Answers to the After-Christmas-Trivia Game quiz – San Francisco Chronicle
Trivia, in Latin, is often defined as the plural of trivium, a term that means “where three roads meet.” Apparently this is where the Roman legions would gather after a good battle, sit down and ask each other about unimportant topics, an early Trivial Pursuits. Not so we Bay Areans. We meet here at The Chronicle, the Voice of the West.
Last week I offered you trivia questions. In the intervening seven days, we have had the beginning of the new year, and the annual Talling of the Boys, but today we offer the answers. Remember, these are my answers, not necessarily always the correct answers. Feel free to dispute, and you will get a polite reply from me. But you will not have the prestige of having done this “my way.” Which leads us to our first answer:
1. In 1964, Frank Sinatra sang that Chicago is “My Kind of Town.” Apparently, he liked it better than either Las Vegas or Hoboken.
2. Horatio Magellan Crunch, born on Crunch Island, in the Sea of Milk, served as a (cartoon) naval captain. His ship, by the way, was the S.S. Guppy, which proves the adage: It doesn’t matter the size of the ship as much as what you do with it.
3. Wellington, New Zealand, is the southernmost national capital in the world. Antarctica does not have a capital.
4. Bookkeeper has three consecutive pairs of double letters.
5. The two U.S. states with elevation points below sea level are California (lowest point 282 feet below sea level) and Louisiana (lowest point 8 feet below sea level).
6. The easternmost point of U.S. territories is Point Udall on the island of St. Croix in the Caribbean. The westernmost point (by travel, not longitude) of U.S. territories is also Point Udall, but this one is on the island of Guam. The sun never sets on Udall.
7. In the sequence B, F, J, P, the next letter is V. Each of those letters (and sometimes Z) follows a vowel.
8. Mr. (Hector J.) Peabody is the cartoon beagle who invented the Wayback Machine and appeared in “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
9. The number that comes first alphabetically is 8.
10. “Almost” is the longest common word in the English language whose letters appear in alphabetical order. It was almost “forty”: the only number spelled out in alphabetical order. (If we include names and proper nouns: probably “Aegilops,” a genus of grass or weed.)
11. In “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” Tony Bennett found the loveliness of Paris “somehow sadly gay.” This is an oxymoron. I have been a sad gay, but never sadly gay. If you have a choice, pick gaily gay, or gaily LGBTQIQ2.
12. In 1967, Sidney Poitier starred in “In the Heat of the Night” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” Bonus points if you know that the Mel’s Drive-In Spencer Tracy visits in the latter film was not the one on Van Ness, but was in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior at 5199 Mission.
13. Earl Warren served the longest consecutive term as governor of California, 1943 to 1953. Jerry Brown was governor longer, but there was a 28-year gap between his terms.
14. Margaret Thatcher was the first British prime minister in the 20th century to serve three consecutive terms.
15. The historical marker at the corner of Taylor and Turk streets commemorates the 1966 LGBTQ uprising at Compton’s Cafeteria.
16. To drive down the “crooked” part of Lombard Street you need to make eight hairpin turns.
17. A boat sailing directly west from San Francisco (past the Farallon Islands) would make landfall in Japan.
18. Other than Sacramento, Carson City, Nev., is the capital closest to San Francisco. (In 1869, however, San Francisco was the state capital, so no capital could have been closer).
19. According to Scott McKenzie’s 1967 song, if you are going to San Francisco you should wear some flowers in your hair. (I tried it once with roses and found I couldn’t pull it off.)
20. The letter “e” appears in every odd number.
21. Poetically enough, Ukiah, spelled backward, is “haiku.”
22. A moment, by its earliest definition in medieval days, is 1/40th of an hour, or roughly 90 seconds. A jiffy, by the way, is 1/100th of a second, so there are 9,000 jiffies in a moment. Physicists also define a jiffy as the time it takes for light to travel one fermi.
23. The letter J is not found in the names of elements in the periodic table. (Technically, Q appears in temporary element names like ununquadium, so that answer is also acceptable.)
24. Mission Street, or parts of it, were once called the King’s Highway, or El Camino Real. (Route 82 also includes San Jose Avenue.)
25. Treasure Island shares the name of a Robert Louis Stevenson book, and was the site of a 1939-40 world’s fair.
26. Eureka Valley is better known as the Castro.
27. This was a trick question. Supergirl actually had two pets: Streaky, the cat of steel, and Comet, the Superhorse. Turns out Comet wasn’t really an equine but a centaur who got caught horsing around.
As of press time (as we say in the newspaper biz), four readers have distinguished themselves as top trivialists. Congratulations to Klaudia Herrold, Michael Lazarus, Paula Lichtenberg and Sheila Tokos, who each emailed me with 25½ out of 27 answers right and are hereby declared this year’s winners!
And many thanks to Mrs. E, Crazy Mike, the Countess and my husband, Brian, for helping me to gather this place where three roads meet.
Kevin Fisher-Paulson’s column appears Wednesdays in Datebook. Email: kevinfisherpaulson@gmail.com