The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep: The Friday Quiz: Late-Breakers

When the Wombat is late, he triples down. Here's a trio of skull-seize-ups to close out your week.

1. Jefferson Davis named this region as a "territory" in 1862, a full year before the U.S. would follow suit. By what name is it known today?
2. The largest city in one U.S. state, and the 2nd-largest city in another are both named for prime ministers of England. What are they?
3. The largest outdoor performance of its kind in America is the boast of Eureka Springs, Arkansas; it began regular summer evening performances in the late 1960s and continues presently. The cast contains a various number of performers, sometimes as high as 200. What is the performance of?

First correct answer to each wins a marketing tester bottle of ConfidenceWater(TM), the sports drink infused with a unique balance of electrolytes and vodka. No Googling or singing that schoolyard ditty listing all of the British prime ministers from the Restoration through Neville Chamberlain. One guess at each part per comment but comment as often as I want you to comment, which is often.

Comments

1: Puerto Rico?

2: Pittsburgh?

Posted by: Scraps | May 9, 2008 02:30 PM

1. New Mexico
2. Richmond
3. Clogging

Posted by: boxjam | May 9, 2008 04:22 PM

Well done on Pittsburgh (named, incidentally, not just in commemoration of William Pitt, but with Edinburgh in mind...so much so that attempts to later regularize its spelling to the more German-like "Pittsburg" (matching various German-immigrant settled Pennsylvania towns) was strongly resisted in the 19th century.

Posted by: BT | May 9, 2008 05:18 PM

And William Byrd gave Richmond, VA, its name because the view of the James reminded him of the Thames as it ran by his boyhood home in Richmond, outside of London.

Posted by: BT | May 9, 2008 05:20 PM

2. Raleigh?

3. Passion Play?

Posted by: Scraps | May 9, 2008 05:39 PM

1. Cuba. Jefferson Davis was bold.
3. *I* was going to say Passion Play. In case that's wrong, O Calcutta.

Posted by: Jonathan | May 9, 2008 06:32 PM

hey I used to live in pgh (as did the wombat's sis) -- great city

I could be cheeky and guess "Churchill" but I can't remember where it is, NoDak or SoDak, possibly?

Posted by: art | May 9, 2008 06:37 PM

1. Guam; my uncle is doing a news-story on a confederate warship that traveled to the "far east"...(uh, I think)

3. Sing-a-long with the Sound of Music

Posted by: art | May 9, 2008 06:43 PM

1. Nevada

2. Well, as P'burgh is clearly not the largest city in PA, the missing city is the largest city in its state. balmer?

3. mime warfare

Posted by: boxjam | May 9, 2008 10:46 PM

boxjam you are very clever -- but where's balmer?

1. Arizona
2. Fairbanks?
3. Hair

Posted by: art | May 10, 2008 12:53 AM

2. Baltimore?

Posted by: art | May 10, 2008 12:56 AM

Tell me that "balmer" isn't some slang for baltimore then...boxjam is way too clever for me

Posted by: art | May 10, 2008 12:57 AM

1. Hawaii
2. Pierre
3. Godspell

Posted by: art | May 10, 2008 08:08 PM

Art gets #1 right -- the CSA claimed Arizona as a territory a year before the slowpokes in the Union bothered.

And Scraps edges out Jonathan -- the massive Passion Play that Gerald L.K. Smith started is the subject of a whole chapter in Daniel Radosh's book Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel World of Christian Pop Culture, which I read recently and enjoyed the HELL out of. The section on Christian alternative rock is particularly interesting.

No right answers, yet, on one state's largest city, named for an English Prime Minister.

Posted by: BT | May 12, 2008 09:51 AM

Birmingham?

Posted by: art | May 13, 2008 07:49 AM

Wheeling?

Posted by: art | May 13, 2008 07:55 AM

Denver?

Thatcher, South Dakota

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 11:23 AM

Disraeli, Colorado

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 11:24 AM

Gladstone, Mississippi

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 11:25 AM

Major, Maine

New Orleans, Loozana

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 11:36 AM

New York, New York

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 11:37 AM

Cromwell, Kentucky

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 11:42 AM

Neville, Nebraska

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 12:01 PM

I promise, it's the largest city in the state. Most of our participants have been in, or at least through its city limits, at least once.

The river upon which it's built is named for another European leader, although not from Great Britain. This person was not a precise contemporary of the prime minister in question, although their lives overlapped.

Posted by: BT | May 13, 2008 02:22 PM

Norfolk (or however you pronounce it)

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 02:45 PM

Jersey City

Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2008 05:22 PM

Trenton

Posted by: Jonathan | May 14, 2008 01:19 AM

Nope

Posted by: BT | May 14, 2008 12:41 PM

Raleigh

Posted by: Jonathan | May 14, 2008 04:17 PM

Charleston