Auntie's Quiz O' the Week

[Virgil]

Oh I had missed the April Fools quiz. I got seven correct on that one: 2,3,5,6,7,9,12.

On the last one also go seven correct: 1,4,5,7,8,10,12.

There were a few I should have known in both.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks Pablo for taking this and all the other quizzes. Happy Easter to you as well -- and a belated congrats to NC for winning the NCAA.

And Virg, thank you too. Seven must be your lucky number. Next time you're @ a racecourse that's the one to play!

[AuntShecky]

The answer to the previous bonus question is: Green

Now that Earth Day is on the horizon, it’s interesting to note that the buzzword du jour – “green” – describes one who is environmentally conscious (and conscientious.) I wonder if this connotation is more or less arbitrary, other than the obvious fact that green is the color of natural phenomena: leaves, flower stems, and the legal variety of grass. Occasionally the word “green” doesn’t even mean green, as the rubric of Noam Chomsky’s famous line illustrates a sentence that is linguistically perfect while making no semantic sense at all: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

The English language is as just as alive as any frog awakening in an April pond, and since they are living things, words change constantly. For instance, today the word “transparent” has a positive quality, meaning to be willingly open to scrutiny, but not so long ago a “transparent” person meant one could see right through him. (Such is the trivia picked up by watching cable news shows. But if I never hear the word “counterintuitive” again I’ll be a happy woman.)

So far “green” can be either good or bad according to the context. When used to describe slime or mold, green can be nasty. Remember the scene from Neil Simon’s
The Odd Couple when Felix is shocked by what he finds in Oscar’s refrigerator? When the ultra-neat Felix asks his cleanliness-challenged roommate to identify
the disgusting leftover, Oscar shrugs and says: “It’s either very young cheese or very old meat.”

With that, to the quiz:

How Green Was My Auntie?

1. Who was the prominent American who began a short poem with the line “Nature’s first green is gold”?

2. What is the term to describe a tyro or an absolute beginner?

3. What were the legal tender notes first issued by the U.S. in 1862?

4. For a television series which ran between 1955 and 1960, Richard Greene portrayed this beloved character.
Who was this folk hero, who is, incidentally, usually clad
all in green?

5. Which 1943 Rogers and Hammerstein musical was based on Green Grow the Lilacs, a play by Lynn Riggs?

6. In Shakespeare’s Othello, what is meant by the phrase “the green-eyed monster?”

7. Who was the highly-regard British novelist-playwright-screenwriter (1904-1991) who wrote serious novels with religious themes (The Power and the Glory) as well as political thrillers and detective stories (The Quiet American and The Third Man)?

8. What did Eric the Red discover in 985?

9. In a 14th century poem, perhaps one of the finest in the English language, Sir Gawain manages to keep a cool head, so to speak. Who is the other main character
mentioned in the poem’s title?

10. In 1775 Ethan Allen led a band of Vermonters who rose up against British occupation. What is the nickname given to these intrepid revolutionaries?

11. A person who has a natural affinity for and success with gardening is said to have what?

12. What term refers to the backstage area where performers wait just before their cue to go on?

13. And finally, name the actor who famously proclaimed in a 1973 SF movie, “Soylent Green is people!”


Answers
1. Robert Frost
2. greenhorn
3. greenbacks
4. Robin Hood
5. Oklahoma!
6. Jealousy
7. Graham Greene
8. Greenland
9. The Green Knight
10. The Green Mountain Boys
11. A green thumb (or “green fingers”)
12. The Green Room
13. Charlton Heston

A clue for the next quiz can be found in this BONUS question:
Supply the missing word in the title of this 1923 e e cummings poem:
“All in green my love went______” (what?)

[Virgil]

I only got seven. I should have done much better on this. I'm upset at myself I didn't get Frost. I got these correct: 2,3,6,7,8,9,11.

[MissScarlett]

I got eight right: 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12. I'm upset I didn't get Frost, too, because I've been studying him.

[DickZ]

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie, and for the time and effort you spend in composing these gems.

I must have gotten really lucky this time – even though I missed the first one, the only other one I missed was number 5. And I have read some Robert Frost works within the past year, and I just watched Oklahoma again about two weeks ago!

I have to admit a couple of them were lucky guesses – for example, I wouldn’t have gotten The Green Knight were it not for the theme of this quiz, and Charlton Heston was the only actor I could think of in Soylent Green, which I never actually saw.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks for taking the quiz, Virgil, and Miss Scarlett, don't beat yourself up for not getting the Robert Frost one. I had to look in every anthology I have until I found his poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay. And Mr. Z:

. . . Charlton Heston was the only actor I could think of in Soylent Green, which I never actually saw.

You haven't missed anything, believe you me. The late
Phil Hartman once did a dead-on impression of Charlton emoting that line on SNL.

[AuntShecky]

The answer to the previous Bonus Question is: Riding


Whoever said “Getting there is half the fun” never had the experience of suffering through airport security or endless delays on the tarmac. Depending on the degree of convenience involved, travel can be either a pleasure or a pain in a certain region of the body.

Henry Ford’s right-hand man William Knudsen once explained the demand for the automobile thus: “Everybody wants to go from A to B sitting down.” Last year when the price of gasoline – to use the media’s pet verb - “skyrocketed” -- folks were sure to get their pictures in the local newspaper by getting to work or school via horseback. And if you ever become saddle sore, you won't feel like sitting down for a week.

Although the theme of this week’s jaunt concerns various modes of transportation, the great humorist Robert Benchley famously quipped that there were only two kinds of travel: first-class and with children. With that, let’s “go”— to the quiz:

Primp My Ride

1. This question would have fit the topic of an earlier quiz, but what is the title of Katherine Anne Porter’s only novel, as well as a 1494 allegorical work by Sebastian Brant?

2. “The Five Forty-Eight,” a taut short story taking place on a commuter train, was written by an American writer (1912-1982) known for uncovering the angst and guilt beneath suburban affluence. Who was he?

3. 1939 was a banner year for movies: Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and this masterpiece
by John Ford. What was the title of this classic western?

4. Speaking of movies, there have been three filmed versions of this hit Broadway musical by Jerome Kern, all adapted from a novel by Edna Ferber. What is it called?

5. What was the highly-unusual mode of transport which Hannibal used to cross the Alps in the Second Punic War (ca. 218 BC)?

6. According to the History Channel, the multi-million dollar spectator sport NASCAR arose from a tradition born in the mountains of southeastern America. What was the whimsical name for the folks who souped up the engines of their vehicles in order to elude the “revenuers”?

7. What was the derogatory nickname for Henry Ford’s Model T, a metaphor that mixes a metal with a diminutive for a feminine name?

8. What is the title of William Inge’s bittersweet play, adapted into a 1956 movie which featured Marilyn Monroe in the finest performance of her career?

9. In the opening number of On the Town (Comden/Green/Bernstein),which mode of transport
is referred to in the line: "The people ride in a hole
in the ground?"

10. What was the transportation-related “day job” of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of Night Flight and The Little Prince ?

11. If you’re singing a certain traditional American folk song, what have you been doing “all the livelong day”?

12. What is the 1843 opera by Richard Wagner based on the legend of a Dutch ship captain doomed to wander around the Cape of Good Hope for all eternity, unless he can find a woman willing to sacrifice everything for his sake?

13. And finally, a week from Saturday is the day for the 135th running of the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of thoroughbred horse racing’s Triple Crown, which hasn't had a winner in thirty-one years. What was the name of the last Triple Crown winner?



Answers
1. Ship of Fools
2. John Cheever
3. Stagecoach
4. Showboat
5. Elephants
6. moon shiners
7. Tin Lizzie
8. Bus Stop
9. NYC subway system
10. Aviator (pilot)
11. “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad”
12. The Flying Dutchman (Der Fliegende Hollander)
13. Affirmed

The theme for the next quiz can be found in the BONUS QUESTION:
Supply the missing word: In 1940, Lionel Hampton (1908-2002) was traveling on a airplane when he composed his signature song, “Flying ____” (what?)

[Wilde woman]

AuntShecky - your quizzes are great fun. Thanks for taking the time to compose them each week!

I only got five right - #5, 9, 11, 12, 13. Admittedly, the only one I knew for sure was 13, because I've never seen a Triple Crown and every year the hope is renewed.

[Virgil]

This was a tough one. I got only four: 1, 2, 5, 9.

By the way Hannibal only had a couple of dozen or so elephants. It wasn't like his whole arny was on elephants.

[DickZ]

Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. Your timing is great, as I just returned last evening from a five-day visit to my brother and sisters in Texas and actually experienced firsthand several of the transportation modes you covered in your quiz.

I got number 1, as I actually read that book, but I had no idea that it was her only novel. I wrote Ms. Porter a letter telling her how much I enjoyed the book, and cited several samples of what made it so great. She was kind enough to answer, but I wasn't smart enough to save her answer well enough to be able to find it now. I sure thought I had her letter in the book, which I still have, but the letter isn't there. It's hard to believe the book was published in 1962 - it seems almost like yesterday.

After missing numbers 2 and 3 (although I should have gotten 3), I was able to get numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. I wrongly guessed bus driver for number 10, but I got numbers 11, 12, and 13 right. I only knew the English version of 12, so I hope that's OK.

[PabloQ]

OK, I went back and took the Green one and I only missed the first question. I will admit that I totally guessed on question 5. Great quiz as always, Auntie.

[PabloQ]

10 of 13 on the Transportation, missing 2, 4, and 8. These are always so much fun. Keep them coming.

[AuntShecky]

Auntie (in quizmaster mode) -- Thanks Virgil, Wilde Woman,
Dick Z, and Pablo for playing our game.
I'd "tell you what you've won" viz a viz "parting gifts" but we're
all out of Lee Press-On Nails today. But I kid, I kid.
These things are fun to write.

[AuntShecky]

Previous bonus question answer: Home


“A man’s home,” so it’s oft said, “is his castle.” If that’s the case, where does that put the lady of the house?-- not, one certainly hopes, where Orson Bean, the erstwhile professional talk-show guest said to put her: “in the stove!”

Fortunately, the Women’s Liberation Movement changed all that. Now women have equal rights to a full day’s work – and to come home to another full day’s work.

Humans generally delegate housekeeping duties to the distaff side, but in the world of our feathered friends, gender roles are reversed. For instance, the male bower bird of Australia doesn't merely construct a home for his beloved – he becomes a veritable interior decorator, festooning the elaborate edifice of moss and twigs with feathers, flowers, pretty pebbles, and shells, all without the benefit of the latest issue of Better Nests and Gardens. Not only that, while the bower bird is busily prettifying the premises, he has to keep his eye out for predators – especially the ones hawking sub-prime mortgages.

With that, let’s make ourselves at home, have a cup of tea, and visit with the quiz:

“Dumbesticity”

1. According to the speaker in Frost’s “Death of the Hired Man, ” Home is the place that when you have to go there, “ what has to happen?

2. Who was the British poet whose 1845 poem, “Home-Thoughts from Abroad” begins, “Oh, to be in England now that April’s there?”

3. In 1922 an American poet known for his iconoclastic style wrote a more conventional, albeit harrowing, autobiographical novel called The Enormous Room. Who was he?

4. The ancient Romans gave their Lares and Penates sacred personalities; in modern times we may almost worship what the late George Carlin called our “stuff.” What are they?

5. What’s the title of the 1852 Dickens novel centered around a interminable court case called Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce?

6. Name the adventure novelist and poet who wrote these famous lines: “Home is the sailor home from the sea and the hunter home from the hill.”

7. What was the title of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 novel about a curse and its effect upon a spinster and her brother and their ingénue cousin and her sweetheart?

8. “You Can't Go Home Again” is advice one might want to take with the proverbial grain of salt, but it also serves as the title of a 1940 posthumous novel by a voluminous though brilliant American writer. Who was he?

9. It has nothing to do with the culinary skills of the concessionaires, but what is the term from sports slang referring to a team’s perceived advantage on its own turf, or possible preferential treatment by referees, or a cheerleader-like slant by the sportscasters calling the game?

10. Modern feminists adopted this 1892 American short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in which the female narrator descends into madness before the reader’s eyes. What is the title?

11. Set in the home of a sea captain, this work is a powerful anti-war allegory which blames “apathy, confusion, and lack of purpose” as the sources for the world’s problems. What is the title of this poignant 1920 play by George Bernard Shaw?

12. Who wrote The Kitchen God’s Wife, an acclaimed 1991 novel which is a loving portrait of the experience of Chinese immigrants in California?

13. And finally, what’s the title of the perennially popular, 1964 rock classic by The Animals which contains the lyric, “It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy/ And God, I know, I'm one?”

Answers:

1. “They have to take you in.”
2. Robert Browning
3. e e cummings
4. Household gods
5. Bleak House
6. Robert Louis Stevenson
7. The House of the Seven Gables
8. Thomas Wolfe
9. “home cookin’ “
10. “The Yellow Wallpaper” (Not to be confused with the dying words of Ronald Firbank:
“Either that wallpaper has to go – or I do!”)*
11. Heartbreak House
12. Amy Tan
13. “The House of the Rising Sun”
*There is dispute about the source of this quotation. If this is important to you, please read
this:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...649#post716649


A clue for the next quiz topic: What’s the subject of the most famous song by Howard Johnson (1887-1941) that begins “M is for the Many things she gave me?”