trivia

so lately i've developed a trivia habit. for years, mama x and i have gotten out when we could to play pub trivia. the x family team is called the damn (damned, damn the) yankees. we are a respected trivia team here in the nc wilderness, for what that's worth. still, with mama x working so damned much, and little baby d being sickish, and baby sitters so hard to come by we just don't get out much.

i've been feeding my trivia jones by trying to pen questions for the local trivia game . i've been surfing the net absorbing random knowledge, and trying to distill it into interesting and informative questions. i've played against these same teams for 5 years now, and i've got a pretty good feel for the depth and breadth of knowledge of teams like mad dog, chris and ann, the corner lunatics, and uranus. i came up with 30 or so questions, set them up with rhythym and meter, and submitted them to the guy who reads the trivia on saturday nights. and he rejected them. said they were too hard. really, i was a little heartbroken...:(

so i decided to let you, dear reader, determine for yourself whether these trivia questions are outrageous. bear in mind that i'm aiming to make the winning score 15 or so. answers follow.


Q: What element is indicated by Rn on the periodic table?

2) Q: Who was the 1st tourist in space?

3) Q: Which two Presidents signed the US Constitution (bonus: 1 pt. for each) ?

4) Q: What is the name of the protagonist in the classic "Catcher in the Rye"?

5) Q: Who is the #2 leading scorer in NHL history?

6) Q: What is the world's largest freshwater lake (by volume)?

7) Q: How many Academy Awards has Brad Pitt won?

8) Beer Question!! Q: If you are the airport designated "WAT" what city and country are you in?

9) Q: Where did the future king David reportedly slay the giant Goliath?

10) Q: According to Billboard magazine, what is the #1 selling album of all time?

11) Q: Who was the first man to win 3 consecutive NASCAR cup titles?

12) Q: Who played "Gopher" on The Love Boat?

13) Q: What kind of gun, specifically, did John Wlikes Booth use to kill President Lincoln?

14) Q: Who was the 1st US President to have a Christmas tree in the White House?

15) Q: How many games did each team play in the 1982 NFL regular season?

16) Q: What language gives us the word "candy"?

17) Q: What is the name of the Native American tribe who shared the 1st Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims?

18) Q: What two teams played the longest professional baseball game in history? (bonus: how many innings? bonus: what was the score?)

19) Q: What year was the Alaska Pipeline finished?

20) Q: What classic rock anthem is honored with a sculpture in Montreaux, Switzerland?

21) Q: What historical event occurred on July 16th, 1945, at what is now White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico?

22) Q: You thought you'd never have to do this again, didn't you? But here it is - algebra. 3x+34=2x+89. Solve for x.

23) Q: What is the common name for the constellation Cygnus?

24) Beer Question!! Q: What is the capitol of Madagascar?

25) Q: What is the smallest member of the family Camelidae?

26) Q: Who wrote Winnie the Pooh?

27) Q: Which indigenous people were decimated and displaced after the 1675-1676 King Phillip's War?

28) Q: The NC state motto is " Esse Quam Videri". What does it mean?

29) Q: What year did the Dow Jones Industrial Average first close above 1,000?

30) Q: Who is known as "the father of modern Astronomy"? .

Tie Breaker, in three parts, each worth 1 pt:

1) Multiple choice- What year was the 1st postage stamp issued?
a) 1760 b) 1840 c) 1910

2) What country issued it?

3) What is depicted on it?

Answers:
1) Radon
2) Dennis Tito, a Californian businessman
3) George Washington & James Madison
4) Holden Caulfield
5) Mark Messier
6) Lake Baikal in Siberia. It contains more water than all of the Great Lakes combined.
7) None. He was nominated in 1995 for his supporting role in Twelve Monkeys.
8) Waterford, Ireland
9) The valley of Elah.
10) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
11) Cale Yarborough
12) Fred Gandy
13) A derringer pistol.
14) Franklin Pierce.
15) 9
16) Arabic "qandi" is derived from the Persian "qand" (sugar). Arabic & Persian both acceptable.
17) The Wampanoag. (about whom, dear reader, there are sure to be future posts..)
18) The Pawtucket Red Sox hosted the Rochester Red Wings on April 18, 1981. The game went 33 innings. Sox won, 2-1. (a game, dear reader, that daddy x attended with his uncle, an avid baseball fan. the child x became cryingly tired and was turned off of baseball for a good many years afterward)
19) 1977
20) Smoke on the Water, by Deep Purple.
21) The Trinity test, 1st test of of a nuclear weapon.
22) x=55 (ok, maybe this one was really just sadistic, but i intenede it to be a reminder to us all how we let things we used to know just slip away...)
23) The Swan.
24) Antananarivo. (look, if the beer question is too easy, the owner doesn't invite you back)

25) A: The South American vicuna.
26) Alan Alexander (A.A.) Milne.
27) The Wampanoag. (this was both ironic and predictable. anyone who got #17 could probably intuit the answer here as well)
28) "To be, rather than to seem". (did i mention that we live in nc? i assumed, perhaps mistakenly, that schoolchilden would be taught this motto, and it was a creampuff question.)
29) 1972
30) Galileo Galilee

Bonus:

part 1): b) 1840.

part 2): Great Britain (England).

part 3): Known as a "Black Penny", it sported an austere portrait of Queen Victoria.

so if you happen to be somewhere in nc saturday night, playing trivia at your local pub, maybe you'll hear one of these questions...

but likely not because the trivia reader says they're too tough, creampuff.