On April 10, Palatine High School hosted one of its most looked forward to events of the year: Trivia Night. The major fundraising event for the Ray Mills Fund, Trivia Night raised over $3850 by the end of the night. With 40 teams and more than 400 people coming out, the cafeteria was packed.  Hollers and whoops of joy were heard clearly across the cafeteria  all night as teams got a question right, or conversely groaned in dismay upon missing a question.

This year, a major game changer was introduced to the event. Instead of grouping all the teams together into one huge division, this year saw the formation of a second division specifically for high schoolers. If a team had four or more high schoolers, they were part of the scarlet division. Teams that had five or more adults then became part of the gray division. Each group had its own set of winners and totaled points separate from each other.

The new rule was created to acknowledge the fact that it has been primarily adult teams that end up winning in years past. Logically, this makes sense. The older one is, the more likely they are to know odd bits of knowledge that have accumulated over time in the back of one’s mind. And as we all know, these odd bits of knowledge are crucial in trivia. The goal of the new division was to ultimately allow students to have a chance to finally take home some of the prize money.

The theme for this year, 21, also focused on a new adjustment to the point total system. Instead of receiving a single point for each correct answer as in years past, players were asked to rank their answers from one through six according to their confidence level in their responses. Thus, if you were extremely confident with an answer, your team would give it six points and so on. A perfect set of responses for a round would add up to a  grand total of 21. The new rule seems to reward correct answers more while penalizing wrong answers less. For example, if you got half of the questions wrong in years past, then you would only have half of the points. If you got half of the questions wrong this year, however, and if you gave those wrong answers the lowest point values, you would still have seventy one percent of the points.

Categories this year included everything from science, sports, celebrity gossip, music videos, to even recognizing symbols.

NHS members were also seen helping out during the event, either filling in at tables, selling food, or totaling points among other things.

Emcee for the night and chemistry teacher Christopher Smith would like to say “Thanks to everyone for coming out and let’s make it even better next year.”