We’re going to take Labor Day weekend off, which means we’ll be back with Trivia Newsletter CLXIV on Thursday, September 7th.
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 U.S. state is, as of 2023, home to the most headquarters of Fortune 500 companies with 55, including those of Sysco, Dell Technologies, and AT&T?
2) “If I'm lucky, a month from now, best-case scenario, I'm managing a Cinnabon in [BLANK]," says the character Jimmy McGill in an episode of Breaking Bad. This prediction bears out, as shown in the spinoff Better Call Saul. WHAT city, its state’s most populous (but not its capital, as its capital is the state’s second-most-populous city), has been omitted from McGill’s quote?
3) On September 30, 1962, President John F. Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 in order to deploy more than 30,000 troops to WHAT state in order to facilitate James Meredith’s efforts to enroll at a university?
4) CONCACAF, a part of FIFA, is one of the six continental governing bodies for association football. Each of the three “C”s in the initialism CONCACAF stands for a word that begins with “C.” Of those three C-words, WHICH one is not the longest and not the shortest (in terms of number of letters)?
5) Though DeWalt sometimes calls them “Radar Scanners” and Milwaukee Tool sometimes calls them “Sub-Scanners,” these tools are most commonly used by folks putting up (say) mirrors or televisions to locate not animals retained for breeding but instead WHAT?
6) Each of the answers to Questions #1 through #5 is a variation or type (or is a word that is part of a variation or type) of WHAT? Your answer should be one word.
Trivia Newsletter CLXII Recap
1) The investigations led by high school students Peter Maldonado and Sam Ecklund into various low-level pranks form the basis of WHAT Netflix mockumentary that aired from 2017 to 2018?
This is AMERICAN VANDAL. The folks behind that show made Players, a mockumentary about League of Legends and the e-sports world. I’d tell you to check it out, but it’s on Paramount+, a streaming service no one is subscribed to, so you can probably pass on it.
2) The “Battle of the Palouse” refers to an athletic rivalry between Washington State University and WHAT other university, located in a city that is just a few miles away from Washington State University (and not the approximately 5200 miles that one might initially expect)?
This is the UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO. That campus is in Moscow, Idaho, which is where the “5200 miles” clue came from. I understand that the answer to “Why is it called Moscow?” is somewhat disputed, but here’s Moscow’s answer:
Settlers were first drawn to the area in 1871, with abundant grassland and available timber for building. The area was first named “Hog Heaven” which was later changed to “Paradise Valley.” In 1877, Samuel Neff filed for a postal permit under the name of Moscow because the area reminded him of his hometown of Moscow, Pennsylvania. In 1875, the city’s first store was opened on what is now Main Street. Moscow grew with the arrival of the railroad in 1885. The town became incorporated in 1887 and was chosen as the site for a land-grant institution, the University of Idaho, in 1889. Idaho achieved statehood in 1890.
Because the University of Idaho is a land-grant university, the land for the university was able to be used for a university because of WHAT SET OF FEDERAL LAWS, passed in 1862 and 1890 and named after a Vermont politician? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
3) It happened to Rome several times (including in the years 455 and 1527), to Constantinople in 1204, and to Fran Tarkenton at least 570 times. WHAT is it?
This was a SACK, both in the historical sense of a city being razed and in the sense of a football play.
In case you’re interested in an hours-long documentary where you can learn more about the Minnesota Vikings and Fran Tarkenton, Jon Bois and the folks at SB Nation are in the midst of their fantastic YouTube series The History of the Minnesota Vikings. It is truly fantastic, even for folks who aren’t really into sports, and I can’t recommend it enough. Consider giving the first episode (the previous link) five minutes to see if you might like it.
4) Girl with Balloon, Show Me the Monet, Girl with a Pierced Eardrum, Love is in the Bin, and the documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop are all works by WHAT pseudonymous artist?
This is BANKSY.
Feels like we’re talking a lot about documentaries in this recap, but Exit Through the Gift Shop is apparently trippy:
The camera captures it all, sparking speculation about the film’s veracity: Did the clever Banksy — the film’s credited director — create [Thierry] Guetta to mock the art world? Is Guetta — who shot much of the footage — actually a paid actor playing a savant-like character invented for the project? Or, as some have speculated, is he Banksy himself?
Banksy has insisted the film is completely true. But coming from an unidentifiable artist whose work includes titles such as “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this …,” such claims have only fueled the doubts.
Guetta himself, speaking to The Times in his first extended interview since the film was released last spring, said, “This movie is 100% real.”
5) Kung Fu Records, an independent record label that was founded in 1996 by Joe Escalante and Warren Fitzgerald, has preleased albums by several punk-rock groups. Its best-selling release was the demo album Buddha by WHAT group that was recently reunited with vocalist and guitarist Tom DeLonge?
This is BLINK-182. On the few occasions that Jeopardy! will ask you about Blink-182 these days, you’ll almost always be spotted DeLonge’s name or the name of one of their songs, “All the Small Things.”
6) Someone spraypainted over the title of this newsletter and now no one can read it! We’ll get someone to clean that up, but in the meantime, WHAT is the theme of this newsletter?
We were looking for “VANDALS” or “VANDALISM,” but since Question #6 wasn’t particularly closely pinned we decided to accept “graffiti” and its ilk as well:
Question #1: “Vandal” is in the title of American Vandal.
Question #2: The University of Idaho’s sports teams are the Vandals.
Question #3: In 455, Rome was sacked by the Vandals.
Question #4: Banksy’s artwork is often considered vandalism, or a form thereof.
Question #5: Joe Escalante and Warren Fitzgerald, the founders of Kung Fu Records, are most closely associated with the punk-rock band The Vandals.
Question #6: Our newsletter title (█████████), which is just a bunch of black rectangles, was meant to indicate a title that had been vandalized.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
Land-grant universities were established as a result of the MORRILL ACTS. Several land-grant universities, including the University of Idaho, have a structure named “Morrill Hall” or something of the sort in honor of Justin Morrill, a U.S. representative and senator from Vermont whose most notable legacy is the Morrill Acts.