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 by using the button below. 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 generally 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) Nella Last, a volunteer for the Women's Voluntary Service and the British Red Cross during the Second World War, authored one of the longest examples of WHAT in the English language? The television film Housewife, 49 is based upon her writings, in which she expressed that she was riddled with worry that members of her family would be killed in the war.
2) A common but readily debunked explanation of WHAT nursery rhyme is that it was written during a bubonic-plague pandemic in the fourteenth century? According to this gaunt explanation, the first line of the rhyme describes a symptom of the plague, the second line describes a futile good-luck charm, the third line approximates the sneezing of an infected person, and the final line describes the people who have died from the plague.
3) In the last two seasons of the television show How I Met Your Mother, the character Robin Scherbatsky frets over WHAT family heirloom, passed down to her by her grandmother and which she intended to be her “something old” for her wedding? The object took a serpentine path throughout the show’s plot, as at varying times it was in Central Park, in a pencil box, in Germany, and in a river—finally it is given to Robin in the show’s penultimate episode.
4) Chris Chelios and Brian Rafalski, besides both playing at one time for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have their names engraved three times each on WHAT trophy, the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America?
5) In the ancient Greek play Medea by Euripides, Medea takes out her revenge on Jason’s bride-to-be, Glauce, by poisoning a set of golden robes and WHAT other object, in the hopes that Glauce will not be able to resist wearing them? (If you wisely pick a certain name for this item, regularly used in translations of Medea, its first syllable will be a clue for what happened to Glauce.)
6) This newsletter is missing TWO fictional characters needed to complete a full set. NAME either missing character.
Trivia Newsletter LXXXVIII Recap
1) In a phonetic sense, Madame Medusa, Baron Silas Greenback, Professor Norton Nimnul, Warren T. Rat, Tom, and Chef Jonah Robert Skinner might all be fans of WHAT Canadian electronic music producer and DJ who has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, including one for the song “Raise Your Weapon”?
This is DEADMAU5, pronounced “dead mouse”—each of the listed characters is the antagonist of a mouse in a work of fiction, so they might be folks who like dead mice and things that sound like them:
Madame Medusa is the antagonist in the 1977 film The Rescuers
Baron Silas Greenback is the antagonist of Danger Mouse, the protagonist of the British animated television series Danger Mouse
Professor Norton Nimnul is a recurring antagonist in the animated television show Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (the protagonists include the mice Monterey Jack and Gadget)
In the original distribution of this newsletter, I literally took an “L” by accidentally omitting the “L” from the end of Professor Norton Nimnul’s name. My apologies for the error.
Warren T. Rat is the antagonist of the 1986 film An American Tail
Tom is the cat from the media franchise Tom and Jerry
Chef Jonah Robert Skinner is the antagonist of the 2007 film Ratatouille
Yeah, yeah, that’s a rat and not a mouse, but we’re just going to assume Chef Skinner is an equal-opportunity hater here.
“Chef Jonah Robert Skinner” is a reference by Pixar to the scientist B.F. Skinner, most notable for his studies on behaviorism in psychology. Skinner created the “Skinner box” (or “operant conditioning container”) used to run experiments on animals such as rats and pigeons. For example, if the test subject hits the correct button while in the box, food pellets are automatically dropped into the box, and if it hits the wrong button, they automatically get electrocuted. As another example of a Skinner box, you might be a Chicago Bears fan who knows that this newsletter is going to go live about ten hours after your hated rival, the Green Bay Packers, defeats your team, and yet you still watched the Bears on the sad glowy rectangle that makes you feel the bad things.
2) Stanley Ipkiss, a down-on-his-luck bank employee, and Tina Carlyle, a glamorous jazz singer played by an actress making her film debut, are two of the main characters of WHAT 1994 film? The film featured an appearance by the neo-swing band Royal Crown Revue and was credited by The Washington Post as providing “neo-swing’s first mainstream break.”
These are the main characters of THE MASK. The Mask might be most famous for Jim Carrey being green and doing silly things, but it also apparently provided neo-swing with its first mainstream break.
The antagonist in The Mask is a mafioso named Dorian Tyrell, which is a name that may as well have been made in a laboratory that creates trivia tie-in names (“What is the last name of the antagonist of The Mask? Game of Thrones fans might know that he is ‘growing strong’ when he wears the eponymous mask, and Blade Runner fans know his mask-aided persona can be replicated.”). Tyrell is played by the character actor Peter Greene. Greene generally tends to play anonymous detectives or characters with names like “Boyfriend,” “Admissions Counselor,” and “Mercenary #1.” One of Greene’s most notable roles, however, was in another 1994 film--it hit #1 in the domestic box office just a few months after The Mask did. NAME that film. The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
3) The musical Love Never Dies, set in 1907, begins with the soprano Christine Daaé and her husband Raoul arriving in Manhattan so that Christine can make her American singing debut. First publicly performed in 2010 and with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Love Never Dies is the sequel to WHAT 1986 musical?
This is THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
One of the perks of writing (and hopefully of reading) a trivia newsletter is that it helps you see your own trivia blind spots. For an example of a blind spot: Until I was about 24 years old, I believed that the term “hors d'oeuvres,” which generally refers to appetizers, exclusively referred to deviled eggs and to no other foods. So, if someone asked me what I thought of the hors d'oeuvres, I would have said that I didn’t like them (as I am no fan of deviled eggs). It made a lot of sense to me—”ouevre” seemed a lot like a word that would mean “egg” (you know, like ovary, or omelet), and certainly if someone offers you hors d'oeuvres, there’s a high chance that deviled eggs are on the scene.
The highest and best value of trivia to me (besides “it’s fun” or “it sometimes is a good way to bond with people”) is the constant realization that I am very wrong, a lot of the time. To quote the recent winner of the LearnedLeague Championship:
I keep doing this not just to show what I know, but also to learn from what I *don't* know. Quizzing exposes me to new ideas and new voices. Quizzing reminds me that there's *a lot* that I don't know. It reminds me that, quite often, I'm demonstrably wrong. And if I'm often wrong about "trivia," then maybe I'm also wrong about the more important things in life.
So I wrote this question about five days ago, and if you would have asked me six days ago “In what year do you think The Phantom of the Opera was first publicly performed?”, I would have thought about it for a little bit and I would have said something like “Well, I think it takes place in 1880 or so,”2 and then I would have kept going and said “It's obviously a very influential and seminal musical, and I know it's all over these lists of 'longest-running musicals.' I bet it's been around forever. I don't really know who wrote it, but I'm just going to guess 1925."
As you’ve already seen, that would have been wrong by 61 years.3 And if I'm completely wrong about The Phantom of the Opera and the era in which it was created—maybe the most popular musical of all time, constantly referenced in trivia—what else am I wrong about?
The Phantom of the Opera is by far the longest-running Broadway show ever, with more than 13,000 performances—it’s been running there continuously since 1988, and it took the “longest-running” title from Cats (which ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000).
The longest-running off-Broadway musical ever (and, in fact, the longest running uninterrupted show of any kind in the US) is The Fantasticks, which ran continuously from 1960 to 2002 at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York’s Greenwich Village. Jerry Orbach—yes, that Jerry Orbach who played Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order for over a decade—got his first major role of his career in The Fantasticks in 1960. Orbach is also the voice of Lumière the candelabra in The Beauty and the Beast (1991), another thing I did not know until I wrote this.
[A quick update before publication: I wrote most of the above last Thursday. Last Friday, it was announced that Phantom’s Broadway run will end on February 18, 2023, which will end the streak referenced above. Apparently, now that The Phantom of the Opera has been referenced in Trivia Factorial, the show has accomplished its mission and there’s no more story to tell.]
4) The following is a passage (from which two words have been omitted) from WHAT short story, first published in 1842?
With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “[BLANK].”
This is the Edgar Allen Poe story “The Masque of the Red Death.” The story details a prince’s efforts to wait out a deadly plague by walling up his abbey and holding luxurious parties with his nobles.
Once you start looking for references to this story, they are everywhere. For example, going back to The Phantom of the Opera, the character Erik shows up to a masquerade dressed as the Red Death. Another example—The Shining (the novel) contains the line “and the red death held sway over all,” which is straight from Poe. Yet another: The Bonfire of the Vanities explicitly references the story. Yet another: There’s a shoutout to the story in the video game Crusader Kings II when you attempt to seclude your court from the Black Death:
There’s even a Tumblr post where someone compares the quality of various Red Death costumes.
5) NAME the clinical psychologist, the first female president of the American Psychosomatic Society, famous for her expert-witness testimony regarding brainwashing, including with respect to high-profile cases such as the People’s Temple, Jonestown, the Patricia Hearst bank robbery trial, and the Branch Davidian and Heaven’s Gate cults. She regularly traveled under an assumed name due to the many death threats she received for her work.
This is MARGARET SINGER. The Scientologists really, really did not like her (we’re not going to link to them, but you can look it up if you want):
The mantra of the anti-religious movement of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s revolved around the now-debunked theory of “cultic coercive persuasion” devised by psychologist Margaret Singer and sociologist Richard Ofshe. The theory, used to justify the practice of violent deprogramming of members of new religions, flew in the face of one of the most fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment and international human rights law—freedom to exercise the religion of one’s choice.
Repeated over and over by anti-religious groups of that era and their media spokespersons, Singer’s fallacious theories persisted until challenged and then exposed as unscientific bunkum by real experts, including religious leaders, scholars and Singer’s own peers.
The Lancet, a medical journal, had a nice obituary for Singer when she passed away in 2003:
Still, Singer was soon sought after by prosecutors and others for her expertise. She interviewed Charles Manson and countless members of other groups. In the 1990s, she turned her attention to con artists, especially those who prey on the elderly. “The common theme is how people go about influencing each other with words through social and psychological manipulations”, she said in a 1996 interview. “I am a specialist in brainwashing and thought reform. I am especially interested in elder abuse because I will be 75 pretty soon. I am a good example of a tough old bird who wants to help the other old birds see to it their roofs and swings and cages don’t get stolen.”
…
Singer was a feisty and savvy antagonist to those who hoped to intimidate her. She told The San Francisco Chronicle in a 2002 profile that after a “cult thug” paid her visits at 2 am for a week, she leaned out her window and yelled, “I’ve got a 12-gauge shotgun up here with a spray pattern that’ll put a 3-foot hole in you, sonny, and you’d better get off my porch or you’ll be sorry! And tell your handlers not to send you back!” She was 80 years old. Singer was more subtle with her professional critics, some of whom questioned the term brainwashing and Singer’s lumping together of the Scientologists with cults.
Finally, on the occasion of what would have been Singer’s 100th birthday last year, her son wrote a touching LinkedIn post about her (and if you click through, you’ll see references to Rick and Morty and South Park). In that post, he shared a foreword he wrote in a book about his mother:
It's a delight to write about Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer. First of all, she was my mom. So, it's an easy task to conjure up all the wonderful characteristics that made her special to me personally. Equally important, my mom played a leading role in helping to define personal and psychological freedom during a period in world history where one of the greatest threats to civilization and freedom is the manipulation of our beliefs and lives by individuals, cults or other politically motivated groups with a hidden agenda.
…
My mother's greatest admonition to her family–and to her friends and clients–was always this: don't be afraid to walk away from anything that doesn't seem right. She always noted how cults and groups played on the systematic manipulation of social norms. If anything, being the person that she was, she personally wouldn't walk away from things that didn't seem right–she challenged them upfront and in their face. One of things that I value most of all in recalling my mother, and her work, is that she was the first person to challenge and ask questions of anyone and any group in any setting. She feared nothing.
6) WHAT distinction, closely related to this newsletter’s theme, is shared by each of the following persons (and, as of today, no others)? Wayne Brady, Kandi Burress, Nick Lachey, Jewel, LeAnn Rimes, T-Pain, Teyana Taylor.
Each of these people has WON A SEASON OF THE TELEVISION SHOW THE MASKED SINGER. That’s the show where celebrities dress in goofy animal costumes and sing, and over the course of a season contestants are eliminated and identified, until one contestant remains.
This newsletter tried repeatedly to point you to masks in a musical context:
Question #1: Deadmau5 is a musician who wears a distinctive mouse mask
Question #2: The question referenced music twice (Cameron Diaz’s character is a jazz singer, and the Royal Crown Revue appearance), and the answer was The Mask
Question #3: We discussed Christine’s singing career, and the “phantom” from Phantom wears a distinctive mask
Question #4: We mentioned in the quote musicians at the parties, and the answer included the word “masque”
Question #5: The answer was “Singer,” and the question described how she needed to give a fake name, or “mask” herself
Newsletter Title: “Ken Shamed Tigers” is a reference to Ken Jeong, who is a judge on the show, giving a hard time to contestants (who are occasionally dressed as tigers). It’s also an anagram for “The Masked Singer.”
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
PULP FICTION. Greene plays Zed, the sadistic security guard who is the accomplice of the pawnshop owner. Bruce Willis’s character rescues Ving Rhames’s character from the security guard and pawnshop owner in a memorable scene.
This would have been mostly correct—the bulk of the action of The Phantom of the Opera takes place in 1881. Of course, I am writing a recap guessing at my state of mind about a question I now have the benefit of knowing the answer to, so it’s very easy to sound almost-correct.
The Phantom of the Opera is based on a novel by Gaston Leroux, released in volume form in 1910, but my wrong “1930” guess was not based on knowing that fact.