A regular feature on the sports website Deadspin, before the writing staff and editorial staff resigned in 2019 and largely went over to Defector, was “Let’s Remember Some Guys.” The phrase refers to the practice of blurting out the names of (typically) athletes in a group setting and, well, Remembering Some Guys.
Last weekend was the NFL’s “Super Wild Card Weekend,” with six playoff games taking place. In today’s newsletter, we Remember Some Guys who played for some of the NFL franchises that played this past weekend.
[Not an NFL fan? Don’t worry, we added some bracketed clues for you to try to guess at the Guys we’ll be Remembering.]
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 Miami Dolphins lost to the Kansas City Chiefs last weekend in the fourth-coldest game in NFL history. Miami fans may have pined for warmer climes and warmer times, such as the 2018 “Miracle in Miami” when Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski jumped to his left and failed to tackle WHAT player, leading to Miami scoring the first walk-off, game-winning NFL touchdown involving multiple lateral passes ever?
[This player’s last name is the same as the stage name of the first artist to have three songs debut in the top three of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time.]
2) The Dallas Cowboys were upset by the Green Bay Packers last weekend. The Cowboys’ gaffes may have reminded Cowboys fans of the two gaffes committed by WHAT alliteratively named player in 1993? The second such gaffe happened when he stepped to his right and touched the ball following a failed field goal, allowing the Dolphins to regain possession and win the otherwise out-of-reach game.
[This player’s last name is also an archaic word referring to someone from Latvia; you can add “-ish” to get another word for the Latvian language.]
3) The Chiefs will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2018 season when, in the AFC Championship Game against the Patriots, a seemingly game-clinching interception was waved off after the referee put his hands on his hips to signal that WHAT player was offsides?
[This player has the same last name as someone who often had a certain band play, in lieu of “Hail to the Chief,” the fight song of the University of Michigan.]
4) The Pittsburgh Steelers lost a rescheduled game against the Buffalo Bills. Fans of the Steelers might have wished things went more like they did in the 2015 season’s wild-card round victory over the Bengals, in which WHAT player implausibly caught a touchdown pass by, mid-catch, doing a front flip and tightly bringing his knees in, pinning the ball in his leg?
[This player has the same last name as a product of Chicago’s Second City comedy club who, in addition to being a co-creator and the star of the television show Shrill, was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2012 to 2022.]
5) Fans of the Detroit Lions, fresh off their first playoff win since 1992, might be tempted to celebrate in a fashion similar to WHAT running back, who was penalized in 2022 for a series of pelvic thrusts that went viral due to the act’s similarity to a Key & Peele sketch?
[This player has the same last name as a winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, who was the founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.]
6) Two of the 2023 playoff teams, the Lions and Cowboys, traditionally host Thanksgiving NFL games. Two other 2023 playoff teams have the longest streaks of not playing on Thanksgiving. The Cleveland Browns haven’t played on Thanksgiving since 1989, and the Los Angeles Rams haven’t played on Thanksgiving since 1975—the same year that a version of this newsletter’s theme was released in the U.S. WHAT is today’s theme?
Trivia Newsletter CXCII Recap
1) Fidel Castro is on the reverse of Cuba’s current one-peso bill; WHAT is the last name of the man who is on the obverse of the bill?
This is José MARTÍ.
Martí, a poet and writer, is a Cuban national hero due to his role in fighting for Cuban independence from Spain. José Martí International Airport is Cuba’s largest airport.
WHAT ACTOR claimed throughout his life that he was Martí’s grandson? You might think, based on one of this actor’s most famous roles, he was joking; he most assuredly was not. The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
2) Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur begins with the words “It befell in the days of [BLANK] Pendragon, when he was king of all England…” WHAT name fills in the blank?
This is UTHER. Uther is in Arthurian legend the father of King Arthur. He might also be the father of this guy:
Historians may argue that King Arthur never really existed. However, that hasn’t stopped one man from claiming that he is the reincarnation of the legendary Celtic hero
In 1986, John Timothy Rothwell officially changed his name by deed poll to Arthur Uther Pendragon, and has lived ever since doing what he can to uphold the “ancient virtues of Truth, Honour and Justice” in Britain’s “hour of greatest need.”
As a druid leader, an eco-warrior and political activist, he has become famous as a modern King Arthur, and until a “bigger, badder and bolder” version comes along he has no intention of relinquishing the role.
A self-confessed “media tart,” Pendragon has been featured on many TV shows, has made the headlines of national newspapers, had a book published about him, and has been the subject of a documentary film. He once had his own column in the Esher News & Mail newspaper too. Not bad for someone who left school in his mid-teens with no qualifications!
3) WHAT word fills in the blank in the following excerpt from Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”? “‘My name is Ozymandias, king of [BLANK]: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’”
This is KINGS. The poem is a sonnet, and therefore a quick read:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The poem is a favorite for writers trying to convey that things may not go particularly well for someone in power—”Ozymandias” is the name of a Season 5 episode of Breaking Bad, the name of a Watchmen character, and is referenced in the penultimate episode of Succession. It also, somewhat unbelievably, inspired the name of the media company OZY; the company’s CEO, who is being sued by the SEC, has previously said that the poem means "think big, but be humble.” They should have sent a poet.
4) ¿QUÉ MES sigue inmediatamente a 'mayo' cronológicamente? Por favor responda en español.
This is JUNIO. This question was our (surely poor) attempt to ask, in Spanish, which month comes immediately after the month of May.
Here are some fun facts about the month of June from, uh, a car dealership in Glens Falls, New York (presented without edit):
1. June is the month with the longest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and conversely, June has the shortest daylight hours of the year in the Southern Hemisphere.
2. June’s birthstone is the pearl, the Moonstone and the Alexandrite.
3. The June birth flower is the Rose and the Honeysuckle.
4. In 2009 June was the 662 most popular name for girls in the USA.
5. June is derived from Juno, the goddess of marriage.
6. In both common and leap years, no other month begins on the same day of the week as June. Weird, isn’t it?
7. June is international men’s month.
8. June is accordion awareness month, as well as candy, dairy and papaya month.
5) “The merchant of death is dead,” wrote a French newspaper in 1888 about a person with WHAT last name, who passed away in 1896?
This is Alfred NOBEL.
In the cold light of day (very cold here in the Midwest, lately!), we should have hedged this question (i.e., adding something like “According to some sources…”), since there’s an open question of whether the obituary we asked about was really published:
Nobel never spoke publicly about the motivations behind the pledge, but many believe it was inspired by an earlier case of mistaken identity. In 1888, Nobel’s brother Ludvig had died in France from a heart attack. Thanks to poor reporting, at least one French newspaper believed that it was Alfred who had perished, and it proceeded to write a scathing obituary that branded him a “merchant of death” who had grown rich by developing new ways to “mutilate and kill.” The error was later corrected, but not before Alfred had the unpleasant experience of reading his own death notice. The incident may have brought on a crisis of conscience and led him to reevaluate his career. According to biographer Kenne Fant, Nobel “became so obsessed with the posthumous reputation that he rewrote his last will, bequeathing most of his fortune to a cause upon which no future obituary writer would be able to cast aspersions.”
The newspaper incident is often cited as the driving force behind Nobel’s philanthropy, but historians have yet to find an original copy of the “Merchant of Death” obituary. Some now dismiss the story as a myth, while others argue that it was only one of many factors that helped shape the inventor’s decision. The Nobel Foundation, for instance, notes that he may have first gotten the idea for the science prizes in 1868, when he received an award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for “important inventions for the practical use of mankind.” Nobel was also a voracious reader who spoke five languages and dabbled in writing plays and poems, and this may have sparked his interest in offering a prize in literature.
6) WHAT WNBA team name, omitting the relevant city or state, could fit the theme of this newsletter? The below image may help you:
[Do not assume the chart necessarily represents optimal guesses. As stated above, the answers to Questions #1 through #6 may be, or may not be, dictionary words that would be accepted in a standard game of Wordle.]
This was the Atlanta DREAM.
This newsletter was released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and so this newsletter was a nod to that fact. Dr. King’s name doesn’t fit into a Wordle grid, so each of the first four answers were his name, plus or minus a letter. The last two answers pointed to the facts that Dr. King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and that he is notable for his “I Have a Dream” speech:
MARTÍ
UTHER
KINGS
JUNIO
NOBEL
DREAM
Our newsletter title, “Third Monday,” just referred to the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. Day occurs on the third Monday of January (and thus each calendar year). King was born on January 15, 1929, and so the holiday fell on MLK’s actual birthday this year. (For whatever it’s worth, no other WNBA team fit into the Wordle grid.)
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The actor who claims to be Martí’s grandson is CÉSAR ROMERO. The “joking” clue in the recap refers to Romero’s role as the Joker in the television show Batman (1966-1968) Some sources say that Romero is actually Martí’s godson—read more here.