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/EdGz4uwn7RujCYBf9. 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) In 1957, the perhaps appropriately named Donald Featherstone designed WHAT ornamental invention, sometimes unpopular with homeowners’ associations? Featherstone received an Ig Nobel Prize, the tongue-in-cheek award recognizing those who “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” for his work in 1996; Featherstone was the first person to accept his Ig Nobel in person.
2) The city of Thebes was one of the most important cities in ancient Egypt—located on the Nile River, it was often the capital of Egypt and served as a key religious area, evidenced by the nearby Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. The ruins of Thebes are today located in WHAT modern city, which has a population of about 400,000 people?
3) A Fata Morgana, named after Morgan le Fay from Arthurian myth, may explain sightings of the Flying Dutchman ghost ship and other false sightings of UFOs, islands, boats. A Fata Morgana isn’t quite a hallucination, as it can be captured on camera—instead, a Fata Morgana can be properly categorized as an example of WHAT six-letter natural phenomenon?
4) You are an ambitious bartender trying to come up with new drinks. You decide it would be fun to create a spin on a vodka gimlet, so you take that recipe and sub out simple syrup, instead adding triple sec to get some more citrus, and you add a splash of cranberry juice to make it more tart. You try your invention, and suddenly realize with dejection that you’ve just reinvented WHAT popular cocktail?
5) Today’s the first day of the National Football League draft. In that spirit—halfback Jay Berwanger, the first winner of what would become the Heisman Trophy, was also the first player ever drafted in an NFL draft (though he elected not to play professional football). Berwanger, in addition to being probably the only Heisman winner to be tackled by a future U.S. president in Gerald Ford, attended WHAT university, which today is a Division III school not particularly renowned for athletics?
6) WHAT distinction is shared by each of the following films (together with many films and other works)? The Godfather (1972), Rain Man (1988), Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), Leprechaun 3 (1995), Mars Attacks! (1996), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Con Air (1997), Rush Hour 2 (2001), Up in the Air (2009), Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015), Jason Bourne (2016).
Here are the answers from last time (due to some recent travel, this recap is truncated):
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)?
JOKER - EACH OF THE DEADPOOL FILMS PREVIOUSLY HAD THIS DISTINCTION, BUT IT’S JOKER AS OF NOW.
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.
PIONEER 10 - THE OTHER OBJECTS TO DO SO ARE PIONEER 11, VOYAGER 2, VOYAGER 1, AND NEW HORIZONS. (VOYAGER 2 LAUNCHED SIXTEEN DAYS BEFORE VOYAGER 1.)
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.”
JACK JOHNSON - THE FILM REPORT OF THE FIGHT, THE JOHNSON-JEFFRIES FIGHT, SPARKED RACE RIOTS WHEN JOHNSON DEFEATED JEFFRIES, AND AS A RESULT CONGRESS BANNED DISTRIBUTION OF ALL PRIZEFIGHT FILMS ACROSS STATE LINES, A BAN THAT LASTED ALMOST THIRTY YEARS.
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.
(QUEEN) MARGARET OF ANJOU
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.
“IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING”
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.
EACH IS AN “ACE” OR OTHERWISE CLOSELY AFFILIATED WITH AN “ACE” IN SOME FASHION:
BRAD ARMBRUSTER - THE NAME OF G.I. JOE CHARACTER “ACE”
JOE CARNAHAN - DIRECTOR OF THE FILM SMOKIN’ ACES
JIM CARREY - PLAYED “ACE VENTURA” FROM PET DETECTIVE FILMS
TODD CHAVEZ - BOJACK HORSEMAN CHARACTER WHO IDENTIFIES AS ASEXUAL, OR AN “ACE”
AARON ELAM - PROFESSIONAL VIDEO GAME PLAYER WHO GOES BY “ACE”
RICHARD HESSE - CO-FOUNDER AND LONGTIME PRESIDENT OF ACE HARDWARE
IAN FRASER KILMISTER - ALSO KNOWN AS LEMMY, LEAD SINGER OF MOTÖRHEAD, NOTABLE FOR SONG “ACE OF SPADES”
TOM SEAVER - CONSUMMATE EXAMPLE OF AN ACE PITCHER FOR THE NEW YORK METS; PITCHED MORE “OPENING DAY” GAMES THAN ANY OTHER PLAYER
PHOENIX WRIGHT - MAIN CHARACTER FROM “ACE ATTORNEY” VIDEO GAMES
CHUCK YEAGER - ACE PILOT DURING WORLD WAR II (i.e., 5+ CONFIRMED PLANES DOWNED IN MID-AIR)
The first five questions alluded to playing cards, with Q2 through Q5 specifically making a straight except for the ace:
Q1: JOKER
Q2: Pioneer TEN
Q3: JACK Johnson
Q4: QUEEN Margaret of Anjou
Q5: “In the Hall of the Mountain KING”
The newsletter title (“Soft”) was meant to make you think of blackjack, since if you have an ace, you are said to have a soft hand (e.g., soft 17 vs. hard 17). Finally, this was the 52nd newsletter, and a deck of playing cards has 52 cards.
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released