This is not an ordinary Trivia Factorial newsletter. If you’re looking for the recap to Trivia Newsletter XCIX, you can get there via the below button.
In celebration of our 100th flagship newsletter, we’ve set up an interactive puzzle game framed by a story. Think of it as a low-tech escape room with a trivia slant. If you’re the kind of person who likes taking a minute to skim the questions before moving on with your life, this edition might not be for you. (We’ll be resuming our standard format in Trivia Newsletter CI.)
Three notes for Trivia Newsletter C:
Googling things and otherwise using external resources is completely fine! You will almost certainly need to do so.
Collaborating with other people is also acceptable.
A warning: Once you actually begin the game at the end of this newsletter, it may take a few seconds for the page to load. Leaving the site idle may result in the need to reload the game.
The “win condition” for this newsletter is to identify the two words that are written on the plastic pink flamingo found at the end of the story. Correctly identifying those words by using the below Google Forms link (or, as always, by replying to this e-mail as an alternative) will constitute a correct answer for the purpose of the “Question #6” leaderboard.
Happy hunting!
“And that’s why I need a trivia expert,” she says.
You blink. You were never good in median res. You’re in a poorly lit bar. She is to your left, agitated at your non-response to what has clearly been a long explanation of something. A dog occupies the barstool to your right, unless you’re a cat person, in which case a cat occupies that barstool. A flag hangs on the wall—you recognize that it is the flag of the State of Nevada, in part because the flag bears the words “Battle Born” in the top left corner, but admittedly mostly because the flag also bears the word “Nevada.” It’d be a California flag if it bore a bear, you idly think.
“You know? A trivia expert? You? That advertisement you responded to? The reason we’re meeting here to talk about what we’re about to do?”
“Can we just start over from the beginning?”
She sighs. Your intuition tells you that this entire scene is for color and won’t provide very much useful information.
“In 01946,” she begins, “a casino opened up nearby, back when people still gambled. It was called the Flamingo. Inside the Flamingo is something I want.”
“Wait,” you say, “is this a heist? Everyone knows the money’s been long cleared out. Besides, no one even uses—”
“Money? No. Glory? Do you know who Donald Featherstone is?”
“Of course I do; I used to subscribe to this one trivia newsletter,” you say. “Donald Featherstone designed the plastic pink flamingo, the lawn ornament.”
“That’s right,” she says, pleased she doesn’t need to repeat this part as well. “They’re kitschy and some people think they indicate bad taste, but those people are silly. A decade or so after the Flamingo opens, they have an exhibit—the very first plastic pink flamingo! But no one’s seen it since, or so the legend goes.”
“Okay. Looking for a flamingo in the Flamingo. Got it.” It occurs to you to ask a question you probably should have asked earlier. “Who are you again?”
“Me? I’m not really a ‘name’ person. Names are what we give to things out of sight, or else why would we need a name for them? And I’m always with me.” She is not saying this for the first time. “But for our purposes, you can call me Felicia Featherstone, scion of the Featherstone family, with no goal save one: finding the first flamingo.”
This all seems a bit contrived to you. “I’d like to better understand what value this flamingo has to you,” you say.
“People are always losing things. Their tempers, their senses, their keys, their incredibly rare artifacts. I’m a finder, and I’m good at it. One time someone lost their Marbles, and now thanks to me those are back in Greece—though I don’t think the British are too happy. But like I always say: ‘It belongs in a museum in its country of origin.’”
“Isn’t that from—”
“Everything’s from everywhere,” Felicia abruptly says. “Thanks to me, things get to where they’re supposed to be. I helped restore the Kasubi Tombs in Kampala, I found the Crown of Kartli-Kakheti and brought it back to Mtskheta, and I once spent thirty-four days finding a lost balloon so a kid would stop being sad. Now, the actual Featherstone family would very much like their flamingo back, and that’s what we’re going to make happen.”
“So wait, what does trivia have to do with any of this?”
“Before they closed the Las Vegas Strip, the people who ran the casinos tried to appeal to different crowds. You had your nightclubs and your dayclubs, your petting zoos, your reverse petting zoos, and for a brief period in late 02022 in connection with a trivia convention at the Flamingo, ‘escape rooms’ with puzzles designed for trivia buffs.”
“Ah,” you say. “It sounds as though the puzzles are entirely restricted to information available in the year 02022, so we don’t need to worry about anything that’s happened since. Good.”
“Sure, whatever. I’ve sifted through tens of thousands of ‘tweets,’ a popular form of communication at the time, around when this convention would have happened. I still don’t know what a ‘Liz Truss’ is or why it was so fond of lettuce, but contemporaneous messages suggest that a particular escape room at the Flamingo had a plastic flamingo as a prize, and that the flamingo was a rare artifact. It’s my best lead.”
“You seem very good at this adventuring thing,” you say. “Are you sure you even need help?”
“Oh, I hate trivia,” she says cheerfully. “Silly people with their Pantheons and their Parthenons, their Monets and their Manets, their Invisible Man and The Invisible Man, all to flash peacock feathers at one another.”
“You sure know a lot of common trivia answers easily confused for one another for someone who doesn’t like trivia,” you say.
“I know enough to know what I don’t know,” Felicia says. “And what I don’t know is trivia. But you say that you do, and I could use your help. Are you in?”