Trivia Marathon - KVSC St. Cloud, MN 2/13-2/15

All Trivia shows hinge on a just a few questions. It doesn't matter if it's one of Dice's two-hour pub quizzes or a 50-hour marathon like the one going on in St. Cloud, Minnesota this weekend, the difference between winning and losing can be as finite as earning the theme round with Dice or answering one of the higher point value questions in the KVSC contest.

I tell you this, because it is often difficult to explain this Trivia-thon style contest to people that don't play any Trivia, let alone trying to justify the number of hours I devote to Trivia. Hosting as frequently as I do, doesn't allow for many opportunities to play with my team in Portland, so when I can join my Dad's Computers Family for any of the contests they play, I jump at the opportunity. For this weekend's contest, we join forces with two-time reigning champion Stefan's Dream.

It's currently 9am PST on Sunday and I've been playing all night. Stefan's Dream XVI has been leading all of the contest, but we have failed to capitalize on several opportunities to separate ourselves from the pack. Through Hour 42, we have 11,600 points, approximately 80% of the total points available. A horror-scream filled 30th hour brutalized everyone (Stefan went 4 of 18), so our percentage is a little down from previous years.

And *next* year we can have a speed round of audio of teams screaming while playing *this* year's Red Speed Round.... #triviaweekend

— Shibby (@shibby917) February 15, 2015

I logged into our group Skype not long after the horror round for Dice's typical Trivia all-nighter. In Hour 36, they played an odd audio question that asked to identify the "member of the Masland quality family." At 2:00am it sure seemed like they were looking for the speaker of this clip. The audio clip text was as follows:

"...design in two pile highlights, for extra decorating. And the texture, that's a heavy grow point. A Really luxurious value at about $11.95 a square yard. it comes in several delightful colors to compliment your room and flutter your furnishings. dark and like green, grey, beige Beaver and Cardinal red."

After several minutes of trying to find the speaker's identification, I tried using several boolean variations of the text trying to back into the speaker's identity. As I scrolled through the first few pages of Google results, my eye caught a blurry, old print ad in a newspaper for a couple Masland Mattress products. I guessed we should try the product line "Cantara." Although it was incorrect, fortunately, the phone bank operator asked for a spelling, which usually indicates we are close. Our group Skype chat erupted as I looked a little more carefully at the ad and answered, "Cantata." That correct answer was worth 70 points, a very solid score in this contest. In then end, it may not make a big difference, but that answer is currently accounting for nearly 20% of our current Hour 42 lead of 365 points!

-Dice