Remember Trivia Newsletter XXXII, which was modeled off of the word game Wordle? Remember when we did the same thing in Trivia Newsletter LXIV? Well, now we’re on Trivia Newsletter XCVI, and every XXXII newsletters, we do Wordle.
(If you don’t know what Wordle is, this link and the rules found there may help you: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html.)
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) In 1906, an businessman influential in Chicago passed away due to pneumonia contracted while playing golf with Robert Todd Lincoln, the eldest son of Abraham Lincoln. 106 years later, entirely coincidentally, an acclaimed actress with the same last name as that businessman played Robert Todd Lincoln’s mother in the film Lincoln and was nominated for an Oscar. WHAT is the shared last name of the businessman and actress?
2) The Curse of Capistrano, a 1919 novel by Johnston McCulley set in the early 19th century in what is today California, is the first work to feature WHAT fictional character, who has since appeared in dozens of films?
3) WHAT infectious disease, which can be vaccinated against by a common vaccine that also protects against measles and rubella, is typically characterized by pain and swelling of the salivary glands?
4) The headline of a 2019 Vanity Fair retrospective on the television show The Sopranos referred to the offing of the character Adriana as the WHAT that changed everything? This answer, an informal word used to certain killings (whether or not the victims were moles), repeatedly appears in reviews and recaps of the show.
5) What is the SECOND WORD of the two-word term, stamped on likely thousands of American whiskeys, that has no precise legal meaning but practically refers to whiskey that is neither vatted or single-barrel? For example, the brands Four Roses, Elijah Craig, 1792, and Evan Williams all offer varieties of whiskey labeled with this term.
6) Oh no! I forgot to write Question #6 again! Can you just come up with a noun—maybe a big one?—that completes this weird chart below?
[Do not assume the chart necessarily represents optimal guesses, but do assume that all answers are valid Wordle submissions.]
Trivia Newsletter XCV Recap
1) NAME the activist most famous for suing Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in an employment-discrimination lawsuit that was decided by the Supreme Court in 2007. There’s something else: Two years later, Congress passed a “fair pay act” named after her that strengthened the remedies available to victims of pay discrimination.
This activist is LILLY LEDBETTER. Lilly Ledbetter is a household name—but I didn’t say that, President Biden did.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is often noted as the first bill that Barack Obama signed into law. October 14th (hey, that’s tomorrow) is Lilly Ledbetter Day in Illinois, according to a proclamation passed by the state’s then-governor in 2010. However, in Phoenix, Arizona, Lilly Ledbetter Day is April 14, following that city’s own movement to pass equal-wage laws throughout the 2010s. I suppose you should just celebrate it whenever the spirit moves you.
2) NAME the actor who spoke as Sergeant First Class William James in a film that won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2010; he has also appeared in multiple films in the Avengers film franchise and the Mission: Impossible film franchise.
This is JEREMY RENNER. The film we alluded to was The Hurt Locker—confusingly, the film was released in 2008 at a film festival, but didn’t see commercial release until 2009, so we strayed away from its year of release in the question.
In 2017, Jeremy Renner released a mobile app called “Jeremy Renner Official” (iOS). I defer completely to this excellent article from The Ringer to describe the app:
Actor, musician, and app developer Jeremy Renner — the thinking woman’s Gerard Butler, the unthinking woman’s Daniel Craig — released an app Wednesday. It’s not clear who asked for this, or if there’s even a market for a mobile app devoted to the seventh-most-famous person in the Avengers movies, but let’s not get bogged down by silly questions like that. The app is called “Jeremy Renner,” just like him, and he describes it as “the main place I interact with my fans and share a deep look into my life.”
…
Beyond being a delivery system for a clip of Jeremy Renner singing a cover of the Animals’ “The House of the Rising Sun” — which plays when you launch the app — this thing is not functional. It’s basically useless unless you agree to pay for its many in-app upgrades. There’s a newsfeed where Jeremy Renner posts short, vague updates about his life, but many of the updates are locked, and the only thing you can do in response to the posts is post a comment yourself, which requires logging in through Facebook. You can amass stars through participating in this feed: The more stars you have, the higher up you move on the “fanboard,” which is a ledger of the people in this world who love Jeremy Renner the most. While new users automatically get 100 stars, getting a large influx after that requires making in-app purchases.
For Jeremy Renner superfans, there’s an option to “be a standout Jeremy Renner superfan,” which costs $2.99 a month. I signed up to be one such superfan, which allowed me to unlock several things that had been previously unavailable when I was a non-standout Jeremy Renner superfan. Like a video of Jeremy Renner sitting in a garden in a baseball cap, just bragging about how many fans he has. “There’s no way I could possibly get back to all the people on social media,” he says in the video. All right. Then he encourages fans to leave a comment about why they’re the best fan and promises to have lunch with the best commenter.
…
The main takeaway from all of this? Jeremy Renner’s Jeremy Renner app is the Jeremy Renner of apps.
3) In the music video for WHAT song by John Mayer, Australian model Gemma Ward appears alone in an otherwise empty room, despite the song having a plural title?
This song is “DAUGHTERS.” It’s a bad song. It fundamentally doesn’t work, and the more you learn about it, the more it doesn’t work—it’s patronizing, it’s gender essentialist, it’s self-important, and it’s just kind of boring. Just look at the lyrics:
So fathers be good to your daughters,
Daughters will love1 like you do,
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters tooBoys, you can break
You'll find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong and boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without warmth from a woman's good, good heart...On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the guide and the weight of her world
Let’s quote Mayer on what the song’s about:
I loved a girl a lot, but she couldn’t trust men. And if you trace it back, it was the first man in her life she couldn’t trust. I know this song sounds like I’m just sitting around the house, spitballing, thinking of really lofty things to think about, but it really is the result of tracing it backwards to find out how I could possibly love this person. And the answer is: you can’t. Because someone else didn’t before you.
Remember—this song won the Grammy for Best Song of the Year in 2005. This isn’t us picking on some single no one’s heard of; this is, according to the Recording Academy, the very best song that we made in that 366-day period. That’s right, there was even an extra day to make a better song than “Daughters” because it was a leap year! And yet.
Let’s end on someone who isn’t Mayer. You know that 2008 horror movie The Strangers, the scary home-invasion film where Liv Tyler and the guy from Felicity get attacked by three masked strangers for no reason? Gemma Ward, the model from our question, played one of the strangers from The Strangers. I’m just going to take the word of this blog that posts about Vogue magazine covers, but Ward has apparently been featured on a high number of covers of Vogue.
4) Elmer Berger (who was the first to patent it in the United States), Ray Harroun (who used it as part of winning the first Indianapolis 500), and Dorothy Levitt (who recommended its use in her book The Woman and the Car) all saw things clearer thanks to their roles in inventing and popularizing WHAT early twentieth-century innovation?
This is the REARVIEW MIRROR.
The Woman and the Car was first published in 1909 and can be read in its entirety right here. It’s a brisk read and is alarmingly charming—or perhaps I am just easily charmed. Here’s the part about the mirror, with the next few lines for fun:
The mirror should be fairly large to be really useful, and it is better to have one with a handle to it. Just before starting take the glass out of the little drawer and put it into the little flap pocket of the car. You will find it useful to have it handy—not for strictly personal use, but to occasionally hold up to see what is behind you. Sometimes you will wonder if you heard a car behind you—and while the necessity or inclination to look round is rare, you can, with the mirror, see in a flash what is in the rear without losing your forward way, and without releasing your right-hand grip of the steering-wheel.
If you are going to drive alone in the highways and byways it might be advisable to carry a small revolver. I have an automatic “Colt,” and find it very easy to handle as there is practically no recoil—a great consideration to a woman. While I have never had occasion to use it on the road (though, I may add, I practise continually at a range to keep my eye and hand “in”) it is nevertheless a comfort to know that should the occasion arise I have the means of defending myself.
If you are driving alone a dog is great company. The majority of dogs like motors and soon get into the habit of curling up on the seat by your side, under your coat.
Levitt, the first British woman racing driver, is believed to have held the world’s first water speed record and was at one time the women’s world land speed record holder. Called the “Fastest Girl on Earth” and the “Champion Lady Motorist of the World,” she taught Queen Alexandra (the wife of Edward VII) and the princesses how to drive. This image below (of her) was, according to her book, her favorite photograph:
5) Have I got a little story for you: Mel Gibson was the first person to win it, Paul Rudd is the most recent person to win it, and John F. Kennedy Jr. and David Beckham are the only non-entertainers to win it. WHAT is it?
This is the “SEXIEST MAN ALIVE” award, by People (the magazine).
Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Idris Elba, and Paul Rudd are all folks with four-letter last names who have won the award, but WHO is the only person who has won the award with a three-letter last name? The person in question was born in 1972 and won the award in 2004. The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.2
6) NAME a band that could fill in the blank below in this list of artists, delineated with respect to a certain distinction; one potential answer is also this newsletter’s theme. Each subset of bands below is non-exhaustive, and the list could continue with more bullet points and other artists.
The Beatles; the Bee Gees
Joan Baez; Boyz II Men; The Calling; Danzig; Electric Light Orchestra; Led Zeppelin; Queen
Chicago; Judy Collins; Danzig; Falco; The Jackson 5; Led Zeppelin
Beyoncé; Black Sabbath; Danzig; Foreigner; Godsmack; Led Zeppelin
Joan Baez; Chicago; Judy Collins; Lenny Kravitz; Live; The Steve Miller Band
Chicago; Ice-T; We the Kings
Chicago; David Guetta; Bob Seger
Chicago; Incubus
Jason Aldean; Blink-182; Chicago
Chicago; Jason Moran; [BLANK]
This is a list of artists who released albums that are named after numbers—each bullet point is for each number (so, The Beatles have a compilation album named 1 and the Bee Gees have an album named One). We also allowed album names that were the name of the band with a number; so, for example, Chicago named most of their albums things like Chicago V and Chicago VI, which is why they’re all over this list.
Under the parameters we set, any band or artist with an album called 10, Ten, X, or the such would have been acceptable, but the most famous such album by far is the debut album by the band PEARL JAM, and that’s what this newsletter was nudging you towards. Each of the first five questions alluded to a Pearl Jam song:
Question #1: Lilly Ledbetter referring to “YELLOW LEDBETTER” (“There’s something else” referring to the lyric “I see / I don't know, there's something else”)
Question #2: Jeremy Renner referring to “JEREMY” (“Name the actor who spoke as Private First Class” obliquely referring to “Jeremy spoke in class today”)3
Question #3: “Daughters” referring to “DAUGHTER” (“alone in an otherwise empty room” referring to “Alone, listless / Breakfast table in an otherwise empty room”)
Question #4: “Rearview mirror” referring to “REARVIEWMIRROR” (“saw things clearer” referring to “Saw things, saw things / Saw things, saw things clearer, clearer / Once you were in my rear-view mirror”)
Question #5: “Sexiest Man Alive” referring to “ALIVE” (“Have I got a little story for you” referring to the opening line of the song, “‘Son,’ she said, ‘have I got a little story for you’”)
Newsletter Title: “Rhymes of the Ancient Mariners Fans” referring to Pearl Jam being from Seattle4 (and, well, being a band that peaked in 1992 and yet persists today).
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
Every major lyrics website says that this line is “Daughters will love like you do,” but it is abundantly clear to me that Mayer is saying “Daughters will live like you do.”
JUDE LAW.
Speaking of The Ringer, it had a very good article just a couple of weeks ago on “Jeremy.”
Yeah, I know that Eddie Vedder, like many wrong people in Chicago, is a Chicago Cubs fan. I’m sticking with it: Mike McCready, the Pearl Jam guitarist, played the national anthem at a Mariners game last week, and earlier this season, you could get a Mariners shirt at the “Pearl Jam Ten Club Day” at the park.