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/QYLqN9hG8VMMSRHB8. 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) It’s Monday morning, which means it’s the perfect time for math! Assume a regular pentagon has vertices A, B, C, D, and E. A line is drawn from A to B, from B to E, and from E to D, as shown in the image below (not necessarily to scale). WHAT is the interior angle between line segment BE and side ED, expressed in degrees?
2) In the Netflix animated dramedy BoJack Horseman, the character Diane Nguyen was born in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1980s; appropriately enough, within the show’s plot, Diane was named after a character from WHAT television sitcom?
3) There are two U.S. state capitals that have flags featuring a depiction of a phoenix. NAME both cities.
4) WHO is, probably, the only person to publish exactly three novels, each of which have titles with exactly two words, and have each of those three novels adapted for the screen? In chronological order of the adaptational releases, the adaptations were (1) a critical and box-office success, (2) a critical and box-office failure, and (3) an acclaimed miniseries.
5) He graduated Duke University with a bachelor’s degree in 1990 and obtained his M.D. at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 1995. NAME this personality, far more famous for his acting career—he won the MTV Movie Award for “Best WTF Moment” for a 2009 film and later starred as the titular character in a widely panned ABC sitcom. Despite his career change, he still maintains his medical license and presumably did not get into any wacky misadventures with the deans of Duke or UNC.
6) The following list of television shows is almost a complete set of shows that share a specific distinction, but it is missing two television shows; NAME either missing show. Saturday Night Live (1975—), Law & Order (1990-2010; 2022—), The Larry Sanders Show (1992-98), The Nanny (1993-99), Family Guy (1999—), Freedom: A History of US (2003), Brothers & Sisters (2006-11), Hjälp! (2007-09), Chuck (2007-12), Hot in Cleveland (2010-15).
Here are the answers from last time:
1) In Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, there is a character named Bilal X, who in the novel is a successful former pop singer who has converted to Islam and is 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?
This is Yusuf Islam, also known by his stage name Cat Stevens. For a brief span in the early 1970s, he was romantically linked to singer Carly Simon—she wrote “Legend in Your Own Time” and “Anticipation” about him, and he later wrote “Sweet Scarlet” about her.
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”?
This is a description of the movie poster for Junior (image below). A few folks sensibly guessed Twins (1988), which is also directed by Ivan Reitman and also stars Schwarzenegger and DeVito.
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 video game made for Microsoft Windows by independent developers Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl that is cited as one of the best roguelike games of all time alludes to the same story.
Abraham and Isaac was our answer—the story, also known as The Binding of Isaac (which is the game’s name), is that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, and after Abraham began to comply, God interrupts the sacrifice. As you can imagine, there’s a good deal of debate on the contours and meaning of the story.
4) Serdar Berdimuhamedow was, earlier this month, “elected” president of WHAT nation in an election generally 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.
Berdimuhamedow is, as of a few days ago the president of Turkmenistan—he takes over the position after his father was president for fifteen years. Turkmenistan is rarely brought up in Jeopardy!, and when it is, it’s usually for the propositions that Turkmenistan is a former Soviet republic, borders the Caspian Sea, and has Ashgabat as its capital.
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.”
Ando came up with instant noodles, and later the product Cup Noodles that is still widely sold today. David Chang, who established the Momofuku line of restaurants (with locations in cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC), selected the name as a nod to Ando.
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).
Each of these films has a father and a son act together in the film. Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen were both in Wall Street; Sylvester Stallone and Sage Stallone were both in Rocky V; Jeff Bridges and Lloyd Bridges were both in Blown Away; Donald Sutherland and Kiefer Sutherland were both in A Time to Kill; Ben Stiller and Jerry Stiller were both in Zoolander; Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, and Cameron Douglas were all in It Runs in the Family; Clint Eastwood and Scott Eastwood were both in Gran Torino; Tom Hanks and Colin Hanks were both in The Great Buck Howard; and Brendan Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson were both in the seventh Harry Potter film.
Question #1 asked for Yusuf Islam, and one of his most famous songs is “Father & Son.” Question #2 asked for Junior, which is likely self-evident and was going for the paternal connection. Question #3 asked for Abraham and Isaac, and Abraham is Isaac’s father. Question #4 alluded to a political dynasty, another clue for a father/son relationship. Question #5 explicitly referenced the word “father.” Finally, the name of the newsletter, “The Sun Also Rises,” was meant to allude to a “son” getting an early role in a film, just like his actor father.
The current-ish* Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
*typically updated 4-6 hours after each newsletter is released