a quiz

[calimac]

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.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

This quiz is best done in company, as I have done on Christmas morning for the last several-many years. Our group, consisting of livejournal folks nadinelet, blackpearl10, imnotandrei, alanbostick, as well as Lisa, Donna, D., and Kerry, got most of them. We disavowed some of Carroll's tunnels as "glorified overpasses," but I think the only two we actually missed were the Point Richmond tunnel, which I don't think I know, and the Berkeley traffic circle tunnel, which I can't picture at all even though I know that area. Others that we flat out missed include the post office (I guessed the U.N.), the million-selling song (though we did discuss sheet music), and a couple more.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't think I know this Point Richmond tunnel either: that's the one of the 13 that I might not have driven. And the one between 92 and 280 is definitely a glorified underpass.

The one he confusingly calls "the Marin Circle tunnel in Berkeley" must be the tunnel running vaguely under Marin Circle: the one connecting Shattuck and Solano. That's the only one I've walked through, and bicycled through.

A long-ago job cataloging old sheet music is what introduced me to "After the Ball" and its status as the first big hit song, though one strangely little heard today, while others from that era are instantly recognizable.