Monday, May 17, 2021

Digest for rec.games.trivia@googlegroups.com - 2 updates in 2 topics

msb@vex.net (Mark Brader): May 17 12:32AM -0500

These questions were written to be asked in Toronto on 1998-03-02,
and should be interpreted accordingly. All questions were written
by members of the Usual Suspects, but have been reformatted and
may have been retyped and/or edited by me. I will reveal the
correct answers in about 3 days.
 
For further information, including an explanation of the """
notation that may appear in these rounds, see my 2020-06-23
companion posting on "Reposted Questions from the Canadian
Inquisition (RQFTCI*)".
 
 
I did not write either of these rounds.
 
 
* Game 6, Round 4 - Entertainment - Pen Portraits
 
Read the description; name the movie star described. I'll add
a hint that all of them were best known in, broadly speaking,
the mid-20th-century period.
 
1. Dwight MacDonald said: "She is as wholesome as a bowl of corn
flakes and at least as sexy."
 
2. Someone said of herself: "I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck
like an ostrich, and long limp hair. You have to be good to
survive with that equipment."
 
3. Billy Wilder said: "Here is class, somebody who went to school,
can spell and possibly play the piano. She's a wispy, thin
little thing, but you're really in the presence of somebody when
you see that girl."
 
4. Rex Reed said: "Most of the time he sounds like he has a mouth
full of wet toilet paper."
 
5. Howard Hughes said: "His ears make him look like a taxicab with
both doors open."
 
6. James Whale said: "His face fascinated me. I made drawings of
his head, adding sharp bony ridges where I imagined the skull
might have joined."
 
7. Harriet Van Horne said: "She would have made an exemplary prison
matron, possibly at Buchenwald. She had the requisite sadism,
paranoia, and taste for violence."
 
8. We don't know who said: "She is like a nun with a switchblade."
But we do know that Christopher Plummer said of the same person:
"Working with her is like being hit over the head with a
Valentine card."
 
9. David Bowie said: "He epitomized the very thing that's so
campily respectable today -- the male hustler. He had quite a
sordid little reputation. I admire him immensely."
 
10. Cecil Beaton said: "She has a face that belongs to the sea and
the wind, with large rocking-horse nostrils and teeth that you
just know bite an apple every day."
 
*Note*: Please decode the rot13 after you have finished with all
the questions: Vs lbh whfg fnvq "Urcohea" sbe nal nafjre, cyrnfr
tb onpx naq chg va n svefg anzr.
 
 
* Game 6, Round 6 - Sports - Canoeing
 
1. Which Indian group gave us the word "canoe"?
 
2. What kind of canoe did fur-traders call a "canot du maītre" or
"Montreal canoe"?
 
3. The regular paddling stroke is called a bow stroke. Usually a
sternsman or solo canoeist will add an outward hook to this stroke
to steer the canoe in a straight line. What is the resulting
steering stroke called? (We don't mean "stern stroke"; that's
not specific enough.)
 
4. On a canoe, what is the "painter" and where is it?
 
5. Most canoes have two seats and one or more narrow bars extending
across the width of the canoe to support the sides and for
paddlers to lean against. What are these bars called?
 
6. A solo canoeist usually sits a little to the side he/she is
paddling on, so that the canoe tilts to that side. What else
is unusual about a solo paddler's position in the canoe?
 
7. What is unusual about the so-called Indian stroke?
 
8. Beginning in the 1850s, the classic cedar-strip canoe was
developed in a Canadian city that gave its name to this style
of canoe and exported it around the world. What city?
 
9. When paddling solo into a strong headwind, where in a canoe
should you sit?
 
10. If your canoe begins to tip, you can stabilize it with a quick
paddle motion, for example, slapping the water sharply. What is
this technique called?
 
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years."
msb@vex.net | -- Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog
 
My text in this article is in the public domain.
msb@vex.net (Mark Brader): May 17 12:30AM -0500

Mark Brader:
> the Canadian Inquisition (RQFTCI*)".
 
 
> * Game 6, Round 1 - Current Events (excerpt):
 
> Answer these 1998 questions if you like for fun, but for no points.
 
Again nobody tried these.
 
> 1. What proposed British constitutional change did the Queen
> endorse this week?
 
Gender equality in the royal succession.
 
That is, after the change the oldest living child of the relevant
person would inherit the throne; in the system then existing, it
was the oldest living son if there were any and the oldest living
daughter otherwise. With the agreement of the 16 relevant countries
-- the "Commonwealth realms" -- the change was finally made in 2011,
applicable only to heirs born afterwards.
 
Thus, among the Queen's children, Princess Anne still comes behind
her younger brothers Prince Andrew and Prince Edward; but among
Prince William's children, Princess Charlotte, born in 2015, comes
before her younger brother Prince Louis.
 
> 2. What did the TTC suggest was the cause of a drop in transit
> ridership during the first six weeks of 1998?
 
The flu. No, there wasn't a major outbreak at the time.
 
 
 
> * Game 6, Round 2 - Science - Plate Tectonics
 
> 1. What ocean is surrounded by an area of igneous activity called
> the "Ring of Fire"?
 
Pacific. 4 for everyone -- Erland, Joshua, Dan Tilque, Dan Blum,
and Pete.
 
> 2. What volcanic island rose above the sea off Iceland in 1963?
 
Surtsey. 4 for Erland, Dan Tilque, and Dan Blum.
 
> across) are found in the middle of a plate instead of at the edge
> of one -- two examples of such regions are the Hawaiian Islands
> and Yellowstone National Park. What are such regions called?
 
Hot spots. 4 for Dan Tilque.
 
In 2009, three entrants surprised me by going way off base in the
same direction as each other: they said caldera, which actually is
a crater-like volcanic formation caused by subsidence rather then
outflow -- Crater Lake is an example.
 
> 4. What plate """does""" Toronto sit on?
 
North American. (Still true.) 4 for Erland, Dan Tilque, and Pete.
 
> 5. Alfred Wegener proposed the hypothesis of continental drift
> in 1912. He suggested then that a supercontinent had once
> existed -- what did he call it?
 
Pangaea. 4 for Erland, Joshua, Dan Tilque, and Dan Blum.
 
> 6. When a plate begins to split apart, what feature appears?
 
A rift valley. I accepted "rift zone". 4 for Erland, Dan Tilque,
Dan Blum, and Pete.
 
> 7. A major African lake and a major Asian lake are both found in
> examples of an <answer 6> -- name either one.
 
Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal. 2 for Pete.
 
In 2009 I did not accept the Dead Sea; it is indeed in a rift valley,
but hardly qualified as major even before human intervention caused
it to start shrinking. Lake Baikal now has about 50 times the area
of what's left of the Dead Sea, and over 200 times the volume.
 
> 8. A plate that lies mostly under the Pacific Ocean off Peru
> """is""" named for a well-known early culture of South America.
> What """is""" that name?
 
Nazca. (Still true.) 4 for Erland, Joshua, and Dan Tilque.
 
> 9. When two plates collide and one slides under the edge of the
> other, this is called what?
 
Subduction. 4 for Dan Tilque and Dan Blum.
 
> 10. Canada drifts farther each year from England, the mother
> country, because of what mid-ocean process related to the motion
> of plates?
 
Sea-floor spreading. 4 for Dan Tilque.
 
 
 
> 1. See: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/msb/oo6/3/A.jpg
 
> This script was used in various forms to write many languages,
> not all of them related.
 
Cuneiform. 4 for Erland, Dan Tilque, and Dan Blum.
 
> 2. See: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/msb/oo6/3/B.jpg
 
> This one is found on the edges of stones scattered across
> Ireland.
 
Ogham. 4 for Joshua, Dan Tilque, and Dan Blum.
 
 
> This adaptation of the Greek alphabet was used in Egypt from
> the 4th to the 9th century and is still seen today (rarely).
> Its name matched the language it was used for.
 
Coptic. 4 for Erland, Joshua, Dan Tilque, and Dan Blum.
 
> 4. See: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/msb/oo6/3/D.jpg
 
> This variation on the Roman alphabet was widely used across
> Northern Europe.
 
Runic (runes) or Futhark. 4 for Erland, Joshua, Dan Tilque,
and Dan Blum.
 
> """recently""" deciphered by about six people working
> cooperatively, after scholars in the field spent decades
> on the wrong track.
 
Maya(n). 4 for Erland, Dan Tilque, and Dan Blum.
 
> some of the letters, but little meaning can be drawn from the
> surviving inscriptions. Again, the script is called by the
> name of the language, which is...?
 
Etruscan. 4 for everyone.
 
 
> Used by a famous seafaring people of the Mediterranean, this
> is the ancestor of many modern scripts. It is named for the
> people and their language.
 
Phoenician. 4 for everyone.
 
 
> This script was deciphered in about 1954 by Michael Ventris.
> The language is actually Greek, even though he initially
> conjectured that it was <answer 6> -- what do we call the script?
 
Linear B. 4 for Erland, Joshua, Dan Tilque, and Dan Blum.
 
 
> This script was found by archaeologists at a site called
> Mohenjo-daro, now in Pakistan. It has not yet been deciphered.
> It currently goes by what name?
 
Indus Valley or Harappa script. 4 for Dan Tilque and Dan Blum.
 
> using three scripts. The bottom portion of the stone is in
> Greek, the top portion is in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and here
> is most of the middle section -- written in what script?
 
Demotic, another way to write Egyptian. 4 for Joshua, Dan Tilque,
and Dan Blum.
 
The stone is in the British Museum in London. I took photo K myself.
 
 
Scores, if there are no errors:
 
GAME 6 ROUNDS-> 2 3 TOTALS
TOPICS-> Sci His
Dan Tilque 36 40 76
Dan Blum 20 40 60
Erland Sommarskog 24 28 52
Joshua Kreitzer 12 28 40
Pete Gayde 14 8 22
 
--
Mark Brader | scanf() is even more complicated and usually does
Toronto | something almost but not completely unlike what
msb@vex.net | you want. -- Chris Torek (after Douglas Adams)
 
My text in this article is in the public domain.
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