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1) “I walked down Seventh Avenue and saw grown men weeping like children, and women sitting in the curbs with their heads in their hands,” Langston Hughes wrote regarding an event in 1936 between Max Schmeling and WHOM? Hughes was presumably happier with the event’s 1938 sequel.
2) The actor Nathan Lane was born Joseph Lane; he took Nathan for his stage name from a character he played in a 1992 revival of WHAT musical that premiered on Broadway in 1950 and was nicely nicely received both times, winning five Tony Awards in 1951 and four in 1992?
3) NAME the musician missing from the following headline to a 2019 article from the website The Ringer: “[BLANK] and the Curious Case of the Missing 48 States.”
4) As any viewer of Law & Order and its various spinoffs may know, each of the trial-level courts of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System somewhat confusingly has WHAT word in its name that is, in other states, usually reserved for a single court?
5) Marguerite Norris was the first woman (1954) and Katy Boettinger is the most recent woman (2023) to have their names engraved onto WHAT?
6) WHAT U.S. city, alluded to in the questions or answers to Questions #1 through #5, also shares a certain commonality with the following three cities and no other cities? Charlotte, NC; Cincinnati, OH; Jacksonville, FL.
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?
This is TEXAS. California, New York, and Texas account for just under a third of the list, which is probably unsurprising.
Of those 55 companies, Texas Instruments is the only one that has “Texas” in its name. That’s right—those folks who make the graphing calculators you used in high school also make lots of other things. However, Texas Instruments is not the highest-ranked member of the Fortune 500 that has a state within the company’s name (as listed in the Fortune 500). WHAT COMPANY, founded in 1845, holds that distinction? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
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?
This is OMAHA; the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln.
It would be really pleasing to me if Cinnabon were owned by, say, an old couple that perfected a recipe for cinnamon rolls and wanted to share it with people in decrepit shopping malls. This story is almost accurate—Cinnabon has a charming origin story—but, as often happens to good ideas executed well, a series of acquisitions has led to Cinnabon being owned by Focus Brands (which also owns brands such as Schlotzsky’s, Carvel, Moe’s Southwest Grill, McAlister’s Deli, Jamba Juice, and Auntie Anne’s). Focus Brand is itself owned by Roark Capital Group, a private-equity firm that owns too many other companies to concisely list here (Anytime Fitness, The Cheesecake Company, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin-Robbins, Massage Envy, and soon Subway are just some of them).
Oh, what the heck, let’s do one more question in this recap. According to Roark Capital Group’s website, the company takes its name from a character from a novel by WHAT AUTHOR? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.2
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?
This is MISSISSIPPI, and specifically Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi. Read more about that here:
By 9:00 p.m. the riot turned extremely violent. U.S. marshals who had been defending Meredith and university officials in the Lyceum building on campus, where Meredith registered, ran out of tear gas. Rioters threw rocks and bottles and began to shoot. President Kennedy then decided to bring in the Mississippi National Guard and Army troops from Memphis, Tennessee, during the middle of the night, led by Brigadier General Charles Billingslea.
Before their arrival, rioters learned of Meredith’s dorm hall, Baxter Hall, and began to attack it. When Billingslea and his men arrived, a white mob set his car on fire while he, the Deputy Commanding General John Corley, and aide Captain Harold Lyon were still inside. The three were able to escape but were forced to crawl 200 yards through gunfire from the mob to get to the Lyceum building. To try and keep control of the crowds, Billingslea created a sequence of secret code words to signal for first, when to issue ammunition to the platoons, second when to issue it to the squads, and finally when to load. None of these could occur without the codes given by Billingslea. This resulted in one third of the Marshals, totaling 166 men, were injured in the mass fight and 40 soldiers and National Guardsmen wounded.
Two men were murdered during the riot: French journalist Paul Guihard who was working for the Agence France-Presse, and 23-year-old Ray Gunter, a white jukebox repairman. In total, more than 300 people were injured. On October 1, 1962, the riot was suppressed with 3,000 soldiers stationed to occupy Oxford and the Ole Miss campus. Meredith, escorted by U.S. Marshals, attended his first class at Ole Miss, an American history course.
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)?
This is CARIBBEAN, as CONCACAF stands for the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football. Mexico and the United States are generally the two teams in contention as the best CONCACAF team on the men’s side, whereas the U.S. women repeatedly dominate the women’s side of the game.
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?
These are STUD FINDERS. Do you want to learn more about how stud finders work? No? Well, here’s a link anyway.
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.
This newsletter pointed to POKER:
Question #1: Texas is a type of game in hold ‘em poker.
Question #2: Omaha is also a type of game in hold ‘em.
Question #3: Mississippi stud is a casino table game based on poker.
Question #4: Caribbean stud is another casino table game based on poker.
Question #5: Stud poker is one type of poker (together with hold ‘em, draw, and some other varieties).
Newsletter Title: “A River Turns Through It” refers to the “turn” and the “river,” two of the community cards in Texas hold ‘em, which is generally considered the most popular type of poker these days.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The highest-ranked Fortune 500 company with a U.S. state in the company’s name is NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY.
Roark Capital Group takes its name from Howard Roark, the protagonist of The Fountainhead by AYN RAND. “Our name signifies our admiration for the qualities embodied by Howard Roark but, as a firm of diverse viewpoints, it does not signify adherence to any particular political philosophy,” Roark’s website claims.