Below are six trivia questions I’ve written. You can reply to this e-mail if you’d like to participate. Like most trivia, the answers can be readily found via Google, so you’re on the honor system. The SIXTH question of each set is designed to be a question that cannot be easily Googled, so correct answers to those will be tracked and recognized in the next newsletter. The answers, and the next set of questions, will be published every Monday and Thursday.
1) The Java Man, Piltdown Man, Taung Child, and “Lucy” are all examples of fossil finds purported to be the WHAT specific two-word phrase between anatomically modern humans and our anthropoid ancestors? The answer is also the name of a 2019 stop-motion animated film made by Laika, the studio behind films like Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings—the film featured the voices of Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, Emma Thompson, and Zach Galifianakis.
2) Mount Narodnaya and Mount Karpinsk are two prominent peaks in WHAT mountain range, also the name of a territory in most standard editions of the board game Risk?
3) On October 27, 1994, perhaps the world’s first internet “banner ad,” which was for AT&T, was shown on the website HotWired. It is said that that ad had a CTR of 44%. As internet advertising became more common, the rates of CTR heavily declined, and although CTR heavily depends on context, CTRs of 0.1% or less are not rare today. WHAT does CTR, commonly thought to be a key component of search engine optimization, stand for?
4) In the novel The Great Gatsby, the following passage appears: “They are not perfect ovals – like the [BLANK] in the [BLANK] story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end – but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the seagulls that fly overhead.” In the novel War and Peace, the following passage appears: “The spiritual guide was astonished at this solution, which had all the simplicity of [BLANK]’ [BLANK].” WHAT words, which the Italians might have called uovo di Colombo, are missing from both phrases?
5) In one of the more infamous video game puzzles of all time, your advisor in Metal Gear Solid (1998) instructs you to check “the back of the CD case” to learn a certain numeric code. The trick is that the solution is not in the game at all, but requires you to check the physical box that contained the game. That code is needed because you must call WHAT character in the game, who shares her first name with the person who has been nominated for more Oscars than any other person in history? (First name sufficient.)
6) Based upon the theme of this newsletter, what is the number missing from this group of numbers? 6, 5, 13, 8, 8, 9, 6, 8, 10, 8, 18, 7, 9, 4, 6, 8, 18, [BLANK], 9, 4, 8
Here are the answers from last time:
1) Name the woman who got her start on the television show Last Comic Standing in 2007 and who authored the 2016 memoir The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo. She has been nominated for a each of a Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award, and her father is the second cousin of the current Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate.
Amy Schumer is the answer here, with the last hint prompting you to think of Senator Chuck Schumer. I present without commentary this excerpt from her Wikipedia page: “In May 5, 2019, Schumer gave birth to a boy, Gene. Schumer initially gave Gene the middle name Attell—in honor of comedian Dave Attell—but changed it to David after realizing that ‘Gene Attell’ sounded like ‘genital.’”
2) WHAT song was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 from November 12 to December 10, 1983? The song’s name alludes to the wealthy Upper East Side in New York City, and the song’s singer has stated that the song itself was inspired by his relationships with Elle Macpherson and Christie Brinkley.
This is “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel. More than I care to admit, I think about the 2021 song “deja vu” by Olivia Rodrigo, which name-checks the song and imagines a lover saying “I love you” every 40 seconds or so:
I'll bet that she knows Billy Joel
'Cause you played her "Uptown Girl"
You're singing it together
Now I bet you even tell her
How you love her
In between the chorus and the verse (ooh) (I love you)
3) Among his many other career accomplishments, WHO is the only NBA player to average 25+ points per game for 15+ consecutive seasons (without taking any seasons off)? He is also the only NBA player to be in the top ten players all-time in both points and assists.
Whether you think of LeBron as the rightful GOAT, or think of him as an overrated choking me-first harbinger of the era where team-oriented basketball and careful roster construction is dead, I think everyone can agree that LeBron was the answer to this question. The “seasons off” clue was meant to point you away from Jordan and think of players who have played at a high level for a long period of time.
LeBron is not only the only player to have 25+ points for 15+ consecutive seasons; he’s the only player to have 25+ points for 14 or more seasons whether consecutive or not. You might guess that someone like Jordan or Kobe is #2 in this stat, but it’s actually Kevin Durant with 13 such seasons (keeping in mind that he missed the 2018-19 season), assuming he keeps his pace up this year.
4) According to a Sports Illustrated article, WHAT celebrity, born in 1977, has granted by far the most wishes to children via the Make-A-Wish Foundation, with over 650 and counting? In addition to being one of the all-time greatest performers in his field, this celebrity has starred in several big-name films and had his 2005 album certified platinum.
It’s John Cena! Tied with Ric Flair for the most world championships reigns in professional wrestling history, there’s virtually no sphere of pop culture that Cena hasn’t waded into in some way.
5) “We started a Web site, but NBC refused to let us put the address on any of our ads because they didn’t want people to know the Internet existed. They were worried about losing viewers to it.” This quote was given to Vanity Fair about WHAT television show, which was canceled in 2000 after airing twelve episodes? Today the show, which has a rhyming title, regularly appears in lists of the greatest television shows of all time.
We were looking for Freaks and Geeks here, which can be watched on Hulu or Amazon Prime. The show is credited with helping launch the career of many of its stars, including James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Linda Cardellini.
6) What unusual distinction is shared by each of these films? The Invisible Man (1933), Back to the Future Part III (1990), The Fugitive (1993), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), Anastasia (1997), Batman Begins (2005), Final Destination 3 (2006), Super 8 (2011), Skyfall (2012).
Each of these films has a scene featuring a literal trainwreck—as part of the plot, a train derails and crashes. The theme of this quiz is that each of the other answers had some relation to Trainwreck, the 2015 romantic comedy film by Judd Apatow. The film stars Amy Schumer and includes LeBron James and John Cena in the cast. In addition, a key part of the movie’s plot is the fact that “Uptown Girl” is the male lead’s favorite song, and the movie is directed by Judd Apatow, who also created Freaks and Geeks (and the quote above in #5). Finally, “inert wreak,” our newsletter’s title, is an anagram of “trainwreck” and is, perhaps, an indirect way to describe a destroyed train that is no longer moving.
SIXTH QUESTION LEADERBOARD
CK - 5
SM, ZM - 4
RC, VB - 3
KM, MM, MS - 2
EM, JK, TS, WM - 1
[As a programming note: It is fairly likely that I will soon offload the sixth-question leaderboard to a separate, regularly updated Google Charts link rather than needing to update every newsletter, in part to make the newsletter more friendly to folks who weren’t around since Day 1 and in part to allow for newsletters to be finalized well in advance. More on that soon.]