Thursday, March 28, 2013
Ken Jennings Tuesday Trivia - March 26
THIS WEEK'S QUESTIONS
1. The Onyx River, a seasonal stream just twenty miles long, is the longest river found where? must be located somewhere remote that is usually dry or frozen. The Mojave Desert? Death Valley? Antarctica?
2. Which of the year's four seasons boasts more U.S. federal holidays than any other? I counted 4 in winter - Xmas, New Years, MLK, Presidents Day. I think this is more than fall (3), summer (2) and spring (1)
3. What Canadian is the only member of the Saturday Night Live house band ever to return to host the show? It's hard to imagine Neil Young as either a host or a band member. So trying to think of actors or performers rather than musicians. Was Jim Carrey ever in the house band?
4. The trigeminal, vagus, and hypoglossal are three of the body's twelve cranial what? nerves?
5. Over 50 U.S. kids caught salmonella in a mini-epidemic that resulted from imitating the crucial behavior in which Disney animated film? kissing a frog? From The Princess And the Frog? I don't think eating an apple like Snow White did would be problematic because it is everyday behavior. Kissing a frog is a little out of the ordinary.
6. What word, recently much in the news, come from the Latin for "with a key," because of its association with a locked room? sequester
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these U.S. states (and one district) in this order, and no others? New York, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Vermont, Texas. Questions like this often relate to the the plot of a specific movie or book. But nothing comes to mind.
LAST WEEK'S ANSWERS
1. Athol Fugard, Alan Paton, J. M. Coetzee, and Nadine Gordimer are among the most respected writers ever to hail from what country? They all criticized the apartheid-era policies of their homeland, the Union of South Africa. correct
2. What achievement in baseball can be statistically nullified if the scorekeeper rules "defensive indifference"? You can't officially steal a base if the catcher (or another fielder) didn't care enough to try to throw you out. correct
3. What Cree Indian food staple was usually made by combining equal quantities of dried venison and melted fat? That's how you make pemmican. Mmmm. Pemmican. correct
4. What song topped the British pop charts throughout January 1981, despite having been originally released almost a decade earlier? "Imagine" had its greatest chart success not upon initial release, but ten years later after the assassination of John Lennon. correct!
5. The 2013 OfficeMax/Office Depot merger makes the new company the largest in its space. What company is now #2? Take that, Staples. correct
6. Below fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine on the periodic table sits what heaviest halogen, the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth? (If you don't count a few stray atoms of berkelium, that is.) There's probably only a single ounce of the element astatine in the Earth's crust at any given time. not sure that I would know that unless I had just spent a year in a class staring at the periodic table each day
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these books? The Bad News Bears, The Children of Men, The City of Ember, The Flight of the Phoenix, The Gangs of New York, The Silver Linings Playbook, The War of the Worlds. Each lost the leading "The" for a later movie adaptation. I'm sure there are other examples of this--can anyone name any? "Life of Pi" was always "Life of Pi," by the way. so obvious and yet I missed it
1. The Onyx River, a seasonal stream just twenty miles long, is the longest river found where? must be located somewhere remote that is usually dry or frozen. The Mojave Desert? Death Valley? Antarctica?
2. Which of the year's four seasons boasts more U.S. federal holidays than any other? I counted 4 in winter - Xmas, New Years, MLK, Presidents Day. I think this is more than fall (3), summer (2) and spring (1)
3. What Canadian is the only member of the Saturday Night Live house band ever to return to host the show? It's hard to imagine Neil Young as either a host or a band member. So trying to think of actors or performers rather than musicians. Was Jim Carrey ever in the house band?
4. The trigeminal, vagus, and hypoglossal are three of the body's twelve cranial what? nerves?
5. Over 50 U.S. kids caught salmonella in a mini-epidemic that resulted from imitating the crucial behavior in which Disney animated film? kissing a frog? From The Princess And the Frog? I don't think eating an apple like Snow White did would be problematic because it is everyday behavior. Kissing a frog is a little out of the ordinary.
6. What word, recently much in the news, come from the Latin for "with a key," because of its association with a locked room? sequester
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these U.S. states (and one district) in this order, and no others? New York, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Vermont, Texas. Questions like this often relate to the the plot of a specific movie or book. But nothing comes to mind.
LAST WEEK'S ANSWERS
1. Athol Fugard, Alan Paton, J. M. Coetzee, and Nadine Gordimer are among the most respected writers ever to hail from what country? They all criticized the apartheid-era policies of their homeland, the Union of South Africa. correct
2. What achievement in baseball can be statistically nullified if the scorekeeper rules "defensive indifference"? You can't officially steal a base if the catcher (or another fielder) didn't care enough to try to throw you out. correct
3. What Cree Indian food staple was usually made by combining equal quantities of dried venison and melted fat? That's how you make pemmican. Mmmm. Pemmican. correct
4. What song topped the British pop charts throughout January 1981, despite having been originally released almost a decade earlier? "Imagine" had its greatest chart success not upon initial release, but ten years later after the assassination of John Lennon. correct!
5. The 2013 OfficeMax/Office Depot merger makes the new company the largest in its space. What company is now #2? Take that, Staples. correct
6. Below fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine on the periodic table sits what heaviest halogen, the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth? (If you don't count a few stray atoms of berkelium, that is.) There's probably only a single ounce of the element astatine in the Earth's crust at any given time. not sure that I would know that unless I had just spent a year in a class staring at the periodic table each day
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these books? The Bad News Bears, The Children of Men, The City of Ember, The Flight of the Phoenix, The Gangs of New York, The Silver Linings Playbook, The War of the Worlds. Each lost the leading "The" for a later movie adaptation. I'm sure there are other examples of this--can anyone name any? "Life of Pi" was always "Life of Pi," by the way. so obvious and yet I missed it
