It was meant to be a one-time goof. Ten years later, Cory Cove’s Initials game is a mega hit

Ten years ago, when KFAN’s AJ Mansour announced he was leaving the network for a new gig, co-host Cory Cove of The Power Trip Morning Show decided to send his friend away with a trivia challenge. He called it the AJ game.

“Honestly, the idea was just to be a really dumb, easy, cheap throwaway game,” says Cove. “But everyone really enjoyed it. The immediate feedback was overwhelmingly positive.”

Mansour did not stay away long; he returned to the station after about three days at his new job. And the duo also brought the game back, as a regular part of the Friday morning show. Today it is known as The Initials Game.

The game isn’t really ‘dumb’. It’s actually eloquently simple, addictive and easy to play, but not easy! First, Cove finds twelve people, places, objects, sentences, pieces of media, or other things that have the same initials. Before each round, he reads out up to six clues that players use to figure out what is being described. The first player to shout the correct answer gets a point.

For example, here is a round from an episode played with WCCO hosts at the State Fair. The initials: BP

Clue 1: That’s the name of a 1998 miniseries about chef Gordon Ramsey.

Clue 2: This show was connected to a then-unknown 19-year-old Lady Gaga.

Clue 3: This was a 1993 movie starring Wesley Snipes and Dennis Hopper.

Clue 4: This was a hidden camera show on MTV.

Clue 5: This is about vapor pressure.

Answer: boiling point!

As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless. In May, the radio version of the game turned 10 years old; last Friday was the game’s 542nd episode.

As a morning show host on a sports radio station, Cove originally created the game with sports fans in mind, but he quickly discovered that Initials attracted a new audience.

“We’ve had so many women say to us, ‘My stupid boyfriend listens to your show, and I thought it was stupid, but then I fell in love with The Initials Game, and then I kind of fell in love with the whole show in reverse order,” says Cove.

He also had an inkling that his game could thrive in other formats. In 2020, Cove set up a Kickstarter in hopes of turning The Initials Game into a card game that could be played at home. The goal was to raise $30,000. It earned $354,828. Four years later they are on their fourth game pack, with sets often selling out quickly after release.

But The Initials Game still hadn’t reached its final iteration. A year and a half ago, radio personality/hip-hop artist/man about town Sean McPherson put Cove in touch with Trivia Mafia co-founder Chuck Terhark to see if they could turn it into a bar night.

“Listeners all know this game very well because it is super popular and it is held every Friday morning,” says Terhark. “But I had never listened to the sports show, I only heard about it because it’s a trivial thing that everyone plays.”

He knows all about it now. It took over a year to develop an app that allowed people to play live smoothly (during the pandemic, TM switched to a paperless format). Trivia Mafia’s version of the game started this summer with a regular night at Falling Knife Brewing Co.

“It was honestly even better than I imagined in my head,” Cove says of the launch. “It was super packed and everyone had fun. And they had like 65 teams or something like that.

It was also the first time Cove was able to play its game instead of being the host. “I write all the prompts for the radio show, but I didn’t do any of the content for this; Chuck and his team did that,” he says. “I actually got to play, which is just super fun to be on the other side of it.”

“I think people like to have something to do when they go out with friends,” Terhark says of the ongoing phenomenon of bar trivia. “Most of our players are regulars who rise week after week and really make it. It becomes part of their lives.”

The bar version of The Initials Game quickly built a team of regulars. It was such a success that a few months later, game nights were organized during the week at seven different locations in the city.

While Cove doesn’t have to worry about writing prompts for the bar events, he is still working on the radio segments and upcoming card game releases. He’s not worried about that, though; he is at a huge disadvantage.

“I have a catalog on my computer with about 14,000 alphabetical items,” he says. “I also have an Excel spreadsheet of every combo I used and when I used them.”

As for the future of The Initials Game, Cove believes it could still morph into another iteration, whether it be a video game, app, or television show.

“During Covid I’ve had a few conversations with TV producers,” he says. “Like real, legitimate people who would try to pitch it to Game Show Network or Netflix. That is my ultimate goal. I would love it if it ever became a TV show. I think it’s essentially a blue collar version of Dangerright? For example, you have to be smart, but you don’t have to Danger smart.”