Thanks to Patrick Iber for this set of questions! His previous four sets of questions for Trivia Factorial, all written earlier this year, can be found in our archives (each has “[Guest Post]” in the title).
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) WHAT Midwestern river was named “River of the Year” in 2019 by the American Rivers conservation association, celebrating extraordinary improvement on the 50th anniversary of an infamous incident?
2) A copy of Action Comics #1, published in 1938, sold in 2014 for more than three million dollars. It features the first appearance, most notably, of WHAT character?
3) WHAT neckless instrument with strings stretched across a thin, flat body had a resurgence of interest after the release of a 1949 film noir directed by Carol Reed?
4) WHAT is the name of the Cold War broadcasting project established in 1949 with the support of the CIA? In its early years, it featured the voices of many exiles from Communist Eastern Europe. Today, a successor organization is operated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
5) You’re driving along I-30 from Little Rock to Dallas. WHAT border city is the largest (by population) you would pass through along the way?
6) WHAT four-word description, applicable to exactly twelve human beings in all of history (though never for very long), fits today's theme?
Trivia Newsletter CLIV Recap
1) Identify the slang term omitted in the following passage from a 1933 article representing what is believed to be the first time the term was used with this meaning in print: “A Hollywood soda-jerker forwards this glossary of soda-fountain lingo out there … ‘Shoot one’ and ‘Draw one’ is one coke and one coffee … ‘Shoot one in the red!’ means a cherry coke … An ‘echo’ is a repeat order … ‘[BLANK]’ means all out of it.”
This is EIGHTY-SIX, sometimes “86” or “eight-six.” What’s up with that?
While the other numbers in the arbitrary soda-counter code are long forgotten, eighty-six entered wider usage and developed new meanings—attached to people, not just menu items. In the restaurant industry, eighty-six was soon applied to customers who were considered objectionable for some reason, worthy of removal like an item from the menu. The March 27, 1936, issue of The Gateway, the newspaper of the University of Nebraska–Omaha, explained:
“Girls, if you walk into the drug store and the good-looking guy behind the fountain yells out “PINEAPPLE,” you may feel flattered, as that means, in good English, that he thinks you are a wow, a honey, and a cute little trick.
“But, if he hollers “EIGHTY-SIX,” he doesn’t like your type.”
And in a 1942 crime story published in The Washington Post, charmingly titled “Murder With Your Malted,” one character explains how eighty-six could make the metaphorical leap to people: “‘The tuna-fish salad is 86’ means there isn’t any more. And if you say a guy is 86, that means he’s fired or all washed up or something like that.”
2) WHAT film is missing from the following chronological and otherwise complete list of feature films directed by a particular director, shortened to the initials of the titles of the films? A3, [BLANK], TG, FC, PR, Z, TCCOBB, TSN, TGWTDT, GG, M. (Remember, name the film.)
These are films by David Fincher, and the missing film is SEVEN. (The stretch of The Curious Case of the Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl may have helped the most in figuring out what films were listed.)
Benjamin Button was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, winning three. WHICH ONE of Fincher’s films was nominated for ten Academy Awards, the second-highest total (and the most of any film for the ceremony in question)? The film, which is named at the end of this newsletter, won two of those Oscars.1
3) Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin are sometimes called the “Mighty Handful” of prominent nineteenth-century Russian composers. Another name for the group is the “Пятёрка,” a word meaning WHAT?
That word means “FIVE.”
Speaking of Russian composers, I really enjoyed this piece on Sergei Rachmaninoff’s dog Levko from the Substack publication Art Dogs. It’s a fun Substack; each post digs into the pets owned by famous artists. Art Dogs also taught me this tidbit: Take a guess where Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) passed away. Maybe Moscow, or Leningrad? Maybe he left the country and lived out his last days in Paris or London? No, he passed away in Beverly Hills—yes, that Beverly Hills.
4) WHAT is the atomic number of the element, used in medications for bipolar disorder, that is the least dense of all elements that are solid at room temperature?
The element is lithium and its atomic number is THREE.
When the soft drink 7 Up was introduced in 1929, it was originally marketed as “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda,” where “lithiated” means “to combine with lithium.” The drink contained lithium citrate (used to treat bipolar disorder and the such) from 1929 until 1948, when the FDA banned lithium citrate.
Why is 7 Up called “7 Up?” We’re not particularly sure—Snopes digs into some of the theories here.
5) In September 2020, Breonna Taylor became the second person ever to be featured alone on the cover of WHAT monthly magazine that had been published since April 2000? (Unrelatedly, the final issue of the magazine was released in December 2020.)
This is Oprah’s magazine, O. (The clue here was that Oprah was the first person ever to be featured alone on the magazine’s covers, as she was on literally every cover until this edition.) Here’s that cover, by the way:
The New York Times in describing this cover reported that “O: The Oprah Magazine gives its cover to someone other than its founder for the first time,” and NPR reported that “For the first time in its 20 year history, O Magazine has someone other than Oprah Winfrey on its cover.” These statements are untrue,2 as the below covers from April 2009 and December 2009 show (and also the below cover from January 2015 shows, if you are willing to be liberal with the word “someone”):
6) WHAT word completes the theme of this newsletter?
Our answers were eight-six, Seven, five, three, and O, which spell out most of the phone number in the catchy 1981 song “867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone. Thus, the missing word was NINE. Our newsletter title, -4442, is the number you get if you take “867-5309” as an actual mathematical instruction and subtract 5,309 from 867.
Did you know the group Tommy Tutone is still around? They released an album in 2019 and they still perform gigs; their surprisingly detailed calendar lists a variety of events they’re playing this year, including private parties and at least one wedding.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The David Fincher film nominated for ten Academy Awards is Mank (2020), which won two—Best Production Design and Best Cinematography.
Arguably, the NYT statement is true, if you construe “gives its cover to someone” to mean to exclusively give the cover to another person; I would not construe the statement that way, though.