Wow, sometimes I thought the day would never get here.
May 102012
May 092012
Just as I was thinking about who I should dedicate The Puzzler’s Mansion to, the nation got into one of its periodic debates about teachers. They are either America’s heroes or parasites bankrupting the country through the pension system (and with summers off to boot). They are paid far too much or not nearly enough. Tenure protects good teachers or it’s an obstruction standing in the way of education reform. We need to let teachers have free reign in the classroom, or we need to adhere to a strict curriculum so that no child is left behind.
I find these conversations exhausting because you can cite specific examples to make just about any larger argument seem valid, and I wind up agreeing, at least momentarily, with everybody. The “rubber rooms” of New York City were an outrage, but I can also see the value in not allowing the hiring and firing of teachers be left solely in the hands of the administration, which is in turn beholden to the school board, which all too often is packed with, shall we say, political immoderates. I nod in agreement as one talking head or another mourns that we must now “teach to the test,” but I also see at least some value in standardized testing and trying to figure out if a school is, in general, doing well or doing poorly. Indeed, as homeschoolers, we even want to know that about ourselves, and that is why we’ve signed up our daughter to take a test a couple of weeks from now.
And that reminds me. We didn’t pull my daughter out of public school because of her teachers. Her teachers were fine. But the educational theory in play these days seems to be that the class can only advance as a group — and if some kids aren’t quite there yet, then we’re going to stop and help those kids catch up. And obviously that’s fine. But we recognized that our daughter could be progressing a lot faster, and that was never going to happen in the classroom setting. Our district has no gifted program for elementary school kids, or even a “slightly advanced” program. I assume our school district has neither the money nor the wherewithal to offer such a thing.
All of which is to say, asking what’s wrong with American education and talking only about the teachers is like saying, “What’s wrong this car?” and only examining the tires. There are other parts to this machine, too, you know.
Anyway. It was during one of these outbursts of public opinion that I decided to dedicate the third Winston book to “Teachers who make a difference.” Because somehow, no matter what the political climate and no matter how severely the budget has been slashed, we still have a great many good teachers out there. Yes, others are not so good, and most fall somewhere in between. That’s okay — that’s how it works in every profession. We’re never going to reach a point where all of our teachers are above average. The bad teachers can be survived and the average ones can be tolerated. The good teachers will make an impression on your child that will last long after the names of the bad and mediocre ones are forgotten.
In the dedication, I name three specific teachers who were particularly important to me: Claire Donahue, Robert Sarli, and Bill Scott.
Claire Donahue
I don’t think I was in high school for more than a week before I turned the library into my permanent refuge. I lived in that library. Any moment that I did not absolutely have to be somewhere else, I was in the library. The other students had to sit in homeroom; I raised my hand during roll call so that my presence could be registered, and then I left. To the library. I tolerated substitute teachers until they ran down and let us have the rest of the period free, and then I told them I needed to go to the library.
I recall that each day I had at least one period of “study hall.” I do not recall ever attending study hall. I went instead to the library. I imagine I worked it out with the study hall teacher early on, and then simply never returned.
The lunchroom? What lunchroom? I never stepped foot in that loud, unwelcoming place. I took my lunch down to the A/V room. Which was connected to the library.
Claire Donahue was the school librarian, and for those four years she was easily, far and away, the most important adult in my life outside of my parents. She was kind and warm, a den mother for a small group of us who needed a place to build up a small reserve of sanity before leaping back out to withstand the rest of the school day. It’s hard to imagine how I would have endured high school without the oasis she made available to us.
It was years before it dawned on me that she didn’t have to allow any of this — that a different teacher might have said, “This isn’t a clubhouse, you know. Where are you supposed to be right now?” It’s not possible to envision those words coming out of Ms. Donahue’s mouth. She knew that, for certain kids, a library is far, far greater than the sum of its books.
Robert Sarli
I am pretty sure that Mr. Sarli was my English teacher for two consecutive years. That must be the case, right? There’s no way we covered that much stuff in a single year. We read Shakespeare and the early Greeks. We read short stories, we read novels. We read classics, we read science-fiction, we read plays. We listened to the production of “Waiting For Godot” with Burt Lahr. We read poems, we read music lyrics. We wrote essays and papers and reports.
Mr. Sarli is, for me, the epitome of the good teacher. Nobody’s ever going to make a movie about him — he didn’t overcome ridiculous odds like Jaime Escalante or the Dangerous Minds woman. He was teaching a whole lotta white suburban kids. But he did it with a sharp wit, a genuine enjoyment of his subject, and most of all a boundless enthusiasm, like he couldn’t wait to explain the metaphors in Othello.
Years after I graduated, I went back to say hello to him, and in the course of chatting, I mentioned that I could not remember the name of a particular short story we had read in high school — not even in Mr. Sarli’s class, but in some other class. Well. He was up in a flash and brought me to the storage room adjoining his classroom, and we paged through anthology after anthology, looking for that story. I finally had to say, no, stop, it’s okay, I’m sure I’ll come across it again some day.
If every teacher approached his or her subject with this same knowledge and devotion, this would be a very different country indeed.
Bill Scott
There are days when the entire world changes, and for me, one of those days arrived when I spotted Games magazine on my algebra teacher’s desk.
I had been an avid reader of Games for a couple of years at that point, and had never seen a copy in the hands of another living soul. Discovering that Mr. Scott also enjoyed the magazine was like coming across a fellow member of a very small cult. We chatted about this puzzle or that puzzle — I still remember an anecdote he told me about trying to solve a particular Calculatrivia question — but that wasn’t enough for me. I started making puzzles for him to solve. Terrible, terrible puzzles. He took them and solved what he could. When a puzzle could not be solved, he told me so, and he encouraged me, though not without exasperation. The year spent in his class deepened my love of puzzles and helped set me on a path I would follow for, as far as I can see, the rest of my life.
Oh — he was a good teacher, too.
My working title for the new book was The Grand Piano Puzzles, as it takes place for the most part at the home of a world-famous (but fictional) classical pianist named Richard Overton. Music, therefore, plays a prominent role in the book, infusing itself into a few of the puzzles and popping up here and there as the story develops.
I started off in this direction largely because Overton is based in part on Stephen Sondheim, who was also once known for throwing puzzle parties for his friends. (He created a puzzle event for charity just last year.) I didn’t want to make Overton a Broadway lyricist, however, for various reasons, the most straightforward of which was, I didn’t want to put myself into a situation where I would have to write witty Broadway-like lyrics. Getting the story and the puzzles where I want them is plenty challenging enough, thank you, without testing my poetry chops as well.
So: Out with the Broadway legend, and in with the classical musician. Soon I found myself researching some of the clever, puzzly things composers have accomplished over the years, so that I could have my characters talk about them. Ultimately, only one such anecdote made the cut for the final book. This is sensible, of course, as I’m writing a story, not a history textbook. But in another way it’s too bad, because some of this stuff is so impressive that it might even amaze 11-year-old kids.
Here, for example, is a visual representation of Bach’s “Crab Canon.” I remembered this one from my various attempts to read Godel, Escher, Bach. In that book, Douglas Hofstadter does as well as he can to communicate to us how amazing Bach’s work is. Description alone, however, can only get you so far. This video not only plays the piece but also shows us the canon — playing first forward, then backwards, then forward and backward at the same time, and then with the sheet music twisted into a Mobius strip, so that it’s played forward, backward, upside-down, right-side-up, and across several planes of reality for all I know.
I’ll admit up front that I don’t know a lot about classical music, and nothing at all about the composition of it, so it’s hard to know exactly how impressed I should be with this. (I’m reminded of a three-ball juggling routine that went viral on the Internet a few years ago, with everybody saying “Wow!” and “This guy’s awesome!,” to the frustration of several jugglers who didn’t think the guy was such a big honking deal.) But, come on, how can you not be impressed at a piece of music like this, one that sounds harmonious in every direction? It doesn’t feel like something the average guy — even the average composer — is just going to knock out. And even from across the centuries, Bach made it look fairly easy.
And because all of this is evidently not complicated enough, Bach even embedded puzzles — or “musical riddles” — into his works. What I’ve read on this makes it sound like the performer actually had to solve the riddle in order to play the piece correctly. I don’t quite get how that works, exactly, but it definitely sounds like Bach was a guy with a puzzler’s heart.
Bach’s name doesn’t actually come up in The Puzzler’s Mansion, but another composer plays a small but pivotal role in the story: Edward Elgar. And so, long after the book was already in production, I was amazed and somewhat frustrated to discover that Elgar also has a reputation for puzzling: He is the creator of the Dorabella Cipher, a pair of coded messages sent to a woman named Dora Penny. Here’s one of them:
I hope the deciphered messages don’t say anything terribly important, because Ms. Penny was never able to figure them out. Nobody else has been able to read them, either, and not for lack of trying. You can find various stabs at a solution around the Internet, but at a glance it seems like most of these are based on conjecture and wishful thinking — nobody’s cracked the thing for real.
But still! A famous composer who created a nasty puzzle that’s been haunting solvers for over a century! I think I might have found a place for that in my book, if I had known about it. Ah well. I suppose that for most readers, The Puzzler’s Mansion will already be plenty puzzling enough.
At long last, the third (and final) (probably) Winston Breen book hits the bookshelves this week!
I’m just gonna say: I’m proud of this book, and I’m excited to finally see it out in the world. All this week, I hope to have some interesting blog posts related to the book and its themes. For now, though, I’ll just link to this recent interview I did with Susan VanHecke of Authorlink.
Mar 292012
Especially for you wordplay-slash-geography mavens.
Mar 292012
This may have been the season’s easiest set of questions. But of course there was a sports question in there, too — and college basketball, to boot! — to deny me a six-pack once again.
1. The men’s basketball team for this university, now a member of the Big East Conference, was a #1 seed in the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament in the years 1980, 1981, and 1982, but lost its first game of the tournament each of those years.
Bah, I’m not even worrying about this, not when the other questions are such gimmes. I chose “St. John’s” at random. Correct answer: The Depaul Blue Demons.
2. “Dancing in the Street,” a hit for David Bowie and Mick Jagger in 1985 (and slightly less so for Van Halen in 1982), was originally recorded and made famous by what Motown singing group?
I am a big fan of Mick Jagger, and there are some days I think the Rolling Stones get short shrift in comparison to the Beatles. But I cannot watch the man perform without at some point having the thought: This man is a Batman villain come to life. He jumped out of the comic book and became a rock-and-roll singer. And never is this clearer than in this video:
I mean, look at this guy when he sings the line “Back in the USSR.” Dude is scary.
Anyway, this was a total gimme: Martha and the Vandellas were the original singers.
3. The Earl Hamner, Jr. novel Spencer’s Mountain, and subsequent 1963 Henry Fonda/Maureen O’Hara film of the same name, provided the basis for what 1970s/early 80s television drama set in 1930s/40s America?
I never watched The Waltons, but I recognized this as the answer right away.
4. In 1957, a Patrick Dennis novel was adapted into a stage play and later a film, with Rosalind Russell in the title role in both. In 1966, a musical version opened on Broadway, with Angela Lansbury originating and winning a Tony for her titular performance. Give the name of either the novel or the enduring Broadway musical.
Thank goodness for the second half of this question — without it, I’m not sure I would have come up with Mame, though I did see the movie long ago.
5. Named after the English physicist who predicted its existence in 1964, this hypothetical elementary particle, known also as the God particle and expected to have no spin and a neutral change, validates the Standard Model by explaining the origin of mass of elementary particles.
My favorite part of The Economist is the science section, because they do not dumb things down AT ALL. They don’t just say what these scientists are doing; they explain how the scientists are going about it, and if you’re not smart enough to keep up, well, that’s your problem. I am not smart enough to keep up — not even nearly — but I still read the news stories with amazement. Quantum computing! Nanobots! The discovery of distant planets!
And the Higgs boson, of course. I’ve certainly read my share about that. Again, I can barely grasp what we are talking about here, but I understand the main point: That we have nearly completed a very complicated jigsaw puzzle that has taken us decades, if not centuries, to put together. There is one very big piece that goes smack in the center. That piece, incredibly, may or may not exist. If it does not, they’ll have to break up the whole puzzle and try again. But if it DOES exist! We’ll have a truer understanding of the physics of the universe, and can use that understanding to advance our knowledge even further. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand that this is an exciting time for science.
6. Under the standard rules of chess, there is one piece (i.e. one type of piece) which must remain on squares of the same color for the entire game. Which piece is it?
Oh, come ON, really? That’s the final question of the season? Well, I guess it beats a crazy tough one. The bishop moves diagonally along squares of the same color. That’s all, folks.
I finished the season with (cue that sad trumpet sound) a record of 7-15-3. Pretty darn poor. I answered 78 questions answered correctly out of 150, which is neither reason to celebrate nor break down in tears. There are a few people ahead of me in my rundle who did worse at the trivia. Where things really went to hell is on defense — you’re not getting anywhere in this league with a -24 match points differential.
But hey, look at that: I have now predicted the winner of my rundle for two seasons running. Gary Sherman last season and now Tom Nissley, who ran away with it with a 20-3-2 record. Congrats to him! About the only thing I can carry away from this season with a sense of pride is that I represented one of his three losses. “How’d you do this season?” Well, I beat a big-time Jeopardy! champion! “But what was your record?” Hey, did I mention I beat a big-time Jeopardy! champion?
Mar 282012
Wow: Four gimmes in a single day. I feel like someone said, “I can’t stand it anymore — throw that poor idiot a rope, would you?” It won’t make a drop of difference in my ranking, but at least I can hold my head up just a little bit higher.
1. One of the most widely recognized ‘constructed words’, created to demonstrate irregularities in spelling in the English language (and, in some cases, the need for spelling reform) is the fake word “ghoti,” which is a re-spelling of (and thus pronounced like) what common word?
Every wordplay lover knows this: The “gh” is lifted from “tough,” the “o” is borrowed from “women,” and the “ti” is visiting from “lotion.” The result: Fish.
Surely there is a Phish tribute band called Ghoti. Right? There darn well should be.
2. In Rudyard Kipling’s short story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” what type of animal is the title character?
Gimme: A mongoose. This story got a lot of play in my house when I was a kid.
3. This term was used in Ancient Rome to refer to a resident of the Roman province of Arabia, and by the time of the Crusades had evolved into a term for any follower of Islam.
Goodbye, six-pack! Just as with the “Mexico” question the other day, it seemed impossible that the answer here could be “Muslim.” In this case, however, I didn’t have any alternative answers to fall back on. Muslim it is, then, typed with crossed fingers, as I was 100% certain of all my other answers. But no: What I wanted was “Saracen.” Ah well.
4. What is the title of the song in this audio clip (28 seconds)?
When I was in college, I was in a production of Biloxi Blues, which takes place during World War II, and the soundtrack was filled with swing tunes, including this one. During a rehearsal, they were doing a sound check, and as this song played, one of the actors said, “I love this piece of music. It really gets me in the mood for the next scene.”
We all stared at him.
“What?” he said.
“You know the name of the song is ‘In The Mood,’ right?”
“It is? You’re kidding.”
A related story: Biloxi Blues was the first of the few plays I acted in, and easily my largest role. Maybe a year after the production had ended, I was sitting in a movie theater, waiting for the show to start, when I felt myself getting sick. Something was wrong with me: I was dizzy, I was suddenly sweating, and someone had flicked a switch on my heart, setting it at the wrong speed. What the hell was happening? Then I heard the music that had been playing: The exact same recording of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” that, a year earlier, had led into the first scene of Biloxi. That opening scene took place on a train, which the set designers had built on the orchestra pit, which could be raised and lowered hydraulically. Five minutes before the show was to start, I was curled up in a ball in the back of the “train” (I was not to be seen by the audience until halfway through the scene). All I could do was lay there and listen to that song, and try to calm my screaming nerves while I waited to be raised up in front of 500 people.
A year later, hearing the song again, various assorted body parts leaped into action before my ears even noticed the song was playing.
5. A 6 foot 3-1/2 inch tall white rabbit is the title character of what Pulitzer Prize-winning play from 1944?
Harvey! Even if you never saw the play or the excellent movie, Harvey is pretty firmly embedded in the culture by now, is he not?
6. The type of roof on this building is known simply as a French roof, but is also known as what, after the 17th c. French architect who first popularized it?
First thought, even before I clicked on the picture: “Mansard.” Then I clicked, and was disappointed: That’s not what I thought a mansard roof looked like. Well, it still made for a good guess — indeed, somehow my confidence needle remained pointed at full as I submitted this answer. And for good reason.
Even with so many questions in my wheelhouse, I quite nearly sabotaged myself with my defense: I won 6(5)-5(3), an ugly victory. At this point, of course, it doesn’t matter if I win or lose, but nonetheless: Yeesh. I have got to get my act together before next season, somehow.
1. Name either of the two main gangs at Rydell High School (one male, one female) identified by name in the 1978 film Grease.
Nice to see two theater questions in one day, especially since I am about to blow the other one. I could have named them both: T-Birds and Pink Ladies.
2. What is the name for a particular type of musical comedy theatrical production, well known in the British Commonwealth but much less so in the U.S., which is normally based on traditional children’s tales, known (and popular) for its numerous performance conventions, and usually performed during the holiday season?
I had NO time to dwell upon trivia questions on Monday morning, but I suspect all the time in the world would not have led me to the word “pantomime,” which is what was needed here.
3. An organization known as the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, which presently is composed of members of the Swiss and Swedish Armed Forces, was created as part of the armistice agreement that ended what?
My thought process in a nutshell: ARRGH ARRGH ARRGH, CHOOSE A WAR, OKAY, WORLD WAR II, DONE! Actual answer: The Korean War. Again, I doubt having more time for this would have helped much.
4. What is the common name for the section of the musical instrument highlighted in this image?
On this one, more time would have helped, absolutely: The word “scroll” was fluttering somewhere around my brain, but I had no faith in my ability to catch it anytime soon. My answer: “Knobby thing.” Then I kicked myself after I hit submit.
5. What is the term, from Quechua for plain, used to describe the temperate lowlands which cover most of Uruguay and central Argentina?
So confident was I in my answer — llano — that I zeroed this question. Surprise! The answer is “pampas.”
6. This two-word phrase, which occurs repeatedly in both the Old and New Testaments, is common in Christian liturgy, and comes from the Greek for ‘Lord have mercy’.
“Kyrie Eleison.” I knew I was unreligious, but I guess even I am surprised at the extent of it — I am utterly unfamiliar with this phrase except as the chorus to that cheesy 80s pop hit.
(And even then, it has always sound to me like “carry a laser.” Which would have made it a far superior song, in my opinion.)
Mar 242012
1. What is the last name of the family who, with their house staff, are the main subjects of the television series Downton Abbey?
My wife and I were latecomers to the (WARNING: Overused pun approaching!) Downton train. That we watched the first episode at all is proof that I am not as resistant to peer pressure as I have always believed: It felt like I was the only one on my Facebook list not chattering away about these stuffy-looking Englishfolk — after a while I had to see what the hooraw was about. The first season was waiting for us on Netflix, sitting there smugly like it knew we would click on it eventually.
We find the show very enjoyable. The soap-opera plot line is compelling though occasionally preposterous. What kept us coming back was the acting. Wow, the acting! I just love watching these people at work. The leads — Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery — are all passable, but they are outshined at every turn by the supporting cast. Brendan Coyle as Bates has mastered a sort of supernatural stillness that nonetheless radiates about 5,000 conflicting emotions. I love Jim Carter’s noble head butler Carson, Lesley Nicol’s frazzled cook and Sophie McShera as her even-more-frazzled assistant. And of course at this stage in her career, Maggie Smith is incapable of delivering a line that does not hit the bullseye. (About the only actor I cannot watch is Rob James-Collier, and this is probably because his character, Thomas Barrow, is a cartoon villain trapped in an otherwise realistic world.)
So, this was an easy question, right? You would certainly think. But my initial smile when I saw this question faded when I realized I didn’t know the answer. What the? How can I not know this?
I went through my morning routine thinking of nothing else, and finally it came to me on the drive to work: Grantham! The main character is Lord Grantham, or something. Whew. I typed in my answer with a feeling of great relief. I didn’t let the shoulda-been-a-gimme slip away.
Except, no. Grantham is a place. The main character is the Earl of Grantham… but his name is Robert Crawley. Arrgh.
(But then LL decided to accept either answer! Yaay!)
(But my opponent scored it zero! Boooo.)
2. What is the world’s most populous primarily Spanish-speaking country?
I approached this question like a policeman studying a suspicious package left on a park bench. Frowning, walking all around it, wondering whether or not to call in the bomb squad.
The answer seemed like it should be Mexico — Mexico City, after all, is one of the most populous cities in the world — but it couldn’t possibly be that easy, could it? Was this a trap? What were the other possible answers? Spain, of course… But Mexico is larger than Spain, isn’t it? And while there are other Spanish-speaking countries in the world, surely none of them have a greater population that Spain or Mexico…
I went with Mexico, fully expecting to be wrong. But it was right.
3. In the Apollo 11 space mission, where humans walked on the moon for the first time, the Lunar Module was named Eagle. What was the name of the Command/Service Module, manned by Michael Collins during the landing itself (it would not be the last NASA craft so named)?
I considered the right answer, Columbia, which is a minor victory all by itself, considering the space program is not one of my strongest areas of knowledge. But, alas, I didn’t stick with that answer, jumping over to Viking instead.
4. Cray, Burroughs, Eckert-Mauchly, and Wang are all names of current or former companies whose business was the manufacture of what?
3/4 of a gimme: I’ve never heard of Eckert-Mauchly. But the others were all computer companies, clear as day.
5. The title characters of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers are Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, but the story tells the tale of what other adventurer, as he travels to Paris to join the prestigious Mousquetaires de la garde?
Gimmeish, though I had to take an eye doctor’s approach to spelling the answer correctly: I started with something like “Dartagen,” changed a couple of letters, then asked myself “Is this better now, or now?” Changed a couple more letters, asked myself that question a few more times, added an apostrophe, and actually wound up with the correct spelling: D’artagnan.
Agony. I tried every trick in the book to grope my way to an answer. Unfortunately, there is only one trick in my book: Figure out the category for the question, by seeing which categories have not yet been asked. We hadn’t yet had a sports question, which would mean this was going to be impossible. Current events was a possibility, too — a politician, then? I wasn’t getting an actor’s or musician’s vibe from this guy…
That was about as far down the road as I was able to travel. Finally I put Benjamin Jealous, the head of the NAACP, mostly because I love that guy’s last name. Correct answer: Conrad Murray. WHO?
To Google! Oh, he was Michael Jackson’s doctor, now in jail for manslaughter, the poor bastard. And, oy, the very first link on the search is the news headline, “Conrad Murray: I’m Rail Thin From Explosive Diarrhea!” Thanks, Google and Learned League. You have made my day.
Mar 232012
1. Who is the current Prime Minister and head of the government of the Republic of Iraq?
My brain kept feverishly shoving “Karzai” at me, but that’s Afghanistan, of course. I couldn’t summon up the actual answer, which was Nouri Al-Maliki. Sometimes I consider myself to be a fairly educated man on world events, and then there are days like this.
2. In the same year that former U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a result of his work on his namesake reconstruction plan, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was awarded a Nobel Prize in what category?
Churchill won a Nobel that wasn’t the Peace Prize? But… in what other categories was he even qualified? The other medals are all science-related, aren’t they? Plus literature, of course. Was there anything else I was forgetting? There had to be. But no amount of thought would bring to light that missing category, probably another one related to statesmanship, which must surely be the answer. Exasperating.
Well, I had to say something. Physics and chemistry and the like were right out. That left only economics and literature, and neither of these seemed remotely feasible. I didn’t want to leave this blank, though. Of my two lame-o choices, literature was, I supposed, marginally more likely than economics. So that is finally what I put.
And it was right. LOL WHUT?
3. What is the area of the region bounded by the graphs of y = x^2; x = 0; x = 2; and the x-axis?
Damn, I really and truly thought I had this right. Unfortunately, when I sketched this out (we’re allowed to do that, right?), I drew y=x^2 as a straight line. This gave me a triangle, and even I know how to calculate the area of a triangle. The answer was 4!
Wrong. y=x^2 is a somewhat curved line; calculating the resulting area requires a formula I am totally unfamiliar with; and the answer is 8/3.
4. What type of nut are these?
I was able to write out a whole lot of nuts — all of which brought to mind immediate mental images quite different from this picture. Almonds, pecans, chestnuts, walnuts, macadamias: I knew the answer was none of these. I kept brainstorming and eventually wrote down “hickory nuts hazelnuts.” That brought to mind… no image at all. As with the Nobel question, I didn’t think hazelnuts would be right, but it looked righter than anything else on my list. So that’s what I said. And it was correct. Wow.
5. Name the film, scheduled to be released in the U.S. in July of 2012, which will be the thirteenth feature film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and the studio’s first fairy tale, as well as its first with a female main protagonist.
Gimme with a cherry on top. Brave.
6. Who celebrated his 50th birthday by premiering his Symphony No. 5 in E flat major at the Helsinki City Orchestra on December 8, 1915?
Paraphrased, this becomes “Can you name a Finnish composer?”, the answer to which, obviously, is “No.” That left only the timeframe as a clue, but there wasn’t much help there, either. Finally went with Tchaikovsky, for no particular reason. Actual answer: Jean Sibelius.
