The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep: The Friday Quiz: Lakeside Edition

Coming to you live from scenic Putnam County, specifically the shore of Seven Hills Lake. If I squint across the water from where I'm sitting I can just make out one of a pair of herons that not long ago alighted on the opposite shoreline, about five hundred yards away. On second thought, that might be a branch -- but I *did* see the herons arrive.

Apologies for last week's quiz blackout. The run-up to Harrypalooza was almost as exhausting as the weekend itself, and afterwards I felt pretty much a Deathly Hollow (and not very Hallowed) myself. I didn't even remember that there was a "Friday" with something called a "Quiz."

But even though this week has been similarly crowded by the mundane struggles of the 21st-century salaryman, I hereby -- with the kind help of our frequent Guest Wombat Gavin "Europe is My Playground" Edwards -- re-inaugurate our weekly excursion into pointless info-mongering. So, via Gavin:

What do the following products have in common?

Hosmer's Sugar
Chase-O
Cole's Orange Flower Water
Kneitel's Fandango

First correct answer posted to comments wins a bucket of lakewater, replete with pollywogs. Or at least an assortment of dead leaves and waterbugs. No Googling or rifling through Great-Aunt Maribel's pantry. One guess per comment, but comment as often as you like.

Comments

Safe for phenylketeneurics.

Posted by: Jonathan | July 27, 2007 11:22 AM

NEW Chase-O et al failed, prompting reversion to the original recipes

Posted by: shananan | July 27, 2007 11:31 AM

Shoot. This week my mommy has no idea.

Uh, cocaine as an ingredient?

Posted by: hackly_fracture | July 27, 2007 11:37 AM

Oops: phenylketonurics (sorry).

Posted by: Jonathan | July 27, 2007 11:44 AM

Nothing yet!

Posted by: lewombat | July 27, 2007 11:51 AM

Hey, I know this!
Oh, wait.

Posted by: gavinedwards | July 27, 2007 11:53 AM

Obviously, the use of the letter O.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 11:57 AM

They're all orange.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 12:01 PM

THey're all fictious products used in recent movies about gastronomy.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 12:02 PM

They're all fictious products used in recent fictious art- or entertainment works.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 12:03 PM

The answer is far less general than that.

Posted by: lewombat | July 27, 2007 12:07 PM

The use of the letters E, O, A, and S.
(Far less general than bootsy's answer.)

Posted by: Jonathan | July 27, 2007 12:32 PM

They're all incredibly cool and confoundingly oblique pop culture references.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 12:40 PM

All from Britain.

Posted by: Jonathan | July 27, 2007 12:59 PM

All are offerings to the lesser-known orishas of Santeria:
Oblabla
Chingado
Scuttlebutt
and Yomama

Posted by: shananan | July 27, 2007 03:34 PM

The Wombat appears to be napping, or possibly carving a canoe from an old yew log, so I might as well do some junior quizmastering:

Bootsy is correct that they're all fictitious, but as Bill implied, we're looking for a much more specific answer.

To help you along, three more in the group:

Keels' Beans
Phoenix Baking Soda
Mama's Cream of Tartar

Posted by: gavinedwards | July 27, 2007 03:53 PM

featured on The Who Sells Out

Posted by: james | July 27, 2007 04:01 PM

Garrison Keillor made them up.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 04:33 PM

I don't think you can make a canoe from yew.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 04:35 PM

THey're all ingredients in the world-famous Sweet Bean Orange Surprise Souffle with Chase-O sauce.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 04:36 PM

(good for dieters)

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 04:37 PM

They're in a cake. In McArthur Park.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | July 27, 2007 04:39 PM

Items in Harriet Pottera's kitchen

Posted by: shananan | July 27, 2007 04:52 PM

Sssshhhh... don't tell the Wombat. He's been working very hard on it, with a collection of plastic sporks as his only carving tools.

At any rate, many interesting guesses, but none are--how do you say?--correct.

So two more products:

Woody's Salt
Ta-Ka-Kake

This has made me hungry--I'm going to get lunch.

Posted by: gavinedwards | July 27, 2007 05:07 PM

James and the Giant Frittata

Posted by: shananan | July 27, 2007 05:19 PM

Items on the famous crypto-grocery list of The Swedish Four, intercepted by the OSS in 1939. Once deciphered (by MI6, and they never let Langley live it down) it revealed the address of an inventor in Ankara who had labored to produce the perfect chutney. Suppressed during the war, the recipe was later used to blackmail J. Edgar Hoover.

Posted by: Jonathan | July 27, 2007 06:01 PM

A last clue for the day, and then we'll see if anyone gets it by tomorrow:

All these fine consumer products have their origin in a book--and whoever identifies that book, which most if not all of you have read at least once, will have won this week's Quiz--yet Bootsy's guess of "MacArthur Park" is tantalizingly close.

Posted by: gavinedwards | July 27, 2007 07:02 PM

Mary Poppins' House of Pancakes

Posted by: shananan | July 28, 2007 12:42 AM

The Jurassic Park Cookbook

Posted by: shananan | July 28, 2007 12:52 AM

The Sisterhood of the Yellow Cotton Dress Stained with Green Icing

Posted by: shananan | July 28, 2007 12:54 AM

None of those.

This is an American book published in 1970. I would guess that most of you have read it more than once.

Posted by: gavinedwards | July 28, 2007 10:46 AM

Mickey in the Night Kitchen?

Posted by: shananan | July 28, 2007 11:33 PM

Hey hey!

(shanahan) slips in with the correct answer just before I was about to flip over the cards:

All those products can be found in Maurice Sendak's 1970 classic book, In the Night Kitchen. (None are mentioned in dialogue, but all are seen in the art.) The similarity to "MacArthur Park" is that both are works of art largely concerned with recipes for cake.

Thanks for playing, everybody--and let's hope that Bill's yew canoe doesn't sink.

Posted by: gavinedwards | July 29, 2007 12:33 AM

That was a good one!

Looking forward to the lake water. No teenage tadpoles, please, the legs with tail freak me.

Posted by: shananan | July 29, 2007 11:20 AM

Sorry I was distracted by my woodcrafting, everyone. Great question, Gavin, and thanks for the additional clues.

Does anyone here know how to get a deeply embedded yew splinter out? What if it's in a part of your body that you can't actually see?

Posted by: BT | July 30, 2007 11:14 AM

The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

The Wombat File is a Delaying Tactic that May Save Your Life

The Friday Quiz: Lakeside Edition

Comments

Post a comment