The crazy 26-hour-long KaleidoQuiz is preparing for its 41st year, but this time there will be a few changes.

While KQ has become more and more popular over the past few years, there is a limit on the number of teams this year.

“I’m limiting the number of teams to 20 this year, as it’s becoming harder and harder logistically to create quality events and have them scored for that number of teams in a reasonable time,” said Alex Kharbush, senior in software engineering and director of KaleidoQuiz.

“If I do go over my 20-team limit, I plan on meeting with team captains and having two smaller teams make one bigger team. The bigger teams do better, since they have the people power to make it through my barrage of events.”

Kharbush said he was going to incorporate YouTube into the event as well.

“One thing that I’m really excited about is YouTube,” he said. “I will try to record as much of the events as possible and post them on YouTube so teammates can see how and what the team members did for the two hours they were gone.”

The event will begin at 4 p.m. on March 7 and end at 6 p.m. on March 8.

KaleidoQuiz is thrown every year by the ISU student-run radio station KURE and is packed with events.

“It’s mostly a trivia contest that has different random events thrown in there,” said Andy DeVries, senior in graphic design and member of the KURE board of directors. “It used to be different, but due to the advent of Google, we had to make the questions more challenging and throw in a lot more events to mix it up, because the questions just weren’t doing it any more.”

Among the normal trivia questions – which are asked every 6 minutes throughout the event – there is also a scavenger hunt, montages (song and movie recognition) and other random tasks that different teams have to perform.

“It’s confidential,” DeVries said. “But I can say we’re always trying to make it bigger and better – more and more crazy events and more challenging questions. We’re always trying to improve on it,” DeVries said.

One famous tradition involves a scavenger hunt in which teams have to drive around the region.

“There was a famous one where teams had to go to Boone,” DeVries said. “Back in the day, when there was more teams involved – and they rushed the city and freaked out the townsfolk because there was about 200 kids swarming the city. They couldn’t tell what was going on.”

The montages are also an important part of the event and consist of spliced-together song or movie parts.

“Last year we had a Led Zeppelin one where it was all songs with the word ‘baby’, and it was just the word ‘baby’ and you had to decipher which song it was. Some are next to impossible.”

The Inter-Residence Hall Association passed a bill that allows the first 15 teams to sign up in the dorms to get $100 of spending money to go towards KQ.

“The bill is huge for us,” DeVries said. “It’s a great thing for dorm interaction. It used to be huge in the dorms, but it’s really waned in the last few years. I blame the iPod because people just aren’t listening to the radio as much.”

The event is run completely by phone, and KURE sets up a home base and a code system so nobody can sabotage other teams’ progress. The events are planned by KURE’s board of directors and the whole event is organized by Kharbush.

“Alex plans this all year long – it’s his only obligation,” DeVries said. “The day one KaleidoQuiz ends, he’ll be thinking about the next one.”

Signing up

To sign up, go to :

www.kaleidoquiz.org.

KQ begins at 4 p.m. March 7 and ends at 6 p.m. March 8.

Applications are being accepted through March 6.

Entry costs are $25 if signed up before March 1 and $30 after that.