Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (20 page)

13.
Mary Decker (Slaney)

14.
A window

15.
A bicycle

JANUARY 27

SO GOOD YOU COULD PLOTS

1.
Adolf Hitler

2.
Alfred Hitchcock’s

3.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

4.
Charles Lindbergh

5.
René Descartes (the Cartesian plane)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHY

Easy

1.
Spain

2.
India

3.
Egypt

4.
Brazil

5.
France

Harder

1.
Thailand

2.
Nicaragua

3.
Austria

4.
Peru

5.
Algeria

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Cameroon

2.
China

3.
Croatia

4.
Senegal

5.
Turkmenistan

FOUR FLUSHERS

1.
The St. Louis Blues

2.
The Oxford English Dictionary

3.
(“On the whole, I’d rather be in”) Philadelphia

4.
M*A*S*H

JANUARY 28

PIONEER AT HAND

1.
B

2.
C

3.
F

4.
H

5.
A

6.
J

7.
I

8.
E

9.
D

10.
G

INNER TUBE

1.
The Dick Van Dyke Show

2.
Murphy Brown

3.
Home Improvement

4.
30 Rock

5.
Extras

COUNT IT OFF

1.
Iron & Wine

2.
Eurythmics

3.
Green Day

4.
Led Zeppelin

5.
The Dave Matthews Band

6.
Toto

7.
Madness

8.
UB40

9.
Slipknot

10.
Broken Social Scene

JANUARY 29

SHUSH LIFE

1.
Melville’s

2.
Iran

3.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer

4.
Hector Berlioz

5.
Marian the Librarian (
The Music Man
)

DRIVING TEST

1.
The Chevrolet Corvair

2.
The Dodge/Plymouth Neon

3.
“Honky Tonk Woman” (“Country Honk”)

4.
KITT’s (
Knight Rider
)

5.
Subaru

6.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

7.
Edsel

8.
A Ford Excursion

9.
The Mini (Cooper)

10.
Mexico

FIVE-TIMERS CLUB

1.
Judy Garland

2.
State quarters

3.
Candyman

4.
Carrie Underwood

5.
Billy Martin

JANUARY 30

WALK THIS WAY

1.
Shel Silverstein

2.
Draw

3.
Joanne Woodward

4.
“Pictures of Matchstick Men”

5.
Kitty Genovese

COMING AND GOING

1.
Hannah

2.
Radar

3.
Nauruan

4.
Elle

5.
a-ha

6.
A kayak

7.
Eve

8.
(Honda’s) Civic

9.
Otto

10.
(A) racecar

A MATTER OF TRUST

1.
Texaco

2.
Real estate (investment)

3.
Palau

4.
Elvis Costello’s

5.
It’s stamped on the
edge
of the coin

JANUARY 31

IT’S UP TO U

1.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

2.
Marcel Marceau

3.
Jawaharlal Nehru

4.
Maya Angelou

5.
Martin Landau

PLAID TO THE BONE

1.
What’s Up, Doc?

2.
Lamar Alexander

3.
Wales

4.
Edith Head

5.
Burberry’s

OUT TO PASTURE

1.
The Boston Celtics (21)

2.
William Tell

3.
Emeritus

4.
James Cagney

5.
Barry Sanders

6.
Britney Spears

7.
E. M. Forster

8.
Mitch

9.
Sally Ride

10.
Cocoon

FEBRUARY 1

1906
T
HE FIRST STEAM
shovels arrive in Utah to begin excavating the Bingham Canyon copper mine near Salt Lake City. Today the 1,900-acre mine, still producing, is the world’s largest man-made excavation.

COPPER TONE

1.
What’s added to copper to make bronze?

2.
What’s the only part of the Statue of Liberty’s exterior that’s not copper?

3.
The Latin name for copper comes from what island where the ore was mined anciently?

4.
Today’s U.S. pennies are 2.5 percent copper. What metal is the other 97.5 percent?

5.
Who was engaged to magician David Copperfield for six years in the 1990s?

1920
T
HE
“M
OUNTIES”
are officially formed when the North West Mounted Police merges with the Dominion Police. Look out, Snidely Whiplash.

STRAIGHT “EH?”S

Oh,
Canada!
How much do you know about our “Kraft dinner”–eating neighbors to the north?

1.
What Canadian island was named for the father of Queen Victoria?

2.
How many points are there on the maple leaf on the Canadian flag?

3.
What ship sank in 1975 after passing too close to Ontario’s Caribou Island when the gales of November came early?

4.
What music star is named for a Soviet gymnast who won three gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics?

5.
Prime Minister Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for defusing what world crisis?

6.
What prospector is cremated in poet Robert Service’s most famous ballad?

7.
What violinist-bandleader was the first inductee into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame?

8.
What two Canadian provinces have capitals named for the same person?

9.
What future TV western star was CBC News’s “Voice of Canada” during World War II?

10.
What’s the name of the mainland portion of the province originally called Newfoundland?

11.
What Canadian company is North America’s oldest brewery?

12.
What sports championship is named for a man whose great-uncle has a tea blend named for him?

13.
What actor’s 1999 memoir was entitled
Get a Life
?

14.
What Italian army captain who settled in Toronto in 1831 lent his name to a popular teen drama?

15.
What’s the only one of the Great Lakes that has no Canadian waters?

FEBRUARY 2

1602
S
HAKESPEARE’S
T
WELFTH
N
IGHT
is probably first performed at London’s Middle Temple Hall, to celebrate Candlemas, not the titular holiday. The Bard playfully labels the play “Or What You Will,” making it his only work with a subtitle.

SUB POP

What famous novels use these subtitles?

Easy

1.
The Whale

2.
And What Alice Found There

3.
A Tale of the Christ

4.
The Autobiography of a Horse

5.
A Space Odyssey

Harder

1.
From This World to That Which Is to Come

2.
The Modern Prometheus

3.
Life Among the Lowly

4.
There and Back Again

5.
The Parish Boy’s Progress

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
A Novel Without a Hero

2.
The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

3.
The Children’s Crusade

4.
A Pure Woman, Faithfully Presented

5.
The Saga of an American Family

1887
T
HE
P
UNXSUTAWNEY
G
ROUNDHOG
C
LUB
makes its first annual trek to Gobbler’s Knob to watch a small rodent predict the weather.

TIME AFTER TIME

Celebrate your own personal
Groundhog Day
with some questions about endless repeats…endless repeats…endless repeats…

1.
What Sanskrit word do Buddhists use to refer to the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth?

2.
What Beatles number one hit repeats the title in the lyrics forty-one times?

3.
What ad campaign gave us Sitagin hemorrhoid cream, Rottenbrau beer, Golden Grenades cereal, and Château Marmoset wine?

4.
What Italian phrase for “from the beginning” is used in music notation to indicate a repeated passage?

5.
What’s the only team ever to appear in four consecutive Super Bowls?

6.
Jack Torrence’s “novel” in Kubrick’s
The Shining
actually consists of what proverb, typed over and over again thousands of times?

7.
What phenomenon is named for the French words for “already seen”?

8.
What happens ninety-two times in a row at the beginning of Tom Stoppard’s play
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
?

9.
What word did Benoit Mandelbrot coin in 1975 for infinitely complex shapes, each tiny part of which contains the whole?

10.
What movie does Turner television traditionally broadcast twelve times in a row every December 24?

2002
T
HE
N
ICOLE
K
IDMAN GHOST STORY
The Others
cleans up at Spain’s Goya Awards, since it was directed by a Spaniard, Alejandro Amenábar. It’s the only movie ever to win the Best Film Goya despite not having a single word of Spanish in it.

SIGNIFICANT OTHERS

1.
In the title of a George Bernard Shaw play, what’s
John Bull’s Other Island
?

2.
To counter slipping sales, what was marketed, beginning in 1987, as “the other white meat”?

3.
What photographer exposed New York’s squalid slum life in 1890’s
How the Other Half Lives
?

4.
What’s the punny name of “the Other Reindeer” voiced by Drew Barrymore in a Christmas TV special?

5.
What backup band was replaced with “the Other Band” for the 1992
Human Touch/Lucky Town
tour?