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) The reverse of New Zealand’s fifty-cent coin features WHAT ship? It reached New Zealand in 1769, becoming the first European vessel to do so since the Heemskerck and Zeehaen in 1642.
2) WHAT word has been omitted from the following excerpt from the Platonic dialogue Timaeus? “…[T]here lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together … Now in this island of [BLANK] there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.”
3) On March 30, 2023, the Vatican issued a statement repudiating a doctrine known by WHAT one-word name? The doctrine, which can be traced back to various fifteenth-century papal bulls authorizing European powers to conquer non-Christian lands, is also discussed at length in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark opinion with respect to Johnson v. McIntosh (1823).
4) Logan, Blair, Scott, Sherman, Anna J. Cooper, Thomas, Dave Thomas, and half of Chevy Chase are, in a certain sense, all in WHAT CITY?
5) Jack C. Taylor, the founder of a company originally known as Executive Leasing Company, subsequently gave the company the name by which it is today known in honor of WHAT aircraft carrier on which Taylor served during the Second World War?
6) WHAT WORD completes today’s theme?
Trivia Newsletter CLVI Recap
1) Naomi, a 2022 television series that aired on The CW and was based on a comic book, was co-created by Jill Blankenship and WHAT filmmaker, who is also the first Black woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director?
This is AVA DUVERNAY; Selma (2014) was the film that led to the Golden Globe nomination mentioned above.
DuVernay also directed WHAT 2018 FILM that gave her the distinction of being the first Black woman to direct a film with a budget exceeding $100 million? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
2) WHAT author, born in 1956, is most notable for writing a 54-book series (with ten companion books) centered on Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel, Tobias, and Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill and their abilities to transform into any animal they touch?
This is KATHERINE APPLEGATE, who (together with her husband) wrote under the pen name K.A. APPLEGATE. Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill? Yeah, they call him “Ax” for short in the series.
Applegate’s website contains a little question-and-answer section:
Q: What’s some advice you have for someone who wants to be a writer?
A: My biggest piece of advice is this: Be persistent. I may have written my first story in fourth grade, but I didn’t become a published author until I was in my 30s.
Here’s a little story: I almost gave up when I was writing The One and Only Ivan. I remember thinking that the whole idea was crazy! Who would want to read a book narrated by a gorilla? One day, I stood over my trash can with the manuscript in my hands, trying to decide once and for all whether I should throw it away. But in the end, I knew that I wanted to tell Ivan’s story. So I pushed through, finished my first draft, and sent it to my editor. After a lot of revising, the book was published—and later won the Newbery Medal! So find a story you believe in, embrace editing and rewriting, and have fun. You’ll be amazed at what you can do.
My second biggest piece of advice is to read, read, and read some more. I firmly believe that reading as many books as I can makes me a better writer.
3) The 2018 film At Eternity’s Gate is based upon the final years of the life of WHOM? The film contains what are likely false claims about the recent discovery and publication of an object known as the “lost Arles sketchbook.”
This is VINCENT VAN GOGH.
There are certain films you expect to have mid-credits scenes or post-credits scenes. I hope it is not a big spoiler to tell you that, for example, Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) has two post-credits scenes. Free Willy (1993) technically has some footage of, well, Willy after the credits. Space Jam (1996) has some joshing between the “cast” after the credits. The Disaster Artist (2017) puts Tommy Wiseau in the post-credits scene. But who would have thought that At Eternity’s Gate would also have a post-credits scene? “I’m here to talk to you about the Post-Impressionist Initiative,” Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec does not say to van Gogh in the scene.
4) “I have read the Greeks; I find the Hindus deeper,” once said WHAT scientist famously associated with a quote from the Bhagavad Gita?
This is J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER.
The most famous film to depict Oppenheimer is, of course, the docudrama The Beginning or the End (1947). Here are some thoughts on that film from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
I visited Hollywood for the first time about ten years ago. After an all-day drive down the coast from San Francisco, we reached Los Angeles at dusk. Driving down Wilshire Boulevard upon our arrival, we saw an extraordinary sight. A man strolled out of a luxurious appearing apartment house on our right. In the man’s hand there was a leash, and at the end of the leash there was a duck, amiably waddling along beside his master.
The duck was wearing shoes!
It is difficult to describe my emotions while viewing that scene. I felt as if I was viewing something in a dream—a dream in which fantasy is superimposed upon reality to such an extent that the result can only be described as ludicrous.
By the time the first reel of “The Beginning or the End,” MGM’s saga of the atomic bomb, had passed before my eyes, my thoughts had returned to the scene of the duck with shoes. I had the feeling that I was viewing a grotesque reality. I had the feeling that both the duck and his master might have contributed, at least to some extent, to the production of the picture.
5) NAME the video game publisher and developer headquartered in Bellevue, Washington that in 2022 released the Steam Deck, a portable gaming system.
This is VALVE. Valve is most notable as the developer of the platform Steam and as the developer of gaming franchises such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike. Valve was originally founded in Kirkland, WA, which might be most notable as the home of Costco’s previous corporate headquarters and thus the namesake of Costco’s “Kirkland Signature” brand.
6) As of July 20, 2023, WHAT do the following U.S. presidents, and no other U.S. presidents, have in common? Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon.
This is a complete list of PRESIDENTS WHO HAD MULTIPLE VICE-PRESIDENTS. Each of our answers (Ava DuVernay, Katherine Applegate, Vincent van Gogh, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Valve) had either multiple Vs or multiple Ps, which was your way to try to realize we were talking about multiple VPs. Our newsletter title, Papovavirus, refers to a particular type of virus that is of no importance to us, except that (I believe) it is the only Scrabble-eligible word that has multiple Vs and multiple Ps in it (other than papovaviruses).
Trivia Newsletter Variety Pack 6 Recap
We’ll go quickly here since we’re doing multiple recaps today:
1) Blake Fall-Conroy, an artist and mechanical engineer, created an art installation that lets users turn a crank to cause the installation to dispense pennies. The installation at one time dispensed a penny approximately every 4.97 seconds of cranking, as the installation is meant to be a commentary on WHAT, also part of the installation’s name?
The installation is a commentary on the FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE, since getting a penny at that rate would yield just about $7.25 an hour. Read a bit more about it here.
2) Whether measured by domestic gross or worldwide gross, and as of July 24, 2023, WHAT is the highest-grossing film of 2023 that is not a sequel, not a prequel, and is not based upon existing intellectual property?
This is the Pixar film ELEMENTAL.
I admit that this is a question I would not try out if I were hosting, say, a bar trivia night, as it would be unfun to argue with a stubborn group just trying to have a good time whether a film like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is truly a sequel. Since publication, Barbie and Oppenheimer have overtaken Elemental in at least one respect here, which is why we limited the question to “July 24”—it would be additionally unfun to guess at whether a pub trivia host thought of those works as “based upon existing intellectual property.” (I would say yes—the case for Barbie is obvious, and Oppenheimer is based on a book—hey, what’s the name of that book? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.2) Still, better to just ask a cleaner question outside of a Variety Pack.
3) The “Crosstown Shootout” is an annual basketball game played between the teams of WHAT two universities? Their campuses are separated by under three miles, and they have not played a football game since 1973, as that was the last year that both schools had a football team.
These schools are XAVIER and CINCINNATI. I really liked this Grantland piece on the rivalry from a few years ago.
4) According to Forbes, WHO is the only known transgender billionaire? A retired lieutenant colonel of the Illinois Army National Guard, she is the cousin of a current state governor and the cousin of a Cabinet member who served from 2013 to 2017.
This is JENNIFER PRITZKER. Here’s a Forbes piece about Pritzker.
5) Depending on how one measures a continent’s boundaries, there are a few potential versions of the “Seven Summits,” the highest mountains on the seven continents; for example, Europe’s highest peak could be considered either Mont Blanc or Mount Elbrus. Of the five mountains that are unquestionably part of the Seven Summits, WHICH comes last alphabetically?
This is MOUNT VINSON, named after Carl Vinson, a long-serving U.S. Representative.
6) Maulana Karenga, the co-founder of the group US Organization that was a rival group to the Black Panther Party, is likely most notable for creating WHAT in 1966? The Black Candle, a documentary film released in 2012, is about Karenga’s creation and is narrated by Maya Angelou.
This is KWANZAA. Karenga is very much alive and has his own website here.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The DuVernay-directed film we referenced above is A WRINKLE IN TIME.
The book that Oppenheimer (2023) is based upon (or “inspired by,” depending on whom you ask) is the biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.