It has finally happened: A six-pack! Six questions up, six questions down, and nothing but correct answers from start to finish.
I honestly never thought the day would come: For players of my ho-hum ability, there are SO MANY WAYS for things to go wrong. How many times have I smugly hit Submit only to learn I had fundamentally misread a question? How many times have I known some arcane fact seemingly up to the very moment that I read a trivia question about it, at which point the fact makes a jailbreak right out of my brain? Not to mention all the Learned League categories for which my depth of knowledge can be measured in centimeters. A day might have five gimmes, but if the final question is about sports, or science, or geography, then that’s it for the six pack: Gone for another day.
Well. Surprise! Despite the presence of a sports question and a geography question, all of my answers were right. Maybe everybody gets one day where the slot machine rollers line up perfectly: Jackpot, Jackpot, Jackpot!
1. What is the largest country in land area on the Central American isthmus? It is also home to Central America’s two largest freshwater lakes — one named for the country, the other named for the country’s capital city.
The hardest question in the batch: My answer was 100% guesswork. I suppose if you know something about the region, this question was loaded with hints, but for me the whole second half was no help at all: Blah blah lakes, blah blah capital. I didn’t even try to come up with a rational answer: My strategy pretty much boiled down to “Name a country that is probably located in the right part of the world.” I went with Nicaragua. Wow, it’s right!
2. What was the last name of the family at the center of the comedy/drama series The Wonder Years?
Fred Savage played Kevin… Kevin… Kevin what? It took some meditation to make it come back to me: Kevin Arnold.
3. What is the name of the business establishment being depicted in this painting?
My first thought: The Moulin Rouge. My second thought: This seems a little more sedate than the Moulin Rouge depicted in the movie of the same name. Third thought: Sure, but that movie was directed by Baz Luhrmann, who doesn’t do small when enormous is possible. And there are cues from what I remember of the movie that confirm my answer: The clothes and beards seem right for the period, and there is also a green, absinthy tint to everything, especially that woman on the right. (Either that or she is a sea monster.) The final convincer: I had no backup plan. It was Moulin Rouge or nothing. Moulin Rouge it is! Correct!
4. Of the 50 discrete words that appear in Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, which is the only one that begins with the letter F ?
Is this really going to be a difficult question for anybody? That’s hard to fathom, but then again I have read this book about ten million times. I will not eat them with a fox, I will not eat them in a box. (Considering how my daughter once loved this book, it’s ironic what a picky eater she has turned out to be.)
5. Ray Bluth, Don Carter, Carmen Salvino, Harry Smith, Dick Weber and Billy Welu were among the initial inductees for a Hall of Fame in what sport?
Got it from Dick Weber: Bowling!
Actually, I confused Dick Weber with his son, Pete Weber, who has made an attempt to bring bowling into the modern age by wearing dark sunglasses and adopting a Hulk Hogan-like attitude, neither of which does much to counter the fact that he is a professional bowler. But I got to the right place, so who cares if I took a wrong turn along the way?
Here’s Pete Weber celebrating a win, I believe earlier this year. Stay tuned for the immortal line, “Who do you think you are? I AM!”
6. Field artillery Colonel Robert R. McCormick was, from 1926 until his death in 1955, sole publisher of what major American newspaper — a time which includes one of the most notorious gaffes in newspaper history, which occurred in November of 1948.
There needs to be a term for a question where the first half fills your brain with a panicked OH NO!, but then the second half turns it into a total gimme. That’s what we have here. I’ve never heard of Colonel Robert R. McCormick, but his presence in the question is unnecessary: All I really needed were the last eleven words. Chicago Tribune, with its famous DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN cover.
So there you have it! My first six pack. I’m not expecting this to happen again anytime soon, that’s for sure. In the meantime, though, Who do you think you are? I AM!
Congratulations! That’s awesome. Meanwhile …
1: Argh! I treated this as a pure geography question and guessed (I think) Honduras. If I had just spent a moment thinking about the words “NicarAGUA” and “ManAGUA”, I suspect I would’ve had a chance. (I actually have no idea if those aguas are a coincidence, but they still would’ve convinced me.)
2: I recognized this one when I saw it, but it would never have come to me.
3: On a different day, I bet I would have guessed this correctly, but yesterday I put down the Lapin Agile.
4: I don’t think I ever read this until I was a teenager, at least. The only rhymes I could think of that might have been in the book were boat/goat and plane/train. Took a shot with “friend”.
5: Thank you, Dick Weber, for saving me from a skunking. Jeffrey “Jangler” Harris gave me 3 points for this, not at all unreasonably considering my stats.
6: I knew that this was the paper Truman was holding up in that famous photograph. I knew it was a Chicago paper. But something in my brain kept telling me it was now defunct. So I rejected the Tribune and said the “Chicago Herald”.
3(1)-5(3) loss. Luck giveth, luck taketh away.
Congrats Eric. I bet another six-pack comes sooner than you think! Today I played Greg Pliska who has been in the Champ Rundle for a while now.
1. Nicaragua is pretty large for Central America. I couldn’t have told you that Lakes Nicaragua and Managua were the largest in the region, but I’ve heard of both.
2. I watched it a lot. I actually thought of Winnie Cooper first, played by Danica McKellar. She’s gone on to be a mathematician and is trying to inspire other young women to follow on that path. Kevin Arnold was cool.
3. Another Art Institure of Chicago question. As a former member, I’ve seen this several times.
4. With my last name, I’d better get this.
5. Dick Weber was my sole entry into this one. I knew it absolutely. Remove him from the list and I’d have had no idea.
6. I’d never heard of the Colonel either but the Dewey Defeats Truman thing plus the confirmer that Chicago’s immense McCormick Center (I’m guessing named after him?) sealed the deal.
In the end, Greg missed only Kevin Arnold and I managed a 9(6)-7(5) win which has kept me in 3rd place.
Missed the 6-pack by one. Let’s see how that works out.
1 — Despite my geography deficiency, I somehow knew that Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala were the big ones. On size alone, I had nothing much to go on, but since I’d heard of lakes Nicaragua and Managua, that seemed to be a good way to proceed.
2 — TV question? About an 80s-90′s sitcom? Come to papa!
3 — My art knowledge is gappy, but I recognized this as the Moulin Rouge. It helped, no doubt, that this was (spoiler alert!) one of the paintings used in the 2005 Mystery Hunt puzzle “Gallery Tour” (http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/05/setec/gallery_tour/) — a logic and identification puzzle I highly recommend.
4 — Took me a small number of seconds to get to FOX, and also a small number to make sure I wasn’t confusing it with Fox In Socks, but yeah, was pretty easy.
5 — I grew up in New Jersey. Of *course* I know bowling. (Didn’t recall Smith and Belu, but knew the others.)
6 — And for the six-pack … dang! What was the Dewey Defeats Truman paper? I was too stuck on it having to be East Coast, since surely an inland paper would have had more time o get the headline right. Part of my brain wanted Tribune, but “NY Tirbune” or “NY Herald-Tribune” seemed wrong, since the question sounded a bit like it was a currently existing big paper. So, as between “New York” and “Tribune,” I ditched “Tribune” (nuts!) and went with New York Post. I knew the paper in the famous photo was not in tabloid form, but thought the Post might not have been tabloid at the time. What do I know? (Evidently, not the answer to this question.)
So, 5/6, not a bad day’s work. And, what did our host say above about the Seuss question? “Is this really going to be a difficult question for anybody?” Good point! Let’s give it a zero!
And so I came *this close* to Bucknering today. My opp defended correctly (kudos to you sir!), and I handed him a 1 (Moulin Rouge), a 2 (Bowling), and a 3 (Arnold) — all defensible on his stats, I think — for a 6(5)-6(3) tie. I’m guessing about a 10th place finish for me this season (currently 8th), a safe distance from either moving up or moving down. And, that’s OK.
Skipped out on posting after a discouraging loss on Monday but still clinging to life in the top 3 of Rundle D. And for today:
1) Nicaragua just seemed right, and I believed there could be a Lake Managua. Got this one, and all of zero points for it!
2) I was thinking McAllister for a while but then I remembered that Kevin McAllister is Macauley Culkin’s character in HOME ALONE. Thought for awhile and then cam around to Arnold, knew it was right.
3) Moulin Rouge just seemed like the right answer, I thought the top hat guy looked like Toulouse Lautrec. And this is not Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!
4) I remembered Fox.
5) Went with Golf. I probably would have recognized some names from the Golf Hall of Fame, so not a great guess.
6) Because the Dewey Defeats Truman headline shows up in the Cheers title sequence I went with the Boston Globe. Never even thought of Chicago but yeah, there are places named for McCormick there!
Still a win 4(4) – 1(2) (I gave 2 points for Nicaragua, so not a great defense) – Am now sitting pretty at #2 in Rundle D. Can I hang on?
Congratulations! I only got 3 of these, though I’ve bested you on a number of other occasions. Just goes to show how surprisingly different our knowledge is.
I am remarkably consistent in this season LL53: The Losening
1) “Name a big country in Central America” I went down the ones I had been to and picked the largest of them. And then it turned out that I was wrong about that [Honduras is larger than Guatemala] and I just didn’t remember any big lakes so I sort of knew I was wrong. But MAN, all three of those places are close to the same size…
2) This was sort of back when I was not watching much TV, which seemed like a good idea at the time but is now haunting me.
3) I think I said Chat Noir because I thought I remembered it from a postcard series. Apparently this is a place that is right down the street from the Moulin Rouge, which is closer than my answer was in my head.
4) FOXFOXFOX.
5) “Name a sport in which you likely do not know a single person” I went with Golf but bowling was clearly the better choice here.
6) Got the reference, got sidetracked by the “field artillery colonel…” stuff. Knew east coast but nothing else.
The good news is that I think thanks to my imperfect defense my smartie opponent has now climbed out of the gravitational pull of the relegation basement. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a biggish spread on all of these questions league-wide. A good assortment.
Congratulations!
Meanwhile, back in the world of four-correct losses:
1) Lake Costa Rica, Lake Guatemala, Lake Honduras, Lake Nica — that’s it.
2) Kevin … Paul … Winnie … Arnold … Arnold!
3) Knew the painting
4) Came with a few seconds thought
5) screeeeeeeeeeech. I thought Ray Bluth sounded like a football player, decided that was too easy, and changed it to “College Football”. Feh.
6) Aaargh, frustrating: I knew it was Dewey Beats Truman but couldn’t name the paper. I put down Washington Post, assigned scores, gave my answers another once-over, and just as I was hitting submit thought “wait, it’s the Chicago Tribune!”. Too late though.
I’m still right in the middle of the pack in Rundle C Coastal, but the difference between where I am and a ranking about halfway down in the demotion zone is exactly one point. So could go either way, very easily (the top few players in the rundle have become more stratified by this point).
Congrats Eric, you’ve waited long enough for that.
1. The Aguas in Nicaragua and Managua helped me make my decision here although I was able to eliminate Guatemala due to the unlikelihood of a Lake Guatemala City.
2. Knew this instantly. Decided to give Joon a 3 here since his TV scores are pretty terrible (Sorry Joon). I did this knowing that he might have seen the later seasons of this show when he was growing up. My bad. Turns out he knew this.
3. Immediately thought of Moulin Rouge but there wasn’t enough dancing so I decided to go with Maxim’s a well known Parisian restaurant that unfortunately only really existed in the 20th century.
4. Forgive me for not remembering this one. I kind of rushed my answer here and just went with Fork although I was unable to convince myself of the word that would have inevitable rhymed with Fork (Cork, Pork, Spork). If I had thought about this for awhile I might have remembered Box which might have led me to Fox.
5. No idea here. Joon had done well on specific sports info so I only gave him a 1 here. This turned out to be his only incorrect answer.
6. Remembered that this was the Chicago Tribune.
Ended up losing 8(5)-4(3). Even if I hadn’t made the mistakes on Moulin Rouge and Fox I probably still would have lost since I wasn’t going to score Joon 3 on the Sports question. Oh well.
Congratulations, Eric! I’m glad your day has finally come.
1. “Lake Nicaragua” seemed to ring a bell, but I went through the choices anyway: Belize and Panama I could picture in Central America, and they’re simply not largest. Also, Lake Panama and Lake Panama City is dumb. Ditto Lake El Salvador and Lake San Salvador. Given its meaning, Lake Costa Rica would just be bizarre. And so on. Eventually decided my first instinct was looking pretty good and went with it.
2. I also thought immediately of “Winnie Cooper” and couldn’t shake it. I surprised myself with how many of the actors I could name, but never dredged up another character’s last name.
3. This was the question my opponent assigned me 3 points for, thanks to my abysmal performance in Art. My first thoughts were: some cafe in the title of the painting or the Moulin Rouge. But wasn’t the Moulin Rouge some kind of theatre? That low wall in the front and streetlights visible in the back… no, this is a cafe, and who cares about the rest of the thought process because we all know it will only end badly.
4. Gimme.
5. Drew “auto racing” out of a mental hat and went on to see if the next question was any friendlier.
6. StevenS and I are sharing a brain. I said Boston Globe for exactly the same reason.
Deviating from course on the Moulin Rogue left me with a 2(2)-3(3) loss. Sigh.
Way to go, Eric!
1) I knew Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua were the big ones, and then Lake Managua sounded familiar.
2) Spent a while trying to come up with a last name to go with Kevin. Eventually my brain said McAllister, and I lit up. “Yes, that sounds so right!” Of course, as Steven mentioned, that’s from Home Alone (which was from the same time period and also features Daniel Stern). I did note that “Wayne McAllister” didn’t sound quite right, but didn’t bother thinking about it any further.
3) Thought of Moulin Rouge, but for some reason went with Folies Bergère (or rather a poorly spelled attempt at Folies Bergère).
4) Came right away, but I also had to make sure I wasn’t just thinking of Fox in Socks.
5) None of those names sounded familiar. NASCAR?
6) Knew the headline, but no idea on the paper. Said Boston Globe.
I left a few points on the table, but even at my best I wasn’t going to match my opponent’s six-pack. I’m still hanging around the top of the relegation zone, and will need to pick it up a little to stay in C.
Congratulations, Eric!
In my rush to post before leaving for work this morning, I see I was remiss in not saying — congrats on the sixer, Eric!
congrats on the 6-pack, eric!
and gary, no apology necessary—i really am terrible at TV and i knew that was going to be my 3-pointer (just as i know somebody will give me 3 today on the album cover, since my pop music score is only slightly less terrible). luckily i’m just the right age to have watched that show as a kid. i had a huge crush on winnie cooper, and later discovered that danica mckellar & i share a birthday.
on the bowling question, i didn’t recognize any of the names, and went through this agonizing thought process:
1. i should guess a sport where i wouldn’t recognize any of the names. that narrows it down quite a bit.
2. carmen… that’s a woman’s name. i should guess a sport that both men and women play.
3. welu… looks like it could be hawaiian? maybe i should guess a beach sport.
4. volleyball! awesome. very pleased with this guess.
5. but wait, if beach volleyball had a hall of fame, surely karch kiraly would be in the inaugural class? hmm, back to the drawing board.
6. bowling, maybe? i know they actually have a hall of fame, in st louis; i’ve been there (st louis, not the bowling HoF).
7. wait, beach sport? how about surfing? that’s a great guess. (i was perhaps unduly influenced by the question in the WQC this past weekend about the surfing champion.)
so i had bowling filled in for about 20 seconds, in between my first guess, which i liked, and my final guess, which i loved. and it turns out billy welu is not hawaiian at all; he was born in … st louis. oh well. i’ve got a long string of 5s now—slightly frustrating, but 5 is usually good enough to win in B rundle, and indeed that’s been the case.
ertchin and gary, great catch on the “agua” thing. i’m familiar with both lakes, but that is a really cool solving path.
1. I think this came up in quiz bowl the other night- I got to Managua, then decided it was the capital of Honduras. I even thought of Tegucigalpa (wondering if it was the capital of Hondruas) before rejecting it. Boo.
2. Took me a minute, but I got there.
3. Debated between Folies Bergeres and Moulin Rouge, opted for the wrong one.
4. Easy. I wondered if my opponent would notice I am at Dartmouth and adjust their defense for Seuss trivia.
5. Guessed something random.
6. Tribune came to me right away, and had no reason to move away from it.
Lost. Out of promotion zone for now.