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.
Another note: If you’re submitting answers, please do not use any external resources, including the Internet, to help you determine the answers for any questions, including Question #6. (If you aren’t submitting, then do whatever!)
1) In the beginning, there were various Atari consoles, and then the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America in 1985. After that came the Mega Drive, Ozisoft, and Tec Toy, which were each international versions of WHAT video game system, released in North America on August 14, 1989? The system is often credited for innovating video gaming generally; it has been called "the key incubator for modern sports franchises," and it even featured an online subscription service that predated PlayStation Plus by over fifteen years.
2) Delilah DiCrescenzo, a 2001 graduate of Queen of Peace High School in Burbank, Illinois and a 2005 graduate of Columbia University, is an American distance runner who competes in the women's 3000-meter steeplechase. She nearly qualified for the Summer Olympics in 2008 and 2012, and also was the subject of a hit song, released in 2006, by WHAT band? The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 2007 and remains the band's only #1 hit.
3) The 2001 film Ocean's Eleven probably featured the first use of WHAT four-word phrase that has become something of a meme? In the film, Don Cheadle's character yells this phrase to his team (plus the two words "to do") when he blows up a vault door and an alarm goes off. In a memetic sense, the phrase is most commonly invoked to call attention to someone committing a blunder while working--for example, one example lambasts a "Dinosaur Supervisor" in Jurassic Park with the phrase.
4) Tomorrow, you can remember, remember the fifth of November, when Guy Fawkes failed to destroy the British Parliament and assassinate WHAT king of the House of Stuart? He was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and shortly after taking the throne, he formally adopted Shakespeare’s theater company, causing the “Lord Chamberlain’s Men” to become the “King’s Men.”
5) In Greek mythology, Artemis, the goddess and huntress of deer, repeatedly saw an island illuminated by moonlight under the Aegean Sea and wanted it to be hers. With the help of Zeus and Poseidon, the island was lifted from the sea. Today we know this island as Patmos, but as the story goes, the people at the time honored Artemis and named the island after WHAT goddess? They probably did so because of this goddess's relation to Artemis and not because she was the lead singer of, as they might have called it, 30 Seconds to Ares.
6) What unusual characteristic do these films have in common? A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), Footloose (1984), Dune (1984), Pulp Fiction (1994), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Man on Fire (2004), Fury (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).
Here are the answers from last time:
1) "King Henry Died Monday Drinking Chocolate Milk," "Kings Hate Dragons Because Dragons Can’t Make Money," and variations thereon are all sentences suggested by the Internet and by teachers to help memorize WHAT?
Kilo-, Hecto-, Deka-, Meter/“Base”, Deci-, Centi-, Milli-…these are all metric system prefixes. The mnemonics differ on what to do with the base unit, but hopefully there was enough for you to get there. I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t already been said about the metric system compared to the non-SI systems we often use in the United States, except—did you know that the unit of volume we use for large-scale water management in the US is an “acre-foot,” or an acre of water that is one foot deep? The average American suburban family uses about one acre-foot of water per year.
2) Of the fourteen times a Black actress has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, only one instance has resulted in that actress winning the award. Name that actress, or the film she starred in.
This was Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball. On winning the award and on the fact that no Black actress has won it since, Berry said in 2020:
“It's one of my biggest heartbreaks. The morning after, I thought, 'Wow, I was chosen to open a door.' And then, to have no one… I question, 'Was that an important moment, or was it just an important moment for me?' I wanted to believe it was so much bigger than me. It felt so much bigger than me, mainly because I knew others should have been there before me and they weren't.”
3) The subsequent query assumes that you are bounded to U.S. roads and that you cannot get on a plane, teleport, cross over to Canada or south of the border, or use oceans or other waterways: You wake up near Portland, Oregon. Now you must return home by car to Montgomery, Alabama. However, your buddy on the journey becomes deathly unwell when he enters any US state whose name makes use of the 9th letter of the alphabet (he had an eye gouged out once and the letter sets the guy off). You're a thoughtful chap and agree to take a route to dodge any such states. What's the FEWEST NUMBER of states between Oregon and Alabama your route could take you through?
I wrote this question, and then removed the letter “i” in all places, which was harder than you might think!
The first state you must enter is Nevada (as Washington, California, and Idaho all have an “i”). From there, Utah and Colorado in that order are your only options. From Colorado, you can go to Nebraska, Kansas, or Oklahoma, but only Oklahoma gets you past the dreaded “Minnesota/Iowa/Missouri” wall blocking the Midwest. From Oklahoma, your best route is Arkansas, Tennessee (you have to bypass Mississippi), and then Alabama. Therefore, the minimum number of states is six, and the map looks like this. Google Maps tells me that this route is possible, but very inefficient.
4) Hill, Wisconsin is a town of 364 people in north-central Wisconsin that is aptly named because it contains the tallest point in the State of Wisconsin, at 1,951 feet (above sea level). This is not close to the "lowest high point" of any US state; instead, that honor goes to Britton Hill, the tallest natural point (above sea level) in WHAT state? The state has at least fifty buildings taller than Britton Hill, and our buddy from Question #3 could not travel to this state.
This honor goes to Florida. Britton Hill is on the Florida panhandle less than a half-mile from the Alabama border and is a mere 345 feet above sea level. Next time you are in the Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin Metropolitan Statistical Area, you can share that fun fact.
5) Guest hosts of Saturday Night Live who have appeared on the show five or more times are known as members of the "Five-Timers Club," a club that the show has repeatedly acknowledged. Three of the members of the Five-Timers Club were born in 1980 or later; name any one of them.
Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, and Justin Timberlake are all correct answers. In 2020, a publication called Buzz Bingo claimed to review over 3,500 movie scripts and concluded that Jonah Hill has said more curse words on screen than any other actor (due largely to his work in The Wolf of Wall Street).
6) What unusual distinction is shared by each of these individuals? Ann Richards, Caitlyn Jenner, Charlie Daniels, Dale Earnhardt, Dennis Hopper, Don Meredith, George Foreman, Gwen Stefani, Henry Winkler, Martina McBride, Tony Danza, Troy Aikman, Wynonna Judd, Willie Nelson, and Yakov Smirnoff.
Each of these folks guest starred as themselves on the animated comedy King of the Hill. There were a few ways to figure this out; maybe you remembered that the word game Boggle was Peggy Hill’s favorite game (and featured prominently in a few episodes), maybe you realized that this list of people was Texas-heavy, or maybe you looked at the first word in each of Questions #1-5 of this quiz, which spelled out “King of the Hill Guest.” I gave credit to any answer that mentioned King of the Hill guests.
SIXTH QUESTION LEADERBOARD
CK - 3
SM, ZM - 2
EM, JK, KM, MM, MS, RC, WM - 1