America has been taken by storm with quiz game shows on television, in computer games and on campuses across the country. Games like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” “Jeopardy” and “You Don’t Know Jack” have proven that knowledge can get you a little bit of fame and some money in your pocket.

Carver Hall will be turned into a quiz show venue at 9:15 a.m. Sunday. The ISU Academic Quiz Club won the bid to host this year’s Upper Midwest Regional of The Testing Recall About Strange Happenings (TRASH) competition, a test of pop culture trivia.

Teams from around the upper Midwest will compete for the chance to reign victorious in pop culture knowledge.

Questions are read in quiz bowl form — there is a toss-up question and teams buzz in to answer, said Anthony de Jesus, former player and current question creator for TRASH. If answered correctly, the team answers a bonus question.

“A toss-up begins with difficult clues and follows with progressively easier clues all leading to the same answer,” de Jesus said. “Players can buzz in before the question is over, but risk a five point penalty and losing a chance at the bonus.”

The format may be the same as any other academic competitions, but what makes TRASH unique from the other college-hosted quiz bowls is the questions themselves.

“TRASH is one of the few organizations that provides questions for quiz bowl,” de Jesus said. “Most tournaments are run by submission — teams submit one round of questions and have a bye in the schedule when that round is used, while the host team is responsible for playoff questions.”

Matthew Cvijanovich, senior in history and tournament director, said the questions are unique because they are all related to pop culture.

“There are 20 toss-ups [in each game],” he said. “In every set of 20, there are probably four movie, four TV, four sports, four something else.”

Winning teams from each of 10 regional competitions in the United States and Canada will receive an assortment of interesting prizes from the ISU Academic Quiz Club, as well as an automatic bid to the TRASHionals in April 2004, held at the University of Tennessee — Chattanooga.

“The tournament is open to current college students and alumni,” said James Dinan, TRASH business manager. “People in the real world who don’t want to play academic tournaments. Students who are in college tend to also play other academic tournaments.”