On Saturday, Feb. 23, students filled Blackwell Ballroom in Ruffner to about three-fourths of its capacity. Why? For the opportunity to win $200 in prize money competing in Thinkfast, a trivia contest.
TjohnE Booking & Productions is the company that puts together the prize money contest.
Allen Conrad, the host of the competition, said, “We have a $200 cash prize, and we do have five consolation prizes,” said Conrad.
The event was free to students and no registration was required in order to play. All that was needed was a Longwood student identification to trade for a keypad, and the student was good to go.
Conrad said, “The game starts off with two preliminary multiple choice rounds where the contestants face rapid questions. The top four groups at the end of each round will face off against one another in a typical game show style setting. If you’ve seen “Jeopardy,” you know what I’m talking about. The winner of each of those rounds earned an immunity spot into the final round. The final two spots were determined by a talent competition judged by the attending stu- dents.
Students could do any talent they wanted as long as it was a capella, and none of the viewing audience could be harmed in any way.
In terms of the difficulty of the questions, Conrad had this to say, "They questions are geared to the college level so they are not that difficult, and it is a general knowledge popular culture trivia quiz show. So there's a lot of stuff about movies, television shows, sports, things of that nature."
“There’s no math [in the ques- tions],” said Conrad. “Once in a while there might be some ridiculous, weird math question, but it’s really like an easy one once you think about it. So there’s not like [any] tough math questions.”
The contest lasted about an hour and a half and had much in the way of interesting questions, talent, screaming by some extremely enthusiastic contestants, comradely and a bit of discord from members of the audience about a question in the final round.
The question that caused such discord was “What do Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton have in common?” The answer supposedly was, “They were both impeached.” However, Jackson was never impeached during his term as president, Andrew Johnson, the 17th president and president during the beginning of the Reconstruction period fol- lowing the Civil War, however was the first president to be impeached by Congress.
Senior Kate Miller ended up winning the contest and the $200 in prize money. She had this to say about the contest. “[The questions] were kind of hard. It kind of helps that my dad was asking me trivia questions since I was little, so it came through for once.”
The $200 that Miller won will be going toward her sorority, Alpha Sigma Tau, so they can “have some more fun things to do,” according to Miller. Miller has been a member of Alpha Sigma Tau since fall 2010.
If you were one of the students who went to the contest and had a fun time or you couldn’t make it this time but wish you had, contact the Student Activities Office. Maybe if enough people ask, TjohnE will bring the show back to Longwood for future enjoyment.
LU students compete for $200 cash prize at Thinkfast trivia in Blackwell Hall.
