Below are six trivia questions I’ve written. You can reply to this e-mail if you’d like to participate. Like most trivia, the answers can be readily found via Google, so you’re on the honor system. The SIXTH question of each set is designed to be a question that cannot be easily Googled, so correct answers to those will be tracked and recognized in the next newsletter. The answers, and the next set of questions, will be published every Monday and Thursday.
1) France’s third-largest city (and second-largest metropolitan area), the former capital of the Gauls at the time of the Roman Empire, can have its letters rearranged to form one of the most common and versatile words in the English language, which can be used as an adverb, adjective, or conjunction. WHAT’s the city?
2) Scott Joplin, known as the “King of Ragtime,” is the “Joplin” in the following quote about Marvin Hamlisch—Hamlisch is one of two people in history (together with Richard Rodgers) to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize:
“[Hamlisch] got the Oscar for music he didn't write (since it is by Joplin) and arrangements he didn't write, and 'editions' he didn't make. A lot of people were upset by that, but that's show biz!”
WHAT is the 1973 film being alluded to above, which film led to a revival in interest in Joplin’s music? For years, radio stations would announce “The Entertainer” as the theme from the film in question, by Hamlisch, rather than as Joplin’s song.
3) The NBA rulebook states that a player, while his team controls the ball, must not remain for more than three seconds “in that part of his free throw lane between the endline and extended 4’ (imaginary) off the court and the farther edge of the free throw line.” That’s a lot of words to say the “paint,” the “lane,” or WHAT three-letter word? In zone defenses, it’s common to have a player defend the “top of” this area.
4) WHAT city’s walls serve as the only intact example of a fortified colonial settlement in North America north of Mexico? Portions of the city, together with its historic ramparts, were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.
5) In 1998, Brenda Chapman became the first woman to direct an animated feature from a major studio when she directed DreamWorks Animation’s film The Prince of Egypt. Fourteen years later, she co-directed WHAT film, becoming the first woman to direct a full-length Pixar film and the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?
6) WHAT unusual distinction is shared by each of these films? The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Hoosiers (1986), The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Zombieland (2009), Moneyball (2011), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Grudge Match (2013).
Here are the answers from last time:
1) Topping a steak (or veal, or another protein) with crab meat, asparagus, and (typically) béarnaise sauce—this is a preparation typically given WHAT male name, purportedly in honor of Sweden’s king between 1872 and 1907?
The answer here was “Oscar,” which may be connected with King Oscar II of Sweden. The “King Oscar” export brand sells sardines and other canned seafood products (including via Amazon Prime, right now) and is the only brand to have obtained, in their words, King Oscar’s “royal permission” to use his name.
2) The Rolling Stones used this word to describe horses in 1971. A year later, Lou Reed described a “side” with the same word. Almost forty years later, Sia and Flo Rida sang about people sharing the same quality. Whether you’re born to be it, or you’re young, it and free—WHAT is the shared word?
These were references to songs to help you get to “wild”—”Wild Horses,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Wild Ones,” “Born to be Wild,” and “Young, Wild and Free” were the songs referenced here. One song that I did not jam in here was “Wildest Dreams” (or, if you’re across the aisle politically, “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)”)—the liner notes for the song state that Taylor Swift’s heartbeat serves as the beat for the song.
3) Earlier this week, HBO tapped Nick Offerman (of Parks & Rec fame) to play Bill, a survivor of a zombie apocalypse who maintains an uneasy alliance with main characters Joel and Ellie, in WHAT adaptation of a video game series that the network is currently working on?
The Last of Us is the answer here—the franchise started in 2013 with Naughty Dog’s same-named game, followed by its sequel which was released in June 2020. Craig Mazin, perhaps best known for his work on the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, will be a writer for the TLoU adaptation.
4) A novel is quoted in part below:
"I'm like you," he said. "I remember everything."
I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you're just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there's not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and…
WHAT five-word instruction ends the novel quoted above? Notably, the last paragraph does not appear in the novel’s film adaptation.
“Look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name” is how Call Me by Your Name, the 2007 coming-of-age novel by André Aciman, ends. A sequel to the novel called Find Me was released in 2019, and Find Me is broken up into four narrative sections—Tempo, Cadenza, Capriccio, and Da Capo. Speaking of which—
5) WHAT Italian phrase (literally “from the head”) does “D.C.” stand for in musical notation? Below is an example of the notation in use.
Da capo is our answer here. I’m pleased to report that I learned about this connection between “da capo” and Call Me By Your Name only after this newsletter was published last Thursday. If trivia has any purpose, it’s to remind us that everything’s connected.
“Da capo” is an instruction to repeat the previous portion of music—the idea is to save space rather than having to actually write the music out again.
6) WHAT unusual distinction is shared by each of these films? The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Chinatown (1974), The Breakfast Club (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), While You Were Sleeping (1995), Spider-Man (2002), Iron Man (2008), I, Frankenstein (2014)
“Nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance.”
“Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown.”
“Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.”
“But I shall always look back on that first with the most fondness; my introduction to Basil of Baker Street: The Great Mouse Detective.”
“Peter asked me when it was I fell in love with Jack, and I told him, it was while you were sleeping.”
“This is my gift. My curse. Who am I? I'm Spider-Man.”
“The truth is--I am Iron Man.”
“I, defender of the demon hoard. I, my father's son. I, Frankenstein.”
Each of these is a film in which the last words of the film (whether spoken aloud or via voiceover), excluding post-credits scenes, are also the name of the film. It’s often so ham-handed and painfully earnest to end your movie with the titular line, so it always sticks out for me. Look at that While You Were Sleeping quote. Sandra Bullock has to create a hypothetical conversation in order to have any way to say the phrase “while you were sleeping” (instead of “while HE was sleeping”) and it’s just so inorganic and perfect. I threw in a sub-theme for fun—the title of the newsletter refers to the play The Importance of Being Earnest, which is by Oscar Wilde (whose name made up the first two answers to the newsletter). That play, of course, also ends with its titular line.
Question #3 was to get you to think of the ends of things (The Last of Us), Question #4 was an overt reference to a titular line, and Question #5 was trying to connect you with going back to the start of something once you reach the end (i.e., saying a title at the end of the movie).
I can’t mention titular lines without mentioning this perfect comedy sketch, which I recommend watching.
The current Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.