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/vJAb6dugAYXMnh2o9. 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 all-time highest-grossing R-rated film (let’s call such a film an “ATHGR film”) in the U.S. domestic box office, not adjusting for inflation, is The Passion of the Christ. Internationally, though, that film isn’t in the top-five ATHGR films. WHAT film is, by a margin of almost three hundred million dollars, the ATHGR film worldwide (again, not adjusted for inflation)?
2) With a plaque designed in part by Carl Sagan in tow, WHAT was the first artificial object to leave our solar system by achieving the necessary escape velocity? In the fifth Star Trek film, the Klingons blow this object up as target practice, but it (she?) gets better treatment in SB Nation’s serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative 17776.
3) “For more than thirteen years, [he] was the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth,” Ken Burns said. NAME this “Galveston Giant” whose 1910 fight against James Jeffries, like a few other fights, is commonly called the “Fight of the Century.”
4) WHO is the only character to appear alive in each of William Shakespeare’s first tetralogy of histories (Henry VI, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Richard III)? True (enough) to life, she in the plays vies for power with her rivals during the Wars of the Roses, loses her son Edward at the Battle of Tewkesbury, and by the time Richard III occurs, she’s sidelined and cursing the nobles for their roles in her family’s downfall.
5) “I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and 'to-thyself-be-enough-ness' that I can't bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt,” said Edvard Grieg about WHAT short piece of classical music he wrote for Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 play Peer Gynt? The irony probably did not make itself felt—the song is often borrowed and sampled, including in the opening credits of the 1990s Sonic the Hedgehog animated TV show and, as a trap version, in the film Trolls.
6) WHAT distinction, which can be summarized by a single word, is shared by each of the following persons/characters? Brad Armbruster, Joe Carnahan, Jim Carrey, Todd Chavez, Aaron Elam, Richard Hesse, Ian Fraser Kilmister, Tom Seaver, Phoenix Wright, Chuck Yeager.
Here are the answers from last time (due to some recent travel, this recap is truncated):
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?
RICHARD NIXON
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.
THE DESCENDANTS
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
JANE AUSTEN (EACH WORD IN THE LETTER IS JUST WRITTEN BACKWARDS)
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).
PARAMOUNT
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.
SUE BIRD AND DIANA TAURASI
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.
LOCATIONS WHERE SEASONS OF THE U.S. VERSION OF THE TELEVISION SHOW SURVIVOR TOOK PLACE. (“FRANCE” REFERS TO FRENCH POLYNESIA, A COLLECTIVITY OF FRANCE).
QUESTION #1 - oriented you to game shows in that era
QUESTION #2 - reference to “immune” for the Survivor concept of “immunity”; “descendant” is, in legal usage, essentially a synonym of “survivor”
QUESTION #3 - explicit reference to “survive”
QUESTION #4 - Paramount and CBS are (essentially) affiliates; episodes of Survivor can be watched on streaming service Paramount+
QUESTION #5 - together with Questions #1 and #3, generally references the types of physical and mental challenges between the genders that pervade throughout Survivor, with reference to Survivor motto “outwit, outplay, outlast” throughout the questions.
NEWSLETTER TITLE: “American Idol” meant to refer to the era of television, keep you away from international versions of Survivor, and refer to the immunity idol critical to Survivor.
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released