Trivia Guy works to uplift us all

COEUR d’ALENE — If you find a few crusty fellows drinking coffee at the diner early in the morning or an employee taking a quick breather in the company breakroom around lunchtime, a disheveled newspaper with fun trivia questions will likely be within reach.

Those questions — sometimes funny, sometimes ponderous, but always concise — might be just the thing to bring a smile to somebody’s face during the daily grind.

Trivia expert Wilson Casey has been grinding out those trivia questions for decades, and takes pleasure in bringing hope and encouragement to his nationwide audience. The Woodruff, S.C. native pens six new trivia questions every day, plus several books of trivia each year, as part of his mission to delight millions.

Those millions include readers of The Press, which has carried his column for five years in the A section each Monday through Saturday. He started as a 20-something school teacher whose principal tried to stump him one day on entertainment trivia from past issues of TV Guide. That sparked his interest, and not long after, Casey approached his local newspaper with a weekly trivia column. He quickly became nationally syndicated, but then fell into the pitfalls of youthful carelessness, and lost his contract.

“I was young and dumb,” he confessed in a phone interview with The Press.

After that experience, he jumped at the chance to work as a full-time radio personality who asked trivia questions to callers. He spent 22 years entertaining local audiences over the airwaves.

“I never had a radio voice, but I was nice and quick-witted with people who would call in,” he said.

Beginning in 2000, he resumed writing trivia columns that are nationally syndicated, and has been working 50-60 hours per week since.

Casey shows up several times in the Guinness Book of World Records, most notably for his 30-hour run of 3,333 consecutive correct answers to trivia questions on the radio in January 1999. He didn’t stop because he missed one, he explained. After 30 hours, and with a “nice, round number” of 3,333, he just decided to stop. Some have tried to break it, but the record still stands almost 20 years later.

His author page on Amazon lists more than 50 separate published works by Casey, including a nonfiction work on America’s last train robber, “Bedlam on the West Virginia Rails,” that has been adapted for a possible feature film.

During the 2016 presidential election campaigns, he published two books on Hillary Clinton — one full of reasons to vote for her, and another full of reasons not to vote for her.

He annually produces a golf trivia book that you’ll see at local bookstores and online. For all that he’s achieved, though, Casey remembers what it was like to struggle to make it. He said he approaches every trivia column and book with the mindset that he has to prove himself to his readers all over again.

He recently published a book on Bible trivia, “Test Your Bible Knowledge,” that offers 201 separate trivia quizzes. At six questions each, each quiz won’t take more than a few minutes to work through.

Each quiz starts off with a warmup question, and then follows that up with five multiple-choice questions. Based on reader feedback, Casey put the answers to each quiz at the bottom of the same page the quiz is on. People don’t like having to flip to the back of the book to find the answers, he explained.

“They want the answer right there where they can immediately see it and not lose their place,” he said.

Each quiz stands on its own and has approximately the same difficulty level. Appropriately for the topic at hand, each answer cites chapter and verse for those who want to know where that particular trivia tidbit came from. As is his wont, Casey aims to uplift readers with his trivia.

“In my heart, I’m hoping someone will take my Bible trivia and the questions will trigger them to learn about the Good Book and apply it to their daily lives,” he said.

Writing isn’t a lucrative career, but for Casey that’s not the important thing.

“There’s so much bad news and sad news. Readers want to be informed and entertained. That’s what my trivia does,” he said. “I get emails from all over the country from people who really love and enjoy it. I treasure those.”

To learn more or to get Casey’s trivia and books, go to triviaguy.com.