Below are six eleven 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 ELEVENTH question of this 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.
1a) NAME the fictional character whose name fills in each of the blanks in the following incomplete list: Truck, [BLANK], Schrute, [BLANK], Miner, [BLANK], [BLANK]/Halpert, [BLANK], Vickers.
1b) WHAT fictional character is the UK equivalent of the answer to Question 1a?
2a) Madeleine L'Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time, gave a speech in 1983 at the Library of Congress arguing that children’s literature ought to engage with difficult questions in order to challenge readers. That speech is sometimes called “Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?”, as L’Engle repeatedly quotes WHAT T.S. Eliot poem, published in 1915?
2b) In the poem that is the answer to Question 2a, the following lines appear: “Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter / I am no prophet — and here's no great matter[.]” These lines refer to a story in the New Testament of the Bible about the beheading of WHOM?
3a) NAME the pope of the Catholic Church known as the “Warrior Pope” who repeatedly personally led soldiers into battle. He ratified the Treaty of Tordesillas between Portugal and Spain, formed an anti-Venetian military alliance known as the League of Cambrai, and took his papal name not in honor of a prior fourth-century pope but in honor of a historic general and leader.
3b) WHAT word, most notably used in a different context, generally means anything that relates to one of five specific popes (and not one more than that), but particularly an uncle of the pope described in Question 3a?
4a) Perhaps counterintuitively, WHAT 1990 film was until the release of The Blair Witch Project in 1999 the highest-grossing independent film of all time (worldwide, not adjusted for inflation)? Two direct sequels were released in 1991 and 1993. A reboot of the franchise, and that reboot’s sequel, were released in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
4b) In the same week that the 1990 film referenced in Question 4a was released, WHAT musical artist released what would become the year’s best-selling single? The song’s title, as a noun, means “the prevailing fashion or style at a particular time.”
5a) NAME the American author born in 1903 notable for his biographical novels about famous persons, such as Lust for Life (Vincent van Gogh), Immortal Life (Jessie Benton Frémont), The President's Lady (Rachel Donelson Jackson), and another book adapted into a 1965 film of the same name directed by Carol Reed.
5b) If you take an anagram of the first name of the answer to Question 5a, and keep his last name the same, you now have a new phrase: That phrase loosely describes marble and grief-stricken depictions of, in a sense, the answer to Question 4b. WHAT five-letter word is more commonly used in art to describe such depictions?
6) WHO is the theme of this newsletter?
Trivia Newsletter LXXXV Recap
1) Boston and Worcester are the two most-populous cities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; in fact, they are also the two most populous cities in the entirety of the six states that comprise New England. WHAT city, about 56 miles from Boston on Interstate 95, is the third-most-populous city in New England? The city’s name is also found in the text of the Declaration of Independence.
This city is PROVIDENCE, the capital of Rhode Island. The last line of the Declaration of Independence (before the signatures) is the following: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Rocco Francis Marchegiano is better known as Rocky Marciano—he’s one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. The fact that usually comes up about him for trivia is that he finished his professional career undefeated, with a record of 49-0. His pro career lasted from 1947 to 1955; in 1969, he tragically died in a plane crash.
28 of Marciano’s 49 professional fights took place at the Rhode Island Auditorium in Providence. Back when Marciano was still fighting under the name “Rocco Marchegiano,” the announcer at the Auditorium wasn’t able to pronounce the name. Marciano’s manager suggested that he go by “Rocky Mack” to fix that problem and make Marciano more marketable, but Marciano wanted something that sounded more Italian, and so they went with “Rocky Marciano.”
2) Below is an image from a fixed camera located on a particular street in London. The camera, which streams a live feed to viewers on a 24/7 basis, is stationed at WHAT recording studio, which shares its name with that particular street?
This camera is at ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, and the depicted street is Abbey Road, most famous for its association with the album Abbey Road by The Beatles. The cover of that album features the band’s members walking in the same location:
Why you would want access to a 24/7 stream of the intersection is beyond me, but here you go: https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam=abbeyroad_uk
3) William Still, a Philadelphia businessman and abolitionist, wrote in 1872 what is believed to be the most complete firsthand written account of the activities of WHAT clandestine network, for which Still helped route as a “conductor”?
The answer here is the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. I didn’t slip it into the question, but Still is sometimes called “The Father of the Underground Railroad.”
The written account in the question is called The Underground Railroad Records; the work chronicles the stories of over six hundred people who escaped to freedom via the Underground Railroad. It’s freely available online in a variety of formats: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15263
Quoting that work’s preface:
Frederick Douglass, Henry Bibb, Wm. Wells Brown, Rev. J.W. Logan, and others, gave unmistakable evidence that the race had no more eloquent advocates than its own self-emancipated champions.
Every step they took to rid themselves of their fetters, or to gain education, or in pleading the cause of their fellow-bondmen in the lecture-room, or with their pens, met with applause on every hand, and the very argument needed was thus furnished in large measure. In those dark days previous to emancipation, such testimony was indispensable.
The free colored men are as imperatively required now to furnish the same manly testimony in support of the ability of the race to surmount the remaining obstacles growing out of oppression, ignorance, and poverty.
In the political struggles, the hopes of the race have been sadly disappointed. From this direction no great advantage is likely to arise very soon.
Only as desert can be proved by the acquisition of knowledge and the exhibition of high moral character, in examples of economy and a disposition to encourage industrial enterprises, conducted by men of their own ranks, will it be possible to make political progress in the face of the present public sentiment.
Here, therefore, in my judgment is the best possible reason for vigorously pushing the circulation of this humble volume—that it may testify for thousands and tens of thousands, as no other work can do.
4) NAME the rapper, born in 1999, whose trailblazing first hit song holds the record for the most consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Before he reached fame, he ran several Nicki Minaj fan accounts on Twitter, including one with the handle “@NasMaraj”.
This is LIL NAS X, whose given name is Montero Lamar Hill. The song in question is “Old Town Road.”
Lil Nas X’s first tour began two days ago in Detroit; it’s called the “Long Live Montero Tour,” and it runs through mid-November, with stops throughout the United States and Europe. Montero, besides being Lil Nas X’s given name, is the name of Lil Nas X’s debut studio album, and “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” is the first track on that album (and Lil Nas X’s second song to hit #1 on the Hot 100, after “Old Town Road.” The music video to the song, which shows the singer sliding down a pole to hell and giving the devil a lap dance, led to controversy; as one of many examples, Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, tweeted in response to some of the (satanically themed) merchandise related to the song the following:
Our kids are being told that this kind of product is, not only okay, it's "exclusive." But do you know what's more exclusive? Their God-given eternal soul.
“Old Town Road” heavily samples the song “34 Ghosts IV” by Nine Inch Nails; as a result, the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails received a songwriting credit for “Old Town Road.” WHAT’S his name? He’s won an Oscar for Best Original Score (The Social Network) and a Golden Globe for Best Original Score (Soul). The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
5) Hey, is there any way you can help me out with this weird bullet-list thing? I think the blank is AN AMERICAN NOVELIST AND POET born in 1922:
Old Bull Lee → William S. Burroughs
Carlo Marx → Allen Ginsberg
Dean Moriarty → Neal Cassady
Sal Paradise → [BLANK]
Sal Paradise is the narrator of On the Road, and he represents the work’s author, JACK KEROUAC. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Cassady were some of the key figures in the Beat Generation, the literary movement, and On the Road is one of its seminal works. The listed equivalent names are the character stand-ins for those writers in On the Road.
In the Netflix show BoJack Horseman, BoJack’s father is established to be a fan of the Beat Generation. One of the show’s recurring bits is that, because many of the characters are anthropomorphized animals, many parts of the in-show universe are renamed after animals. A high-school yearbook shows a “class clownfish,” or Beyoncé’s husband is shown to be a zebra named Jay-Zebra, as two of a whole lot of examples. In a flashback, when BoJack’s father meets his mother, he describes how he wants to go to California:
“What’s in California?”
“Ginsberg, Cassady, Squirrelinghetti. [Pause.] This is where you ask me if those are towns, and then I smirk at you.”
“I’m familiar with the Beats, thank you. I like Ginsberg all right, but if you ask me, that Squirrelinghetti is nuts.”
“Squirrelinghetti,” besides setting up the “nuts” pun, is a riff on Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet who is also considered part of the Beat Generation—but don’t tell him that, as he says “I keep telling people I wasn’t a member of the original Beat Generation. I was sort of the guy tending the store.” Ferlinghetti might be most famous for being arrested (and later acquitted) for publishing Allen Ginsburg’s poem “Howl” due to the poem’s allegedly obscene content. Ferlinghetti passed away just last year, a few weeks short of his 102nd birthday.
6) WHAT specific distinction, also this newsletter’s theme, is shared by each of the following people (and many others) and the paths they took? Bill Bradley, Bill Clinton, Ronan Farrow, James Fulbright, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Edwin Hubble, Kris Kristofferson, Rachel Maddow, Pardis Sabeti, Malcolm Turnbull, Robert Penn Warren, Heather Wilson, Naomi Wolf.
Each of these persons received a RHODES SCHOLARSHIP, the prestigious postgraduate award.
Each of our questions pointed to “Rhodes” in some fashion and contained a synonym of “road”:
Question #1: Providence is RHODE Island’s capital, and we purposefully referenced Interstate 95
Question #2: The question prompted Abbey ROAD, and explicitly said “street”
Question #3: The question prompted Underground RailROAD, and we mentioned “route”
Question #4: Lil Nas X is most notable for “Old Town ROAD,” and we spotted you “trailblazing”
Question #5: The question is about On the ROAD, and we mentioned “way”
Question #6: We added the word “paths”
Newsletter Title: “The New Colossi” borrowed a reference to the Emma Lazarus poem “The New Colossus.” besides referring to the successes that Rhodes Scholars tend to have later in life, we were trying to link you to the Colossus of RHODES, one of what are generally considered the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
An aside: The Rhodes Scholarship was set up by Cecil Rhodes. You know how Rhodesia used to be the name, or part of the name, of multiple African countries, including Zambia and Zimbabwe? “Rhodesia” comes from the same Rhodes, as Rhodes was a British imperialist throughout the late nineteenth century. Rhodes also bungled the Second Boer War into existence and, almost unbelievably (in terms of one guy’s ability to contribute to not-good things), founded De Beers, the diamond firm. Unsurprisingly, many have called for the Rhodes Scholarship to be renamed.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
TRENT REZNOR. I’d be remiss not mentioning Atticus Ross, a musician and producer whom Reznor regularly works with; Ross also has a credit for “Old Town Road” and also won the Grammy and Golden Globe mentioned above.