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: https://forms.gle/cwPCmfiYmeJQX4DdA. Like most trivia, the answers can be readily found via Google, so you’re on the honor system (i.e., do not use external resources to help you answer any of the questions). The SIXTH question of each set is designed to be a question that cannot be easily Googled; correct answers to those will be tracked and recognized in the next newsletter. The answers, and the next set of questions, will be published on Mondays and Thursdays.
1) The first person to outplay the competition and win the top prize on the American version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was John Carpenter. His final question on the show on that occasion was the following: “Which of these U.S. Presidents appeared on the television series Laugh-In?” He was given four choices, but you don’t need them—WHAT was the correct answer to Carpenter’s question?
2) Law students dread the convoluted “rule against perpetuities” in their property classes, but the outside world isn’t immune to archaic legal doctrines either; the rule's application kicked off the plot of WHAT 2011 film starring George Clooney that grossed $177 million and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture? The film's name, in a general sense, applies to those who might be most concerned about the rule against perpetuities.
3) NAME the author of the following letter, apparently written as a playful attempt to outwit an eight-year-old. The author wrote thousands of letters, but only 161 survive:
Ym raed Yssac
I hsiw uoy a yppah wen raey. Ruoy xis snisuoc emac ereh yadretsey, dna dah hcae a eceip fo ekac. Siht si elttil Yssac’s yadhtrib, dna ehs si eerht sraey dlo. Knarf sah nugeb gninrael Nital. Ew deef eht Nibor yreve gninrom. — Yllas netfo seriuqne retfa uoy. Yllas Mahneb sah tog a wen neerg nwog. Teirrah Thgink semoc yreve yad ot daer ot Tnua Ardnassac. — Doog eyb ym raed Yssac. — Tnua Ardnassac sdnes reh tseb evol, dna os ew od lla.
Ruoy Etanoitceffa Tnua
Notwahc, Naj . 8. Enaj Netsua
4) NAME the fifth-oldest film studio in the world; it is the only member of the “Big Five” film studios still located in the city limits of Los Angeles. In 1916, Adolph Zukor, one of the studio’s co-founders, put 24 actors and actresses under contract and honored each with a star on the studio’s logo (though the number of stars was later reduced to 22).
5) NAME both athletes who outlasted the competition to become the only Olympic basketball players to each win five gold medals. Both played together in college on a team that had an undefeated season, and while rumors of retirement hover around both players, they are currently active basketball players.
6) WHAT distinction is shared by each of the following countries (and no other countries)? Malaysia, Australia, Kenya, France, Thailand, Brazil, Panama, Vanuatu, Palau, Guatemala, Cook Islands, Fiji, China, Gabon, Samoa, Nicaragua, Philippines, Cambodia.
Here are the answers from last time:
1) According to the film Pulp Fiction, a “Royale with Cheese” is how WHAT fast-food product, still sold today, is identified in France?
This is a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, the McDonald’s product. The idea is that a “quarter pounder” wouldn’t make a lot of sense because France uses the metric system. As I understand, Vincent Vega was not quite right—it’s called a “McRoyale” and you don’t need to specify avec fromage because a McRoyale already includes cheese.
2) There are four U.S. cities that have at least one team in each of the “Big Four” major leagues (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL) play within its city limits. Of the four, two of them have NFL teams that have won a Super Bowl in the past ten years—NAME both of those cities. Both cities are in the top-20 in the U.S. in population, and of the three players generally considered to be the lead contenders for the NBA Most Valuable Player Award this season, two of them play in these cities.
These cities are Philadelphia and Denver. The “within its city limits” part excluded, to varying degrees, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The Super Bowl part excluded Chicago and Detroit. The three lead contenders for NBA MVP this season, by a mile (according to betting odds, ESPN coverage, etc) are Nikola Jokic (who plays for the Denver Nuggets), Joel Embiid (who plays for the Philadelphia 76ers), and Giannis Antetokounmpo (who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks). A while back, at a citywide competition for Whaddayaknow Trivia, one of our local pub trivia outfits, the quizmaster asked teams for one question to spell Giannis’s last name, which was not great!
3) WHAT is suffragist Susan B. Anthony’s full middle name? What, that’s not a fun enough question for the 50th newsletter? Fine—so “Oxbridge” is generally the portmanteau to refer to the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, the elite UK universities. If you wanted to create a portmanteau of (i) the Ivy League university that merged with Pembroke College in 1971, and (ii) the Ivy League school most recently founded and with the largest current undergraduate population, then a sensible choice would be WHAT, also Susan B. Anthony’s middle name?
Susan B. Anthony’s middle name is “Brownell,” which this question imagines is a portmanteau of Brown University and Cornell University. Clara Barton (who founded the American Red Cross), shortly before Anthony’s death, said “A few days ago some one said to me that every woman should stand with bared head before Susan B. Anthony. ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘and every man as well.’ I would not retract these words. I believe that man has benefited by her work as much as woman. … The nation is soon to have woman suffrage and it will be a glad and proud day when it comes.”
4) Insects typically don’t have blood circulating through their veins, because they don’t have blood (or veins, for that matter). Instead, WHAT is the name typically given to the fluid, somewhat analogous to blood, that circulates through an insect’s interior?
This is hemolymph, also present in arachnids and crustaceans. According to Scientific American, hemolymph is mostly water, but also contains ions, carbohydrates, lipids, glycerol, amino acids, hormones, some cells and pigments.
5) WHAT is the four-word title of the following sonnet? The answer may be something of a puzzle:
A hard, howling, tossing water scene.
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
"How cold!" Weather stings as in anger.
O Silent night shows war ace danger!The cold waters swashing on in rage.
Redcoats warn slow his hint engage.
When star general's action wish'd "Go!"
He saw his ragged continentals row.Ah, he stands – sailor crew went going.
And so this general watches rowing.
He hastens – winter again grows cold.
A wet crew gain Hessian stronghold.George can't lose war with's hands in;
He's astern – so go alight, crew, and win!
This sonnet, written by David Shulman in 1936, is called “Washington Crossing the Delaware” and commemorates the moment in American history when Washington and his men crossed the Delaware River during the country’s revolution. There were plenty of clues within (redcoats, star general, Hessian, George), but the trick here is that every line of the poem is an anagram of “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”
6) NAME an individual, based upon this newsletter’s theme, who is missing from the following list of individuals sharing a specific distinction: William Clark, Kamehameha I, Helen Keller, Meriwether Lewis, John Muir, Caesar Rodney, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, York.
The intended theme here was that each of these individuals appears on quarters circulated in the “50 State Quarters” program that ran between 1999 and 2008, except I excluded all of the U.S. presidents. Thus, some acceptable answers left out included Abraham Lincoln (on the Illinois state quarter), Teddy Roosevelt or Thomas Jefferson (on Mount Rushmore,1 on the South Dakota state quarter), James Madison (technically on the New Jersey quarter as one of the individuals crossing the Delaware River), and perhaps most straightforwardly, George Washington (on the obverse of every state quarter, and also part of the South Dakota and New Jersey quarters). (The Ohio state quarter shows an astronaut, likely in an attempt to commemorate both Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, but neither is explicitly identified as the figure on the coin and I don’t think one was intended to be included over the other.)
The newsletter name was trying to orient us there with the word “obverse,” together with the fact that there were 50 state quarters. Question #1 was used to give us “quarter.” Question #2 was used to yield Denver and Philadelphia, the cities with the two largest U.S. Mint facilities where all of the state quarters were minted (except for a small amount of proof coinage minted in San Francisco). Question #3 was trying to focus us further on coins, since Susan B. Anthony was on the obverse of a dollar coin minted in 1979-81 and again in 1999; and, as a very slight hint, we used the word “fine,” a gradation used by coin graders. Question #4 had the slight connection of referring to circulation, another currency/minting hint. Question #5, besides being a fun standalone puzzle, was meant to give you an “in” for Question #6.
In retrospect, little distinguishes my list from a general theme of “people shown on currency” or “people intended to be honored by the 50 State Quarter program” and so grading decisions for Question #6 will be made in that light.
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released
I spent some time dwelling on whether the South Dakota state quarter actually depicts any U.S. President, or whether it merely depicts a monument and no presidents at all. Same différance, I suppose.