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

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Being legendary is orthogonal to being fictional. Lear is both. Geoffrey of Monmouth's book is completely made up (even his Arthur has nothing in common with the historical warlord of that name), and the etymology connecting Lear to Leicester is bogus.

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

But isn't the question partly whether Shakespeare thought Lear was real? If real, he intended to be writing a history. If not, he was writing a fictional tragedy.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, that isn't the question. The question was, "Who is the earliest British king among his title characters?" That leaves open for discussion only, "Does a fictional character count as a British king?" Didn't say anything about what Shakespeare thought he was writing about the guy. Did Shakespeare know that his sources for Richard III were mostly a bunch of hooey? I have no idea.

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

Well, the question doesn't ask REAL British King does it? Just "British King." I admit, my answer would have been King John, since I thought both Cymbeline and Lear were entirely fictional.