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/NCTGuhDZeg6zyFTm8. 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) NAME the screenwriter and author who in the late 1990s and early 2000s was a fixture on the cable network E!, at times hosting six hours of programming daily; in addition, she wrote the screenplay to the 2017 film Logan Lucky, which was directed by her husband. Her last name comes from her first marriage, during which she was the daughter-in-law of a seven-time Primetime Emmy Award winner.
2) The “Costume Institute Benefit” is a formal name for an event more commonly known as WHAT, last held on May 2, 2022?
3) NAME the noun described by each of the following: (i) an event in the life of Paul the Apostle commonly depicted in baroque art and also known as the Damascus Christophany; (ii) generally, what NFL teams attempt to do immediately after scoring a touchdown; and (iii) in law, an intentional civil offense defined by one court as “any act of dominion wrongfully exerted over another’s personal property.”
4) A 34-year-old singer/songwriter, who is one of the most acclaimed artists in contemporary music and who is known for the albums Channel Orange and Blonde, shares the last name of his stage name with that of a 29-year-old Venezuelan singer/songwriter best known for his 2016 song “Me Rehúso” (later released in English as “Baby I Won’t.”) WHAT is that shared last name?
5) The opening ceremonies for the Summer Olympics that were most recently held in China took place on WHAT specific date (MM/DD/YY), which should come as no surprise due to a certain number being viewed as particularly lucky in Chinese culture (and other cultures)?
6) WHAT distinction is shared by the following live-action films, and by no other live-action films? Gravity (2013); The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003); The Dark Knight Rises (2012); Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009); What Women Want (2000); Jumanji: The Next Level (2019); Battleship (2012); Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (2011).
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As part of writing this newsletter, I’ve gotten a kick out of checking out other newsletters to see what folks on Substack are up to. One that I unironically subscribe to is The Sample, a free newsletter that lets you sample other newsletters by forwarding you a different newsletter each day based on your interests. For example, earlier this week I was introduced to a newsletter that sends you two hours of work-appropriate music every weekday, which I thought was fun.
In the interest of full disclosure: each person who subscribes to The Sample via the above button will cause The Sample to forward this newsletter, Trivia!, to one hundred people, so subscribing is also a way to support my efforts.
Here are the answers from last time:
1) The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, honoring Colonel Shaw and his 54th Regiment, together with the Oneida Football Club Monument, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, and entrances to the Boylston and Park Street subway stations, are all located in or a near a certain public park in WHAT U.S. city?
These are all in Boston Common in BOSTON; the park is generally credited with being the oldest city park in the United States. The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was the second African-American regiment organized in the North during the U.S. Civil War, and was featured in the film Glory; the first was the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment.
2) FILL in the blanks below with the four-word phrase twice spoken by Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, nearly sixty-eight years ago:
Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild ... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you've done enough. Have you [BLANK], sir? At long last, have you left [BLANK]?
The repeated phrase is “NO SENSE OF DECENCY,” generally seen as a turning point during the investigation for communist activity conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. In addition to his lengthy legal career and contribution to American history, Welch was nominated for both a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer for playing the judge in the legendary trial film Anatomy of a Murder, starring Jimmy Stewart.
3) The number 66 can be expressed as the sum of three positive square integers in three different ways (so, 1^2 + 1^2 + 8^2 equals 66, and so do 1^2 + 4^2 + 7^2 and 4^2 + 5^2 +5^2). 66 is not the smallest positive integer with this property; WHAT number is? The same number is also the following: (a) the primary jersey number worn by Tedy Bruschi, Aroldis Chapman, Zach Thomas, and Brian Urlacher, and (b) the number of countries in Africa, based upon membership in the United Nations.
The number is 54 (1^2 + 2^2 + 7^2, or 2^2 + 5^2 + 5^2, or 3^2 + 3^2 + 6^2). 81, 86, 89, and 99 are the next such numbers. As for the last part above, the United Nations qualifier excludes bodies such as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, also known as Western Sahara, that claims land that much of the international community recognizes as a portion of Morocco (although 39 UN nations recognize SADR).
SADR is one of two African states where Spanish is widely spoken; WHAT is the other? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
4) NAME the 1998 film starring Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell, and Mike Myers that focuses on a legendary disco club in New York City. The film was widely panned at release, but the director’s cut of the film, restoring the film as originally intended without executive meddling, was shown at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival in 2015 and was called by Vulture “a kind of cult status as a lost classic of gay cinema.”
The film is 54, named after Studio 54, the disco club. Ryan Christopher, the director, said of the director’s cut that “I still can’t believe it. Usually director’s cuts come from Orson Welles or famous movies like Blade Runner. That this happened is kind of amazing.”
5) “Easy Listening,” “Middle-Road Singles,” and “Pop-Standard Singles” are previous names for a category used by Billboard to track WHAT two-word broad genre of music since 1961? Elton John, Neil Diamond, and Barbra Streisand have been standard-bearers of the genre, though the song to spend the most consecutive weeks at #1 in the Billboard category is “Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 (feat. Cardi B).
That Billboard category is now known as ADULT CONTEMPORARY, our answer here. It might be easier to categorize what adult contemporary music is not than what it is.
6) WHAT distinction is shared by each of the following individuals? Christie Brinkley, Jackie Chan, Hugo Chávez, Carly Fiorina, Matt Groening, Amy Heckerling, Sid Meier, Angela Merkel, Catherine O’Hara, Walter Payton, Condoleezza Rice, Jerry Seinfeld, Al Sharpton, John Travolta, Oprah Winfrey.
Each of these folks was born in the year 1954. This one was designed to get you to wonder what these seemingly disparate people would have in common, and hopefully realize that they are very nearly the same age (but that it would be improbable for them to be 54 years old and that “54” had to refer to something else).
Question #1: reference to “54”
Question #2: reference to event occurring in 1954—designed to orient you to things that are just about 68 years old
Question #3: the answer is 54
Question #4: same (hey, that “54” might be important)
Question #5: each of these folks are, or would have been, literally adult contemporaries
Newsletter Title: “Peerage” is a word made up of “peer age”—these are all peers who are very roughly the same age
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released
The other Spanish-speaking nation in Africa is Equatorial Guinea, as it was formerly colonized by Spain.