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Return to regular viewThe 21st Annual Xmas Quiz
Jon Carroll
Wednesday, December 25, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
SO YOU ARE finished with a morning's worth of funlike activities, and you have perhaps eaten some heavy food and you wish to relax with a nice, difficult quiz, a quiz so maddening that answers will not even appear until Thursday. Well, bunkie, you've come to the right place.
1. In the spirit of the season: What is the difference between a reindeer and a caribou? For extra credit, what amusing dental feature do reindeer share with caribou?
2. Oh, let's play war. The city is Baghdad. What is the nearest major city not in Iraq north, south, east and west of Baghdad? I concede that east is pretty darned hard, so I'll take any of four answers. Hundred-mile deviance from true north, true west, etc., allowed.
3. St. Sebastian, a favorite subject of medieval artists because he looked so cool tied to a tree with about eleven hundred arrows in him, is, not surprisingly, the patron saint of archers. What other distantly related profession is he the patron of?
4. Don't you love saint questions? St. Blaise is the patron saint of wool combers. Why?
5. OK, you know that Annie Lennox was half of the Eurythmics. But what was the name of the guy?
6. As long as we're on the topic of music: What are the first names of the Everly Brothers? The Neville Brothers? The Righteous Brothers? The Isley Brothers? (OK, the last one is tricky.)
7. What is the derivation of the word "Ouija," as in Ouija board?
8.THE LEVELING-ADJUSTMENT foot, the lock ring and the remote control are all parts of what? The bulkhead, the support leg crank, the stake pocket and the deck are all parts of what? The hinged pressure foot, the tension block and the spool pin are all parts of what?
9. What other animal besides the human is susceptible to leprosy?
10. Some royalty questions: Queen Victoria was from the house of Hanover, not the house of Windsor. After her marriage to Albert, she changed her surname to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. So why wasn't Queen Elizabeth II, a direct descendant of Queen Victoria, born a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha? What is the house of Windsor? Who was the first Windsor?
11. Other than bankrolling Christopher Columbus' expedition, did King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain ever do anything else noteworthy?
12. Where is the world's longest railway tunnel? Where is the longest underwater vehicular tunnel in North America? Where is the longest vehicular tunnel in the United States?
13.YOU KNOW THEM, you've seen them, you've loved them. They're called Cruiserline Ventiports. But what are they really?
14. Name-brand origins: How did Minolta get its name? How did Doritos get its name? How did Sanyo get its name?
15. The largest incorporated city in the United States (in terms of area, not population) is: a) Los Angeles, Calif.; b) Oklahoma City, Okla.; c) Sitka, Alaska; d) Milwaukee, Wis.; e) Honolulu, Hawaii; f) New York City, N.Y.; or g) None of the above.
16. You live in Northern California, and you are rudely awakened at dawn. You look out your window and see in the tree a woodpecker with black and white stripes on its body. Without consulting any reference books, you know it is probably not one of the following: a) the downy woodpecker, b) the hairy woodpecker, c) the red-cockaded woodpecker, d) the three-toed woodpecker, e) Nuttall's woodpecker. How do you know? As a hint: All of these woodpeckers do have black and white stripes on their bodies.
Many thanks to Jack Mingo, Art Siegel, John Steele, Christopher Schaefer,
Rachel Carroll, Andrea Behr and, of course, Jennifer Lopez. Merry rest of your
day.
My favorites are No. 7 and No. 12. Solve them and amaze your friends!
The movie wasn't so hot, it didn't have much of a jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.