For nearly a year, many prepared for the event by taking notes from movies and television. Others view the event as a time to socialize and recall days gone by with friends. WWSP estimates the event draws between 10,000 and 12,000 participants on 400 to 500 teams for the weekend. Trivia weekend has expanded from its modest beginnings to an event embraced by many community members and businesses, many of whom participate themselves. The city of Stevens Point suspends overnight parking laws during the event to accommodate the many visitors to neighborhoods where teams set up their headquarters.
Signs begin appearing in yards and on homes, designating the sites as the location of a trivia team.
To try to generate interest in the relatively new University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point radio station, then called WSUS, the pair came up with the trivia contest in the fall of 1969. Schaff was the station's program director and Donovan was a freshman from Neenah who got the idea from Lawrence University, where radio station WLFM held a trivia contest. Donovan, who had won the off-campus division of the Lawrence contest as a high school student, wrote the questions. That instituted the event that may trigger the return of more alumni to the campus than homecoming. After the first contest, the radio station tried another one in the fall of 1970, but participation fell off so the station moved the contest back to the spring in 1972, and it has remained there since.