Here's Jon Carroll's annual Christmas quiz and his equally annual answers. Comments below the
At least I didn't spot any goofs this year, like the time he asked what was Frodo's relationship to Bilbo in The Hobbit (Frodo isn't in The Hobbit; he hadn't been born yet, or, more relevantly, been invented by Tolkien yet) or mucked up the reason why George VI wasn't crowned under his first given name of Albert.
Question 1 slew me. I've driven through at least 12 of those 13 automobile tunnels, yet I could only think of 2 or 3 of them offhand.
I couldn't put the 4 items of question 3 in the right order, but I knew what a right order would consist of, as I recognized two of the words and knew that there were four of the items in question.
amy_thomson should have been able to get this one.
I got question 5, but wondered if it qualified, as Lear is fictional.
Question 6. "How many states are there in the United States?" Bah. I know the trick in this one, but I also wondered, "United States of what?" A couple other countries, Mexico and Brazil as I recall, are or have been known by names fairly translatable as United States of X.
12, 14, 16, and 17 I was able to make stabs in the right direction. Total blank on everything else.
At least I didn't spot any goofs this year, like the time he asked what was Frodo's relationship to Bilbo in The Hobbit (Frodo isn't in The Hobbit; he hadn't been born yet, or, more relevantly, been invented by Tolkien yet) or mucked up the reason why George VI wasn't crowned under his first given name of Albert.
Question 1 slew me. I've driven through at least 12 of those 13 automobile tunnels, yet I could only think of 2 or 3 of them offhand.
I couldn't put the 4 items of question 3 in the right order, but I knew what a right order would consist of, as I recognized two of the words and knew that there were four of the items in question.
I got question 5, but wondered if it qualified, as Lear is fictional.
Question 6. "How many states are there in the United States?" Bah. I know the trick in this one, but I also wondered, "United States of what?" A couple other countries, Mexico and Brazil as I recall, are or have been known by names fairly translatable as United States of X.
12, 14, 16, and 17 I was able to make stabs in the right direction. Total blank on everything else.