Monday, December 26, 2011

an answer I require

Jon Carroll's annual Christmas quiz and the answers. DO was already on it.

I did fine on the geography quiz, but muffed this one. The only questions I got right were 5 and 8, and not because I knew the answers but because they were multiple-choice and the other choices were all obviously wrong. I got parts of 6, 14, and 15. I ought to have known 11, but all I could say for sure was that it must be a place name from the correct linguistic region.

I query Jon's source for saying that the corpse being dressed for its funeral in the opening credits of The Big Chill was not Kevin Costner. (He'd been cast as the dead man in some flashback scenes which were cut before release.) Everything I've ever read about the subject says it was him. Which doesn't prove it right, but does make me wonder where Jon got contradictory information and which is more reliable.

I am useless on "think of a word which has these characteristics" questions like 4. I put 10 too far to the east in South America and too far to the west in North America. I do not know any Paul Simon songs that do not have "and Garfunkel" in the credits; does that make me too old or too young to have gotten the reference in 1? I thought that 2 might have something to do with the Knights Who Say ..., but they haven't been in the news lately. The answer to 3b is contradicted by the movie about Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, but it didn't know dip about Stravinsky so I'm not surprised it didn't know dip about Chanel either. I knew the first part of 14, but I've never seen the movie. If the answer to 16 isn't a), I'm stumped; I know there's somebody with a name resembling that to whom that is the answer. (ETA: Now I remember: it was Fred Harvey.)

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