Tag: shakespeare

Quiz: Triangulation

4-July-08 / James Callan

Round 3 at the Old Pequliar on June 3, 2008.
Average score: 6.13/10 (16 teams)

1) the Segway, one of the Spice Girls, and a castaway
2) a DC Comics supervillain, a children’s television show, and a kind of camera lens
3) a fruit-based dessert, a geologic term, and something a baseball player wants to avoid
4) Beatrice’s cousin, a role playing game system, and what they call a grinder in New York
5) a sign in the Chinese zodiac, something you’d find at a mall, and Splinter
6) a monster that lives in a maze, something funky you might see on TV, and a Whoopi Goldberg film
7) a women’s basketball team, a Peggy Lee song, and something to starve
8) an episode of the series Rome, an automotive company, and a Conan O’Brian character,
9) a recent celebrity autobiography, a truly creepy Japanese horror film, and an Adobe software title
10) a baseball stadium, a jazz-era synonym for hunky-dory, and the alligator man

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Quiz: Pop Shakespeare

9-May-08 / James Callan

1) A speech in Henry V supplied the title for what nonfiction book and the HBO miniseries based on it?
2) At the climax of “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” the South Park episode inspired by Titus Andronicus, Cartman tricks his enemy into doing what?
3) In 2006, the best-selling album in the United States was the soundtrack to what TV movie, a loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet?
4) Spurred by a joke in a 1991 movie, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing have been translated into what artificial language?
5) Two Gentlemen of Verona inspired “Two Gentlemen of Capeside,” an episode of what TV drama?
6) In 2000, what novelist and New Yorker contributor published a prequel to Hamlet called Gertrude & Claudius?
7) One clue that Paul is dead: Lines from King Lear, including “O untimely death!”, can be heard in the background of what trippy Beatles song?
8) In Neil Gaiman’s comic series The Sandman, Morpheus, the king of dreams, commissions Shakespeare to write two fantastical plays. Name one of them.
9) The 1992 hit “Stay” was the biggest hit for what band, which took its name from a 1985 song by the Smiths, which was inspired by a section of Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own?
10) Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas play comical variations on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in what movie loosely based on Hamlet?
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Quiz: All or Nothing

26-September-07 / James Callan

1) The New York Times‘ motto is “all the news that’s” what?
2) What 1984 film is about a young boy’s efforts to save Fantasia from The Nothing?
3) Name two of the three artists who sang “All for Love” on the soundtrack of 1993’s The Three Musketeers.
4) The anti-consumerist protest Buy Nothing Day takes place the day after what holiday?
5) What All My Children actress was nominated for a Daytime Emmy 18 years in a row before winning in 1999?
6) Being and Nothingness, the treatise that kick-started existentialism, was written by what French philosopher?
7) The All Blacks are the rugby union team for what country?
8) Cordelia is told that “nothing will come of nothing” in which Shakespeare play?
9) Dennis Haysbert, who tells you that “you’re in good hands with Allstate,” used to play the president on what TV show?
10) What word completes these Talking Heads lyrics? “From the age of the dinosaurs / Cars have run on gasoline / Where, where have they gone? / Now, it’s nothing but” what?

Average score: 7.3

Quiz: In the Seattle of Make-Believe

17-May-07 / James Callan

1) The episode titled “The 1000th Show” was what series’ only episode that was actually filmed in Seattle?
2) The characters in Grey’s Anatomy work in what Seattle hospital?
3) What 1999 comedy adapts the action of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew into a local high school?
4) In what 1992 film does a fictional mayor veto the idea of a Supertrain to address Seattle traffic problems?
5) Max, resident of Seattle in the year 2019 and the main character in the show Dark Angel, was played by what up-and-coming movie star?
6) In the 2002 film The Ring, Seattle journalist Rachel Embry attempts to save her son from the ghost of a girl named what?
7) In the 1983 film WarGames, David Lightman challenges a computer named Joshua to what game?
8) Dr. Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist from Seattle, stars in what video game series?
9) In the 1973 film The Night Strangler, Carl Kolchak tracks an undead alchemist through the Seattle Underground. What city was he living in in The Night Stalker when he tracked down a vampire serial killer?
10) In DC Comics, what member of the Justice League moved to Seattle in 1987, though he’s now the mayor of Star City?
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Quiz: Science Fiction Authors

12-February-07 / James Callan

Team-requested round topic!

1) L. Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics laid the foundations for what religion he went on to create?
2) Before writing the post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban wrote several childrens books about Frances, who was what kind of animal?
3) Which of these authors had the highest-grossing movie, adjusted for inflation, adapted from one of his novels: Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Crichton, Philip K. Dick, or H.G. Wells?
4) Which of these words was coined by Isaac Asimov in 1941: android, doohickey, positron, or robotics?
5) What novel, sometimes called the first science fiction novel, did Mary Shelley write in an effort to scare the bejeezus out of Lord Byron?
6) In the movie Back to the Future Part III, Doc Brown and Clara share the same favorite author. Who is he?
7) Ray Bradbury has appeared in one television commercial, a funny take on “the food of the future.” What food was it?
8) In Back to School, what author does Rodney Dangerfield’s character hire to write a paper on his own novels?
9) Aldous Huxley took the title of Brave New World from what Shakespeare play?
10) What competitive reality show takes its name from a phrase in one of George Orwell’s novels?

Average score, out of 16 teams: 5.81.