Jeopardy who? KLCC, our local NPR affiliate and trusty Eugene public radio source for all things newsy, is sprucing things up with the hottest new quiz show on the block: “The KLCC Conundrum,” self-proclaimed to be “Oregon’s most puzzling quiz.”
Airing on Fridays KLCC’s NPR news segments — Morning Edition, Here & Now, and All Things Considered — the show format consists of one person participating in a five-minute themed general knowledge quiz. Themes include everything from timely topics, such as Friday the 13th (appropriately aired on Friday, Sept. 13), “guess the name,” or even secret themes that the quizzee has to figure out.
What makes this show particularly special is that it is “Oregon and Pacific Northwest flavored,” even if the questions only relate to our great state “diagonally,” says quizmaster and local bar trivia host staple Forest Walker Davis.
Unlike Jeopardy, you don’t have to be a regular Ken Jennings (74-time Jeopardy champion) to participate — though, the “Conundrum” did recently host a five-time Jeopardy winner. In fact, anyone in Oregon is invited to register to play The KLCC Conundrum on the air.
Questions range from sciency to video gamey to history, always on theme, and always with a dash of the hosts’ delightful banter. Questions of “Conundrum’s” past have ranged from “Skittles, Mork and Mindy, and trout have what in common?” and “An astronomical term ultimately coming from the Greek word for milky?”
In the registration form, participants are asked questions that tailor the quiz to their interests and trivia abilities. They also get to choose their “spice level,” or mode of difficulty that they would prefer for their questions. The week’s guest is randomly selected, invited on, and the power of knowledge is ignited. However, the show is very low-pressure, and the two hosts with voices smooth-as-butter are there to guide par-quiz-ipants to success with clever hints.
KLCC’s program director, Jason Brown, says he appreciates the opportunity for outside-the-news engagement, and the sense of community that comes with it. “People who listen are the ones who are presumably hearing this and signing up,” and with this, the audiences, the hosts, the participants “are all rooting for each other” says co-host Brown (who has an excellent last name, I might add). “In some sense, I think we’re all rooting against Forest.”
“We’re always looking for opportunities to develop local programs and to develop programs that are interactive and getting community voices on,” Brown says. “A quiz show is the perfect vehicle for that” (and with a last name like that, I sure trust him).
“The Conundrum” first aired in early June and has been over the radio waves every Friday since. It was born when Davis was hosting trivia at Ninkasi Brewing Company where “the team of KLCC folk were just constantly winning,” he says.
Brown and his colleagues were so taken with Davis’ wizardry in quiz mastering that they invited him to host a trivia show on KLCC. Brown says Davis’ questions are “so clever and he just has such a pleasant and inclusive demeanor with the way he conducts things.” He adds, “If it’s your first time that you show up to one of his quizzes, I think you really feel welcome.”
I can confirm this, as you can catch me, a happy Eugene Weekly intern, on the air Friday, Oct 18, on “The KLCC Conundrum.” I did feel very welcomed by Davis’ EW-themed questions in tribute to Eugene Weekly, and the answers to all of my questions had those two letters appearing next to each other.
I came in with high hopes, thinking that my whole 20 years of life experience would guide me into knowing all of the hidden secrets of the world and slide me into victory. Full journalistic transparency: I didn’t do fantastic, but I learned a lot. The truth is, the real quiz show is all about the friends I made along the way
So tune into the “KLCC Conundrum” on Fridays to hear some trivia or sign up and take a crack at it yourself, because as Brown says in his intro, “We can’t play a good game without players. We tried it — it just didn’t work.”
*Answers: Skittles, Mork and Mindy, and Trout all have rainbows in common. The Greek word for the astronomical term “milky” is “galaxy.”The KLCC Conundrum airs on KLCC 89.5 FM on Fridays at 7:45 am, 11:34 am, and 4:44 pm, Sign up to register KLCC.org/conundrum.