The LitNet Forum Game Quiz o' the Week

[AuntShecky]

Next time you long on to Online Literature Network, look at the left hand side of the opening screen. There you will find an entire forum devoted to numerous quizzes about individual authors and/or individual works. About a year and a half ago, the Forum Games featured a continuous thread titled “Auntie’s Quiz of the Week,” a less serious brain-teaser in which the quizzes were comprised of several seemingly divergent works and authors, all connected – often tenuously!– by a common characteristic. Here’s a link to one of those previous quizzes:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=811398#post811398

This “new” thread hopes to continue where “Auntie’s Quiz of the Week” left off, only this time, LitNet participants have the opportunity not only to take a stab at the questions but also write and post quizzes themselves. In other words, I hope that the Forum Games quiz would become more of a community rather than an individual effort.

If you want some suggestions on how to compose a quiz, here are some suggestions to get you started:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=9641

Meanwhile, here’s the initial quiz offering for 2010, the first of which I hope will be many more. (That’s up to you, LitNetters!) All of the questions and/or answers have something to do with some form of the words “first,” “begin,” “new,” or “start.” So, let’s get started with this little ditty we like to call:

First, A New Beginning

1. What is the term used to describe the fortunate results when a person succeeds brilliantly the very first time he or she attempts a new endeavor?

2. Which British poet (1809-1892) wrote the monumental elegy, In Memoriam, in which the following lines appear:
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

3. Name the ancient Roman god with 2 faces –one facing forward and the other looking backward, who presided over the beginning of the year. It forms the root of the word for one of our calendar months.

4. A legal term concerns who gets the first and usually biggest share of a family inheritance, and/or the rule of succession to the throne in medieval Europe. What is this word which literally means “first born?”

5. Initially appearing in 1623, what two-word term refers to the earliest collection of Shakespeare’s plays published just 7 years after his death? In more modern times two facsimile editions were published, one in 1902 by Oxford University Press and the other by Yale University Press in 1954.

6. Who was the American composer and lyricist (1893-1964) who wrote “Begin the Beguine?”

7. W. E. Hickson isn't as well known as his oft-quoted advice. What’s the line which precedes “Try, try again,” the first three words of which legendary infielder Keith Hernandez found to be a perfect title for his autobiography?

8. What was the term for the loosely-knit group of French filmmakers of the 1950s including “auteurs” such as Rohmer, Truffaut, Renais, and Godard who brought a individually artistic yet autocratic control over the complete production of their works?

9. It’s a no-no-- or used to be-- in objective, straight news stories, but this type of narration is highly effective in numerous literary works, as diverse as Tristram Shandy, David Copperfield, andThe Catcher in the Rye. When a narrator recounts his own experiences and observations throughout the entire work, we say that the novel is written in the what?

10. Appropriately enough, it opens with the words, “In the beginning. . .” What is the first book of the Bible as well as the Old Testament ?

11. What is the literary term for a written line containing two or more words repeating the sound of the initial letter, such as the “f” in Milton’s line, “Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,” or the “c” in the simile “cool as a cucumber” or the “s” in the tongue-twister “She sells seashells by the seashore?”

12. Who was the American-born British poet (1888-1965) who included the line, “In my beginning is my end” in “East Coker,” one of his Four Quartets?

13. And finally, name the comedian, musician, author of 54 published books, pioneer of late-night television, actor, and song lyricist (1921-2000) who wrote the jazz standard, “This Could Be the Start of Something.”



Answers
1. Beginner’s luck
2. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
3. Janus
4. Primogeniture
5. The First Folio
6. Cole Porter
7. “If, at first, you don’t succeed” (Mr. Hickson didn't offer Plan B, or what to do if at Try #7734 you still haven't succeeded.”)
8. The New Wave Cinema
9. Written in the first person.
10. Genesis
11. Alliteration
12. T. S. Eliot
13. Steve Allen

Sources:
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by Ivor R. Evans, New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Third Edition
and (for question #11) The Oxford Companion to the English Language.

[DickZ]

It's nice to see the return of your quiz, Auntie, as I've missed them over the holidays. I got numbers 1, 3, 7, 10, 11, and 12 on this one, and I'll be looking forward to next week's.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks, DickZ. Let's hope a LitNetter posts a second quiz
next week.

[DickZ]

Thanks, DickZ. Let's hope a LitNetter posts a second quiz next week.
Well, Auntie, I will post one on Wednesday, to conform with your previous schedule, but I feel it will pale in comparison to the quizzes you put out. I'm sure this new approach will make us appreciate your quizzes more, rather taking them for granted.

[DickZ]

Here is my attempt at a quiz for the week, and I hope it won’t make everyone mutter to themselves that this idea of rotating responsibilities for the weekly quiz won’t work as well as when Auntie handled everything all by herself.

1. In Les Misérables, what alias did Jean Valjean use when he was released following nineteen years in the galleys?

2. In Les Misérables, what was the name of Jean Valjean’s ward?

3. In Les Misérables, what ‘vehicle’ did Jean Valjean use to escape from the convent where he had been hiding?

4. In A Tale of Two Cities, what did Madame Defarge do while watching the guillotine do its work?

5. In A Tale of Two Cities, who killed Madame Defarge?

6. In A Tale of Two Cities, who said “It’s a far, far better thing that I do now than I have ever done?”

7. In The Count of Monte Cristo, what was the name of Edmond Dantès’s fellow prisoner, with whom he secretly communicated for many years?

8. In The Count of Monte Cristo, what alias taken from The Arabian Nights did Edmond Dantès use?

9. In The Count of Monte Cristo, who was the woman Edmond Dantès planned to marry before he was carted off to prison?

10. In Great Expectations, what sort of outfit did Miss Havisham always wear?

11. In Great Expectations, who was the girl that Miss Havisham matched up with Pip?

12. In Great Expectations, who was the source of Pip’s great expectations?


ANSWERS
1. Monsieur Madeleine
2. Cosette
3. coffin
4. knitted
5. Miss Pross
6. Sidney Carton
7. Abbé Faria
8. Sinbad the Sailor
9. Mercedes
10. wedding dress
11. Estella
12. Abel Magwitch

[AuntShecky]

Thanks for keepin' the ball rollin', DickZ!

[Virgil]

I got seven correct in Aunty's quiz: 2,3,5,9,10,11,12.

In Dick's quiz, I had only read Great Expectations out of the novels being quized, and I got all three of those.

[qimissung]

In Aunty's quiz I got 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12 correct.

I took Dick's quiz but have only read Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities years (and years) ago and I only got four questions correct. :mad:

A good first effort, Dick, but I do you suppose that you could ask about a variety of things, like Aunty? I might try one eventually, but it would probably be in the summer. They look immensely time-consuming...

[DickZ]

....A good first effort, Dick, but do you suppose that you could ask about a variety of things, like Aunty? I might try one eventually, but it would probably be in the summer. They look immensely time-consuming...
Thanks for taking the time to try the quiz, qimissung, and for saying something about it. We don't seem to have too many people here who offer comments, so it's a rare treat to hear anybody say something - anything. With your avatar, I will figure that three of the four questions you answered were on Les Misérables.

I'll be looking forward to your quiz this summer, and I hope that someone else will step up and create another between this one of mine and the one you will put out this summer.

Yes, it's time consuming, and either Auntie is brilliant or has lots of time on her hands, because writing quizzes like hers isn't as easy as it seems. You have to actually try it to get an appreciation for what she does.

As I said in an earlier post, we all take her and her material for granted.

[DickZ]

Since nobody else has come forward with a quiz, I'll post one more.

1. In The House of Seven Gables, what was the name of the spinster who was the current resident of the house and who played a major role in the story?

2. In The House of Seven Gables, what was the name of the lodger living in the house?

3. In The House of Seven Gables, what was the name of the man who had to be forced off the land before the house could then be built?

4. In Frankenstein, what was Frankenstein’s first name?

5. In Frankenstein, what was the full name of Frankenstein’s best friend?

6. In Frankenstein, what was the most important thing the monster wanted Frankenstein to do – something that Frankenstein started, but didn’t finish?

7. In The Three Musketeers, what was the motto of the musketeers?

8. In The Three Musketeers, what are the names of the three musketeers?

9. In The Three Musketeers, what is the name of the cardinal who plays a major role?

10. In Gulliver’s Travels, what is the name of the land Gulliver visits which has tiny people?

11. In Gulliver’s Travels, what is the name of the land Gulliver visits which has huge people?

12. In Gulliver’s Travels, what is the name given to the horses who rule the land where his final voyage of the book takes him?







ANSWERS
1. Hepzibah Pyncheon
2. Holgrave
3. Matthew Maule
4. Victor
5. Henry Clerval
6. create a female companion for the monster
7. “All for one, and one for all.”
8. Athos, Porthos, Aramis
9. Cardinal Richelieu
10. Lilliput
11. Brobdingnag
12. Houyhnhnms

[AuntShecky]

Please stay tuned at the end of the quiz for an important announcement.

Back in the days before texting, folks actually talked to each other face-to-face. They even used real words with vowels in them. This particular type of human interaction was called “the art of conversation” in which a quick-witted invitee would occasionally relate an amusing anecdote or drop a pleasant – or a barbed– bon mot. During the inevitable lag in the dinner party when all the guests seem to have run out of things to say, an apropos quotation just might fill that awkward silence. There is an endless choice of wisdom to cite –from Shakespeare, Shaw, Casey Stengel –a veritable fountain of repartee.

Of course, you have to be reasonably sure that the quotation is accurate. As Yogi Berra may have said, “I really didn’t say half the things I said.” In order to make sense, you should also include all the significant parts of the statement, as Robert Benchley realized in his Maxims from the Chinese: “It is rather to be chosen than great riches, unless I have omitted something from the quotation.”

So by now you know this week’s topic is quotations. Unless otherwise specified, all you have to do is identify the source in this little quiz we like to call:

Quote “Quotable Quotations We Like To Quote” Unquote

1. Name the American poet who originated the line: “Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore.’ “

2. When you come to see this one, you’ll conquer this question. Who said “Veni, Vidi, Vici?”

3. One of his poems is about a supermarket in California, but this line comes from“America,” composed in 1956. Identify the literary legend who wrote: “When can I go into a supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?”

4. This British author and political leader couldn’t have been thinking of the LitNutters when he said “ It’s a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations.” Who was he?

5. And certainly this next line does not apply to any of the aspiring authors in the Lit Net community. Name the brash but highly successful college basketball coach who said, “All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.”

6. When the “pop”ular artist first made his observation, he meant it in a totally upbeat, joyous way, but in these celebrity-obsessed times, the quote is almost always used scornfully. Name who first predicted “In the future everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

7. Which nineteenth century British poet thought up the inspiring thought “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp/Or, what’s a heaven for?”

8. He could excel in so-called “legitimate” roles such as that of Mr. Micawber, but he was best known playing himself reciting scripts he wrote under various pseudonyms. For instance, when a character accused him of being drunk, he famously replied, “And you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life.” Who was he?

9. A backhanded compliment is embedded in the following rejection notice: “Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” Who was the British author and lexicographer (1709-1784) who first made that assessment?

10. Name the inspirational writer who espoused living the simple life with advice such as “Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.”

11. Identify the baseball legend who slyly asked, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?”

12. A phrase that really “caught on” in the American language was derived from the title of a novel about a convoluted military regulation “which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask, and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions . . .” What was the title of this novel by Joseph Heller?

13. “Hindsight is always 20/20" has been quoted so much that it’s almost a cliché, but few people realize that the line originated with movie director and screenwriter Billy Wilder. Name Billy’s 1959 comic masterpiece which stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis and ends with the line, “Nobody’s perfect.”


Answers:
1. Edgar Allen Poe
2. Julius Caesar
3. Allen Ginsberg
4. Winston Churchill
5. Bobby Knight
6. Andy Warhol
7. Robert Browning
8. W. C. Fields
9. Dr. Samuel Johnson
10. Henry David Thoreau
11. Satchel Paige
12. Catch-22
13. Some Like It Hot


Hey, LitNutters! Why not contribute your very own quiz to this thread? You'll be glad you did. You're already Brilliant so you don't need help, but just in case you want to check out some quiz-making suggestions, try this:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=9641

[Virgil]

Ooh, I got nine correct: 1,2,3,4,6,9,11,12,13. I should have got Browning, but I went with Tennyson. And i think I've seen that Thoreau quote but missed it. Hey i'll try to write a quiz over the weekend, my dear Aunty. :)

[DickZ]

I got 1, 2, 4, 11, 12, and 13.

[qimissung]

OK, DickZ, I took your quiz first, and, yep, you guessed it, got7, 8, 9, and 10 correct, an improvement of sorts over the last one. :) Obviously I should have gotten 11 and 12 but they would not come to mind. :D

Aunty, I took yours next. I got 1, 2, 4 6, 7, 12, and 13. Just a little over half right, as usual. :D

Dick, I'm glad you appreciated the comments. I worried that I hurt your feelings. Thank you for making the quiz. I do not take AuntShecky for granted, though. I am in awe. I know it only looks easy. I appreciate her, and you.

[Virgil]

Man, it's freezing here today. It was 15F (-9C) this morning when I took the dog out for her weekend morning play of fetch the tennis ball. The cold doesn't seem to bother her at all, but I frankly hate it. And I'm sure New York City is not the coldest place in the northern hemisphere right now. ;)

It's cold enough for me and so I decided to whip up a quiz for our dear Aunt Shecky on the subject of winter and/or cold. My quizes are purely literary, so you better know your novels, short story, poetry, and even plays. Let us know how you did. :)



1. What is the name of the leading character in Tolstoy’s War and Peace who while imprisoned by the French after attempting to assassinate Napoleon suffers through the harsh Russian winter? (I’ll take just a first name)

2. Buck is the main character in which of Jack London’s novels, in which a domesticated dog is separated from civilization, becomes wild, and ultimately a sled dog in Alaska’s Yukon?

3. In which part of the US is Edith Wharton’s novel Ethane Frome set, in which the characters endure a harsh winter, where they sled down the rolling icy hills?

4. What was the name of the short story by Stephan Crane where a nervous and drunk Swede and a boy fight in the cold Nebraska winter setting?

5. In Lord of the Rings, the Frodo and his hobbit friends depart in winter to take the ring away from the Shire and encounter a human named Strider who assists and protects them. Strider turns out to have a noble heritage and a different name. What is that name?

6. Who is the author of the wonderful classic poem, titled “The Snowman,” where the junipers are “shagged with ice” and the snowman beholds “the nothing that is”?

7. In Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” what is the name of the virtuous and beautiful Queen of Sicilia who is falsely accused of infidelity?

8. In which circle of hell does Dante reserve for traitors where they are frozen in a lake of ice?

9. In Henry David Thoreau’s Walden or a Life in the Woods, where Thoreau lives in a cabin in near isolation by a pond, the author recounts how one winter a 100 men invade the area to take back something and ship it to the Carolinas. What was it the 100 men took?

10. Robert Frost’s famous “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” the central character stops between the woods and this element of nature.

11. In which James Joyce short story does the entire island of Ireland get blanketed by a cover of snow?

12. Who is the author of this fabulous opening sentence, “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice"?



















1. Count Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov
2. The Call of the Wild
3. New England (Massachsettes)
4. "The Blue Hotel"
5. Aragorn
6. Wallace Stevens
7. Hermione
8. The Ninth Circle
9. Ice from the frozen pond
10. The frozen lake
11. “The Dead”
12. Gabriel García Márquez, from One Hundred Years of Solitude

[AuntShecky]

Really "cool" quiz, Virgil! I loved the way the questions were worded, but especially liked the intro (nice and brief, I should learn from you!) My favorite part was that every question had something to do with your theme.

I missed the War and Peace question and The LOTR one. I surprised myself by getting the answer to #12 right. (Made me feel good about meself for a second.)

Thanks so much, Virgil and DickZ for infusing a little life and activity into this thread.

[DickZ]

Thanks, Virgil, for posting the quiz. I only got two right - numbers 2 and 3. I'll have to do some more reading.

[Niamh]

I'll see if i can whip one of these up during the week. :)

[Virgil]

Thank you guys. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[AuntShecky]

I'll see if i can whip one of these up during the week. :)

Aw, bless you, Niamh! Here's a cyberhug.
Another quiz, a silly one, will be posted by yours truly around Feb. 14 or so, God and "Pong II" (my PC) willing.

[Niamh]

as soon as i have my assignment done i'll start on one.

[AuntShecky]

This quiz is rated PG-13. Reader discretion is advised.

Question: where would you find lurid imagery, boldface buzzwords, and graphic violence? ( I mean, other than a programming meeting at a cable network.) The answer is a tabloid headline, where lowbrows can find satisfaction for every prurient need. Suffice it to say that a typical tabloid headline makes a sleazy show like Nip/Tuck look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Now, I know for a fact that the literary taste of the typical LitNutter lies considerably farther up the brow than that of the typical "readers" of scandal sheets, but I think all of you can ace this quiz. In the questions below, all you have to do is name the literary couples and/or character(s) to which the tasteless headlines refer. (Nobody will object if you feel like spraying your PC with disinfectant afterward.) Now to the quiz, which we cringe to call

Literary Love, Scandal Sheet Style

1. ROMAN POLITICO DUMPS WIFE FOR EGYPTIAN QUEEN

2. HOTTIE: “MONSTER HELD ME PRISONER –
BUT NOW I LOVE HIM!”

3. LIVE-IN TEACHER FINDS MYSTERY MAN’S WIFE IN ATTIC

4. HUBBY REINS IN FEISTY WIFE;
SETS WOMEN’S LIB BACK 500 YEARS

5. WIFE CHEATS ON CRIPPLED HUBBY WITH GAMEKEEPER

6. DANE’S SCORNED GAL PAL DROWNS SELF;
BODY, STILL CLUTCHING FLOWERS,
FOUND IN NEARBY RIVER

7.PRINCESS SHARES LOVE NEST WITH 7 SHORT GUYS;
CLAIMS: “SIZE DOESN’T MATTER”

8.TROJAN STUD RUNS OFF WITH WORLD’S HOTTEST BABE;
“OF COURSE YOU KNOW THIS MEANS WAR!” KING FUMES

9. TEENS’ FORBIDDEN LOVE DEFIES FEUDING FAMILIES

10.PRINCE FINDS ABUSED GAL’S FEET “PERFECT FIT”;
LUCKY CHARWOMAN SAYS “NO MORE SLEEPING IN THE KITCHEN!”

11. RUSHIN’ TRAIN ENDS LIFE OF STRAYING HOUSEWIFE

12. TWO-FACED SLUT VAMPS STRONG MAN;
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW

13.DRUGGED PRINCESS WAKES UP AFTER CENTURY-LONG COMA; ASKS: “DID I MISS ANYTHING?”



Answers

1. Antony and Cleopatra
2. Beauty (and the Beast)
3. Jane Eyre
4. Petruchio and Katherina (Give yourself full credit if you said “The Taming Of the Shrew.”)
5. Lady Chatterley (and her Lover)
6. Ophelia (Hamlet)
7. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
8. Paris and Helen (The Iliad)
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. Cinderella
11. Anna Karenina
12. Delilah and Sampson
13. Sleeping Beauty

[DickZ]

Great quiz, Auntie. I was afraid we weren't going to have one this week.

I got some right - namely numbers 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 13, and I certainly should have gotten number 12 also. I couldn't get number 11 either, and I keep meaning to get into some of the Russians like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky soon, since I'm getting old and better get into them before the bell rings. I've neglected them for all of my life to this point and shouldn't continue doing that.

[qimissung]

Great quiz, AuntShecky. I got them all but number 4. I thought it was "The Doll House" by Ibsen.

[Virgil]

:lol: Boy was that fun. I got them all except number 2. I had guessed the minotaur, which is pretty silly. :D

[AuntShecky]

March is National Women's History Month, so here's a -- you should excuse the expression-- a "quickie" about characters in the midst of the age-old "Battle of the Sexes." HINT: All of the titular (ahem) women were created by men. Your job is just to name these authors of the male persuasion.

Ladies and Gents

Name the author of:

1. Daisy Miller

2. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

3. Hedda Gabler

4. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

5. Sister Carrie

6. Madame Bovary

7. The verse drama The Countess Cathleen and a series of poems featuring "Crazy Jane"

8. Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

9. Moll Flanders

10. Tess of the D'urbervilles: A Pure Woman

11. Anna Christie

12. Candida , the 1903 about an older woman loved by a younger man, though she was not by any stretch a "cougar."

and finally,
13. the words and music for Annie, Get Your Gun


Answers:

1. Henry James
2. Edward Albee
3. Henrik Ibsen
4. Stephen Crane
5. Theodore Dreiser
6. Gustave Flaubert
7. W.B. Yeats
8. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
9. Daniel Defoe
10. Thomas Hardy
11. Eugene O'Neill
12. George Bernard Shaw
13. Irving Berlin

[Virgil]

Hmm, I got eight of the thirteen. I should have done better. I got correct numbers 1,3,4,5,6,7,9,10.

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie, for another great quiz. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time required to take it, as I'm now into Twitter. I had to tweet to 284 stalwart individuals that I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, with the 'jelly' actually being raspberry preserves, and I then had to read what each of the 284 had for their lunches. By the time I finished reading all this, it was time for dinner and another round of tweets, so I was unable to take the quiz.

I'll try again next week, and I hope there will be another quiz then, and maybe at that point I will have broken this painful addicition. And hopefully, there won't be too many Facebook friends to confirm or to invite when the next quiz rolls around, because that can be a big consumer of time as well.

[AuntShecky]

In the course of preparing to write this quiz, the flip-side of last week's snorefest, two startling discoveries revealed themselves. The first was that the majority of women authors have something in common with notorious criminals -- they tend to have three names. The other revelation was even more disheartening, and that's the fact that authors of the male persuasion vastly outnumber female writers. Last week I had very little trouble finding works by male authors with female names in their titles, but this time finding works about men by women authors was as difficult as finding an honest statement in Hollywood on Oscar night. Many of the works I did manage to find fall under the category of children's literature, which like women authors, is often marginalized. Well, it's a darned good thing the women's movement changed all that! (Er. . . . .)

In any event, for the literary works below (one of which is a "trick" question) all you have to do is name the female author.

Gentlemen and Ladies

Who wrote:

1. Little Men

2. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus

3. Ethan Frome

4. Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?

5. Jacob's Room and Orlando

6. Death Comes for the Archbishop

7. Silas Marner, Adam Bede, and Daniel Deronda

8. A Good Man is Hard to Find

9. Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates

10. Song of Solomon

11. The Talented Mr. Ripley

12. The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

and finally

13. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes


Answers
1. Louisa May Alcott
2. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
3. Edith Wharton
4. Agatha Christie
5. Virginia Woolf
6. Willa Cather
7. George Eliot (This is the "trick" question-- her real name was Mary Ann Evans.)
8. Flannery O'Connor
9. Mary Mapes Dodge
10. Toni Morrison
11. Patricia Highsmith
12. Beatrix Potter
13. Anita Loos


Note: It would be very nice if some members of the LitNet contributed a quiz or two to this thread. How about a quiz about authors and works of Irish heritage? That's just a suggestion.

[Niamh]

I was jsut about to post that i'll sort out an Irish quiz seeing as its coming close to St Patricks Day and then i saw your little green note and smiled. :)

[Niamh]

I have on done which i shall post on sunday. :)

[Virgil]

Last week I had very little trouble finding works by male authors with female names in their titles
Why is it that male authors have to try to prove they understand the female mind, especially 19th century male authors? :wink5:


but this time finding works about men by women authors was as difficult as finding an honest statement in Hollywood on Oscar night.
And yet women don't feel the same urge. It has crossed my mind.

To your quiz, I got eight correct: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10.

[Niamh]

So as we are all coming into St Patricks week, i decided to borrow the quizmaster hat from AuntShecky and post one of my own.
Here is a literary quiz on Irelands writers and literary associations.
(sorry if its tough! :p )


1: Shakespeare wrote in the Merchant of Venice "Do all men kill the things they do not love?". But which famous Irish writer wrote "Each man kills the thing he loves"?

2: Who was the first Irish Writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923?

3: What is the name of the famous novel that Bram Stoker wrote which was influenced by local superstitions and folklore from his childhood growing up in Dublin.

4: My fair Lady is a musical version of which famous play by George Bernard Shaw?

5: And Another Thing... is the sixth installment in Douglas Adams famous Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series, but which Irish Novelist, better known for his childrens literature, wrote it?

6: Speranza was the pseudonym of which well known poet, Nationalist, and writer for The Nation during the 19th Century?

7: Writer of Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposel and Drapier's Letters Jonathan Swift was the Dean of which Dublin Cathedral?

8: The Limerick born Thomas Lefroy, Irish MP and famous Lord Chief Justice for Ireland, was once the love interest of which famous English Author?

9: Brian O'Nolan was the real name for which Irish novelist who also wrote articles for the Irish Times under the nom de plume Myles Na gCopaleen?

10: The Anglo-Irish Literary Revival was founded by W.B.Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, George Russell and Edward Martyn. But what other name, also the name of a collection of poems by Yeats, is the revival commonly known as?

11:Which Irish Poet is famous for saying in retaliation to being added in the Penguin Book of Contemporary British poetry "Be advised! My passport is green, No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen"?

12: ChickLit Auther Cecilia Ahern is the daughter of which ex-Taoiseach?

13: What text is contained in the Book of Kells?

14: What was the name of St Patricks supposed autobiography?

15: In 1907 a riot broke out in The Abbey Theatre in Dublin during the performance of which J.M.Synge play?
























1: Oscar Wilde
2: W.B.Yeats
3: Dracula
4: Pygmalion
5: Eoin Colfer
6: Lady jane Wilde
7: St Patrick's Cathedral
8: Jane Austen
9: Flann O' Brien
10: The Celtic Twilight
11: Seamus Heaney
12: Bertie Ahern
13: The Gospels
14: Confessions
15: The Playboy of the Western World

[Virgil]

Hmm, I only got seven correct: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 15. I need to brush up on my Irish lit.

Hehe, I kept wainting for a James Joyce question. :wink5:

[Niamh]

from me? never! I'm surprised i stuck a Wilde one in there! :lol:

[Virgil]

from me? never! I'm surprised i stuck a Wilde one in there! :lol:

Oh I didn't know you didn't like Joyce. He is kind of snooty to his own people, isn't he? :wink5:

[Niamh]

Oh I didn't know you didn't like Joyce. He is kind of snooty to his own people, isn't he? :wink5:

Nah! Just dont see what the big deal is about him. Better writers have come from this country.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks be to ya, Niamh for writin' the quiz this time.
Sure and I missed Eoin Colfer, Lady Jane Wilde (though I did say "Wilde;" if I had just gone w. the last name, I would've gotten credit on Jeopardy!), Flann O'Brien,and Bertie Ahearn. I should've gotten Seamus O'Heaney. Shame on the likes of me!

[Niamh]

Thanks be to ya, Niamh for writin' the quiz this time.
Sure and I missed Eoin Colfer, Lady Jane Wilde (though I did say "Wilde;" if I had just gone w. the last name, I would've gotten credit on Jeopardy!), Flann O'Brien,and Bertie O'Hearn. I should've gotten Seamus O'Heaney. Shame on the likes of me!

Ah sure you did a grand auld job so you did! Dont be frettin yourself. ;)

[qimissung]

I only got 2, 3, 7, and 13 correct, although I have heard of Eoin Colfer, and Seamus O'Heaney, and of course Oscar Wilde, and Pygmalion (that one I should have gotten, since I've actually taught it); and I've heard the story of Jane Austen's engagement.

[AuntShecky]

Charlatans, pranksters, and scam meisters invade every walk of life, but they must derive special pleasure when they hatch an elaborate scheme against the pompous in our culture. There must be no greater satisfaction to say to the snooty and hoity-toity literary establishment: "You've been punk'd!" Hence, the topic of our little quiz today: literary hoaxed. Embedded therein is a trick, which undoubtedly will be evident to you after answering a couple of the questions. As one of P.T.Barnum's signs used to say, "This way to the egress" . . .and to this week's nonsense, which we like to call

The Hoaxes With the Mostest

1. Speaking of P.T. Barnum, the circus king and showman, offered an exhibit of the so-called "Cardiff Giant," an enormous fossil of a man allegedly discovered in New York State in 1889. Barnum's giant was a mere copy of the "real" thing, which in itself was a carved piece
of wood. It's remarkable that never the twain would meet. Name the monumental American author who based his short story, "A Ghost Tale," upon this elaborate hoax.

2. "The Hoax," a 2007 movie starred Richard Gere as author Clifford Irving, who claimed that he had interviewed Hughes, the reclusive movie producer and aviation manufacturer for a biography, which turned out to be a case of criminal fraud. An earlier movie, Melvin and Howard, told the story of a man who innocently, though mistakenly, claimed to have been mentioned in the billionaire's will. What was Hughes's first name?

3. In 1764, a British author named Horace released one of the first Gothic novels, The Castle of Otranto, which he claimed to have been a translation of a work created in Italy in 1529, but really was his Howard's own creation. The facts did not, however, diminish the book's
wild popularity, whereas today such disinformation may have landed an author in WALPOLE State Prison. What's the last name of this author?

4. That same year, James MacPherson, educated at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh tried to pull a fast one by stating that he had discovered an epic by the mythical poet Ossian (Oisin), but the long poem actually originated from MacPherson's quill. The work nevertheless was a source of patriotic pride for both Scotland and for which other Gaelic-speaking nation, whose heritage is the source of world-wide celebration every March 17?

5. In 1983, respected magazines such as Time and Stern paid huge amounts of money for the rights to publish The Hitler Diaries, purported to be the written thoughts of the genocidal dictator whose designs on conquering Europe led to which world war which followed World War I and occurred from 1939-1945?

6. Though F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, is by and large a serious novel, the epigraph to book was meant as a joke. The quotation of the book's flyleaf is attributed to one "Thomas Parke D'Invilliers," a fictional character from an earlier Fitzgerald work, This Side of Paradise. Who really wrote the epigraph?

7. A British poet named Thomas (1752-1770) was adept at mimicking archaic verse, so he claimed that one of his works had been discovered in an old chest of a church, along with fake documents and certificates allegedly proving the poem's authenticity. He claimed that his "Rowley" poems had been written by a 15th century English monk who had committed suicide at the age of 25. According to the Oxford Companion, the critical controversy over their questionable provenance "raged on for decades,"for decades" but despite the TON
of CHATTER, the poet ultimately was respected, notably by Keats, who dedicated Endymion to him. Who was he?

8. The pop culture goddess, Oprah, once had the wool pulled over her eyes when she featured the book by James Frey for her wildly-popular televised "book club." A subsequent revelation which showed that the book purporting to be a truthful soul-baring memoir about the author's suffering through addiction turned out to be mostly made-up tales proved embarrassing to the hostess. Although her credibility among some viewers faltered, Oprah's reputation remained in tact, while that of Frey shattered, one could say into "A Million Little. . ." (what?)

9. Speaking of TV, in 1996 the Fox Network was made a laughingstock when it broadcast an alleged "documentary," Alien Autopsy. The film was supposedly actual footage of a post-mortem exam of an extraterrestrial being who'd crashed his spaceship in Roswell in 1947, though every shot had been fake. Your question: If an alien actually landed in Roswell, and demanded, "Take me to your leader," to whom would you actually take him -- to Rupert Murdock or to Mr. Spock?

10. Speaking of spaceships, on Halloween Night, 1938 a radio drama, with simulated the format of a new program, reported that Martians had landed in New Jersey. Even though there were disclaimers throughout the program, mass hysteria developed among listeners who thought that the alien invasion had been real. The script was 100% fiction, based on an 1898 novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, updated by a "boy genius" named Orson who had the same last name with a slightly different spelling. What was it?

11. In 1944, a lonely insurance salesman by the name Ern Malley, committed suicide at the age of 25, but not before carefully leaving behind a manuscript of poetry. As it turned out, Ern Malley was a complete fabrication of two pranksters named James McAuley and Harold Stewart. The poems themselves, nevertheless were deemed "not really bad" or quite good by the poets. The fictional Ern Malley was said to have been a native of which island country where one could find equally preposterous but nonetheless real kangaroos and duck-billed platypuses, Name that country.

12. After the authentic Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, fakes and forgeries of so-called "ancient manuscripts" came out of the woodwork, among them, a fragment from the Gospel of Matthew, which Paul Coleman Norton said he had discovered in 1950. Titled "Amusing Agraphon," it was a complete fraud, which lacked, shall we say bite, because the fragment depicted Jesus assuring the Faithful that in the Afterlife, those with dental loss will have be completely restored to oral health in order that they can weep, wail and gnash their what?

13. And finally, who is buried in Grant's tomb?

Answers

1. Ask me again and I'll tell ya.
2. That's for me to know and you to find out
3. None of the above.
4. None of your beeswax.
5. Surely, you jest.
6. Don't call me Shirley.
7. Does a bear er, sit in the woods?
8. All of the above.
9. Can you serve mankind by telling funnier jokes?
10. Well, you couldn't prove it by me.
11. That's because all the toilets flush the wrong way.
12. That's the Gospel truth.
13. You must be putting me on.
Yep! APRIL FOOL!
For more info on literary hoaxes, here are some nifty sites:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2009/04/famous_literary_hoaxes.html

http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2005/10/top-20-literary-hoaxes.html

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Eighteenth-Century_Literary_Hoaxes/

GOTCHA!
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/08/14/gotcha/

[Pendragon]

Dang, Auntie. And after I answered all but three of them correctly! That first story by Twain is one of my favorites!

[Virgil]

:lol: Ok, I struggled through all that and ...:lol: Aunty, aunty, aunty. :wink5:

[AuntShecky]

I don't mean to ignore National Poetry Month and certainly don't want to downplay the significance of Earth Day (tomorrow, April 22.) But I won't kid ya, folks -- verily, I gots the Fever! On the other hand, this Friday is a big day for lovers of the Bard, for April 23 is the date for his birth (in 1564) and death (1616.) The problem is -- how do I combine both baseball and Shakespeare in one quiz? Let's face it, you don't see many Danish princes covering center field; furthermore, sports during the Elizabethan Era usually involved baiting bears and some kind of "hurling" that had nothing to do with 90 mph fastballs. But way back when kids actually played outdoors on sandlots they used to ridicule each other with a sarcastic taunt that alluded to the Shakespeare. So, with these two seemingly disparate topics yoked by violence together, enters today's quiz, which we like to call:

Nice Play, Shakespeare!

1. The opening line to Shakespeare's play about an assassination in Rome sounds like an exhortation to sluggers taking too long to take their home-run trots: "Hence! Home, you idle creatures get you home." A slightly later line describes both The Fever as well as the defensive player whose position is right behind the plate: "Passion, I see, is catching." And a batter who likes to "take" rather swing at pitches might tell himself that the man on the mound "hath left you all his walks." Name the play in which these quotes appear in their original contexts.

2. What is the title of the 1952 Bernard Malamud novel about a washed-up hitter named Roy Hobbs who gets a second chance to make baseball magic with his bat named "Wonderboy?"

3. The hero of Shakespeare's greatest drama experiences deep philosophical trauma when he cries foul after his recently-widowed mother and uncle have gone well beyond first-base. Near the tragic conclusion of which play do we hear the line "A hit, a very palpable hit?"

4. The legend of Faust goes to the ballpark in an original novel by Douglass Wallop which formed the material for a hit Broadway play in the 1950s. Name this musical which features the fabulous song "Heart" ( as in ya gotta have it.)

5. The chief character in what might be Shakespeare's most emotionally powerful tragedy might even be too old for an Old Timer's Day game. Nevertheless, name the play in which we can find this famous simile: "As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the Gods. They kill us for their sport."

6. Last Sunday every Major League Player wore the same number on his uniform -- 42. This annual gesture is in honor of a man who helped change not only the history of baseball but also the social fabric of America. Who was he?

7. When a batter wonders if the air blowing into the stadium might carry the ball over to right field, he might ask his manager, "Sits the wind in that corner?" When a runner steals a base, the pitcher might complain "Flat burglary if ever was committed!" Both quotes come from the same play and of course, they weren't intended to be applied to the Grand Old Game but instead to the action of the delightful romantic comedy of whom Beatrice and Benedick eventually become a couple. What is the title?

8. Among the several books produced by a present-day American sportswriter are two outstanding collections of his baseball essays: How Life Imitates the World Series and Why Time Begins on Opening Day. Who is he? (Hint: His last name is exactly the same as the 18th century biographer of Samuel Johnson.)

9. A Mark Harris novel about the relationship between a worldly-wise pitcher and a terminally-ill catcher inspired a 1973 movie starring a young Robert De Niro. What was it?

10. Some fans are so interested in compiling or even memorizing baseball records and statistics that they become obsessed with "[t]rifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ." Other fans who like baseball but deplore the ever-escalating salaries of some of the star players might want to chide owners who only want to "Put money in thy purse." Both of these quotes come from a play about a Moor who is led astray by a green-eyed monster, not to be confused with the mighty green monster at Fenway Park. Name the play.

11. New York State native Phil Alden Robinson tapped into the spirit of Midwest farmlands with his mystical baseball novel. Name the book whose 1984 movie version contains the popular quotation, "If you build it, they will come."

12. When a team's standing is entrenched down in the cellar it's easy for a player to experience this sentiment: "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes/I all alone beweep my outcast state." This is the opening couplet of one of 154 poems that Shakespeare wrote in a special form. What do you call this kind of verse, consisting of 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter?

13. And finally, the lyrics and music by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer are not as old as Shakespeare, but they're 102 years old and I daresay nearly as beloved as Shakespeare's poetry. Fans often sing it during the seventh inning stretch. Name that tune!




Answers
1. Julius Caesar
2. The Natural
3. Hamlet
4. Damn Yankees
5. King Lear
6. Jackie Robinson
7. Much Ado About Nothing
8. Thomas Boswell
9. Bang the Drum Slowly
10. Othello
11. Field of Dreams
12. sonnet
13. "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/po_stmo.shtml

[Niamh]

1,3,5,7,10,12 I know nothing about baseball!

[Virgil]

Oh, fantastic quiz Aunty. You did it, combined Shakespeare and baseball. I got nine correct. Not bad, but I should have gotten Much Ado About Nothing. I got correct numbers 1,2,3,5,6,10,11,12,13.

[Wilde woman]

Aunty! I love your quizzes!

I got 9/13 correct - all the Shakespeare and #2 and #13 of the baseball. Can't wait for next week's!

[AuntShecky]

Thank you Niamh and Virgil for taking the quiz, and Wilde woman:




Can't wait for next week's!

Maybe you or one of our stunningly perspicacious LitNutters could post the next quiz!

[Niamh]

I'm moving next week but if i get a chance i'll try do one but i cant garuntee. :)

[Pendragon]

1,3,5,7,8,11,12,13 No too shabby

[Nikhar]

I guess I out to be really ashamed if I say that I got zero correct answers. But then my reading has been quite limited.

And well, the only Shakespeare's I have read were 'The Tempest', 'The Merchant of Venice' and just one act from 'Julius Caesar' (The one where Antonio gives his speech). And we had to read all these as there were in our literature course.

I read tempest wayyy long back...when I was just about 11.. I didn't even understand it I guess then.


Though I am quite familiar with Merchant of Venice. We enacted the court room scene for school drama. And I played Shylock (could you have guess that after looking at my avy :p).

[DickZ]

Thanks again, Auntie. I've been away from my computer for a while, and this was a very welcome treat upon my return.

I got numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13, but I have to admit that I wouldn't have gotten number 8 without your generous hint.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks Pen, Nikhar, and DickZ for taking our little quiz.

[qimissung]

I only missed 6, 7, 8 an 11! Yeah, yeah, technically I still struck out, but it feels like a win to me! :)

By the way, Auntie, I di the previous quiz, too...:skep:

[AuntShecky]

Before the ink is dry on their spanking new diplomas, great multitudes of undergraduates will almost instantly find a change in the character of their junk mail -– so long solicitations for student credit cards, hello requests for donations to the alumni association. Such a milestone is marked by a highly traditional, formal ceremony in which the soon-to-be-former students have the once in a lifetime opportunity to dress up like an Oxford don. (By the bye, how is old Don lately? Is he still wearing those dorky oxfords?)

Many grads look upon the commencement ironically, but their proud parents take the custom seriously. It’s easy to spot parents in the crowd; they’re the ones frantically clicking photos before hocking their digital cameras for the scratch to make that final tuition payment. The convocations usually feature a commencement speaker (who may also be the recipient of an honorary degree on that day.) The speech is often delivered by a prestigious newsmaker or national celebrity, or at least a prominent member of the local community. The speaker usually is someone who already has a job. For a humorous(?) take on this topic, click here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=896289#post896289

Meanwhile, let’s graduate to this week’s quiz, which we like to call

As You Go Forth

1. What is the title of the 1967 Academy Award winning film directed by Mike Nichols?

2. Book learning isn’t the highest priority among everyone. For instance, “Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire/That’s a’ the learning I desire” and “Leeze me on drink! It gi’es us mair/Than either school or college.” Name the poet (1759-1796) who wrote those lines.

3. John Barth’s satirical novel, Giles Goat-Boy, features a topsy-turvy educational system, but the noun referring to an item bestowed at college commencements actually derives from a Vulgar Latin word meaning “to step down.” What is this item called?

4. Close friends of E.B. White, the brilliant New Yorker essayist and children’s book author, always called him “Andy.” The nickname became attached to him because the president of the college he attended at the time was also named “White,” but with the first name of Andrew, not Elwyn. What was the name of E. B. White’s alma mater, one of the eight Ivy League colleges?

5. Which word associated with an undergraduate commencement comes from the Medieval Latin word for a squire, a young knight in service to an older, more experienced knight?

6. John Maynard Keynes (1886-1946) was arguably the most influential theorist of the twentieth century. Yet he was skeptical about education, defining it as “the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.” Nevertheless Keynes was a leading
mind in which particular discipline of knowledge?

7. The music at most college convocations is predictable. Occasionally it is the medieval song, “Gaudeamus Igitur,” featured prominently in the Academic Festival Overture by Johannes Brahms. But which British composer created “Pomp and Circumstances,” the most famous piece of music played at graduation ceremonies?

8. What are the initials for the equivalent of the Ph.D. at law schools?

9. In 1963, the American reading public made the spicy novel, The Group, an explosive best seller. Its Vassar-educated author nevertheless was a prominent literary figure, known for her revealing autobiography, critical studies, theatrical reviews, and her tempestuous marriage to Edmund Wilson. Among her novels is The Groves of Academe, a brilliant satire of institutions of higher learning. Who was she?

10. Name the great British poet (1688-1744) who warned, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” (The operative word is “little,” because he wasn’t referring to an all-night kegger at the frat house when he advised people to “drink deep.”)

11. Along with the usual suspects found in commencement speeches – “follow your bliss,” “give back” to the community, etc. – graduates also hear the words, “carpe diem,” which originated with the classical poet Horace. For his brilliant 1956 novella, Saul Bellow used the English translation of the phrase, which is what?

12. These days only ones who wear this kind of headgear are graduates and cartoon owls. Yet ancient kings of France supposedly wore this flat, square cap, named for the construction implement to carry a substance used by bricklayers or plasterers. What is it called?

13. And finally, name the literary giant (1835-1910) who wrote: “Training is everything. A cauliflower ain’t nothing but a cabbage with a college education.”


Congratulations and best of luck to all of our fine graduates out there!


Answers*

1. The Graduate
2. Robert Burns
3. degree
4. Cornell
5. Baccalaureate (or “bachelor,” since a squire was most likely unmarried.)
6. Economics
7. Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
8. J.D. (Jurum Doctor, “Doctor of Laws.”)
9. Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)
10. Alexander Pope
11. Seize the day
12. Mortarboard
13. Mark Twain


*NOTE: See Reply # 58 below for 3 questions that didn't make the cut.

ALSO--DON'T FORGET -- All LitNutters are welcome to write their own original, themed quizzes and post them in this thread any time!

[Niamh]

pathetic attempt by me! 2,5,7...

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie, for another creative quiz. I didn’t get that many right, so I’ll go over each of my correct answers - or the ones I’m claiming to be correct.

I got number 1 right off the bat, and told myself this was going to be easy. I quickly found out just how wrong I was when I missed numbers 2, 3, and 4. Now I probably would have gotten number 3, but our Latin teacher back then in the olden days wouldn’t let us even think about exploring Vulgar Latin because he figured he would have a hard time convincing us filthy-minded teenagers that it didn’t really mean pornographic.

I was able to get number 5, but just between you and me and the lamp-post, it was a total guess. I missed number 6, and just knew the Elgar part of number 7, so I’m taking full credit for the composer of Pomp and Circumstance.

I missed number 8, but I’m going to give myself 80% credit for saying Mary McGrory on number 9 on account of that’s very close to Mary McCarthy and they were probably from the same home town in addition to having the same initials.

I knew number 10 because I have lots of other Alexander Pope quotes that I like besides the one you cited. Other favorites of mine include: Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Man never is, but always to be blest, AND Fools rush in where angels fear to tread AND To err is human, to forgive divine.

I knew number 11 because I remembered it from Latin AND because I saw the movie Dead Poets’ Society.

I knew number 12, but I didn’t know number 13.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks Niamh and Dick for playing our quiz. Couple of"outtakes"--mainly because I forgot 'em!:

1. What is the three-word phrase for the adversarial conflict between regular folks and academics in a municipality that hosts a college or university?

2. In a metaphor for a person who is so obsessed with scholarship that he or she is out of touch with the real world, we say that "He's living in a ----" (what?)

3. A famous 60s era folk trio that had a big hit
with a novelty song that included the lines:
"It's not as bad as it appears
He's got rhythm and a Ph.D."

Name the group and the song.







1. Town and Gown
2. Ivory tower
3. "I'm in Love with a Big Blue Frog" by Peter, Paul, and Mary.

[Wilde woman]

Hi Aunty! Love the theme this week. I got 9/13 on the quiz, though - admittedly - Alexander Pope was a wild guess for me. Got lucky! I'm kicking myself for missing #5 because I'm trying to revive my Latin. In the outtakes, I only got #2. :frown2: But now I've learned the phrase "town and gown", which definitely applies to some grad programs (which shall remain nameless :biggrin5:) that I recently visited.

[Pendragon]

Only got four, #2, #11,#12, #13 Oh Well!

[AuntShecky]

This time around we're looking at famous pairs: groups of two people or places which go together like bacon and eggs – or peaches and cream, or cream cheese and bagels. (I'd say “peanut butter and jelly,” but I don't want to offend the allergic.) Gee, for some reason I've gotten hungry all of a sudden. (Maybe I should have said “gin and tonic” or “scotch and soda.”) So let’s get together and go straight to the quiz, which we like to call

Take Two

1. What is the name of the constellation containing the two stars, Castor and Pollux, as well as the astrological sign for May 21-June 20?

2. Many of us recognize the name of a pair of virtually identical, rotund schoolboys who presented “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Through the Looking Glass. I just found out, however, that the two names weren't originally coined by Lewis Carroll but by John Byrom (1692-1763), who first gave the names to two sets of constantly-bickering but “negligibly different” musicians. What are the two names?

3. One was a horrifying sea monster; the other, a deadly whirlpool. Both ruthlessly terrorized unwary sailors venturing through the Strait of Messina near Sicily. When linked together, their names symbolize two equal dangers-- you can't avoid one without having to face the other. Who (or what) are they?

4. Two minor characters from Hamlet describe themselves thus: “On fortune’s cap we are not the very button.” Yet they were lucky for Tom Stoppard, who granted the pair a play of their very own in 1967. Who are they?

5. A worldly-wise California migrant worker named George finds himself the de facto caretaker of the lumbering, slow-witted Lennie in an acclaimed 1937 novella by John Steinbeck. What was its title?

6. Talk about a couple of towns with a bad “rep.” No, we're not talking Vegas and LA. What were the two “cities of the plain” in Genesis whose names have come to be associated with sin and depravity?

7. Two modern municipalities in the northern Midwest of the United States are squeaky clean compared to the ones in the previous question. These two are so geographically and culturally linked that they are often referred to as the “twin cities.” In fact, they share a MLB team called “The Twins.” What are their specific names?

8. Two heroes of antiquity were so devoted to each other that one was willing to substitute his own life when the other was about to be executed by a tyrant. Hence the names “Damon and Pythias” came down through history as synonyms of which virtue?

9. Who was the 17th century who wrote twin poems about the active and the thinking man– “L’Allegro and “Il Penseroso”?

10. In the summer of 1921, two Italian immigrants were found guilty of murder and robbery in a Braintree, Massachusetts court. Soon afterward a widespread clamor arose that the two had been unfairly convicted because of their unpopular political beliefs. Their plight inspired literary works by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Upton Sinclair, and most notably, Maxwell Anderson who based his acclaimed drama, Winterset, on the case. What were the names of the two innocent men whose exoneration arrived much too late, a half-century after their deaths.

11. Mark Twain made the young Edward VI switch roles with Tom Canty, a lookalike commoner. What was the title of this wildly popular novel of 1881?

12. And finally, the unlikely combination of a wisecracking comedian with a crooning heartthrob brought success to a series of seven motion pictures, beginning with The Road to Singapore in 1940 and ending in 1962 with The Road to Hong Kong. What were the names of the members of this comedy team who, “like Webster’s Dictionary,” were “Morocco-bound”?








Answers

1. Gemini
2. Tweedledum and Tweedledee
3. Scylla and Charybdis
4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
5. Of Mice and Men
6. Sodom and Gomorrah
7. Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota
8. Friendship
9. John Milton
10. Sacco and Vanzetti
11. The Prince and the Pauper
12. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby


Sources: Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and The Reader's Encyclopedia.

[Wilde woman]

Hi Auntie! Great quiz. I got 9/12. For #10, the names were on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't think of them. And I could only think of one of the Twin Cities...shame on me; I'm such a bad American.

[aliengirl]

Hello Aunty! I got 1,4,5,6,8,9, & 11 correct. I also checked some old quizzes and found them very useful as well as fun. Will look forward to more!

[Whifflingpin]

Didn't get 7,8 or 10.

“negligibly different” is perhaps a bit harsh, seeing as one was George Handel and the other Giovanni Bononcini.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you Wilde Woman, Alien Girl and Whifflingpin
for taking the little quiz.



[QUOTE=Whifflingpin;911709

“negligibly different” is perhaps a bit harsh, seeing as one was George Handel and the other Giovanni Bononcini.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for taking the quiz! I put "neglibly different" because that's what my sources said. I'll check and make sure I punctuated it properly.

[AuntShecky]

I'm "bumping" this, because I have have reason to believe one of our outstanding members of the Lit Net has a quiz to post. Please click "reply" and let 'er rip!

[Pendragon]

Nicknames Quiz

1) Civil War general from whose nickname we get the term “stonewalling”, referring to delays in accomplishing goals.
2) Nickname of the wild west outlaw whose name may or may not have been Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, or William Henry Bonney.
3) Wild Bill Hickok’s nickname had absolutely nothing to do with his real name. Give Hickok’s real first and middle names.
4) Two members of The Wild Bunch, supposedly killed in Bolivia by Army Troops were Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Give their real names, respectively.
5) Give the last name of the baseball brother duo known fondly as “Dizzy and Daffy”.
6) Who was “Little Sure Shot”?
7) Buffalo Bill was a western hero and famous showman who brought the Wild West to England and Europe. Give his complete real name.
8) Give the nickname of American criminal Charles Arthur Floyd.
9) UK serial killer who may have been James Kelly, James Maybrick, Walter Sickert, Dr Thomas Neill Cream, or John Pizer, although the world may never know whom.
10) William T. Anderson rode with Quantrill in the gory massacre at Lawrence, Kansas. Give his sanguinary nickname.
11) Frank Edwin McGraw, father of country music legend Tim McGraw, was a legend himself in baseball with this nickname.
12) Name the athlete whose self styled nickname is “Prime Time”.
13) What basketball superstar is known fondly as “The Hick from French Lick”?
14) Which President of the United States was nicknamed “Old Hickory”?
15) Name the Pulp Fiction Magazine hero who is nicknamed “The Master of Darkness”
16) Name the DC Comics character who is known as “The Fastest Man in the World”
17) George Bush, as Vice President to Ronald Regan, referred to Regan’s economic policies under this degrading nickname.
18) What is the true identity of the Marvel Comics hero Daredevil?
19) Charles E. Bolton, the last great stagecoach robber of the old West referred to himself in jesting poems left at crime scenes as whom?
20) Assisted-suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian is know by this grim nickname.
Bonus: Quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, left halfback Jim Crowley, right halfback Don Miller and fullback Elmer Layden are known as:


1: Thomas Stonewall Jackson 2: Billy the Kid 3: James Butler 4: Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh 5: Dean 6: Annie Oakley 7: William Fredrick Cody 8: Pretty Boy 9: Jack the Ripper 10: Bloody Bill 11: Tug McGraw 12: Deion Sanders 13: Larry Bird 14: Andrew Jackson 15: The Shadow 16: The Flash 17: Voodoo Economics 18: Matthew Murdock 19: Black Bart 20: Doctor Death BONUS: The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame

[DickZ]

Thanks, Pendragon, for a great quiz. I’ve really missed seeing these lately. I’ve tried to write a few myself but they didn’t go over very well.

I got numbers 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, and the bonus. For number 7, I have to admit that I didn’t know Cody's middle name, but I’m taking credit anyway for getting the rest of it.

Thanks again for stepping up and composing an interesting one. I know from personal experience that it's not very easy.

[Virgil]

Nice quiz Pen. I only got nine correct: 1, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20. I should have known a couple of them though.

Minor correct to your number 17. Bush didn't make the "voodoo econonics" phrase as vice president. He made it while running against Reagan in the primary.

[DickZ]

Thanks for the Take Two quiz, Auntie. I didn't notice it when it first came out, as I'm really getting wrapped up in the World Cup. But I'm sure glad I eventually found it.

I got all of them except for the John Milton question. You're very creative, as always.

[AuntShecky]

This time of year, when the air’s as heavy as a Nietzsche tome and it feels like every one of your internal organs is melting, it’s really irritating when somebody thinks it’s the height of wit to ask, “Hot enough for you?” What the h- does that mean? Well, some people actually love the summer, but your average sun-worshiper on the beach never looks as if he or she is having a good time -- squinting, frowning, or trying discreetly to shake the stray bits of sand out of his or her bathing suit. Sunshine is good – don’t get me wrong– without it we’d all starve, if we hadn’t already been frozen to death.

Yet even a genius as savvy as the Bard himself looked a little askance at Old Sol. The speaker of the sonnets was glad that his mistress’s eyes were nothing like the sun. When questioned about his gloomy state, Hamlet confesses, “I am too much in the sun” (I, ii), which, according to Brewer’s, means he has “lost God’s blessing.” A similar observation of this “far inferior state” occurs in King Lear (II,i): “Out of heaven’s benediction comest to the warm sun.”

Hence to the air-conditioned comfort of this week’s quiz in which the questions and answers all pertain to the season in which the northern hemisphere is currently experiencing. Wipe the sweat off your brow, take a sip of an ice-cold beverage, and dive into the quiz which we – so originally! -- call

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

1. Folks have sung this seasonal hit every year since it was first “recorded” in 1250 by John Fornset, a monk at the Reading Abbey. The second line of the ditty is “Lhude sing cuccu!” What’s the famous first line?

2. The script for the 1957 movie The Long, Hot Summer was stitched together from bits and pieces of works by which major American author?

3. “ What is the title of the Gershwin folk opera which features “Summertime” as its signature aria?

4. According to an old saying, what is the crop that typically is “knee-high by the Fourth of July?”

5. The noted historian Barbara Tuchman won the first of her three Pulitzer Prizes in 1962. Name this seminal work recounting the run-up to, the execution, and the far-reaching consequences of World War I.

6. Although the play’s title refers to a winter event, Twelfth Night includes a reference to summer (III, iv) when Olivia tells Malvolio that he’s showing symptoms similar to those found in dogs, thought to have been highly susceptible to rabies at this particular time of year. What is the mental condition to which Olivia refers?

7. A child’s once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is the premise of “All Summer in a Day,” a short story written by which American science fiction and fantasy writer (b. 1920)?

8. For what or whom are the months of July and August named?

9. For centuries, fishing has been a favorite recreational activity, especially in summer. An early authority on the subject remarks that “as for winter fly fishing, it is as useful as an almanac out of date.” Not only did he know every angle of his subject, he evidently lived a long time-- (1593-1683), perhaps as a happy result of his favorite leisure activity. What was the expert’s name and what was the title of his famous guidebook?

10. “He had been for eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.” This satiric description appears in The Voyage of Laputa, a section of a larger, extraordinarily famous work. Who was the literary giant who wrote it?

11. Name the major American playwright for whom summer was a recurring setting including Summer and Smoke (1947), Suddenly Last Summer (1958), and Clothes for a Summer Hotel, a 1980 work about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

12. Who was the American humorist and entertainer (1879-1935) who once quipped: “I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do today”?

13. And finally, who was the significant British poet (1837-1909) who, in addition to creating poems such as The Garden of Proserpine, asked the urgent question: “What will thou do when the summer is shed?”







Answers

1. “Sumer is icumen in” (“Cuckoo Song”)
2. William Faulkner
3. Porgy and Bess
4. corn
5. The Guns of August
6. Midsummer Madness
7. Ray Bradbury
8. Roman rulers
9. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
10. Jonathan Swift
11. Tennessee Williams
12. Will Rogers
13. Swinburne

Bonus! Bonus! Added 7/16/10, 5:05 pm EDT

This time of year, "There ain't no cure" for what?

Bonus Answer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItOCOeskC20

[Taliesin]

Got 1. 3. 4.7. 8.and 10.
Rather okay concerning the heat, I guess.

[DickZ]

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. I also hate it when someone asks if it’s hot enough for me. I would like to say I would prefer it to be a few degrees hotter, but I haven’t yet been able to muster the courage to actually say that.

Anyway, I got numbers 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and the bonus question. I had to get #5, since I recently bought the Franklin Library leather-bound version of The Guns of August, which is a fantastic book. I'm also old enough to remember Summertime Blues when it was sung for the first time, which is a claim that most of the members of this forum can't make.

[Wilde woman]

Hi Auntie,

Thanks for the quiz. I only got 4/13 this week: #3, 4, 8, and 10. Dismal. As a medievalist, I'm ashamed to have missed #1, and I really should've gotten Swinburne as well. Well, better luck next week.

[dafydd manton]

Got more than I thought I would, but it's amazing how much you can forget between being 16 and 55. Is the brain just going through natural processes, or was all that blurb about "every drink kills x million brain cells" really true? Thanks for the cerebral gymnastics!!

[Pendragon]

1,4,6,10. Very poor job there, Pen!

[AuntShecky]

It’s that proud time of year again for apple-cheeked kids to show the 4-H projects they've worked on all summer long, for farm wives to display their meticulous yet lovingly wrought efforts in canning, baking, and flower arranging, and for their husbands to flex their skill on the midway in order to win a stuffed animal or a Kewpie doll which invariably costs much less than what they dropped on the games. The harvest has begun, and with it comes all manner of county fairs, homespun craft bazaars, and traveling carnivals, from the wholesome to the seedy. You'll find occasionally tasty– if not especially nutritious- fare such as corn dogs, cotton candy, fried dough, all of which the bold and the foolhardy may risk losing entirely on the amusement park rides. Don't worry about being hoodwinked or flimflammed or bamboozled by some flashy city slicker. This quiz is multiple choice for your enjoyment (and my aggravation!)

So – Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Step right up for today’s dubious attraction, which we like to call

Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair

The Choices
a. James Joyce
b. John Barth
c. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
d. Simple Simon
e. E. B. White
f. State Fair
g. Thomas Hardy
h. E. L. Doctorow
i. Ray Bradbury
j. Bartholomew Fair
k. Franz Kafka
l. 1903 World’s Fair
m. Vanity Fair

The Questions
1. What is the title of Ben Jonson’s 1614 comedy featuring archetypal characters named Littlewit, Busy, and Justice Adam Overdo?

2. Known for writing expansive picaresque novels such as Giles Goat-Boy and The Sot-Weed Factor, who is the contemporary writer of a short story collection titled Lost in the Funhouse?

3. Name the historical cultural event which concludes the 1944 film, Meet Me in St. Louis.

4. Who is the poet, publisher, and San Francisco bookstore founder whose most famous work is A Coney Island of the Mind?

5. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the team that created popular musicals such as Carousel, provided the source material for three movies with the same title, two great ones in 1933 and in 1945, and one considerably less so in 1962. What was the title?

6. A down-at-the heels farmhand gets so stinkin’ drunk at a fair that he literally sells his wife and baby. This the opening of the novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge. Who wrote it?

7. Name the 20th century literary giant who wrote the short story, “Araby,” named after a traveling bazaar that symbolizes a young man agonizing over his first love.

8. Which author wrote “The Hunger Artist,” about a man who, like a sideshow freak, starves himself for the entertainment of audiences?

9. Who is the present-day author of novels set against a cultural and historical backdrop, such as Ragtime and World’s Fair?

10. Tattoos are commonplace, even ubiquitous these days, but in previous eras a “tattooed lady” was a carnival attraction. Then, as now, the body art was one-dimensional, nothing fantastic like that of “The Illustrated Man,” written by which American short story writer?

11. Who wrote Charlotte’s Web, featuring a spider with literary leanings and a “famous” pig destined to win a prize at the county fair – or perhaps suffer a far worse fate?

12. What is the title of the 1848 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray?

And finally–
13. Who met a pie man going to the fair?

The Answers
1. j
2. b
3. l
4. c
5. f
6. g
7. a
8. k
9. h
10. i
11. e
12. m
13. d

[Virgil]

Ooh, you're back with quizes Aunty. I got them all correct! :D It's a little easier having the answers in front of one, needing only to choose the right one.

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie. I’ve really missed these quizzes so it’s great to see their return. I got numbers 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, and 13, but I have to admit that number 1 was a guess.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks, Virgil (long time no see!) and DickZ.

Just a clarification about Question # 5:

I misinterpreted the source material about the State Fair movies. There was indeed a film of that name made in 1933, but it wasn't a musical and thus the composer and lyricist had nothing to do with it. They did, however, contribute the songs used in both the 1945 and 1962 films.

Brings up (not "begs") the question: which of Richard Rodgers's most prominent lyricists do you prefer: Hart or Hammerstein? Although the latter showed that he did have an "edge," notably in South Pacific, most of the projects with which Mr. Hammerstein was involved tended to be somewhat saccharine, e. g. The Sound of
Music. Yet Rodgers's earlier collaborator, Lorenz Hart, wrote edgy songs full of wit, despite or maybe because of his troubled life.

But asking which lyricist you prefer is no doubt moot. Reminds me of a story about NYC's mayor Mike Bloomberg.

For an interleague "subway series" a few years ago, reporters asked Bloomberg which NY team he was rooting for, the Yankees or the Mets. Apparently Bloomberg tried to think of a diplomatic answer that wouldn't alienate any New York fan. "I'm for the team that has Matsui on the roster." Both teams at the time had a player whose last name was Matsui -- the infielder Kaz on the Mets and DH aand occasional outfielder Hideki on the Yanks.

[Wilde woman]

Auntie! Thanks for the quiz. I've missed seeing them. This one seemed much easier with the multiple choice - I got 9/13. I got #4-8 and #10-13. I was excited to see Ferlinghetti in there because when I lived in San Francisco, I used to go to his bookstore "City Lights" all the time!

Admittedly, I've never heard of Doctorow; I'll have to go check him out. And though I've seen Barth's books around, I've never actually picked one up. But your question on him made him sound really interesting.

Can't wait for next week's quiz!

[AuntShecky]

Arguably one of the best-known works of American verse, “The Road Not Taken” has been “taken,” all right, by editors of countless high school anthologies. Although teachers and students alike find much to admire in the works of Robert Frost, this particular work has been subject to misguided interpretations (see below.)* The readers must have taken a wrong turn when their GPS systems went on the fritz.

Scenic paths, highways, and byways run for miles through numerous stories and songs. The summer may be over for tourists, but construction season lingers on. If you’re being directed to a detour, or fighting gridlock, or stuck in traffic jam, you might like to pass the time by taking our little quiz, which we like to call

Caution: Road Work Ahead

1. “Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road./Healthy, free, the world before me” are the opening lines of “Song of the Open Road.” Who wrote them?
(a.) Walt Whitman (b.) William Wordsworth (c.)William Carlos Williams (d.) Walt Jocketty.

2. Whose most famous work is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
(a.) Douglas Adams (b.) Adam Corolla (c.) Adam West (d.) Douglas Brinkley

3. We may already have had more than enough post-apocalyptic novels by 2006, but in that year who published The Road, winner of several prestigious literary awards?
(a.) Kevin McCarthy (b.) Russell Banks
(c.) Cormac McCarthy (d.) MacKinlay Kantor

4. Whose song advised hipsters to “Get your kicks on Route 66"?
(a.) Nelson Riddle (b.) Count Basie (c.) Bobby Troup
(d.) Bobby Short

5. ALL of the following are names of characters in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road EXCEPT:
(a.) Dean Moriarity (b.) Carlo Marx (c.) Gregory Corso (d.) Sal Paradise

6. According to conventional wisdom, the Road to Hell is paved with what?
(a.) gold (b.) the sins of the fathers (c.) good intentions (d.) municipal bonds.

7. Name the 2007 winner of the Kentucky Derby:
(a.) Street Smarts (b.) Street Sense (c.) Bellamy Road (d.) Quality Road

8. What’s the title of the Tony award winning musical which features G-rated puppets speaking racy lines and singing R-rated songs?
a.) Avenue A (b.) Street Scene (c.) Poppyseed Street (d.) Avenue Q.

9. Which of the following is the most famous poem by Alfred Noyes?
(a.) "Cherry Blossom Lane" (b.) "The Highwayman" (c.) "Road Warrior" (d.) "Walk, Don’t Run"

10. Which former U.S. President is credited with the creation of the Interstate Highway System?
(a.) FDR (b.) Eisenhower (c.) JFK (d.) LBJ (e.) Nixon

11. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby took the Road to. . .” ALL of the following EXCEPT:
(a.) Rio (b.) Hong Kong (c.) Utopia (d.) Ruin (e.) Zanzibar

12. Among the following, who is most associated with the song, “Hit the Road, Jack”?:

(a.) Jamie Foxx (b.) Mary Wells (c.) Ray Charles (d.) The Coasters (e) The Temptations

13. And finally, long before we were born Fred Astaire introduced this in a movie, but a few of us were here by the time Frank Sinatra had a smash hit with this song by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. What was it?:
(a.) "Where the Streets Have No Name" (b.) "Easy Street" (c.) "On the Street Where You Live"
(d.) "One for My Baby and One More for the Road"





Answers
1. a 2. a 3. c 4. c 5. c 6. c 7. b 8. d 9. b 10. b 11. d 12. c 13. d

*Here's the link to the critical article about the "The Road Not Taken":
http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays08-01/poetry.html

[Wilde woman]

Auntie, I've seen that article before and think it's great. I need to share it with all my students. I did a bit better this week; I got 9/13 correct: #1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12. The last one was a complete guess...I got lucky there!

I was excited to see a Derby question here. I've never noticed how many of our top Thoroughbreds have road/street related names (Giant's Causeway, Cherokee Run, Forward Pass, Raven's Pass, and Conduit also spring to mind). But I suppose we owe much of that to the Street Cry craziness since Street Sense won the Derby. On a random note: Bellamy Road is one of the most beautiful Thoroughbreds I've ever seen.

[Pendragon]

2,4,6,10 and 11. How embarrassing!

[AuntShecky]

Thanks to you both for taking the quiz. And Pen, I hadn't seen your screen name lately --it's nice to see you back.

[Jazz_]

Thanks for the quiz Aunt Shecky - even though I only got 5 right :eek:

I had no hope with the Kentucky Derby Winner though :p

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie. I got 1, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.

[AuntShecky]

Surprise! We finally have a quiz. Eleven of the thirteen questions are multiple choice; for the remaining two you're on your own. Let's get right to this week's fright-fest, which, surprisingly enough, we like to call

October Surprise


1. Which of the following poets rhapsodized about "October's bright blue weather?":
(a) Elinor Wylie (b) Sara Teasdale (c) Emily Dickinson (d) Helen Hunt Jackson

2. The phrase "a tankard of October" refers to what kind of libation?
(a) ale (b) beer (c) wine (d) hard cider

3. Of the following works by Edgar Allen Poe which one specifically takes place on Halloween?
(a) "Annabel Lee" (b) "The Raven" (c) "Ulalume" (d) The Tell-Tale Heart.

4. A scene about a witches' sabbath can be found in which work by Nathaniel Hawthorne?
(a) The House of the Seven Gables (b) Tanglewood Tales (c) "Young Goodman Brown" (d) Ethan Brand

5. The October Revolution occurred in which country?
(a) France (b) Russia (c) Italy (d) Cuba

6. Most of us are familiar with Washington Irving's legendary Halloween tale. Name the real geographic location of "Sleepy Hollow."
(a) Kinderhook NY (b) Secaucus NJ (c)Tarrytown NY (d) Paterson NJ

7. Which seventeenth century English poet wrote "Witchcraft by a Picture"?
(a) Herrick (b) Marvell (c) Crashaw (d) Donne

8. Robert Frost wrote all of the following EXCEPT:
(a) "After Apple-Picking" (b) "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (c) "The Witch of Coos" (d) "Solomon and the Witch"

9. Name the historically significant event occurring on October 24, 1929.

10. October is our tenth month, but for the ancient Romans it was the eighth month. Why?

11. Who wrote "The Goblin Market"?
(a) Dante Gabriel Rossetti (b) William Morris (c) Christina Rossetti (d) Elizabeth Barrett Browning

12. Which American novelist wrote Goodbye, Columbus?
(a) John Irving (b) Philip Roth (c) John Updike
(d) Bernard Malamud

and finally, it's MLB playoff time!--

13. Name the former major league baseball star most associated with the sobriquet, "Mr. October."
(a) Stan Musial (b) Henry Aaron (c) Willie Mays (d) Reggie Jackson





Answers
1. d 2. a 3. c 4. c 5. b 6. c 7. d 8. d (Yeats)
9. The Stock Market crashed. 10. The Roman calendar began in March. 11. c 12. b 13. d

[Wilde woman]

Hi Auntie,

I really enjoyed taking the quiz, though I completely tanked on it. I got 6/13. I got #5, 6 (by pure luck), 8, 9, 10, 11. I really struggled with the Hawthorne question because I'd read (b) and (c) so long ago I barely remembered them, and the answer to the Poe question was the only one I hadn't read.

Thanks for introducing the Donne poem to me. I hadn't heard of that one and it sounds fascinating so I must go check it out.

A final question: What does Goodbye, Columbus have to do with October? (Obviously, I haven't read it.)

[DickZ]

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. I only got five right – numbers 5, 6, 10, 12 and the bonus question. I guess I'll have to study October a lot more.

[papayahed]

Allllllll Riiiiigghhhtttt I forgot how much fun these quizes were even though I only got 5 correct. (The bonus question saved me)

[Virgil]

Oh I had missed the quiz on the road. I got nine correct there (1,3,4,6,9,10,11,12,13)

On the October surprise I got only got seven (4,5,6,9,11,12,13).

Thanks for these Aunty. I always enjoy them. :)

[AuntShecky]

A final question: What does Goodbye, Columbus have to do with October? (Obviously, I haven't read it.)

Some parts of the western hemisphere celebrate --or used to commemorate --Columbus Day on October 12.

[Jazz_]

Thanks Aunt Shecky - I only got 6 right, but still enjoyed taking the quiz :D

[AuntShecky]

Here's a little quiz to get your glucose pumping against the autumn chill. The questions aren't all that difficult, but what's really baffling is why the sportswriters awarded an MLB Gold Glove to. . .Derek Jeter? In any event, like a fallen oak leaves in the wind, let's skip over to the
quiz which we like to call

November? No Kidding!

1. Who wrote the following lines:
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!--
November!(a) Emily Dickinson (b) Gerard Manley Hopkins (c) Wordsworth (d) Thomas Hood

2. In the United States, the first Tuesday of November is often designated as Election Day. Which one of the fifty states produced more American Presidents than any other?
(a) Virginia (b) New York (c) Pennsylvania (d) Massachusetts

3. Speaking of states, one of them was the site of the historic "First Flight" by the Wright Brothers. Even though that event occurred in December (of 1903), November is nevertheless National Aviation Month. Not only that, this state entered the Union in the month of November
(of 1789.) What was it?
(a) South Carolina (b) North Carolina (c) Delaware (d) Ohio

4. "November's sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sear."Who wrote that? (a)Robert Burns (b) Helen Hunt Jackson
(c) Sir Walter Scott (d) Tennyson

5. Bonfires are set each November 5 on Guy Fawkes Day, a reference to the Gunpowder Plot, a failed attempt to destroy which English ruler?
(a) James I (b) Charles I (c) Charles II (d) James II

6. In what year was Thanksgiving permanently established as a National Holiday, officially to occur each year on the fourth Thursday in November? (a) 1621
(b) 1863 (c) 1941 (d) 1956

7. Name the significant American novel in which the opening paragraph includes the line: "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul. . ."
(a) O Pioneers! (b) Moby Dick
(c) The Sound and the Fury(d)An American Tragedy

8. The Major League Baseball season is already long, and in recent years the expanded postseason has made it even longer. Not that I'm complaining, but if this keeps up, the groundskeepers are going to have to add another piece of equipment to the lawn tractors and tarps-- a snowplow! Even so, North America still can have pleasant weather throughout the autumn. Of the following major sporting events, which one usually takes place in November?
(a) Masters Tournament (b) Indianapolis 500 (c) Boston Marathon (d) Breeders' Cup

9. Because their year began in March, the ancient Romans considered November to be the ninth month. The Saxons in Britain called it "Wind-monath" because this was the month in which they did what?
(a) put up wooden shutters on their windows (b) pulled in their fishing boats until the following spring (c) finished their wine-making for the season (d) swept their chimneys and checked them for down-drafts.

10. Today, November 10, 2010 is the 235th birthday for which branch of the U.S. military?
(a) Army (b) Navy (c) Marine Corps (d) Coast Guard

11. November 11 has been designated as Veterans' Day in both Canada and the United States, but the it has not always gone by that name in the U.S. Between 1946 and 1954, it was called Remembrance Day" in order to honor those who had given their lives in the Second World War. By what name was this important day called between 1918 and 1946?

12. Match the following Memorials in Washington, D.C. with the dates of their dedication and/or official public openings.
(1) Vietnam Memorial (2) Korean War Memorial (3) World War I Memorial and (4) World War II Memorial
Dates: (a) 1931 (b) 1993 (c) 1995 (d) 2004

13. And finally, a major figure of American Literature was born on November 30, 1835, the same year that Halley's Comet made its rare appearance. The author correctly predicted that his death would come when the comet returned again. Who was he?



Answers:
1. d
2. a
3. b
4. c
5. a
6. c
7. b
8. d
9. b
10. c
11. Armistice Day
12. 1B, 2C, 3A, 4D
13. Mark Twain

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie, for another very entertaining quiz. I was able to get a few of them right - namely, numbers 2, 3, 6, 8 (only because a filly with an amazing record participated in this year's event), 10, 11 (only because I'm old enough to have lived through the other names), 12, and 13.

Please keep these coming. I can appreciate how difficult it is to produce them, having tried a couple of times without much success.

[Wilde woman]

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie! I enjoyed it, though I always feel humbled by your seemingly infinite store of knowledge. I got 6/13...2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9. I just realized none of those were literary, but historical. That's actually quite depressing....I'm supposed to be a student of literature. :(


8 (only because a filly with an amazing record participated in this year's event)

Are you as depressed about Zenyatta's loss as I am?

[qimissung]

Fair to Middlin'-I got them all correct! Hooray for me! Hopefully I'll get to your newer ones tomorrow, Aunty.

[AuntShecky]

Yay, Q! You got them all right! By the bye, love the quotes in your signature. Did you know that somebody took Rumsfeld's tortured syntax and published it as a collection of "found poems." (A critic said they were like bad Wallace Stevens.) Frankl, by contrast, is a great writer,
whom more of us should read.

[AuntShecky]

Well here we are again, watching the year getting ready to pack up and take off for parts unknown, and "good riddance to ye," we say! Meanwhile here is the final quiz of 2010, whose content consists of random bits of material culled from previous quizzes. All right, call them "repeats" if you will, but that's no different from what the TV and cable networks do. Hey, I love It's a Wonderful Life as much as the next gal, but that movie seems to have more lives than a vampire's pet cat. With that, I bid adieu until 2011-- when we do hope more LitNutters will participate in this thread and post quizzes of their own devising - and without further ado, here's a little thing we like to call

The Super Duper, Lolapalooza, Suretomakeyousnooza Lit Net Forum Games 2010 Final 'Zam

1. Which novel opens with a scene about a down-at-the heels farmhand getting so stinkin’ drunk at a fair that he literally sells his wife and baby?

(a) The Mayor of Casterbridge.
(b) The Vicar of Wakefield
( c ) The Mill on the Floss
(d) Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

2. Which author wrote “The Hunger Artist,” about a man who, like a sideshow freak, starves himself for the entertainment of audiences?

(a) Dostoevsky
(b) Kafka
(c) Ray Bradbury
(d) Tolstoy

3. According to conventional wisdom, the Road to Hell is paved with what?

(a.) gold
(b.) the sins of the fathers
(c.) good intentions
(d.) municipal bonds.

4. “He had been for eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers” is a satiric bit from of an extraordinarily famous work, whose “Voyage to Laputa” has been modernized and will be released as a “Major Motion Picture” in the U.S. on Christmas Day under the original title, what was it, and who was its author?

5. Shakespeare wrote all of the following lines EXCEPT:
(a) “I am too much in the sun”
(b) “. . .nothing like the sun”
( c ) “Out of heaven’s benediction comest to the warm sun”
(d) “The sun also rises”

6. “Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road./Healthy, free, the world before me” are the opening lines of “Song of the Open Road.” Who wrote them?

(a.) Walt Whitman
(b.) William Wordsworth
(c.)William Carlos Williams
(d.) Walt Jocketty.

7. In the following works, all by Mark Twain, which one is about a commoner switching roles with a royal figure switches roles with a member of royalty?

(a) Puddin’head Wilson
(b) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(c )The Prince and the Pauper
(d) The Mysterious Stranger

8. Name the two heroes of antiquity so devoted to each other that one was willing to substitute his own life when the other was about to be executed by a tyrant.

(a) Scylla and Charybdis
(b) Achilles and Hector
( c ) Tigris and Euphrates
(d) Damon and Pythias

9. Of the following which name is not the title character of a novel?

(a) Silas Marner
(b) Adam Bede
(c) Daniel Deronda
(d) George Eliot

10. What is the literary term for repetition of the same sound, such as the beginning consonants in a cluster of words?
(a) anachrony
(b) alliteration
(c) asyndeton
(d) epistrophe

11. Who wrote the play, Candida, about a young man infatuated with a much older woman?
(a) Oscar Wilde
(b) Voltaire
(c ) Plautus
(d) George Bernard Shaw

12. Which poet wrote the following lines?:
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

(a) Burns
( b ) Tennyson
( c ) Eliot
(d ) Auden






Answers


1. A 2. B 3. C 4. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift 5. D 6. A 7. C 8. D 9. D 10. B 11. D 12. B

[DickZ]

Thanks for another enjoyable quiz, Auntie. I got 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy new year, and thanks so much for making this a fun place to be.

[Wilde woman]

Hallelujah, I got them all right!! :cornut: By no means did I know all the answers, but took educated guesses on about half of them and got them all! What luck! I should go buy a lottery ticket now.

I love that the Hunger Artist came up. It's probably my favorite of Kafka's short stories. And I swear I could recognize Tennyson's verse anywhere. His poetry reads so simply, but has a really timeless quality.

By the way, I'm fascinated by this Candida play. I need to go check it out, especially since one of my New Year's resolutions will be to finally read some Shaw.

[Pendragon]

All but 2 and 12. Not bad

[AuntShecky]

Help! Call the cops, call out the National Guard, call Dr. Clayton Forrester! My television has been invaded –not by intergalactic aliens but by boiling battalions of competing chefs. In the past, dignified gourmet cooks like Julia Child and James Beard brought a soupcon of class to the TV schedule, but now every time I turn on the idiot box, all I see are toque-wearing hot-heads foaming at the mouth and wielding steak knifes like Samurai swords. If it’s not temperamental cooks on the screen, it’s food. I don't mean just the commercials. Never did I dream that I'd be paying the cable company for the privilege of watching a thirty-minute show about barbecue sauce. The programmers are just reflecting the desires of their audience whose eyes are way, way smaller than their stomachs. If you don't believe Americans are obsessed with food, just take a look at the long lines in front of local restaurants on “All You Can Eat Nights.”

Well, if you can't beat ‘em, feed ‘em. Hence the topic this time is all things comestible. It’s high in calories, low in taste, but there’s no danger of growing a Walmart shopper’s waistline. Just get your rotten vegetables ready to throw at the current quiz fare which we like to call

Food for Naught

1. The ancient Greek Gods punished a king for spilling the beans about their secrets by forcing him to stand up to his chin in a river of Hades with a bunch of delectable fruit hanging above his head. Every time the king tried to drink or eat, the waters would recede and the fruit would remain just out of reach. This myth directly links to which
modern English word?

(a) tantalize (b) tempting ( c ) stymie
(d) frustration


2. “The world’s no blot for us/ nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:/ to find its meaning is my meat and drink.” Which British poet composed those lines?

(a) Byron (b) Browning ( c ) Burns (d) Betjeman


3. Aside from a title of a novel by H.G. Wells, what is “The Food of the Gods?”

(a) angel food cake (b) peach Melba ( c ) ambrosia
(d) free salad bar


4. A major figure in America’s cultural heritage, he gave The Atlantic Monthly its name and contributed a series of fiction, verse, and essays to a series called “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.” Who was this physician/professor/poet?

(a) James Russell Lowell (b) Ralph Waldo Emerson
( c ) William James (d) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

5. According to a character created by British novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) what is the “gravest sin” a gentlewoman can commit before lunch?

(a) gluttony (b) make dinner plans
(c) read a novel (d) invite William S. Burroughs over

6. In the Satyricon by Petronius Trimalchio, is the ancient Roman counterpart of a billionaire flaunting his wealth in extravagant ways, such as throwing an over-the-top orgy, er–dinner party. Trimalchio’s Banquet was the original title of an early 20th century American classic which was changed to what?

(a) The Great Gatsby (b) Greed ( c ) A Moveable Feast(d) Dinner at Eight

7. Who was the inspiration for a character or characters in Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham?

(a) the respective owners of the bakery and pub in the author’s Canterbury neighborhood
(b) Thomas Hardy ( c ) Paul Gauguin
(d) Miss Sadie Thompson


8. Which of the following dessert items whetted the narrator’s memory in Proust’s magnum opus?

(a) meringue (b) croissant ( c ) Napoleon
(d) madeleine

9. What is the title story of one of the short story collections by Sherwood Anderson?

(a) “The Egg and I” (b) “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”
( c ) “A Dill Pickle” (d) “The Triumph of the Egg”

10. In a famous literary work of the 19th century, who are the pitchmen who recite the spiel which begins: “Come buy, come buy/Apples and quinces/Lemons and oranges/Plump unpack’d cherries/Melons and raspberries/Bloom-down cheek’d peaches. . .”

(a) street vendors in Oliver Twist (b) the Duke and Dauphin in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
( c ) witches (d) goblins

11. Who wrote the well-known short poem essentially consisting of a thank you note to his wife for leaving a dish of plums for him in the refrigerator?

(a) William Carlos Williams (b) Kenneth Koch
( c ) Kenneth Rexroth (d) Kenneth Patchen

12. Which time-honored metaphor or -- if you prefer – cliché refers to keeping the populace contented (and thus not contentious) with free food and entertainment?

(a) soup to nuts (b) bread and circuses
( c ) bread and cheese
(d) a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou

and finally–

13. Which 1977 dubious use of celluloid can be found on lists of the worst movies ever made– maybe, since it’s a parody of horror flicks, intentionally so?

(a) "The Eggplant that Ate Chicago "
(b) Banana Splitz
( c ) Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
(d) Dinner for Schmucks





Answers
1. a 2. b 3. c 4. d 5. c 6. a 7. b 8. d 9. d 10. d 11. a 12. b 13. c

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie. I got 1, 3, 4, 7, 12, and 13.

As history always repeats itself, bread and circuses are rearing their ugly heads again. Or as Littlechap promised all who would vote for him when he decided to run for public office in the musical Stop the World – I Want to Get Off: “Free false teeth for all!!!”

[Wilde woman]

I got 8/13 correct: #1-3, 8, 10-13. Not bad, considering I guessed on a bunch.

#6 is a fascinating fact...I had no idea! And I've never heard of #12...I thought it was going to be something about the peanut gallery. And I completely guessed on #11 because it totally sounded like something WCW would write. :biggrin5:

[AuntShecky]

You know that the proverbial inmates are running the asylum when the news media devote more ink, bandwidth, and air time to pseudoscience rather than the real thing. A case in point was the recent disclosure that Everything You Always Thought About the Zodiac (and were too busy to ask) Was Wrong! More about this earth-shattering news here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1001298#post1001298

Meanwhile, since Jupiter is aligned with Saturn, as Mercury getting its brakes re-aligned, and Venus is in the seventh house, putting roaming spouses in the dog house, but mainly because I can't come up with a better topic, here’s the current quiz, which we like to call

Hey, Baby, What’s Your Sign?

1. Which erstwhile Broadway musical featured the song “The Age of Aquarius”?
(A.) Grease (B.) Hair ( C.) Godspell (D.) Hairspray

2. The constellation and namesake sign “Pisces” means “The Fish.” Regardless of the birth dates and consequent “signs” of the following winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, which one wrote a pro-feminist novel titled The Flounder?
(A.) J.M. Coetzee (B.) Gunther Grass (C.) Isaac Bashevis Singer (D.) Patrick White

3. In his prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer alludes to which particular sign of the Zodiac?
(A.) Aries (B.) Capricorn (C.) Cancer (D.) Virgo

4. According to ancient wisdom, each sign of the Zodiac corresponds with one of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. By the Middle Ages, when people still took astrology seriously, astrologers attributed certain human characteristics to the influence of specific astrological signs, while the medieval forefathers of pop psychologists delegated the substances phlegm, choler, blood, and black bile as governing certain human personality traits. When all 4 were in "balance," the person was assumed to be ok, but if one of the four substances dominated the other three, than the person would be thought to be phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, or melancholic. These traits were thus grouped under what general term?:

(A.) The Ages of Man (B.) The Four Seasons (C.) The Four Humours (D.) The Four Tops

5. In what year did the Ford auto company begin producing one of their most popular models, the Taurus?
(A.) 1959 (B.) 1968 (C.) 1986 (D.) 1997

6. Both the constellation and its namesake Zodiac sign were named after what famous mythological twosome?
(A.) Romulus and Remus (B.) Castor and Pollux (C.) Pantagruel and Gargantua (D.) Scylla and Charybdis

7. Name the exquisitely literate yet expressively down-to-earth novelist who created the steamy
The Tropic of Cancer and the satiric The Tropic of Capricorn?
(A.) Henry Miller (B.) D. H. Lawrence (C.) William S. Burroughs (D.) Vladimir Nabokov

8. To date, for which of the following has there been a total of thirteen named “Leo”?:
(A.) Newborn cubs in the Bronx Zoo (B.) Go-to guys for Martin Scorsese’s casting director (C.) Models for the MGM logo (D.) Popes

9. Which astrological sign, concurrent with the autumnal equinox, correlates with a constellation roughly resembling a scale, evidently symbolizing the equal “weight” of day and night?
(A.) Virgo (B.) Scorpio (C.) Aries (D) Libra

10. Up until the recent declaration by astrologists, what would be your sign if you were born on Halloween?
(A.) Libra (B.) Virgo (C.) Scorpio (D) Sagittarius

11. The constellation and astrological sign named Sagittarius derives from a Latin root word which means what?
(A) arrow (B) hunter (C.) bear (D) drinking gourd

12. It is unknown whether aficionados of astrology are in the same group as conspiracy theorists, but folks who are convinced that the Apollo 11 mission was fake and that the alleged moon landing occurred on a soundstage might champion a 1978 movie entitled what?
(A.) Scorpio Rising (B) Capricorn One (C.) Under Capricorn (D) The 40 Year Old Virgo

13. And finally, the newest and 13th sign of the Zodiac is called Ophiuchus (http://http://www.startistics.com/ophiuchus/ophiuchus1.htm), a constellation that is supposed to look like a man wrestling a bunch of snakes. Allusions to serpents can be found in the Bible and various ancient mythologies, including an episode in The Aeneid, also depicted in a Roman sculpture exhumed in the sixteenth century. The tale told of a hero who after expressing his misgivings about accepting The Trojan Horse, was subsequently punished by the gods. Name this poor soul who was strangled by sea serpents.

(A.) Lamia ( B.) Laocoon (C.) Kraken (D.) Cecil




Answers
1.B 2.B 3.A (“The Ram”) 4.C 5.C 6.B 7.A 8.D
9.D 10.C 11.A 12.B 13. B

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie. I got 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 13.

[Wilde woman]

WHAT? There's a new zodiac sign??!! WHY? My sign has changed and I'm now no longer comfortable with my identity. :nonod:

But I got 11/13 right on the quiz. I guess I'll have to console myself with that.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you Dick and Wilde Woman for taking the quiz and commenting.

Among all the thousands of popular songs over the years, nearly every last one of them is about the same subject – Love: looking for it, finding it, enjoying (or suffering) through it, praising it, losing it, and damning it. Yet of all of these ditties, only one well-known song mentions the word “valentine.” We talking of course about “My Funny Valentine,” composed way, way back in 1937 by Richard Rodgers and his first -- some say his best – lyricist, Lorenz Hart.

One of the lyrics in that song asks the musical question: “Is your figure less than Greek?” Unlike the Greeks, I've never been seen bearing gifts. But I do have a quiz. More about gifts in the
anti-humor thread, (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1008202#post1008202) but right now it’s time for our romantic encounter in which we ixnay on the foreplay and skip the um, "details" in-between and go right to the falling asleep part with this lovely little quiz which we like to call:

The Four Letter “L” Word


1. Ah Love, your magic spell is everywhere, including in these lines: “Hail, Bishop Valentine whose day this is,/ All the air is thy Diocese.” Who wrote them?
A. Plutarch
B. Dante
C. Shakespeare
D. Donne

2. Adam, who was a “first dude” in a literal sense of the term, candidly confesses his feelings: “After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.” Which American author created Adam’s Diary?
A. Sherwood Anderson
B. Frank Sullivan
C. Mark Twain
D. James Thurber

3. Literally translated the word means “little loves.” What are amoretti?

A. Miniature chocolates given to schoolchildren in Venice on St. Valentine’s Day
B. Itinerant troubadours in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries
C. Small glasses of an orange and hazelnut flavored liqueur served as an after-dinner cordial.
D. A cycle of 88 sonnets written by Edmund Spenser and presented to his bride-to-be.

4. Speaking of sonnets, name the poet who wrote the one which begins:
“Love is not all: it is not meat or drink/ Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;”
A. Swinburne
B. Shakespeare
C. Edna St. Vincent Millay
D. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

5. Who defined love as “a temporary insanity cured by marriage”?
A. Nietzsche
B. Ambrose Bierce
C. Samuel Johnson
D. Elizabeth Taylor

6. Same word, different definition: “Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful woman and discovering that she looks like a haddock.” Who said it?
A. Woody Allen
B. W. C. Fields
C. John Barrymore
D. Groucho Marx

7. Speaking of definitions, who described the ideal marriage as “a union between a deaf man and a blind woman”?
A. George Bernard Shaw
B. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
C. Oscar Wilde
D. Henny Youngman

8. In the late twentieth century, Walker Percy wrote a novel “Love Among the Ruins.” Name the British poet who wrote a poem with that same title much earlier?

A. Thomas Hardy
B. Kipling
C. Robert Browning
D. Robert Burns

9. We've all heard it hundreds of times, maybe we'll experienced it more than a few times, but who first coined the phrase “It’s better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all”?

A. John Dryden
B. Cervantes
C. Voltaire
D. Tennyson

10. An incurably optimistic philosopher who sees our world as “the best of all possible worlds” would naturally have a sanguine view of love but —would this positive attitude also include the downside of love, including, ewwwww!–venereal disease? Well that’s exactly as he calls it in a extremely witty poem by Richard Wilbur (1921– .) Guess the title:

A. “Ever Since Columbus”
B. “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”
C. “A Reckoning”
D. “Dr. Pangloss’s Song”

11. Name the usually less-earthy poet who wrote the following lines:
“A woman can be proud and stiff/ when in love intent./Love has pitched its mansion in/ The place of excrement. . .”
A. Pope
B. Yeats
C. Blake
D. Eliot

12. Who said “Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.”
A. G. K. Chesterton
B. Robert Frost
C. Byron
D. Auden

13. In 1967 Howard Nemerov (1920- 1991) wrote some lines that were acutely topical then but surprisingly enough do not seem at all dated in the year 2011. It begins:
“Lovers everywhere are bringing babies into the world/Lovers with stars in their eyes are turning the stars/Into babies, lovers reading the instructions in comic books/ Are turning out babies according to the instructions. . .” What's the poem’s title:

A. Make Love Not War”
B. “Love Goes Out the Window When the Pram Wheels Into the Hall”
C. “Ah, Love Your Magic Spell is Everywhere”
D. “Family Values”

14. And finally, name the singing group whose 1957 Top 40 hit was “Bye, Bye Love”:

A. Ray and Bob Eberle
B. The Everly Brothers
C. The Brothers Four
D. The Righteous Brothers


Answers
1. D 2. C 3. D 4. C 5. B 6. C 7. B 8. C 9. D
10. D 11. B 12. A 13. A 14. B

[Virgil]

I haven't done one of your quizzes in ages. I only got seven right here. It seemed I should have done better. Anyway, I got 1,3,5,9,10,11,14 correct. Thanks Aunty. :)

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie. I only got 5, 8, 9, and 14. I never even dreamed that I would flunk Valentine’s Day.

[Wilde woman]

I am apparently love-retarded. I only got 5/13 - #1, 3, 8-10. To make up for it, here's some juicy Valentine's Day trivia. The first recorded mention of St. Valentine's day in association with romantic love is Chaucer's 1382 poem, the Parliament of Fowls, although Chaucer places it in May rather than in February. In the poem, Chaucer gives some randy descriptions of the god Priapus and goddess Venus, as well as an adorable scene where all the birds of the world choose their mates under the guidance of Lady Nature.

#3C is really bothering me:


Small glasses of an orange and hazelnut flavored liqueur served as an after-dinner cordial.

What are these called? I know it's amor-something.

[AuntShecky]

I am apparently love-retarded. I only got 5/13 - #1, 3, 8-10. To make up for it, here's some juicy Valentine's Day trivia. The first recorded mention of St. Valentine's day in association with romantic love is Chaucer's 1382 poem, the Parliament of Fowls, although Chaucer places it in May rather than in February. In the poem, Chaucer gives some randy descriptions of the god Priapus and goddess Venus, as well as an adorable scene where all the birds of the world choose their mates under the guidance of Lady Nature.

#3C is really bothering me:



What are these called? I know it's amor-something.

Oh I made that up for the quiz! If I had said "almond" liqueur you might have thought of "Amaretto."

How 'bout that Eddie Spenser though! How come 21st century guys don't write their sweeties a 88-poem sonnet cycle?

I think you're absolutely right about the Chaucer
allusion. But the Feast of St. Valentine goes back much further, I'm thinking.

[Wilde woman]

Oh I made that up for the quiz! If I had said "almond" liqueur you might have thought of "Amaretto."

How 'bout that Eddie Spenser though! How come 21st century guys don't write their sweeties a 88-poem sonnet cycle?

Yes, amaretto! That's what I was thinking of. Obviously, I don't know my liqueurs, but that's partially because I don't have the budget (I'm a grad student!) to indulge in fancy booze very much.

As for Valentine's poems...I'd be happy if my boyfriend wrote me a half-decent limerick. :p

[qimissung]

This is the worst I've ever done, I think. I only got 2, 4, and 14 right, but I loved taking it. Thanks, AuntShecky.

[AuntShecky]

2/17/11 quiz

I hear tell that once upon a time, the milieu for small talk and pleasant conversation was the cocktail party. This was back in the day before Internet chat rooms and Twitterers (Tweeters?-- “I twaght I taw a puddy cat.”) Anyway, one of the more popular ice-breakers was the question, “Have you read so-and-so’s novel?” prompting an equally popular yet truthful answer, “No, but I saw the movie.” Even though yours fooly has never been spotted within a 100-mile radius of anything resembling a cocktail party –nor for that matter, a movie theater lately -– books and movies have something to do with today’s topic: novels, poems, and movies about the movies.

Movies about movies– that opens up a whole viper’s nest of clichéd metaphors, such as “biting the hand that feeds you.” Or “a snake swallowing its own tail.” Come to think of it, not everybody in the Hollywood community is a stunt person, but they all seem to be contortionists. That’s because Hollywood has the double-jointed ability to pat its own back, especially on the big award ceremony coming up on Feb. 27. I didn't get an invitation to that soiree either– my invitation must be lost in the mail, just like my nomination to “Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities, ” which I've been eagerly awaiting for four decades. (It should be here any day now.) Meanwhile, ahead of schedule and well below budget is this week’s Feature Presentation, which we like to call:

Roll ‘Em


1. A prominent figure in French New Wave, Francois Truffaut directed the picture which won an Academy Award (TM) for the Best Foreign Language Film. The fictional plot depicted the goings-on among cast and crew both on and off-camera. What was the title of this partially satiric, partially affectionate movie about the making of a movie?

A. Life is Beautiful
B. Cinema Paradisio
C. Day for Night
D. Night and Day

2. “Double Feature” depicting the speaker’s experience upon exiting a movie theatre after a matinee, comes from a poet who usually finds his inspiration in gardens and the greenhouse. Who is the author of this fine lyric poem?

A. Theodore Roethke
B. Seamus Heaney
C. Carl Sandburg
D. Archibald MacLeish

3. To this day, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) never fails to surprise his audiences, through his works and from quirky anecdotes about his unusual life. The fact that Shaw himself had helped adapt one of his own stage plays into a movie script was interesting enough; even more interesting was that the adapted script had won a major award. Most interesting of all was the fact that when informed about the honor, Shaw had no idea what it meant– he had to ask just what an “Academy Award” (TM) was. What was the title of both the film and the movie?

A. Pygmalion
B. My Fair Lady
C. Major Barbara
D. Candida

4. The breakthrough for this writer’s career began in the 1920s with the publication of critically acclaimed and financially successful short stories. Later years found the author working in Hollywood, the setting and subject for the 1941 novel, The Last Tycoon, whose chief character was supposedly based on the legendary studio head, Irving Thalberg. Who was this author?

A. William Faulkner
B. Ernest Hemingway
C. F. Scott Fitzgerald
D. Dorothy Parker

5. One of Robert Frost’s subjects is a former movie queen, “the picture pride of Hollywood,” aging, down on her luck, and working as a cleaning lady. What is the title of this poem?

A. “Provide, Provide”
B. “Directive”
C. “The Bearer of Bad Tidings”
D. “The Witch of Coös”

6. “Homer Simpson” is the protagonist of “The Day of the Locust,” but this Homer is far from the hilarious character on the current animated TV series. This 1941 novel is a dark, nearly-apocalyptic vision of Hollywood, though incidentally, its author’s brother- in-law was the American humorist, S. J. Perelman. Name this author.

A. Dashiell Hammett
B. Nathanael West
C. George S. Kaufman
D. Budd Schulberg

7. A critically acclaimed picture of 1992 is a fictional and satiric look at the movie business today, celluloid warts and all, with questionable compromises, shady deal-making, chewing up and spitting out creative types, and the resulting resentment, along with the shadow of
a crime. Directed by the inimitable Robert Altman, its script by Michael Tolkien has been often used as a model in college-level screenwriting classes. What is its title?

A. Sunset Boulevard
B. The Player
C. Barton Fink
D. Swimming With the Sharks

8. Though most known as a director, Woody Allen did not direct but appeared as the title character of The Front, a 1976 dark comedy about the movie business and how it works around the obstacles caused by which historical event?

A. How World War II affected the film industry
B. The Hollywood Blacklist
C. The Great Depression
D. The arrival of a new competitor, television

9. Speaking of Woody, which one of his movies follows the romance between a neglected housewife and a movie character who literally steps out of the screen and into “real” life?

A. Stardust Memories
B. Sweet and Lowdown
C. Melinda and Melinda
D. The Purple Rose of Cairo

10. “The Bridge” by the American poet Hart Crane (1899-1932) was inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge, but another one of his poems took its subject matter from way over on the other coast and depicts a poignant scene inspired by a figure from the silent film era. Who was this famous movie star?

A. Mary Pickford
B. Harold Lloyd
C. Buster Keaton
D. Charlie Chaplin

11. An overly earnest movie director has ambitions to make an influential world- changing movie he wants to call “O Brother, Where Art Thou,”-–incidentally, the same title of a relatively recent comedy by the Coen Brothers and starring George Clooney. When the would-be auteur disguises himself as a hobo and goes on the road to do research, he discovers something which audiences want and need much more than social enlightenment. What is the title of this 1941 classic movie written and directed by the great Preston Sturges?

A. Sullivan’s Travels
B. Hail, The Conquering Hero
C. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
D. The Great McGinty

12. And finally, this movie about movie-making always makes the top of every list of Greatest Movie Musicals of all time, and often among the greatest movies of all time. What is the name of this beloved 1952 classic about Hollywood’s transition from silent pictures to talkies?

A. All About Eve
B. A Star is Born
C. There’s No Business Like Show Business
D. Singin’ In the Rain

Answers
1.C 2. A 3.A 4.C 5.A 6.B 7.B
8.B 9.D 10.D 11.A 12. D

[DickZ]

I probably should just keep quiet on this, but I only got #4. I thought I knew the movie adaptation of Shaw's play Pygmalion was called My Fair Lady, but I guess it wasn't. And to make things even worse, I don't know the difference between a film and a movie.

[AuntShecky]

I probably should just keep quiet on this, but I only got #4. I thought I knew the movie adaptation of Shaw's play Pygmalion was called My Fair Lady, but I guess it wasn't. And to make things even worse, I don't know the difference between a film and a movie.

Apparently, the award-winning screenplay which Shaw himself helped adapt was based on the original play for the stage. My Fair Lady was much later -- a musical version of Pygmalion. I think it was Lerner and Loewe, but please don't quote me.

I don't know the difference between a "film" and a "movie" either, except maybe the former gets taken more seriously and the latter comes with $7 popcorn.

Finally, I'm having second thoughts about these quizzes. They're a lot of fun to write but time-consuming yet are not generating enough interest ("hits") to keep 'em comin'. What do you think I should do, Dick?

[DickZ]

. . .
Finally, I'm having second thoughts about these quizzes. They're a lot of fun to write but time-consuming yet are not generating enough interest ("hits") to keep 'em comin'. What do you think I should do, Dick?
I can well imagine they are very time-consuming to write, as I've tried to come up with some myself and have failed miserably. Mine had nothing like the creativity and imagination that yours always have. I would certainly understand if you abandoned the project and turned your attention to other efforts.

[AuntShecky]

I can well imagine they are very time-consuming to write, as I've tried to come up with some myself and have failed miserably. Mine had nothing like the creativity and imagination that yours always have. I would certainly understand if you abandoned the project and turned your attention to other efforts.

Thanks, DickZ, for your opinion. I'll wait to see if anyone wants to weigh in with their preferences about the quizzies. If enough LitNutters say they like them, I'll keep doing them, and if no one else replies, I'll have my answer.

[Wilde woman]

Auntie, I have great fun doing your weekly quizzes. I'd be sad to see them go, but I understand can only imagine how much time you put into them. Like Dick, I'll understand if you decide to nix 'em. But perhaps you'd consider doing some for special occasions, like holidays? I rather like the holiday-themed ones. :)

I'll be back to look at this last quiz.

[AuntShecky]

So I'll bump this latest one (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1009860#post1009860) while movies are in the news today. If there are a sufficient number of hits, I'll decide whether to revive it, put it on "hiatus" (a euphemism in the TV industry) or put it out of its misery.

[AuntShecky]

Aw, what the hell. . .

Now that it’s March and the Luck o’ the Irish is just around the corner, here’s a quickie in which each of the answers contain the word “seven,” which is also a number that’s supposedly lucky (or so I'm told.) Without further blarney, shake your rabbit’s foot, look for that 4-leafed shamrock and take a chance on this week’s snorefest, which we like to call

Lucky Sevens

1. What is the title of the autobiographical work by T. E. Lawrence, better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”?

2. Kurosawa’s masterpiece of 1954, a highly-influential movie about a septet of warriors who attempt to save a farming village under siege, was Americanized and remade as The Magnificent Seven. What was the original title of this film?

3. What is the common term for the potentially “lethal” vices and human failings discussed at length by, among others, St. Thomas Aquinas?

4. Which majestic city of antiquity – still a thriving metropolis – was built on seven hills?

5. You can bet that the characters in a play by Aeschylus were far from lucky, but what is the title of this Greek tragedy about a war waged by brothers in order to regain the throne of an ancient city-state?

6. Name the collective phrase describing tourist attractions noted by Hellenistic travelers in a list that included the Pyramids in Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, and four others.

7. Finally, Nicholas Meyer adapted his own novel about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and their encounter with Sigmund Freud as way to cure a secret addiction. Name this critically acclaimed movie of 1976.


BONUS!– Not a question, but an added attraction just for those hardy LitNutters kind enough to click on this thread. Here’s a cute little video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4tNQ0Y7SFQ)that might help us get our minds off this seemingly endless winter.


Answers
1. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
2. The Seven Samurai
3. The Seven Deadly Sins
4. Rome
5. Seven Against Thebes
6. The Seven Wonders of the (Ancient) World
7. The Seven Per Cent Solution

[Disagree]

I got 4 out of 7 correct. :blush:

:drool5: <--- Me.




BONUS!– Not a question, but an added attraction just for those hardy LitNutters kind enough to click on this thread. Here’s a cute little video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4tNQ0Y7SFQ)that might help us get our minds off this seemingly endless winter.


Heh, thanks for that video.

[AuntShecky]

Among the myriad products of Einstein’s celebrated brain comes the oft-quoted description of insanity as doing the same thing the same way while expecting a different result. Here we have an illustration of that famous definition with yet another quizzical equation. Following the previous quiz with the sevens, this one features questions and/or answers all concerned with the number
“8.” So at the risk of the M.P. seizing yours fooly to be drummed out via a “Section 8,” here’s this week’s derangement which we like to call

“Crazy Eights”

1. Originating in the game of pool, what’s the common phrase for a perilous situation in which the affected person can’t extricate himself?

2. In his early years, he was the author of a tract defending a religion which he later denounced both in his official policy and in his private life which was marked by serial monogamy. Name this monarch.

3. What is the “timely” title of the following 1922 poem by A. E. Housman?:

He stood, and heard the steeple
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people
It tossed them down.

Strapped, noosed nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.

4. Legends and lore tell about buried pirate treasure which allegedly included large quantities of old Spanish silver dollars called by which colloquial term?

5. What was the title of Fellini’s 1963 semi-autobiographical masterpiece, rich with both realistic and hallucinogenic scenes?

6. The terms octave, octet, and ottava rima all pretty much mean the same thing, which is what?

7. What is the term for a particular book size formed by folding a sheet of printer’s paper three times to make 8 leaves or 16 pages?

8. Finally, name the 1988 John Sayles work about the World Series of 1919, “thrown” by the infamous Chicago “Black Sox” and starred an ensemble cast including, among others, John Cusack, D.B. Sweeney, the director himself as Ring Lardner, and a very young and much subdued Charlie Sheen.


Answers:

1. Behind the eight ball

2. Henry VIII

3. “Eight O’Clock”

4. Pieces of eight

5. 8 ½

6. Eight lines of verse, the first part of a Petrarchan sonnet, or a stanza consisting of eight lines.

7. Octavo

8. Eight Men Out

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie. I enjoyed both the quizzes on SEVENS and EIGHTS, and I'm anxiously awaiting the appearance of the quiz on NINES.

I got many of the answers in both quizzes, but not all the answers in either.

[Pendragon]

All but number 3 on this last quiz. Shortening the quiz seem to give me better odds...

[AuntShecky]

Thanks so much, Dick, for taking and "bumping" the quizzes, and Pen! It's great to see you back on the ol' LitNet forums!

[Wilde woman]

Hi Auntie! I'm so glad you've put up a few more quizzes for us.

For the 7 quiz, I got 5/7 - missed the first and last ones.

And for the 8 quiz, I also got 5/8 - #1-3 (though three was purely a lucky guess) and #6-7. I must thank my paleography class for teaching me about #7. I can't believe I forgot the Fellini film!

[AuntShecky]

The great American poet who wrote the lines: “Lifeless in appearance, sluggish/dazed spring approaches” hit the nail right on its frozen head. Certainly the lines apply to the Great Northeast of the U.S., where some folks choose to live for the “change of seasons,” the terms for which are “Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction.” Even so, some signs of spring have already been spotted here in East Hogwash. Just the other day I saw a beer can and an old tire peeking their little heads out from the bottom of
a snowbank.

The questions and answers below all have an affinity with the word for the season which that glossy liar, the calendar, says it is. In any event, spring right down to this week’s quiz, a twisted Slinky toy we like to call

Spring, Sprang, Sprung

1. The poetic lines in the intro come from a 1923 verse called “Spring and All” which opens with: “by the road to the contagious hospital/ under the surge of the blue/ mottled clouds driven from the/ northeast–a cold wind.” Name the poet.

2. What was the title of Ernest Hemingway’s debut novel, first published in 1926?

3. What is the technical term for the first day of spring, when the number of daylight hours is, allegedly, equal to the number of hours of darkness?

4. The orchestral composition“Le Sacre du Printemps” (“The Rite of Spring”) provoked a full-scale riot after its 1913 premiere. Who was the composer?

5. The word for the forty days preceding Easter, a time reserved for penance, fasting, and spiritual renewal for Christians, is the same as the M.E. word for “spring.” Even though these days we're aware of it more in the breach than in the observance, what do we call it now?

6. The present-day version of a German play by Frank Wedekind features rock music while retaining the original plot about a bunch of teenagers whose fancy has suddenly turned to thoughts of, ahem, “love.” Name this Broadway show which won the 2007 Tony Award for Best Musical.

7. And speaking of er, “love,” theologians of centuries past attempted to reconcile their ideal of chastity with the explicit passages within a certain book of the Bible. The former interpretation of this scripture as an “allegory” about the relationship between God and His worshipers has since been abandoned, and the erotic elements have been accepted for what they are, as in these lines: “A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” What is the title of this Old Testament text?

8. And finally, the section of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons which was earmarked to represent spring has a title which sounds like a variety of pasta sauce. What is it?


Answers
1. William Carlos Williams
2. The Torrents of Spring
3. Vernal equinox
4. Igor Stravinsky
5. Lent
6. Spring Awakening
7. “The Song of Solomon” (“The Song of Songs”)
8. “La Primavera”

[Wilde woman]

that glossy liar, the calendar

I absolutely love your turn of phrase here, Auntie! And I sympathize. Here in upstate New York, we finally had a spring-like week last week. All the snow melted, the temperature got up into the 50s, and I was able for the first time in 4 months to go outside in something other than snow boots. But when I woke up this morning, it was snowing AGAIN! In a single day, we went from no snow to 5 inches, with more expected tonight and tomorrow. And I've discovered how much bad weather can completely ruin your day. Winter apparently NEVER ENDS here.

Anyways, for the quiz I got all but #2. For #3, I immediately got the "equinox" ("equal night") part, but was really struggling to come up with the first word. Then I saw all the green "springs" you put in, Auntie, and the word ("vernal") came to me. I don't know if you intended it that way, but thanks! As luck would have it, my eclectic knowledge of musicals, Classical music, Middle English, and Italian all came in useful here...which is about the only thing which has gone right for me all day. Thanks for making me feel better in this miserable snowbound hell. :)

[AuntShecky]

To honor saints and presidents
We have days off from work and schools,
but get no rest nor holidays
From ever-present fools.

Tomorrow is the first day of April. (Don’t let that foot o’ snow on the ground fool you.) Watch out for pranks and practical jokes, neither of which were imbedded-- at least consciously so--in this week’s raspberry. I know, I hear ya: yours fooly had better quit foolin’ around and trip right over to the foolish banana peel, hot foot, and open manhole which we like to call

No Foolin’

1. Which Shakespearean character cried, “Lord, what fools these mortals be?”

2. Name the English poet who observed that “[f]ools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

3. With what does the analogy in Proverbs 26:11 compare a fool returning to his folly?

4. A classic of world literature opens with a celebration called “The Festival of Fools,” which in medieval times occurred not on April Fool’s Day but on January 1, or in this case, January 6, the Feast of Epiphany. What is the title of this 1831 work?

5. Known for her technically brilliant short fiction, Katherine Anne Porter produced only one full-length novel. Name this work which has been praised as “a major achievement of allegorical writing.”

6. What did an athlete named Foolish Pleasure achieve in 1975?

7. Name the work by contemporary American novelist Richard Russo which formed the basis for a 1994 theatrical movie starring Paul Newman.

8. We’ll wrap this up with a musical question. Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Ketty Lester et al. provide the answer. Maybe you can answer it as well: Why am I a fool?






Answers

1. Puck
2. Alexander Pope
3. “As a dog returneth to his vomit.” (Don’t look at me– I didn’t write it!)
4. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
5. Ship of Fools
6. Won the Kentucky Derby
7. Nobody’s Fool
8. Click here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs7t4SkW4Ho)

[AuntShecky]

What d’ya know –it’s May already! If you want to take a break from smelling the blossoms, here’s a little quiz in which the questions ask you to ID authors who were born in this Merry Month. This week’s snorefest is a relatively short one, so that you can get right back to the flowerbed before that pesky woodchuck devours every last one of the tulips. So let’s tiptoe over to the quiz, which we like to call

May-be Baby

1. There’s no “catch” in this question: which twentieth century American novelist was born on the first of May, not in ‘22 but a year later?

2. Born on May 6, 1856, this baby boy grew up to be one of the most significant figures in modern history. Name this person who, for all we know, might have driven his mother crazy. That, of course, means he was perfectly normal. (Hey, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.)

3. In a sense, all was “right with the world” on May 7, 1819 when a poetic virtuoso was born in London. Who was he?

4. If a rainbow appeared over Glen Cove, L.I. New York on May 8, 1937, its gravity didn’t interfere with the birth of which reclusive contemporary novelist? Who is he?

5. Speaking of rainbows, an “iconic” song about one appeared in the 1939 movie version of a classic children’s book. Who was the original author, born on May 15, 1856 in Chittenango, New York (nowhere near Kansas)?

6. Name the author born on May 20, 1799 who was famous for writing a compendious tome. (What’s so funny? Sacre bleu!)

7. If you want to flirt with the danger of a little learning, remember this date: May 21, 1688. That’s when hope sprang eternal, thanks to the birth of which prominent Neoclassical poet?

8. You don't have to be a detective to figure this one out, because, of course, it’s elementary. Which universally popular British writer was born on May 22, 1859?

9. It takes only self-reliance to answer this next question: which influential American essayist and poet was born on May 25, 1803?

10. And finally, lilacs were no doubt blooming in the dooryard when which beloved American poet came into the world on May 31, 1819?






Answers
1. Joseph Heller
2. Sigmund Freud
3. Robert Browning
4. Thomas Pynchon
5. L. Frank Baum
6. Honoré de Balzac
7. Alexander Pope
8. Arthur Conan Doyle
9. Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. Walt Whitman

[qimissung]

I only got 3, 4, 5, and 10 on that one, Aunty.

[qimissung]

D'oh, and I only got number 5 of the April quiz.

[AuntShecky]

Things are tough all over. Every industry is struggling through this sputtering economy, except maybe the liquor companies. Printed newspapers are especially suffering, with the double-whammy of the bad financial landscape as well as the fact that increasing numbers of readers prefer getting their news from electronic sources. As a result American publishers are cutting labor costs the same way other corporations do, by “outsourcing.” It sounds like a joke, but it’s true: the reporter who is covering your local school board meeting may be filing his story from India.

I knew our local newspaper, The East Hogwash Penny Pincher, was in trouble when the size of the daily edition kept shrinking faster than Posada’s batting average. The paperboy used to place the morning paper under the doormat, but lately he’s been able to stuff it through the keyhole. But the monthly subscription rate kept going up! You might say it’s a case of being a buck short, and --since the Penny Pincher seldom prints MLB box scores in a timely fashion – a day late.

Despite all that, today’s quiz is dedicated to the hard-boiled reporter with ink in his veins, a cigarette hanging out of his lips, and a little card with the word “Press” stuck into the band of his fedora (or whatever headgear is fashionable in Bangalore.) Now for a few column inches of all the snooze that’s unfit to print in this little birdcage liner which we like to call

Stop the Presses!

1. A hilarious Broadway hit about newspaper reporters spawned several movie adaptations, the best of which was His Girl Friday (1940) starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and the ever-versatile Ralph Bellamy. What is the original title of the 1928 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur?

2. Between 1709 and 1712 Joesph Addison and Richard Steele edited early prototypes that could be considered the earliest newspapers in England. Name these two periodicals.

3. May 5, 1895 marked the first appearance of a comic in an American newspaper: asingle-panel cartoon drawn by Richard F. Outcault for the New York World. What was the
name of the recurrent character?

4. These days members of the media are often demonized for their intrusive insensitivity,but at one time they were ranked with institutions that were highly-respected in an even earlier era: the Church, the Nobility, and the Townspeople. What is the antonomastic term or collective synonym for The Press, first coined by Thomas Carlyle?

5. The annual American journalism prizes named for illustrious publisher Joseph Pulitzer began in 1917 as a way to honor exemplary editorial writing, reporting, and public service. Just a year later the number of categories swelled, including prizes for fiction, poetry, and drama. Name the playwright who received the prize for four of his plays, in the years 1920, 1922, 1928, and 1957.

6. Newspapers with a small-sized format first appeared in Great Britain, but as early as 1919 they were extremely popular with New York City patrons of commuter trains and subways. The term for this kind of daily was “originally complimentary,” but through the years they began to get a bad rep as the term began “to denote journalism which is unashamedly sensationalist and profits by appealing to the lowest instincts.” Yet today it accounts for 60% of the British newspaper market.* The term for this type of newspaper derives from the brand name for a condensed medicine. What is it?

7. He started his writing career in 1863 as a reporter for the local newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada. One could say that this is where he “made a name for himself” which was what?

8. Until the 1980s, this was the collective noun for the British Press, originally the name of an underground river in central London. What was this term?

9. A classic movie from 1941 invariably lands near the top of lists of the best films ever made. The reason for this is its masterful, ground-breaking technique, but the story itself– the rise and fall of a newspaper magnate based on the life of William Randolph Hearst–is certainly no deadbeat. What is the title?

10. And finally, in journalistic circles, what does “30" mean?




Answers
1. The Front Page
2. The Tatler and The Spectator
3. “The Yellow Kid”
4. The Fourth Estate
5. Eugene O’Neill
6. Tabloid
7. Samuel L. Clemens aka “Mark Twain”
8. Fleet Street
9. Citizen Kane
10. “The End”


*Quoted from The Oxford Companion to the English Language, edited by Tom McArthur. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, page 1019.

[qimissung]

My degree is in journalism, Auntie, even so I only got 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 correct.

Excellent quiz, as usual! Thank you so much for doing these.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you, qimissung, for taking these quizzes and commenting. Hope you're not the only one!

Up next, a quiz inspired in part by Dark Muse's blog:

This time of year is an exciting one for fans the Sport of Kings, as it’s the season for outstanding three-year-old colts to vie for the Triple Crown, even though there isn't going to be a Triple Crown champion this year. The last time we had one? Don't ask. Even so, the winner of the Kentucky Derby, “Animal Kingdom,” will try to beat “Shackleford,” the Preakness Champ, in the last jewel in the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, on Long Island, NY.

Apart from fast-running steeds, a somewhat less speedy member of the animal kingdom made news this week. “Tex,” of Knoxville, Tennessee who hasn't had female companionship for over twenty years, is finally going to have a date–no mean feat for a 550-lb tortoise who is 130 years “young.” Since Tex is not all that Internet savvy, he couldn't access online dating services, so his handlers sprayed him with some after-shave and hooked him up with an Atlanta belle named “Corky.” Now comes the hard part–when Tex has to pin a corsage on Corky’s shell. Hmmm–wonder what their first date will be. Maybe Tex will take her to the Belmont.

If you haven't already guessed, this week’s bungle in the jungle features our fellow creatures as they relate to literature and pop culture. Let’s try to learn something from our betters as we zoom in on the zoo which we like to call

Critters, Litters, and Letters

1. What does the mnemonic sentence: “King Phillip Came Over From Germany Saturday” help us remember?

2. Although born in the Midwest, this distinctive American poet (1887-1972) relocated to NYC, home of the Bronx Zoo, which inspired works such as “The Fish,” “The Monkeys,” and “The Pangolin.” Who was this poet?

3. At a special event in Oxford, an undergraduate approached the guest of honor and asked him what he meant when he wrote the line: “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree.” He responded, “I mean ‘Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree.’ “ Who was this poet, born in the same place as the poet in question #2?

4. Name the specific type of allegory which features real or fabulous creatures such as the phoenix or the unicorn, used to illustrate human flaws and virtues, for example, the medieval Reynard the Fox, Chanticleer in Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” and the talking animals in Kipling’s Just So Stories.

5. What is the creature from the Old Testament whose name roughly translates as “That which gathers itself together in folds,” interpreted through the centuries as a sea serpent, a whale, or a crocodile, and, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, symbolizes envy?

6. Who was the naturalist (1809-1882) whose painstaking research unwittingly caused controversy even to this day, with his innocuous descriptions such as “A hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits?”

7. A New York newspaper man, Don Marquis, created a humorous character who committed his philosophical observations to paper when the office was empty and the world was asleep. Funny thing, though, “archy” typed all of his musings in lower-case letters. Why?

8. Name the Yorkshire county veterinarian (1916-1995) who wrote a series of best-selling non-fiction books about his practice all with titles culled from an English hymn?


9. “The Hind and the Panther” is a 1687 poem which, including the two creatures in the title, uses a bear, a wolf, an ape, a boar, and a fox to represent various contentious religious sects. Who is the author of this politically-charged work designed to promote reconciliation?

10. And finally, an original science fiction novel by French author Pierre Boulle formed the basis for a highly-popular 1968 movie and its numerous sequels. What was the title of the first film version?



Answers:
1. Classification system for living things:
Kingdom,
Phylum,
Class,
Order,
Family,
Genus,
Species.

2. Marianne Moore

3. T. S. Eliot

4. Bestiary (or beast fable)

5. Leviathan

6. Charles Darwin

7. archy was a cockroach, so he couldn't reach the shift key to make upper case letters.

8. James Alfred Wight (“James Herriot”)

9. Click here (http://www.online-literature.com/dryden/poetical-works-vol1/15/) for answer.


10. Planet of the Apes

[qimissung]

Oh, I only got 6, 7, and 8. I Always think I'm fairly smart until I take these, Aunty. :)

[aliengirl]

I got 3,4, 6, and 9 correct. A poor score! :(

[ShoutGrace]

Ouch. Have these quizzes gotten this much harder since I've stopped taking them? Maybe my brain has atrophied; maybe there is some financial incentive involved now and easy answers just won't do. I only got 5, 6, 8, and 10.

I guessed "fable" (after Aesop) for number 4, but I'm glad to now know the term "bestiary." I know Leviathan well, and I like the interpretation of him as a whale, and all the musings and Biblical quotations on that topic in "Moby Dick."

I knew Darwin was the answer for number 6 because I've actually heard this quote in a lecture before, which described the skirmish of words between Matthew Arnold ("that levite of culture") and Huxley (Darwin's bulldog). Arnold is famous for saying (after directly quoting the Darwin line you printed above), of that hairy quadruped, "there must have been something in him that inclined him to Greek." I've taken a lot of care in trying to understand the profundity of that notion. :)

I only knew James Herriot because I've seen that name on the spines of books countless times in bookstores everywhere! I also gave "All Creatures Great and Small" to an animal loving girlfriend once.

I guessed Blake for number 9 and was disappointed.

Thanks again for the quiz Auntie.