the annual quiz
Dec. 26th, 2007 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacHere's Jon Carroll's annual Christmas quiz and the answers.
The questions on vice-presidents, nos. 11-12, were DEAD EASY, EASY, EASY. If I'd been taking this quiz with a group, I would have written down the answers, so as to demonstrate my vice-president fu, while not denying others the chance to guess.
I got no. 10, if "Some mountain in Ecuador, I forget its name" counts as the right answer. But I give myself extra credit on this one because I followed what Carroll meant, not what he wrote. What he meant was, "the point furthest from the center of the Earth," not "the point closest to outer space," because space is defined by the thinness of the atmosphere, and that's a function of elevation above sea level, not distance from the center of the earth, which means Mt. Everest is the answer to the question he wrote.
Most of no. 6 I got, including the trick question, most of no. 4 and no. 20, and parts of no. 1. In no. 19, I knew the relationship between the silent works of Cage and of Batt, but didn't get what he meant by "which one is better."
I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I got both parts of no. 15. This is not the sort of question that I believe I ought to know the answer to, but I did. Fortunately for my self-respect, I had no clue on the bonus question.
On the other hand, I ought to have been able to figure out the answer to no. 17, but I didn't.
Right on no. 9, but it was guesswork. Any of the statements could have been wrong as far as I knew. I knew that Abraham Lincoln and Hedy Lamarr both held patents, but I couldn't have said exactly what they were for.
Didn't get no. 2, but as Earp is buried in Colma, I knew it had to be something of the sort.
Wrong on no. 14, but my wrong answer wasn't Shakespeare, as Carroll expected. It was Robert Burns. (It was some other person entirely who penned the succeeding couplet: "But when we've practiced quite a while / How vastly we improve our style.")
No idea on the lists of parts in no. 3, no. 5, or no. 13, even though two of them turn out to be SFnal devices. No idea on no. 16 either. No clue on no. 7, no. 8, or no. 18.
The questions on vice-presidents, nos. 11-12, were DEAD EASY, EASY, EASY. If I'd been taking this quiz with a group, I would have written down the answers, so as to demonstrate my vice-president fu, while not denying others the chance to guess.
I got no. 10, if "Some mountain in Ecuador, I forget its name" counts as the right answer. But I give myself extra credit on this one because I followed what Carroll meant, not what he wrote. What he meant was, "the point furthest from the center of the Earth," not "the point closest to outer space," because space is defined by the thinness of the atmosphere, and that's a function of elevation above sea level, not distance from the center of the earth, which means Mt. Everest is the answer to the question he wrote.
Most of no. 6 I got, including the trick question, most of no. 4 and no. 20, and parts of no. 1. In no. 19, I knew the relationship between the silent works of Cage and of Batt, but didn't get what he meant by "which one is better."
I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I got both parts of no. 15. This is not the sort of question that I believe I ought to know the answer to, but I did. Fortunately for my self-respect, I had no clue on the bonus question.
On the other hand, I ought to have been able to figure out the answer to no. 17, but I didn't.
Right on no. 9, but it was guesswork. Any of the statements could have been wrong as far as I knew. I knew that Abraham Lincoln and Hedy Lamarr both held patents, but I couldn't have said exactly what they were for.
Didn't get no. 2, but as Earp is buried in Colma, I knew it had to be something of the sort.
Wrong on no. 14, but my wrong answer wasn't Shakespeare, as Carroll expected. It was Robert Burns. (It was some other person entirely who penned the succeeding couplet: "But when we've practiced quite a while / How vastly we improve our style.")
No idea on the lists of parts in no. 3, no. 5, or no. 13, even though two of them turn out to be SFnal devices. No idea on no. 16 either. No clue on no. 7, no. 8, or no. 18.
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Date: 2008-01-01 01:36 am (UTC)I was also close on #7, having come up with a short list that included Gibraltar. In my junior-high day, we didn't have Geography classes, we had Social Studies classes. We studied a dam that was built in Ghana, but we didn't emphasize where the heck Ghana was. I got more geography in history classes, frankly.
The rest were sort of hit or miss, with no surprises as to what I knew (Cary Grant's first film yes, Fred Astaire's no). Still, the useless stuff I didn't know is probably going to stick in my head.
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Date: 2008-01-01 04:11 am (UTC)