1. Why is the “Traveling Question” just a question? The Traveling Question gets it’s name from the days of yore when it was just one question. KQ Staff would ask a special question over the radio like “What is the third word engraved on the bell found in the town square in small Iowa Town X?” and give teams just enough time to drive to the town, find an unoccupied pay-phone (ha!),  and call the answer back to KQ Staff to earn big points. Over the years the Traveling Question has grown into something a little more fun, but a little more complex but retains the name.
2. So in a nutshell what is the Traveling Question? The Traveling Question is probably best described as the quintessential college movie road trip. As a team you are tasked with a quest, it’s not entirely clear where you’re going, what you’re doing when you get there or how you’re going to accomplish it but you’ll be damned if anyone is going to stop you from figuring it all out?
3. That didn’t tell me what the Traveling Question is though… That’s not a question, and it’s kind of whiny, better keep that in check over KQ. No one likes whiners.
4. Ok, so how does the Traveling Question work then since it’s apparently an epic quest? Perfect! An epic quest! Why didn’t we think of that? That’s much better than college movie road trip. Much like other epic quests you’ve been on a wizard or other similarly shady figure will give you a set of clues. You’ll probably get these clues in the dead of night or some other equally inconvenient time, 5AM close enough. With these set of clues you’ll be given tasks generally to find things or places, solve puzzles and document your travels, generally with photographs.
5. Sounds like a pretty big deal, I don’t know if my small/new team wants to do it. Do we have to? No, you don’t and you can still have a blast at KQ. The top three finishing spots might be out of reach for you but if you’re small or new that might be the case anyway. Here’s the kicker though, if you’re in it for the prizes, we have more prizes for teams that don’t finish in the top 3 than we have prizes for the top 3; if you’re in it for just the fun,
6. So we want to do it, we leave at 5 AM the Saturday morning of KQ and since we don’t know what we’re doing we can’t prepare? Almost, but not quite. There are some things that you can do to prepare and ensure you’ll succeed at the Traveling Question, and there are some things you must do.
7. Ok so what are the things we must do?
1. You need to figure out who your drivers for the Traveling Question are going to be, they unfortunately have to be decided ahead of time for liability and safety reasons. You will generally need 2 drivers and can have up to 2 alternates (this is the case for KQ 2013).
2. Your drivers will need to pass a motor vehicle records check. How this done is covered in the informational meeting (see the next point) but the important thing to note is that this process takes time, up to a week and a half in some cases, as little as 3 days in others.
3. You need to attend the KQ Informational Session generally held the Sunday two weeks before KQ (for KQ 2013 it is February 17th at 7pm in Friley 2414), you should ideally have a team captain and all of your drivers (generally 2 + up to 2 alternates)
4. You need to provide your own car, no rentals (ISU Policy).
5. Your drivers need to be ISU Students (ISU Policy).
6. Your drivers and any passengers (see below) need to be 18 years of age or older. Since people leave at 5AM and you don’t know where you’re going you have to be legally able to sign your own travel waiver.
7. You’ll need a camera. Nothing crazy, something that can get pictures from the destination to Ames, ideally without you having to return. A newer smart phone is perfect for this, they take perfectly acceptable photos and can email them back to team headquarters or worst case directly to KQ Central.
8. Ok so what are the optional things?
1. Get all of your drivers (primary or alternate) to the informational meeting, not just a team rep, it’ll be very helpful for everyone.
2. Have a navigator! You can bring non-drivers on the trip, they don’t have to do the motor vehicle check. This person can peer over maps (see below on those) solve puzzles in the car and serve as an extra pair of eyes that doesn’t need to be on the road.
3. Bring real maps. Smart phones and tablets are great, and useful, but you can draw on real maps, you can get a bigger picture. At very least a map of Iowa is going to help you. Crazier teams might pick up maps for every bordering state ahead of time, don’t go nuts though, the Traveling Question is not a race; pick up the maps you think you’ll want on the way out of town, or stop at a rest stop (many states give away free maps). A decent road atlas for that matter might serve you well.
4. Writing tools are great. Pencils, pens, post-it notes.
9. Where are we going this year? Have you not been reading? We’re not telling! You’re going to have to figure it out.
10. Ok, so where have you gone in the past? Here is as far back as we can remember. 2012: Dubuque, IA, Galena, IL; 2011: Omaha, NE; 2010: Minneapolis, MN;  2009: Chicago, IL, and Toronto, ON OR Chicago, IL, Madison, WI, Rochester, MN, Clear Lake, IA; 2008: No Traveling Question; 2007: No Traveling Question; 2006: No Traveling Question; 2005: Madison, WI; 2004: 12 destinations within Story and Boone County; 2003: All 4 extreme corners of Iowa.
11. How many points is the Traveling Question worth. The balance of the Traveling Question is different every year but it is typically worth 800-1500 points, successful teams typically get 80-100% of the available traveling question points which typically will make up between 10% to 20% of a teams earned points.

• Ahhnold and the Terminators
• Bring on the Picros
• Buchanan Hall Take All
• Burkskin Gulch Jr. Rangers
• Cloudy With a Chance of Chloroform
• Crazy Train
• Don’t Choke Under the Weight of the Column of Air Above You
• Dunston Checks In 2: Dunston Checks Out
• Epic Sail
• Fallen Angles in the Outfield
• Fifth Place
• Fourth and God: The Tim Tebow Story.
• Hypnotoad
• I Has Your Bucket
• I Moustache You A Question
• I was created for two things and your Mom is busy till Saturday at 6
• I was hiding under your porch because I love you.
• If I bite a werewolf, does he turn into me?
• KIDSEXCHANGE
• Magical McMagic and the One Armed One Manned Polka Birthday Band
• Multiple Scoregasms
• My Bologna has a first name, it’s B-A-C-O-N
• Nonoxynol-9
• Not the mama!
• Our cooking is fabulous, even the smoke alarms cheer us on
• Perpetual Motion Squad: We Can Go All Night
• Pete
• Philosoraptors in Brick’s House
• Rise of the Phoenix: Fairchild’s Revenge
• Schrödinger’s Cat in the Hat
• Sherpas of Niagra Falls
• Shoot First, Ask Christian Slater
• Some Assembly Required
• Super Symmetric Squad
• Super-Secret KQ Kommandos
• Team Dante
• Team Destroy All Humans
• The Donkey Calls
• The Little Lebowski Urban Achievers
• The Ministry of Darkness
• The next 26 hours are the only time every year that Google’s DNS server gets more access than your mom.
• The opposite of Christopher Reeves, Christopher Walken
• The Wild Boz and Her Band of Merry Pancake Makers
• They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard!!
• Ubiquitous Screaming Penguins
• Vandalay Industries
• veROFLraptorz
• Water, Sugar and of course Purple
• We can’t say this team’s name on the radio
• We’re so Spinney, we’re dizzy.
• whom

Hope that helps you on your path to KQ glory!

The process is nearly identical to last year. Fill out the online form, and afterwards put your registration fee (in cash or green intramural form) in a sealed envelope labeled with your full team name. Drop that envelope off at the KURE Office in 1198 Friley Hall. If the Office is empty slide the envelope under the door. Under no circumstances should you leave your registration fee with a DJ in the KURE Studio.

Both the online form and the fee payment must be completed by the deadline to be a valid and complete registration. An email will be sent to confirm receipt of both the online form and the registration fee.

2013 Deadlines and fees:
Regular Registration: $35 by Friday, February 15th at 5PM.
Late Registration: $40 by Wednesday, February 27th at 11:59PM.

Radio contest enthusiasts, puzzle gurus, trivia buffs and Google-fu masters it’s time to set your sights on a new challenge! For 46 years KURE and the student radio stations before it have put on Kaleidoquiz a massive radio contest that at points in its history has been the largest radio competition in the world. KQ is a massive undertaking though. Successful teams have at least 30 members and they dedicate 26 hours to radio contest glory. Not everyone has the time, enough people to put together a full team, or is crazy enough, to take on KQ.

This year KURE is proud to announce QuickyKwiz, a new event designed for people that want to try a part of this decades old crazy radio contest but can only drum up a few friends and don’t want to be Googling facts about the cast of Firefly at 4:30 in the morning. QK, as we’re refering to it for brevity, will be 7 hours long and will run from Noon to 7pm on Saturday November 10th.

At it’s core will be the same crazy and silly questions read over the radio every 6 minutes that you get during KQ but’ll be shorter, more focused, and designed for smaller teams. We expect a successful team to need no more than 5-10 participants. So gather together a group of friends from your residence hall house, members from your club, a group of co-workers, or just a bunch of friends for a weekend event with almost no peer.

In addition to the questions on the radio every 6 minutes QuickyKwiz will include other Kaleidoquiz mainstays such as scavenger hunts, montages (where you have to identify 10-20 clips of media from music, movies, television), and maybe even a special event, who knows.

Hard core Kaleidoquiz veterans, and those who are considering trying KQ for the first time this coming spring need not shy from this event for more casual radio contest participants, we expect to see some familiar faces and soon to be familiar faces at QwickyKwiz. You’re not going to have as much fun in your mega-team forms though, as mentioned above you’ll enjoy the event most in teams of 5-10 so break into smaller groups and treat QK as some intra-team fun and fall training for the big event in the spring!

QuickyKwiz registration will start this coming Friday, October 5th, and will close Wednesday, November 7th. Further details on QK team registration will follow in a registration post this Friday, so stay tuned!

A special thanks to the Iowa State Daily for their fantastic coverage throughout.  You can find a boatload of photos over on the Ames247 Flickr Photostream, some crowd sourced reporting over on the Ames247 site, an article dedicated to 70′s Hoops specifically. The Daily’s print edition ran a fantastic print article last Thursday. You can likely look forward to some recap coverage in the next week or so, so stay tuned for that.

You’re liking wondering what the final results are, so here they are:

1. 7966 points – Cloudy With A Chance of Chloroform – Starbuck House
2. 7737 points – We’re More Innovative than Steve Jobs, more courageous than Steve Irwin, more touching than Michael Jackson, and less dead than all three – Harwood House 
3. 7199 points - Schrödinger’s Cat in the Hat – Material Advantage
4. 7165 points – Team Loaf
5. 5391 points – Super Symmetric Squad
6. 5355 points – My Bologna has a first name, it’s B-A-C-O-N
7. 4466 points – Pleistocene Pirates – Pearson and Palmer Houses
8. 4432 points – Back Sack Box – Alpha Kappa Lambda 
9. 4359 points – This is Barta!! – Anders House
10. 3759 points – Crazy Train
11. 3718 points – Our cooking is fabulous, even the smoke alarms cheer us on – Helser Hall
12. 2425 points – Your argument is well thought out and informed. Please allow this as our rebuttal: suck it. – SCUM
13. 2166 points - Team Name Sharks with Lasers Eating Pancakes that Can Shake Hands While Wearing Fallopian Tube Socks Repping Team Edward Built Like A Brick Singing Zip Zop Bibbity Boop Bop Hi Ho Silver Away Featuring Social Lubricant Which is Better than Honors – ISU Astronomy/Physic Club
14. 2097 points – Fourth and God: The Tim Tebow Story – Last year’s “Shoot First, Ask Christian Slater”
15. 1450 points – Fallen Angels in the Outfield – EEOB Grad Students
16. 1328 points – Vandalay Industries
17. 867 points – Team Stange – Stange House
18. 667 points – the Kimballers – Kimball House
19. 220 points – LDSSA – LDSSA

Now that we’ve gotten rid of all of the late registration riff-raff here’s a step by step guide to individual registration:

1. Go to the individual pre-registration form, fill it out completely and submit it. Need to tell someone an easy to remember url to get there, tell them kqpeeps.kure885.org.
2. Download a Kaleidoquiz 2012 Waiver, print it off, fill it out completely, and keep it in a safe place.
• If you are under the age of 18 you will need a guardian to sign the waiver. Send them the url to the waiver, have them download it and mail or fax it back to you. If you are under 18 you must have a guardian sign. Waivers not signed by a legal guardian for those under 18 will not be accepted.
• Downloading and printing your own copy is optional. We will have copies printed and on hand at registration but you’ll be able to get into the fast track line!
• If you do print off your own copy either print it back to front or have it stapled.
3. Go to KQ Registration on Friday March 2nd.
• Registration will be in 2414 Friley Hall just north of the Hall Desk.
• Registration will be open from 10am-5pm.
• Show up early, drop in between classes, before lunch, after lunch, etc.
• There might be a line but if you have your waiver printed and filed out you’ll be able to get into the “Fast Track” line only for those who have completed waivers.
• You will need government issued photo id (driver’s license, student id, passport) and some means to verify your date of birth (driver’s license, passport… copy of your birth certificate I guess?)
4. Get your totally sweet KQ 2012 wristband
• Please note, wristbands actually just ok, not totally sweet.
5. All done!

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I really need both photo id and proof of my date of birth? Yes.

Do I have to print off my own waiver? No, we’ll have copies printed, but you have to wait in line for those and then get into the line with those with completed waivers, it’s faster if you have it ready to go.

I can’t make it between 10am-5pm does this mean I can’t do KQ?! Absolutely not! At 5pm (or whenever the line disappears) we’ll move registration to the Challenge Desk outside the KURE Studios and will have them open for all of KQ.

Do I really have to have my parent/guardian sign my waiver? Are you under 18? Yes Did you not read what we wrote above about that? Sort of Ok, well we “sort of” explained it up there, but here it is again, yes your guardian must sign the waiver if you’re under 18

Do the lines get long can I do this in-between classes? Sometimes, they’re longest around noon till about 3 PM. even then it takes about ten minutes total. If you can do it between classes depends a lot on how close your classes are and how fast you can run, so, no comment.

Do I have to fill out this waiver to compete in KQ? If you have to interact with KURE staff to earn points we will not grant any points to someone without a wristband. If you’re sitting in a team HQ without one there is nothing we can do, but if you’re your team’s best breakdancer and we call for break dancers you’ll probably be late if you have to go register first. You’re best off just getting it out of the way.

This list is long, and relatively comprehensive so don’t let it scare you. For smaller first time teams KQ is about picking your battles and dividing what resources you have available. In the end though it’s all about having fun, if that’s your goal and you’re short someone at 5AM and can’t make it to an event, don’t sweat it, you wont get the points but there’s always next year.

1. Gather Your Team - Kaleidoquiz is a team event. Team sizes vary greatly but successful teams, for purposes of this list teams that finish in the top 10, typically have, at minimum, 25 team members. That 25 number is important because it’s also the number of people we target you’ll need during most hours of KQ. Mind you, this is based on approximations of an “average” team, so your millage may vary. If you’ve got someone who’s ungodly in front of Google you might need fewer people in your phone room, if you’ve got someone who’s a hoarder you might not need so many people for scavenger hunts, but remember, this is a 26 hour event and most of us need to sleep to be at peek performance.
2. Pick a Team Headquarters - For 26 hours wherever you pick will be your home. The essentials you’ll need are an internet connection, a big enough room to fit people and a bunch of computers, and ideally a side room you can work on the various side projects we throw you. Beyond those essentials you’ll want easy access to cars (and thus parking), and a place for your team members to get away and take a nap and/or unwind. Finally a huge bonus is proximity to Friley. We try our best to give ample time to teams that are off campus or farther flung than UDA, but in the end everyone has to be given the same deadlines. The less transit time you have the better.
3. Plan a Route to Friley and the KURE Studios - The bowels of Friley Hall are home to KURE and Kaleidoquiz. We’re dirty scheming jerks and our home reflects this. We have no windows, and if you don’t familiarize yourself with the basement of Friley before the day of KQ you’re more likely to cross paths with a Minotaur than get to an event on time. Seriously, take a field trip with a bunch of people down to the Studios before KQ, but please don’t feed the DJs. Really, don’t feed them, you’ve seen Gremlins right?
4. Gather Items on the “Team Scavenger Hunt List” - The Team Scavenger Hunt List is the only clue that we’re going to give you into the events of this year’s KQ.  We’re being intentionally cryptic and obtuse, get used to it. Parse the items on this list carefully because it was composed with care. Hopefully this’ll give you some insight into what we’re looking for this year.
5. Read Everything on the Kaleidoquiz Website - No really, we’re giving out free advice here. We also like to leave hints in strange places. If you think of a question, write it down, we always do a pre-KQ team Q&A, a KQ&A if you will. Worst case we might not answer your question, or we might give a cryptic answer,  but we might be upfront about things; if you don’t ask you have zero chance of even a hint.
6. Develop a Plan for Expenses - This is easy for some and harder for others. If the team is buying pizza at 1AM, who is paying for it? Now that you’ve purchased 10 novelty versions of Monopoly for a scavenger hunt (because you cheated and didn’t just find people that owned them) what are you going to do with them, and who’s footing the bill? Keep receipts, they make figuring out who owes whom much easier. This isn’t to say that KQ can’t be done on a shoestring but it’s not cost free either, at minimum you’ve got a registration fee.
7. Prepare a Plan of Action for Friday Before KQ - Kaleidoquiz starts at 4PM on Friday afternoon. But that’s not when you should start getting your team set up, that’s when you should be ready, ready for anything (see item 9). 4PM is when the first question is read, the first challenges are announced, and the gauntlet is laid down. This means your team HQ should be set and ready to go. You should have many team members on site as you can and the rest of them on their way. You should have picked up your team packet (available from 2PM onwards), tested your secret phone line (3PM onwards), and most importantly most, if not all, of your team members should have finished individual registration (10AM-5PM).
8. Prepare a Plan of Action for All of KQ - Kaleidoquiz is a multiheaded beast. You’ll need to all be at the top of your game at all times. Come up with a plan for when people are going to do what. Some teams plan out who is sleeping when to ensure that when the 5AM duldrums hit you’ve got some fresh minds and cheerful faces to pull the third shifters through to the end. Other teams go so far as to plan out shifts for eating. As much as planning is possible you should attempt to do so.
9. Be ready for All Standard Event Types - Kaleidoquiz is all about the unexpected but there are some things you can always count on.
• Questions on the Air: the heart of KQ, read every 6 minutes, you’ve got up till the buzzer to answer them. You should probably have a recording and some kind of transcript of the questions. We’re self referential at times and you’ll always want to make sure you can remember if that question had a “not” in it.
• Scavenger Hunts: 20 items, 2 hours, 3 times. You’ll have to build some of these things from scratch, others you’ll have to wake your friend’s Mom in Boone to drive up that children’s toy she never threw away.
• Montages: 10 to 20 5-15 second movie and music clips you have to identify. You should have some means to record these, we only play them once, but we give you a 15 minute warning.
• Physical Challenges: These might be a dodgeball or four-square tournament, it might be a game of Quidditch, they might be a race to the top of a rock climbing wall, they might be a triathalon. No really, we made people do a triathalon once.
• Creative Challenges: Photoshop showdowns, talent shows, rock operas, video editing challenges, we’ve done them all. You’re guaranteed to need a video camera at some point.
• Intellectual Challenges: video game tournaments, lectures, in-person internet-free trivia challenges, navigating Wikipeida, the sky is the limit.
• The Traveling Question: This is infamous, it’s epic, it’s the college road trip you see in movies, the quest for that distant goal that changes along the way. You’ll literally go places you didn’t expect you’d ever go, and those places are frequently out of state.
10. Prepare to Throw Your Plans Away - If your best graphics person is sleeping at 4am and we throw out a challenge to photoshop Dan Quayle into a 2012 Presidential Debate they better be available, and easy to rouse from a slumber. Kaleidoquiz is all about adapting to what’s thrown at you, adapting being the key word.

The process is nearly identical to last year. Fill out the online form, and afterwards put your registration fee (in cash or green intramural form) in a sealed envelope labeled with your full team name. Drop that envelope off at the KURE Office in 1198 Friley Hall. If the Office is empty slide the envelope under the door. Under no circumstances should you leave your registration fee with a DJ in the KURE Studio.

Both the online form and the fee payment must be completed by the deadline to be a valid and complete registration. An email will be sent to confirm receipt of both the online form and the registration fee.

2012 Deadlines and fees:
Regular Registration: $35 by February 17th at 5PM.
Late Registration: $40 by February 29th at 11:59PM.

In addition, this year KURE is offering a special Kaleidoquiz Team Scholarship to encourage people to try Kaleidoquiz for the first time. Further explanation and instruction can be found on the team registration form.