Germany’s own Mackie Messer is better known by what name in English?

WEDNESDAY‘S ANSWER:

Femlin is a portmanteau of “female” and “gremlin,” and femlins are the charming naked wingless pixies that flit through the Party Jokes page (and occasionally elsewhere) in Playboy magazine.

Ben Schott, you’ve done it again.

*January 6 at the Old Pequliar in Seattle. If you’re in town, come!

You’ll live forever!

Score: 100% (10 out of 10)

Process of elimination helped me out on this one. (No pun intended, Tycho Brahe.)

Since August 1955, what magazine has been home to jovial little creatures known as femlins?

SUNDAY‘S ANSWER:

WALL-E is to earth as WALL-A is to the Axiom. Specifically, Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class vs. Waste Allocation Load Lifter Axiom-Class.

In Pixar’s 2008 hit, the last robot on earth is a WALL-E unit. What’s the name of his larger cousins working on board the spaceship Axiom?

THURSDAY‘S ANSWER:

Are the Hopi one of the nations represented at IHOP, the now-official name of the International House of Pancakes?

What national restaurant chain’s name is the anagram of a Native American language?

(If there’s more than one answer to this I’ll … be delighted.)

YESTERDAY‘S ANSWER:

Ha! An answer already? No. But I’ll give you a hint:

Those performances were given in more than one medium.

Another puzzler that you can work on over your time off:

What role do all these actors have in common?

John Derek
Victor Garber
Frank Langella
Jack Lemmon
James Marsden
Rob Morrow
Raoul Walsh

YESTERDAY‘S ANSWER:

“Inner Groove” or “Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove” was the post-”Day in the Life” track full o’ gibberish on British pressings of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

What album in the rock ‘n’ roll canon originally ended with a track sometimes called “Inner Groove”?

FRIDAY‘S ANSWER:

Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and Tony “The Ant” Spilotro were the inspirations for Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci’s characters in Casino. I think “Lefty and the Ant” would’ve been a more interesting title.

What 1995 movie is based on the real-life story of Lefty and the Ant?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER:

The Cupertino effect got its name from a spellchecker’s attempts to replace cooperation (or possibly cooperatino, a mistyping of cooperation) with Cupertino, Apple’s home city. If the “cooperation” story is correct, it’s because the spellchecker preferred Cupertino to co-operation, with the hyphen.

When uninformed spellcheckers take an uncommon but perfectly spelled word and replace it with a word in their dictionary, that’s known as the Cupertino effect.

Example: Spellcheckers unfamiliar with Obama would suggest Osama as a replacement. Hitting “replace all” without looking could accidentally make you look like a McCain supporter. Whoops.

Question: The Cupertino effect got its name a couple of years ago when spellcheckers would suggest replacing what word with “Cupertino”?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER:

What do Lon Chaney, Jr., Brendan Fraser, Phil Hartman, Meat Loaf, John Lone, and Matt Salinger have in common? Such a tough question deserves a hint before we get to the spoilerrific answer.

Hint: Jack Nicholson got halfway to qualifying for the list.

Think!

Think a little more!

Think the end of The Shining!

The answer: They all played human popsicles — characters who were frozen, then thawed out later. Specifically, the wolfman in House of Frankenstein, Link in Encino Man, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer on Saturday Night Live, Eddie in Rocky Horror Picture Show, the title character in Iceman, and Captain America in the horrible movie of the same name.

Yes, that was hard. That’s how we roll.