QUIZnotes

Here's the very belated run-down of NERDS Trivia from May

AND

I'll take this opportunity to let you know that June 29, 8pm will be the next iteration of NERDS

A huge congrats to Space Monkey Mafia for taking home first (and a shout out to The Never Nudes for tickling our funny bones with your 'totes appropes' name selection)

The run down - see how you did/might have done...

ROUND 1: POTPOURRI

1. Please draw the punctuation mark, an interrobang. 

2. What is the only South American country that has both a Pacific and an Atlantic coastline?

3. In Greek Mythology, this man built the structure that housed the minotaur, flew to safety on hand-crafted wings, and is credited as the father of carpentry. He even makes an appearance in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series as a son of Athena. But, as with all Greek heros, he also had a tragic life: He was responsible - directly and indirectly - for the deaths of his son (from which we learned to follow instructions) and nephew (from which the world gained partridges). For a point each, what is his name, and what are the names of his son and nephew.

         

4. The average yellow wooden and graphite pencil can be sharpened 17 times and write 45,000 words. If one were used to draw a continuous straight line, (within 5 miles) how far would it stretch?

5. Prior to the 20th century, what term was used to describe what we now call a “psychiatrist”?

6. The 1987 debut album, Rhyme Pays, of American rapper and actor Tracy Marrow, has the distinct honor of being the first hip-hop album to carry the ‘explicit content’ sticker. He gained further notoriety, for the controversy he created over his 1992 track “Cop Killer” on the self-titled first album by Body Count. What is Tracy Marrow’s stage name?

7. Which of the original 13 US Colonies listed as states in the US Constitution is spelled incorrectly in that original document?

8. What is the largest land animal capable of producing offspring without engaging in sex?

9.  Which grape varietal, named for its resemblance to a pine cone, is characterized by its dark purple-color, tight bunches of small, thin-skinned grapes, is famously difficult to cultivate, and is most produced in the Burgundy region of France?

10. Which food, named in class 4.2 of the Maritime Dangerous Goods Code (category Flammable Solids, subgroup: Substances Liable to Spontaneous Combustion), continues to absorb oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide after harvesting, and can, if placed under pressure, burst into flames?

ROUND 1: ANSWERS
1. ‽ (An interrobang is a non-standard punctuation mark used to combine the functions of a question mark - the ‘interrogative point’ - and the exclamation point - known in printers/programmers’ jargon as the ‘bang’. In 1962, the head of an advertising agency, Martin Speckter believed that ads would look better if copywriters conveyed surprised rhetorical questions using a single mark. He then proposed this concept in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks.
2. COLOMBIA
3. DAEDALUS, ICARUS, PERDIX
4. 35 MILES
5. ALIENIST (Though fallen out of favor conventionally, the term is still used in psychiatric hospitals to describe mental health professionals who evaluate defendants to determine their competency to stand trial).
6. ICE-T (Somewhat ironically, he has played a cop on Law and Order: SVU since 2000)
7. PENNSYLVANIA (‘Pensylvania’)
8. TURKEYS (The technical term is Parthenogenesis, and the offspring of such virgin births are always sterile males).
9. PINOT NOIR (it has been said that while God made the Cabernet Sauvignon, the devil made the Pinot Noir)
10. PISTACHIOS

ROUND 2: THE LONG WEEKEND

1. Composer Jem Finer created a computer-generated musical titled “Longplayer” that began playing at a London lighthouse in 1999. This musical is designed to play, uninterrupted, for how many years? (Hint: Scheherazade [SAY: Schkair zee AID ee] wouldn’t like it.)

2. Puggy, a male Pekingese, currently holds the world record for a dog having the longest one of these.

3. At 29,800 miles, the Pan-American Highway is the longest road on record. It originates in what U.S. state and spans through North, Central, and South America.       

4. This author’s work A la recherche du temps perdu (translated as In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past) contains an estimated 9,609,000 characters and is the longest novel on record. (Sorry, David Foster Wallace.)

5. This country in Southeast Asia hosted a kissing contest to break the world record. The winning  couple kissed for more than 58 hours. Sadly, the contest did not require a re-enactment of the Lady and the Tramp scene using pho noodles.

6. Former cosmonaut Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov is the record holder for the longest single spaceflight in human history. During one trip, he stayed aboard this space station for more than 14 months.

7. In 1987, a bard-ass decided to recite the complete works of this writer. The performance lasted more than 110 hours. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not record-breaking.

8. Discounting Greenland, which 5 countries boast the longest coastlines? Hint: 3 of the 5 countries are located in East or Southeast Asia.

9. At 36 characters, the term Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia [pronounce: Hip-oh-paht-oh-mahn-stroh-sehs-kwip-uh-day-lee-oh-foh-bee-uh] is one of the longest words on record. Cruelly, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is defined as the fear of what?

10. This man famously had the longest winning streak on Jeopardy! after winning 74 games in a row.

ROUND 2: ANSWER
1. ONE THOUSAND
2. TONGUE (4.5 inches)
3. ALASKA
4. MARCEL PROUST
5. THAILAND
6. MIR SPACE STATION
7. SHAKESPEARE (the event was called the “Bard-athon”)
8. CANADA, 125 570 miles; INDONESIA, 33,999 miles; RUSSIA, 23,396 miles; PHILIPPINES,      22,559 miles; JAPAN, 18,486 miles

A note on Greenland: This list does not include Greenland which has 44,087 kilometres of coastline but is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark (where things are often rotten). If it were to be included it would be number 3 on the list. The United States is a respectable 8th on the list at 19,924 km (12,383 miles).

9. THE FEAR OF LONG WORDS.
10. KEN JENNINGS

ROUND 3: VISUAL

Directions: Unscramble the anagrams to find well known authors, literary characters and titles (punctuation in the questions do not appear in the answers).

1. Fat Arrow

2. Ape and all gore

3. Memo - jeer joker

4. Win now whilst idle

5. O, chip Icon!

6. Broke Smart

7. Tolerant Botcher

8. He'll mesh crooks

9. Steamy row

10. My Vice Honed Diet

ROUND 3: ANSWERS
1. Art of War
2. Edgar Allan Poe
3. Jerome K. Jerome
4. Wind in the Willows
5. Pinocchio
6. Bram Stoker
7. Charlotte Bronte
8. Sherlock Holmes
9. Tom Sawyer
10. The Divine Comedy

ROUND 4: MUSIC (DIVAS)
1. Casta Diva - Maria Callas
2. She's So High Above Me - Tal Bachman
3. Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) - Cher
4. Jolene - Dolly Parton
5. Telephone - Lady Gaga (Feat. Beyonce)
6. I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston
7. Rollin' in the Deep - Adele
8. Because You Loved Me - Celine Dion
9. Don't be Jealous of my Boogie - RuPaul
10. The Way We Were - Barbara Straisand