Weeklypedia #20: Semiannuapedia

Well, it's taken even longer than usual to put this quiz together (I started it on May 20th!), but here it is. Due to the longer time, it's also more disjointed than usual, and has some really stupidly obscure stuff in it. Trivial, you might say. The last three clues were all added in the last week, and are, I think, the strongest.

As usual, feel free to add your answers in the comments, and I've now posted the answers to my last quiz(es). With this kind of a gap between quizzes, it forces me to essentially play each quiz in order to write the answers.

1. After Hasbro bought Avalon Hill, makers of the game "Diplomacy," the pieces in that game representing armies and navies were replaced with metal howitzers and battleships, cast from the same dies used for pieces in this other Hasbro title.
2. BEFORE & AFTER: Star of "Munich" and "Hulk" who's a word game played with tiles stored in a bag shaped like a piece of fruit.
3. On July 3rd, 1940, a British Naval task force attacked and destroyed a portion of the fleet of this future ally, fearing that its ships would become part of the German Navy and demonstrating British determination to continue fighting.
4. Prior to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver, this was the westernmost location to host the winter games (Note: for these purposes, the international dateline is defined as the western end of the map).
5. As of 2009, it is the only country in the Southern Hemisphere to have hosted any Olympic games.
6. One of the two directors, other than Quentin Tarantino, to have directed films written by Tarantino.
7. It is a more common name for the typographic character called the asperand or amphora.
8. According to "Chicago" keyboardist Robert Lamm, this song's title refers to the time 3:35 (or 3:34) AM.

Weeklypedia #19: a Quizsplosion!

OK, here's the latest quiz, with a couple of bonus quiz/puzzly things below. The answers from #18 will be posted shortly.

1. Of Kansas City, KS, Tulsa, OK, and Omaha, NE, it is the one neither furthest west nor furthest east.
2. Shortly before his father's assassination, Robert Todd Lincoln was saved from falling under a train by the brother of this man. The rescuer, considered by some the greatest American actor of the 19th century, was later comforted to learn he had saved President Lincoln's son.
3. This author, an intelligence officer in WWII, devised the never-used Operation Goldeneye, which would have maintained contact with Gibraltar in case it was invaded by Spain or the Axis.
4. The city of Charlotte, North Carolina, is named for the German Princess Charlotte, who married this British king the year before the city's founding.
5. In 1972, Nolan Bushnell co-founded this American video game company with a Japanese name.
6. In 1977, Nolan Bushnell founded this chain of pizza restaurants.
7. Sakura is the Japanese name for this flower, which blooms in late March in southern Japan, through early May in the North.
8. Before 1980, the last significant eruptions of this peak were a series of ash eruptions from 1831 to 1857.

Plus, a puzzle, in the style of Will Shortz on NPR Sunday mornings:
Take a two word phrase that would mean trite, meaningless statements made in a pique of anger. Move the first letter from the second word to the beginning of the first word to get a two-word phrase suggesting which parts of the globe you might want to keep your cargo ships out of. (Note: this puzzle was suggested to me by the name of a forthcoming posthumous novel by Michael Crichton. If you look this title up, it will spoil the answer.)

Plus, a very narrow trivia quiz that you can help me flesh out:
For each of the following songs, name the cable TV series that featured the song in the last minutes of its finale. Clicking on the song title reveals the answer and, if watched entirely, will spoil the series:
1. Don't Stop Believing by Journey
2. Breathe Me by Sia
3. All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix
4. Way Down in the Hole by The Blind Boys of Alabama
5. Any additions?

Weeklypedia Quiz #18: Barely Legal

Trivia! The last quiz's answers will be up shortly.

1. This author, who died in 2009, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice, for the third and fourth books in a tetralogy.
2. The back of a coin is called the reverse; the front is called this.
3. Having lost one US presidential election, this candidate returned eight years later, "tanned, rested & ready."
4. During a performance of the play "Henry VIII" in 1613, cannon fire set this London landmark ablaze.
5. In "Postcards From The Edge," Meryl Streep stars as a fictionalized version of this actress/author, known primarily for an iconic science fiction role.
6. In the Godfather movies, the appearance of this fruit is often a portent of violence or death.
7. The University of California Santa Cruz's mascot is this fruitily-named mollusk.
8. This bank was originally founded in California by two American Express executives, though it is legally chartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, somewhat closer to the location its name suggests.

"Fruity Mollusk" is the name of my next improv team, by the way.

Speaking of Fruity Mollusks:

Actually, I guess the cereal isn't fruit-flavored. It's a trap!

Wikipedia Quiz At Seventeen: Janis Ian Edition

Trivia time! #16's answers are posted.

1. Eustace Tilley is the monocled mascot of this magazine.
2. The Director's Guild of America authorizes its members to substitute this pseudonym for their own names in their credits to protest the treatment of their film by the studio.
3. Pitcairn Island was settled in 1790 by mutineers and crew from this ship.
4. A line of plants, especially fruits or vegetables, that is grown organically from seeds older than 100 years (or predating WWII, depending on who you ask) may be labeled with this handed-down adjective.
5. This Mexican port is called "Four Times Heroic," having withstood siege or occupation from the Spanish, French, and twice from the Americans.
6. If you're trying to figure out the possibility of a recessive trait appearing in offspring of parents who carry the gene, you might construct this diagram, named for its biologist inventor.
7. He proposed a Hierarchy of Needs in a 1943 paper. The bottom tier is physiological (food, sleep, breathing, etc.), the top, self-actualization).
8. Of the original 12 companies listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896, it is the only one still in existence today.

Bonus! Pop cultural version of the last clue (answer is the same):
8. Contrary to its portrayal on a sitcom, this corporation is not a subsidiary of the Sheinhardt Wig Company.

Discussion question for grammar nerds:
In clue #7, between the words "top" and "self-actualization," should I have used a colon or semicolon instead of a comma?

Weeklypedia Quiz #16: Two-to-the-fourth!

It's trivia! Good hunting, people.

1. US Attorney David Iglesias, whose firing from his post in New Mexico was part of a larger scandal related to political hiring practices in the Department of Justice, was the inspiration for Tom Cruise's character in this film.
2. If Garret Hobart had not died during his vice presidency, or if he had lived one year longer, this man might not have become President of the United States.
3. News of the Camp David Accords between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat interrupted the broadcast of the first episode of this television series, the remake of which started in 2003 on the Sci-fi Channel.
4. Before he became Prime Minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, led the military campaign that ended this leader's Hundred Days return.
5. Following the results of a 2008 vote, in June 2009 this will become an independent country within the Kingdom of Denmark.
6. During World War I, the British Royal Family was renamed from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to this less-German-sounding name.
7. The eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1816 in what is now Indonesia may have been the cause of short-term climate changes in the American northeast, Canadian maritime provinces, and northern Europe, an effect that was named "The Year Without a" this.
8. During the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the symptoms of this genetic disorder were typically treated with asprin, which, as a blood thinner, only made things worse.

Last quiz's answers are up. So say we all.

Weeklypedia Quiz #15: Quinceañera

Shall we play a game?

1. This Japanese term used in the Americas and Australia refers to the second generation -- children of Japanese immigrants born in their adoptive homelands.

2. He was the first US President to serve his entire presidency without a Vice President.

3. He was the last US President to serve his entire presidency without a Vice President.

4. President Benjamin Harrison refused to say which order he signed these two states into the Union. In effect, they joined simultaneously.

5. One winter in the 1870s, young Chester Greenwood perfected these items of clothing he'd invented by using flat spring steel in place of the baling wire he'd tried first.

6. Many brands of root beer trace their origins to this year, in which the 18th Amendment was ratified, beginning Prohibition.

7. It was the last play that Shakespeare wrote.

8. (This one takes two steps.) It is the capital of the nation of origin of the characters who shot & killed Doc Brown at the beginning of the movie "Back to the Future."

Woo! Trivia!

Previous quiz's answer key was long overdue, now posted 2 1/2 months later.

Weeklypedia Quiz #14, many fortnights later

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

It's been a long time since we did the [Weeklypedia] stroll. Lemme get back, baby where I come from. I started writing this quiz mid-summer, and since then have had to update two of the clues because of changing circumstances. Hint, hint?

But wow: as of the last Weeklypedia quiz, the presidential general election had barely started. I could've written a question about Sarah Palin, and it would've been really obscure. In fact, I think I had decided against just such a thing at some point earlier this year. Oh well, I'll have to switch to Jennifer Granholm questions instead.

1. In April 2001, American millionaire Dennis Tito became the first of this elite group, currently numbering six in the world.

2. On January 31, 1976, this Arizona native was killed in a bar fight. Ironically, the one suspect invoked his right to remain silent. The case was never solved.

3. An hairy man, this biblical character sold his birthright to his brother for a mess of pottage.

4. This large fish was thought to have gone extinct in the Cretaceous Period, until one was found alive off the coast of South Africa in 1938 (bonus points if you can spell it).

5. As a matter of protocol, this US Senator is currently (as of December, 2008) the highest among Senators on the ceremonial US order of precedence, but only under particular circumstances. Otherwise, it's President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd (D-WV).

6. She was America's first Second Lady and its second First Lady.

7. Twenty days after representatives of Spain and France met to ceremonially mark one of the property transfers from the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, representatives of France and the US met in the same room in The Cabildo to transfer the same property as part of this agreement.

8. In 1898, in the only coup d'état of a municipal government in US history, white supremacists took power over this city on the Cape Fear River, which is not, incidentally, in Delaware.

Weeklypedia 12 & 13: Deluxe Double-wide

Hey, it's more trivia, despite the fact that the new history system in Firefox 3 has made harvesting my Wikipedia activity more difficult. Last week's answers are up, of course.

1. Named for an Italian mathematician & astronomer, it is the theoretical point between two astronomical bodies where the bodies' gravitational pulls on a small object cancel each other out, and the object will remain stationary.

2. Metamerismic animals are characterized by having these.

3. Approximately 86% of the land in this state, more than any other, is owned by the Federal government.

4. The Slattery Report, commissioned by the US Dept. of the Interior under Secretary Harold Ickes in 1939, explored the possibility of allowing large numbers of European refugees, in particular Jews, to settle in this state.

5. Between 1986 and 1997, in at least 20 incidents, at least 40 people were killed by people of this ostensibly unarmed occupation.

6. Fans of Monty Python may know the globus cruciger, a medieval symbol of royal authority, by this more modern and martial name.

7. Martha Rountree, in 1947, became the first moderator of this public affairs television program.

8. Klimt, Gaudí, and Tiffany are all exemplars of this early-20th-century movement in art and design.

9. Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece, this cathedral in Barcelona has been under construction on and off since 1882.

10. The killing of Meredith Hunter at this event in December 1969 inspired the fifth verse of Don McLean's song "American Pie"

11. The death of Meredith Hunter was captured on film by the Maysles Brothers, who were filming this concert documentary.

12. Though it may suggest baseball and is used metaphorically in politics, the term "unforced error" originates in this sport.

13. One of the shortest books in the Bible, theologians may describe it as an allegory of God's love for the chosen people, but we all know what it's really about.

14. This place is surrounded by a 30-km "Zone of Alienation," in which 120,000 people lived before they were evacuated.

15. This sandwich, intended to appeal to adults, was introduced by McDonalds in 1996 with a $300 million ad campaign, and was a flop.

16. The man most responsible for the Boston Celtics' NBA Championship.

I'll just go ahead and answer that last one: who is Timberwolves General Manager Kevin McHale? Seriously, he may be the best GM in sports, according to Forbes, but I'm pretty sure they thought he was still in the Celtics organization.

Weeklypedia 10/11: Double-shot

Before my job/work moves, I printed out my browsers' Wikipedia histories. That list is somewhere in my messenger bag (aka man-purse). Someday I'll get around to plumbing the depths of that list for quality nuggets of trivia [I really should have used the participle "mining" instead of "plumbing," given the unpleasant combination of words "plumbing" and "nuggets" - ed.]. But for now, there's more recent Wiki-research afoot! I'm going to make this week's quiz double-long, to start making up for the month-long gap in May.

As always, the answers to the previous quiz are now up.

Weeklypedia Nos. 10 & 11

1. The Compromise of 1877 gave this US Presidential candidate an electoral victory in exchange for moving Federal troops out of the South, a move that effectively ended Reconstruction and allowed "Redeemer" Democrats to enact Jim Crow.

2. Batman's criminally insane foes, when not at large, are incarcerated in this facility, named after the fictional Massachusetts setting of much of H.P. Lovecraft's horror writing.

3. Explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to reach this.

4. This NY group was the first hip-hop act to get the message that they'd be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

5. When a politician says "if nominated, I will not run, and if elected I will not serve," he or she is said to be making this kind of statement, named for its originator.

6. This author's crime and western novels have been adapted into movies starring John Travolta, Pam Grier, George Clooney, and Russel Crowe.

7. In the final scene of the final episode of the TV show "The Sopranos," a suspicious character is seen wearing one of this exclusive brand of jackets, popular nationwide in the 1980s.*

8. The separate mafia organizations in New York City are collectively known by this numerical name, and were referenced as such (with fictionalized individual names) in such works as The Godfather, The Sopranos, and Grand Theft Auto.

9. This wife of a presidential candidate was hospitalized approximately a year after her husband lost the election for having drank (drunk?) rubbing alcohol.

10. This one-time vice presidential candidate visibly injured his own face, rather than be used as a propaganda tool by his North Vietnamese captors.

11. Alan Greenspan and David Rockefeller were among the founding members of this group in 1973. The group was designed to foster relations between the three collective powers of Europe, Japan, and the United States, and figures into many right-wing conspiracy theories.

12. This comet passed close to Earth in 1997, and was cited by the Heaven's Gate cult as the signal for their mass suicide.

13. New Horizons, launched by NASA in 2005, will in 2015 be the first ever probe to fly by this.

14. From the Latin root meaning "game," and suggested by Herman Hesse's novel "The Glass Bead Game," it is a word meaning the study and theory of games.

15. Tay Zonday, composer and performer of this song, is one of many web celebrities appearing in the music video for Weezer's single "Pork and Beans."

16. This Iowan Representative to the US Congress, who Horace Greeley famously instructed to "go west, young man," was beaten with a cane about the head and shoulders by a fellow Congressman in 1866.

Here's a fun tidbit that I decided not to question-ize: each of the Voyager space probes carry a golden record as a sort of time capsule, or, in case of extraterrestrial salvage, message of identification & peace. The discs include greetings in many languages and a selection of music from around the world. There's some Bach and some Beethoven, some Stravinsky (terrifying for aliens, I imagine), some Chuck Berry and some Louis Armstrong, pygmy music, gamelan, etc. Anyway, apparently Carl Sagan, who chaired the group that put this together, wanted to include "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles. The Beatles loved the idea but those killjoys at EMI nixed the idea. I like to think that EMI was actually concerned that the title of the song would be read as a threat, the equivalent of a statement to pre-Columbian tribes in the western hemisphere reading "Here Comes Spain." Could've been a terrific diplomatic faux pas. Or maybe it was sensible on the company's part, when you consider that aliens probably already had mp3 and internet technology in the 1970s -- it was too much of a copyright infringement risk.

* PS: [Spoiler Alert] I rewatched the last couple episodes of The Sopranos last night and the finale seemed MUCH less ambiguous this time around -- Tony totally got shot and killed at the blackout. [End Spoiler Alert]

Weeklypedia 9: Don't Call It a Comeback...

...because who knows if it will stick. Last week's month's time's quiz has had answers up since early May.

This week's quiz is dominated by presidential trivia, driven by my digging around matters of the election. Enjoy.

Weeklypedia Quiz #9

1. A traditional Christmas meal in this country consists of fried chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken, eaten at home.


2. Their creator named these humanoid monsters by borrowing a word from Beowulf but also acknowledged a similarity in their name to "various sea-beasts of the dolphin order."


3. Winners of this multinational competition have included Abba's "Waterloo" and Lulu's "Boom Bang-a-Bang."


4. This former civil engineer is the earliest US President with a presidential library in the National Archives and Records Administration system.


5. He is the US President whose presidential library was built first.


6. He was the first US Vice President to utilize One Observatory Circle in the US Naval Observatory as his residence.


7. He was the first Catholic to be one of the two major political parties' nominee for US President.


8. This former Georgia Congresswoman is a Green Party candidate for US President in 2008.

Weeklypedia 8

OK. This week had some interesting Wiki-learning, and you get to reap the benefits. Some of the questions below are related to stuff I'd learned in the past, but was reminded of for one reason or another this week.

Last week's answers should be posted by the time you read this.

Weeklypedia Quiz #8

1. If two of them (Democrats) win their challengers' bids, and the third (a Republican) defends his seat, members of this western political family will comprise 3% of the US Senate.

2. It is the maximum amount one individual may gift to another under US tax law, without paying taxes or declaring it.

3. The founders of Berkeley Systems, famous for the "After Dark" screen saver software and its iconic flying toasters, went on to found this liberal political action website during the Clinton impeachment scandal.

4. Someone in an enviable position may be figuratively said to be in this, named for Dumetella carolinensis,which makes its nests over most of the United States.

5. It is the name for Phil Spector's technique of music production, which features heavily-overdubbed vocal and instrumental lines recorded in an echo chamber, which he employed with such artists as The Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Beatles.

6. Careful with that eggnog! As little as ten grams (2 teaspoons) of this household spice is mildly (if unpleasantly) hallucinogenic, and sixty grams can be fatal.

7. Disappointingly, this rock band, fronted by a former member of Nirvana, played at a fundraiser in 2000 for a group that denies the link between HIV & AIDS, and claims that HIV medications cause AIDS.

8. Japan's Takeru Kobayashi is known the world over for being a champion at this competitive pastime.

Weeklypedia "Secaucus" 7

Better late than never, right? For reasons I'll discuss later, I've been a bit distracted from trivia gathering of late. Below are new questions. Elsewhere are answers to old ones.

Weeklypedia Quiz #7

1. Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh were all rulers of this ancient cradle of civilization, and were celebrated as members of a fictitious rock band in a 2007 song by They Might Be Giants.

2. This former US Senator (D - GA) gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

3. The Drake Equation (sometimes incorrectly labeled the Sagan Equation) estimates the number of these in our galaxy.

4. This naturalist found the life cycle of the Ichneumon wasp incompatible with a natural world directed by a benevolent God.

5. Filmmaker George Romero was inspired by a visit to the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania to make this 1978 horror film.

6. Chop the top off of a pyramid or cone, parallel with the base, and you'll get one of these three-dimensional solids.

7. Quentin Tarantino originally wanted to use this 1979 pop song for the infamous torture scene in Pulp Fiction, but he was beaten to the punch by its use in the film Reality Bites.

8. For the purposes of touring with his Mothers of Invention ensemble, this rock musician had his percussionist's marimba and vibraphone outfitted with electrical pickups for purposes of amplification.

Weeklypedia 5 & 6: Pick Up Sticks

I've been pretty busy the last couple of weeks for a variety of reasons, some of which I'll be blogging about shortly. So, I've been neglectful of the Weeklypedia quizzes and it's time to play catch-up. In the immortal words of Sir Mix-a-Lot: "Unh! Double-up! Unh! Unh!"

Oh, and here are the answers to Weeklypedia #4.

Weeklypedia Quiz #5

1. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin drew harsh criticism in 2004 for her book that defended this American policy of World War II.

2. This Democratic politician served as the first Director of the Peace Corps and Ambassador to France in the 1960s, and was a Vice Presidential candidate and father of a First Lady of California.

3. Three-time Oscar-winning (and six-time nominated) film editor Thelma Schoonmaker has been primarily known for her association with this American director.

4. The most prominent Opera composer at the time of Italian unification, this man's last name was also used as an acronym signifying Italian King Victor Emmanuel II.

5. Get too close to one of these, and physicists theorize that the gravity gradient will stretch your body into a long, thin strip of matter, a process they call spaghettification.

6. At about 290 pounds, this pitcher for the Cleveland Indians is the heaviest player in Major League Baseball.

7. The two co-founders of this company (who also share a first name) got their start designing a prototype for the arcade game Breakout for Atari within four days.

8. If you steal cargo on the high seas, you may be known as a pirate. If you do it with the sponsorship of a state, you may be known as this.

OK, here we go again.

Weeklypedia Quiz #6 (This one is Nazi-heavy)

1. The Japanese term for a samurai without a master, or a 1998 Robert DeNiro film directed by John Frankenheimer.

2. Canadian scholar and theorist on communications and media Marshall McLuhan broke the fourth wall in a famous cameo appearance in this 1977 comedy.

3. Anybody? Anybody? This actor, columnist and former Nixon staffer is now (sadly -ed.) starring in a documentary film promoting the concept of "Intelligent Design."

4. It is a historical uncertainty whether this German physicist knowingly slowed his work on the atomic bomb to prevent his Nazi employers from attaining it.

5. Ernst Röhm was purged from the leadership of this colorful Nazi organization, arrested personally by Adolf Hitler on the Night of Long Knives, because he was a homosexual.

6. (Last Nazi one, I swear) Valkyrie, a film by Usual Suspects director Bryan Singer about the July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler, has faced barriers to filming in Germany because of the religion of this actor, its star.

7. Italian printer Aldus Mantius is believed to have first used this punctuation mark to separate individual clauses that are nonetheless related to one another.

8. One of this American songwriter's biggest hits was the song "Without You," a cover of a Badfinger song that was later a major hit again, for Mariah Carey.

It's over! 26.2 miles of trivia!

Weeklypedia Quiz #4: Fantastic

Last week's answers are now available. Please also check out a couple of updates to my Jeopardy audition story. Here are some new clues:

Weeklypedia Quiz #4

1. This singer & trumpet-playing bandleader was the "A" who partnered with Jerry Moss to form "A&M Records."

2. This aquatic/aviary term refers to an event that is so unusual and unimaginable that it cannot be predicted. The September 11 attacks and the stock market crash of 1987 are cited by some as examples.

3. This 1980 film by Michael Cimino on the Johnson County War was a financial disaster that led directly to the folding of United Artists studio into MGM.

4. The 1966 novel and 1968 Frank Sinatra vehicle "The Detective," about Detective Joe Leland, was followed by a sequel book, Nothing Lasts Forever, which was adapted into this late '80s blockbuster action film.

5. An arena, indoor or outdoor, for track cycling.

6. Mexico has recently seen several riots in major metropolitan areas, in which youths who follow this musical and fashion style have been targeted for attack.

7. Handmade Films, the British production company behind such films as "Monty Python's Life of Brian," "The Long Good Friday" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," was co-founded by this lead guitarist.

8. Interstate Bakeries Corporation owns both the Hostess brand of snack foods and former competitor Dolly Madison, originator of these cakes once pitched by Charles Schultz's Peanuts characters.

Next week! Or rather, later this week!

Weeklypedia #3: Already at the bottom of the barrel?

Last week's answers are up. Here's this week's quiz, which feels more sophomore-slumpy than last week's did.

1. The remake of this film featured James LeGros in a small role as a used car salesman who didn't want any trouble from his first customer of the day.

2. He is the NYC cop who broke the code of silence surrounding police corruption in the early 1970s (last name only is acceptable).

3. This hazardous metal is commonly obtained from the ore cinnabar, and is one of only two elements that is liquid at standard temperature and pressure.

4. Regina is its capital.

5. This 2002 album by the rock band Wilco would have been known as "Yoke How Fox" if they were British instead of American.

6. It's a slang term for a padded backrest on a motorcycle.

7. She's the owner of the company that adapted Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" into a film in 2005.

8. The title of Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung, which premiered in Bayreuth, Germany in 1876, is a translation of this Norse term meaning "the Fate of the Gods."

Until next week, or until I finally blog something other than hastily-constructed trivia.

Weeklypedia Quiz #2: Sophomore Slump

OK. It's a bit late, but here is the second Weeklypedia quiz, comprised of stuff I learned or re-learned because I read about it on Wikipedia this week. The answers to last week's quiz have been posted as a comment to that blog entry, so check 'em out.

Here's the new quiz:

1. If The Ramones had reset their song "Rockaway Beach" in the next nearest peninsula to that shore, it might have been called this.

2. When he takes office to succeed NY Gov Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson will be the United States' fourth African-American governor and, significantly, only the second governor who is this.

3. Although wildly popular in American Chinese restaurants, this dish, named for a ming dynasty warrior, is largely unknown in China.

4. It is a statistical phenomenon that may be seen as a basis for a "sophomore slump," the tendency of those who excel to be less above-average in their next performance.

5. For most of NASA's Space Shuttle project, extra-vehicular manipulations have been performed by astronauts and by eponymous robotic "arms" produced in this country.

6. This British rock band was hailed as "the next Beatles," had the support of the Fab Four and even performed original songs by Lennon & McCartney, before spectacularly flaming out.

7. This presidential appointee is not part of the military, but is the head of one of the United States' uniformed services. Hence the naval-styled attire. (Note: multiple correct answers are possible.)

8. They are what the two syllables of the geographic slang BosWash refer to.

I still have not blogged about how my Jeopardy! audition went on Monday. I'll do that soon, honest. Short version: it went well, I think, and I hope that I have a decent shot at being a contestant. I'll know if they call me or not in the next 18 months. More to come, but in the meantime, check out the blog of one of the other applicants at my session, kmkat, who knits! She even got some great pictures!

New Feature: Weeklypedia Quiz #1

I was chatting with Nels today and, after asking how my Jeopardy audition prep was going, he declared that he had two trivia questions for me. Here they are:

1. He founded the Dominican Rebuplic.
and
2. It is the only borough in New York City not on an island.

After I answered (I got #2 right), he then demanded that I prepare some trivia for him. I scoured my browser's history for Wikipedia topics I'd read in the previous week, and came up with some clues (Prisoner of Trebekistan has taught me that the nomenclature is clues and responses, since questions and answers don't really apply properly to Jeopardy). I've polished up these clues a bit, and posted them below. Nels says he wants more, so I'm going to keep doing this from time to time.

So, this is the first in a maybe-weekly series of trivia quizzes based on my Wikipedia consumption. Keep in mind that I'm a nerd, so being a nerd will help sometimes (there are two in the quiz below that it'll especially help on). Correct responses will be provided each time a new quiz goes up.

Weeklypedia #1

1. Heiress and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt is the mother of this CNN anchorman.

2. In 1976, the Viking I probe spied a "face" in this region of Mars' surface.

3. It is defined as one minute of an arc of a great circle on the Earth's surface.

4. He has been identified by various groups as the Pope, Martin Luther, and the Secretary General of the United Nations.

5. On the fictional planet of Arrakis, you'd call it Muad'Dib, but this rodent has a different name in the real American Southwest.

6. This film director has been portrayed by Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio.

7. In the 1970s, his girlfriends included socialite Silver St. Cloud. Since then he's tended more towards news photographers and burglars.

8. His last theorem proved unsolvable for centuries.

Come back next week for more. Fair warning: comments may have spoilers in them