The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep: The Friday Quiz Returns: Grab Bag Time!

Hey there, lovers of stupid questions it takes too long to read, let alone answer, to be very entertaining. Did you miss us last week? No? Well, we're back anyway.

After the shocking lapse of last Friday, we have an inordinately large pile-up of the kind of brief questions that we're just too lazy to pad out into full-on quiz questions. Instead, we present them all to you at once...consider it a smorgasbord of delights primed to clog your neural pathways.

Oscar Hammerstein, the grandfather of the famous lyricist, was a big-time theater owner and opera buff. He also held multiple industrial patents, including one for the first automatic assembly of what product (more popular in his day than ours, but still around)?
What famous retail brand took the name of a Nashville hotel in 1886, where a product served by a local grocer became well-known?
In the late 1950s, a teenager named Ernest Evans was rising to local fame in Philadelphia by singing over the loudspeaker at Fresh Farm Poultry, where he worked. He went on to become famous under what name, bestowed on him by a co-worker?
The name of what modern conveyance is derived from a word in French that originally meant both a springy jump or a young goat?
After watching a young Polish girl doing it in 1835, Joseph Neruba formalized and popularized what activity, which swept through Europe shortly thereafter?

FIrst correct answer to each of the comments wins a jellybean of a type rejected by my daughter. Available colors are Interstate-Highway-Exit-Sign-Green, Wilting Pink with Variable Flecks, Not-Quite-White, Fading-Bruise Yellow and Too-Brown Brown. No exchanges. No Googling or making a springy jump like a young goat. One guess per each part per comment but comment as often as you can bear to.

Comments

1. opera glasses
2. Hostess
3. Engelbert Humperdink
4. hippity hop
5. jump rope

Posted by: boxjam | June 22, 2007 07:43 AM

1. movie projector
2. R. C. (yes, Royal Crown)
3. The Big Bopper
4. Chevrolet
5. Polka

Posted by: art | June 22, 2007 08:34 AM

1. player piano
2. ?
3. Chubby Checker
4. Chevette - although I think Art has this one.
5. ballet

Posted by: james | June 22, 2007 10:44 AM

Dang. I like the Chubby Checker guess a lot. As well as RC.

5. tap dancing

Posted by: boxjam | June 22, 2007 11:32 AM

1. pipe organs
2. Red Rose
3. Cold Porter (originally coined in a brewpub; the spelling was changed later)
4. Cabriolet
5. Tripping the light fantastic

Posted by: Jonathan | June 22, 2007 12:03 PM

Art guessed #5 correctly, and james is right about the creator of "The Twist." No. 4 is not a brand name but more of a name we apply to a whole class of vehicles.

No. 1 is unrelated to the theater per se; but at turn of the century it was certainly a bigger moneymaker than opera glasses or even player pianos.

Posted by: BT | June 22, 2007 12:49 PM

1. stereoscopes
4. coupe

Posted by: Jonathan | June 22, 2007 01:38 PM

I probably should have said "much bigger moneymaker" -- than opera glasses, or stereoscopes, or any such thing.

Coupe is a nice guess, but not what we're looking for.

Posted by: BT | June 22, 2007 01:41 PM

1. victrolae
4. escalator

Posted by: boxjam | June 22, 2007 01:44 PM

1. milkshake mixer
4. pogo stick

Posted by: Jonathan | June 22, 2007 01:51 PM

4. sedan

Posted by: boxjam | June 22, 2007 01:52 PM

1. Nickelodeon
4. luge

Posted by: james | June 22, 2007 02:00 PM

1. luge
4. Nickelodeon

just in case

Posted by: james | June 22, 2007 02:03 PM

1. pinball machines
2. jitney

Posted by: Jonathan | June 22, 2007 02:30 PM

Nope

Posted by: BT | June 22, 2007 03:02 PM

1. typewriter
2. C.W. Post
3. http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/04/chubby_checkers.html
4. BMX

Posted by: art | June 22, 2007 09:02 PM

1. hat
2. Dolly Madison
4. l'Boingerie

Posted by: boxjam | June 23, 2007 10:15 AM

1. roller skates
2. Chock Full O' Nuts (due to weekend discounts)
4. I still say it's cabriolet

Posted by: Jonathan | June 25, 2007 04:34 PM

OK, I'm an idiot. It IS cabriolet. I don't know how I missed that! The springily jumping young goat lent its name to a springy little carriage, which in turn lent its name to the small carriages-for-hire that roamed the streets of London...which in turn gives us "cab." (The "taxi" part of taxicab comes from the French "taximètre" -- a metered charge).

On #1: Oscar H. made his money in the cigar biz, and one of his many patents is for an automatic cigar-roller.

Jonathan picks up a near miss on No. 4. It was the Maxwell House hotel.

Posted by: BT | June 25, 2007 09:55 PM

The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

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The Friday Quiz Returns: Grab Bag Time!

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