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) Also the holder of the naming rights to the largest indoor arena in Louisville, Kentucky, WHAT company, formerly known as Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc., (tastily?) operates the fast-food brands KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell?
2) The 2019 television show Watchmen includes several allusions to WHAT musical, which first opened on Broadway in 1943, including references to the songs “People Will Say We’re in Love” and “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’”?
3) “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one hundred percent,” says the titular character in a 1940 work after he has been tricked into sitting on an egg by an irresponsible bird. NAME the 1954 work that continues the story of this titular character as he tries to save a tiny planet located on a speck of dust.
4) Glass Joe, King Hippo, Don Flamenco, and Soda Popinski are opponents in WHAT 1987 video game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System that was once described as a “brilliant puzzle game [disguised] as a sports game”?
5) “If it’s true that guilty feet have got no rhythm, then [they] at least helped an indeterminate but undeniable segment of the Chinese public find their footing amid those transformative times,” wrote Biography about the boundary-breaking concert in Beijing in 1985 starring WHAT pop duo?
6) NAME the distinct characteristic, also alluded to in this newsletter, notably held by each of the films and television shows referenced in the following list: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988), Mars Attacks (1996), Just Shoot Me (1997-2003), Moulin Rouge (2001), Teen Titans Go (2013—), Documentary Now (2015—), Shazam (2019).
Trivia Newsletter CXXVIII - Main Recap
1) A common (and potentially inaccurate) story for how the name “Dadaism” was adopted for a twentieth-century European art movement is that artist Richard Huelsenbeck randomly selected from a dictionary the word “dada,” a colloquial French term referring to WHAT kind of horse? A same-named kind of horse is associated with the May Day 'Obby 'Oss festivals in Padstow in Cornwall, England.
This is a HOBBY horse. (‘Obby ‘Oss was a purposeful clue here.)
If you’ve been reading these recaps for a while, you’ve probably learned a thing or two about me. “The guy loves semicolons and em dashes and never asks questions about art and theater,” you’re perhaps thinking, and yes, that’s mostly right.
A thing you do not know about me because I haven’t told you, though, is that I think the Great American Novel, if such a thing exists, is Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (which we’ll be calling Tristram Shandy). Tristram Shandy is filled with characters obsessing over their hobbyhorses (i.e., their hobbies) in ways that disrupt their conversations and the narrative; indeed, if you’ve made a career out of saying punchy things about centuries-old narratives, you might even say that for Tristram Shandy and Tristram Shandy, the reader is a hobbyhorse.
You might have some objections to identifying Tristram Shandy as the Great American Novel, such as “it wasn’t written by an American” or “it was written before the United States existed” or “it has nothing to do with America.” To that I say that all I see are parallels between this country and a work that calls itself a simple biography but is actually a bizarre experimental meandering journey that never does what it purports to do. Tristram Shandy was put together between 1759 and 1767, and guess what else was starting to be put together around then? George Washington quite literally wrote wartime orders in a copy of it. I have much more I could say about why Tristram Shandy is the Great American Novel, but the last thing I’ll say is to look at one of Tristram Shandy’s most famous lines:
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
What, you’ve never thought that about the Founding Fathers? Speaking of which:
2) An article on the website How Stuff Works features the clickbait title “You'll Never Guess Why Thomas Jefferson Raised Geese.” Jefferson raised geese so that he would always have access to a particular type of WHAT, also the last name of a leading character in a 2014 film and its “Vol. 2” released in 2017?
Jefferson raised geese so he could use his favorite type of QUILL. The film reference is to Peter Quill, the Chris Pratt character in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Contrary to the headline referenced in the question, many of you were quite able to guess why Thomas Jefferson raised geese. I admit, I am a big fan of the Thomas Jefferson FAQ on that How Things Work page and the order the questions are presented in, here presented without further commentary:
What is Thomas Jefferson most famous for?
Thomas Jefferson is one of America's founding fathers, writer of the Declaration of Independence, and country's third president.
When did Thomas Jefferson die and how did he die?
He died of unknown causes on July 4, 1826.
Did Thomas Jefferson remarry after his wife died?
No. When Thomas Jefferson's wife was on her deathbed, he made a promise to never marry again.
Did John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die on the same day?
Yes. Former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within five hours of each other on July 4, 1826.
How many slaves did Jefferson own?
Throughout his lifetime, he enslaved over 600 human beings.
3) “I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals” wrote an author in a 1726 work. Two hundred and ninety four years later, an artist with the same last name might have sung back “Your integrity makes me seem small / You paint dreamscapes on the wall.” WHAT is that shared last name?
These quotes are by Jonathan SWIFT in Gulliver’s Travels and Taylor SWIFT in her song “peace”, and I will not be putting punctuation inside those quotation marks because that’s not part of the name of the song, AP Stylebook be damned. I had this fun idea in my head that Taylor was offended at being called small by Jonathan, but maybe that idea worked better as my dreamscape than as a question.
Swift (the first one) is referring to the Lilliputians, the tiny folks that Gulliver meets on the first island he visits. This is whence we get the English word Lilliputian, referring generally to small things, which is a word you can use when it’s more important to convey how smart you are instead of actually conveying ideas clearly.
4) In 2002, the now-defunct Book Magazine ranked the top one hundred characters in literature since 1900. Only one character is in the top ten of both that list and the top ten in the American Film Institute’s list, created in 2003, of the fifty greatest heroes in film history. WHAT is that character’s last name?
This is Atticus FINCH, from To Kill a Mockingbird. The 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch; it also marked the film debut of William Windom, Alice Ghostley, and WHAT LEGENDARY ACTOR, who played Boo Radley? Though this person has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, he’s won only one—Best Actor for Tender Mercies (1983). The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
The 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird has quite famously been the target of repeated efforts to ban it. You can pretty readily predict how I’d feel about that, so instead, let’s go to…famously reclusive Harper Lee in 1966?
5) The first multi-camera production of the Disney Channel (following single-camera successes Even Stevens and Lizzie McGuire) was a teen sitcom airing from 2003 to 2007 centered around a character with WHAT first name and her hidden ability to see visions of future events?
This is RAVEN from the television show That’s So Raven. It’s important to always have a few “bits” ready for any situation, and one of mine is exclaiming “that’s so raven!” whenever the Baltimore Ravens, the NFL team, do something exciting.
Raven-Symoné, who played the titular character in That’s So Raven, received an award at Variety’s inaugural “Family Entertainment Awards” a few months ago:
“Kids are the smartest people I know,” Raven-Symoné told audience members at The West Hollywood Edition. “The family space and the kids’ space is worthy of bold, thought-provoking content. They can handle it.”
Raven-Symoné continues to star on Raven’s Home, the Disney Channel spinoff of That’s So Raven.
6) Whether it’s big, small, or on multiple television sitcoms, WHAT word fits the theme of this newsletter and the grid below?
The answer here was CRANE, referring to (small) birds, (large) construction equipment, and Frasier Crane from Cheers and Frasier. The title of this newsletter was “The Bird Is the Wordle,” and each of the answers (hobby, quill, swift, finch, raven, crane) also related to birds in some fashion.
Trivia Newsletter CXXVIII - Footnote Recap
As you might recall, we included a game in the footnotes of our last mainline newsletter. The footnotes are recreated below (Footnote Six contains the prompt), and the last footnote at the very end of this newsletter contains the solution.2
Between 1971 and early 2022, 37 of the 270 alderpersons who have served in Chicago’s City Council, or some 13.7% of them, have been convicted of, or have pled guilty to, at least one federal crime (i.e., not merely charged with a crime). Worded differently: Since 1971, the odds of an alderperson being a convicted criminal (federally) since having been an alderperson are about the same as it being a Thursday at any given time.
Your author’s opinion, Chicago bona fides aside, is that ketchup on hot dogs is fine! People will tell you that it makes the hot dog too sweet, but people will also tell you that the Cape of Good Hope is Africa’s southernmost tip (it’s Cape Agulhas) and that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space (nope, not really), so maybe stop listening to people. Well, except me.
The play for which Scarlett Johansson won a Tony is A View from the Bridge. Read about that play’s interesting connection with the legendary film On the Waterfront here and more about Elia Kazan (the director of On the Waterfront) and Miller’s power struggles here.
Mind you, if you’re asked for the first modern detective story, as opposed to novel, the standard answer is Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
This person is also trying to sell you a copy of Seeley Regester’s The Dead Letter and so in reality may have an economic interest in the question.
Here’s a bonus game, for absolutely no prize and no Question #6 leaderboard credit, based entirely on these six footnotes. Each of the previous five footnotes contains a word describing an item in a certain six-item set. WHAT WORD ought to appear in this Footnote Six in order to complete the theme? The missing word alludes to an item that might be of particular interest to a character associated with someone mentioned in these footnotes. The answer will be in the next newsletter. (The links in these footnotes will not prove useful in answering this bonus question.)
Trivia Newsletter Variety Pack #4 Recap
1) Top Gun: Maverick and All Quiet on the Western Front are the first films to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture that have all five vowels (A, E, I, O, U) in their titles since WHAT film, directed by a person who also has all five vowels in their name?
This was ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, directed by Quentin Tarantino.
People who like wordplay sometimes keep an eye out for “supervocalics,” words and phrases that use each of the vowels only once. (There’s debate, but generally it’s OK for a “Y” to appear as long as it also only appears once.) Note that a film title like Top Gun: Maverick is a supervocalic, as each vowel only appears once, but All Quiet on the Western Front is not, as some of the vowels appear multiple times. As Jeopardy! icon Pam Mueller pointed out on Twitter a few weeks ago, Top Gun: Maverick is an example of a sequel that turned a film title supervocalic. Another tweet from a wordplay Twitter account points out that Top Gun: Maverick is not only supervocalic, but that it’s now the highest-grossing supervocalic film ever, outpacing Mary Poppins Returns. At least until Joker: Jacuzzi finally comes out, anyway.
2) The comic strips Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem and Patty Jo ‘n’ Ginger were created by WHAT artist, also an inductee of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, who is generally credited as being the first female African-American cartoonist?
This is JACKIE ORMES. Here’s an example of one of Ormes’s comics:
Another bit you should know about Ormes:
Ormes’ artistic legacy, however, is not tied as strongly to her comics themselves as it is to the deal she struck in 1947 with the high-end Terri Lee Doll Company to create a deluxe doll in the likeness of her characters. This doll, Patty-Jo, was the first African American girl doll to come with an extensive, upscale wardrobe, in contrast to those sold previously that almost entirely projected the pickaninny or mammy archetype. The Patty-Jo doll was meant to capture the spunky, smart, precocious and cute personality of Ormes’ comic character.
3) DJ Bauer, Michael Beller, Lukas Harkins, Joe Lunardi, and Jerry Palm are among the most famous practitioners of WHAT twelve-letter predictive science, so to speak, that is particularly in vogue in March of each year?
These folks are famous for their contributions to BRACKETOLOGY, in relation to the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament that’s going on this week. A tool I really like is Bracket Matrix, which assesses how accurate these five (and many other bracketologists) are each year.
4) In 2008, Apple introduced its iPhone 3G model. Last year, the iPhone 14 was introduced. Between 3 and 14, WHAT is the only number that Apple “skipped” in the naming of its iPhone models? (For purposes of this question, you can count the iPhone X as the “iPhone 10.”)
The iPHONE 9 is the correct answer here, as it doesn’t exist. Apple jumped straight from the iPhone 8 models to the iPhone X. This article purports to explain “every reason” that the iPhone 9 never launched, which feels impossible in a metaphysical sense.
5) The U.S. State Department’s requirements relating to a K-1 nonimmigrant visa provide the basis of WHAT television show that has been airing since 2014 and which has had over a dozen spinoffs, such as Pillow Talk, Just Landed, and Self-Quarantine?
According to the State Department:
The fiancé(e) K-1 nonimmigrant visa is for the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) of a United States (U.S.) citizen. The K-1 visa permits the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) to travel to the United States and marry his or her U.S. citizen sponsor within 90 days of arrival.
The show in question, then, is 90 DAY FIANCÉ. I’m running out of steam here, so let’s hand it over to the artificial-intelligence chatbot ChatGPT:
Q: Can you tell me a joke about 90-Day Fiance?
A: Sure, here's a joke about 90-Day Fiancé:
Why did the 90-Day Fiancé couple go to the casino? To put all their visas on red!
Q: Can you tell me another joke about 90-Day Fiance?
A: Sure, here's another joke about 90-Day Fiancé:
Why did the 90-Day Fiancé couple break up? Because they just couldn't make their love last any longer than a K-1 visa!
6) Nettilling Lake is generally recognized as the world’s largest lake (by area) that is on an island. NAME the island on which Nettilling Lake is located; the island is named after an English explorer known for seeking out the Northwest Passage.
This is BAFFIN ISLAND. You can imagine the various arguments one can have about what an “island” is, but Baffin Island is generally identified as the fifth-largest island in the world, behind (from first to fourth) Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, and Madagascar.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The actor we asked about who made his debut in the film To Kill a Mockingbird is ROBERT DUVALL.
Each of the footnotes in Trivia Newsletter CXXVIII alluded to one of the six Infinity Stones relevant to the plots of many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies from 2008 to 2019; the words “time,” “space,” “power,” “mind,” and “reality” appeared in the first five footnotes, so the missing word is “soul,” for the MCU’s “Soul Stone.” That object would be of particular interest to Scarlett Johannson’s character Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), as she died so the heroes could secure the Soul Stone in the film Avengers: Endgame.