Hi all—we’re going to take off a couple weeks for spring break. This time, we’ve actually thought ahead and have lined up four guest posts from some of our brilliant readers, which means you’ll keep getting Trivia Factorial with no interruption while we’re out.
During our break, the Question #6 leaderboard may lag, and the recaps will be shorter and more cursory. We’ll be back at full strength on Tuesday, April 2nd, when our Fighting Illini are with any luck in the Final Four in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.
Today’s edition comes from Patrick Iber, the lead editor for the terrific Hidden Connections MiniLeagues on LearnedLeague. He’s written many of our previous guest posts, and you can check those out on our About Page.
If you are interested in writing a guest post, perhaps to promote some endeavor of yours, we would love to hear from you! We write the recaps, so all you have to do is write six questions with a hidden theme.
[For this edition, and also for all of the guest posts this month, the newsletter title of “Guest Post” is not a clue about the theme.]
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) Blaise Pascal's search for a perpetual motion machine did not succeed (spoiler alert). But his efforts are credited with providing the basic technology used in WHAT game, the name of which is derived from the language Pascal spoke?
2) The French children's television show known by the shorthand name Miraculous has become an international hit, featuring two teenagers with secret superhero identities. WHAT is the identity of the show’s female protagonist, named first in the show's subtitle and the film adaptation released in France in 2023?
3) When George Orwell volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War, as described in Homage to Catalonia, he ended up affiliated with the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM), a group often described as Trotskyist. He fought in intra-factional combat in Barcelona, fighting against Moscow-aligned groups. Among Orwell's allies in that combat were members of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). WHAT English word describes the philosophy of the CNT?
4) Track star Carl Lewis was such an athletic talent that in 1984 he was selected in 12th round of the NFL draft, by the Dallas Cowboys (though he had not played college football). That same year, he was also selected with the 208th pick of the NBA draft, though he had not even played high school basketball. WHAT team -- that made a more consequential choice at #3 that year -- drafted Lewis?
5) The western meadowlark is the official state bird of six states, but WHAT bird has been named the state bird by seven contiguous states?
6) WHAT novel, published in 1830, is suggested by today’s theme? Al Gore, playing somewhat against stereotype, has called it his favorite novel.
Trivia Newsletter CCVII Recap
1) NAME the general and politician who served as one of Bolivia’s earliest presidents; a close friend of Simón Bolívar, he is known as the “Grand Marshal of Ayacucho” and is the namesake of Bolivia’s judicial capital.
This is ANTONIO JOSÉ DE SUCRE. Sucre is Bolivia’s judicial capital. Why was he called the Grand Marshal of Ayacucho? The Battle of Ayacucho was a key battle during the region’s fight for independence—read more about it here.
2) Anthony Davis, once identified by The New York Times as “the dean of African-American opera composers,” won a Pulitzer Prize for composing the music for the 2019 opera The Central Park Five. He also composed the music for a 1986 opera based on the “life and times” of WHAT individual, which opera was performed at the Metropolitan Opera last winter and at the Seattle Opera last week?
This is MALCOLM X. The opera is X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Here’s a 2023 piece on the opera.
3) In the screenplay for the 1970 film Patton, General Patton says at one point “You remember, General, what [REDACTED] said in four fifteen B.C. during the Peloponnesian War: ‘If Syracuse falls, all Sicily falls -- then Italy!’” NAME the statesman and general Patton is quoting; he is a major character in the play Timon of Athens.
This is ALCIBIADES. Just a bit more on him:
But with all these words and deeds, and with all this sagacity and eloquence, he intermingled exorbitant luxury and wantonness, in his eating and drinking and dissolute living; wore long purple robes like a woman, which dragged after him as he went through the market-place; caused the planks of his galley to be cut away, that so he might lie the softer, his bed not being placed on the boards, but hanging upon girths. His shield, again, which was richly gilded, had not the usual ensigns of the Athenians, but a Cupid, holding a thunderbolt in his hand, was painted upon it. The sight of all this made the people of good repute in the city feel disgust and abhorrence, and apprehension also, at his free living, and his contempt of law, as things monstrous in themselves, and indicating designs of usurpation. Aristophanes has well expressed the people's feelings toward him--
"They love, and hate, and cannot do without him."
And still more strongly, under a figurative expression,--
"Best rear no lion in your state, 'tis true;
But treat him like a lion if you do."
4) Between the Curtains is one name for a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo that she dedicated to WHAT person on the date that was both his birthday and the twentieth anniversary of the first day of the October Revolution?
This is LEON TROTSKY. The self-portrait looked like this:
5) WHAT woman was voted the greatest woman of the past 1,000 years in a 1999 BBC News Online poll, beating out (in addition to every other woman of that millennium) Elizabeth I, Mother Teresa, Marie Curie, Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, and Eleanor Roosevelt? She is the second-longest-serving prime minister in her country’s history, behind her father.
This is INDIRA GANDHI, who was the prime minister of India. Her father is Jawaharlal Nehru.
6) The following is a complete list of cities that hold WHAT distinction? Washington, DC; Buffalo, NY; Dallas, TX.
This surprisingly depressing newsletter asked you about five folks who were assassinated, which was your clue to realize that these were the three US cities where SUCCESSFUL ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS were carried out against US presidents. Our newsletter title, “Beware!”, pointed to the fact that the newsletter came out on March 15th, or the “ides of March,” the date of Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC.
Perhaps you’ve gotten to this point in the recap and are a little sad that you don’t have a bunch of links to click and long excerpts from other works to skim. To make it up to you, we’ll be suggesting some reading material that we’ve really enjoyed in the past. For today, read all about the guy who bowled a perfect game on September 11, 2001:
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link. (Updates to the leaderboard may occur irregularly until April.)