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. Like most trivia, the answers can be readily found via Google, so you’re on the honor system (i.e., do not use external resources to help you answer any of the questions). The SIXTH question of each set is generally designed to be a question that cannot be easily Googled; correct answers to those will be tracked and recognized in the next newsletter. The answers, and the next set of questions, will be published on Mondays and Thursdays.
1) The 1974 film The Little Prince was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Song Score; thus, for the first time, an openly transgender person was nominated for an Oscar. NAME the English composer, perhaps most famous for her BBC Radio work in the 1950s, who earned this distinction.
2) The 1976 film The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Song Score; thus, for the second time, an openly transgender person was nominated for an Oscar. NAME the English composer, perhaps most famous for her BBC Radio work in the 1950s, who earned this distinction.
3) It is very likely that you or someone you know has had multiple run-ins with a product with the brand name Comirnaty (also known by its international nonproprietary name tozinameran). Comirnaty was developed and distributed in response to WHAT?
4) The first rule of Fight Club, as expressed in the same-named film and novel, is “you do not talk about Fight Club.” WHAT is the second rule of Fight Club?
5) Of the many songs to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., exactly one of them has a title that explicitly names a English monarch with a regnal number. The song was released in 1965 and is based on a British music hall song from 1910. NAME the monarch named in the song’s title.
6) WHAT distinction, related to this newsletter’s theme, is shared by the following songs? “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” (Pink Floyd), “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (Kylie Minogue), “Dear Mr. Fantasy” (Traffic), “Glad You Came” (The Wanted), “Killing in the Name” (Rage Against the Machine), “Kiss It Better” (Rihanna), “Mr. Brightside” (The Killers), “Zero” (Yeah Yeah Yeahs).
Trivia Newsletter CV Recap
1) In geometry, WHAT word, derived from a Greek word meaning “not falling together,” describes a line that, in a sense, continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance? For example, in the below depiction of f(x) = 1/x, the answer to this question describes the x-axis and y-axis.
These are ASYMPTOTES.
According to a search on the website lyrics.com, there are twenty-three known songs that have the word “asymptote” in their lyrics. Most of them appear to be by artists who have under 50 listeners and under 1000 plays for their songs on Spotify. The most notable exception is “Do This Thing,” from the Mean Girls musical (gosh, we can’t get away from Mean Girls lately), which covers the math competition at the story’s climax and has a section where the students shout out answers to (presumably) unseen math questions:
[ADJUDICATOR, spoken] Welcome to the ICMT State Final Math Championships, sponsored by no one. Please solve for...
[KEVIN] X equals two!
[MARYMOUNT #1] The rate is two pi!
[TYLER] X is greater than the value of Y!
[MARWAN] Both polynomials are second degree / So the asymptote is at Y equals three!
[MARYMOUNT #2] Function X equals MX plus C!
[KEVIN] The derivative of F at argument Z!
[MARYMOUNT #3] Negative four!
[CADY] Negative two!
[MARYMOUNT #1] The slope is zero!
[CAROLINE KRAFFT] The answer is true!
[MARYMOUNT #3] One point of inflection!
[KEVIN] Twenty-nine!
[CADY] Four is the slope of the tangent line!
Gosh, it was nice of the ICMT to make the answers all rhyme.
Mean Girls takes place in Illinois, and the statewide math competitions for students are put on by the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics, or the ICTM (notice the slight difference from the song). I’m not sure what animated the change in the musical, but I went and dug up an old high school award to confirm I wasn’t just making this up:
2) NAME the band, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, that was credited by VH1 as “the first all-female band who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to reach Number One in the Billboard chart.” The group broke up in 1985 with each member pursuing a solo career, but has reconvened several times and has toured as recently as this year.
This is THE GO-GO’S. Get an “Almost Same Name” question correct in the future by knowing that Beauty and the Beat is the name of the first album by The Go-Go’s (which was highly successful), while “Beauty and a Beat” is a 2012 Justin Bieber song featuring Nicki Minaj.
If someone’s asking you about a Go-Go’s song, it’s probably going to be “We Got the Beat,” or maybe “Vacation” or “Head over Heels.” Belinda Carlisle, the lead singer of the Go-Go’s, went on to have a successful solo career—she is likely most famous for the song “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
3) Excluding Washington, D.C., WHAT is the most populous city in the United States that shares its name with the last name of a U.S. president? (Note: The president's surname and the city's name must match entirely--so, if a president had been named John Denverton, for example, that would not match with “Denver.”)
The city is CLEVELAND, OHIO, sharing its name with Grover Cleveland. Cleveland has about 370,000 people. Lincoln, NE (290k), Madison, WI (270k), and Jackson (150k) were some possibilities that fell short. Had we accepted Washington, D.C., that would be the clear winner (670k or so people).
Cleveland generally had a reputation for honesty and integrity. In fact, a faction of anti-corruption Republicans broke off from the GOP candidate, James G. Blaine, and supported Cleveland (a Democrat) in the 1884 presidential election, which would lead to Cleveland’s first term. WHAT NAME, which comes from an Algonquian word meaning “important person,” is used to describe this Republican faction that supported Cleveland? The same word, oddly, is used in the name of an elected position held by Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter franchise. The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
4) WHAT television show, which debuted on NBC in 1995 and was canceled after one season, was called by The New York Times “[a] hybrid of Top Gun-style technology and A Few Good Men whodunitry”? The show was picked up by CBS, where it ran until 2005 and spawned another hit series that continues to air today (and that itself is responsible for several spinoffs).
The show is JAG, and the first spinoff was NCIS.
The derogatory word “jagoff” refers to a person who is being a jerk or inept in some fashion. Pittsburgh lays claim to the term, but if you ask me, Chicago perfected it.
That article linked to in the prior paragraph will tell you about a couple of times that “jagoff” has creeped into the news (relating to Mark Cuban and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel). One more example: In December 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. The mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a tiny suburb east of Pittsburgh, tweeted out his thoughts on the ban. The mayor of Braddock was a political unknown at the time, but has become a household political name since then:
5) NAME the sandwich periodically sold at McDonald’s that first debuted in McDonald’s restaurants around Kansas City in 1981. After being removed from the menu in 1985, it was brought back in 1994 as a tie-in with the film The Flintstones, due to the item’s ostensible connection with the opening credits of the same-named television show.
This is the McRIB. The reference to the Flintstones opening credits refers to the part when the Flintstones’ car has a giant rack of ribs placed on top of it.
This article posits that, between 2005 and 2011, there was a strong correlation between the times that McDonald’s offered the McRib and when the price of bulk pork was low. According to McDonald’s, the McRib’s most recent foray onto the menu (November 2022) would be the last time the McRib is offered, though the author of this article is not convinced.
6) WHAT distinction, related to the theme of this newsletter, is shared by each of the following athletes (and many others)? Lance Armstrong, Joe Blanton, Kim Clijsters, Randall Cunningham, George Foreman, Rob Gronkowski, Gordie Howe, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Gabe Kapler, Mario Lemieux, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marshawn Lynch, Andy Pettitte, Dave Stieb, Georges St-Pierre, Rasheed Wallace, Reggie White.
These are all folks who HAVE RETIRED AND THEN UNRETIRED TO CONTINUE PLAYING THEIR SPORT—Jordan is probably the most famous example culturally, and (without checking carefully) Gronk is probably the most recent example on the list.
Each question generally pointed to something stopping, and then restarting:
Question #1: In the graph of a function (like the one depicted above), the asymptote can, in a sense, be seen as what causes the function to “stop” and then resume past the asymptote.
Question #2: We noted how the Go-Gos broke up and now periodically get back together.
Question #3: Grover Cleveland stopped being president after his first term, and then gave it another go for a second non-consecutive term.
Question #4: We mentioned how JAG was canceled and then uncanceled.
Question #5: The McRib, like the “karma chameleon” in the Culture Club song, comes and goes.
Newsletter Title: “Resume” was a bit of a pun, referring to a résumé (since it was Trivia Newsletter CV, and a “CV” can refer to one’s curriculum vitae), but we were using the word in the sense of someone’s career “resuming” after retirement.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link. (I expect we will be a day or two behind, but we’ll catch up before Trivia Newsletter CVII is released.)
MUGWUMPS - One way that Jeopardy! will prompt you for the word is as follows: The “Never Blaine” Republicans who didn't support the 1884 GOP candidate were called these, from an Indian word.