GRAPE NEHI Name Origin

The name of Walter "Radar" O'Reilly's favorite soft drink, on the TV series "M*A*S*H." Essentially identical to Pros From Dover, who'd won a year earlier.

The Dover/Grape team believe they are to blame for unleashing the now-usual practice of trivia teams changing their name from semester to semester; in the 1960s and 1970s, teams tended to keep their one franchise title for eons.

Grape Nehi holds the record as the smallest team ever to win a trivia contest, with just eight members. Of course, there's a story nehind the story, as these eight were no ordinary eight; Grape Nehi included some of the legendary trivia talent of the 1970s. With contests today becoming more elaborate, not less, it seems likely that Grape Nehi's record shall stand.

1. Rick Weinberg '74
2. Gene Falk '75
3. Peter Zaccagnino '75
4. Steve Marino '76
5. Jim Baldwin '76
6. Carmen Palladino '76
7. Marty Marchese '78
8. Mitch Katz '79

Mitch Katz recalls:

There were four other people involved:

• Rick's girlfriend was there, but I have the sense that she fell asleep halfway through the contest.
• An actual undergraduate (short blonde guy) stumbled on to us and stayed for the second and third hour.
• I have a note that professor Eva Grudin showed up at 5:00 am.
• There was one other guy, whose name was (I think) Mike Simpson, who doesn't appear in the Alumni Directory.

  This was an especially exciting contest as Giga was ahead by 3, 2 and 4 points in the first three hours. They widened that lead to 9 and 8 points in hours four and five. Hour six they were only ahead by two. Hour seven Grape Nehi took the lead by 5 and we ended up winning by 4. After this all-alumni team won, we looked at each other and said "What do we do now?" meaning how do we run a contest when none of us are on campus. It was like the final scene in "The Candidate, " after Redford is guaranteed by Peter Boyle that he will lose, and then he wins the election."