A note before we start: We’re changing our publication days!
For this newsletter’s entire history, we’ve released newsletters on Mondays and Thursdays. Going forward, we will be releasing newsletters on Tuesdays and Fridays. Our next newsletter will be released on Tuesday, February 6th. Everything else will stay the same: Newsletters will come out around 6 AM Central Time, and you’ll still typically see 7-8 newsletters per month.
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) Robert Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize for New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes, and he taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts, but his remains are in WHAT U.S. state, which named him its poet laureate in 1961?
2) The most played song on Spotify by singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton, a cover of a song originally recorded in 1981 by David Allan Coe, extols the virtues of a certain type of liquor from WHAT U.S. state?
3) According to the Ecological Society of America, WHAT U.S. state is the only U.S. state to have a continuous border of rivers running along three of its sides? The organization also claims that the state has more navigable miles of water than any other state in the union, other than Alaska.
4) Alfred Kinsey, the sexologist most notable for his namesake scale (also called the Heterosexual–Homosexual Rating Scale), founded in 1947 the Institute for Sex Research at the flagship state university for WHAT U.S. state?
5) Carol Moseley Braun and Roland Burris are two of the eleven Black U.S. senators in U.S. Senate history. Braun and Burris represented WHAT state in the Senate, which has been represented by more Black senators than any other state, with three?
6) The states that are the answers to Questions #1 through #5 have something in common with five of the original thirteen U.S. colonies. No other states have this in common. WHAT is that commonality, the subject of a U.S. patent? (Appropriately, a single word will be sufficient.)
Trivia Newsletter CXCV Recap
1) The titular character in a Disney Channel show that aired from 2001 to 2004, the current stage manager of (and a longtime “Clue Crew” member for) the television show Jeopardy!, and the U.S. labor leader credited by the AFL-CIO’s website as the “father” of Labor Day all share WHAT last name?
This is MCGUIRE—specifically, Lizzie McGuire, Jimmy McGuire, and Peter McGuire.
We used the scare quotes on “father” because the AFL-CIO does as well:
The "father" of Labor Day and of May Day, as well as the founder of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Peter J. McGuire was one of the most remarkable figures in the history of the American labor movement. McGuire probably did more than anyone else to convince skeptical, locally minded union activists around the country that a national labor federation was not only necessary but also possible. Without his tireless enthusiasm and practical example, the creation of the AFL and its survival through its early years are practically inconceivable.
Born in New York City into a poor Irish Catholic family, McGuire quit school at 11 to work when his father went off to fight in the Union Army. While working at odd jobs, McGuire attended the free night classes at Cooper Union, where he met Samuel Gompers and other young firebrands. Apprenticed to a piano maker in 1867 at the age of 15, McGuire was active in labor and radical circles, including the New York branch of the International Workingmen's Association.
That excerpt mentions Samuel Gompers, who was the first president of the AFL and a key figure in its history. Folks like Gompers would have opposed what “wobbly” international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
2) The two Boeing VC-25 aircraft that have the callsign “Air Force One” while the president of the United States is on board as well as the Boeing C-32 designated “Air Force Two” when the vice-president is on board are typically when not in use stationed at a joint base located near Morningside, Maryland known by WHAT name?
This is Joint Base ANDREWS, formerly Andrews Air Force Base.
In 2021 and 2022, two security breaches at Joint Base Andrews were publicized:
A 17-year-old was arrested and another person got away after they drove through a checkpoint at the military base in Maryland that the president and the vice president use to travel to and from Washington, military officials said.
The teenager, who was not identified, was armed when he was apprehended, they said.
The security breach at Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Md., in suburban Washington, happened Sunday night at about the time that Vice President Kamala Harris and four Cabinet members landed at the base, which was put on lockdown for several hours.
After the pair drove through the checkpoint at the base’s main gate, the authorities stopped their vehicle with “barriers,” the base said in a statement. The two then fled the vehicle, which the authorities said was stolen. The 17-year-old was apprehended and remains in custody, and a sweep of the based determined that the second intruder had “departed the installation.”
…
In February 2021, an intruder at the base boarded a plane typically used by senior government officials and military leaders. The breach prompted the authorities to order a review of security at Air Force bases worldwide.
3) According to its entry in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, a particular vessel sometimes called the S/L Livingstone is docked in Key Largo, Florida. The vessel is most notable for its use in a 1951 film. GIVE the last name of the author who wrote the 1935 novel that the film is based upon. (The film, novel, and vessel all have the same name, plus or minus the word “the.”)
This is C.S. FORESTER. This question is about the film and novel The African Queen. For the price of $59 + fees (for adults), you can book a Port Largo canal cruise on the actual African Queen that was used in the filming of the movie:
4) Change one letter in a name that appears in a nonprofit journalism school and research organization perhaps most notable for operating the website PolitiFact.com in order to yield WHAT dog breed?
This question asked you to start with the Poynter Institute and get to the POINTER.
Read more about pointers here. We rate any claim that these are not good dogs "pants on fire”:
5) The official state bird of Oklahoma, Tyrannus forficatus, is a flycatcher with a distinctive tail. WHAT adjective appears in the bird’s name to describe its tail?
This is a SCISSOR-tailed flycatcher. It appears on Oklahoma’s state quarter:
The reverse of the Oklahoma state quarter, like many coin designs, was designed by “one of the preeminent coin artists, sculptors, and engravers of our time,” Phebe Hemphill. Here’s an image of Hemphill hard at work:
6) WHAT is the seven-letter word that can connect each of the answers to Questions #1 through #5?
Each of the words that was an answer to Questions #1 through #5 can also make up the name of a musical group, when combined with the word SISTERS:
The McGuire Sisters were a singing trio that peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. They had #1 hits with “Sincerely” and “Sugartime.”
Do you remember those 90’s commercials for Bagel Bites, the mini-bagels with pizza toppings on them? Those commercials had that catchy song: “Pizza in the mornin’! Pizza in the evenin’! Pizza at suppertime!” We included a video below. That song is an adaptation of the McGuire Sisters’ “Sugartime” (“Sugar in the mornin’ / Sugar in the evenin’ / Sugar at suppertime”).
The Andrews Sisters were a group most notable for their work in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s. You’ll want to remember songs of theirs such as “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me),” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Rum and Coca-Cola.”
The Forester Sisters were a country-music group that peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Notable songs of theirs include “I Fell in Love Again Last Night” and “Mama's Never Seen Those Eyes.”
The Pointer Sisters achieved mainstream success throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and may be most notable for the songs “I’m So Excited” and “Jump (For My Love).”
The Scissor Sisters were formed in 2000 and are most notable for songs such as “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’” and “I Can’t Decide.”
Our newsletter title (“e.g., Smith”) was meant to get you to think of another group of “Sisters”—the seven liberal-arts colleges in the northeastern United States that are called the Seven Sisters. Those are Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Vassar, Radcliffe, and Smith.
If you’ve gotten this far in the recap: Please remember that the next newsletter is coming out on TUESDAY, and not MONDAY.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The labor union we asked about was the INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD. Members of the IWW are nicknamed “Wobblies.”