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) Boyz II Men Boulevard, James Mtume Way, and Patti LaBelle Way are honorary streets located in WHAT city?
2) WHAT single word fills in BOTH of the blanks in the following sentence? “The first amphibious landing conducted by what would become the United States Marine Corps occurred in March 1776 on the island of New [BLANK] with assistance from the covering fire of the USS Wasp and the USS [BLANK].”
3) NAME the city, sharing its name (not coincidentally) with the royal house that ruled Great Britain from 1714 to 1901, that is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony.
4) NAME the Greek island, the second-smallest of the seven main Ionian islands, that has a population of about three thousand people and is most notable as the site of a mythical homecoming.
5) In 1977, while sitting in the back of a taxicab, graphic designer Milton Glaser came up with what is likely his most famous logo, a pop-culture icon that is primarily in American Typewriter typeface and that is used to profess one’s love for WHAT place?
6) The answers to Questions #1 through #5 make up five members of an eight-member set. NAME any of the three other members of that set.
Trivia Newsletter CXLII Recap
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.
This is ANNE BOLEYN.
It’s important to have “bits,” by which I mean brief jokes. One of my bits that I secretly use to get better at trivia is this: Whenever someone mentions a very famous actor, I try to name one of that person’s lesser-known works, but act like the person is primarily famous for that thing. So instead of saying “Yeah, you know, Heath Ledger? Brokeback Mountain, The Dark Knight, A Knight’s Tale?”, you might say something like “Oh, you mean the Elizabeth Banks from The Lego Movie?” or “Sally Field? From Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco, right?” You get the idea.
I like to imagine that this character consumes information in exactly the wrong way, and one way that this behavior manifests is that this person is extremely familiar with Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn, and knows very little about Anne. “Oh, yeah, Mary Boleyn, she was the mother of Catherine Carey, the chief Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth. Wait, who was Mary’s sister? Is that the other Boleyn girl?”
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.
This is KERRI WALSH JENNINGS.
Earlier this year, NBC reported that Jennings is actively trying to qualify for the 2024 Olympics, which in and of itself would be an astonishing accomplishment for several different reasons. She suffered a setback last month due to a surgery, but continues to try to rehab the injury compete internationally.
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.
This is RIHANNA, who performed in the most recent Super Bowl halftime show.
Rihanna has won hundreds of awards, including nine Grammy Awards. She has never won an Oscar, but she has been nominated for one (Best Original Song) in connection with WHAT FILM? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
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.
This is JACINDA ARDERN. Here’s a pretty good writeup by NPR about her and her departure. Ardern is now a member of the Board of Trustees of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, which “use[s] a fair and rigorous process to search, select, accelerate, award and scale the best and most ingenious solutions to repair and regenerate our planet, while simultaneously nurturing eco-innovators and their impact.”
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.
This is BARBARA KINGSOLVER—the second sentence of the question alluded to The Poisonwood Bible.
Why’s it called The Poisonwood Bible? The story is from the points of view of an obstinate missionary’s wife and four daughters, so let’s learn a little more about them:
Rachel is the eldest, and the most obstinately American, “heavy hearted in my soul for the flush commodes” she has left behind. Entirely resentful of the new world into which she is plunged, her truculence is expressed via a high school demotic. “I always wanted to be the belle of the ball, but, jeepers, is this ever the wrong ball”.
…
In contrast, her sister Leah, the dutiful daughter, seeks to follow her father. “All my life I've tried to set my shoes squarely into his footprints.” Her narration combines biblical cadence with ready clichés. Her twin Adah suffers from hemiplegia and, for much of the novel, cannot speak at all. Yet she speaks to us. Indeed, speechless Adah is the novel's language expert. She plays with words and is a lover of palindromes, with which her chapters are punctuated.
She puns and rhymes and turns words inside out. She begins to learn the local tongue, Kikongo, and to discern that small differences of emphasis make one word become another. Hectoring the locals in his sermons, her father – she hears – keeps telling them something different from what he means. “Tata Jesus is a bangala!” he declares, meaning “something precious and dear.” “But the way he pronounces it, it means the poisonwood tree.”
Five-year-old Ruth May has her chapters, too, and as strong an inclination as any other character to cite the scriptures. Battered with chapter and verse by their father, every member of the Price family is steeped in the King James Bible. It provides the family likeness in their voices. Its verses are inescapable.
Orleanna thinks of her husband's power over her and hears Genesis in her head: in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. “Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.”
6) WHAT is the unusual distinction shared by the events described in Questions #1 through #5 of this newsletter?
Each of the questions describes a moment in time (Anne Boleyn’s coronation, Kerri Walsh Jennings’s 2012 gold medal run, Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show, Jacinda Ardern’s swearing-in, and Barbara Kingsolver’s time writing The Bean Trees) involving a woman who was PREGNANT AT THE TIME.
The newsletter title (“Fargo, a Quiet Place”) pointed to the two movies Fargo (1996) and A Quiet Place (2018). In Fargo, the protagonist Marge Gunderson is seven-months pregnant during the events of the film. In A Quiet Place, Emily Blunt’s character is late into her pregnancy, and her efforts to give birth in a world of monsters attracted to sound constitute a major plot point.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The film for which Rihanna was nominated for an Oscar is BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (the nomination was credited to Ryan Coogler, Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna and Tems). The song is “Lift Me Up.”