Two clarifying notes: (1) You don’t have to participate at all! If you just glance at the questions, nod along, and do nothing, that’s just fine. (2) If you do want to participate, the best way to do that is to reply to the e-mail directly—and, if you aren’t getting e-mails, then subscribe!
Below are six trivia questions I’ve written. You can reply to this e-mail if you’d like to participate. Like most trivia, the answers can be readily found via Google, so you’re on the honor system. The SIXTH question of each set is designed to be a question that cannot be easily Googled, so correct answers to those will be tracked and recognized in the next newsletter. The answers, and the next set of questions, will be published every Monday and Thursday.
1) A building in Inglewood, California is the flagship location of what would be an unassuming small chain of dining establishments, except that the building has a 32-foot tall WHAT on top of it? This object has been featured repeatedly in pop culture, including in Arrested Development, Entourage, Iron Man 2, and the music video for "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
2) Take an eight-letter word that comes from the Latin for "thread" and describes something sometimes made out of tungsten and used in light bulbs. Remove the first letter of that word. Then, move one of the remaining letters to a different place in the word. You've now got a word that is a synonym for a minor disease. Name either the word you started with or the word you ended with.
3) Name the US President who was the first president to visit Europe while in office; he was awarded a shiny golden Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts over there.
4) Imagine you were playing a strange version of Scrabble where you could play as many letters as you wanted at once, the board was extremely large, and there were no restrictions requiring you to use English words; however, the letters retained their standard values from the American English edition. Of the seven main-line Harry Potter books, which book's title would be worth the MOST points in this game? Assume all spaces and punctuation marks are worth zero points each, and ignore word/letter bonuses.
5) "These violent delights have violent ends." These words are spoken by Friar Lawrence in a play written in the late sixteenth century, and are spoken again several times in a television show that began airing in 2016 to a character named Dolores, arguably the lead character of the first season of that show. Name the play or the TV show.
6) What unusual distinction is shared by these songs? "The Sound of Silence" and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel, "X" by Xzibit, "Work" by Iggy Azalea, "Sons & Daughters" by The Decemberists, "Milky Cereal" by LL Cool J, “My Favorite Things” by Julie Andrews, "Devil Without a Cause" by Kid Rock, "Cinderella Man" by Eminem, "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, "The Tide Is Turning" by Roger Waters, "Diamond Dogs" by David Bowie, and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" by many artists.
Here are the answers from last time:
1) What event took place at Madison Square Garden on August 24 and 25 of 1979 and featured persons such as Richie Havens, Elliott Randall, and Paul Butterfield? Advertisements for the event didn’t bill its name, instead merely identifying the event as “Celebration: Ten Years Later.”
The answer here is Woodstock ‘79, or just Woodstock. Havens, Randall, and Butterfield are big Woodstock names, but the biggest hint here is “hey, what’s something that happened in New York in 1969?” Did you know that Woodstock, Snoopy’s best friend from the Peanuts comics, first appeared in 1967 but wasn’t given a name until 1970 (and was explicitly named after the concert)?
2) Name the American fast-casual restaurant chain that is headquartered in a suburb of St. Louis and has over 2,000 locations (all of which are in the U.S. and Canada). In 2007, it was the largest provider of wi-fi hotspots in the United States; in October 2020, they added pizza to the menu.
This one was Panera Bread, and this question was actually the genesis of this whole endeavor. “Wait, Panera Bread was once the largest wi-fi provider in the United States?” is the fact that I wanted to share with my friends, and here we are. The Paneras in St. Louis, by the way, are called “St. Louis Bread Co.” for reasons I cannot imagine.
3) In November and December of 2004, the U.S. military fought a battle in what Iraqi city, which ultimately was the bloodiest conflict for the American military since Vietnam? The city is known in Iraq as the "city of mosques" for the more than 200 mosques found in the city and the surrounding villages.
The answer to this unhappy question is Fallujah. Also known as “Operation Phantom Fury,” the combatants killed thousands of civilians and, less importantly, destroyed about sixty of those mosques.
4) What is the two-word alliterative term that has been used to describe, typically in the NFL but occasionally in other sports, extraordinary plays by receivers requiring great effort, such as by Odell Beckham Jr. or Julio Jones? The term was first used in 1893, according to Merriam-Webster—perhaps people more commonly saw these in their literal context back then.
”Circus catch” was the answer here. Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that the title of the prior newsletter was the Latin phrase for “bread and circuses,” which was intended to be a hint for both #2 and #4. Hey, it stopped being a pretentious phrase when The Hunger Games used it.
5) There are two American cities in the Eastern Time Zone that have five-letter names and more than 250,000 people. Name both cities.
These are not N’York and B-Town, but instead are Miami and Tampa. No, the city that borders Tampa Bay is not actually called Tampa Bay, it’s just Tampa—and, by the time you’re reading this, it’s hopefully the city that lost to the Chicago Bears yesterday.
6) What unusual distinction is shared by each of these films (and many others)? On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), Goodfellas (1990), High Fidelity (2000), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Lord of War (2005), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Wanted (2008), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
In each of these movies, there’s a scene where the “fourth wall” is broken and a character speaks directly to the audience. I could have added more famous examples like Deadpool, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or Fight Club—but mostly I regret not adding Muppets Treasure Island. By far the most pretentious example here is Wanted, where James McAvoy looks at the camera in the last shot of the movie and says “what the f*** have you done lately?” Hopefully, what you’ve done lately is learn something from this newsletter.
Congratulations to the several people who got this one correct, but I suspect today’s sixth question will play harder.
SIXTH QUESTION LEADERBOARD:
CK - 1
RC - 1
SM - 1
WM - 1