We’re going to take the weekend off—we’ll be back with Trivia Newsletter CLXXIV on Thursday, October 19th.
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 direct sequels to the following films, some of which were made for television, all have WHAT word in their titles, with varying grammatical results? The Jerk (1979), Splash (1984), Teen Wolf (1985), Look Who’s Talking (1989), Why Did I Get Married? (2007), Think Like a Man (2012).
2) WHAT last name fills in both of the blanks in the following list? Tatum (1971-76); Walker (1976-83); Miller (1983-84); Eisner (1984-2005); [BLANK] (2005-20); Chapek (2020-22); [BLANK] (2022—). [Note: Your answer should be just one name.]
3) Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin is better known by WHAT mononym? Generally credited as her nation’s best-selling solo artist, she is notable for songs such as “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” and “Only Time.”
4) Identify the single word, repeated multiple times, omitted from the following sentence describing efforts to describe past events that is sometimes used as a demonstration of the value of punctuation: James, while John [BLANK] [BLANK] “[BLANK],” [BLANK] [BLANK] “[BLANK] [BLANK]”; “[BLANK] [BLANK]” [BLANK] [BLANK] a better effect on the teacher.
5) Photography pop quiz! Either (a) Give the first name which the artist born Emmanuel Radnitzky is most commonly known by; his Le Violon d'Ingres became in 2022 the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction; or (b) give the last name of the British photographer born in Calcutta who is notable for her soft-focus photographs of Victorian men and women; she is sometimes credited as the first person to take “close-ups.”
6) WHAT four-letter body part shares the theme suggested by the answers to Questions #1 through #5?
Trivia Newsletter CLXXII Recap
1) I see a French minister of finance reviled for his austerity measures during the Seven Years’ War that became the namesake of an art form that was seen as a cheap method of portraiture, as opposed to forms such as painting or sculpture. WHAT was that minister’s last name?
His name was Étienne de SILHOUETTE. Take note, those preparing for next week’s MiniLeague on Eponyms and Namesakes on LearnedLeague.
Kara Walker may be the most notable silhouettist in art today. Here’s a description of her from the Tate Modern:
Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. Walker was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 1997, at the age of 28, becoming one of the youngest ever recipients of the award. She has been the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University since 2015.
Walker is regarded as among the most prominent and acclaimed Black American artists working today.
2) “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad” is the opening line of WHAT 1921 historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, which takes its title from the stock clown character in the commedia dell'arte that the protagonist portrays?
This is SCARAMOUCHE. The quote we used in the question (“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad”) was used for the inscription on Sabatini’s tombstone.
If Jeopardy! wants you to say “commedia dell’arte,” they might spot you some of the stock characters from the form: Scaramouche, Pierrot, and Harlequin are the ones they tend to go to. You may also get literal descriptions of the form—either “comedy of the profession” (the translation of the phrase), or something like “Italian form of improvised comedy.”
Scaramouche was an international bestseller, and was followed up a year later by Sabatini’s next enormously popular work, Captain Blood: His Odyssey. If someone’s asking you about Sabatini in trivia, that person probably wants you to say Captain Blood, Scaramouche, or perhaps his 1915 work The Sea Hawk.
3) Director Kevin Reynolds and actor Kevin Costner collaborated repeatedly; Costner appeared in films directed by Reynolds such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Waterworld, and WHAT 1985 cult-classic film, Reynolds’s first feature-length film and Costner’s first starring role? The film grossed only $91,666 at the box office, perhaps because moviegoers could not yet buy tickets from the same-named company.
This film is FANDANGO.
Fandango also marked the film debut of actress and model Suzy Amis. She’s appeared in a few other films, such as The Ballad of Little Jo and The Usual Suspects, but is most notable for her role in WHAT blockbuster film? (If you know whom Amis is married to, this question is easier.) The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
4) On March 17, 1990, Julio César Chávez fought Meldrick Taylor in a boxing match for the light welterweight world championship often called the greatest boxing match of the 1990s in no small part due to its controversial ending. Promoters marketed the fight by emphasizing Chávez’s power and Taylor’s speed with the phrase “WHAT Meets WHAT,” which are very, very frightening for those with astraphobia?
This was billed as THUNDER Meets LIGHTNING. Here’s the NYT at the time:
Julio Cesar Chavez knocked out Meldrick Taylor in the final seconds of a spirited 12-round bout between junior welterweight champions here at the Hilton Hotel tonight, but it was a controversial ending. Chavez was behind on two of the judges' cards at the time that Referee Richard Steele stopped the fight with just two seconds remaining.
…
The end came after Chavez connected with a powerful right hand that dumped Taylor in a neutral corner. A bleeding Taylor got to his feet quickly, but Steele gave him the mandatory eight count.
By that time, the red light was blinking in the corners of the ring, indicating that there were less than 10 seconds remaining in the bout. That made Steele's stoppage premature, according to Taylor's cornerman, Lou Duva, who charged into the ring and screamed at Steele.
Asked what Duva had said to Steele, Lou's son, Dan, who is Taylor's promoter, said the older Duva told the referee ''that he had choked.''
Steele said later of Taylor: ''I asked him, 'Are you all right?' and he didn't say a thing. No fight is worth a man's life. When I see a man get pounded and I think he's had enough, I'm going to stop the fight.''
5) Kim Stanley Robinson is most notable for writing the Mars trilogy of science-fiction novels; he also wrote a 2009 novel, the namesake of which is WHAT seventeenth-century scientist, who is visited by 32nd-century time travelers who live on a set of four moons he discovered?
This is GALILEO. Those four moons of Jupiter are, of course, its four largest and sometimes called the Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Oh, what the heck, let’s do one more in-recap trivia question. WHAT is the name of the fifth-largest moon of Jupiter? Sometimes just called Jupiter V, it was discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard and was named by him after a foster-mother of Zeus from Greek mythology. Just as it’s the name taken by the unicorn in the novel and film The Last Unicorn when she is transformed into a human, it’s the last natural satellite to be discovered via direct visual observation. That answer’s at the end of this newsletter.2
6) To WHAT work is this newsletter alluding?
We were alluding to the third verse of Queen’s song “BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY,” if you count the first part of the song (“Is this the real life?”) as the introduction and not the first verse:
I see a little SILHOUETTO of a man
SCARAMOUCHE, SCARAMOUCHE, will you do the FANDANGO?
THUNDERbolt and LIGHTNING, very, very frightening me
(GALILEO) GALILEO, (GALILEO) GALILEO, GALILEO Figaro magnifico
But I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity
EASY COME, EASY GO, will you let me go?
There were two small in-line hints as well—Question #1 started with “I see a,” and Question #4 included the “very, very frightening” line.
TouchTunes is a company that sets up electronic jukeboxes at bars and restaurants and empowers customers at those places to pay money to pick the song that is playing. The company is headquartered in New York, with a few other locations around the world.
I realize it is wildly improbable that anyone reading this knows an employee of TouchTunes, but if you are such a person, then please, please put me in touch with someone at TouchTunes so that I can offer that person money in exchange for removing the Muppets version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” from their app and jukeboxes. One of the regulars at my third place likes to repeatedly play that song, and something must be done.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
Suzy Amis played Lizzy Calvert, Rose’s granddaughter in the modern-day portions of the film TITANIC. James Cameron, who has been married five times, is currently married to Amis.
The fifth-largest moon of Jupiter is AMALTHEA.