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) NAME the diving position that is generally considered the easiest to assume; it makes up the four body positions in diving together with straight, pike, and free…OR, NAME the American who won Olympic gold medals in the springboard and platform events in both 1984 and 1988; he is widely considered one of the best divers in history.
2) NAME the co-prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder case who co-wrote The Trials of Nikki Hill and whose last name happens to trade on the New York Stock Exchange as stock symbol DRI…OR, NAME the person best known as the lead prosecutor in the same case, who co-wrote Without a Doubt.
3) NAME the word for the rear of a boat that fills in the blank from this quote by a character named Quint in a 1974 novel: “Brody, cast off the [BLANK] line”…OR, NAME the author of that novel, who has a cameo as a reporter in the 1975 film based on that novel.
4) NAME the actor whose final acting appearance at a particular Washington, D.C. theater came on March 18, 1865, when he portrayed the villainous Duke Pescara in The Apostate…OR, NAME the painter who, together with his brother Hubert, painted the Ghent Altarpiece—he liked to punnily sign his paintings with the phrase “Als Ich Kan.”
5) NAME the co-founder and, from 1925 to 1951, the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker who was also an original member of the Algonquin Round Table literary group…OR, NAME another original member of that group who won an Academy Award for his short comedy film How to Sleep and who happens to be the father of the author mentioned in Question #3 above.
6) For Trivia Factorial’s two-year anniversary, we have two themes today! Many folks could fit into this newsletter’s first theme, but NAME a Pulitzer Prize winner who does…OR, of the many singers and models who appeared in Taylor Swift’s music video “Bad Blood,” NAME the person who best fits this newsletter’s second theme.
Trivia Newsletter CLXXIV Recap
1) NAME the activist, generally recognized as the co-author of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” program, who is most notable for the ten-year period in which he transformed the National Urban League into a leader in the civil-rights movement.
This is WHITNEY YOUNG.
You Chicagoans reading along may suddenly think of Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, a terrific high school in the city attended by folks such as Craig Robinson (Darryl from The Office, among other roles) and Michelle Obama. Indeed, the school is home to the Michelle Obama Athletic Complex, and somehow that isn’t the only sports complex with Michelle’s name—there’s one in California too.
2) The New York Jets now have the longest postseason drought among teams in the four major North American sports leagues, as the Jets have not made the postseason since the 2010 NFL season. WHAT team, which won its Pacific Division in the 2022-23 season to end its 16-year playoff drought, held this distinction prior to the Jets?
These are the SACRAMENTO KINGS. The Kings have had a long and tumultuous history, and that includes their name: They’ve been the Rochester Seagrams, the Rochester Eber Seagrams, the Rochester Pros, the Rochester Royals, the Cincinnati Royals, the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, and the Kansas City Kings before settling in Sacramento in 1985.
Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco are the four most populous cities in California. Sacramento is #6. WHAT CITY, located in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, is the fifth-most-populous city in California? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
3) “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; / Weep, and you weep alone. / For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth / But has trouble enough of its own” spun WHAT poet in her poem “Solitude” (1883)?
This is ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. “Spun” was a little pun with “Wheeler,” but this was a tough one!
I had all these things ready to write about Wilcox—and you can find out more about her here—but I think this picture says it all, doesn’t it?
4) The song “My Kind of Town,” an ode to the city of Chicago recorded by Frank Sinatra, was originally part of the score for a 1964 musical film starring Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Bing Crosby. That film reimagines WHAT legend in a 1920s gangster setting? For example, Crosby plays the character Alan A. Dale.
This is the legend of ROBIN HOOD; the film is Robbo and the 7 Hoods. There are these Chicagoisms that you get used to as a city resident (“No ketchup on hot dogs!” or “It’s not called the Windy City because of the weather!” and such), but perhaps the most Chicago thing I’ve ever heard is that “My Kind of Town” was written to be sung by a mob boss who just got acquitted of murder.
Read a bit more about Robbo here, including this tidbit:
The pic ran into several delays and sad moments, as Sinatra’s pal JFK was assassinated in Dallas, and they stopped shooting for 10 days. A month later, the nineteen-year-old Frank Sinatra, Jr. was kidnapped at knifepoint in Lake Tahoe and held for ransom. Under the scrutiny of the FBI, Sinatra met the kidnapper’s demands and handed over $240,000. Five days after his abduction Frank Jr. was released unharmed and just a few days after the amateur criminals were arrested. By this time Sinatra lost interest in the film and just went through the motions, ending the uneven film just as quickly as possible.
5) The following persons share WHAT last name? (i) The U.S. Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995 who was the architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (and known to baseball fans for a different reason); (ii) Tom Cruise’s character in the Top Gun films; and (iii) the author of the novel Cloud Atlas.
These folks are George, Pete, and David MITCHELL. Baseball fans will know Senator Mitchell from his Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball, more punchily called the Mitchell Report.
George Mitchell is one of the very few people in modern times to serve in all three branches of the U.S. government, as he was a U.S. Attorney (i.e., a federal prosecutor with the executive branch), a U.S. Senator, and briefly a U.S. District Judge. You can find Wikipedia’s list of such folks here. The most notable person on the list is certainly John Marshall (most notably the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for 35 years or so, but also a U.S. Representative for a year and briefly the Secretary of State). Marshall’s inability to deliver certain commissions while Secretary of State led to the most important decision in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, which was written by, of course, John Marshall.
6) The answers to Questions #1 through #5 allude to, respectively, the second, seventh, eighth, thirteenth, and sixteenth items on a particular ordered list. WHAT is #1 on that list? (Here’s a hint: if the fourth item on that list were applicable to your commute, so to speak, you might need an umbrella.)
This was a newsletter about the highest points in US states, and the above ranks referred to where those points rank on a list of the highest points in each state:
Question #1: Whitney Young (Mount Whitney is the highest point in California, and is #2 on this list (i.e., only one other state has a higher highest point than Mount Whitney)
Question #2: Sacramento Kings (Kings Peak is the highest point in Utah)
Question #3: Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Wheeler Peak is the highest point in New Mexico)
Question #4: Robin Hood (Mount Hood is the highest point in Oregon)
Question #5: Mitchell (Mount Mitchell is the highest point in North Carolina—it’s also generally the highest peak in mainland North America east of the Mississippi)
Thus, the item that is #1 on this list is whatever is the tallest point in the United States that is also the tallest point in a U.S. state. That’s…just the tallest point in the U.S., which is DENALI. Your clues were the somewhat literal newsletter title (“Can You Take Me Higher?” prompting you to come up with a higher point), and also the clue in #6 (the fourth item on the list is Mount Rainier, and a rainier day could necessitate an umbrella).
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The fifth-most-populous California city is FRESNO.