Auntie's Quiz O' the Week

[PabloQ]

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

[PabloQ]

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

[AuntShecky]

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

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

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

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

[Virgil]

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

[AuntShecky]

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

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

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

That Objectionable Four-Letter Word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

[DickZ]

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

[qimissung]

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

[PabloQ]

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

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

[AuntShecky]

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

[AuntShecky]

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

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

Is This Stuff Gonna Be on the Quiz?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All right – Pencils Down!

Answers

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

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

[DickZ]

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

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

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

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

[AuntShecky]

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

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

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

Shuck and All

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

[DickZ]

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

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

[AuntShecky]

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

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

[qimissung]

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