Sorry, Wrong Answer

by Rod L. Evans, Ph. D.

  21. The residents of Derbyshire, England, are Darybites or Darbians.

  22. The residents of Exeter, England, are Exonians. The term Exonian is also used for students and graduates of schools with “Exeter” in their names, such as Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire.

  23. The male residents of Plains, Georgia, are Plains-men; the female residents are Plainswomen.

  24. The residents of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, are Punxyites.

  25. The residents of Shropshire, England, are Salopians, from Salop, another name for “Shropshire.”

  Quiz 14

  Time

  1. The Oktoberfest beer festival begins in what month?

  2. In what month is Cambridge University’s May Bumps boat race held?

  3. If it’s noon in Pensacola, Florida, what time is it in Fargo, North Dakota?

  4. When was the first day of the current century?

  5. How often does a leap year occur?

  6. In what decade was the car called the Stutz Bearcat introduced?

  7. If it is noon on a Tuesday at the South Pole, what time is it at the North Pole?

  8. When is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere?

  9. If it’s noon in California, what time is it in Kentucky?

  10. Which has more time zones, the People’s Republic of China or Alaska?

  Quiz 14 Answers

  Time

  1. The Oktoberfest beer festival begins in September, though it originally began in October.

  2. The Cambridge University’s May Bumps boat race begins in June, though it used to be celebrated in May.

  3. If it is noon in Pensacola, Florida, it is noon in Fargo, North Dakota, because they are both in the Central Time Zone.

  4. The first day of the current century was January 1, 2001. Because there is no zero in the Christian era calendar, and the first century lasted from year AD 1 (or 1 CE) to the end of the year 100, the second century began in the year 101, and the twenty-first century began in the year 2001.

  5. A leap year is not every year divisible by four because years divisible by one hundred but not by four hundred are not leap years. For example, 1800 and 1900 are years divisible by four but are not leap years. In contrast, the year 2000 was a leap year. Why are there exceptions? According to our calendar (the Gregorian calendar), the year has 365¼ days. To make up for the quarter day lost because the calendar has room for only 365 days, the day is traditionally added every four years and traditionally after February 28, giving us February 29. In reality, however, the year isn’t exactly 365¼ days but 365¼ days and a few extra minutes. To make things come out right, exceptions were made to the rule about leap years, making them usually, but not always, occur every four years.

  6. The Stutz Bearcat was introduced in the second decade of the twentieth century (1914), though it is associated with the 1920s.

  7. The question asking for the time on the North Pole is unanswerable because there are no universally accepted criteria for time on the North Pole, though the question would be answerable for the South Pole, whose time has been coordinated with that of New Zealand. People at the North Pole may choose whichever time zone is convenient, such as Greenwich Mean Time or the time zone of the country from which they departed.

  8. The summer solstice is usually on June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, but it can also fall on June 22 in years preceding leap years. Likewise, the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere is usually on December 21, but it can also fall on December 22 in years preceding leap years.

  9. If it’s noon in California, it is both 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. in Kentucky because Kentucky is one of the thirteen U.S. states divided into two time zones. Although any one place in Kentucky will have one time zone, the state has two time zones.

  10. Alaska has more time zones than the People’s Republic of China because Alaska has two time zones (the Alaska time zone and the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone), and the People’s Republic of China has one time zone, Chinese Standard Time.

  Quiz 15

  Sports

  1. What is the official national sport of Canada?

  2. In what direction does the baseball pitch known as a curveball curve?

  3. In what weight class did Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) fight during the 1960 Olympics?

  4. How many consecutive strikes must a bowler throw to have a perfect game?

  5. What sports personality originated the saying “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing”?

  6. Why did the first modern Olympics have a marathon race in 1896?

  7. How did the word seed come to be used in tennis rankings?

  8. During the 1980 Winter Olympics, America’s hockey team, Team USA, received a gold medal immediately after defeating what country’s team?

  9. When pugilism is distinguished from boxing, what is the difference?

  10. How did the San Diego Chargers get their name?

  11. How did the Brooklyn Dodgers get their name?

  12. Ever since its inception, the Rose Bowl has been held where?

  Quiz 15 Answers

  Sports

  1. The official national sport of Canada is not ice hockey but lacrosse, which in 1867 was made the national game of Canada by the Canadian Parliament.

  2. A curveball curves not sideways but downward. The curveball is really a drop ball and was called the “out drop” pitch in early baseball. When a curveball is thrown correctly, the hand will snap the ball over the index finger as it is released, spinning the ball from top to bottom and causing it to curve downward. Note that some pitches do curve sideways, but they aren’t properly thrown curveballs. Rather, those are sliders, round-houses, or improperly thrown curveballs.

  3. Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) fought not as a heavyweight but as a light heavyweight in the 1960 Olympics.

  4. A perfect game in bowling requires twelve strikes.

  5. The sports personality on record for having first said “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing” is not Vince Lombardi but Henry Russell (Red) Sanders, a former football coach at UCLA and Vanderbilt. Sanders uttered two versions on two different occasions. In 1950, at a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo physical education workshop, Sanders told his group: “Men, I’ll be honest. Winning isn’t everything. Men, it’s the only thing.” Those remarks were quoted in a Los Angeles Times article by Art Rosenbaum published on October 18, 1950. In 1955, in a Sports Illustrated article preceding the 1956 Rose Bowl, Sanders was quoted as saying, “Sure, winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Vince Lombardi might have heard those words from Sanders and is on record using them as early as 1959 in Lombardi’s opening-day talk for Packers’ training camp. Even though the quotation came to be associated much more closely with Lombardi than with Sanders, Lombardi, according to James Michener’s Sports in America, claimed to have been misquoted or at least misunderstood. He claimed that he had intended to say, “Winning isn’t everything. The will to win is the only thing.” Two facts are clear: Lombardi used the quotation on several occasions, and Red Sanders is on record for having used it before Lombardi. As a side note, this famous remark was repeated by a girl quoting John Wayne’s character, a football coach, in the 1953 movie Trouble Along the Way.

  6. The Olympic marathon, part of the modern Olympics, was not a race in the ancient Olympics. The origin of the twenty-six mile run stems from a heroic tale of fiction. Legend has it that a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran twenty-six miles from Marathon to Athens to relate the victory of the Athenians over the Persians in 490 BCE. Right after delivering the message, Pheidippides died or so says the legend. The first three modern Olympic marathons, beginning in 1896, were roughly 26 miles, varying from game to game. In 1908, the distance became officially 26 miles and 385 yards. The games were then in London. The starting line for the marathon was outside a window at Windsor Castle, from which one half of the British Royal family could watch. The finish line was in front of the royal box in the White City stadium where
the other half of the royal family was waiting. In short, the length of the modern marathon is due partly to an ancient legend and partly to the preferences of the British Royal family in 1908.

  7. Seed, used in ranking tennis players in tournaments, comes from “conceded,” referring to players who are conceded, or assumed, to be the best in ranking for a tournament. Casual usage led to ceded, which led to the current word seed.

  8. Team USA received the gold medal for hockey not after defeating the Soviets but after defeating the Finns. Even though Team USA defeated the heavily favored Soviet team, which had not lost in the Olympics since 1960, the medal round was contested in a round-robin format. Consequently, even after defeating the Soviets, Team USA could have finished any position from first to fourth after the final game against Finland. It was only after the Americans defeated the Finns that America earned the gold medal. Note that the Finns placed fourth and so did not even receive a bronze medal, which went to Sweden. The Soviets, who received a silver medal, were disgraced, especially in the USSR, where the loss embarrassed the citizens. Ironically, Team USA had been beaten badly (ten to three) by the Soviets in a pre-Olympic exhibition game at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

  9. Pugilism, when it is distinguished from boxing, is bare-fisted. John L. Sullivan, then, engaged in pugilism.

  10. The San Diego Chargers football team did not get their name from a charging style of play but from a business of the team’s original owner, Barron Hilton, who owned the Carte Blanche credit card company and who, by the way, was the second son of Conrad Hilton, founder of Hilton Hotels.

  11. The Brooklyn Dodgers were called Dodgers not because of their agility on the field but because of their being in Brooklyn, where Trolley Dodgers were Brooklynites living at the height of the trolley-car era, when there was a maze of trolley lines in the borough.

  12. The Rose Bowl has always been held in Pasadena, California, except on January 1, 1942, when Duke and Oregon State met at Duke University because of security concerns just twenty-five days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

  Quiz 16

  Music/Instruments

  1. How many performers were in the music group the Thompson Twins?

  2. How many performers are in the music group Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons?

  3. What kind of instrument (string, woodwind, percussion, and brass) is an English horn?

  4. Who wrote the lyrics to “Stardust”?

  5. Where was the rock group America formed?

  6. How was the song “As Time Goes By” first introduced to the public?

  7. Who wrote the Christmas carol “Away in a Manger”?

  8. What British group created the first single record to reach number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, beginning the British Invasion?

  9. What is known as the Rolls-Royce of pianos?

  10. What is the only acoustic (nonelectric) instrument invented in the twentieth century?

  Quiz 16 Answers

  Music/Instruments

  1. The music group the Thompson Twins consisted of three performers, who were all unrelated.

  2. The group Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons consists of four performers, including Valli.

  3. An English horn is not a brass instrument; it is not a horn, and is not English. The English horn is an alto oboe (a woodwind) with an angled mouthpipe. The word English in English horn mistranslates the French for “angled.”

  4. The person who wrote the lyrics of “Stardust” was not Hoagy Carmichael, who wrote the music, but Mitchell Parish.

  5. The rock group America was formed in England.

  6. The song “As Time Goes By” was not introduced through the 1942 Warner movie Casablanca but in a 1931 musical called Everybody’s Welcome.

  7. Martin Luther did not write “Away in a Manger” but received credit for it because James R. Murray, its composer, wanted to help Luther spread Lutheranism.

  8. The first group with a number one single was not the Beatles but the Tornados, whose 1962 instrumental song “Telstar” began the British Invasion.

  9. The Rolls-Royce of pianos is not a Steinway but the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand, manufactured only in Vienna.

  10. The only acoustic instrument invented in the twentieth century was the steel pan drum, a tuned steel drum that can play more than one pitch. It was invented on the island of Trinidad and is strongly associated with Calypso music.

  Quiz 17

  Words

  1. What is the English word for the central walkway in a church, down which the bride walks?

  2. How did toadstools get their name?

  3. What is the English word for the offspring of a female donkey and a stallion?

  4. What was a pedagogue (Greek paidagogos) originally in ancient Greece?

  5. What is the proper English word to describe a horse of either sex that is under one year of age?

  6. In English, what is the name for a group of geese in flight?

  7. Who is supposed to have been born by I mmaculate Conception?

  8. True or false: Many people have slid down banisters.

  9. What is the singular of the word graffiti?

  10. What is a vagina femoris?

  11. What is a vagitus?

  12. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, how should you pronounce the color word mauve?

  13. What is a vomitorium?

  14. What is the Latin-derived term for a female graduate of a college or university?

  15. How did Devil’s Island, part of a French penal colony off the coast of French Guiana, get its name?

  16. What does madding mean in the title Far from the Madding Crowd?

  17. What is fulsome praise?

  18. What is a specific English word for a group of kittens?

  19. What is the correct two-word English phrase for self-belittling humor? Hint: It contains self.

  20. How did we get the word babble?

  21. What did humble in humble pie originally mean?

  22. How should one pronounce Pierre, the capital of South Dakota?

  23. What does turdiform mean?

  24. What is an anal feeler?

  25. What does anile mean?

  26. What does discomfit mean?

  27. How should one pronounce Cannes, the famous resort city on the French Riviera and home to the Cannes Film Festival?

  28. How did the expression drawing room come into use?

  29. What is a Hudson seal?

  30. What is the traditional difference between dwarfs and midgets?

  31. How did cesarean section get its name?

  32. A civilian is a person who is not a member of what organization(s)?

  33. In the former Soviet Union, to whom was the word comrade applied?

  34. During what war was the expression D-Day first used?

  35. In World War II, what did the D in D-Day stand for?

  36. What is the word for the past tense of the verb lie, meaning “to recline”?

  37. The verb scan can mean “to examine hastily or superficially.” What else can it mean?

  38. What is described by the noun buttery?

  Quiz 17 Answers

  Words

  1. The English word for the central walkway in a church, down which the bride walks, is nave; the word aisle comes from Latin ala (“wing”) and properly describes the side walkways in a church.

  2. Toadstools have nothing to do with toads; rather, the often inedible and even poisonous fungi are called toadstools from the German Tod (“death”) and Stuhl (“stool”).

  3. Hinny describes the offspring of a female donkey and a stallion. The word for the offspring of a male donkey and a mare is mule.

  4. In ancient Greece, a pedagogue was not a teacher but a “leader of a boy”—that is, a slave who led a boy to school. It was in Latin that paedagogus came to mean “preceptor,” a usage that passed into French and other modern languages.

  5. A horse of either sex under one ye
ar of age is not called a colt (boy horse) or a filly (girl horse) but a foal.

  6. The English word for a group of geese in flight is skein; the word gaggle describes geese on land or in water.

  7. The person who some people believe had an Immaculate Conception was not Jesus, who was said to have had a virgin birth, but Mary, Jesus’ mother, who, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, was purged of original sin at her conception.

  8. The answer is false because no one slides down banisters; the part of the staircase people slide down is a balustrade, or handrail. Banisters are the uprights supporting the balustrade or handrail.

  9. The singular of the word graffiti is graffito, from the Italian graffito (“scratching”).

  10. The vagina femoris is the connective tissue in muscles of the thigh.

  11. A vagitus is the cry of a newborn child.

  12. The word mauve, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is pronounced mōv; in other symbols, mohv.

  13. A vomitorium was not a place where ancient Romans or anyone else vomited or were permitted to vomit (or throw up) but was a passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an amphitheater through which crowds could spew out at the end of some performance.

  14. The Latin-derived term for a female graduate of a college or university is alumna (plural, alumnae).

  15. Devil’s Island got its name not from the penal conditions or the climate but from the turbulent waters surrounding it.

  16. Madding does not mean “annoying” or “driving to insanity” but “frenzied.” Thomas Hardy’s title, by the way, was borrowed from poet Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

  17. Fulsome praise is excessive, insincere praise.