This is the 200th edition of Trivia Factorial! In this terrifying world, all we have are the connections that we make. We hope to keep making more. Thanks for reading along.1
Below are six trivia questions. If you’d like to participate, you can either reply to this e-mail or submit your answers via Google Forms by using the button below. You can find our rules and guidelines by following this link.
1) Whether you consider the version of the song “Cleveland Rocks” originally by Ian Hunter, the cover by the group The Presidents of the United States of America, or the truncated version of the song used in the opening credits of The Drew Carey Show, WHAT is the last word of the song’s lyrics?
2) WHAT is the smallest positive whole number that cannot be made from the set of numbers {1, 2, 3, 4}, using each number exactly once and using only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division? [Note: Do not use concatenation (treating the numbers as digits and combining them); for example, 412 + 3 would not be a valid operation.]
3) Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 in WHAT city, the capital of what was then the Grand Duchy of Tuscany?
4) NAME the Baptist pastor who has been serving as the junior U.S. Senator from Georgia since 2021; appropriately enough, his first name and middle name are both of Biblical origin.
5) “[N]obody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a [BLANK] revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice,” once said philosopher Bertrand Russell. This statement is an example of an analogy repeatedly made by him in the context of religion, known as Russell’s WHAT?
6) NAME the individual, born in 1865, to whom this newsletter most closely alludes.
Trivia Newsletter CXCIX Recap
1) Doing research for this question, it dawned on me that James Rado, who was the co-author of the book and lyrics of a particular musical, was born on January 23, 1932. But what really sent me to the fifth dimension was the realization that (according to further research) some people born on that day are calm and sensitive, while others are enthusiastic and active. WHAT was the musical?
This is HAIR. This question was filled with references to Hair, some of which you can find in this article excerpt:
Reflecting a more youthful world view, and spreading positive vibes imparting the belief that the impending societal changes were going to make the world a better place, "'Hair' became a Broadway smash and cultural phenomenon that spawned a million-selling original cast recording and a No. 1 song on the pop charts for the 5th Dimension, notes television's History Channel.
That hit song, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," gushes about the world arriving at the "dawning of the Age of Aquarius," which became a rallying cry and badge of honor for the youth-led cultural revolution where members touted a new age of peace, love and light beyond the then-current Age of Pisces.
Few people, then or now, fully comprehended the "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" opening line: "When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars."
2) WHO was the costume designer for Rear Window, Samson and Delilah, Roman Holiday, All About Eve, and many other films, and whose eight Academy Awards are the most of any woman?
This is EDITH HEAD.
We’ve never figured out how to make this a trivia question, but Edith Head’s head is shown in a jar next to Jar Jar in an episode of Futurama:
3) WHAT inanimate object is the typical shape that the Dungeons & Dragons monster known as a “mimic” assumes?
A mimic tends to assume the form of a treasure CHEST. The classic D&D/video game situation is for the player to see a chest and believing it contains valuable loot, only to find that the chest is a hostile creature. This Etsy keychain riffs on the concept:
4) The fruit of the rose—which can be used in jams and teas—is sometimes referred to as a hee or a haw, but most often called WHAT?
These are called rose HIPS (or sometimes rosehips). Rose hips are a rich source of vitamin C and are sometimes used in preserves.
5) At 2:02 pm on October 11, 2022, the official Twitter account of the company Meta published a single-word tweet that described a product update. The word in question is, in a mathematical setting, the more common name for catheti. WHAT was that tweeted word?
This was LEGS. Here’s that tweet:
This tweet served as an announcement that legs were going to be added to avatars in the metaverse.
We concede that Meta tweeting merely the word “legs” must seem very odd. Back in the wild halcyon days of 2022, though, corporate accounts tweeting one-word tweets was A Whole Thing. According to the website “Know Your Meme,” the Twitter account for WHAT agency kicked off this trend in 2022 by tweeting the word “trains”? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.2
6) WHAT unit of measurement continues this newsletter’s theme?
We were looking for FOOT or FEET here. The body of work here was Hair, Edith Head, chest, hips, and legs, so we were looking for you to continue downward and end up at the feet, so to speak.
Thanks to Patrick for writing this set of questions!
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
You might have wondered if we were going to do a special edition for this newsletter, as we did for other milestones such as Trivia Newsletter C and Trivia Newsletter CL. The official answer is no—this was a return to normal C, after all. The “hey, good for you for reading the footnotes” answer is that we ran out of time, but you can play with what we started to work on here. Don’t sweat—we’ve got something really fun planned for this summer.
The “trains” tweet was tweeted by AMTRAK. (Yeah, yeah, it’s X now, whatever.)