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/g276bwD78AD7uieq6. 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) Each of the following people shares the same first name, which is WHAT? (a) the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway; (b) an actress who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film Goodfellas and four Emmys for the television show The Sopranos; and (c) Marty McFly’s mother in the Back to the Future films.
2) Nora Ephron wrote in her semi-autographical novel Heartburn that, in order to make the ideal version of WHAT eleven-letter word, one should “mix two tablespoons of Grey Poupon mustard with two tablespoons good redwine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add six tablespoons olive oil, until [it] is thick and creamy”?
3) WHAT city, served by Interstate 89 and by the Green Mountain Transit Authority, is the least populous of the fifty U.S. state capitals?
4) WHAT word, used as an adjective, is used to modify (a) “showers” in the title of a song by the band LMFAO; (b) “problems” in the title of a song by Taylor Swift; (c) “night” in the title of a song by Lady A, and (d) in the title of a 1996 song, a word meaning “a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness because of a catastrophic explosion”?
5) WHAT battle of the First World War, taking place over a few days in July 1918 (and in a sense a sequel to a battle fought in September 1914), is generally viewed as the last major German offensive on the Western Front? The battle led to significant German losses and the beginning of the “Hundred Days Offensive” of the Allies that ultimately ended the war.
6) WHAT characteristic is shared by each of these films, which characteristic is also this newsletter’s theme? Casablanca (1942), The 400 Blows (1959), Anastasia (1997), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Before Sunset (2004), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Taken (2008), Inception (2010).
Here are the answers from last time (with the modified instructions included for reference):
Six trivia prompts follow. If you want to join in, you can transmit data my way as to this circulation or turn in your opinions via this link. Similar to most trivia, solutions abound via Bing, so this quiz asks you for good sportsmanship (that is, do not look up solutions). That SIXTH prompt that follows is difficult to Bing; I track and account such in a following circulation. Truths and prompts go out on Mondays and Thursdays.
For a spoiler—the theme of this newsletter was that I didn’t use the letter “e” while writing it. The first evidence of this was that I completely rewrote this prelude where I give you instructions—this is why I say “prompts” and not “questions,” “Bing” and not “Google,” “truths/solutions” and not “answers,” and why this was a “trivia circulation” and not a “trivia newsletter.” If you clicked through to the Google Forms submission form, it similarly was rewritten to avoid the fifth letter of the alphabet.
1) Hold that ringing communication tool for a bit, lipogram aficionados! Music hath charms to calm a wild bosom and a charming thing is a joy always in WHAT gimmicky 1939 book? If you don’t know, try an Australian stand-up artist who is on a tour now that is known as Body of Work.
This describes the novel GADSBY by Ernest Vincent Wright. If you knew about Gadsby, you had a leg up here, since the gimmick in Gadsby is that it’s a 50,000+ story that does not use the letter “e.” I borrowed “Hold that ringing communication tool, lipogram aficionados” from a contemporary review of the novel, but that was another clue—why not just “hold the phone”? Within the novel, because the author can’t use idioms like “Music has charms to soothe a savage beast” or “a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” those phrases become the modified phrases I used in the question.
A lipogram, by the way, is a composition from which the writer systematically omits a certain letter or certain letters of the alphabet. (Think about what occurs during a liposuction, and the term lipogram will make more sense to you.) The Australian stand-up comedienne I referenced is Hannah Gadsby, notable for her Netflix show Nanette—but, well, when you can’t write the words comedienne, comedian, Netflix, streaming, or Nanette, we go with “stand-up artist.”
2) A family of Italian siblings, following an arthritis diagnosis, thought up in 1956 a J-300 pump for putting in a bathtub to assist with ministrations. WHAT word dubs both that family and that family’s most-known product?
This was the JACUZZI family. “Ministrations” are the provisions of assistance or care, which is not the best word here, but when you can’t use medical, medicine, treatment, care, therapy, remedy, or cure, that’s how we get “ministrations.” “Jacuzzi” is a registered trademark and is not quite, yet, a generic term.
3) WHAT’s both (i) a 2007 action/horror film that draws from a Hitchcock film about a back window, and (ii) a 2008 pop song by Rihanna?
These are both called DISTURBIA—the Hitchcock film in question is Rear Window, but, y’know, can’t say “rear.” Disturbia, the film, stars Shia LeBeouf and is the third-highest-grossing (domestic) film with a ONE-WORD title that LeBeouf has appeared in, behind Transformers and WHAT 2014 war film? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
4) Babbitt is a 1922 book by Arrowsmith’s and Dodsworth’s author. That book’s protagonist, in wording and in disposition, was an inspiration for WHAT alliterative titular protagonist of a 1937 book?
Babbitt is by Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book’s main character is George F. Babbitt, a typical middle-class man in the city of Zenith (meant to be a stand-in for any Midwestern medium-sized city) who gradually becomes discontent with his monotonous life. J.R.R. Tolkien borrowed the name “Babbitt” to write THE HOBBIT about Bilbo Baggins, himself a character most comfortable at home and uninterested in adventure.
5) It’s okay if you know nothing of a particular TV show that was airing from 2011 to 2019; fanatics of that show (and books) know that “R + L = J.” WHAT’S “J” stand for?
This is JON SNOW from Game of Thrones, since “R + L = J” was a longstanding fan theory about the identity of Jon’s parents in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels. “You know nothing” was meant to be a clue to point to the somewhat memetic phrase “You know nothing, Jon Snow” from the show.
6) An individual word in this circulation, supra #1 through #5, sticks out! Only this word has a particular quality. WHAT word is that?
As described above, the newsletter title (“Contriv’d”) and the questions were all written without using the letter “e.” Only one word in the newsletter sticks out and disobeys that rule, and that is “ALLITERATIVE,” our answer here.
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released
Fury. Constantine and Holes are the 4th and 5th films on this specific list (LeBeouf one-word films by domestic gross).