Wednesday, January 5, 2011

The Wednesday Quiz: Why yes, it HAS been working out!

Returning from its sojourn in Australia looking relaxed, fit, and trim, it's:


...now with no fussy scoring system!  And no prizes!  Except the thrill of applying your knowledge, intuition, inductive reasoning, and willingness to risk public embarrassment in a friendly and moderately supportive environment!!

Ready?  Here goes!  Answers come out on Friday!

1. He was a key figure in the development of Vienese classical music -- the stuff we generally call "classical music" -- writing dozens of successful operas and including guys like Schubert, Beethoven, and Liszt on his list of students. But his music all but disappeared from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. Who are we talking about here?

2. What is the word that means: "A figure or trope by which a part of a thing is put for the whole, the whole for a part, the species for the genus, the genus for the species, or the name of the material for the thing made"?

3.

We are of course in _______________.


4. From the Wiki: He was born in 1878 to a cobbler in the town of Gori. At the age of seven, he contracted smallpox, which permanently scarred his face. At ten, he began attending church school where the Georgian children were forced to speak Russian. By the age of twelve, two horse-drawn carriage accidents left his left arm permanently damaged. At sixteen, he received a scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary; though he performed well there, he was expelled in 1899 after missing his final exams.

Who is this famous guy?

5. What is this city?



6. What book does this passage come from?
People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." It ends like this: "Poo-tee-weet?"

7. Policies privilaging the majority language and religion of this country -- Sinhala and Bhuddism -- led to three decades of civil war that killed 100,000 people and displaced far more. Recently, things seem to have calmed down.

8. Why, it's the flag of __________!



9. Introduced in the 1980s, this class of drugs has become the best-selling pharmaceutical product in history. By dramatically reducing the mortality rate from heart disease, they have substantially increased life expectancy, thus making big trouble for healthcare and pension funding wherever they are used.

10. A 1994 drama set in the state of Maine, it initially performed sluggishly at the box office but subsequently became incredibly popular largely by word of mouth. It has been at or near the top of the Internet Movie Database's fan-generated list of best movies of all time since the late 1990s.

----

The tie-breaker: How many major world cities -- with a population over 2 million say -- can you think of that start with this week's letter?

Go ahead!  Give it a try!  Put your answers in the comments!  

21 comments:

Elaine said...

OMG!!! What a thrill!

1. Salieri
2. Oh, god! and I know this is stored somewhere in the gray matter, too! Asymptote? Shoot. I can even see the page in the book...but it's blurry.
3. Sydney!
4. Josef Stalin? I wanted to say Rasputin but the arm barred my way.
5. Sarajevo?
6. I have no clue. Last Living Widow of a Confederate War Veteran?
7. Tibet?
8. Sweden
9. statins?
10. The Shining?

This week's letter? I know I need the extra credit, but how would I know this week's letter? I don't watch Sesame Street any more. Oh, well, I'll just accept my public disgrace with equanimity.

Rex Parker said...

Salieri
Synechdoche
Sydney
Stalin
Sarajevo
Slaughterhouse Five
Sri Lanka
Sweden
Statins
The Sixth Sense

Rex Parker said...

SEOUL, SAIGON (?), SAO PAULO, SHANGHAI, uh ... S.F. SYDNEY, SAN JUAN, ST. LOUIS, SAN DIEGO, SEATTLE ... I'm sure there's something Middle Easter I'm forgetting. SANA(A) (crossword city)!? Is that big? Ugh, apparently I can name 11 that are Maybe that big, tho' S.D. seems a stretch. Wait, SINGAPORE! That's a city, right? 12.

12.

Christine M. said...

1. & 2. No clue
3. Sydney
4. Stalin
5. Sarajevo
6. Slaughterhouse-Five
7. Sri Lanka
8. IKEA! Just kidding. Sweden.
9. statins
10. dunno

Morgan said...

1. Schumann
2. Substitution
3. Sydney
4. Stalin
5. Somethingville
6. Slaughterhouse 5
7. Serbia
8. Sweden
9. aSpirin
10. The Shining

SnowGirl said...

Shitballs, a quiz!

1. shrug
2. shrug again
3. Sydney
4. Stalin
5. Sarajevo
6. Slaughterhouse 5
7. Sri Lanka
8. Sweden
9. S beta blockers?
10. Shawshank Redemption

Bonus: I'm just gonna name cities here... Sarajevo, Stockholm, Sydney, Saigon, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, St. Petersberg, Santiago, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Santo Domingo, San Diego, San Francisco, San Antonio, Seattle.

DrSchnell said...

Yay, Wednesday Quiz!
1. Salieri
2. Schenectady - no, I mean, synechdote (sp?)
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Stalin
5. Sarajevo
6. Slautherhouse-5, or, The Children's Crusade
7. Sri Lanka
8. Sweden
9. statins?
10. Shawshank Redemption (only because I think I remember you writing about this one a while back).
Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Sydney, Seattle, San Francisco,San Diego, St. Louis, Shanghai, Santiago, Singapore

PB said...

1. No idea.
2. Synecdoche is when you have part for a whole (i.e. blade for sword); it is not to be confused with metonymy, which is when you have a thing for a related thing (for example, Mars - the Roman god - for war, or perhaps using something like knife in place of sword).
3. Sydney
4. Rasputin (?)
5. I admit it, my geography is miserable.
6. Whatever it is, I haven't read it. Catch-22?
7. Sri Lanka (more wild guesses!)
8. Sweden
9. aspirin?
10. Pulp Fiction?

So really I just wanted to answer question 2, since it's a term I teach my students each year when we're reading Vergil.

mrs.5000 said...

The quiz is back!
1. Why that would be...uh...Herr Schlieberhimmelhof!
2. Synecdoche
3. Sydney
4. umm...Stalin?
5. Sarajevo
6. Slaughterhouse Five
7. Sri Lanka
8. IKEA! I mean, Sweden.
9. statins
10. Shawshank Redemption
Tie-breaker: Praise be for the tie-breaker clue! Otherwise I would still be trying to choose between synecdoche and metonymy. So...Shanghai, Stockholm, Sao Paolo, Sydney (?), San Francisco, Seoul, St. Louis? Sheffield? Sapporro? OK that's probably enough grasping at straws. Welcome back surprise quiz!

mrs.5000 said...

You'd think I could remember Seattle, at least. I probably just don't want to admit that it's that much bigger than Portland.

Nichim said...

Yippeeeeee!

1. I don't know!
2. Schenecdoche (or however you spell it)
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Josef Stalin
5. Sarajevo
6. I don't know!
7. Sri Lanka
8. Sweden
9. s...s...seratonin reuptake inhibitors? No, that was the 90s.
10. I don't know!
tie-breaker: St. Louis, San Salvador, Sarajevo, Singapore, Stockholm, San Francisco, San Diego, Shanghai (is it still called that?), Seoul, Sydney, Sao Paolo, Seattle, San Jose (Costa Rica), San Juan (Puerto Rico), Saigon (is it still called that?), Samarkand, Santiago, Sowetho... okay, I left this window open all day at work and that's all I can think of (but I'm sure there's something else, way down inside me...)

Elaine said...

Well, the nickel drops at last... There was a huge discussion about 'synecdoche'-- on ?WordPlay--at some point, and the more people tried to explain how it differed from metonymy,the more confusing it got.

I see that I was supposed to think of S. Tsk. I never seem to pick up on these patterns (one reason, no doubt, why I am so miserable at solving Matt Gaffney's clever meta-puzzles. Nonetheless, last week my name got drawn from the pot of 300+ correct answers and now I've got a prize on the way. Woot! ) I think you could name San Antonio and Sacramento, too. Where I live, the entire state has barely more than 2 million folks, but there are some interesting S names: Smackover, for example.

Aviatrix said...

Oooh! Oooh! Welcome back Wednesday quiz. How I have missed guessing things I don't know anything about. Can't you give us scores anyway? We like scores. They don't have to be fussy. You can just give me a zero, for example.

1. Smetana
2. syncdoche
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Solzhenitsyen
5. Sarajevo
6. That sounds like Kurt Vonnugut Jr., so Slaughterhouse Five
7. Ah Bhuddism, the religion of Ghandi. Why do English speakers so often misplace other people's Hs? I was going to go with Bhutan, bhecause there had to bhe something influencing that misspelling, but I'd better make it Sri Lanka.
8. <strike>Ikea</strike> Sweden.
9. Steroids
10. Superbad

Sydney
San Francisco
Seattle
Santiego
Seoul
Shanghai
Singapore
Stockholm
Smolnsk
St. Petersburg

Aviatrix said...

Don't feel badly, Elaine. I had to go back and change everything but Sydney, Sarajevo and Sweden once I realised there was a magic letter.

Elizabeth said...

1. Salieri
2. Synecdoche
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Solzehnystensynsn
5. Srbeniza
6. Slaughterhouse 5
7. Shoot
8. Sweden
9. Statins
10. So do not know this

Stockholm. Singapore. Unless that's not a city. San Francisco. Suzhou. Shanghai. Sao Paulo. Stalingrad. Sydney. So long for now.

Jennifer said...

Please assume there are question marks after pretty much all of these.

1. Salieri
2. Synechdoche
3. Sydney
4. Schopenhauer? (I thought that one deserved an extra question mark)
5. Sarajevo
6. This is NOT Shakespeare, that's about all I know. I accidentally saw Elizabeth's answer when I was scrolling down to write my comment, as hard as I was trying not to look, and I realized I'd misread the question (thinking author), so... I'd better take a fail on this one.
7. Siam
8. Sweden
9. Statins
10. Holy cow, I don't even have a plausible guess.

I hope I don't get docked points for the ones I get wrong--I'm pretty sure some of these don't qualify as major world cities, but...
Stockholm
Sydney
Sarajevo
Seattle
Shanghai
San Franciso
San Antonio
St. Petersbuerg
Strasburg
Stuttgart
San Diego

Ben said...

1. Salieri
2. subset
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Stalin
5. Sarejevo (can't spell it)
6. Slaughterhouse 5
7. Sumatra
8. Sweden
9. Ssssomething
10. Something by Stephen King? Don't know what though.

Tie-breaker:
San Francisco
Santiago
San Antonio
San Diego
St. Louis

Michael5000 said...

Oh, right, the answers:

1. Salieri
2. Synecdoche
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Stalin
5. Sarajevo
6. Slaughterhouse-5
7. Sri Lanka
8. Sweden
9. Statins
10. Something, indeed, by Stephen King: The Shawshank Redemption

Fabulously well done, y'all!

Michael5000 said...

And the Aviatrix, who wants points, gets six!

Aviatrix said...

Woohoo! Thank you!

UnwiseOwl said...

Well, I totally missed this, but since there's no scoring, I can enter late, right?
I'm so glad the quiz has come home, as its Australian cousin died a sad death, but who knows, it might be back now that I have more time...

1. Schlitz? Oh dear...
2. a Synecdote, great word.
3. Syd-e-ney, Oztrailia
4. J. Stalin Esq.? I had Lenin, but everything was wrong, then I realised the theme and it was all good.
5. Sofia, the great Potato
6. Slaughterhouse-5 or The Children's Crusade. Sometimes I actually know things! So it goes.
7. I think this is Ceylon, right? But you want it with an S, so Sri Lanka?
8. Sweden. A+
9. Statins! Working for nurses has benefits after all.
10. The Shawshank Redemption? It's somewhere up that way, anyway, and about the right time.

BONUS: As long as we're not being tested...hundreds.