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 might know a DMV as an occasional annoyance in your life and a DMX (may he rest in peace) as an occasional joy in life. If you’re thinking of a DMZ, though, and specifically the one located at latitude 37°54'32.274" and longitude 126°42'17.5356", you are thinking of something separating WHAT two countries?
2) The overhead system, the floor pick-up system, and electric batteries are the three methods that can be used to power WHAT frivolity, the current largest operating example of which is in Gurnee, Illinois?
3) Name the American playwright known as the “theater’s poet of Black America.” Among his many accomplishments, he is the only person to be nominated for six or more Pulitzer Prizes for Drama (and the only person from Minnesota to ever win one) and the only person not named Neil Simon to be nominated for nine or more Tony Awards for Best Play—less importantly, he won the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1988.
4) A “before, during and after” question is a question that requires you to link three concepts—for example, a recent Jeopardy! clue asked for an “AMC zombie spin-off about the last thing Wild Bill was dealt, an antiseptic cleansing agent,” and the question was “[What is] Fear the Walking Dead Man’s Hand Sanitizer?” What is the solution to the following before, during and after?
The last James Bond film to star Timothy Dalton with the debut studio album by the band Metallica, featured on the television show that was nominated for Favorite TV Show in the Kids’ Choice Awards in 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2020.
5) Imagine for this question you are the worst Wheel of Fortune player ever. Improbably, you have reached the final round of the game, where you must solve one last puzzle. The category is “U.S. States” and the game, as always, spots you R, S, T, L, N, and E. No letters are illuminated on the board. Immediately, with no thought, you blurt out your lucky extra letters: “Z, W, D, and U!”. Again, no letters are illuminated. (You also can’t count how many letters there are because you’re bad at that too.) Despite your plight, you still have enough information to solve the puzzle with a single guess. WHAT U.S. state is the game looking for?
6) What unusual distinction is shared by each of these films? The Natural (1984), Crossroads (2002), Garden State (2004), Lincoln (2012), Home (2015), Ad Astra (2019).
Here are the answers from last time:
1) On May 17, 2019, the website Vice ran an article by a former editor of the satirical newspaper The Onion. Below is an excerpt from the article. WHOSE name fills in the blank? The quote below refers to articles The Onion had previously run about this person doing things like shirtlessly washing his Trans Am in the White House driveway and getting banned from Dave & Buster’s.
If you’ve ever thought of [BLANK] as a clueless but lovable clod, a well-meaning klutz who is predictable, friendly, and ultimately electable, I am in small part responsible for that image. And I’m sorry.
The Onion writer is referring to Joe Biden. Personally, I think that Joe Biden would be the president today even if The Onion hadn’t published “Biden To Honor Fallen Soldiers By Jumping Motorcycle Over Vietnam Memorial” and that the above quote takes far too much credit, but what do I know?
2) In mathematics, a “Leyland number” is a number of the form x^y + y^x where x and y are integers greater than 1. For example, the first Leyland number is 8 (2 squared plus 2 squared). WHAT is the smallest three-digit Leyland number? [Note: For those submitting answers, using pen and paper is OK, but using a calculator or Google is not.]
The answer here is 100, as when you add 2^6 (64) to 6^2 (36), you get 100. Earlier iterations of this question attempted to link a Leyland number to the unrelated Jim Leyland, long-time manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Tigers, but those efforts were scrapped. Leyland (the manager) is the only person to win both a World Series and the World Baseball Classic as a manger.
3) WHAT is the shared name of the following items? (1) the American name of a ubiquitous board game derived from alquerque, a Middle Eastern strategy game; (2) a chain of drive-thru restaurants that started in 1986 in Alabama and has a few hundred locations, primarily in the southeastern United States; and (3) a black-and-white cocker spaniel that became nationally important due to a speech given on national television on September 23, 1952?
Each of these was “checkers.” As I understand, the Checkers fast-food franchise is known as “Rally’s” throughout most of the Midwest for reasons I cannot imagine. My argument is that Checkers/Rally’s might be the largest fast-food chain with the smallest cultural footprint, although fans of their “Rap Cat” advertising video from 2007 may disagree.
4) The Germans might call it Sturm im Wasserglas. The Estonians might say torm veeklaasis. The French might go with une tempête dans un verre d'eau. I might say it’s “my second-favorite Shakespeare play (Prospero notwithstanding) if you put that inside the namesake of a famous bribery scandal from 1921 to 1923 that embroiled the Harding administration.” WHAT is the four-word idiom (or five words, if you start it with the article “a”) to which we’re all referring?
These were all ways to get to “a tempest in a teapot,” or variations thereon. The “bribery scandal” referenced above is generally known as the Teapot Dome scandal. In 1924, Albert P. Fall (Harding’s Secretary of the Interior) purportedly testified in front of Congress, “Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I'll end up drinking your milkshake.” This line was adapted famously into There Will Be Blood, the 2007 film.
5) Name the American elected official, first elected in 1974, who was born in Montpelier, Vermont and who earlier this month announced his impending retirement. Due to his comic book fandom and connections, he has appeared in small roles in several films, including Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
This one is Patrick Leahy, perhaps better known among the youth as the second-most famous senator from Vermont. As of this moment, he is the only sitting senator who served during Gerald Ford’s presidency.
6) What combination of letters finishes this set? ROH, DMO, DMA, DTX, RCA, [BLANK], DDE
[Note: The original e-mail distribution of this question contained a typo. “DTX” above was incorrectly noted as “RTX.” The above version is the true, accurate version of the question.]
This was meant to be a list of persons in the 20th and 21st century who had been a U.S. senator and then became a U.S. president, listed by their party affiliation and the state for which they were senator—thus, Warren G. Harding (R-OH), Harry Truman (D-MO), John F. Kennedy (D-MA), Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX), Richard Nixon (R-CA), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Joe Biden (D-DE). The quiz was littered with references to these persons, to senators generally, and to the U.S. Senate (that’s what the “100” in the math question was for, as the Senate has 100 seats).
Three programming notes:
First, the Question #6 leaderboard will no longer be sent with each newsletter. Instead, the Question #6 leaderboard can always be viewed at this link, which is a highly advanced Google spreadsheet.
Second, so as to avoid the situation where new subscribers can never compete for the top of the leaderboard, the leaderboard will reset every couple of months. The next reset will be after Newsletter XX, a few weeks from now. The linked spreadsheet will always record past winners, so there’s glory (but no actual prizes) to be had.
Third, once we get into the new leaderboard cycle, I will likely turn to Google Forms as a way to submit answers instead of e-mails/texts, just for administrative ease. More on that later this month, and again, thanks for reading along.