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) St Edward’s Crown, the centerpiece of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, was used on June 1, 1533 to crown WHOM? The use of the crown for a queen consort was unprecedented at the time; the king had sought to further legitimize the coronation of his second wife.
2) NAME the athlete who, together with Misty May-Treanor, won a gold medal in beach volleyball for the United States at the 2012 Olympics; it was the record third consecutive Olympiad at which the two had won a gold medal playing beach volleyball together.
3) According to the website Odds Shark, “Don’t Stop the Music” was the favorite among bettors for the first song to be performed at the Super Bowl LVII halftime show by WHAT artist, with odds of +110? Those who took the underdog “Better Have My Money” (+1000 odds) might have been singing those very words when it was performed first.
4) NAME the former world leader who, according to The Economist, became in 2017 the world’s youngest female leader at the age of 37. Earlier this year, she resigned and was succeeded by Chris Hipkins.
5) NAME the author whose first novel, The Bean Trees, was written while the author was struggling with insomnia in 1988. The author is more notable for a 1998 novel that, despite its name, should not cause contact dermatitis if handled.
6) WHAT is the unusual distinction shared by the events described in Questions #1 through #5 of this newsletter?
Trivia Newsletter CXLI Recap
1) gloria jean watkins, who authored works such as feminist theory: from margin to center, is closely associated with berea college in kentucky and is best known by what pen name?
This is bell hooks, testing the Trivia Factorial norm of putting answers in recaps in ALL CAPS like this. What’s with the lower case?
Early on, hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins, wanted a way to honor her maternal great-grandmother while detaching herself from her work. She wrote dozens of books using her great-grandmother’s name but didn’t capitalize it.
During a 2013 visit to Rollins College, she told an audience that she always wrote her name in lowercase because she wanted people to focus on her books, not “who I am.” (Ironically, the spelling of her name became a matter of public fascination.)
It’s nice to be able to play word association with names, book titles, and ideas—that’s how you get better at trivia—but it’s also probably a good idea to actually see what these folks had to say, right? Here’s how the first chapter of Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, published in 1984, opens:
Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually-women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority. A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot in life without visible question, without organized protest, without collective anger or rage. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved the way for contemporary feminist movement-it was written as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, “the problem that has no name,” often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women-housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: “We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.’” That “more” she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife.
2) NAME the novelist who (i) produced Safe Haven (2013), The Best of Me (2014), The Longest Ride (2015), and The Choice (2016) and no other films based upon his works, (ii) was the screenwriter for The Last Song (2010) and no other films based upon his works, and (iii) has written eighteen other novels, perhaps most famously a 1996 novel that was adapted into a 2004 film directed by Nick Cassavetes.
This is NICHOLAS SPARKS (the 2004 film is The Notebook).
I found a BuzzFeed piece from nine years ago that promises to let you generate your own Nicholas Sparks plot. This wouldn’t be particularly novel, but the questions and answers were apparently all images, and every image on the page is no longer available, so you just have to click on buttons blindly to generate the plot. If there’s a better metaphor for love, I don’t know it.
After I pseudo-randomly selected options blindly, BuzzFeed generated this plot:
“The Only Kiss”
Rich girl Samantha and poor boy Harrison meet at a carnival one summer’s day. They fall in love instantly because they’re soul mates. They spend one perfect day together but then Samantha’s evil rich father drags her away. Harrison tries to track her down but Samantha’s evil rich mother blocks his attempts. 20 years later Harrison is dying of cancer and finally finds Samantha, who is now married. But she can’t resist her first love and they go on a boat ride together. It starts raining so they kiss and have sex. Harrison dies in Samantha’s arms and she vows never to kiss anyone again.
Geez, that’s kind of a downer. ChatGPT, can you generate a better Nicholas Sparks plot for my readers?
Q: Could you write a plot of a novel in the style of Nicolas [sic] Sparks? The title should be “The Only Kiss.”
A:
Title: The Only Kiss
Plot Summary:
“The Only Kiss” follows the poignant love story of Emily Sullivan and Ethan Taylor, two souls brought together by fate and tested by the complexities of life. Set in the charming coastal town of Sandstone Cove, this emotionally captivating novel explores the power of love, sacrifice, and the endurance of the human heart.
Emily Sullivan, a talented but introverted painter, finds solace and inspiration in her art. Her days are filled with vivid brushstrokes, solitary walks on the beach, and the company of her loyal dog, Daisy. Emily's peaceful existence takes an unexpected turn when she stumbles upon a worn-out, weather-beaten journal buried in the sand during one of her beach outings. Intrigued by its contents, she embarks on a journey to uncover the author's identity and the story behind its words.
The journal belongs to Ethan Taylor, a widower whose heartache has left him emotionally scarred. With a successful career as a marine biologist, Ethan spends his days studying the intricate beauty of the ocean and its creatures, while silently mourning the loss of his beloved wife, Rachel. Burdened with guilt and longing, Ethan pours his emotions onto the pages of the journal, recounting the memories and dreams he once shared with Rachel.
…
“The Only Kiss” is a heartfelt tale of love's resilience, second chances, and the transformative power of forgiveness. In the enchanting backdrop of Sandstone Cove, Emily and Ethan's love story will captivate readers, reminding them that sometimes, the only kiss holds the power to mend a broken heart and create a love that transcends time.
I liked the BuzzFeed one more.
3) NAME the recipient of a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007 for his thesis entitled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud; his research was carried out in the early 1970s, but was interrupted by his music career, which included repeated recognition as one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
This is BRIAN MAY, the lead guitarist of Queen. You can read A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud right now. I had wondered what the paper was even about, so here’s part of the intro:
The Zodiacal Light, conveniently abbreviated to ‘ZL’, is the name given to a diffuse cone of light seen in the Western sky in the evening, from around the end of twilight, and in the Eastern morning sky just before dawn. In the latter incarnation it has been called the ‘False Dawn’. If it could be viewed in a completely dark sky when the Sun was eclipsed, we might imagine that the complete outline of a brightness contour of the ZL would be an ellipse, with the Sun at its centre, and its long axis roughly aligned with the ecliptic. To see this phenomenon clearly on Earth, it is necessary to have a good, dark sky, free from clouds, terrestrial light sources, moonlight, or aurorae. It is also an advantage to be within or near the tropics, since it is here that the cone of light is inclined at a high angle to the horizon, making it still visible when the Sun is well below the horizon, and the sky is completely dark. The maximum intensity of the ZL is greater than the brightest parts of the Milky Way, and in ideal conditions, the morning and evening cones are seen to be linked up, by a continuous faint band right around the ecliptic. This ‘Zodiacal Band’ is visible all through the night, and shows a secondary brightening at the anti-solar point, known as the “Gegenschein”. With modern instruments more sensitive than the human eye, it has become apparent that even well off the ecliptic, indeed even at the ecliptic pole, there is still some contribution to the sky background brightness from this phenomenon. The Zodiacal Light, in fact, surrounds us.
…
A thorough knowledge of our own evolving system of planets, debris and dust helps to shed light on the evolution of planetary systems in general. Of course the search is highlighted by a desire to answer the question of whether our Earth, and life as we know it, is unique in Creation, or if such life is scattered liberally throughout the Universe. Zodiacal Dust may still be holding on to some of the secrets relating to these questions.
4) NAME the activist who, just months after settling a years-long legal dispute with the group OutKast regarding their use of her name in the title of the most successful radio single of their album Aquemini, passed away and became the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda.
This is ROSA PARKS.
To Tell the Truth is a long-running television game show. Let’s turn to Wikipedia for the premise:
To Tell the Truth is an American television panel show in which four celebrity panelists are presented with three contestants (the “team of challengers”, each an individual or pair) and must identify which is the “central character” whose unusual occupation or experience has been read aloud by the show's moderator/host.
In 1980, Rosa Parks appeared on To Tell the Truth, together with two impostors. The three contestants were able to look at Parks and the impostors and ask them questions, and then had to vote on which person was the real Rosa Parks. This is one I really recommend playing along with without looking up anything in advance. Can you identify Rosa Parks before the contestants try to?
(I know we include a lot of clips and videos in these recaps, but if you only click on one, click on this one—and if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, at least check out Nipsey Russell’s remarks and the reveal, starting at the 5:50 mark.)
5) Holden Caulfield’s misremembering of the line “if a body meet a body” from the 1782 poem “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” as “if a body catch a body” is the basis of the title of J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye. WHO wrote “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye”?
That poem was written by ROBERT BURNS.
A “Burns supper” is a celebration of Robert Burns’s life and works, typically held on or about an anniversary of Burns’s birthday (January 25th) each year. A typical feature of a Burns supper is the reading of a specific poem by Burns that begins with the below lines, addressing WHAT specifically?
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang ‘s my arm.
The answer’s at the end of the newsletter (which, if you keep scrolling, is coming very soon to a screen near you).1
6) WHAT is the theme of the answers to Questions #1 through #5? (A single word will suffice.)
Each of our answers is, in a grammatical sense, a SENTENCE: bell hooks, Nicholas sparks, Brian may, Rosa parks, and Robert burns. (Answers in the vein of “their last name is a verb” were also acceptable.)
The newsletter title (“Judge Punishes”) was meant to be another example of such a sentence, but was also meant to point to the practice whereby, after a criminal defendant is found guilty, a judge sentences the defendant to a punishment.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The excerpted poem by Robert Burns is “Address to a HAGGIS.”