Auntie's Quiz O' the Week

[AuntShecky]

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

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

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

[AuntShecky]

Previous topic clue: River


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

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

With that, let’s sail on to the quiz.

A River Runs Through This

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

[MarkBastable]

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

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

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

GEE na lol la BRIG i da

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

[Virgil]

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

[DickZ]

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

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

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

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

[AuntShecky]

Previous clue: Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Wet!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

[DickZ]

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

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

[AuntShecky]

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

[AuntShecky]

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

[AuntShecky]

Previous quiz topic clue: sea


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

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

Now Sea Here

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

sources: the usual suspects, previously noted.

[Virgil]

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

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

[DickZ]

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

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

[PabloQ]

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

[AuntShecky]

Previous topic clue: “lawyer”


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

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

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

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

Ordure in the Court

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

Sources: The usual suspects!

[Virgil]

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

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

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