Alum co-authors $25,000 trivia challenge

Q: Who was the only TV cast member of M*A*S*H to have actually served in the Korean War? Q: What is the second most translated book in the world after the Bible? Q: What two women served as the models for the Statue of Liberty? If you can answer any or all of these questions, then you may be ready for the Challenge. The $25,000 Challenge: The World's Toughest Trivia Contest, is a book containing 1,566 trivia questions in eight categories, including entertainment, arts and humanities and technology. The book will remind many people of board games like Trivial Pursuit and game shows like Jeopardy! with its difficult questions, fill-in-the blanks, photo IDs and requests for the next line from songs. The challenge is to get all or most of the questions right by Sept. 12, 2000. The person who comes closest will receive $25,000 over a five-year period. In the event of a tie, the winners will split the reward. There are also $1,000 cash prizes for the five runners up. If no one can answer all of the questions, the reward will go to the group or person that answers the highest percentage of questions. According to publisher and co-author Ronald Smolin, "This is the highest cash reward ever offered by a publisher for a contest in book format." Smolin is also the president and founder of Trans-Atlantic Publications Inc. in Philadelphia, which is offering the prize money. The other author is Anthony Notaro, a 1998 College graduate. Notaro started working at Trans-Atlantic in the summer of 1997 and continued to work there during the 1997-98 school year. After he graduated with a degree in philosophy and intellectual history, he began working for Trans-Atlantic, editing books and working on the publishing house's World Wide Web site. "I think we were on the Net looking at trivia sites and got the idea to write a book," Smolin explained. "We just started collecting questions, and they just kept coming and coming." The authors decided later -- after spending three sleepless weeks researching and writing the book -- to offer prize money. Trans-Atlantic has started an advertising campaign at 11 colleges across the country, including Princeton University, the University of Michigan and Brown University. It was Notaro's link to Penn, and the fact that Trans-Atlantic is located in Philadelphia that made them advertise on Penn's campus as well. "Penn students like money," joked Notaro, "and the ones I knew all had lots of useless knowledge." There are even several questions that reflect the author's link to Philadelphia and Penn. For example, do you know what Benjamin Franklin suggested our national bird should be? Or which two men invented the first computer, ENIAC? The authors' hope is that news of the contest will spread to other colleges and universities, or even community groups. "It's almost like a hobby for some people," Smolin noted. "If they want, they can just do a few [questions] each day." Smolin is eventually hoping to get groups like fraternities and sororities involved to work as groups to win the money. In addition, for those without a clue to some of the questions, Trans-Atlantic will post hints on their Web site http://www.transatlanticpub.com/trivia/ starting in October. After looking at the questions, some would call the Challenge impossible, but not Notaro, who currently works as a network administrator for PNC Mortgage in Pittsburgh. "It's definitely possible. The questions just require research."

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