a christmas quiz
Dec. 26th, 2006 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacHere be Jon Carroll's Christmas quiz. Here be today's answers. Here be my comments:
My one quibble is with question 17, an easy one for me once you mentally flip through the list of presidents. The quibble is that you have to specify legal name or use name in a question like that. He omitted footnoting John Calvin Coolidge, who did not use his first name. I wondered what Carroll would do about that when counting the presidents up, and I wondered what he'd do about Carter, who eschews his legal "James" no more firmly than Coolidge did his legal "John".
Questions 6 and 16 were easy to the point of being boring.
I knew the story behind 15, but I attributed it to the group of states, not Connecticut specifically, and "seriously consider seceding" is a vague phrase. Maybe that was chronologically trumped by Rhode Island's refusal to join in the first place until the feds whispered, "If you don't want to be part of our union, we'll impose tariffs on you." The word "tariffs" changed their minds real fast. But that's not technically seceding, though it was after the ratification of the Constitution.
Some questions I got partially right, and didn't know the rest: 2, 5, 8, 11, 12. I knew that the stratosphere and troposphere are up-and-down, not north-and-south, but couldn't remember which was on top. (If there were only the two layers of atmosphere, I'd have guessed, but there aren't, and it's been a very long time since I got out of physical geography class.) Nor did the name Srinagar ring a bell.
Question 1 nagged as something familiar, but I didn't guess what.
We had SpaghettiO's when I was a kid, but I never heard the names in question 4. Probably they were made up long afterwards.
I don't see how one is supposed to know all the data in question 7.
I ought to know 13 and 14, but I didn't.
Total blank on 3, 9, and 10.
My one quibble is with question 17, an easy one for me once you mentally flip through the list of presidents. The quibble is that you have to specify legal name or use name in a question like that. He omitted footnoting John Calvin Coolidge, who did not use his first name. I wondered what Carroll would do about that when counting the presidents up, and I wondered what he'd do about Carter, who eschews his legal "James" no more firmly than Coolidge did his legal "John".
Questions 6 and 16 were easy to the point of being boring.
I knew the story behind 15, but I attributed it to the group of states, not Connecticut specifically, and "seriously consider seceding" is a vague phrase. Maybe that was chronologically trumped by Rhode Island's refusal to join in the first place until the feds whispered, "If you don't want to be part of our union, we'll impose tariffs on you." The word "tariffs" changed their minds real fast. But that's not technically seceding, though it was after the ratification of the Constitution.
Some questions I got partially right, and didn't know the rest: 2, 5, 8, 11, 12. I knew that the stratosphere and troposphere are up-and-down, not north-and-south, but couldn't remember which was on top. (If there were only the two layers of atmosphere, I'd have guessed, but there aren't, and it's been a very long time since I got out of physical geography class.) Nor did the name Srinagar ring a bell.
Question 1 nagged as something familiar, but I didn't guess what.
We had SpaghettiO's when I was a kid, but I never heard the names in question 4. Probably they were made up long afterwards.
I don't see how one is supposed to know all the data in question 7.
I ought to know 13 and 14, but I didn't.
Total blank on 3, 9, and 10.
