Auntie's Quiz O' the Week [Archive] - Page 2

AuntShecky

06-03-2009, 04:18 PM

Previous clue: Drink

[Stay tuned for an important announcement at the conclusion of this week’s snooze fest.]

Aw, alcohol-- the nectar of the Gods and demon rum! Civilization has always had a love/hate relationship with liquid spirits, alternately praised and condemned, occasionally within the same paragraph. To wit, this observation from Lender and Martin’s Drinking in America: A History:*
A congressman was once asked about his attitude toward whiskey. “If you mean the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I’m against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer,the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort little crippled children, then I’m for it. This is my position, and I will not compromise.”

Another illustration of the time-honored relationship between politicians and booze was the infamous “Drunken Parliament” of 1661, in which the members were almost never sober. And Mark Twain’s defined a demagogue as “a vessel containing beer and other liquids.”

Speaking of which, in these politically correct times it may be no longer appropriate to tell jokes about booze, such as this one, aged longer than the oldest Scotch: Q. “What’s the difference between an alcoholic and a drunk?” A. “A drunk doesn’t have to go to all those damn meetings.” Each year the numbers of victims of drunken drivers and the statistics affecting the aforementioned “family life” tell us that wine and spirits are not all fun and games. Alcoholism, lest we forget, is not a moral failing but a devastating disease. But what’s a comedian to do?

Some of the best jokes involve tipplers. On the old Andy Griffith show, Otis-- perhaps the only resident of Mayberry resident who wasn’t a teetotaler -- used to lock himself in and out of Sheriff’s Taylor’s jail. Jack Paar’s frequent guest, Oscar Levant, used to boast that he had one drop of blood in his alcohol system. And mild-mannered lonesome old George Gobel once said his uncle was the town drunk, adding "And we lived in Chicago.”

With that under our belt, and with our opinions about alcohol no longer bottled up but half in the bag and three sheets to the wind, let’s send a taste of the grape, a bit of the bubbly, down the hatch in a little ignoble experiment we like to call:

Dipso Mania

1. Identify the poet (1859-1936) who wrote “A Shropshire Lad” and these immortal lines: “Oh many a peer of England brews/Livelier liquid than the Muse,/ And malt does more than Milton can/ To justify the ways of God to man.”

2. Who was the six-foot tall, hatchet-wielding Kansan who was the most famous member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union? Legend has it that John L. Sullivan, the prizefighter, used to run and hide whenever she stormed into his saloon.

3. Released in 1945, a movie about an alcoholic on a desperate four-day quest for a drink was very bold for its time. What’s the title of this film, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Ray Milland?

4. Name the ancient Greek god of wine.

5. The subject of at least nine operas, this larger-than-life character appears in four of Shakespeare’s plays, most memorably as the drinking companion to Prince Hal. Who is he?

6. (This question just went on the wagon.) In which poem do we find these lines by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Water, water everywhere/With not a drop to drink”?

7. A winner of multiple awards, this 1962 movie stars Jack Lemmon as a social drinker who degenerates into alcoholism while dragging his wife down with him. What’s the title, derived from a beautiful line by the poet, Ernest Dowson?

8. Which contemporary of Shakespeare began a poem with this line: “Drink to me only with thine eyes?”

9. Leaving Las Vegas is a 1995 movie about a man who resolves to drink himself to death in Sin City. Name the actor who won numerous awards , including an Oscar, for the leading role. (Hint: He didn’t win for the horrendous remake which desecrated The Wicker Man.)

10. The phrase “drink like a fish” was first coined by which early 17th century playwriting duo famous for tragicomedies such as The Maid’s Tragedy?

11. In 1 Timothy, why does St. Paul entreat us to “use a little wine”?

12. The 1987 movie, Barfly, starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, is the alcohol-fueled autobiography of which diamond-in-the- rough poet of the late 20th century?

13. As a juggler in a Vaudeville act, he was a teetotaler; as a Hollywood actor his elbow-bending was legendary. Who was this “high”-ly quotable star (1880-1946) who said, “A woman drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her”?

14. And finally, this song by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen was introduced by Fred Astaire and became a huge hit for Frank Sinatra and Bette Midler. Name the title of the tune that begins: “Quarter to three/ No one in the place except you and me. . .”

Answers
1. A. E. Housman
2. Carrie Nation
3. The Lost Weekend
4. Dionysus
5. Falstaff
6. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
7. Days of Wine and Roses
8. Ben Jonson
9. Nicolas Cage
10. Beaumont and Fletcher
11. “for thy stomach’s sake”
12. Charles Bukowski
13. W. C. Fields
14. “One for my Baby (and One More for the Road)”

Clue for the theme of the next quiz in the missing word in the following:
When someone preached to humorist Robert Benchley that his drinking would kill him with its slow ______(what?), Benchley replied: “So? Who’s in a hurry?”

Announcement: If you have guessed the missing word above, you know the next topic. Feel free to compose questions on that theme and send them to me via PM before 3 pm next Tuesday, June 9. Please include the answers (Just click on the screen name AuntShecky in the left-hand corner and click the “send private message option.”) All LitNutters whose questions are used in the next quiz will receive appropriate credit.

*Sources (for intro): The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, edited by Clifton Fadiman
(for question #2): "The American Experience" page
of www.pbs.org. Both the network and website are
valuable --and often entertaining -- resources for
writers and readers.
(for various questions): Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,www.imdb.com and other reference books.

Virgil

06-03-2009, 06:43 PM

Urrh, so many movie questions. I'm lucky I got a couple of them right. Let's see I got seven altogether: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14.

qimissung

06-03-2009, 10:19 PM

Well, on the last one, which I just did, I only missed four! That's the best I've ever done.

But on this one I only got 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 right.

I remember watching "The Days of Wine and Roses" in high school. My parents let me stay up late to see it. It made a big impression on me. Cage was excellent in "Leaving Las Vegas." That one was hard to watch. Well, they both were.

For some reason I've never seen "The Lost Weekend." Is it worth a look?

DickZ

06-04-2009, 08:59 AM

Thanks, Auntie. I just don’t know what will happen if there’s not a quiz on some future week. I’m now addicted to these things and would be very distressed to face a week without one.

I started out pretty lucky, with educated guesses that turned out to be correct for the first two. I know the third outright since I watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies, which is the best channel on the air these days.

After missing the deity of wine, which I should have known, I got the next three. Being an ancient mariner myself helped considerably with Coleridge’s poem. And I have seen the Jack Lemmon/Lee Remick movie several times.

After missing 8 - 12 without having even a clue for any of them, I finished strong by nailing the last two.

In summary, I got 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 13, and 14.

AuntShecky

06-05-2009, 01:43 PM

Thank you, Virgil, qimissung, and DickZ for taking the quiz.
If you haven't already done so, don't forget to send me a PM with your contributions for the next quiz. (If my PC, "Pong II," doesn't die, it should appear around its usual day and time.)

AuntShecky

06-10-2009, 04:08 PM

Previous topic clue: Poison

[Stay tuned for an announcement at the conclusion of today’s quiz.]

For centuries poison was a plot device in tragedies and fairy tales, but with the glut of mayhem-mottled movies these days, it rarely shows up as the murder weapon. Though it’s effective and takes a complete autopsy to detect, poison doesn't explode, doesn't make a big bang, doesn't splatter blood all over the screen. When the leading man appears to save the world, in one arm he'll be holding a love interest, twenty or thirty years the hero’s junior. In his other hand will be an Uzi or at least a pistol, or at last resort, a knife. But a bottle of Ipecac? I don't think so.

Speaking of show biz, earlier this week viewers of the Tony Awards saw a spectacular opening number which included an incident that was completely ad-libbed. A wooden curtain fell down banging the bean of Bret Michaels, the veteran rock musician. I've heard of Broadway actors “chewing the scenery,” but this is the first time I've ever seen it bite back! What has this have to do with today’s topic? Well, I always thought that Bret Michaels would merge his original band with a similar heavy metal 80s outfit. Then they could call the combined group “Ratt Poison.”

Well, before we go to get our collective stomach pumped, let’s swallow the quiz:

Name Your Poison

Our first question was sent into us by fellow LitNutter DickZ of Virginia:
1. Name the British notable sitting next to Lady Astor at a formal dinner party when she told him “If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee” - to which he replied “If you were my wife, I'd drink it.”

2. Seemingly harmless produce such as the tomato, potato, and eggplant belong to the same family that also includes an extremely deadly species. What is this plant from which belladonna is derived?

3. Who was the ancient Greek philosopher whose political enemies forced him to take his own life by drinking hemlock?

4. What’s the term for a play or a movie whose subject matter and/or stars have the potential to keep audiences away?

5. A neurotoxin that causes paralysis is the secret ingredient in the cosmetic process which reduces facial wrinkles. By what name is this pricey though popular product known?

6. What is the phrase which refers to a written message, usually anonymous, and rife with invective and threats?

7. Recently evidence has come to light concerning a thirty-one-year-old case of an assassination of a Bulgarian dissident in London. This man, Markov, died after having been allegedly poked by an umbrella tip containing deadly poison. Formulated from the seed coverings of the castor bean plant, what is this lethal toxin called?

8. Long a workhorse for innumerable high school drama classes and community theatre groups, this play by Joseph Kesselring involves two sweet-natured ladies who serve their gentlemen callers elderberry wine spiked with poison. What is the title of this classic comedy, also the basis for a 1944 Frank Capra film starring Cary Grant as the (understandably) surprised nephew?

9. A centuries-old rumor has it that this dame wore a hollow ring which she frequently used to poison drinks of her enemies. Who was this blonde bombshell of Renaissance Italy who did her part to advance her family’s Machiavellian schemes?

10. Hah, and they say literature doesn't do anything “useful.” In 1977, a little Arab girl had been flown to a London hospital, where the doctors were completely mystified by what was ailing her, until a nurse noticed that the child’s symptoms matched those of the murder victims in a novel she was reading at the time. Once it was learned that the poison was thallium, the little girl was treated accordingly. She was able to recover and return home thanks to the work of the queen of British mystery writers. So – who was the author of the life-saving book, The Pale Horse?

11. In Walt Disney’s very first feature-length animated film, a wicked queen attempts to kill her unsuspecting young rival with a poisoned apple. What was the name of this classic movie, first released in 1937?

12. What is the beautiful perennial flower highly toxic to livestock yet which also helps produce digitalis, a life-saving drug used to treat congestive heart failure?

13. And finally, “You're gonna need an ocean/ of calamine lotion,” if you're going to listen to which song by The Coasters?

Answers

1. Winston Churchill
2. Nightshade (no relation to a LitNutter we know and love.)
3. Socrates
4. Box office poison
5. Botox
6. Poison pen letter
7. Ricin
8. Arsenic and Old Lace
(strych)9. Lucretia Borgia
10. Dame Agatha Christie
11. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
12. Foxglove
13. “Poison Ivy”
And now the missing word concealing the clue for the next quiz topic:
In a famous Nathaniel Hawthorne short story, Beatrice Rappaccini is drop-dead gorgeous –literally- as she thrives within the toxic garden cultivated by her ______(what?)

Announcement: If you have guessed the missing word above, you know the next topic. Feel free to compose questions on that theme and send them to me via PM before 3 pm next Tuesday, June 16. Please include the answers (Just click on the screen name AuntShecky in the left-hand corner and click the “send private message option.”) All LitNutters whose questions are used in the next quiz will receive appropriate credit.

Sources: CBS website, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Little,Brown Book of Anecdotes, HowStuffWorks.com, Brooklyn Botanical Garden website, and Video Hound Golden Movie Retriever, published by Visible Ink.

Virgil

06-10-2009, 05:30 PM

Got eight: 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 10, 13. I got lucky with a few guesses but I can't believe I missed Snow White. I said Sleeping Beauty. :lol: And love Churchill quotes. :D

qimissung

06-10-2009, 05:44 PM

I got 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, and the bonus question. Very good quiz, AuntShecky. Yes, Virgil, the Churchill quote is priceless, is it not?

Virgil

06-10-2009, 05:55 PM

I got 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, and the bonus question. Very good quiz, AuntShecky. Yes, Virgil, the Churchill quote is priceless, is it not?

Yes. :) You know I never try that bonus question.

DickZ

06-11-2009, 09:32 AM

Thanks, Auntie. I’m so relieved that you fixed your computer, because I have been very nervous most of the week that we might not have a quiz.

Wow, Auntie, you’re so right about the trend in today’s movies, and how poison would be so inappropriate. When all my children (who are grown and on their own) proudly showed me their television surround sound systems, I had to wonder what I would do with something like that, since I intentionally avoid movies that would benefit from surround sound. I’m not all that interested in explosions or car crashes or machine-gun bursts.

As for the quiz itself, I was able to get #1, #3, and #5 with no difficulty, but didn’t have a clue for #2 or #4. At this point, I was beginning to get paranoid about being some kind of an oddball or something.

This fear of succeeding only on odd numbers was fortunately quelled by my getting #6 and #8 right, while missing #7 and #9. I should have known Lucretia Borgia for #9 but couldn’t think of it. This getting old is for the birds.

Then I reverted to my original pattern, by missing #10 and #12, while getting #11 and #13 correct.

In summary, I got #1, #3, #5, #6, #8, #11, and #13.

I’m trying to figure out the bonus question now, and if I succeed, I’ll try to send a question for next week’s quiz.

AuntShecky

06-11-2009, 01:33 PM

You know I never try that bonus question.

Oh, I wish you would give it a shot. (Pour yourself a shot while you're at it. I'm sure your (ahem) father wouldn't mind.

If you guess the bonus clue, maybe, pretty please, you'd send me a question for the next quiz? Every q. that's sent in means one fewer question I have to write!

Thank you, q. and DickZ for taking the quiz.
Keep those questions coming!

AuntShecky

06-17-2009, 03:43 PM

Clue from previous clue: Father

Success, as is often said, has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Not only that, some men can achieve greatness in one area of life while striking out miserably in another. For instance, in Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, Ernest Pontifex’s old man is a terrible parent, quick with the reprimands and glacially slow with the compliments--if indeed, he ever had a kind word for his son at all. But Butler’s example of the cold and emotionally distant father figure is common in modern literature.

Speaking of stereotypes, what’s with the gender bias in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song that contains the line: “You can have fun with a son but you've got to be a father to a girl?” (Huh? Don't sons need “parenting” as well?) Not only that, we often hear how the giant of Baroque music fathered a total of 20 children yet still had time to compose, but nobody ever mentions the composure of J. S. Bach’s two successive wives whose composure gave him the freedom to dabble on the harpsichord. Not to mention keeping down the NOISE! Comedian Martin Mull nailed it when he said “Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.”

Another stock figure is the bumbling dad in American sitcoms. In a typical tv family consisting of a sarcastic mother, and one or more wise-cracking but insufferably cute children, Dad is odd man out. Although Robert Young was a fount of patriarchal wisdom in Father Knows Best, in most of the comedy series of the fifties and sixties(e.g. Make Room for Daddy, My Three Sons) Dad is either the butt of jokes or nearly irrelevant. Today, tv days are still fools, as is the preternaturally stupid dad in Family Guy and of course, Homer in the brilliant, long-running animated series, The Simpsons.

Not all real-life fathers are buffoons, of course. So to all of our nerve-rattled, beleaguered, dads out there, happy Father’s Day!

Now before we all get taken behind the woodshed for a good thrashin’, let’s go to the quiz:

So’s Yer Ol’ Man!

Our first question was sent in by DickZ
1. What famous 19th century British author was appalled to see his wild and free-spending father incarcerated in a debtor’s prison for four months? The author was only twelve years old at the time of his father’s arrest, so he hadn't yet officially been designated as an author. But even at that early age, he had some pretty great expectations along those lines.

This next one is from Virgil
2. Who is the American author commonly known as Papa and known for his masculine writing style?

3. Which Shakespearean character and father of three famously exclaimed: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

4. Which British author (1874-1936) wrote a series of mystery novels featuring Father Brown, a detective who was also a Catholic priest?

5. Based on the childhood memoir of Clarence Day, Jr., what was the long-running Broadway play and subsequent movie about a stubborn yet loving head of a family in New York of the 1880s?

6. He was completely bald, and his oval-shaped eyes often had a, um, “vacant” look, but he was a generous and loving gentleman. Which classic comic strip character became the guardian of Little Orphan Annie?

7. We know him as the creator of Alice and her adventures, but he also wrote a famous poem parody called “Father William.” Who was he?

8. The same two word phrase which drum instructors use to teach the 4-beat paradiddle appears as the name of a character in the famous Eudora Welty short story,“Why I Live at the P.O.” What is this term?

9. Name the bearded and scythe-carrying figure of folklore who is seen only once a year, on New Year’s Eve – and even then he’s gone by midnight.

10. It sounded like a baby’s first word for his father, but it was a literary and artistic movement founded in Zurich in 1916. A frequent crossword puzzle term, what were the repeated-syllables in the name for this anarchistic, deliberately chaotic forerunner of surrealism?

11. “Big Daddy” is a pivotal character in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a steamy play dripping with raw emotion by which eminent 20th century American playwright?

12. In the original movie 1950 Spencer Tracy played the title character, a host who is constantly made to feel superfluous. After being charged with checking on the amount of the champagne for the guests, the bartender tells him, “Don't worry, Pal – you'll get yours!” Name this comedy classic, remade with Steve Martin in 1991.

13. And finally, what’s the affectionate nickname given to David Ortiz, the current designated hitter and occasional first baseman for the Boston Red Sox?

Answers
1. Charles Dickens
2. Ernest Hemingway
3. King Lear
4. G. K. Chesterton
5. Life With Father
6. Daddy Warbucks
7. Lewis Carroll
8. Papa Daddy
9. Father Time
10. Dada
11. Tennessee Williams
12. Father of the Bride
13. “Big Papi”
The clue for the next quiz topic can be found in the missing word:
An iconic song from Showboat! by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein is “Ol’ Man _____(What?)

Thank you DickZ and Virgil for supplying questions for this week’s quiz. If any members of the LitNet online community would like to contribute a question (and its accompanying answer) for the quiz containing any aspect of the topic hinted in the clue, please send it in a PM to me before 3 p.m., Tuesday, June 23.

Source (in addition to the usual suspects): Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Third Edition, published by Harper & Row.

kiz_paws

06-17-2009, 11:32 PM

DickZ

06-18-2009, 08:26 AM

Thanks again for another great quiz, Auntie. I have always loved the song My Boy Bill from Carousel, so thanks for working it in. I always thought it very effectively captured the difference between how a father views a girl as compared to a boy.

I was able to get the first three, but missed #4. I got #5, #6, #7, and #8, but never heard of that drum instructor’s paradiddle-teaching device, and I’ll have to look up paradiddle to boot.

And I closed out with getting #9-#13 all correct. Related to #13, I’m an avid Boston Red Sox fan, and there’s a blog run by Big Pupi, who is a cocker spaniel also devoted to the Red Sox. In fact, he ran for President of Red Sox Nation a couple of years ago, but was soundly defeated. My cat Eleanor used to participate on the Big Pupi blog, because the idea was to have dogs and cats doing all the talking about the baseball games. But Big Pupi recently switched to Twitter, and Eleanor doesn’t want to have anything to do with Twitter due to its similarity to texting.

So in summary, I got #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #9, #10, #11, #12, and #13.

And I think I have solved the mystery of next week’s quiz, even before kiz paws let the cat out of the bag, so I’ll start working on a question to contribute.

Virgil

06-18-2009, 07:33 PM

I got eight: 1,2,3,4,9,10,11,13. I can't believe I said CS Lewis for Lewis Carrol, and Daddy Warbucks was on the tip of my tongue but wouldn't come out.

qimissung

06-19-2009, 11:50 AM

O.K. I got 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 and the bonus.

I should have known 5, I've heard of G.K. Chesterton, but I don't think I've read anything by him, and I have read "Why I live at the P.O," but unfortunately that was a number of years ago (ahem). Hilarious story, by the way. Virgil, DickZ, good questions. AuntShecky, hats off to you. You do an amazing job. How long does it take you to make these quizzes up?

qimissung

06-19-2009, 11:52 AM

DickZ, that is so cute about your cat blogging! At first I thought you had just misspelled "papi" until I looked a little closer! :lol:

AuntShecky

06-19-2009, 01:28 PM

Virgil, DickZ, good questions. AuntShecky, hats off to you. You do an amazing job. How long does it take you to make these quizzes up?

It takes a while, but it will take less time if I get some contributions from all the smart LitNutters (actually, if you're a LitNutter, you're already smart!)
So keep those questions comin' in!

PabloQ

06-19-2009, 01:48 PM

I hate playing catch up, but I got 8 out of 13 on the Poison quiz. Had I got the clue the week before I might have submitted this question:
Name the 1980s hair band most likely to make you jam knitting needles through your ears.
Opportunity lost.:D
Moving on to Who's Your Daddy. Well apparently I am. I only missed number 5 (which I should have gotten, but went with Cheaper by the Dozen) and 8. When my son learned paradiddle's he learned them by saying paradiddle. I'm going to check it out with him.
Trying to work up a question for next week.

AuntShecky

06-20-2009, 02:32 PM

When my son learned paradiddle's he learned them by saying paradiddle. I'm going to check it out with him.
Trying to work up a question for next week.

Better late than never, Pablo. Glad to see you back.
If you listen to the word "paradiddle" it has the same number of syllables as "papa daddy." Apparently, student drummers are occasionally instructed to say "PA PA DAD DY" as a way to give each beat the same amount of stress. But of course saying "PAR A DID DLE"would work just as well.

Looking forward to seeing your question, as well as those from numerous LitNutters!

AuntShecky

06-24-2009, 05:10 PM

Previous topic clue: River

Fans of heavy metal rock may be familiar with a band which called itself “Styx,” but the name itself goes back to antiquity. Mythology buffs would know that’s the river to which Milton referred as “a flood of deadly Hate,” and just to let everybody know it meant business, it encircled the infernal regions nine times. Named for a daughter of a god, the Styx also flowed through the ancient land of Arcadia. It was said that whenever a god made a false oath on its banks, he would be forced to sip from a glass of its toxic waters, which rendered him speechless for a full year. (Kinda makes me want to --ahem-- buy some certain parties a “drink”, if you catch my drift.)

I know the rules against cracking wise about certain politicians, alas. Even so, New York state officials are all gaga about the quadricentennial celebration of the discovery of the lengthy stream often called “The Rhine of America.” In 1609 a British explorer was hired by the Dutch to find the coveted Northwest Passage. What Henry Hudson found instead was the great river that would one day be named after him. Henry must've known something was up. The minute he started heading due north of New York harbor, he was stuck with two speeding tickets and waylaid by a bunch of wild-eyed guys insisting that they squeegee the Half Moon.

With that, let’s sail on to the quiz.

A River Runs Through This

1. Name the military and political leader (102-55 B.C.) who upon crossing the Rubicon River said some Greek words, most often quoted in Latin as “Iacta alea est.” (“The die is cast.”)

2. What was the acclaimed novel by James Dickey and 1972 movie about four urban men whose wilderness experience on a fictional river in Georgia deteriorates into a struggle to survive?

3. Name the influential poet (1885-1972) and colleague of T. S. Eliot who wrote English versions of Chinese works such as “The River Merchant’s Wife.”

4. Who was the Austrian composer (1825-1899) whose most famous waltz was “The Blue Danube” ?

5. What was the rock on the banks of the Rhine better known as the name siren who sat atop it, as she lured river boatmen to their deaths?

6. What’s the four-syllable “r” word that means “of, adjacent to, or living on the banks of a river or, occasionally, a lake or a pond”?

7. Eminent 19th century author and nature-lover Henry David Thoreau saw his first book published in 1849. What was its title?

8. Name the poet (1902-1967), the most famous contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, who wrote these lines: “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young./ I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. . .”

9. What is the mammal whose name literally means “river horse”?

10. When Thomas Wolfe submitted the sequel to Look Homeward, Angel, his editor Maxwell Perkins made him cut out some thousand pages and then publish the manuscript as two separate volumes, the second of which was called The Web and the Rock. What was the title of the first one?

11. Name the promising actor ( Stand by Me, My Own Private Idaho, and a portrayal of the young Indiana Jones) who met his tragic end outside a Hollywood nightclub in 1993.

12. What was the title of Mark Twain’s 1883autobiographical work, the first part of which recalled his experience as a riverboat pilot?

13. And finally, what is the three-word phrase that’s a slang term for being sent to prison, specifically to Sing Sing, a few miles north of New York City?

Answers
1. Julius Caesar
2. Deliverance3. Ezra Pound
4. Johann Strauss
5. Lorelei
6. Riparian
7. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
8. Langston Hughes
9. Hippopotamus
10. Of Time and the River
11. River Phoenix
12. Life on the Mississippi
13. “up the river”

Next topic clue:
Fill in the missing word in the song by The Standells about the Charles River, often played as part of victory celebrations at Fenway Park: “I love that dirty _____(what?)”

LitNutters are cordially invited to send me, via PM, questions and answers on this topic for the next quiz.

Sources:
Dictionaries, The Video Hound’s Golden Retriever, The Reader’s Encyclopedia, and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. (Publishing info previously noted.)

MarkBastable

06-24-2009, 05:33 PM

Better late than never, Pablo. Glad to see you back.
If you listen to the word "paradiddle" it has the same number of syllables as "papa daddy." Apparently, student drummers are occasionally instructed to say "PA PA DAD DY" as a way to give each beat the same amount of stress. But of course saying "PAR A DID DLE"would work just as well.

Looking forward to seeing your question, as well as those from numerous LitNutters!

Small related fact: drummers learn to keep 7/4 time by saying Gina Lollabrigida, which is ONE two three four ONE two three.

GEE na lol la BRIG i da

I don't know why I find that satisfying, but I do.

Virgil

06-24-2009, 08:08 PM

Not too bad. I got eight: 1,3,4,8,9,11,13. I should have gotten the Twain and Thoreau questions. :(

DickZ

06-24-2009, 10:39 PM

Thanks, Auntie. I got stuck in a procrastination mode and never got around to contributing a question. I’ll try to do better next week, since I’m a Red Sox fan and should be able to figure out next week’s topic.

I got the first two, thanks to my high school Latin classes and watching movies. I missed #3, but got #4, #5, and #6. I missed #7, as the only Thoreau work I’m familiar with is On Walden Pond, which isn’t a river but does coincidentally have water in it. I also missed #8, but got the last five.

In summary, I got #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #9, #10, #11, #12, and #13.

And I’ll try not to put off next week’s quiz question suggestion until it’s too late, as I did for this week’s.

AuntShecky

07-01-2009, 04:46 PM

Previous clue: Water

It’s the season for swimming, diving, and other aquatic sports, though some folks wonder about water polo – how do they keep the little ponies from drowning? For the rest of us human landlubbers, I'd like to say a few words about summer.

Aw, there’s nothing like a quiet summer afternoon, interrupted with the sound of lawnmowers, jackhammers, backhoes, and beeping trucks, or inexplicably-wealthy teenagers driving their own vehicles with stereo systems that sound like coal being dynamited out of a mountainside. Lest we forget, summer brings the shrieking cries of kids, on parole from school; like bees to nectar or addicts to dealers, they squeal with delight as they chase after the ice cream truck whose incessantly repetitive canned jingle is enough to drive St. Teresa of Avila to drink. Not only that, you've got your blackflies and your mosquitoes intensifying the discomfort of already-scorched skin (not that most females expose that much of ourselves, since we've all been reading about our swimsuit-aggravating “figure flaws” for the past three months.)

How about the summer’s special smells: the freshly-spread fertilizer on prize-winning lawns, the nostril-burning fragrance of charcoal lighter fluid permeating a six-mile perimeter around the neighborhood, newly-poured asphalt on a suburban road, mixed with the aroma of an angry skunk, and the sulfur smell of spent firecrackers? And did I mention their unique eardrum-splintering, nerve-crumbling noise? Legal or not, fireworks were formerly a special part of the 4th of July in the US; now from Memorial Day to Labor Day, they can explode on any given peaceful summer night, even a rainy one (perhaps lit by moisture proof matches.)

In one way, a summer thunderstorm is a welcome respite to the heat and humidity, for occasionally a storm will bring a refreshingly cooler breeze that will last, oh, maybe ten or twenty minutes. A thunderstorm, along with thousands of air conditioning systems running on “11" in the area, more likely may bring a power outage, putting the compressors of one’s refrigerator, freezer, and/or room air conditioner in jeopardy, without the compensation of the use of an electric fan. If lightning fries an electronic device, the owner can forget about calling a repairman--as a matter of fact, one can forget about reaching any human being on the telephone. Everybody is on vacation.

Vacation is where we'd all love to be. Lucky are they who have close friends or relatives who own a second home on a lake and are the type of people who aren't stingy with invitations, if you catch my drift. There’s nothing like lounging on a Adirondack chair and looking out over the water – that is, until the motorboats frighten away the fish and the waterfowl.

Ah yes, there’s nothing like summer -- thank God. Let’s float over to the quiz –

All Wet!

Our first question was sent in by LitNutter DickZ:
1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a poet who penned the words, among lots of other memorable lines: Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. However, he has always been accused of using a performance-enhancing drug to help him with his poetry. What was it?

2. Name the 19th century American poet (1807-1882) who wrote the lines: “From the waterfall he named her,/Minnehaha, Laughing Water.”

3. According to Greek mythology, what is a “naiad”?

4. Name the New World phenomenon unsuccessfully sought by the explorer Ponce de Leon.

5. What is the title of Ambrose Bierce’s 1890 short story set during the American Civil War about a suspected spy who seems to escape a hanging?

6. Name the Transcendentalist nature-lover who wrote about his experiences on Walden Pond in Massachusetts.

7. Which prominent English poet (1688-1744) wrote these evocative lines: “As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; /the centre mov’d, a circle strait succeeds,/ Another still, and still another spreads. . .”

8. What was the collective name for the group of writers including Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, who hailed from a particularly scenic area of England?

9. In 1841, a group of idealists formed the social experiment called Brook Farm. Who was the former member who based his novel, The Blithedale Romance, upon this Utopian community?

10. Legend has it that after King George I heard three suites played on a barge cruise on the River Thames, he liked it so much he ordered the 50 musicians to play it again – and even then, one more time! What is the collective name for this composition by Handel?

11. Which Irish poet (1865-1939) wrote that he wanted to arise and go to the “Lake Isle of Innisfree”?

12. According to Arthurian legend, Merlin’s sweetie Vivien returned his affections by imprisoning him in a tower. In his Morte D’Arthur Malory alluded to her mystical powers as it was her arm reaching out of the depths of a body of water to hand Arthur his sword, Excalibur. She also kidnapped the infant Sir Launcelot. Who was this extremely busy gal?

13. And finally, what was the one-word term for the 1972 Washington, D.C. scandal which spawned an Academy Award winning film about two reporters who uncovered the plot and scored a Pulitzer Prize for their newspaper?

Answers:
1. Opium
2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
3. A nymph of a lake, fountain, river, or stream.
4. The Fountain of Youth
5. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
6. Henry David Thoreau
7. Alexander Pope
8. The Lake Poets
9. Nathaniel Hawthorne
10.” Water Music “
11. W.B. Yeats
12. The Lady of the Lake
13. Watergate
Clue for the next quiz topic is in the missing word in the following line by the poet referred to in Question # 2:
“ By the shore of Gitchee Gumee,/By the shining Big-___(what?)-Water. . .”
That’s the clue, but I can't really say when this next quiz will appear, the reason being that this PC, “Pong II” looks as if it’s preparing to go on vacation. Whatever the destination, it’s going barefoot – as it absolutely refuses to boot up! In any event, the next quiz will appear when the PC has been shod. Until then, “sea” you later!

Source(add to previous lists):
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Third Edition

DickZ

07-01-2009, 10:27 PM

Thanks for another great quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13.

I sure hope you can get Pong III pretty soon, so we don't have to go even one week without a quiz. I don't know if I can make it without one.

AuntShecky

07-03-2009, 03:21 PM

Thank you, DickZ, and thanks for submitting a question.
Looking at this, I think the intro is way, way too long! Sorry.
Hope the next quiz is posted soon, as I say, Pong is on its last legs.

AuntShecky

07-07-2009, 02:04 PM

Well, Pong II is still here for now, and we're hoping it's still here when the next quiz is posted. So, if there's anyone who wants to send me a question (and answer) via PM for tomorrow's quiz, please do so today.

AuntShecky

07-08-2009, 05:58 PM

Previous quiz topic clue: sea

Since seventy-five percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water, mostly by saltwater oceans, it is no wonder that the sea has fascinated mankind for eons. Although we are landlubbers,we're also sea-lovers, for the great deep never fails to stir the soul, be it through the romance of adventurous voyages or the romance of. . .well, romance. Concerning the former, in ancient times the sea was the only venue for exploration of lands waiting for discovery and naval battles to be fought. As for the latter, personal ads for the lovelorn contain so many wistful desires for “moonlit walks on the beach” that the reader almost believes that if she shook the newspaper, grains of sand would fall out. But soon the waves of reality sweep in, as the experts warn that someday the beach will become a geological fossil, if global warming and constant erosion have their way, that is, if the real estate agents for the rich haven't already swallowed up the entire world’s wealth of “waterfront property.”

Oh well, tide and time wait for no one, so let’s launch the quiz.

Now Sea Here

1. The first question was sent in by LitNutter DickZ:
Name the British Poet Laureate who penned these words:
"I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…"

2. We find the symbol of the albatross as a bird boding bad luck for ships in which poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

3. Who was the Russian author who wrote the 1896 play, The Sea Gull?

4. What’s the title of the T.S. Eliot poem containing the lines: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas”?

5. Posthumously published in 1924, a novella by Herman Melville depicts an innocent young seaman who is so innocent that his last words invoke a blessing upon the Captain who ordered his execution. What is the title of this short but transcendent study of good and evil?

6. The twentieth of this month will mark the fortieth anniversary of the first manned lunar landing, during which the astronauts proclaimed “We came in peace for all mankind.” What is the aptly-named area of the moon’s surface where the two space astronauts took those historic (and actual) steps?

7. Name one of the three plays by Shakespeare in which a sea voyage and/or a shipwreck is an integral plot point.

8. What is the title of one of Virginia Woolf’s novels which is also the historical military term for the women’s section of the U.S. Naval Reserves?

9. What is the anonymous Old English poem from the 8th century about the joys and sorrows of a mariner’s life as well as a comparison between this world and the next?

10. Based on Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, what was the title of the acclaimed 1954 movie in which Humphrey Bogart portrays the obsessive-compulsive Captain Queeg.

11. Now one more movie title, please: Starring Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin, what is the steamy 1989 thriller whose title was derived from an R&B hit single by Phil Phillips?

12. The author of the 1904 novel, The Sea Wolf, was (for a time, anyway) the highest paid and most widely read writer in the United States. Who was he?

13. And finally, who was the spirited thoroughbred (1933-1947) whose winning ways lifted spirits up from the depths of the Great Depression?

Answers:
1. John Masefield
2. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
3. Anton Chekov
4. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
5. Billy Budd, Foretopman
6. The Sea of Tranquillity (Mare tranquillitatis)
7. The Tempest, Twelfth Night, or The Merchant of Venice
8. The Waves (WAVES)
9. “The Seafarer”
10. The Caine Mutiny
11. The Sea of Love
12. Jack London
13. Seabiscuit
Clue for the next quiz:
Whether we like it or not, at some point in our lives, many of us might have a need for a member of the profession described by the missing word in this definition from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:
“A seaman who is constantly arguing about his rights . . .”[or]”nautical slang for a shark” is a sea ______(what?)”

sources: the usual suspects, previously noted.

Virgil

07-08-2009, 08:41 PM

Oh I missed the water quiz. I got an amazing ten correct on that one: 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

On the sea quiz I got eight: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12.

DickZ

07-08-2009, 10:35 PM

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. I’m sure glad that Pong II is still hanging in there, because I don’t know if I could make it without your weekly quiz.

I got numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 13, and I’m pretty sure I know the answer to the question that’s a clue for next week’s quiz.

PabloQ

07-09-2009, 01:35 PM

boy am I behind. Igot 8 on the River Quiz, 7 on the Water Quiz, and 9 on the Sea quiz missing 1, 4, 9 and 13.
Hang in there Pong II. Auntie, maybe if you just gave him (her?) a new name like Mario, or Luigi or Princess Peach, he (she?) will feel invigorated and hang in there. Having name for something extinct might encourage her (him?) to go the way of passenger pigion.

AuntShecky

07-15-2009, 04:47 PM

Previous topic clue: “lawyer”

Perhaps there is no profession as much maligned as that of the lawyers. In old jokes (including politically-incorrect jokes about drunks, blondes, and meddling mothers-in-law) no other target appears as often as the ambulance-chasing, golf-playing mouthpiece with his hands in everybody else’s pockets. For instance, stop me if you've heard this one (well, even if you do stop me, I'm still going to tell it): A cruise ship carrying a group of clergymen, doctors, and lawyers suddenly sinks, dumping its passengers into the shark-infested drink. In short order the sharks consume all of the clergymen and doctors, but they leave the lawyers unscathed. While awaiting for a possible rescue, one lawyer asks another, “Why did the sharks let us survive?” And the other says, “Professional courtesy.”

Maybe lawyers get a bad rap because a situation involving them usually means trouble. But at times when we really need a lawyer, we're grateful for his or her legal representation. Most attorneys are several echelons above Joe Pesci’s character in My Cousin Vinnie, as the process of becoming a lawyer requires years of postgraduate education in addition to the requirement to to pass an excruciatingly difficult bar exam. According to humorist Calvin Trillin, “If law school is so difficult to get through, how come there are so many lawyers?” The answer, of course, is if there weren't such a frequent cast turnover on the many spin-offs of Law and Order, NBC would have nothing to put on its prime time schedule.

Members of the legal profession are not immune to the condition introduced several decades ago in Laurence Peter’s best-seller. The Peter Principle which maintains that every worker "rises to the level of his incompetence,” goes a long way in explaining why so many lawyers go into politics.

Well, before I get slapped with a lawsuit, let me call my next witness, the quiz:

Ordure in the Court

Our first question was sent in by DickZ. (You, too, can be a contributor to the weekly quiz! Stay tuned for more info at the end of this snorefest.)
1. Which Shakespearean play contains the following words “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

2. What is the slang term for a trial in which customary judicial procedure has been undermined by bizarre, topsy-turvy, upside down (or “down under?”) shenanigans which make it a mockery of the real deal?

3. What was the highly-popular series on Masterpiece Theatre in which Leo McKern played a London barrister who often referred to his better half as “She Who Must Be Obeyed”?

4. In addition to being the greatest orator of his time, name the lawyer who, to the disbelief of his nay-saying critics, was elected as Consul of Rome in 64 BC?

5. A 1925 posthumously-published novel by Franz Kafka concerns the predicament of Joseph K., a mild-mannered clerk who is prosecuted by a bureaucratic legal system for an unnamed crime. What was the title of this work?

6. Having sold his soul to Satan in exchange for material wealth, a New Hampshire farmer has second thoughts and hires an famous orator and statesman to help him escape the contract. What is the title of this 1937 short story by Stephen Vincent Benét?

7. At one time he was an intimate confidante to the King, but the conscience of this lawyer, poet, author, and statesman compelled him to oppose Henry VIII’s legal maneuvering to give legitimacy to his marriage with Anne Boelyn. The dissident refused to recant his initial objection, in full knowledge that such a noble stance would cost him his life. Who was this man, one of the few lawyers ever to be canonized as a saint?

8. Which Charles Dickens novel (1852) concerns Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, a labyrinthine law case that drags on for decades?

9. When his son (Junior) told him that he had chosen the law for his profession, his father (Senior), a brilliant American poet (“The Chambered Nautilus”) and well-known physician, hit the ceiling, exclaiming, “A lawyer can’t be a great man!” Junior proved him wrong by becoming one of most eminent Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Both father and son had the same name. What was it?

10. Disguising herself as a male lawyer, Portia pleads her case in order to save her man’s skin, or more specifically a pound of his flesh. Her defense, which begins “The quality of mercy is not strained,” is one of the most famous dramatic speeches of all time. What is the name of the 1595 Shakespearean play in which this scene appears?

11. In 1925, the sensationalized Scopes “Monkey Trial” involved a high school teacher for having the audacity to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, a controversy which is still -- perhaps inexplicably -- timely. In 1960, Lawrence and Lee’s Broadway play Inherit the Wind featured a defense attorney named Henry Drummond, who was the fictional representative of a celebrated American lawyer. Who was he?

12. We usually think of this English poet (1772-1834) as somber as a proverbial judge in such works as Christabel. But he had quite a diabolic sense of humor,as illustrated by this quatrain:
“He saw a lawyer killing a viper
on a dunghill hard by his own stable,
and the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
of Cain and his brother, Abel.”

13. The unlikely hero of an 1894 Mark Twain short novel is an eccentric but earnest attorney, ridiculed by the townspeople, who redeems himself by sorting through mistaken identities and solving a murder case. Each chapter begins with an epigraph such as, “Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET!”

Answers
1. Henry VI, Part Two, IV, ii.
2. Kangaroo court
3. Rumpole of the Bailey
4. Marcus Tullius Cicero
5. The Trial
6. “The Devil and Daniel Webster”
7. Sir Thomas More
8. Bleak House
9. Oliver Wendell Holmes
10. The Merchant of Venice
11. Clarence Darrow
12. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
13. Puddin’head Wilson

Bonus question containing the clue for the next quiz topic. Fill in the missing word:
The chairman of the Congressional Committee investigating Watergate, Senator Sam Erwin of North Carolina, used to say “I’m just an old _______ (what?) lawyer.”

If you can guess the missing word in above, please send a quiz question and answer on that topic to me via PM between now and next Wednesday.

Sources: The usual suspects!

Virgil

07-15-2009, 08:44 PM

I'm out of my slump. I got nine correct: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13.

As it so happens, just this very morning I was kidding a lawyer I debate with elsewhere about the "killing all the lawyers" joke. :lol: And he came back with the play it was from. Obviously it's been used on him a number of times. :D

Darned, I thought for sure the Dickens novel was Dombey and Son, but yes it's Bleak House.

DickZ

07-16-2009, 08:21 AM

Thanks, Auntie, and maybe it’s time to annoint Pong II as King Pong II since he’s continuing to reign supreme.

I got numbers 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, and 13, although I have to admit that for number 4, I just knew the Cicero part but not the Marcus Tullius part.

AuntShecky

07-22-2009, 05:31 PM

Previous bonus answer: Country

In the final months of the life of Buddy Rich, the legendary jazz drummer checked in and out of medical facilities for various tests and treatments. During one hospital gig, a nurse asked Buddy if he were allergic to anything. “Yeah,” he answered, “country and western music.”

Not everybody has an aversion to country music, though one has to admit that in its contemporary version, many of the tunes sound exactly alike, especially the plaintive ballads by female country singers. Although the genre originally was an umbrella under which one could find bluegrass music, Appalachian folk-songs (via Irish, Scottish, and English settlers), cowboy ballads, Bob Wills-style Texas “swing,” and a pasteurized branch of the Blues, the present-day “rococo” of country music is all snap, glamour, and pop, as far away from its folklore roots as Nashville is from Greenwich Village. So much for authenticity, unless you think that after a country singer struts off the stage with its high-tech lighting and state of the art sound system, he heads straight to the barn to kick around a pile o’ manure with his high-heeled boots.

The multi-million dollar music industry aside, western civilization has always had a soft spot in its heart for the pure, fresh air of the countryside. Before the recent big mortgage disaster,for decades folks dreamed of an idealized little cottage in the country. Once they signed a deed, the ink was scarcely dry before they proceeded to renovate the place! A show biz anecdote to illustrate: flush with his success, Moss Hart proudly showed his Bucks County, PA estate, all landscaped and renovated, to his playwriting partner, George S. Kaufman, who remarked: “This is what God could have done if He'd had the money.”

With that, let’s stick a piece o’ hay between our teeth and mosey up to the quiz:

I'm A Little Bit Country (and a whole lot o' other stuff)

Thanks to DickZ for the first question. Hey, fellow LitNutters, why don't you join him and contribute to this weekly spectacular (or spectacle.) See details immediately following the quiz.

1. What was the name of the short story by Edward Everett Hale about a man who in a fit of rage denounces the United States and blares out that he wishes he would never again hear of his country? For that outburst, he is sentenced to spend the rest of his life on various ships of the US Navy, never to set foot upon the shores again, and he comes to understand the folly of his attitude.

2. In 2007, a movie by the Coen Brothers earned multiple awards including Best Picture. Name the title of the film, derived from the first line of a seminal poem by William Butler Yeats.

3. Name the song often played as an alternative to the National Anthem or as an extra number during community events in the U.S. Its tune comes from a British song, “God Save the Queen.”

4. Alan Paton was a South African novelist and humanitarian who devoted his life to healing his homeland suffering from the evils of apartheid. What was Paton’s first book, published in 1948?

5. He’s a jealous husband and his spouse is an unsophisticated naif who quickly picks up the wicked ways of the city in which bawdy 1675 comedy by William Wycherley?

6. Which fable by Aesop contrasts the lifestyles of two diminutive mammalian cousins?

7. For the 1954 movie, The Country Girl, based on the Clifford Odets play, this woman played “against type” and won an Oscar. Not only that, she went on to co-rule a tiny European country in real life! Who was she?

8. Willa Cather once placed the The Country of the Pointed Firs next to Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter for its importance in American literature. Who was the native of Maine who wrote this novel that reaped such praise?

9. First appearing between the years 43-37, Bucolics and Georgics are collectively known as “eclogues,” poems extolling the virtues of farm life. Who was their author?

10. A soliloquy beginning “Friends, Romans, and countrymen” appears in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, III,ii. Which character gives this speech?

11. In 1920 Wilfred Owen wrote a short but extremely powerful poem containing violently raw imagery and a poignant anti-war message. The title of the poem as well as its concluding two lines-- which Owen calls “the old lie” --come from the Roman writer, Horace. What are these lines?

12. What is the literary term for the artificial conventions or artistic style of a painting, poem, or play idealizing the virtues of shepherds, or rustic life in general?

13. And finally, “Sticks Nix Hicks Flicks” was arguably the most famous headline of all time. Name the long-running show business periodical in which this tongue-twister originally appeared.

Answers
1. "The Man Without a Country"
2. No Country for Old Men
3. “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”
4. Cry, the Beloved Country
5. The Country Wife
6. “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse”
7. Princess Grace (Grace Kelly)
8. Sarah Orne Jewett
9. Virgil ( Publius Vergilis Maro)
10. Marc Anthony
11. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”)
12. Pastoral
13. Variety

NOTICE: Please send me your own questions and answers for the next quiz via PM. The topic of the next quiz is the missing word in the following bonus question:

Similar to a title of novel by Balzac, Franz Kafka called his 1919 short story “A Country _______(who?)”

Sources: add to previous noted list: The Portable Curmudgeon, edited by Jon Winokur. New York: New American Library, 1987.

DickZ

07-22-2009, 05:47 PM

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. Keep feeding Pong II whatever it is that you’ve been feeding him. I start getting nervous around 5PM Eastern if the quiz hasn’t been posted yet, but you came through again.

I got numbers 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, and 13, but I have to admit that the only reason I got #13 is because that’s the only show business newspaper I know. I should have gotten #7 too, but didn't pay enough attention to the hint.

Virgil

07-22-2009, 08:05 PM

This was a tough one for me. I only got five correct: 4, 6, 7, 9, 10. Question on number 12. I said bucolic. Here's the definition from M-W:

bucolic
Main Entry:bu·col·ic
Pronunciation:\byü-ˈkä-lik\
Function:adjective
Etymology:Latin bucolicus, from Greek boukolikos, from boukolos cowherd, from bous head of cattle + -kolos (akin to Latin colere to cultivate) — more at cow, wheel
Date:circa 1609
1: of or relating to shepherds or herdsmen : pastoral
2 a: relating to or typical of rural life b: idyllic
— bu·col·i·cal·ly \-li-k(ə-)lē\ adverb
I'm protesting. I think I should get credit. ;)

I didn't think many people knew who Buddy Rich was. Perhaps the greatest drummer of all time.

DickZ

07-23-2009, 09:46 AM

This was a tough one for me. I only got five correct: 4, 6, 7, 9, 10. ...
Well, Virgil, I'm glad you got #9 since you would have had to change your name if you missed it.

Virgil

07-23-2009, 09:53 AM

Well, Virgil, I'm glad you got #9 since you would have had to change your name if you missed it.

:lol: Yes, I would deserve to be thrown off this site if I didn't get that one. :)

AuntShecky

07-23-2009, 11:26 AM

This was a tough one for me. .

But it wouldn't be so tough if other LitNutters would send me some questions! (Hint, hint.)

Oh and Virgil, if you should ever be "kicked off this site," I would quit in protest!

Thank you for taking the quiz.

Virgil

07-23-2009, 08:47 PM

But it wouldn't be so tough if other LitNutters would send me some questions! (Hint, hint.)

Oh and Virgil, if you should ever be "kicked off this site," I would quit in protest!

Thank you for taking the quiz.

:D Thank you Aunty. I really appreciate that. :)

Hey you didn't answer whether bucolic also was a correct answer for number 12.

AuntShecky

07-24-2009, 12:55 PM

:
Hey you didn't answer whether bucolic also was a correct answer for number 12.

Well, Virgil, I looked up "bucolic" in my dictionary, and it had a similar description, but the original question specified literary works about shepherds, whereas "bucolic" is an adjective that could be used for more general situations.

But just to be clear, I don't keep track of how LitNutters "score" on these quizzes. Just like Internet gambling sites, Auntie's quiz is "For entertainment only!"

PabloQ

07-24-2009, 01:12 PM

Can't we all just get along?
I got 1,2,3,6,7, and 13 which I think is pretty dismal.

AuntShecky

07-29-2009, 02:34 PM

Previous bonus clue: “Doctors”

Dr. John Fell, who was Dean of Christ Church at Oxford in the late 17th century, was the subject of what arguably may be the best literary anecdote of all time. When Fell told a certain student, Tom Brown, that he could escape expulsion from the college by successfully translating Martial’s 23rd Epigram,* Brown came up with this:

I do not love thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know and know full well,
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.

*Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
Hoc tantum possum dicere non amo te.

Tom Brown’s disapproval of the academic dean is quite different from our contemporary attitude toward those with the “Dr.” in front of their names, at least the ones who write “M.D.” following them. Indeed, until very recently the average layperson regarded the physician with inordinate respect, as those human high-achievers occasionally get to “play God.” The fondest wish of many an American mother is that her daughter (or son) marry one, as television viewers swoon over actors portraying physicians on daytime soaps and prime time dramas.

Well, I'm not a doctor and I don't even play one on TV, but I know full well that doctors worked damn hard to get where they are: multiple years of post-graduate education and internships financed by scholarships, crushing student loans, and wages from his first wife. Even though it seems that those established in the higher-echelon of the medical profession are flush with what P. G. Wodehouse called “the oil de palm,” the primary motive to become a physician is to help patients. Little did the doctors know that one day they'd find themselves ultimately working for insurance companies.

But just as in the case of lawyers, when we really need a doctor, we're grateful to locate one, even if it means looking for him on the golf course. While he “runs some tests,” instead of taking two aspirin and calling him in the morning, let’s take our weekly medicine. At the end of the quiz -- unlike the usual diagnosis or the typical insurance claim form -- you might actually find a couple of straight answers.

Whazzup Doc?

1. (Courtesy of DickZ): What book by Russian author Boris Pasternak was made into a blockbuster movie starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie?

2. What’s the title shared by Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan tragedy and post WWII novel by the Nobel laureate, Thomas Mann?

3. I.F. Stone states that this man “who became a legend in his lifetime” was the “greatest figure” to become “truly scientific in the full modern sense.” Who was this Greek physician believed to have lived between 460 and 337 B.C.?

4. By day he was a pediatrician in New Jersey, by night one of the most influential figures in twentieth century American poetry. Who was he?

5. And speaking of split personalities, what’s the complete title of the 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson about a doctor who acts as his own guinea pig in an experiment on the nature of good and evil?

6. In which Gospel of the New Testament would one find the advice, “Physician, heal thyself”?

7. Who wrote the 1666 play whose title translated into English is The Doctor in Spite of Himself?

8. Name the 1925 novel by Sinclair Lewis about a small-town doctor who experiences frustration when his idealistic values become compromised.

9. Which Nobel Prize winner wrote the 1906 play, The Doctor’s Dilemma?

10. This term, unfortunately synonymous with “Witch Doctor,” actually refers to a religious figure rather than a “medicine” man, and often appears in discussions about Native American rituals, though the word itself derives from Slavonic origins. What is this word, which starts with the letter “s”?

11. An emotionally powerful 1915 work by Somerset Maugham features Philip Carey, who starts out as a struggling artist but eventually becomes a doctor. Another unforgettable character of the book is a waitress named Millie. Name this novel, which formed the basis for two excellent, similarly-titled movies.

12. “Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob and kill you, too.” When I read that quotation I could not believe that this ultra-serious artist was the source. (Maybe he had one of his cynical characters say the line.) In any event, which internationally-acclaimed writer (1860-1904) wrote that passage?

13. And finally, released in 1964, what was Stanley Kubrick’s ground-breaking anti-war satire deeply dedicated to the well-being and preservation of “precious bodily fluids?”

Answers

1. Doctor Zhivago
2. Doctor Faustus
3. Hippocrates
4. William Carlos Williams
5. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
6. The Gospel of St. Luke
7. Molière
8. Arrowsmith
9. George Bernard Shaw
10. shaman
11. Of Human Bondage
12. Anton Chekhov
13. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Sources: previously noted, especially Brewer’s Dictionary, The Reader’s Encyclopedia, Video Hound Golden Movie Retriever; also, I.F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates, New York: Little, Brown, 1988.

Next quiz topic: “To Be Announced”

DickZ

07-29-2009, 04:23 PM

Thanks, Auntie, for another great quiz. This was the hardest one I can remember, and I’m not going to even mention to my daughter the doctor how poorly I did on it.

I got numbers 1, 3, 5, 11, and 13 – and I left out The Strange Case of part of 5 - but I'm still taking full credit for it.

And I’m on pins and needles waiting for the topic of next week’s quiz.

Taliesin

07-31-2009, 03:34 PM

Got 1,2,3,5,10 and 13
I think that if you had noted that the answer to 12 was a doctor too I might have gotten it.

qimissung

08-03-2009, 03:50 PM

Ouch! Is there a doctor in the house? I only got 1, 2, 4, 10 and 11 right! I knew 12, but my memory did not intercede in time!

Virgil

08-03-2009, 07:56 PM

Well, I got the first five right and then collapsed. 1,2,3,4,5. :)

AuntShecky

08-05-2009, 02:14 PM

Last week we announced that the next quiz topic was “To Be Announced” and that’s exactly what it is. The questions and/or answers below have some connection with the three words “to,” “be,” and “announced.”

To Be (Or Not to Be) Announced

1. “To Althea in Prison,” a poem written in 1649, contains the lines: “Stone walls do not a prison make/Nor iron bars a cage.” Identify the poet.

2. Unable to make a living by renting out his little fishing boat in Key West, Harry Morgan turns to smuggling immigrants and bootleg booze in order to survive and finally comes to the realization that “A man alone ain’t got no . . .chance.” What’s the title of this 1937 novel by Ernest Hemingway and subsequent movie starring Humphrey Bogart?

3. The speaker in a work by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) expresses frustration over being rebuffed by his teasing girlfriend. Name this poem which contains the immortal lines, “But at my back I always hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”

4. What is the title of the 1927 stream-of-consciousness work by Virginia Woolf centered around a long-postponed boat excursion?

5. For two recent decades what was the recruitment slogan of the U.S. Army?

6. Name the 20th century American poet who announced “A poem must not mean but be.”

7. In a 1971 satire, a dim-witted gardener only knows what he’s seen on television, but his tersely obtuse statements propel him into fame as a great political philosopher. Name this novel by Jerzy Kosinski, later adapted in a movie starring Peter Sellers.

8. In a 1925 poem, “Shine, Perishing Republic,” the speaker rails against his country’s vulgar and rotting culture. While holding out the seeds of hope that something better could be cultivated by his children, he advises them to keep their distance from the corruption and warns them: “And boys, be in nothing so moderate as love of man.” Name the American poet who wrote this passionate and extremely provocative poem.

9. What is the term for an introduction to a formal document, such as the U.S. Constitution, announcing its purpose and goals?

10. In the broadcasting realm, to what do the letters “PSA” refer?

11. Celebrated on March 25, what is the name of the Christian feast day which commemorates the Angel Gabriel’s message to the Virgin Mary that she would become the mother of the Messiah?

12. A “letter word” is an informal word that derives from pronouncing the initial letters of the words in a phrase. So what is the letter word that means an announcer,a host of a show, or a toastmaster?

13. And finally, a little musical passage once titled “First Call” or “Assembly of the Buglers” dates back to its military origin circa 1860. Now the ditty is instantly recognizable at the racetrack. What is the title of this tune, which a bugler plays to announce that the horses are about to proceed to the starting gate?

Answers
1. Richard Lovelace
2. To Have and Have Not
3. To His Coy Mistress
4. To The Lighthouse
5. “Be All tht You Can Be”
6. Archibald MacLeish
7. Being There
8. Robinson Jeffers
9. Preamble
10. Public Service Announcement
11. The Feast of the Annunciation
12. “Emcee” (from the letters “m” and “c” in “Master of Ceremonies”)
13. “Call to the Post”

Sources: (add to previously announced sources)
Oxford Companion to the English Language
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1
The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
and the website of the Louisville Courier-Journal

qimissung

08-11-2009, 04:52 AM

Well, I knew 3, but could not for the life of me think of the title! This is the worst ever! I got 9 and 12 right,oh, and half of 11 if you count "Feast of..." which I don't. Tough one, Auntie!

AuntShecky

08-12-2009, 05:30 PM

Ever hear the expression, “Be careful what you wish for – you might get it?” For the past two and half months, folks living on the right-hand side of the United States complained about the atypically cool and rainy weather. “When’s summer going to get here?” they groused. Well, here it is, with enough the stickiness and soaring temperatures in its carry-on luggage to turn the most humid equatorial jungle green with envy.

The proverbial “Dog Days of August” is a bit of a misnomer. The ancient Romans were the first to use the expression because they believed that the time of Great Heat coincided with the appearance of Alpha Canis Majoris in the morning sky in which the Dog Star, the brightest celestial body in the constellation, contributed to the heat of the rising sun. The only difference is that for the Romans the Dog Days occurred in early to mid-July. I'm totally Sirius.

Unless you have a birthday this month, August is probably not your favorite – no holidays! But most folks are softies when it comes to Man’s Best Friend. To illustrate, the famous Random House publisher, Bennett Cerf once noted that books about Abraham Lincoln, doctors, and dogs never failed to do well, so a sure-fire best-seller would be a book titled Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog. (Except, I hasten to add, amongst readers who happen to be cats.)

Hence comes today’s topic, in which the questions and/or answers have some connection with the words "August" and “dog.” So before all of you throw me to the dogs, I'd better quit doggin’ around, and high-tail it to the quiz:

The Dog-gone Days of August

1. Name the seminal historical work by Barbara Tuchman about military operations in Europe during a single month in the year 1914.

2. Since he publicly hated the feminist theme inA Doll’s House, he might be called “the anti-Ibsen. Who was the Swedish playwright (1849-1912) who had a misogynous view and the strident voice of the war between the sexes in such works as Miss Julie?

3. In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, who was the constable who traded malapropisms with his partner, Verges?

4. In post WW II, American forces occupying Okinawa expect the two civilizations to clash, but instead begin to embrace the Japanese customs with open arms. Name this play by John Patrick, also a 1956 movie with the same title and starring Glenn Ford and Marlon Brando.

5.By what honorific name was the first Roman emperor (27-14 BC) known?

6. Name the acclaimed 1975 film about a bank heist executed by two lovers in order to finance a highly unusual surgical operation for one of the duo. (You might recall the most famous line in the movie was one word, “Attica!” shouted by the star Al Pacino.)

7. The conqueror introduced himself to a philosopher by saying, “I am Alexander, surnamed the Great,” to which the philosopher replied, “I am Diogenes, surnamed the Dog.” Name the school of philosophy to which Diogenes belonged, a one-word term that means “dogs” in classical Greek.

8. Who was the Doctor of the Church (354-430) whose youthful indiscretions and subsequent redemption inspired him to write the work called Confessions? One of this saint’s most famous lines was “Give me chastity and continency – but not yet!”

9. Winning several Best Picture awards, what is the 2008 film set in contemporary India about a poverty-stricken youth who becomes a contestant on a television quiz show?

10. To what was British poet Lord Byron referring in this line: “(?) ending in July/To recommence in August.” (Hint: it wasn't upstate New York.)

11. In World War II, G.I.’s wore these metal items for identification. What were they called?

12. The era of classical literature written in England between the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, encompassing works from Dryden through Johnson is known as what “Age”?

13. And finally, this was once a complimentary term for loose and irregular comic verse, but now it’s a put-down for poorly-executed, bad “poetry.” (Of course none of us have ever written anything like that!) But what’s it called?

Answers:
1. The Guns of August
2. August Strindberg
3. Dogberry
4. The Teahouse of the August Moon
5. (Caesar) Augustus
6. Dog Day Afternoon
7. Cynics
8. St. Augustine (of Hippo)
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. “The English winter”
11. dog tags
12. Augustan Age
13. doggerel

Sources: Same as previous quizzes.

Virgil

08-12-2009, 08:49 PM

In your "to be" quiz, I got eight: 2,3,4,5,9.11,12. Only thing I could think of for PSA was the prostate test. :D.

I got seven in your August quiz: 2,5,6,8,11,12,13.

qimissung

08-12-2009, 10:01 PM

I got 8 right this time. Yippee! 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, and 13.

DickZ

08-13-2009, 08:01 AM

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie, and for the time you spend in putting these together. I'm sure it's not all that easy.

I only got 1, 5, 6, 9, and 11 right, but that's still a lot better than I did on the TBA quiz last week.

AuntShecky

08-14-2009, 10:15 AM

Thank you Quissimung, Virgil, and DickZ for giving these quizzes a try -- it makes the time spent on 'em worthwhile, though they are fun to compile!

By the bye, here's a question from the Dog Daze
quiz that was inadvertently omitted, due to absent-mindedness:

A city in eastern Georgia known for its luxuriant golf course shares its name with the capital of the
state of Maine. What is it?

answer: Augusta

AuntShecky

08-19-2009, 03:37 PM

It’s called “The Sport of Kings,” but thoroughbred horse racing may be one of our most democratic of spectator sports. Fans of the fast runners cut across all economic levels: from millionaire horse-owners in their private clubhouse suites and high-rolling, cigar-chomping bettors lining the rail, down to families and tourists lugging their coolers to the picnic area. The excitement is not only infectious, it’s “parimutuel!” Racing fans come in all shapes and sizes, young and old – but mostly old. Whenever the thought of my rapidly-advancing years gets me down, I head to the Off-Track Betting parlor where I'm sure to be the youngest person in the joint.

Speaking of age, the thoroughbred track at Saratoga Springs, NY can claim a history that goes all the way back to the 1860s. The larger-than-life gambler Diamond Jim Brady was a fixture at that track. In his youth Saratoga native writer Frank Sullivan (1892-1976) worked as a “pump boy” at the betting ring and once served a cup of water to legendary actress Lillian Russell. Sullivan went on to fame as a world-class humorist and writer at the New Yorker. (By the bye, when another New Yorker writer, Dorothy Parker, was asked to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence, she quipped “You can lead a hor to culture, but you can't make her think.”)

By now you can probably bet that this week’s questions and/or answers have some connection with our four-legged friends. I guess I'd better head to the starting gate before I get scratched. It is now – - Post Time!

You Can Lead a Horse to Culture

1. The opening number contains this lyric by Frank Loesser: “I got the horse right here/His name is Paul Revere.” What is this frequently-revived Broadway musical based on Damon Runyon’s colorful tales set in Manhattan?

2. In “The Rocking-Horse Winner” a young boy has a mysterious way of bringing money to his financially-strapped and emotionally-bankrupt family. Name the prominent and occasionally controversial British novelist (1885-1930) who wrote this ultimately tragic short story.

3. A trilogy by Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) includes Noon Wine and Old Mortality. What is the name of the opening novella?

4. The young man famous for his movie portrayal of a boy wizard stretched his acting skills in a stage play about a psychiatrist’s patient afflicted with a bizarre fixation upon horses. What is this award-winning drama by Peter Shaffer?

5. He was the subject of a highly-respected non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand which sired an award-winning 2003 movie starring Tobey Maguire. Who was this plucky little thoroughbred who helped lift the spirits of Americans during the Great Depression?

6. “I put my money on the bobtail nag/Somebody bet on the bay” in a popular nineteenth-century American song by Stephen Foster. I'll wager you won't have to spend all the “doo-dah” day to answer this: What’s the title of the ditty?

7. Irish-born modern British author of humorous novels Joyce Cary (1888-1957) created outrageous artist Gulley Jimpson, played in the movie version by Sir Alec Guinness. What’s the title of this book and 1958 film? (Hint: if a stable-owner gives you a free animal, where should you never look?)

8. Speaking of gifts, in which two ancient works, one Greek and the other Latin, can one read the episode of the Trojan Horse?

9. In which classic Marx Brothers movie do the boys wreak their customary chaos at a track that could be Santa Anita in 1937? (Not that I was around in 1937 – I'm old, but not that old!)

10. Not long ago his likeness formed the ubiquitous logo of a gasoline company, but his origins are ancient, not modern. Who is the winged horse of Greek mythology?

11. Owned by a British prince who named him after the rare astronomical phenomenon which coincided with his birth, this horse won so many races in his life (1764-1789) that eventually no other connections wanted to compete against him. In retirement, he was so successfully at siring champions that to this day 80 to 90% of modern thoroughbreds can claim him way back in their pedigree. Who was this unique horse, for whom the annual award for the most outstanding horse in America is named?

12. Rocinante was the beloved steed of which character in a ground-breaking work of Spanish literature, appearing circa 1615?

13. And finally, in Let It Ride, a 1989 movie that enjoys cult status among racing fans, a character proclaims “There’s a fine line between winning and losing.” How does Richard Dreyfuss’s character reply? “Yeah, it’s the _________.”

Answers
1. Guys and Dolls
2. D.H. Lawrence
3. Pale Horse, Pale Rider
4. Equus
5. Seabiscuit
6. “Camptown Races”
7. The Horse’s Mouth
8. Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid
9. A Day at the Races
10. Pegasus
11. Eclipse
12. Don Quixote
13. Finish Line!

DickZ

08-19-2009, 04:40 PM

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. The week just doesn't seem right until your quiz comes out.

I got numbers 3, 5, 6, 9, and 10.

Virgil

08-19-2009, 08:09 PM

Darn I should have gotten Seabiscuit. I enjoyed the movie, but it just wouldn't come to me. Overall I got six: 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12.

AuntShecky

08-20-2009, 12:03 PM

Thank you, DickZ and Virg. In general, I try to keep a semblance of a "literary" connection in each q. and a., but nonetheless I wish I'd had room to have included the following:

National Velvet
Black Beauty (by Anna Sewell)
The Sting (1973) starring Robert Redford and the late, great Paul Newman and . . . .
Bucephalus!
(Maybe they'll all gallop in some future quiz.)

DickZ

08-26-2009, 07:13 AM

Gee, Auntie - while I remember a great carousel in The Sting, which is a fantastic movie, I don't recall too many horses. Unless of course, you're referring to the racetracks that were never actually shown in the film.

AuntShecky

08-26-2009, 03:23 PM

Rock ‘n’ Roll pioneers Bill Haley and the Comets famously opened Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” with the line “Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans!” Today, August 26, Women’s Equality Day, reminds us that we can, if we so desire, unchain ourselves from the stove. Besides, it’s too hot to cook. Nonetheless, the questions and/or answers in the quiz this time contain some form of the words “pot” or “pan.”

1. “All is the for the best in this best of all possible worlds,” said the ever-upbeat, sometimes grating mentor to Candide. (But hey, who couldn't use a supersized helping of optimism these days?) Name this character created by Voltaire 250 years ago.

2. In ancient Greece, he was the god of so much of creation –fields, meadows, forests, flocks - that his name literally meant “everything.” Who was this mythological deity, depicted as half-man, half-goat and often tootling on a pipe?

3. What’s the term for a piece of work done for no other purpose than for money, merely to keep food cooking on the stove? (It usually refers to a writer cranking out something to produce a quick sale, to keep him going to pursue loftier literary goals.)

4. With an upper case “p” it is the name Milton gave to the capital city of Hell; with a lower case initial letter, the word refers to a scene of general disruption, mayhem or chaos. What is this word, which incidentally appears in a lyric of Johnny Mercer’s “Accentuate the Positive?”

5. What was the elusive substance sought by alchemists as a literal “cure-all”?

6. Required viewing for students of the cinema, Eisenstein’s 1925 work set in Odessa about a 1905 rebellion against the Czar forever changed the art of film-making. What was the title of this silent movie, which contains the iconic and often-parodied exterior shot of a wayward baby carriage hurtling down a staircase?

7. Pantagruel was a monumental creature, son of the equally-impressive Gargantua, both designed as satirical characters to point out foibles and abuses of the status quo, circa 1532. Who was the French philosopher and writer who dreamed up these fantastic giants?

8. Who was the self-educated illustrator and artist (1866-1943) who created children’s classics such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit?

9. Her curiosity allegedly prompted her to open a container, inadvertently releasing every evil into the world (with some accounts adding that Hope remained behind.) Who was this Greek counterpart to the Biblical Eve, whose name literally means, “all-gifted?”

10. What is the term for the style of silent acting relying on gestures rather than words, once highly popular in 18th century England and with the Commedia Dell’arte? (Now it's a frequent target in stand-up monologues and cartoons, maybe because it was once called "dumb show.")

11. This figure from works about the Trojan War was once a “hero-god,” but his reputation over the centuries has deteriorated so much that a modern word derived from his name is synonymous with a salacious procurer. We can find him in the works of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and in Troilus and Cressida, the inexplicably-neglected tragedy by Shakespeare. What is his name?

12. What was the perennial 1946 movie by Frank Capra in which “Mr. Potter,” the crusty, avaricious nemesis of George Bailey, appears?

13. And finally, you won't find it at the end of this quiz, but folklore says you just might find it at the end of the rainbow. What is this elusive treasure?

Answers
1. Dr. Pangloss
2. Pan
3. Pot-boiler
4. Pandemonium
5. Panacea
6. (The Battleship) Potemkin
7. Rabelais
8. Beatrix Potter
9. Pandora
10. Pantomime
11. Pandarus
12. It’s a Wonderful Life
13. The Pot of Gold

qimissung

08-26-2009, 07:09 PM

I got 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 13 correct. I probably should have known 7, but c'est la vie.

DickZ

08-27-2009, 08:17 PM

Thanks, Auntie. I got 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 13. So I did much better on this one than I did on the previous one.

PabloQ

08-28-2009, 05:16 PM

Catching up here and before I move on, I got nine right on the Horse Quiz -- 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13. However, I must pick a nit that the Trojan Horse appears in the Iliad and not in the Odyssey. Unless Nurse Ratchett gave me the wrong meds again.

PabloQ

08-28-2009, 05:25 PM

Stuck on 9 correct. This time 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13.

AuntShecky

08-29-2009, 02:54 PM

Thank you DickZ, Q., and Pablo for giving this latest batch o' quizzes a try.

Some clarifications:
I usually avoid posting any questions and/or answers w/o checking them (mostly in print rather than online, but I do use online sites as a last resort.)

DickZ: "The Sting" question -- the title scam totally involves horse racing and makes reference toseveral tracks of the era if not actually showing the races themselves.

The Trojan Horse quibble raised by Pablo: you may be right, but my trusty Reader's Encyclopedia mentions The Odyssey and The Aeneid as the sources for the Trojan Horse episode, which is what I was going by, rather than trusting my own unreliable memory.

Virgil

08-29-2009, 06:27 PM

I got eight. I should have done better. I should have known panacea. I got correct 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13.

AuntShecky

09-02-2009, 05:15 PM

Early September is bittersweet – its crisper weather is welcome, but this month also brings Back-to-School time and Labor Day (as if some of us needed reminding that we are “overeducated and unemployed.”) Still, it’s always appropriate to salute the workers not only in America but also the rest of the world (where eventually, thanks to outsourcing, many American jobs eventually end up!)

Freud told us that along with love, work is the key to psychological health. The latter is not, however, fun. “I do not like work even if somebody else does it,” Mark Twain once quipped. Likewise Huey Lewis and the News, circa 1982: “I’m taking what they’re givin’ ‘cause I’m workin’ for a livin’.” Both observations were topped by “Charlie McCarthy,” whose lines were written by legendary ventriloquist Edgar Bergen: “Hard work never hurt anybody. But why take the chance?”

So, to avoid pink slips or docks in pay, let’s at least look busy with this week’s quiz:

That Objectionable Four-Letter Word

1. His duties included killing the Hydra, capturing the Cretan bull, and mucking out the Augean stables, in addition to nine other back-breaking Labors. Who was this super-strong demigod of Greek mythology?

2. Booker T. Washington’s earnest autobiography made him a hero in some circles; others disagreed with his preference for economic over political and social advancements. What is the title of this historic 1901 book?

3. As a prime example of a writer with “negative capability,” Charles Dickens illustrated his ability to suppress his own personality so that his characters could come alive. Yet the deprivation of his early life, during which he worked in a shoe polish factory, endowed his vision with authenticity. This is especially true in his 1854 novel about the suppression of imagination and the insistence upon “facts” amid the plight of workers in an industrial city called Coketown. What is its title?

4. Set in a sweatshop where a seamstress toils away, an 1843 poem by Thomas Hood contains the line: “It’ s not linen that you’re wearing out/ But human creatures’ lives.” The title of this poem is “The Song of the _____” (what?)

5. His best known work talks about the “big shouldered” Windy City, “hog-butcher of the world.” The speaker in another one of his poems,“The People, Yes,” says: “I earn my living/I make enough to get by/ and it takes all my time.” Name this American poet (1878-1967.)

6. Another great Chicago writer, Studs Terkel, passed away last year, but he left us a legacy of a vision of America seen through the eyes of everyday, ordinary citizens: “history from the ground up.” What was the title of his monumental non-fiction work of 1974, a collection of interviews with more than 130 people?

7. The modern English word “salary” derived from the Latin noun, sal, which means what?

8. Name John Steinbeck’s 1939 masterwork about Oklahomans fleeing the Dust Bowl and emigrating to California to become itinerant farm workers.

9. A couple of decades ago country music queen Dolly Parton wrote and recorded a song about a female office worker. A movie and a recent Broadway musical shared the title of this particular “timely” song. What is it?

10. American readers know him as the author of The Natural, the beloved baseball novel, but he received critical acclaim for The Fixer, his 1967 book about the struggles of a handyman in pre World War I Czarist Russia. Who is he?

11. The intensely expressive novelist Henry Miller (1891-1980) seized wide “latitudes” (so to speak ) in his volume about his romantic exploits in Paris so vivid that the book was banned for its obscenity. Miller used his experience as an employee of Western Union to create the corporate megalith, The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Corporation, in the companion piece to the first autobiographical novel. What was the title of this slightly lesser-known Henry Miller work?

12. This French author (1840-1902) devoted much of his life to championing the cause of justice, notably in the Alfred Dreyfus case. His novel, Germinal, about European coal miners also helped elicit sympathy for exploited workers. Who was he?

13. And finally, we often picture this quotable British writer and playwright (1854-1900) as an esthete, but for at least one day of his life he did actually engage in manual labor, when his professor, John Ruskin, recruited his undergraduates to build a road between Oxford and a nearby village. Unfortunately the road was never completed, although a resident of the little town later remarked, “I don’t think the young gentlemen did much harm.” Who was Ruskin’s famous student, known for bon mots such as “Work is the curse of the drinking class”?

Answers:
1. Heracles (Hercules)
2. Up from Slavery
3. Hard Times
4. “(The Song of the) Shirt”
5. Carl Sandburg
6. Working
7. Salt (Salt was such a valuable commodity in ancient times that it was used to pay Roman soldiers; thus, the origin of the expression, “Not worth his salt.”)
8. The Grapes of Wrath
9. “Nine to Five”
10. Bernard Malumud
11. The Tropic of Capricorn
12. Emile Zola
13. Oscar Wilde

Sources (All highly recommended):
The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes,
The Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Margaret Drabble,
and podcasts available on www.npr.org, especially the programs on Studs Terkel and Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan.

DickZ

09-04-2009, 08:05 AM

Thanks, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12.

qimissung

09-04-2009, 02:18 PM

I got 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Yeesh!

PabloQ

09-08-2009, 03:24 PM

Auntie, I got 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, picked the wrong Jewish writer for 10 (went with Singer), 11, 12, 13 correct.

An apology about The Odyssey and the Trojan Horse. The Iliad and the Odyssey blur for me and somehow I think the war ends in the Iliad. However, your probably right and the horse is probably in Odyssey.

AuntShecky

09-08-2009, 04:03 PM

Thanks DickZ, Q, and Pablo! Next quiz sometime tomorrow, but I don't know the exact time o' day.

AuntShecky

09-09-2009, 06:04 PM

“Training is everything,” Mark Twain wrote; “A cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education.” Hence, the topic for this week – education of various species. From our proverbial ivory towers we might proclaim that there is no greater lesson than learning how to treat others with respect – though one wouldn't know it these days, with our public schools run exactly like medium security prisons. As a case of point, yesterday's opening panel of the posthumously published “Classic Peanuts” comic strip by the great Schulz. While being dragged to the school bus stop by his sister Lucy, Linus says, “Put in a good word for me. . .Tell the guards I came peacefully. . .”

So before I get rapped on the knuckles with a ruler or have to do time in detention, let’s get out our pencils for this week’s lesson plan:

Is This Stuff Gonna Be on the Quiz?

1. How many of the fabled “three r’s” actually begin with that letter?

2. John Hughes was an American screenwriter/director/producer who passed away just last month. His work was praised for his sensitive depictions of adolescents, especially for the film which centers around a small group of high school students forced to spend a Saturday morning confined to detention. What is the name of this well-received movie of 1985?

3. A much earlier Hughes -- Thomas – created a novel in which the title character attends a British boarding school, where he is tormented by a vexatious bully named Flashman. Name this 1857 novel.

4. The works of this American poet (1902-1967) appear on a typical high school English syllabus not only for their multi-layered quality but also for their resonance with contemporary American teenagers. The speaker in “Theme for English B,” for instance, attempts to find common ground with his instructor though both come from different cultures. Name this poet, the leading light of the Harlem Renaissance.

5. Who was the Greek philosopher (ca. 427-ca. 348 B.C.) who ran the Academy outside Athens?

6. Name the beloved comedy written by Sheridan in 1777 which contains several elements of farce, including romantic dalliances, hidden identities (especially behind screens), gossiping busybodies, and vivid characters drawn as broadly as their names: Lady Sneerville, Lady Teazle, and members of a family named Surface.

7. What is the title of Flaubert’s 1869 novel in which the protagonists may be viewed as the male counterpart of Madame Bovary, in the sense that he bases his behavior on his illusions of a romantic hero?

8. An American sportswriter first coined the term for these elite institutions, but varsity football isn't the first thing that comes to mind whenever any of these hallowed halls of learning are mentioned. (Perhaps Stanley Woodward was being ironic, since ivy was once thought to prevent drunkenness.) In any event, what are the names of the colleges in the Ivy League?

9. Who was the lean, lanky, and highly suggestible schoolmaster in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving?

10. The second word of the title of this 1621 prose work by Robert Burton sounds like the first academic course a pre-med student would take. The book itself is set up like a medical treatise, but its use of cultural examples to illustrate the various kinds of mental states established the book as a significant literary work more than a scientific one. What is the complete title? (Don't feel sad or depressed, if you don't get it right.)

11. This American writer, cultural historian, and philosopher (1838-1918) is best known for his autobiographical work, whose purpose was to show how his education “didn't prepare him for the conflicts of the modern world.” He pursued a “lifelong quest to find order and unity” in a world “in the process of disintegration.” (Hmm. Where have we heard that line before?) The author’s name is incorporated within the title of this work, which is what?

12. Name the British playwright who said: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” (Incidentally , urban legend has it that during the era of graffiti, somebody once scrawled, “He who cannot teach teaches gym.”)

13. And finally, who was the title character in the 1959 hit in which the Coasters sing: “He walks in the classroom, cool and slow/Who called the English teacher ‘Daddy-Oh’?” (You may find a hint to the answer in the intro way up at the top of the quiz.)

All right – Pencils Down!

Answers

1. Only one– “reading”
2. The Breakfast Club
3. Tom Brown’s School Days
4. Langston Hughes
5. Plato
6. The School for Scandal
7. A Sentimental Education (L’education sentimentale)
8. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell. (Score yourself a point for each.)
9. Ichabod Crane
10. The Anatomy of Melancholy
11. The Education of Henry Adams
12. George Bernard Shaw
13. “Charlie Brown”

Sources: Reader’s Encyclopedia, Oxford Companion to English Literature, National Geographic Online edition (for #8), and YouTube.com (#13.)

DickZ

09-10-2009, 01:07 PM

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 1, part of 8 (named all but U of Penn and Dartmouth), 9, 12 (by guessing), and 13.

On questions like number 5, I know there’s always a 33% chance of getting any given question right since 99% of the time the answer to Which Greek philosopher did xxxx? turns out to be either Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, but hardly anyone answering it really knows which one.

In fact, in the live online trivia quiz group I’m in, I always avoid asking questions about Which Greek philosopher did xxx? because the computer screen immediately lights up with every one of the three. Of course, even that is better than the notorious What color is yyy? because the screen then lights up with every one of the 64 colors in a Crayola box.

But then I once violated my own rule about color questions, when I said "Well, everybody will know this one - What color was Barbara Fritchie's hair?" I still saw every color in the Crayola box mentioned before anyone came up with gray.

AuntShecky

09-16-2009, 11:55 AM

It’s harvest time! Although you wouldn't know it by the prices in the produce department, late-summer/early-fall is prime time for fruits and vegetables to appear in abundance. Commercial husbandry is always a risky undertaking, as entire crops can be taken under by a mere whim of weather.

Like farmers, amateur gardeners must be optimistic souls, especially up here in the Great Northeast where the growing season is even shorter than Mariah Carey’s skirts. According to conventional wisdom, corn is supposed to be “knee-high by the fourth of July,” but in this neck o’ the woods, it’s more likely to be “still low when the autumn winds blow.” With the possible exception of zucchini, which seem to reproduce like Tribbles or Schmoos, tomatoes are the most difficult to cultivate. Not only do gardeners have to contend with threats by woodchucks, invading insects, and – new this year!--a particularly virulent strain of mold, there’s the annual race against frost, which customarily hits when the fruit on the vine is still green. Whether or not the produce is ripe, the home canning process is an extremely tricky process to avoid the danger of botulism. If you ask me, I think that’s a lot of anxiety and back-breaking work to obtain canned vegetables when you can buy the store-brand on sale for thirty-nine cents apiece. And if you've got a yen for stewed tomatoes, why not duck down to the Dew Drop in on Ladies’ Night?

Aw, shucks! Before somebody throws some rotten produce at me, let’s dig up the quiz:

Shuck and All

1. What is the title of a collection of Carl Sandburg poems as well as the name of the Big 12 football team at the University of Nebraska?

2. Name the title character from a circa 1608 tragedy by Shakespeare to which this phrase refers: “Ripeness is all.”

3. Provide the last word in this warning from Galatians, a New Testament epistle: “Let us not be weary in well doing: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also ___.” (What?)

4. The modern word for a breakfast food derives from the name of the Roman goddess of agriculture, which is what?

5. Name the prominent twentieth century New England poet (1874-1963) who wrote these lines in “After Apple-Picking”: “. . .I am overtired/of the great harvest I myself desired./There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,/Cherish in hand,lift down, and not let fall.”

6. Akin to Thanksgiving in North America, this holiday once widely celebrated in the British Isles occurred earlier in the year “with the bringing in of the last crop of corn of the season.” What is it called?

7. He grafted Eastern philosophy onto American culture in such poems as “Sunflower Sutra” Never afraid to “howl” with political passion, he often displayed wry humor, as in these lines from “A Supermarket in California”: “What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at/night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!–and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the/watermelons?”Identify this giant among mid-twentieth century poets.

8. In which patriotic American song would one sing the phrase: “amber waves of grain”?

9. A beautiful poem by the highly-influential and greatly beloved 19th century English poet (1770-1850) begins with the following lines, whose title is the current month exactly 190 years ago: “The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields./ Are hung, as if with golden shields,/Bright trophies of the sun!”? Identify this poet with the alliterative name.

10. His signature sign-off of was “Good night, and good luck,” but this pioneer in broadcast journalism earned accolades for Harvest of Shame, his 1960 documentary about the plight of migrant farm workers. Who was he?

11. American author John Irving picked up a screen writing Oscar for his 1999 adaptation of his own novel set primarily in a commercial apple orchard in Maine. What was the title of both the movie and the original 1985 book?

12. The ancient mythical symbol of the bounty of growing things was thought to provide an “endless supply” of fresh food. What is its name, which literally translated means “horn of plenty”?

13. And finally, Jack Norworth co-wrote the iconic American anthem, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but he also gets credit for another old standard still heard this time of year. Norworth’s wife, Nora Bayes, co-wrote this song containing the lyric: “I ain’ had no lovin’ since January, February, June or July.” What’s the title?

Answers:
1. Cornhuskers
2. King Lear
3. Reap
4. Ceres
5. Robert Frost
6. Harvest Home
7. Allen Ginsberg
8. “America the Beautiful”
9. William Wordsworth (The poem is called “September,1819")
10. Edward R. Murrow
11. The Cider House Rules
12. Cornucopia
13 “Shine On, Harvest Moon”

Sources: Once again, Reader’s Encyclopedia and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, various anthologies, and the website for the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.

DickZ

09-17-2009, 10:46 AM

Thanks for another great quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 3, 4, 8, 12, and 13.

However, I'm almost ashamed to say that I only got number 1 because of the Nebraska football team, and not through my knowledge of poetry.

AuntShecky

09-17-2009, 01:10 PM

However, I'm almost ashamed to say that I only got number 1 because of the Nebraska football team, and not through my knowledge of poetry.

Actually, in the first draft of this quiz, the question was solely about Nebraska's gridiron team. I came across the Carl Sandburg factoid when looking up something else! But I was glad that I could include a literary reference.

qimissung

09-17-2009, 01:20 PM

I only got 1, 3, 4, 5, and 8 correct.

Virgil

09-17-2009, 08:35 PM

On the education quiz I got only five: 4, 5, 7, 9, 11.

On the harvest quiz I did very well getting ten correct: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. One of my best.

AuntShecky

09-18-2009, 12:50 PM

Thank you q for taking the quiz, and Virgil thanks for going back and taking the one you missed. Great job, everybody!

AuntShecky

09-23-2009, 02:38 PM

We can point to climate change as the culprit behind the droughts that turn southern California into a tinderbox and the rains that are inundating Georgia. We can blame global warming for the fact that the ice caps on the top and bottom of our planet are melting faster than the heart of a teeny-bopper at a Jonas Brothers concert. If the earth were a manic-depressive (and had a good health insurance plan), and it were cured with some prescription medicine, then we could say: ” ‘Bye, polar disorder!” Nope. Sadly, global warming only goes one way - up.

Fortunately, on a daily basis the spiky temperature graph is merely a seasonal thing. In my neck o’ the woods, autumn is a season of contrasts. The morning temperatures can dip down into the forties and thirties, which the afternoon sun may boost way up into the seventies. That’s why it’s so difficult this time of year to decide what to wear – and why so many kids leave their jackets on the schoolbus.

Thus, the topic for this week: each of the question and/or answer involves the words high and low. So before everybody starts giving me heat, and/or – to paraphrase Sholom Aleichem – I get such a chilly reception that the room catches a cold -let’s go to the quiz:

High and/or Low

1. “Mary,” the sweetheart of many of Robert Burns’s poems, hailed from which scenic region of Scotland?

2. When one itches for some insider information, possibly of a shady and disreputable nature, he might say, “Give me the ----“ (what?)

3. In Lost Horizon, a novel by James Hilton and a film by Frank Capra, the natives of a land high in the Himalayas never seem to age. What is the name of this mythical place?

4. Customarily served in the British Isles during the late afternoon or early evening and usually consisting of a substantial warm dish, bread and butter, and the hot beverage mentioned in its name, what is the two-word term for the meal that often forms the setting for many a scene on Masterpiece Theatre?

5. Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) deliberately defied the trend toward modernism by writing poetry the old-fashioned way, with traditional forms such as ballads. His most famous work is about a robber targeting travelers and contains the line: “The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor.” What is its title?

6. What is the title of Maxim Gorky’s most famous novel (1902)about a group of society’s outcasts and destitute souls who try to cling to their illusions while inhabiting a fleabag hotel?

7. What is the colloquial expression for a supercilious, overly-cultured individual or an adjective describing cultural phenomena or entertainment requiring a certain measure of intellectual vigor? The word is often used pejoratively as a substitute for “snobbish” or “highfalutin’ .”

8. What is the collective term for the European lands such as Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg whose geographic locations are near sea level?

9. Name the Texas native (1921-1995) who wrote “literary” mysteries such as Strangers on a Train as well as a series of novels featuring the high-living villain, Mr. Ripley.

10. Various branches of a highly-respected New England family can boast of the astronomer who discovered the erstwhile planet Pluto and three poets: James Russell (1819 -1891), Amy (1874-1925), and Robert(1917-1977.) What is the surname of these Boston Brahmins (no relation, methinks, to Mike, the equally-worthy, current third baseman for the Red Sox.)

11. Name the musical composer (1901-1988) who was lyricist’s Alan Jay Lerner’s partner for the creation of such hits as Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, and Brigadoon.

12. According to the English Book of Common Prayer, who or what is described as being “a little lower than the angels?”

13. And finally, name the title of the traditional spiritual in which one would hear the line, “Coming for’ to carry me home.”

Answers
1. Highlands
2. Lowdown
3. Shangri-La
4. High tea
5. “The Highwayman”
6. The Lower Depths
7. Highbrow
8. The Low Countries
9. Patricia Highsmith
10. Lowell
11. Frederick “Fritz” Loewe
12. Man
13. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”

Sources: Same as last time!

DickZ

09-24-2009, 09:01 AM

Thanks for another great quiz, Auntie. I'm feeling pretty low because I only got numbers 3, 5, 10, 11, and 13 right. And I didn't even need to use your helpful clue for number 10.

But I'll get over this low feeling before high noon today.

AuntShecky

09-24-2009, 01:29 PM

DickZ

09-25-2009, 07:25 AM

Gee, Dick, I was worried about whether the q. about "The Highwayman" was too obscure, so it makes me feel good that you got that one.
Hope you were just making a joke about feeling "low" and that you hit a high note soon.
I can't be positive because it happened so very long ago, but I think The Highwayman was the first poem I encountered in high school. I've remembered it ever since.

AuntShecky

09-25-2009, 12:45 PM

I can't be positive because it happened so very long ago, but I think The Highwayman was the first poem I encountered in high school. I've remembered it ever since.

Me,too! It was in 9th grade, and the teacher used that poem to illustrate a metaphor.

AuntShecky

09-30-2009, 04:09 PM

When they're not warning us that we're mere moments away from succumbing to West Nile/Monkey Pox/Swine Flu, national news anchors are thundering about The Storm of the Century, even though the present century has only been here for less than a decade. The network broadcasters intone their doomsday prophecies in utter seriousness, as if any viewer foolish enough to ignore the reports would do so at his or her peril. Local “News Center 3, 5, 7 (or whatever number)” follow their big brothers’ leads, but it’s best to take whatever they say with a grain of rock salt.

A case in point: on Sunday morning, October 4, 1987, inhabitants of upstate New York and western New England woke up to the sounds of sharp, snapping noises. The view from many windows revealed the same scene: bent and broken tree branches, still laden with a full complement of leaves, which hadn't even begun to change color yet, let alone fall to the ground. Streets and roads were crisscrossed with downed telephone wires and power lines. But most startling of all is that everything was covered with snow, from 6.5 to 20 inches deep, depending on the regional altitude. Schools and businesses closed, and some residents were without power for more than two weeks, but the worst aspect of this snow “Emergency” was that the storm had been a complete “surprise.” Folks were shoveling and plowing their way out of what the local weather reports had called “partly cloudy.”

A few decades before that Blizzard of ‘87, when I was a little girl, we were the last family on the block to get a television set. Back then the local “weatherman” (not the more pretentious “meteorologist”) showed us what kind of weather to expect with little cardboard cut-outs of a sun, a cloud, an open umbrella and other cartoon figures. I don't want to rain on anybody’s parade, but that low-tech forecast was far more accurate than today’s millions of dollars worth of satellite photos and Doppler radar.

All of this precipitates this week’s topic -- weather. So before this interminable snow job makes everyone storm out of here, I'd better give the forecast:

Cloudy, with a Chance of a Quiz

1. What is the title of the last play Shakespeare wrote? Its title is an old-fashioned word for a storm.

2. Socrates and his philosophical colleagues were satirized (some say unfairly) in a comedy by Aristophanes circa 423 BC. What was the “lofty” one-word title of this play?

3. According to American poet Carl Sandburg, what is the weather phenomenon that “comes in on little cat feet”?

4. The sea voyage back to Ithaca suffered another serious setback when his all-too-curious crewmen let loose the contents of a leather bag, which Aeolus had given to Odysseus with the strict instructions that it was not to be opened. Who was Aeolus?

5. W. Somerset Maugham’s tale about Miss Sadie Thompson and her seduction by a missionary in the South Seas spawned several theatrical and movie versions under which single weather word?

6. What’s the title of a renowned poem by Shelley, who enlightened posterity with this note about how it was conceived “on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumn rains. They began as I foresaw at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by . . .magnificent thunder and lightning.”

7. Early in his illustrious career this Canadian-born American novelist (1915-2005) wrote Henderson The Rain King. Who was this writer who in 1976 won the Nobel Prize for Literature?

8. Name the chief character in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days.

9. The action of his 1963 novel, Cat’s Cradle, zeroes in on “Ice-9,” a substance which has the potency to turn the entire world into a frozen graveyard. Who was the American novelist (1922-2007) who specialized in science-fiction satire?

10. Name the British poet (1808-1892) who was so inspired by Arthurian legends that he created stirring lines, such as this one describing “Avilion” (Avalon) as a place “Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow/nor ever wind blows loudly.”

11. Some homeowners who recently found themselves “under water” with their mortgages most likely wouldn't find consolation in the fact that a fictional amphibian actually owns a country estate. What is this 1908 book by Kenneth Grahame whose characters include Toad of Toad Hall?

12. Who wrote Gravity’s Rainbow , a 1973 tour de force about a suicidal missile race in the post WWII world?

13. And finally, what’s the title of the Irving Berlin standard that contains the lyrics “Never saw the sun shinin’ so bright/never saw things goin’ so right”?

Answers
1. The Tempest
2. The Clouds
(Half credit if you said “cloudcuckooland,” which appears in another Aristophanes play, The Birds.)
3. The Fog
4. Greek god of the winds
5. Rain
6. “Ode to the West Wind”
7. Saul Bellow
8. Phileas Fogg
9. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10. Tennyson
11. The Wind in the Willows
12. Thomas Pynchon
13. “Blue Skies”

DickZ

10-01-2009, 07:37 AM

Thanks, Auntie, for another great quiz. I got numbers 1, 3, 5, 8, 11, and 13. I enjoyed reading The Wind and the Willows as an adult, and I think that I got a lot more out of it than I would have as a child.

PabloQ

10-02-2009, 04:54 PM

For the education quiz a measly 7 (+7 for the rest of the Ivy League), nabbing 1, 2, 4, 8,9, 11, and 13. Charlie Brown is my idol.

For the Children of the Corn quiz, an 8 -- hitting the mark on 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, and 12.

Virgil

10-02-2009, 07:52 PM

On the high/low quiz I only got four: 2, 8, 10, 12. :(

On the weather quiz I got an eight: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12.

AuntShecky

10-03-2009, 02:35 PM

Thanks everyone, for taking our little quiz.

AuntShecky

10-07-2009, 04:31 PM

Mid-October reminds us of a world-changing discovery by an Italian explorer hired by a husband-and-wife team of entrepreneurs ruling Spain. Imagine that --the first instance of “outsourcing” goes back to ‘92 – 1492.

Columbus wasn’t really the first one to discover the new world. The idea that the honor belongs to Leif Ericsson of the Vikings hasn’t really stuck– sort of like Brett Favre’s retirement. It’s also false that Columbus found a totally uninhabited land. He set ashore on a island already populated with folks he erroneously dubbed “Indians,” who reportedly told him, “No parade for you until you show us your green card.”

In our contemporary elementary schools, lessons about early explorers aren’t as prominent as they once were. That’s why if you ask a kid, he’ll tell you that Columbus was the guy behind the “Harry Potter” and “Home Alone” movie franchises. Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria? An R&B girl group from the sixties. And don’t even go near the phrase “land ho!”

So before my ship sails off the edge of the flat earth, let’s explore this week’s topic, which has to do with Italy, Spain, and a little country that often maxes out its limit on its Discover card, and is late making payments on the Visa.

"Diss"-cover This!

1. What is the geographical setting for such Shakespearean plays as Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and (partially) Antony and Cleopatra?

2. What is the title of Thomas Kyd’s 1584 revenge drama rife with political intrigue, murder, suicide, and mayhem?

3. Name the 1988 Eddie Murphy vehicle in which the comedian portrays a prince who travels across the Atlantic in search of a bride.

4. It’s believed that Geoffrey Chaucer borrowed the structure for his Canterbury Tales from an Italian literary work dating from the year 1351. What is the title of Boccaccio’s opus, which stems from ten tales told by each of ten travelers trying to escape the Black Death?

5. Set in Spain during a time of religious persecution, “The Grand Inquisitor” is often published separately from the lengthier work in which it first appeared. What is the title of that larger masterpiece by Dostoevski, which is also the last novel that he ever wrote?

6. What is the title, derived from a line in The Tempest, of the 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley which predicts a future dystopia?

7. What is the beautiful (though somewhat damp) city that forms the setting for a novel by Thomas Mann, The Aspern Papers by Henry James, and several plays by William Shakespeare?

8. Using pre-existing source material, Mozart composed an 1789 opera about a character, Figaro, who is lively, romantic, and an expert in things sartorial. The same character shows up in a later opera under a different title. What is Rossini’s 1816 opera called?

9. By the seventeenth century, scientists and artists had begun to accept the fact that the world was not flat and that other lands lay beyond the vast ocean. One holy sonnet begins “At the round earth’s imagined corners” and another love elegy contains this line describing the speaker’s beloved: “O my America! My new-found land!” Name the metaphysical poet (1572-1631) who composed those lines.

10. What is the title of the 1908 E.M. Forster novel whose action centers around a young tourist who is not 100% satisfied with her accommodations in Italy?

11. Before becoming one of the first fatalities in the Spanish Civil War, he had produced such poems and plays as “Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter,” The House of Bernardo Alba, and Poeta en Nueva York. Who was this author (1898-1936), the best-known modern poet and playwright in Spain?

12. A suburban husband abandons both job and family in hopes of a rosier life with one of his daughter’s classmates in this 1999 movie which captured five Academy Awards. What is it?

13. And finally, in which Lerner and Loewe musical would you heard the phrase, “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain?”

Answers
1. Rome
2. The Spanish Tragedy
3. Coming to America
4. The Decameron
5. The Brothers Karamazov
6. Brave New World
7. Venice
8. The Barber of Seville
9. John Donne
10. A Room With a View
11. Frederico Garcia Lorca
12. American Beauty
13. My Fair Lady

DickZ

10-08-2009, 08:36 AM

Thanks, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, and 13. I should have gotten 7 as well, but didn’t pay enough attention to your clue.

PabloQ

10-10-2009, 09:42 AM

I get so far behind on these and I'm not sure how. In summary:
Nine correct on High/Low - 1, 2, 4, 5 (what a flyer on the guess on this one), 7, 8, 10,11 and 13.
Nine on the Weather Report and I'm still kicking myself for missing the Sandberg question - 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9 (better have this one correct), 10, 11, 12
Ten on the Columbus Day - 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, and 13. I'll admit to the flying guess on the Dostoyevsky question.

Virgil

10-10-2009, 11:12 AM

I did great on this one Aunty. Being Italian-American i think I made Columbus proud. :)

I got nine correct: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13. I'm kicking myself for not getting the Barber of Seville. I knew that, but it just wouldn't come to me.

AuntShecky

10-10-2009, 04:28 PM

I'm so gratified that folks are doing better on these things.
Finally, finally, maybe the questions are getting better --but you LitNetters keep getting smarter all the time!

Virgil

10-10-2009, 04:54 PM

but you LitNetters keep getting smarter all the time!

Perhaps others, but you can't possibly be referring to me. :D

AuntShecky

10-14-2009, 05:44 PM

Viva Hispanic Heritage Month! Way, way, way back in my schooldays the only multi-cultural items you could find were a can of chili con carne and an occasional Perez"Prez" Prado tune on the AM radio. The teachers spent mucho tiempo telling us about European male explorers and the white-washed exploits of the conquistadores. There was never a word about José Marti (1853-1895), the great Cuban poet and essayist, or novelist George Lamming from the island of Barbados, or playwright Francesco Arrivi from Puerto Rico. Back then the curriculum not only failed to recognize the literary contributions of Latinas, but also made a point of mostly ignoring women writers of every ethnicity. Recent years seem to have brought recognition to the works of Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat and Jamaica Kincaid, born in Antigua as Elaine Potter Richardson in 1949. But if we had depended on the former “establishment” in the U.S. to teach us about inclusiveness, all we would know about the rich, diversified culture of some our neighbors to the south would be the pejorative term (and retail clothier) “Banana Republic,” voodoo dolls and zombies, and the Johnny Depp pirate movie franchise.

This week features Caribbean and Central America along with as a more northerly group of colonizers in a little ditty we like to call:

“Yanqui, Go Home!”

1. The word “Yankee,” a diminutive of “John,” derived from the language of Europeans who settled in New Amsterdam and the Hudson Valley, as well colonizing much of the West Indies. What was the nationality of the people who called the
British colonists "Yankees"?

2. Cuban refugee Nilo Cruz won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for a work about immigrants who work in a Florida cigar-factory while a “lector” helps to relieve the tedium by reading to them a novel by Leo Tolstoy. What is the name of this play?

3. What is the body of water whom the Spanish colonizers named after their word for the indigenous people who lived on its islands, which in their own language meant “brave?”

4. What’s the title of a simple song popular during the American Revolution which features a foppish British soldier, a pony, and a feather?

5. Starring Yves Montand, a 1955 masterpiece by French film director Henri-Georges Clouzot depicts a Central American town whose people are exploited by an American oil corporation and focuses on a small group of men who try to escape by transporting a truckload of nitroglycerine, ostensibly to extinguish a fire in a remote oil well. What’s the title of this movie, remade in 1977 by William Friedkin as The Sorcerer.

6. Mostly known as having been on the losing side of a famous duel, who was the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, the only American founding father who had been born in the West Indies?

7. Jean Rhys (1894-1979), born in the West Indies of Welsh and Creole parents, achieved acclaim in 1966 with her novel, The Wide Sargasso Sea. Though setting on a Caribbean island, the chief character is the first Mrs. Rochester, so this book could be considered a latter-day “prequel” to which prominent Victorian novel?

8. Beginning his life in 1930 on the island of St. Lucia, Derek Walcott grew up to write poems such as “Crusoe’s Island” which attempt to move toward a reconciliation between diverse, or often antagonistic, cultures. His poetry blends native rhythmic patterns with more conventional verse forms. A recurrent theme is an intense personal responsibility tempered with peaceful resignation, as in these lines in “Codicil”:
"To change your language you must change your life./ I cannot right old wrongs." What is the distinctive literary honor which Derek Walcott shares with only one other person in the world? (So far.)

9. What is the two-word phrase that can refer to, among many other items: a New England sailing ship of the 19th century, a Boeing seaplane, a specific major league baseball player from the 1940s and 50s, and the Apollo 12 Command Module?

10. What is the geographical term for the type of narrow land area on which the Panama Canal was constructed?

11. In his later non-fiction travel pieces Mark Twain was a champion for the Third World nearly a century before the term was first coined. But he was best known as a comic novelist. What is the title of his time-traveling satiric novel whose chief character is a superintendent of a Hartford factory?

12. In 1816, an ocean away from Central America, the Victorian poet John Keats wrote the stirring sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” The poem is gorgeous throughout, but – like all of us! – Keats made one little factual error in these lines:
“Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/He star’d at the Pacific– and all his men/Look’d at each other with a wild surmise–/Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” What was the mistake?

13. And finally, in a Broadway musical and movie based on a 1954 novel by Douglas Wallop, a middle- aged baseball fan makes a Faustian deal with the devil in order to get on the starting roster of the Washington Senators. Name this show, in which you might hear these lyrics sung in the clubhouse locker room: “So what’s the use of cryin’/ Why should be curse/ We gotta get better/ Cause we can’t get worse!”

Answers

1. The Dutch
2. Anna in the Tropics (as in “Anna Karenina”)
3. Caribbean Sea
4. “Yankee Doodle”
5. The Wages of Fear
6. Alexander Hamilton
7. Jane Eyre
8. Along with V.S. Naipaul, a British novelist born in Trinidad who received the honor in 2001, in 2003 Derek Walcott is the only other person born in the West Indies to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
9. “Yankee Clipper”
10. Isthmus
11. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
12. Keats had the wrong explorer. Balboa, not Cortez, is credited with having discovered the Pacific Ocean.
13. Damn Yankees

DickZ

10-14-2009, 10:37 PM

Thanks for another great entertaining quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.

AuntShecky

10-15-2009, 05:31 PM

Please give yourself credit for #1, DickZ. It wasn't worded clearly, but I have since corrected it. --AS

Virgil

10-15-2009, 08:15 PM

I got seven correct: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11. I should have done better though. I should have gotten Yankee Clipper and Damn Yankess. Shame on me. ;)

I never knew that "Yankee" was a variation of John.

AuntShecky

10-16-2009, 02:15 PM

Virgil

10-16-2009, 06:42 PM

Thanks for taking the quiz, Virgil. In the Yankee Clipper question I thought about actually mentioning Joe DiMaggio's name, but I wasn't really sure of how to spell it.
By the bye, your blog is a GRAND SLAM!

Why thank you. I probably would have gotten Yankee Clipper if you had mentioned DiMaggio. ;)

AuntShecky

10-21-2009, 04:40 PM

Sometimes I wonder why I get all worked up over the fact that the proper use of the apostrophe is virtually unknown anywhere in the contiguous United States (as well as Hawaii and especially Alaska.) After reading an article from a link in Virgil’s blog, I've discovered that I may be a “Snoot.” --
http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/whatisasnoot.htm

If I am indeed a full-fledged member of Snoothood, I would be proud to count myself among such great Snoots as the late William Safire and Lynn Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

Instead of gassing over grammatical gaffes and directing diatribes toward the punctuation-deprived, I should perhaps direct my passion and energy toward more culturally significant issues, such as why does the NHL insist on calling Toronto’s team “The Maple Leafs?” Additionally, this time of year renews my confusion over distinguishing between maples and sycamores. So far the only difference I can see is that you don't have to apply for a third mortgage in order to buy a bottle of sycamore syrup.

This week we're attempting to tell the forest from the trees with questions and answers about things arboreal, some deciduous, including a few stems just beginning to sprout. Since I'm already “past peak” and couldn't be less “poplar,” it “wood” be best to start climbing down to the quiz, which we like to call

Trees, Shoots, and Leaves

1. What is the title of the hit song from 1955, a real “fall classic,” which includes Johnny Mercer’s lyrics about the seasonal phenomena that “drift by my window?”

2. Like comets, meteors were once thought to be bad omens, as described in Hamlet, I,1: “. . .with trains of fire and dews of blood/Disasters in the sky.” What is the two-word term for these celestial streakers in the night sky?

3. Name the playwright whose Desire Under the Elms (1924), inspired by Greek tragedy, concerns a patriarch and his much-younger second wife who seduces her stepson in order to conceive an heir.

4. “Song of Myself” is one of the most famous of Walt Whitman’s poems, collected in a volume whose first edition appeared in 1855. What is the title of this poetry collection?

5. A (necessarily) gigantic tree binding together all of heaven, earth, and hell was thought to be the Tree of Life and Knowledge, as well as of Time and Space. In which mythological tradition would we find this tree called “Yggdrasil”? (Be still, Spell-Check!)

6. Throughout his spectacular career, he had won such honors as the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes, but his 1950 novel, Across the River and Into the Trees, drew mostly yawns from the critics. Who was he?

7. Name the kind of leaves from which the ancient Greeks fashioned wreaths to crown their athletic heroes, who in turn could “look to,” but never “rest on” them.

8. At Fredericksburg, a 96-year-old Civil War heroine confronted Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson with the lines: “ ‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head/ But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.” What is the 1863 eponymous poem by John Greenleaf Whittier in which those lines appear?

9. Speaking of the Old Line State, Maryland-born Munro Leaf (1905-1976) was a former English teacher who wrote, among other children’s books, Grammar Can Be Fun. What is the title of Leaf’s most famous work about a Spanish bull who prefers smelling wildflowers to fighting?

10. Name the poet who begins one of his 154 sonnets with the lines: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold/When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang.”

11. Because of its references to “God” and “prayer,” it probably no longer appears in the syllabus of public schools, but years ago the poem was a huge favorite in elementary classrooms, though literary critics abhorred it. What is the one-word title of this 1913 poem by Joyce Kilmer?

12. Who wrote the 1907 short story, “The Last Leaf,” about an ailing young lady who resolves to cling to life as long as a single autumn leaf remains attached to a branch outside the window of her Greenwich Village apartment?

13. And finally, the American playwright and raconteur George S. Kaufman (1889-1961) once wielded power as the drama critic for the New York Times. When a press agent asked how he could get the name of an actress he was representing printed in the paper, what was Kaufman’s two-word reply?

Answers

1. “Autumn Leaves”
2. Shooting stars
3. Eugene O'Neill
4. Leaves of Grass
5. Scandinavian (Norse)
6. Ernest Hemingway
7. Laurel(s)
8. “Barbara Frietchie”
9. The Story of Ferdinand
10. Shakespeare
11. “Trees”
12. O. Henry
13. “Shoot her!”

Sources: Brewer’s, Reader’s Encyclopedia, The Portable Curmudgeon (Jon Winokur,ed.)
and “Why English Teachers Can't Read Poetry,” by John Kilgore:
http://www.eiu.edu/~ipaweb/pipa/volume3/kilgore.htm

DickZ

10-21-2009, 11:37 PM

Great quiz, Auntie. I'm always amazed at how you pick such timely topics for your quizzes. You certainly put lots of thought into these quizzes, and I hope everyone recognizes this fact.

I got numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, and 11, but I have to admit that the only reason I got number 10 is the fact that Shakespeare is the only writer I know of who wrote so many sonnets. I am not familiar with the particular one you cited here.

AuntShecky

10-22-2009, 12:41 PM

I have to admit that the only reason I got number 10 is the fact that Shakespeare is the only writer I know of who wrote so many sonnets. I am not familiar with the particular one you cited here.

That one would be #73, which, according to some interpretations, could be an allusion to aging. But what's remarkable about that second line:
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

is that the reader can see the speaker (the "I" of
the poem) actually changing his mind before our eyes. More prosaic writers may have had the leaves in a more or less chronological order, (leaves. . .none. . .few), but here he defies logic; it's as if he's saying, no -- "let's leave a few leaves left on the trees,I don't want to go as far as
having the tree totally bereft of leaves, i.e., I'm aging, but I do have a few years left."

It has been said that one of the reasons Mozart is so great is that when we're hearing one of his works, we think we know what the next note will be, but Mozart throws in something entirely different -- but one that is exactly right!

That's what art,music, and poetry is supposed to do-- surprise us, even confuse and perplex us! That's especially true of Shakespeare --and of Frost, which is exactly what John Kilgore says in that article linked in "sources" above.

OrphanPip

10-22-2009, 01:02 PM

What's interesting about that sonnet is the way the metaphors move from seasons, to a leafless tree, to the setting sun, and finally to a dying fire. It gets gradually more hopeless as you realize that the speaker is not only speaking of aging, but of death. Then you get that sweet little couplet about how that all makes loves so much better ;).

Anyway, I got 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, and 13.

As to the name of the hockey team, the official story is that it is named after a regiment from the Toronto region that served in WWI called the Maple Leaf regiment. Thus, as a proper noun, people who belong to the Maple Leaf regiment are Maple Leafs.

qimissung

10-27-2009, 08:30 PM

Well, for the Phillies quiz I got 1, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 13.

And for this one I got 1, 4 5, 7 8, 9 and 10.

I should have gotten 2 and 11, of course! I've read that story in 13, but couldn't bring his name to mind, nor Eugene ONeill's name. Doh!

AuntShecky

10-28-2009, 04:40 PM

Don't get me wrong -- I like chocolate and pumpkins (eaten separately, of course), but if I ever said that Halloween was my favorite holiday, I'd have to have my gourd examined. I don't want to sound like a calendar-challenged Ebeneezer Scrooge*, but All Hallow’s Eve is just an excuse to cause mayhem with the alternative of shaking down folks for free junk food. Around here we call that “legalized extortion.” Anybody who celebrates Halloween should be lit like a candle in his own Jack o’ Lantern with the pointed end of a piece of candy corn staked through his heart.

Nah, I kid, I kid. But the most disturbing fact about how the ancient pagan ritual is commemorated in the US is the high percentage of adult celebrants! Among those superannuated revelers, many actually dress up in costumes. They would look ridiculous dressing up like their children’s favorite animated characters, even if they could find a Tickle Me Elmo or a Bratz doll in Size XXX Lrg. Adults occasionally go in a really scary costume, like a monster (a bank that’s “too big to fail”), or a vampire (the “deductible” on their health insurance plan.) They could rip their outfit, Law and Order style, “straight from the headlines “-- such as a mask of Bernie Madoff, whose face might not be instantly recognizable but whose multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme certainly rings a bell. Or maybe they could get really creative by going as a hot air balloon – either as the reality-show obsessed family or the instantly-inflated monthly payment on the adjustable rate mortgage. In any event, every adult who dresses up for Halloween ultimately looks like the same creature – an overgrown kid. And that's really scary!

To this week’s quiz, in which each q and/or a in our hair-raising (er, hare-brained) haunting has something to do with a sweet snack or devious hijinks, such as practical jokes and the like. So before some ghoul throws toilet paper all over the lawn or pelts me with eggs that didn't even come from free-range chickens, let’s go to the fright-fest, which we like to call

Trick or Treat

1. Found in the myths from Africa and Native Americans of both continents, this shape-changer was a god, a human, or an animal, whose raison d’etre was to make trouble, or to shake up the status quo. Often given the name of Raven or Coyote, what is the one-word general term for this archetypal prankster?

2. A folk song about these delectable treats can be found on an album by Peter, Paul, and Mary (the recently-departed Mary Travers.) What were these edibles distributed to the poor in front of many a church door in Britain on November 2, the day after All Hallow’s Day?

3. This American author wrote a whale of a book as well as several tales set in the South Seas, but one of his masterworks concerned a master of disguises who succeeded in fooling the passengers on a riverboat cruise. So who was the novelist who created The Confidence Man?

4. There are two movie versions of Roald Dahl’s fanciful book about a confectioner and the young lad who wins a contest to tour his manufacturing facility. What’s the original title of this book?

5. Who was the Homeric hero known for his 20-year quest to return home, but especially known for his cunning and devious tricks, such as pulling the wool over the eyes (or eye) of the Cyclops?

6. An “Abram-man” or a “Tom o’ Bedlam” was the name of a beggar, who, dressed in a distinctively strange get-up, engaged in crazed behavior in order to elicit alms from passers-by. What exactly was “Bedlam”?

7. An early 20th century American song by Harry McClintock which referred to “lemonade springs where the bluebird sings.” Far from being family-friendly, however, the lyrics also extolled cigarette trees and whiskey trickling down the hills. What is the name of this song? Fans of Wallace Stegner might know it as the title of his first novel.
(What? You're not a Wallace Stegner fan? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stegner)

8. Known for a novel about Paul Gaughin as well as his masterpiece, Of Human Bondage, who was the British author (1874-1965) who wrote Cakes and Ale, a comic novel about Rosie Driffield, the long-suffering spouse of a “Grand Old Man of Letters” the character thought to be based on the real-life Literary Light, Thomas Hardy.

9. What was the “squat, plump little cake,” the “cookie” which served as the memory- trigger for the narrator of Swann’s Way, the opening volume of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past? (Hint: the name of the cookie is also a feminine name, which doesn't necessarily mean that a female carrying that name is squat, plump, and little.)

10. Characters in this “iconic” American author’s books were no strangers to tricks, pranks and practical jokes, such as using reverse psychology to get out of an unpleasant painting chore or witnessing one’s own funeral. In his later years, the writer, truly a “media celebrity “a century before that term appeared, never appeared in public unless he was wearing his trademark costume – an elegant white suit. Who was he?

11. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote a long, fantastic poem about two sisters tempted by the sweet and delectable wares sold by a group of little troll-like traveling salesmen. Though lines such as: “ ‘Come buy, come buy,’/with its iterated jingle/Of sugar-baited words” sound as if they came from a 21st century commercial, critics believe the poem itself is a religious allegory full of sexual undertones. What’s the three-word title of this poem?

12. “The pennycandy store beneath the El/is where I first/ fell in love/ with unreality/ Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom/of that September afternoon/A cat upon the counter moved among/the licorice sticks/and tootsie rolls/and Oh Boy Gum” begins a delicious poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Born in New York, he relocated to San Francisco in 1951, where he established the City Lights Bookstore and Publishers, which first published the works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, and Burroughs – a group of poets known by what term?

13. And finally, in his 1956 hit, what did Screamin’ Jay Hawkins say he did?

Answers
1. Trickster
2. Soul-cakes
3. Herman Melville
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
5. Odysseus
6. A mental hospital, or a lunatic asylum. (In order to free up space, the seemingly less dangerous inmates were let out onto the street and left to their own devices. Sort of an “early-release” program, I suppose.)
7. “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”
8. W. Somerset Maugham
9. Madeleine
10. Mark Twain
11. “The Goblin Market”
12. The Beat Poets
13. “I Put a Spell on You”

Sources: Reader’s Encyclopedia, Brewer’s, Youtube.com, referencecenter.com
*and “Boo, Humbug,” by Michael Elliott
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/elliott/article/0,9565,525415,00.html

DickZ

10-28-2009, 11:53 PM

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10.

AuntShecky

10-29-2009, 01:17 PM

Thanks for taking the quiz,DickZ. I had qualms about question #2, and had to go back and edit it -- wrong date!

But early this morning I saw an ad for Sting's new album, and he was singing that very song in the commercial! I guess that's what they used to say in the early days of Saturday Night Live: what a "Coinky-Dinky!"

Hope you --and anyone who happens to pass by this thread-- will get a chance to read that Time magazine article, "Boo,Humbug."

Oh, and what a fabulous poem that Ferlinghetti one is! It's encompasses childhood, sex, adolescence, the passing of time, and death in just a few highly accessible lines! Wow. You could
find the complete poem on line here:

http://www.litkicks.com/FerlinghettiSeeger/

And confidentially, if my question earlier this week hasn't worn you to a "Frazz"le the answer appears in today's comic strip. I can't believe I was actually right for a change, though it took a couple o' days to figure out the answer!

AuntShecky

11-04-2009, 05:26 PM

Among the volumes of rich stories about the Immigrant Experience, we have to include one Vladimir Alexandrovich Dukelsky. Although his family was connected to the Russian aristocracy, Vladimir may have been “a dreamer with empty hands who sighed for exotic lands.” He was still a teenager when his family arrived on these shores in 1921. A classical music prodigy since the age of 11, he developed both an interest in popular music and a friendship with none other than George Gershwin, who suggested the Americanized handle “Vernon Duke.” From then on until his death in 1969, Vladimir kept the “Dukelsky” for his classical charts and gigs, but it was “Vernon Duke” who in 1934 composed the classic American song: “Autumn in New York” with its bittersweet melody and words like this: “glittering clouds/and shimmering clouds/in canyons of steel./ They’re making me feel/ I’m home.”

Vernon Duke wrote his own lyrics for “Autumn in New York,” but he often teamed up with other lyricists, notably Yip “The Wizard of Oz” Harburg for “April in Paris.” Needless to say, Vernon got great mileage out of songs about and cities. Fortunately though, he didn’t buy into the “CSI” formula; otherwise we’d have such ditties as “September in Sandusky,” “October in Omaha,” and “Natchitoches in November.”

By now you may have guessed this week’s topic from the Duchess of Cornball : each q and/or a has something to do with the fall season and/or the Big Apple. Even without Vernon Duke’s gem, autumn is the season most associated with New York. For instance, when we watch the yearly telecast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, we can see brightly colored leaves still attached to the trees lining 34th Street. And if we want to see something “fall,” all we have to do is go down to Wall Street and get a gander at the economy.

So before somebody bundles me up and hides me in a haystack of unsecured mortgages, let’s start running this New York City marathon which we like to call

Autumn and New York

1. Among the works of John Keats (1795-1821) are several poems addressed to such diverse items as melancholy, a nightingale, and a Grecian urn, but one begins with the lines “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness/Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.” What’s the title of the poem? (Hint: It’s NOT “To New York”)

2. Two American writers not only share New York as the setting of their novels--You Can’t Go Home Again and The Bonfire of the Vanities, respectively –but also their names! What is it?

3. Lines from “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus are etched on the base of which iconic New York City landmark?

4. What is the title of a 1925 novel which includes newsreels, stream of consciousness, and other innovative forms by the sadly-neglected John Dos Passos (1896-1970)? ( It also happens to be the name of a current popular jazz vocal quartet.)

5. British folks are still familiar with a 17th century jingle that begins “Please to remember the Fifth of November.” To what does that date refer?

6. Speaking of jingles, a darling of the critics is Mad Men, the current television miniseries set in the early 1960s , because it more-or-less accurately depicts which “commercial” industry concentrated on Madison Avenue in New York City?

7. What is the two-word American idiom describing “a loser, dupe, or victim” which originated in the 19th century with “rigged” wrestling matches?

8. Appearing in his second consecutive Auntie quiz is the name Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose title for his 1958 poetry collection refers to a specific section in the NYC borough of Brooklyn which once was the site of an amusement park with rides, a boardwalk, and “famous” hot dogs. What is this place called?

9. In a 1608 Shakespearean tragedy, Antony is described by these lines: “For his bounty, / There was no winter in ‘t, an autumn ‘twas/That grew the more by reaping.” What is the name of the character who says this?

10. A short novel by the French philosopher Albert Camus features a former lawyer confessing his tale of woe and inertia to a fellow customer at a bar in a place whose name once formed part of the original name for New York City. So – what European city is the setting for The Fall?

11. Speaking of bars, one of the world’s most famous poems about the beginning of World War II begins: “I sit in one of the dives/On Fifty-second Street/Uncertain and afraid/As the clever hopes expire/Of a low dishonest decade. . .” The literary giant (1907-1973) who wrote those lines was born in York, England, became a US citizen in 1946, and spent many years living in Greenwich Village. Who is he?

12. When Thomas Hood (1799-1845) griped: “No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds–“ what was he complaining about?

13. And finally, Liza and Frank would stop their respective shows at the point when they’d sing “if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.” And where would that be? (Say it twice, and it’s twice as nice.)

Answers
1. “To Autumn”
2. Wolfe (Thomas and Tom)
3. The Statue of Liberty
4. Manhattan Transfer
5. The Gunpowder Plot (Guy Fawkes Day)
6. Advertising
7. “fall guy”
8. Coney Island (The collection is A Coney Island of the Mind)
9. Cleopatra
10. Amsterdam (Under Dutch rule, NYC was called “New Amsterdam”)
11. W. H. Auden
12. November
13. New York, New York

Sources: Brewer’s, Reader’s Encyclopedia, British Poets of the Nineteenth Century (Page and Thompson, eds.), youtube.com. ,npr.org, and especially http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/

Virgil

11-04-2009, 09:48 PM

Well, I had some catching up to do. I had missed the previous two and so I just did three quizes!!

Trees, Shoots, and Leaves - I got six correct: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10.
I'm kicking myself for not getting "shooting stars."

Trick or Treat - I only got four, how pathetic, correct: 3, 5, 6, 12.
Being a blues fan, I should have gotten "I Put A Spell On You."

I have to brag that I aced the Autumn in New York quiz. :D Of course I have an advantage. ;)

I got a whooping eleven correct, my best effort yet: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13. :)

DickZ

11-05-2009, 12:33 PM

Thanks, Auntie, for another entertaining and challenging quiz. I started out pretty well but then hit some bumps in the road. I got numbers 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, and 13.

Virgil

11-11-2009, 11:28 AM

Today, November 11th is Veteran’s Day in the United States, a day of honor to the military who served. Our dear Auntie has given me leave to do the quiz in honor of this day. I tried to place enough questions in here that non-Americans may find engaging, so I hope this satisfies the general community. But I do realize it is a bit American-centric. Give it a shot.

1. Veterans Day began as Armistice Day to commemorate the end of World War I and to honor the veterans of that war. On which moment in time did the War hostilities cease?

2. Which US president actually signed Armistice Day into law?

3. Armistice Day officially became Veteran’s Day, a day to honor all military veterans who served. Which US president, a veteran himself, signed the change over into law?

4. World War I officially ended about six months after Armistice Day hostilities ended with the signing of this treaty in France.

5. Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia is the resting place of several hundred thousand veterans. Which US Civil War general’s wife did the property formerly belong to?

6. On top of the hill at Arlington Cemetery is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Inscribed on the monument is “HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO…” Known but to Who?

7. The United States was not the first country to start a monumental tomb for an unknown soldier. Actually two other countries were ahead of the US in this custom. Name one of them.

8. Complete the last line of the British/American ditty: “Yankee Doodle went to town/A-Riding on a pony;/he stuck a feather in his cap,/…”

9. The most decorated American veteran for a single war is attributed to Audie Murphy, who received 33 American medals, five from France, and one from Belgium. In which war did Audie Murphy serve?

10. The most highly decorated soldier in American history is now considered to be Colonel David Hackworth, with an astounding 90 decorations. Name the three wars that “Hack” served in.

11. Which American general, widely considered one of the great tank battle strategists and served and survived both world wars, died ironically after returning home from WWII in an automobile accident?

12. Which American general, led the Pacific Allied forces during WWII, oversaw the surrender of the Japanese government, but is also famous for his amphibious landing and Battle of Inchon strategy during the Korean War?

1. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.
2. President Woodrow Wilson
3. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
4. Treaty of Versailles
5. General Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna
6. God
7. United Kingdom (first), France (second)
8. “And called it macaroni.”
9. World War II
10. WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War
11. General George S. Patton
12. General Douglas MacArthur

AuntShecky

11-11-2009, 01:17 PM

DickZ

11-11-2009, 02:39 PM

Great quiz, Virgil - nice job. But I have to differ with you on Audie Murphy's war, which was World War II.

I got all of them except for #3.

Virgil

11-11-2009, 08:38 PM

Thank you so much for volunteering to write the quiz this week, Virgil. This is a nice tribute to our veterans as well as the men and women currently serving in the military.

The quiz is a good one, too. (I missed the question about Col. Hack. by saying he was in WWI, WWII, and Korea.)

Did you know that Audie Murphy was able to parlay his fame as a decorated soldier to a movie career? What's even more interesting is that the majority of the films in which he starred were Westerns rather than war movies:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001559/

Thanks again, Virgil.
I found that out about Audie Murphy while reseaching this. I have never seen an Audie Murphy movie. Thanks on liking the quiz.

Great quiz, Virgil - nice job. But I have to differ with you on Audie Murphy's war, which was World War II.

I got all of them except for #3.
Oh my gosh, I got a question wrong on my own poll. :lol: You are right. For some reason I thought it was WWI, but it's not. I'll have to correct that. Thanks. ;)

AuntShecky

11-18-2009, 04:51 PM

Though gifted with an ironic wit, Benjamin Franklin was not entirely facetious when he proposed that the turkey – not the bald eagle – be named the National Bird of the newborn United States. Sadly, conventional wisdom regards Melagris gallopavo as a symbol of congenital ineptitude. The traditional main dish at Thanksgiving is an epithet often heard in a round of “The Dozens,” and many a waitress working the holiday has been spotted wearing a button with a cartoon dialogue balloon stating “You are what you eat.” So one might say that the turkey is the Rodney Dangerfield in the supermarket poultry case– it gets no respect.

It’s no wonder then that the word “turkey” is synonymous with an extravagant production that fails in a spectacular way – monumental bombs like Howard the Duck, Ishtar, Town and Country, and sequels that went to the franchise well one time too often (i.e., the last installments of Jaws, The Exorcist, Indiana Jones, Star Wars and their ilk. And I do mean “ILL-k.”) Another case in point was Moose Murders, a 1983 play which, according to Brendan Gill of The New Yorker, was such a piece of putrid meat that it “would insult the intelligence of an audience consisting entirely of amoebas.”

You’ve undoubted guessed by now the subject of this week’s disaster. Each q. and a. has some connection with a turkey that’s been stuffed with rottenness, and so utterly devoid of any Redeeming Social Value that it stinks. So let’s all throw some shoes and tomatoes at these fabulous flops, in a little quiz we like to call

The Good, The Bad, and The Turkey

1. What is the one-word term starting with “m” which refers to a word or phrase that arose from a mistake or a misconception, yet stubbornly remains in the language: for instance, “Indian” (for a Native American), “blindworm” for a creature that is neither blind nor a worm, and “turkey,” even though the bird never originated in that country?

2. Who (or what) is “Alan Smithee”?

3. This cult hit (1989-1999) featured a guy and two robots stranded on a space satellite by an evil scientist who forces the trio to watch painfully bad movies, upon which the three captives provide a running commentary. The one-liners, parodies, and comedy sketches made this show a post-modern classic. What was the title of the tv series?

4. Every list of the Biggest All-Time Box Office Failures includes Heaven’s Gate, a 1981 movie with a convoluted plot about a cattle war. The production went so far over budget that it nearly “single-handedly put United Artist out of business.” Ironically enough, the disgraced director, Michael Cimino, had previously helmed an epic about the Viet Nam war which brought him and the film itself a shelf full of Academy Awards. What was the title of that earlier, award-winning film of 1978?

5. Critics seldom are unanimous, but on one thing they are 100% in agreement, and that’s on the “Worst Television Sit-Com in History.” It starred Jerry Van Dyke as a guy whose closest female relative had been reincarnated as a 1928 Porter roadster. Despite its nefarious reputation, the show actually ran for 30 episodes in 1965. What was the title of this infamous series?

6. Who wrote the novel upon which Carrie, the abysmally wretched Broadway musical of 1988, was based?

7. In 1968, comedy writer and “2000-year-old man” Mel Brooks won numerous awards for his screenplay about a shady Broadway character and an initially-reluctant accountant who scheme to mount a deliberately-awful show, “Springtime for Hitler” in order to keep the investments when it most assuredly fails – or does it? Name the title of the original movie and later highly-successful Broadway version of this Mel Brooks classic.

8. Name the modern composer (1882- 1971) whose 1913 world premiere of his ballet, The Rite of Spring, in Paris so enraged the audience that they waged a full-scale riot.

9. He was an earnest director of science fiction “movies” such as Plan 9 from Outer Space, a production riddled with laughably inept special effects, such as using paper plates to stand in as flying saucers. Yet his legendary incompetence was matched by a preternatural optimism. What was his name, the subject title of a well-received 1994 biographical film starring Johnny Depp?

10. The flip side to numerous award shows in which movies are honored for their excellence, what is the name for the annual “award” which singles out “turkeys”? The name of the statuette is a shortened synonym for a “Bronx cheer.”

11. Who was the American playwright, Algonquin wit, and critic (1889-1961) who once opened a play review with the line, “There was laughter in the back of the theatre, leading to the belief that someone was telling jokes back there.”

12. A lavish 1963 movie was over-budget, over-schedule, and marked with such scandals as a “real-life” (by Hollywood standards) love affair between the leading lady and the leading man. The reviews dripped with venom. It was enough to make Shakespeare and the other authors of the source material to spin in their graves. The price tag for the 4-hour-long epic was $44 million ($259 million in 2009 dollars) while it grossed only $26 million. Some experts still rank this disaster as one of the worst box office turkeys of all time. What was it?

13. And finally, rolled out by the Ford Motor Company in 1958, this turkey with four wheels tanked when its sales fell flatter than a tire on a road riddled with potholes. What was it?

Answers

1. Misnomer
2. Official pseudonym in Hollywood used by a director who no longer wants his real name associated with a project. Thus, whenever you see the name “Alan Smithee” roll by in the credits, you know that the picture is a real dog, and you should demand your money back.
3. Mystery Science Theatre 3000
4. The Deer Hunter
5. My Mother, The Car
6. Stephen King
7. The Producers
8. Igor Stravinsky (By 1941, the formerly-offensive music was deemed family-friendly enough to be included in a segment of Disney’s Fantasia.)
9. Ed Wood
10. The “Razzie” (from “raspberry”)
11. George S. Kaufman
12. Cleopatra
13. The Edsel

Sources:
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, The Video Hound's Golden Movie Retriever, International Movie Database, The Portable Curmudeon (ed. by Jon Winkour), npr.org and "Blaze of Glory by
Lesley Gibson:
http://www.act-sf.org/site/DocServer/richandfamous_wop_31.pdf

Niamh

11-18-2009, 05:22 PM

I got 6,7,8,9,10 and 12. I kicked myself for not getting 1 and 4. been a while since i did this! :D

PabloQ

11-18-2009, 08:20 PM

All caught up again. Whew!!
Yankees - 9
Trees - 10
New York - 10
Boo Hiss - 8 (boo, hiss)
Turkeys - 8

AuntShecky

11-19-2009, 02:07 PM

Thanks Niamh and Pablo for catching up on these. By the bye, I won't be posting a quiz during Thanksgiving week, but I do plan to post a couple of more quizzes in December, the good Lord
willing and the creek don't rise, and if Pong II (my PC) reboots when I need it to. Big changes will be coming to the quiz -- perhaps starting a new thread --with a substantial difference -- in January 2010. When that time approaches, I'll post the changes in me blog.

DickZ

11-19-2009, 03:06 PM

Thanks, Auntie. I'm wondering if it would be better to post a low score, considering the nature of the quiz. Wouldn't a high score correlate with a high personal index of turkeyism? I think I would prefer a low score on this one.

Anyway, I won't fudge my answers just for that reason. I got numbers 1, 6, 7, 8, 12, and 13, and I await the judgement of whoever is in charge of assessing who is a big fat turkey, and who isn't.

AuntShecky

11-19-2009, 03:34 PM

I await the judgement of whoever is in charge of assessing who is a big fat turkey, and who isn't.

Dick, on no plane of existence in the universe, parallel or otherwise, would you ever qualify to be "a big fat turkey."

Virgil

11-19-2009, 08:43 PM

I'm the turkey. It's amazing how little of pop culture I know. Anyway, I got only four correct: 6, 7, 8, 13. I too should have gotten 1 and 4.

AuntShecky

11-20-2009, 03:06 PM

It's amazing how little of pop culture I know.

An achievement for which you should feel enormously proud!

AuntShecky

12-02-2009, 04:46 PM

It’s that time of year again! Already there have been a couple of flakes floating around,if not actually blanketing the ground, and there’s a definite chill in the air, a sign of something very special just around the corner. That’s right, ‘tis the season. . .for colds and flu.

The media have been bending over backwards to make sure we're all gosh-darned scared out of our longjohns because -- make no mistake-- we're all going to die! Unless, unless everybody gets a dose of vaccine –whoops! Sorry, folks, there’s a vaccine shortage. Even if you could find a flu shot, what kind of flu shot are you going to get? Let’s see, now, you've got your “regular” flu, your old-fashioned Asian flu, and lest we forget, the one flu over the cuckoo’s nest. (That would be bird flu.)

The latest “strain” as it’s called (because it strains our patience) is H1N1, although the media are fond of calling it “swine flu,” because that makes it sound nastier. What has dear old Porky Pig done to deserve such a libelous association? Warner Brothers should sue! Well, the inexplicably neglected British author Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) had it right when he had one of his characters say: “Ye can call it ‘influenza’ if you like. . .There was no influenza in my day. We called a cold a cold.”

At-choo! You might want to avoid this week’s topic like the plague, because it’s all about highly communicable and deadly diseases in literature. (I'd say “culture,” but I left it back in the lab.) As far as I know, my quiz file is virus-free. So before you stick a needle as long as US 1 in my business end and slap a quarantine sign on me, let’s inject the quiz, which you'll probably call

Sick, Sick, Sick

1. Which one of Shakespeare’s plays contains the curse, “A plague on both your houses!”

2. Name the U.S. Army physician (1851-1902) who helped begin a successful defense against yellow fever in the by discovering that a mosquito was the carrier of that deadly disease plaguing the Panama Canal zone.

3. Newscasters this week have heavily covered a notorious incident of party-crashing, but that security breach does not at all compare to the uninvited guest who infects a gala ball with a deadly disease in “The Masque of the Red Death.” Who wrote that 1842 tale?

4. Although the term itself did not appear until the 16th century, what is the three-word phrase for both the pneumonic and bubonic plagues which devastated Europe in the years 1348-1351? The term directly refers to the skin-darkening symptom of one of the diseases.

5. The AIDS epidemic is the theme of a millennial historic tableaux which won numerous prestigious awards for drama late in the century just past. What was the title of Tony Kushner’s play?

6. “Bring out your dead!” got a laugh in a Monty Python movie, but the line actually first appeared in 1722, with the publication of A Journal of the Plague Year. Name the author, whom we know as the creator of a certain resourceful shipwrecked sailor.

7. The French called it “la maladie anglaise,” which the English in turn called “the French disease.” In other parts of Europe it was known as the Italian disease, the German disease, and so forth. In reality, the microbe causing the epidemic originated in the New World, whence it hitched a ride with trans-Atlantic explorers and voyagers. (Maybe the old myth about sailors having “a girl in every port” has some truth.) Name this disease that evidently doesn't discriminate against nationalities.

8. Which significant German author wrote the 1924 allegorical novel, The Magic Mountain, ostensibly about a tuberculosis sanitarium?

9. Albert Camus also wrote a allegorical-philosophical novel about an epidemic, this time set in an Algerian port. What is the title of this 1947 book?

10. A world-famous essay by Robert Louis Stevenson praised a priest named Father Damien who did good works at a hospital colony on Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands. From which notoriously devastating disease did Father Damien’s patients suffer?

11. An innocuous-sounding nursery rhyme delights children to this very date, but its subject matter contains “folk memory” of a deadly plague. For instance, the verse refers to the practice of using flowers to mask the stench of decomposing corpses who'd had all succumbed to a disease that begins with a seemingly harmless sneeze. What is this nursery rhyme?

12.[Spoiler Alert! Skip this question if you haven't read the story.] The source material for two motion pictures, one good (1953) and one considerably less so (2005) is an 1898 science fiction work by H.G. Wells about a Martian invasion of our planet. The aliens are eventually defeated, not by the earthlings’ sophisticated weaponry but by tiny microbes. What’s the title?

13. And finally, in 1907 an Irish immigrant hired as a cook for a wealthy family on Long Island was discovered by the Board of Health to be the carrier of a certain, potentially-deadly infection, though she adamantly refused to admit that she was the source of the disease. Her name is so synonymous with spreading disease that to this day is a teasing jest. What is this common epithet?

Answers
1. Romeo and Juliet, ( III, I )
2. Walter Reed
3. Edgar Allen Poe
4. The Black Death
5. Angels in America
6. Daniel Defoe
7. Syphilis
8. Thomas Mann
9. The Plague
10. Leprosy
11. “Ring Around the Rosie” or “Ring a ring o’ roses” The actual rhyme goes like this: “Ring a ring o’ roses/ A pocket full of posies/ Ai-choo! Ai-choo!/ All fall down.” (A variation on line 3 is “ashes, ashes,” referring to smoke from bonfires, or possibly an allusion the substance, ashes or dust, to which we're all destined to revert, as prophesied in Genesis 3:19.)
12. The War of the Worlds (Fun factoid for MST3K fans: The name of Gene Barry’s character in the 1953 movie is “Dr. Clayton Forrester.”)
13. “Typhoid Mary”

Sources: Reader’s Encyclopedia, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, imbd.com, and the “about twentieth century history” website.

Virgil

12-02-2009, 08:40 PM

Oh I did ver well. I got eleven correct!! Woohoo! I got 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

Funny about syphillis, how every country blames it on another. :lol:

Jazz_

12-03-2009, 12:30 AM

Only 5 for me :(
1, 5, 7, 9, 11

DickZ

12-03-2009, 09:04 AM

Thanks, Auntie. It's great to have the quiz back after your well-deserved Thanksgiving break. I got numbers 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11.

ShoutGrace

12-06-2009, 01:04 AM

My results:

1.Romeo and Juliet.
2.I traveled through the Panama Canal and watched a documentary regarding this story, but the name has escaped me completely.
3.Edgar Allan Poe
4.“The Black Death.”
5.Sad to say I have no idea.
6.Robert Louis Stevenson.
7.Syphillis.
8.Thomas Mann.
9.The Plague.
10. Malaria.
11.Ring around the Rosy.
12.The War of the Worlds.
13.Typhoid Mary.

I figured question 6 would be wrong because you wouldn't give the name away in another part of the quiz, but couldn't come up with something better. I guessed malaria for 10, but leprosy is probably more devastating and certainly more notorious.

As for question 11, I've actually only known "Ashes to ashes, we all fall down." Reading the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_Around_the_Rosie) on the rhyme was interesting; it appears that many and quite different cultures have the same kind of children's verse.

AuntShecky

12-09-2009, 05:54 PM

When you happen to notice Bruce Springsteen’s arrangement of a certain “iconic” holiday song blasting through the PA system of some retail store, you're not really hearing the original 1934 tune by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie. That was one versatile songwriting team, for not only has “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” delighted generations of children, the duo also wrote one of the smokiest, steamiest, “adult-themed” torch songs of all time, “You Go to My Head” from 1939. I guess one could say that Messrs. Coots and Gillespie were a little bit sugar, a little bit spice – both nice and naughty.

“Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” is a catchy, magical ditty, despite its musical statement of St. Nick as Big Brother, who puts minors under constant surveillance, 24/7 in order to gain info to compile an incriminating dossier: “He’s makin’ a list and checking it twice/ Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” Wow, way to plant the neurotic seeds of a guilt complex into a four-year-old! This week’s topic, nevertheless, concerns characters from literature who are heroes or villains, or maybe a mixture of both, sort of like an angel food cake made with bad eggs.

When it comes down to zero hour on Christmas Eve, Santa strictly adheres to the “either/or,” nice/naughty dichotomy. Who knew the right jolly old elf would be so judgmental? But have you ever noticed how rich kids almost always seem to land on the “nice” list? Before somebody hurls a brick-hard fruitcake at me or shoves a lump of coal in my stocking, let’s swoop down the chimney to the quiz, which we like to call

Naughty or Nice

1. Name the Shakespearean play in which the chief character rises through the royal ranks through heinous acts, such as imprisoning two little princes in the Tower of London and who describes himself this way: “And thus I clothe my naked villainy/With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,/ And seem a saint when most I play the devil.”

2. Herman Melville’s posthumous short novel features this young sailor who personifies innocence, even after committing an act of violent rage spurred on by a false accusation. His goodness is so innate that he even asks God to bless his executioner. Who is this title character?

3. A devious schemer in David Copperfield tries to convince his victims that he is otherwise by constantly describing himself as “ ‘umble.’ “ Name this memorable character created by Charles Dickens.

4. Generations of American adolescents have been captivated by Salinger’s portrait of an earnestly eloquent prep school student who goes AWOL in post-World War II New York City. Name this character who aspires to be a savior of the innocence of children, notably that of his beloved younger sister, Phoebe.

5. Who wrote the short novel featuring Dr. Jekyll and his evil alter ego, Mr. Hyde?

6. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “scarlet” woman suffers the condemnation of her community, yet bears her humiliation with the dignity of her humanity. Identify this heroine who is definitely more sinned against than sinning.

7. The first part of the 1587 tragedy, Tamburlaine, set in the region of the world that contains modern-day Afghanistan, depicts a lowly Scythian shepherd who becomes a great ruler with even greater potential, yet in the second part, his absolute power turns him absolutely rotten. Name this illustrious but short-lived author, the most famous playwright among Shakespeare’s contemporaries.

8. A title character created by George Eliot makes his living as a weaver but suffers through a lonely existence, largely caused by a deep-seated bitterness over having been wrongly suspected of theft. An even greater setback occurs when he himself is robbed of some gold, closely followed by a scene in the novel in which he finds a golden-haired orphan child. Adopting this little girl becomes the source of his eventual redemption. Who was this former miser who turns good?

9. Talk about your revenge fantasies! In 1321, an Italian poet famously put his political enemies in the nine circles of Hell. What is the title, the first of three parts of Dante’s classic epic poem?

10. Name the figure from British folklore who had nice motives for his naughty deeds -- stealing from the rich in order to give to the poor.

11. In his 1866 novel, Dostoevsky presents Raskolnikov, a student perhaps a little too contemplative for his own good, who through convoluted reasoning comes to a philosophical stance that he believes justifies his evil actions. As one may assume, the self-styled “amoral superman” receives his comeuppance. Yet the story ends on a note of penitence and redemption, helped by the pure love of a good woman. What’s the title of this provocative yet ultimately edifying novel?

12. In Arthurian legend, he was the purest and noblest Knight of the Round Table. The only one qualified for the quest of the Holy Grail, he healed the Fisher King and restored fertility to Britain. Unlike the contemporary myth cherished by single gals about the elusive “Mr. Right,” this hero wasn't too good to be true, even though,let's face it, he was fictional. Who was he?

13. And finally, at the beginning of Theodor S. Geisel’s parody of A Christmas Carol, he has a heart that is “two sizes too small,” which, by the end of the story, grows “three sizes that day.” Name this wildly popular Yuletide figure.

Answers

1. Richard III
2. Billy Budd
3. Uriah Heep
4. Holden Caulfield
5. Robert Louis Stevenson
6. Hester Prynne
7. Christopher Marlowe
8. Silas Marner
9. The Inferno (first part of The Divine Comedy)
10. Robin Hood
11. Crime and Punishment
12. Sir Galahad
13. The Grinch (the one who stole Christmas,
in case you were thinking of some other grinch.)

Sources: The Reader’s Encyclopedia and the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame website.
Coming Next Week: A superquiz to close out 09!

DickZ

12-10-2009, 11:26 AM

Thanks for another great quiz, Auntie. I particularly loved this one - not that I don't love them all - because I did better than I usually do. I got numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.

As for number 1, I only specialize in Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet. And on a few rare occasions, I can answer a Midsummer Night's Dream question. While I've heard of Marlowe in question 7, it's obviously not a very thorough familiarity, because I missed that one also.

Virgil

12-10-2009, 05:30 PM

Ha! I got eleven right again. If we stick to literature i do well. :) The two I got wrong were Silas Marner (I'm afraid my George Eliot is weak) and amazingly I got the grinch wrong! :D :D

ShoutGrace

12-12-2009, 06:51 PM

I got the Grinch wrong as well!! I guessed Scrooge for whatever reason.

I got most of these by making educated guesses. I knew "Billy Budd" by title only. I knew "Silas Marner" because of a recommendation given by mono years ago. The only other one I missed was Marlowe . . . like DickZ I had heard of him (in my case, through secondary Shakespeare literature), but didn't come up with the answer either. The play sounds very interesting!

AuntShecky

12-16-2009, 02:47 PM

Good news! This is the last quiz o’ the “weak” for 2009. Come January, if my PC (“Pong II”) is still kicking, and if we have managed to pay the electricity bill, I'll start a brand-new quiz thread with some slight changes, the details of which will be posted soon.

Way, way back in my school days, the teachers used to warn that their final examinations would “separate the sheep from the goats.” I could never figure out which class of ruminants was supposed to be smarter or into which category of cud-chewers I fell. But I'll tell you something – those tests were “baaa”-ddd!

At this late date I must confess that I was never much of a test-taker. Even when the questions were giveaways, such as “Who wrote the autobiographical book The Education of Henry Adams?” or “Fill in the blank ‘To be or not to __’ , “ I still got them wrong!

So I was not a test-taker, but a quiz-maker. Throughout the postings on this thread there has been a little comedy, and also some inadvertent tragedy: less than two weeks after his name was mentioned in the quiz, the actor Gene Barry passed away at the age of 90. Most of the quiz questions concerned writers who had already died a long time ago, especially Shakespeare and Shaw, who appeared in the quiz more frequently than most. There was also a preponderance of American references –a coincidence, not a conscious act of jingoism.

Nearly everything in this year-end review has been culled from previous quiz questions, answers, and introductions – you did read all of my introductions, didn't you? If you get stuck on an item, all you have to do is scroll up through the thread. Time’s almost up, so let’s get to the last snore-fest of ‘09 which I hate to call

Final X-Zam

1. What was Herman Melville’s 1857 novel that takes place on a river boat on April Fool’s Day?

2. Who wrote Leaves of Grass?

3. Name the author from the Jazz Age who said, “In the dark night of the soul it’s always three o’clock in the morning.”

4. Who was the Dublin-born author (1845-1900) who observed that “Work is the curse of the drinking class”?

5. What is the Pentateuch?

6. Name the title of Henry Miller’s 1939 novel considered a counterpart to The Tropic of Cancer.

7. Who wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers?

8. What is the one-word term that refers to both a literary device which directly addresses an absent person, place, or thing and a punctuation mark which few Americans know how to use appropriately?

9. According to Greek mythology, how many muses are there?

10. Which month of 2009 was designated Hispanic Heritage Month?

11. Who was the American literary giant (1835-1910) who categorized really old jokes this way: “The only way to classify the majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geological periods.”

12. What is the only Shakespearean play whose title refers to an occasion set in early January?

13. Who wrote the poem in which the albatross is a symbol of bad luck?

14. Name the leading poet associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

15. What was the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), author of numerous expertly-crafted Victorian novels?

16. Name the monumental English poet of the 17th century who wrote the lines “Come and trip it as ye go/On the light fantastic toe.”

17. Who was the versatile 20th century British author of such novels as The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair?

18. The adage, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” refers to which dubious offering portrayed in The Odyssey and The Aeneid?

19. His tombstone reads, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” In which New England location would one find the grave of this 20th century literary giant?

20. Who wrote Crime and Punishment, as well as “The Grand Inquisitor”?

21. Aldous Huxley derived the title of Brave New World from a line in which Shakespearean play?

22. Name the seasonal song for which Vernon Duke wrote both the music and lyrics.

23. “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce” is the never-ending lawsuit in Bleak House. Who wrote that novel?

24. Name the Greek dramatist who wrote the satiric comedy, The Clouds.

25. What is the perennial holiday song composed by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie?

26. And finally, according to a German legend, when a knight was attempting to pick some posies for his damsel, he slipped off the river bank and drowned. The name for these beloved spring flowers comes from this knight’s last three words. What were they?

Answers
1. The Confidence Man
2. Walt Whitman
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Oscar Wilde
5. The first five books of the Old Testament
6. The Tropic of Capricorn
7. Henry David Thoreau
8. Apostrophe
9. Nine
10. October
11. Mark Twain
12. Twelfth Night
13. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
14. Langston Hughes
15. George Eliot
16. John Milton
17. Graham Greene
18. The Trojan Horse
19. Bennington, Vermont, where, no matter the season, “Frost” is always in the ground.
20. Dostoevski
21. The Tempest
22. “Autumn in New York”
23. Charles Dickens
24. Aristophanes
25. “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”
26. “Forget me not.”

And that’s my “final answer.”