The Wednesday Quiz, in its third incarnation, is basically the same old weekly game of knowledge, intuition, inductive reasoning, and willingness to risk public embarrassment in a friendly and moderately supportive environment!!
Traditionally, it is a closed-book quiz.
It is very possible that answers will come out over the weekend.
1. Aristotle's best-known student conquered some of the greatest empires of his times to put together, briefly, a vast kingdom stretching from the Adriatic and the Nile to the Indus River. Then he died, age 32. What was his name?
2. Because it's basically an elaborate alegory about Freemasonry, its plot is incomprehensible. But since the music is pretty, this opera about Tamino, Papageno the bird-catcher, and their adventures with the Queen of the Night was one of Mozart's big hits. What's is it called?
3. Element number 70 is a silvery-white metal! What's its name? You may have two guesses in this case. Or you can say what it's named after.
4. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen got the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with this phenomenon.
5. This is Pierre Charles L'Enfant's most famous design!
What is it?
6. Why, it's a population density map of _____________!
7. Why, it's an infrared image of ____________!
8. A tropical fruit native to the Sudan, it is fairly common in the foods of India, Africa, and Latin America. In the United States, you are only likely to encounter it in drinks sold in Mexican restaurants or markets... or in Worchestershire sauce. What is it?
9. Element number 11 is a silvery-white metal! It's essential to your biological function, but if you live in North America you probably have way too much of it in your diet, since it's so deliciously savory when combined with Element number 17! What's it called?
10. If you've read a book that is a thinly-veiled treatment of actual people and events, and you want to impress the people in the English department, you refer to it as a ___________________.
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Put your thinly-veiled treatment of actual people and events in the comments.
8 comments:
1. Alexander the Great
2. er, dunno
3. er, dunno
4. x-rays
5. Washington, DC
6. Vietnam
7. Uranus
8. tamarind
9. selenium
10. roman a clef
1. Alexander (the Great) of Macedon
2. Zauberflote (Magical Flute to us 'Merkins)
3. Yterbium or Yttium
4. X*Rays
5. Washington, D.C.
6. Vietnam
7. Uranus
8. Tamerind
9. Sodium (YUMMIE!)
10. Roman a clef
1 Alexander the Great
2 The Magic Flute! Oh, wait. Um, Die Zauberflaute. Die Zaubertraumaflautenzimmerheit. Or something like that.
3 Right! And because I'm a loyal reader, I know it's either Yttrium or Ytterbium. And named after that Swedish quarry, in, um, Ytterb. Where all the stony nordic detectives are hewn from.
4 X-Rays
5 Washington, D.C.
6 Vietnam
7 Uranus
8 tabasco
9 sodium
10 rotisserie d'realite. Hey, you didn't specify it would impress them FAVORABLY!
1. Alexander!
2. Zounds! some thing to listen to while you drink Zinfandel. I dunno, Zamfir!
3. Yttrium or Yttrbium, named (with Terbium) after that town in Sweden that starts the same way.
4. X-rays!
5. Way too easy! Where I am right now! Chocolate City, the Nation's Capitol, home of the Caps, Skins, & Nats...(which is to say Washington, the District of Columbia)!
6. Vietnam!
7. Uranus!
8. Tamarind!
9. Sodium starts with an "Na"
X. Rrrrreally ought to know this one... a Tragedy (haha).. a(n) (auto)biography (wait, that's a fictionalized account of events involving real people.) Names have been changed to prosecute the innocent...revision, recipe remoulade, ratatouille, Roentgenecide, reaching over here, recuscitation, retrospective, revision, remember remember to always dismember..., round the rough and rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran. Rarely recalled literary label.
Allegory has two "l"s.
1. Alexander the Great
2. Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
3. Yterbium or some such. It's named after some (Belgian) village where a bunch of it was found. I read your blog, but I don't memorize it.
4. X-rays
5. Washington, D.C.
6. Vietnam
7. Uranus
8. Tamarind
9. Sodium
10. Uh-oh. I'm not going to impress anyone in the English department today, am I?
1. Alexander the Great
2. Die Zauberfloute (sp?), or, The Magic Michael5000
3. Ytterium?
4. X-rays?
5. Washington DC
6. Vietnam
7. Uranus (there's no way to pronounce it without eliciting a snicker from those of us who aren't too mature for that sort of thing).
8. Tamarind
9. Sodium
10. Rollickin' good read!
I missed a week! Oh noes!
Here goes nothing...
1. I hear that his friends called him Bobby, but the rest of us knew him as Alexander the Great.
2. Z...Yeah ,I got nothing.
3. Yttrium? Named after that little village and quarry that we're all so fond of?
4. Maybe X-rays?
5. Washington DC, my good man.
6. Unified Vietnam
7. Uranus, hurr, hurr.
8. Tangerine? I got nothing.
9. HHeLiBeBCNOFNe NA! Sodium!
10. Roman a'clef. Wouldn't impress my English department, though, they'd be all "you just read that on wikipedia when researching Gertrude Stein's autobiography for writing a quiz", and they'd be right.
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