Another year, another LONG drive to Point for me to join in, once again including a drive through the Pigeon River Gorge section of I-40. The amount of change (for the better) that has occurred since Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee is impressive to see, and most of these areas are back open and should be visited as tourism is a huge part of their economies. It is still true that the hardest hit areas may take years to be back to "normal", and the landscape will never look exactly the same. The gorge section is still currently two lanes separated by an 8-inch high yellow curb, with slow travel speeds...but it's an easy section to drive, and daylight you will see some true miracles of engineering being undertaken.
Besides that, the drive does annually make me question my sanity, but once the contest gets rolling that all goes away. I definitely was not in the Trivia spirit in the weeks leading up to it this year, but still showed up. Maybe it was the return of the phones, maybe it was the theme, or maybe it was just a lot of life stressors being added to the stress that is making a long drive up to Trivia.
The phones were back this year, and even though I preferred the Google Form process last year, I think the new system worked pretty well. Definitely still glitches, we had some issues with not getting credit for questions, and I heard the system was not even close to 100% accurate in logging the incoming calls (as promised). For me, it really is worth it to play this crazy game that allows us to forget the world for a long weekend, have fun with friends we may seldom see, and just, for a minute, relax.Â
This marks the 25th Annual* Trivia Power Rankings. Fourth contest written by DAC (along with two rookie writers as Alex was unavailable this time around. They did an excellent job crafting questions to range from easy to ridiculous, with all the fun and frustration each entail, and make it amusing to see what AI thinks the answers might be (some correct, some...less than so). Always good when you can experience all the highs and lows in the same hour! Not sure how we seem to manage it, but we once again managed to land in 13th place (our 3rd year in a row, and moved up over 400 points in the blackout to do so).Â
The rankings have seen some change, with a good bit of shuffling even amongst the top teams. Congratulations to Dad's Computers for pulling off the six-peat (and maintaining their PERFECT TPR score!), Festivus and Fursuit have once again swapped places, with Festivus reclaiming 2nd. Dad's lead has grown slightly to 0.7270, and the gap between Fursuit and Festivus is 0.1404. UUU has jumped over Triple Deception into 4th, and Triple Deception has held on to 5th.
A few teams disappeared from the list again this year, but I was also able to add a few teams either back in because y'all reached out and let me know your name change history, or let me know you'd finally been playing at least 5 years (please keep doing that!). We're still at about 135 teams being tracked (meaning they have been playing with approximately the same name for at least 5 years). I'm fairly sure there are still more than a few teams who could have a score listed but don't (if I find the time, I'll try to track you down), but as a reminder, it takes 5 years of data to generate the first score. If you have been playing 5 or more years with a name I can't trace (or was unable to trace this time around), or just haven't traced, let me know, and I'll do my best to get you added. Anyway, here are the numbers. 2025 scores & places used came from the 90FM Trivia website. If you disagree, please email (otistrivia@gmail.com) and we can discuss a better method.
Like the BCS (or golf), the lower your score, the better you are...or at least that's what the math says. I used data from the 2022-2026 contests, so, if your team didn't play all 5 years, or if I couldn't figure out your name changes from year to year, or I just didn't get around to tracing your history, you aren't listed. If you'd like to be included in this TPR, email me (otistrivia@gmail.com) your team names/places from the 2022-2026 contests, and I will be happy to make the changes.