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) You already know who it is! Silentó, Silentó, Silentó—go on and do it for me. WHAT’s the verb that I’m about to do before I nae nae? If we’re going way back, though, it’s also part of what you must do when a problem comes along.
2) “O, burn her, burn her! Hanging is too good,” says a shepherd—shortly thereafter, she responds:
First, let me tell you whom you have condemn’d:
Not me begotten of a shepherd swain,
But issued from the progeny of kings;
Virtuous and holy; chosen from above,
By inspiration of celestial grace,
To work exceeding miracles on earth.
WHO is the speaker of this excerpt, the beginning of one of Shakespeare’s more notable female monologues, found in Henry VI, Part 1 (Act V, Scene 4)?
3) Never say never again, sir: name the actor who won the 1987 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first Oscar he was ever nominated for, and then was “untouchable” because he was never nominated for an Oscar thereafter.
4) In the comic book Green Lantern #54 (1994), the title hero finds his girlfriend murdered and unceremoniously stuffed into a certain appliance. Writer Gail Simone collected this and other examples on her website of the, in her view, too-common trope in media for women to suffer indignities as mere plot devices to advance a male character’s story arc. Name the eight-letter “verb” derived from the name of Simone’s website that today is used to refer to this trope.
5) Between 1880 and 1920, what is today’s America’s 38th-largest and 17th-most-populous state had its “Golden Age of Literature,” as world-renowned authors all from this state (e.g., George Ade, Theodore Dreiser, Meredith Nicholson, and Lew Wallace) published their most influential works. The Golden Age ended, but this state’s output didn’t; Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Davis, and the guy who made that famous ‘LOVE’ sculpture, whatever his name is, hail from here too. Name the state.
6) WHAT unusual distinction do these television shows and films share? Muppet Babies (1984-91), The Simpsons (1989—), Toy Story (1995), The Rugrats Movie (1998), Family Guy (1999—), Scrubs (2001-10), Shrek 2 (2004), Hannah Montana (2006-11), Disaster Movie (2008), Regular Show (2009-17), It Chapter Two (2019), Red Notice (2021).
Here are the answers from last time:
1) Imagine all the U.S. interstate highways that do not end in a “5” or “0”. The longest such highway is I-94, which connects cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis and runs through Montana. WHAT is the second-longest such highway, connecting metropolitan areas such as Richmond (VA), Louisville (KY), and St. Louis (MO)?
This interstate is I-64. Almost a third of I-64 is in Virginia. A fun trivia fact: If you took I-64’s 953.74 miles of road and stacked it vertically from the ground, you would not be close to the moon at all.
2) NAME the R&B soul singer and actress who, together with her backup band The Pips, was the first act to appear on the television show Soul Train in 1971—though, she might be more notable for a different train.
This is seven-time Grammy Award winner and generally cool person Gladys Knight—the “train” allusion in the question is to her song “Midnight Train to Georgia,” which fits nicely into the Venn diagram of “notable songs about trains” and “notable songs about going, coming from, or being in the State of Georgia.”
3) NAME the actress born in 1996 in Miami whose parents are psychologist Jennifer Marina Joy and former banker Dennis Alan Taylor. For a 2020 role, she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or Television Movie.
This is Anya Taylor-Joy, the up-and-coming actress who appeared on Time’s Time 100 Next list, which is a list title I hate, list-title-wise. Her hyphenated last name was there in the question, but in reverse order. Taylor-Joy rose to fame for her role in Netflix’s miniseries The Queen’s Gambit.
4) Near the end of The Godfather: Part II, Kay Adams-Corleone, explaining to her husband her motivations for leaving him, says:
There would be no way, Michael, no way you could ever forgive me. Not with this [BLANK] thing that’s been going on for two thousand years.
WHAT single-word adjective fills in the blank? Let’s just say: Never go in against them when death is on the line.
“Sicilian” is the answer, referring to the totally above-board business dealings of the Corelone family and their ancestors. The last sentence is another stealth reference to The Princess Bride to give you another “in” to the question.
5) In many variations of poker, WHAT action, shorthand for passing the action to the next player without wagering additional funds or folding one’s cards, is often signaled by tapping the poker table?
Check, please! That doesn’t actually make sense. Well, the answer is “check.”
6) WHAT unusual distinction is shared by the following films? The Great Escape (1963), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Blade Runner (1982), Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Independence Day (1996), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), X-Men (2000), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).
Each of these films depicts (sometimes only for a moment, and sometimes as a key plot point) a chess game in progress. Writers and directors have realized that a good way to analogize to an upcoming struggle, or even merely to show that someone is highly competent, is to show chess play.
“Opening,” the newsletter’s name, is a fairly straightforward chess term referring to the initial stage of a chess match. “I-64” is a reference to the number of squares on a chess board. Gladys Knight’s last name is a chess piece allusion. Taylor-Joy is referenced as a hint for The Queen’s Gambit, a chess-focused work, which is her most famous work. The “Sicilian Defense” is a popular chess opening, and placing opponents into “check” is a key component of chess.
The current Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.