The Huskie Den Trivia Night quizzed participants on movies, memes and more Tuesday night.
The event was hosted from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Lower Level of the Huskie Den within the Holmes Student Center. Students, sitting individually or in teams, participated for four rounds of trivia. Each round lasted about 12 minutes with 15 questions asked per round and a 10 minute break in between.
The first round was food themed, with questions about classic peanut butter brands, school lunches and various famous food items like Lunchly, created by influencer Logan Paul and other internet personalities.
Chatter and the excitement of the room grew as the students started to answer questions. Teammates shared looks of frustration if the answers were wrong, and cheered for their teams when they answered correctly.
By the second round, more students trickled into the Huskie Den. This round included TV shows, movies and video game related questions.
Some movies featured were “Wicked,” “Harry Potter” and “Star Wars.” A few of the shows featured were “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things.” For video games, the category included a question about the cities within the award-winning video game “Grand Theft Auto.”
One player, Chris Billquist, a graduate student in the counseling program, was in 11th place after the second round. His favorite question was about which “Star Wars” character inhabits the swamp planet of Dagobah.
“I was surprised that so few people got the answer to that one,” Billquist said.
During the break, halfway through the game, a leaderboard showed a team named “The Fashion Club” in third place, “The Furious 4” in second and “Zoinks!” topping the leader board.
The third round started out with a sports question about Chief’s Quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ 450 million dollar contract with the NFL, 98% of people picked the correct answer.
Following this, in the fourth round some questions about memes were thrown into the mix.
One question asked participants to identify an itch relief product that had a commercial which featured a famous shimmy performed by Shaquille O’Neal in 2014. The product was Gold Bond Powder Spray.
Participants competed for their choice of prizes, which were displayed on a long table in front of the Huskie Den. Prizes included Huskie apparel such as hats, sweaters and water bottles. All of the displayed prizes were donated to the Huskie Den from the Huskie Bookstore.
The game ended off with similar statistics as in the halfway point, a leaderboard showed that “The Fashion Club” came in third with 3,227 points, “The Furious 4” were second with 3,246 points and “Zoinks!” once again, won first with 3,419 points.
The first place winners were Hans Herrera, a junior theater studies and art history double major, and Christian Carter, a junior mathematical sciences major with an emphasis in probability and statistics.
Carter felt a sense of nostalgia during some of the questions.
“I liked the Nyan Cat question just because, like, very fun nostalgic memories of the old internet,” Carter said.
Herrera similarly had strong emotions during the game.
“I feel like I love trivia so much so actually getting to do it and actually winning is very fun. All my studies have been worth it,” Herrera said.
The two winners picked NIU hoodies from the prize table.
The event was organized by Jade Klinger, a second year graduate student in the school counseling program, who works as the operations graduate assistant at the Holmes Student Center. Sam Hawkins, the auditorium technical director of the Holmes Student Center, was another organizer of the event.
Since starting the event last year the pair has organized it once a month, but throughout the year, the amount of people attending has grown.
“I think as far as individuals we were probably averaging 15 to maybe 25 throughout the year, but today my approximate head count was like, 60.” Klinger said.
She added that tonight’s crowd was the biggest yet.
“Hands down this was our biggest night hands down,” Klinger said.
The next Huskie Den Trivia Night will be held Oct. 14.
