Williams Trivia (Freshman Edition)

What the heck is Williams Trivia?

Trivia is a glorious and time-honored Williams tradition dating back to 1966. Once in January and once in May, all Williams students—and anyone else who wants to play!—are invited to stay up way too late for a night of music, puzzles, goofy performances, and all kinds of things-you-know, things-you-know-but-can't-quite-remember, and things-you-didn't-know-but-will-probably-be-amused-to-learn-about. It's the final exam for everything you never learned at Williams College.

We are Badger-Sputumly Inconsequential Trivia, the team who ran the May '26 contest, and we're offering up this bite-sized sample of Trivia as a preview of the next contest, to be run in January of '27 by Tasmanian Treebiters of the North. If you have fun tonight, please join us for the real contest come January!

What to bring:

• As many friends, entrymates, family members, vague acquaintances, or complete strangers as you wish to gather. There is no limit on team size. There have been Trivia teams with more than 80 people, and Trivia teams with just one person. You can have fun at any size!
• Computers and/or cell phones. This contest is hosted online, so you'll need to be able to access this webpage and our audio stream.
• Snacks! Under no circumstances should snacks be omitted. (Well, maybe if you have a colonoscopy tomorrow or something. But we hope you don’t.)
• Your knowledge and life experience. An enthusiasm for nonsense. An inner (or outer) nerd and/or geek. Reference books. Silly props. Caffeine.

In the days before the contest:

1. Pick a team name. Any name will do!
2. Before 8:00pm Eastern Time on October 30th, go to www.williamstrivia.com and register your team.
3. Set your team picture to be either a photo of your team or something evocative of your team's name (worth one point)!
4. Make sure that everyone on your team knows the team password.

Just before 8:00pm:

1. Find the link to the audio stream on the main page (the Big Purple Button ), and open that. That's how you'll hear questions and songs. (We recommend checking before the contest starts to make sure your computer accesses the stream without any issue; we'll be playing music in the hour before the contest so that you can verify that we're coming through loud and clear.)
2. Click on the link to your team's chat room in the upper-left corner of the homepage, and say hello to your host!

What will happen:

• At 8:00pm, we will begin the contest by explaining the rules. After that, we will read a question, and then play a song. You have the duration of the song to tell us the answer to the question. You get one point for answering the question correctly, and one point for naming the song and artist. You may not use any internet resources (search engines, song-identifying apps, etc.) to help you identify the song and artist. We don’t absolutely ban using the internet to answer the trivia questions, but we recommend against doing so for your sake; the addition of automated AI responses to most search engines has made googling questions less than fun, and this contest is all about having fun!
• There will be a member of our team hanging out in your team’s chat room as a host. To give answers, just type them into the chat.
• You may ask your host for hints on both the trivia question and the music, and your host will usually answer yes-or-no questions about them. Usually. If you're nice. (If your host is busy with multiple teams, please be patient with them! They’re here to help you, and are doing their best.) You get as many guesses as you can fit into the duration of the song, but when the song ends, time’s up!
• Now lather, rinse, and repeat. Those are the "on-air" questions, and they will continue all night.

But wait, there's more!

• Every hour, we will post an Hour Bonus on the website. It will contain a set of questions on a particular topic or theme, like "Pirates" or "The Letter Q" or "Songs About Butts." You have a full hour to answer them in your team's answer sheet. You may choose to use the internet or not, and must answer “yes” or “no” on the answer sheet as to whether you used it. If you do not use the internet, your bonus will be worth significantly more points (and will probably also be more fun to do)!
• And even more! There will also be a Super Bonus, released at 8:00 PM, which you will have the entire four hours of the contest to complete. It works the same way as an Hour Bonus; it's just bigger.
• And there's the Ultra Bonus: a series of clues spread out over the whole night. (In a full-sized contest, they would be released every hour, but you're going to get new clues every half-hour. Lucky you!) You have to tell us how all the clues are connected. The sooner you do, the more points you get. You can guess as many times as you want, so keep 'em coming. Traditionally, especially funny guesses will be read on-air at the end of the contest, so feel free to try to amuse us.
• We will also have three Action Boni, which will ask you to do things such as act out a scene, dance, sing, draw, or otherwise Do Something besides just sitting and answering trivia questions. (Videos uploaded to a Google Drive are perfect for sharing with us, as are YouTube uploads and the like.)

More Info

Be sure to read the official contest rules for all the nuts and bolts.

We finally have a Williams Trivia GroupMe! Join for Trivia news, announcements, and post-gaming at https://groupme.com/join_group/117954073/YX5S1Pgi

Almost all the trivia from the past 116 contests is online in the WSO Trivia archive at wso.williams.edu/orgs/trivia. If you want to see what questions and boni are like, go there. If WSO is inaccessible and you'd like to see samples of past contest content, just ask in the GroupMe, and we'd be happy to provide!

So start forming your team and planning your snacks! Feel free to send any questions you have to us at badgersputum@gmail.com, or ask in the GroupMe chat. We look forward to scoring your answers and being delighted by your Action Boni on Friday, October 30th!