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/vgZRqcKyE4gGzQSs8. 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) In Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, a character named Bilal X is a successful former pop singer who has converted to Islam; he is also a trusted lieutenant of the character based upon the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Bilal X is pretty clearly a reference to WHAT real-life singer-songwriter, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 and who in 2020 released Tea for the Tillerman², a reimagining of his classic 1970 album?
2) Arnold Schwarzenegger wears glasses and a shocked expression. Emma Thompson is beaming over his shoulder. Danny DeVito is grinning and holding a stethoscope. This is a description of a movie poster for WHAT film, released in 1994 with a tagline of “Nothing is inconceivable”?
3) The first verse of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” which song was named among the 500 greatest songs of all time by Rolling Stone in 2004, alludes to a story involving WHAT two biblical characters that appears in the 22nd chapter of the Book of Genesis? The title of a 2011 PC game by independent developers Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl that is cited as one of the best roguelike games ever alludes to the same story.
4) Serdar Berdimuhamedow was, earlier this month, “elected” president of WHAT nation in an election viewed by the west as being neither free nor fair, kicking off a political dynasty? The Karakum Desert occupies about seventy percent of this sparsely populated Central Asian nation.
5) Momofuku Ando, born in southwestern Taiwan in 1910, is generally credited with being the father of WHAT product? He is quoted as saying that “Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat.”
6) WHAT distinction is shared by each of the following films? Wall Street (1987), Rocky V (1990), Blown Away (1994), A Time to Kill (1996), Zoolander (2001), It Runs in the Family (2003), Gran Torino (2008), The Great Buck Howard (2008), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (2010).
Here are the answers from last time:
1) WHAT clichéd pickup line is also the name of a 1998 single by Des’ree? In the opening words of the song, she name-drops the song title and follows it with the words “Do you know? Let me guess, you’re Scorpio.”
The song is “What’s Your Sign?”, a prompt to have someone say their zodiac sign. Trivia is ripe with lists that need memorization—elements, presidents, orders of Greek architecture, and yes, the zodiac signs. This long digression is going to tell you how I memorized the twelve zodiac signs in order.
I started by memorizing this stupid phrase: “Always talking Grand Canyon, Las Vegas — love Social Security CAPs.” (Yeah, I don’t know.) This gets me to “ATGC / LV / LSS / CAP,” which stands for Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces—that’s the zodiac in order. “But,” you may query, “how do you know that the first ‘A’ is Aries and not Aquarius?” Easy—the first time any letter appears that is shared by multiple signs, it’s always the one with fewer letters. So, Aries before Aquarius, Cancer before Capricorn, Leo before Libra, Scorpio before Sagittarius. I don’t know, it works for me.
(This silly trick has the added benefit of the first four letters, ATGC, being the four types of bases found in a DNA molecule: adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. In fact, adenine pairs with thymine, and guanine pairs with cytosine, so we’ve even got them in that order.)
2) Relative keys in music are the major and minor scales that have the same key signatures—or, they share the same notes but are arranged in a different order of whole steps and half steps. According to Spotify in 2015, G major is the most common key on the streaming service. WHAT is the relative minor of G major (as distinguished from its parallel minor, which is G minor)?
G major’s relative key is E minor. This is, apparently, one of those things that the “circle of fifths” (image below) is meant to help folks figure out:
3) “Canine’s canine” would probably be a worse name for WHAT duotone textile pattern characterized by broken checks or abstract four-pointed shapes, often in black and white?
This was a cute way to get to “houndstooth.” The oldest known occurrence of houndstooth is the Gerum Cloak, believed to be over two thousand years old and found in a Swedish peat bog.
4) In Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey, Agamemnon tells Odysseus that, while he was doing WHAT, “the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades”? The specific phrase used by Homer became the title of a certain author’s fifth novel, which novel is widely regarded as one of the greatest works in twentieth-century literature.
The phrase and novel are As I Lay Dying. As I Lay Dying is also the name of a metalcore band that reached its peak in the late 2000s, being nominated for a Grammy for their song “Nothing Left.” Later, Tim Lambesis, their lead singer, pled guilty to attempting to hire someone to murder his wife, leading to the end of the band’s story. Just kidding! The band reunited after Lambesis was released on parole, and they released their seventh album in 2019.
5) If you’re at London’s Heathrow Airport, one option to quickly get to London is to take the Heathrow Express, which connects Heathrow directly with WHAT train station, located on Praed Street and perhaps well known to author Michael Bond?
The Heathrow Express is a handy, albeit relatively pricey, way to get to Paddington Station, the namesake for the beloved Paddington Bear stories by Bond. Bond passed away in 2017; the epitaph on his grave, like the tag on Paddington Bear in the original story, reads “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”
6) WHAT distinction is shared by each of the following works? The Winter’s Tale (c. 1623 play), Siegfried (c. 1876 opera), Prince Caspian (1951 novel), Back to the Future Part III (1990 film), Lake Placid (1999 film), A Storm of Swords (2000 novel), Semi-Pro (2008 film), Brave (2012 film).
Each of these stories has a bear (or bears) appear at some point. The Winter’s Tale, of course, features one of Shakespeare’s most legendary stage directions: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”
Question #1 is a pun, as “your sign” sounds a lot like “ursine,” the adjectival word for bear-like things. Question #2 mentions major and minor repeatedly and is meant to be an oblique reference to Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Question #3 is houndstooth, and houndstooth patterns are heavily linked to the University of Alabama and their legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. Question #4 alluded to a Faulkner novel, and he is also famous for the story “The Bear”—in fact, “Old Ben,” our newsletter name, is the name of the bear in “The Bear.” Finally, Question #5 is Paddington Station, perhaps most famous culturally for its association with Paddington Bear.
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released