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1) You won’t believe what happens when you combine (i) the titular character of a live-action/animated series that aired from 1996 to 2006 (and was rebooted in 2019), and (ii) the title of a 2010 action-comedy film starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, and Helen Mirren! Specifically, you get the title of WHAT epistolary novel that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
2) One weird trick to stop Professor Ratigan from usurping the Queen of the Mice and becoming the supreme ruler of all mousedom can be seen in WHAT 1986 film, based upon the children’s book series Basil of Baker Street?
3) Wow! WHAT fictional character, owned by the real-life company Sanrio, is most commonly depicted as a young female gijinka of a certain domestic pet, almost always with a red bow? The same-name brand centered around this character has accounted for billions of dollars in merchandise sales, but comparatively nearly no revenue from video-game sales or the box office.
4) Three structures near the Urubamba River that you need to visit today are the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows; those are all part of WHAT site, believed by many to have been constructed as an estate for the emperor Pachacuti?
5) Copy editors hate these! Take the five letter worrd for certain things which are within this question no less then five times, now rearrange those leters and you have the name of WHAT subject of the 1903 film Electrocuting an Elephant, that was produced by Thomas Edison’s film company?
6) WHAT character fills in the blank in the following ordered list? (As always, a [BLANK] may represent one word or more than one word unless specified otherwise.) Wade Wilson, Wade Wilson, Guy, [BLANK], Wade Wilson, Guy, Andrew Paxton, Turbo, Hal Jordan, Guy.
Here are the answers from last time:
1) A human hand has 27 bones: fourteen phalanges (in the fingers), eight carpal bones (in the wrist), and five of WHAT bones, comprising the middle part of the hand between the carpal bones and phalanges? (A hint: the answer is already partially in this question; it’s just missing a prefix.)
These are your METACARPAL bones. They are the equivalent of your METATARSALS in your feet—Jeopardy! really likes asking about these. “Metatarsal” is an anagram for “a metal star,” which will help you in exactly no situations.
206 Bones is the twelfth entry in the series of novels by Kathy Reichs featuring the character Temperance Brennan; the series is probably most famous for inspiring the television show Bones. I don’t have a source for this, because I am making it up, but I have a suspicion that after the TV show started airing in 2005, it became imporant to Reichs (and/or her publisher) to make the link between the novels and the TV show clear. This led to (in my opinion) increasingly odd novel names, as there are only so many bona fide ways to bone-ify a book title. Take a look at the titles of all twenty-one novels currently in the series and see if you agree:
Déjà Dead (1997)
Death du Jour (1999)
Deadly Decisions (2000)
Fatal Voyage (2001)
Grave Secrets (2002)
Bare Bones (2003)
Monday Mourning (2004)
Cross Bones (2005)
Break No Bones (2006)
Bones to Ashes (2007)
Devil Bones (2008)
206 Bones (2009)
Spider Bones (2010)
Flash and Bones (2011)
Bones are Forever (2012)
Bones of the Lost (2013)
Bones Never Lie (2014)
Speaking in Bones (2015)
A Conspiracy of Bones (2020)
The Bone Code (2021)
Cold, Cold Bones (2022)
2) Bianyifang and Quanjude are restaurants particularly notable for WHAT classic dish, characterized by its method of preparation (roasting) and by its thin crispy skin? Legend has it that the dish, named after a city, was a favorite of Henry Kissinger’s following a secret visit he made in 1971.
We were going for PEKING DUCK here. It looks like this:
You can easily make Peking duck at home. All you need are salt and pepper, honey, five-spice powder, soy sauce, brown sugar, cornstarch, hoisin sauce, superfine sugar, sesame oil, some Mandarin-style pancakes, scallions, a cucumber, and a five-pound or so whole duck! Once you’ve gathered up all of those, just mix and cook them in varying amounts for varying times and it’ll work out unless you make any mistakes.
3) The following is the first few lines of a poem by a Welsh poet who later in her life went by Jane Winscom. According to the poem’s title, the poem is an elegy to Jane’s WHAT, specifically? (One word of the poem has been replaced with a [BLANK] below.)
Adieu, dear [BLANK], which birth and Nature gave—
Lo! at the altar I’ve interr’d dear Cave,
For there it fell, expir’d, and found a grave.Forgive, dear spouse, this ill-tim’d tear or two,
They are not meant in disrespect to you.
This is her MAIDEN NAME, Cave.
Jane Cave Winscom is pretty obscure, but is likely most notable for writing poetry about her headaches. For example, “The Head-Ach, or An Ode to Health” provides an interesting account of the various treatments she tried. The poem’s a bit long to quote in full, but the best part (in my view) is the following:
Live’s one on earth possess’d of sympathy,
Who knows what is presum’d a remedy?
O send it hither! I again would try,
Tho’ in the attempt of conqu’ring I die.
4) Kata Tjuṯa is a group of large, domed rock formations located about 220 miles southwest of Alice Springs in central Australia. WHAT large rock formation, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Australia’s most recognizable natural landmarks, is located about sixteen miles away from Kata Tjuṯa?
This is ULURU, sacred to the Pitjantjatjara of the region. In 1873, a surveyor named William Gosse saw the formation and decided to name it after the premier of South Australia, Henry Ayers, and so you’ll sometimes see folks call it Ayers Rock.
In 2017, Australian aboriginal leaders issued a petition, generally called the Uluru Statement from the Heart, asking the leaders of Australia to change Australia’s constitution. We’re going to quote that in full:
We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart:
Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from 'time immemorial', and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature,’ and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.
How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?
With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.
Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.
These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.
We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.
We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
Makarrata1 is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.
We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.
In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.
The new prime minister of Australia, elected earlier this year, made a campaign promise to follow through on the positions advanced in the statement. By the way, WHAT is that prime minister’s name? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.2
5) The Greatest is a 1977 biographical film about the life of WHAT person, who plays himself in the film?
This is MUHAMMED ALI. The song “The Greatest Love of All” by George Benson was written for this film, and is probably more notable for later being covered by Whitney Houston.
In addition to Ali’s well chronicled social and athletic accomplishments, he was nominated for Grammys for two albums. The first one, I Am the Greatest (1963), was a comedy album consisting of monologues and poems delivered by Ali—it is sometimes recognized as a precursor to hip-hop music. The liner notes to that album were written by Marianne Moore, the modernist poet. Moore and Ali would later meet and write a poem together—one journalist recounts it by saying “[Ali] announced that if she was the greatest poetess in the country, the two of them should produce something together—‘I am a poet, too.’” Moore was game: “I do not see any reason why I should not meet someone who assures everyone ‘I am the greatest’ and who is a poet nonetheless.” You can read more about that meeting and subsequent poem here.
Moore’s most famous poem is probably “Poetry,” but I’m partial to “Baseball and Writing” (“Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral; / he could handle any missile.”)
Oh, wait, we didn’t tell you about Ali’s second album, also nominated for a Grammy. It’s called, um, The Adventures of Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay, and Frank Sinatra helped with it. It’s an educational album to warn children about the dangers of tooth decay. No, really:
6) WHAT distinction, also this newsletter’s theme, is shared by each of the following places? Cape Verde, East Timor, Ivory Coast, Macedonia, Swaziland, Turkey, Zaire.
This is a list of countries that have recently CHANGED THEIR NAMES in some fashion—Cape Verde is now Cabo Verde, East Timor is now Timor-Leste, Ivory Coast is now the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, Macedonia is now North Macedonia, Swaziland is now Eswatini, Turkey is now Türkiye, and Zaire is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Debates about national names, who gets to decide them, and the connotations of using certain names and not other names are many in number; like everywhere else in life, it’s probably worth being thoughtful about what we say and why, though that discussion is a bit beyond this newsletter’s scope.
The newsletter really wanted you to think about name changes and alternate names:
Question #1: “Metacarpal” contains “Meta,” Facebook’s new company brand (also relating to the newsletter title)
Question #2: Peking duck refers to Peking, the romanized name of Beijing (this is why Beijing’s major airport has the IATA code PEK, by the way)
Question #3: Maiden names are commonly dropped by spouses in favor of the other spouse’s last name
Question #4: Australia’s official name for the rock formation is “Uluru / Ayers Rock”
Question #5: Muhammed Ali denounced his given name, Cassius Clay
Newsletter Title: “The Facebook,” besides tying into Question #1, is (according to the film The Social Network) the name that Mark Zuckerberg had in mind for his website before Justin Timberlake’s character told him to “drop the ‘The.’”
Bonus tie-in: We announced our name change to Trivia Factorial together with this newsletter. Is that a little cute? Yes. Could I pass up the opportunity? Absolutely not.
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released
Makarrata is a Yolngu word—you can read more about that here.
ANTHONY ALBANESE.