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) Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, both of Schitt’s Creek fame, also starred together with notable comedians like John Candy on the Canadian sketch comedy show SCTV, which aired from 1976 to 1984. WHAT does “SC” stand for in SCTV? (The answer is not “sketch comedy” or a derivation thereof.)
2
) NAME the living composer born in Worcester, Massachusetts with a presidential name who composed the 1987 opera Nixon in China and the 2002 piece On the Transmigration of Souls, the latter of which was commissioned as a memorial piece for the victims of the September 11th attacks and which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
3) In 1992, Mae Jemison became the first Black woman to travel into space when she served aboard the Endeavour. NAME the woman who, fourteen years later, became the second Black woman to travel into space—as of today, she has spent more days in space than any other Black woman, and as a shortlisted candidate for the Artemis program, she may soon become the first woman to walk on the Moon.
4) In the past twenty years, a film that shares its name with a U.S. state capital was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture; in the subsequent year, a film with the same name as that capital’s state was also nominated for Best Picture. NAME the two films, neither of which won Best Picture.
5) Jonathan Goldsmith is a character actor who made minor appearances in a variety of films and television shows throughout the late twentieth century; however, he is much more famous for his commercials, which aired from 2007 through 2015, for WHAT brand? I’m told that he lives vicariously through himself.
6) Many U.S. cities are missing from the following list of cities that share a specific distinction (but are listed in no particular order); name any one of the missing cities. [Note: “Chicago” is not a correct answer.]
Tucson, AZ
Stamford, CT
Madison, WI
Cleveland, OH
Birmingham, AL
Cedar Rapids, IA
Saint Louis, MO
Gulfport, MS
Columbus, GA
San Diego, CA
Here are the answers from last time:
It might be helpful for you to see the word graph itself—that image is below. This recap is a bit more brisk, due to the nature of the unifying theme being the graph rather than anything that tied through the questions. (Apologies for my total non-attempt to make the graph look aesthetically pleasing or lined up.)
1) Oh no! I forgot to write a newsletter and the deadline is very soon. Yikes, I’d better throw something together quickly. Uh…okay, look, just give me the ordinal number that appears in that painting of a wave by Ivan Aivazovsky, the Russian master of marine art; it also is associated with Beethoven’s final symphony that he completed.
This question referenced The Ninth Wave and Beethoven’s Ninth.
2) Still so many questions to write…hey, you know haggis, the Scottish pudding thing? It’s made in part by mincing the heart, lung and liver of WHAT animal?
This one is sheep. As the adjective “bovine” relates to cattle and “canine” related to dogs, “ovine” relates to sheep.
3) Isn’t there usually a pop-culture question by now? Um, fine, just go ahead and take a wildly successful 2017 song for which the opening lyric is “The club isn't the best place to find a lover,” add the word “The” in front of that song, and change the last word of the song’s title to a different word—now you’ve got the title of a film that came out the same year and won a bunch of Oscars. WHAT’S that movie? Just the last word of the movie’s title, please.
This question referred both to “Shape of You,” the Ed Sheeran song, and The Shape of Water, the film directed by Guillermo del Toro.
4) Think of a question, think of a question…hey, isn’t the Super Bowl coming up? Okay, it’s a name that appears in the subtitle of the film City Slickers II, and it’s also the nickname of that guy who founded (and played for, and coached) the Green Bay Packers (apparently he got the name because of his hair)—WHAT’S that shared name?
The film is City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold, and the person in question is Curly Lambeau.
5) Almost done—let’s add a hard one. I’m looking for an Anglo-Irish playwright born in 1728 most famous for The Vicar of Wakefield and The Deserted Village, and not, presumably, for his great skill in working with element #79 on the periodic table. Derived from that guy’s last name, WHAT’s the nickname that his friends gave him that he hated? Like a bagel, maybe it goes with lox?
The playwright is Oliver Goldsmith and his nickname was Goldy. Element #79 is gold, and the lox clue is a pun (“goldy” and “lox” sounds like the fairy-tale heroine Goldilocks).
6) Oh man, I was supposed to do a whole thing where I come up with a theme and ask you to name a specific movie, and there’s just no time for that. I think it’s a movie that came out the same year the Exxon Valdez spill happened? I don’t know, just take your best guess—maybe this weird chart [image below] can help you?*
The film is Glory, and the only other clues for you besides the word puzzle were the release date hint above, and also the newsletter title, “Marching On.” That’s a reference to the song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which has these lyrics—the lyrics “marching on” are repeated in the song and come right before the word “Glory”:
Mine eyes have seen the glory
Of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage
Where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning
Of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is MARCHING ON—
GLORY! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is MARCHING ON.
The current Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.