Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Trivia Q&A: August 5

On a night when the air conditioning went out in Professor Thom's and was being repaired, we still had 19 teams come in on Trivia Night. We at Thom's really appreciated all of you who had to live with a myriad of fans to stay cool.

The scores were generally very strong, and the scores on Summer Olympics Trivia and General Knowledge were particularly good. The top five teams going into IQ Trivia were separated by just two points.

Two teams ran in the table in IQ Trivia, and one was the first place team going in, Monty is a Dog, so they were crowned champions. They won by just two points. Congratulations to Matt and his friends on their well-earned victory. (One his friend Amy predicted to me before the contest began.)

Current Events
1. Amidst accusations of corruption, Ehud Olmert announced he will resign as prime minister of this country after a party election in September.
2. Name 1 of the 2 foods that manufacturers agreed to reduce the levels of carcinogens in in a deal with the California state attorney general's office last Friday.
3. LAPD Chief William Bratton last week said that this Hollywood actress "had gone gay" in an interview with NBC.
4. Late last month, this type of transplant was successfully done for the very first time ever in Germany.
5. This 1980s sitcom star signed a one-day contract to play minor league baseball, but last Friday was ejected after the bat he used was discovered to have been corked with superballs.
6. 145 people died in this Asian country after a heavy rain caused stones from a wall to fall and triggered a stampede of pilgrims at an annual outdoor religious festival.
7. Las Vegas oddsmakers have this Olympic sport the favorite to have a competitor stripped of a medal for failing a drug test.

Answers: 1. Israel; 2. potato chips and french fries; 3. Lindsay Lohan; 4. double-arm transplant; 5. Gary Coleman; 6. India; 7. weightlifting.

Summer Olympics Trivia
1. In which Summer Games did Cassius Clay (aka Muhammad Ali) win a gold medal in boxing? a. 1956; b. 1960; c. 1964; d. 1968.
2. Which country has won a gold medal at every Summer Olympics? a. USA; b. France; c. Great Britain; d. Australia.
3. What was the first US city to host a Summer Olympic Games? a. Los Angeles; b. St. Louis; c. Chicago; d. San Francisco.
4. What sport is being removed from the Olympics following the 2008 Games? a. baseball; b. archery; c. badminton; d. table tennis.
5. Which city is schedules to host the Summer Games in 2012? a. Tokyo; b. Madrid; c. Rio De Janeiro; d. London.
6. Which country did Nadia Comaneci win a gold medal for in gymnastics in 1976? a. Bulgaria; b. Yugoslavia; c. Romania; d. Soviet Union.
7. How many gold medals did swimmer Mark Spitz win at the 1972 Games to set a new record? a. 6; b. 7; c. 8; d. 5.

Answers: 1. b; 2. c; 3. b; 4. a; 5. d; 6. c; 7. b.

True or False Trivia ("The Q Train")
1. In the 1998 Winter Olympics, the only sport that women did not compete in was bobsledding.
2. Lightning is primarily caused by the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon.
3. Tendons connect bones to muscles.
4. Kierkegaarde is considered to be the father of existentialism.
5. Since 1914, all presidential and congressional elections have been held on a Tuesday.
6. In the game of dice, "boxcars" is the name for when you roll double fours.
7. Marilyn Monroe's last film "The Misfits" was also the last movie Clark Gable ever made.
8. Singers Naomi and Wynonna Judd are actually sisters.
9. A tercel is the male of the crocodile.
10. Grover Cleveland was the only president to also be a Supreme Court justice.

Answers: 1. true; 2. false, tides; 3. true; 4. true; 5. true; 6. false, it's double sixes; 7. true; 8. false, they are mother and daughter; 9. false, it is a hawk; 10. false, William Howard Taft was.

General Knowledge
1. On a standard cubic dice, what's the sum of the numbers on any pair of opposite faces?
2. What group of over 100,000 people were pardoned by President Carter in 1977?
3. What is believed to be the most likely cause of Arizona's Barringer Crater?
4. After the Iowa Caucus of 2004, which presidential candidate delivered the now-infamous "I Have a Scream" speech?
5. If you were in Shanghai and dug a hole straight through the Earth's surface, what South American capital city would you be in on the other side?
6. In Soviet Siberia, the main administration for corrective labor camps was known as what?
7. What US city was deep dish pizza first introduced in 1943?

Answers: 1. seven; 2. Vietnam draft dodgers; 3. meteorite; 4. Howard Dean; 5. Buenos Aires; 6. gulag; 7. Chicago.

IQ Trivia
1. What's the only nation with two territorial claims on Antarctica, despite being further from Antarctica than almost any country on Earth? ( 4 points)
2. What world religion is divided into the Theravada and Mahayana schools? ( 4 points)
3. The first island spotted by Columbus in the New World in 1492, San Salvador, is part of what nation? ( 4 points)
4. What was the name of the ship that Charles Darwin made his famous treks to South America on in the 1830s? ( 5 points)
5. On what part of the body would an avid mountaineer wear crampons? ( 3 points)

Answers: 1. Norway; 2. Buddhism; 3. The Bahamas; 4. HMS Beagle; 5. feet.

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