McCaffrey Quest: The Trivia Challenge for Fans of Anne McCaffrey

McCaffrey Quest has its roots in a trivia contest called Pern Quest held in October of 2001. Pern Quest was conceived when sculptor Bernard Pearson offered to donate a piece from the Dreams of Dragons collection as a contest prize. Dreams of Dragons produced Pern sculptures designed by Bernard in close consultation with Anne McCaffrey. Unfortunately Dreams of Dragons production was shut down a few years after it began, due to a serious illness in the Pearson family (however a similar sculpture line based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books is still in operation, The Cunning Artificer's Discworld Emporium).

The prize offer was made to Cheryl, webmaster of Sariel's Guide to Pern, who quickly roped in three good friends and fellow McCaffrey fans to help her brainstorm a contest idea: Anneli, Becky, and Hans. As the Dreams of Dragons sculptures were beautiful as well as expensive, they wanted to create a challenge wherein the winner was truly worthy of such a prize. Thus was Pern Quest conceived, a deeply challenging trivia contest for which the winner most assuredly would have to have to be a rabid fan of the Pern books and stories, able to recall obscure facts - or know where to quickly look for such facts within the books as well as knowing what resources to utilize online. October 19-22 2001, some eighteen months after the original prize offer was made, Pern Quest was held.

Forty-nine brave souls competed for our prizes. Nine walked away victorious. The team that put on the contest discussed making it an annual event and even began working on the next event, but then real life intervened and we all became busy with other projects. Four years later our interest was revived again, other commitments were lighter, and we've gambled that we'll find the time to run this an annual event.

We kicked off our first McCaffrey Quest by focusing directly on the author of our esteem, Anne McCaffrey. The challenge was apparently too daunting, as few dared to compete despite the wealth of prizes offered. The real shame was that at over half of the questions could be answered from obvious internet sources coupled with smart internet searches, as proved by one of our competitors. In the end just four persons walked away with prizes.

The 2006 McCaffrey Quest Team consists of Pam Bennett-Skinner, Anneli Conroy, Cheryl Miller, Becky Skinner, and Hans van der Boom. We are all staff at A Meeting of Minds. To contact us with questions about the contest or sponsorship, email quest@srellim.org or visit A Meeting of Minds message board and post a question for us in the McCaffrey Quest forum.