Category: Games, Tests & Quizzes

Stuff

Ken Jennings has the answers to yesterday’s Capitol Statuary Hall trivia and some more Capitol trivia.

Michael Bérubé responds to a pretty good meme about books: One book that changed your life, One book you have read more than once, etc.

Speaking of books, Bob Cesca thinks “No Way In Hell President Bush Has Read 60 Books” —

Yet, he’s somehow found time to read not one, not five, not 20, but 60 books this year alone (via Crooks & Liars). According to US News & World Report, he’s in a competition with Karl Rove to see who can read more books over the course of the year. Rove is trailing by 10 books, until November when Diebold will put him up by three.

Maybe it is 60. Laura’s a librarian and maybe she introduced George to the “for Dummies” series. You know, Foreign Policy for Dummies, Economic Policy for Dummies, Military Strategy for Dummies, Healthcare Issues for Dummies, Disaster Assistance and Recovery for Dummies.

Oh, and The Constitution for Dummies.

Trivia from the champ

NewMexiKen has been impressed with the high quality of the weekly trivia quizzes from Ken Jennings, the all-time Jeopardy! champ.

You have to sign-up to get the quiz by email. (The link above will take you to a post on last week’s quiz. The Other Projects or About Ken links in the left-hand sidebar will take you to a place to sign-up, also in the left-hand sidebar.)

I don’t think I should copy too much Jennings’s trivia, but I do want to give you a sampling. Here are the first four from last week:

1. Who invented the word “Cablinasian” to refer to his ethnic background?

2. What famous disco refrain of 1974 is drawn, word for word, from scene six of A Streetcar Named Desire, where Blanche DuBois uses it as a come-on to Mitch?

3. What was created, almost seven thousand years ago, by the eruption of Mount Mazama?

4. The Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver were the three ships on which what famous event from American history occurred?

Trivia

NewMexiKen has received my first of Ken Jennings’ weekly trivia quizzes and I must say it’s tough. They’re sent by email, so click the link to sign up.

Meanwhile The Quiz Blogger has some trivia quizzes (posted to the blog) that are just incredible.

It wouldn’t be right to copy trivia from either Jennings or The Quiz Blogger, so I won’t except to give you this example of the first six of 100 questions from the latter’s A Hundred Strong BH82 For Pondering on a Summer’s Day:

1 Famed for its Konig pilsener and its regional brands Licher Pilsner and Lubzer Pils, which brewery was founded in Hamburg’s Altona district in 1879 and produces 12.9 hectolitres of beer per year?

2 Which 24-year-old Australian motorcycle racer rides a Suzuki GSX-R1000 and is the reigning World Superbikes champion?

3 Which pair, one the MP for Dewsbury, the other MP for Tooting, were the first British-born Muslims to be elected to the House of Commons

4 In the 1989 Tour de France which French cyclist and Tour winner in 1983 and 1984, did Greg Lemond beat by just eight seconds to win the competition?

5 In which sport is the Swatch-FIVB World Tour a competition?

6 Which Ethiopian tribe in the remote corner of country known as the Omo Valley is famed for its unique rituals, including its coming-of-age ceremony, which sees young men of the village jumping over cattle while their female relatives are whipped? One spelling of its name is shared with a Norwegian town.

House calls

List in Friday’s New York Times from drawings by Karl Haendel.

How many of these doctors have you visited?

Dr. Spock
Dr. Zhivago
Dr. John
Dr. Feelgood
Dr. Jekyll
Dr. J
Dr. Dolittle
Dr. Roberts
Dr. Phil
Dr. Gachet
Dr. Who
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Ruth
Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Evil
Dr. Watson

This is so cool

Monopoly VisaMonopoly is keeping step with changing technology. The new version of Parker’s classic board game dispenses with the colored currency and instead employs Visa mock debit cars. The card is inserted into an electronic machine where the banker records the players’ earnings and payments. For this updated game, Parker partnered with Visa, which made the card and banking machine. The game, dubbed Monopoly Here and Now Electronic Banking, retails for about $46.

Gear Factor

Do not pass Go

Important pointers on How to Win at Monopoly include these:

3. Remember that Illinois Avenue is the square most often landed on (not including Jail). The B&O Railroad also is among those most landed on; Go rounds out the top three.

7. If you’re stuck with low-income properties, build to four houses quickly to create a building shortage, hurting other players’ chances to build. 24 of 32 houses (or 6 of 12 hotels) could be tied up on just six properties.

10. The trio of orange properties is an excellent monopoly to own because of their relationship to Jail. A roll of 6 or 8 (two of the most common rolls) from Jail lands you on an orange.

Independence Day trivia quiz

  1. Based on their age when they took office, Theodore Roosevelt (42) is the youngest president the U.S. has had. John F. Kennedy (43) is the second youngest. Who is the third youngest president? Fourth youngest? (Both were 46 and some months.)
  2. Who was the oldest president?
  3. Alaska is the largest state, Texas second. Which state is the third largest? Fourth largest? Fifth?
  4. Rhode Island is the smallest state, Delaware second. Which state is the third smallest? Fourth smallest? Fifth?
  5. The highest mountain in the eastern U.S. is in which state?
  6. The largest county in the U.S. is San Bernardino, California (20,105 square miles). The smallest county (26 square miles) is?
  7. The boundary with Mexico is 1,933 miles. The boundary with Canada is about (1) half as long, (2) the same as with Mexico, (3) half again as long as the boundary with Mexico, (4) more than twice as long as the boundary with Mexico?
  8. Two first ladies earned post-graduate degrees. Which two?
  9. True or false, the Liberty Bell cracked ringing to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.
  10. The monarch to whom the Declaration of Independence is addressed is (1) Louis XIV, (2) Elizabeth I, (3) Edward VIII, (4) George III?

Bonus question: Quick, without looking, are there more red stripes or white stripes in the American flag?

Do You Speak Cowboy?

New arrivals to the ranches of the West were often mystified by the language used by local cowboys, trail bosses, and ranch hands. An inexperienced “tenderfoot” or “greenhorn” from the East would most likely hear a lot of “coarse” language, and a variety of colorful expressions.

Test yourself on 10 sentences you might have heard around the bunkhouse circa 1867.

NewMexiKen got all ten, but not without a struggle.

Thanks to Day of the Dead-ly for the link.

10 basic science questions

Think you know your science? Recently, several science gurus — Nobel Prize winners, institute heads, teachers and others who spend most of their time thinking about science — were asked, “What is one science question every high school graduate should be able to answer?”

Take their quiz and see how you do.

Why is the sky blue? Facts you should know.

Da Vinci Code Quest

The Da Vinci Code involves a thrilling murder investigation that unearths a secret that could change the course of history. The film opens May 19th worldwide

The quest, which began April 17th requires skill, intellect, and perseverance. Over a span of 24 days ending May 11th, you will encounter unique challenges. These daily puzzles will pull you deeper into the world of The Da Vinci Code. Answer all 24 puzzles correctly for a chance to win untold riches.

Only the worthy will prevail.

Google: Da Vinci Code

Thanks to Emily for the pointer.

So, how do you score?

Word around was that Vince Young the Texas quarterback got just 6 correct on the 50 question Wonderlic test for the NFL combine. Now they’re saying he took it again and got 16. Here from ESPN.com are 15 sample questions (with the answers at the bottom; it’s self-scoring).

So, how do you score?

NewMexiKen was 15 for 15 but suspects that most NFL teams would still prefer Vince Young.

A little background:

Each year, about 2.5 million job applicants, in every line of work, take the Wonderlic. The average NFL combiner scores about the same as the average applicant for any other job, a 21 [of 50]. A 20 indicates the test-taker has an IQ of 100, which is average. (ESPN.com)

10 of 50 is considered literacy.

Illinois

Corruption of iliniwek (“tribe of the superior men”), natives of region at time of earliest French explorations.

Nickname: Prairie State.
Capital: Springfield.
Entered union: Dec. 3, 1818 (21st).
Slogan: “Land of Lincoln.”
Animal: White-tailed deer.
Bird: Cardinal.
Flower: Violet.
Insect: Monarch butterfly.
Mineral: Fluorite.
Song: “Illinois.”
Tree: White oak.

Illinois Route 66 Plate

Highest point: Charles Mound 1,235′
Lowest point: Mississippi River, Alexander Co. 279′

Total area: 57,914 sq. mi (25th), incl. 2,331 sq. mi. inland water.
Population: 12,600,620 (5th) (July, 2002 est.).

A Beautiful Endgame

From the Wall Street Journal, a fascinating report on Scrabble and the national championship.

RENO, Nev. — The best play of the 2005 National Scrabble Championship didn’t occur during yesterday’s beautiful five-game final match between a Thai student and an American mortgage underwriter.

Nope, for my money it happened on Tuesday, during the 25th round of the 28-game affair, in the second division in the six-division, 700-person field, in a game that had no effect on who’d be crowned king of the Scrabble world.

Rita Norr of Danbury Conn., the only woman ever to win a national championship, in 1987, played the word MATERIAL. In one go, Andrew Golding, an IT professional from Verdun, Quebec, placed RE in front of it and IZE at the end to make REMATERIALIZE. The R landed on a triple-word-score square, and the word totaled 93 points. Rita later tacked on a D: REMATERIALIZED. A 14-letter word. There are 15 rows on a Scrabble board.

After the game, world filtered around the giant playing room. A crowd gathered around the table; 14-letter words don’t happen very often. Photos were taken — of the board, not the players …

Some additional remarks:

… To the people in this tournament, though, Scrabble is a strategy game in which the playing pieces happen to be letters. The purpose of the game is similar to that of other games, physical or mental: to use all of the pieces to their fullest potential to exploit the intricacies of the playing field.

… Scrabble’s secret is that it’s a math game: board geometry, strategic decision making, probability and chance. But nearly every player loves the language part, too, the aesthetics of the letters and letter combinations, the quirky definitions, the sheer breadth and beauty of English.

Scrabble anyone?

It’s the birthday of the man who invented the game Scrabble. Alfred M. Butts was born in Poughkeepsie, New York (1899). He was an architect, but during the Depression he was out of a job and decided he’d invent an adult game. He classified games into three groups—chance, skill and a combination of both—and decided that the last was the most promising. He went methodically through the dictionary and several popular newspapers and counted by hand the frequency of letter usage to come up with the point value for each letter.

He trademarked the game in 1949. He had trouble selling it to major board game companies, but a friend of his decided to produce it on an assembly line in an abandoned schoolhouse. The first few years, only a few thousand copies of the game were sold, but in the 1950’s the president of Macy’s played the game on vacation and got hooked. He ordered more for his store, and Scrabble became a great success.

Alfred Butts enjoyed playing Scrabble with his wife, who was a good opponent. He said, “Nina knows more words and spells better than I, but my architectural training helps me to plan better.” The game has been beloved by many writers, including the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who had a special Russian version made for himself and his wife.

The Writer’s Almanac