An A.M. struggle with a sinus headache and our premodern mass transit system has left your quizmaster feeling a little off his game. Luckily, the annals of history infallibly provide a wealth of quality trivia with which to fuel our hebdomadal excursions into time-frittering, whatever the moment's mood. Today's pointless question:

In the year 1900, George Dewey announced his candidacy for President, although he withdrew his hat from the ring two months later. But he was already famous: on May 1, 1898, he uttered an eight-word phrase that is still often repeated, though usually in an attenuated form that boils it down to six or sometimes even four essential words. The original context is not widely remembered.

What's the phrase, and -- bonus points -- what's the context?

First correct answer posted to comments wins the John Kerry "Old Man of the Mountain" Stone paperweight. No Googling or calling your cousin who edits documentaries for the History Channel. One guess per comment, please, but you may comment as often as you like.

A little lexico-jurisprudential-historico-political trivia for today's quiz-lings:

In the year 2000, a definition from Dr. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was introduced into the proceedings of the lawsuit Campbell v. Clinton. What was the word for which Johnson's definition was called upon? For bonus points, why was Johnson's definition of it relevant? For double-bonus points and a shot of Old Powdered Wig, what was the subject of the lawsuit?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a copy of Laser Hair Removal For Dummies. No Googling or asking the nice lady at the reference desk. One guess per comment, but you may comment as often as you like.

Due to a crowded schedule around here which involved a lot of dishes, we missed the broadcast of the State of the Union address. It's bizarre -- despite the fact that this non-event is essentially a long political infomercial for the governing party and sitting administration, it feels somewhat like a civic duty to watch the damn thing.

But even under Clinton, the exercise was painful: the roll-out of policy initiatives, most of which had already been trial-ballooned, was not exactly stirring political theater. Under Bush, who leans heavily on the tough-but-loving daddy approach he pulled together in late 2001, it's punchier and leaner, less weighted down by Clinton's tendency to wax long on both the details of new programs and the often overdone rhetoric meant to give them a sense of urdency. Short, one-sentence paragraphs, which lead in to applause lines. And plenty of 'em.

But Bush's punches, of course, mostly damage the already-tottering illusion that this administration cares about making any sense at all. I got around the obligation to watch the speech by going right to the teleprompter, and it's a fascinating document, with buzz-phrases, assertions, factoids, and blustery commands more or less cut-n-pasted in a long strand; the Ctrl-c and Ctrl-v keys on Karl Rove's laptop are, I suspect, pretty worn down.

Take a look at the treatment of the War in Iraq; a symptomatic recapitulation of the Administration's previous story-shifting about why we went to war -- Saddam was an imminent threat to the security of the United States/ America is called upon to free the oppressed -- about how things are going (a laundry list of our "coalition partners" comes couched in a deadpan shut-up to people who worry about our relationships with the rest of the world; this is followed by a petulant cry that "we don't need a permission slip" to defend ourselves), and about how it all connects to the War on Terror (he doesn't say, but keeps blipping back and forth between the two in a way which implies that they're the same thing without ever really specifying why).

And I haven't even gotten to the call to defend marriage -- not from homosexuals, but from liberty's greatest foe: members of the judiciary! But there's a crying daughter, and, anyway, you probably know what I'm going to say already.

I hope you enjoy my new novel, a page-turning thriller about a yoga instructor/life coach who balances all the duties of being a Mom -- including coaching her son's competetive rock-climbing squad -- with her abiding interest in forensic pathology. When the members of her knitting chatroom begin to recieve threatening messages, she finds herself thrown into a world of high-stakes counterterrorism Ops. Will her Ivy League training in cultural anthropology enable her to see the pattern that baffles the Secret Service?

I hope you enjoy my new movie. Suppose everything you thought you knew about your physical therapist was a lie? Suppose that every time you synced your variety of personal electronic devices, something else was syncing inside of you? Suppose the people you had invited over to watch "All-Star Survivor" with you were doing so without any irony at all? Now, one man must make a harrowing choice: between a life of windsurfing metrosexual event-dining and the world of high-stakes counterterrorism Ops.

I hope you enjoy my new television series. It's about C-list celebrities, filmed as they ride around in their all-terrain vehicles, drinking bubble tea and sending each other text messages.

No trivia quiz can go long without resorting to that ancient standby of the factoid: the fascinating lives of America's celebrities. Today the Wombat File offers its own People-magazine-ready bit of quizliness:

He was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1878. He first performed in beer gardens, and then on the stage. He appeared in fourteen films, most frequently opposite one of the biggest film stars of the day, and in a celebrated adaptation of a Gilbert & Sullivan operatta at the 1939 World's Fair . At his death in 1949, his body lay "in state" in New York City, where late in life he was particularly honored.

By what nickname was this famous man widely known?

First correct answer posted to coments wins an Indian Lake ashtray that Theresa insists I get rid of. No Googling or hiring a crack team of round-the-clock researchers. One guess per comment, but comment as often as you like.

With the War on Loneliness finally underway -- the question naturally arises -- how are we, as a nation, going to afford this program so vital to out National Emotional Security? There's no question that the standard-bearers of singledom are in retreat; and while it's fine to spend one week protecting the sanctity of the importance of the preciousness of marriage between two people absolutely not of the same sex, we're talking about putting some serious Benjamins to work to get some rings on some fingers. Some people might try to undermine such a long-needed outlay of federal match-making funds, by pointing to the peskily rising deficit.

The answer, fortunately, is obvious: link up with our other major national concern and spend the first chunk of the money getting the terrorists hitched. They're unhappy, they've got too much time on their hands, and they've got no one to come home to. All that can change with a little Match.gov action, aimed at the right angry-young-fundamentalist. And it should be an easy pitch to make even to those prospective beneficiaries not currently within the U.S. borders-- a cave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace, if you get my drift. If there's any further doubt about the matter, let me add this: these days, I couldn't find the time to work on a jury-rigged homemade "dirty bomb" even if I wanted to. And forget about spending a night out with boys, lobbing mortars at convoys outside of Basra.

Once that's taken care of, use the savings on national defense to expand the program: government-sponsored arranged marriages for all! What could be more consistent with a philosophy of a small government, which refrains from overly interfering in the free market? -- excepting the marriage market, that is.

We're not really car people, but now that we live in a part of Brooklyn where one can actually park (and where we are more than a few minutes walk from anything other than pizza and lakeful of ducks), we have considered changing that. If you had pushed me to name a make and model that I'd consider getting, about the only practical one that came to mind was the Subaru Outback.

Not anymore. I guess I'll come back to it if we're ever in the market for a "light truck".

One (sadly rhetorical) question: how is it that a company can openly announce that it is taking advantage of a now-infamous legal loophole in order to make its cars get fewer miles to the gallon, and then expect not to be laughed out of the marketplace? Like I said, sadly rhetorical.

(Oh, and for those of you who missed Malcolm Gladwell's excellent dissection of the psychology behind consumers' SUV choices, the New Yorker didn't put it online, but there is this.)

Ah, the bracing cold of a January morning. Huddle around the wood-stove, my shivering friends, and heat up your brainpans with another pointless puzzle purchased fresh from the Olde Quizze Shoppe:

A famous moment in 19th-century history was celebrated with parties and dances all through the region in which it occurred, and a sprightly fiddle tune commemorating it came to be known as "The Eighth of January." If there were words to this tune at the time of its composition, they were not recorded. In the early 1940s, ethnographers interviewing migrant workers in the Dust Bowl recorded one woman's memory of words to the song; her version told the story of a young man sailing away from his beloved because "my king calls now for volunteers," but these lyrics seemed not to refer in any direct way to the event which inspired the original tune.

However, in the late 50s, a man named James Morris composed new words for the tune -- ones which were more connected to the anniversary. He also rechristened the song and included it on the record of "rediscovered" folk songs. And it was yet another singer who took Morris's revised version and made it a hit single.

What was the event the song commemorated?

The first correct answer posted to comments wins a Dust Bowl commemorative neck-kerchief. No Googling or asking your Ma. One guess per comment, please, but comment as often as you like.

I know that no one except your humble editor cares about the book-cover-design epidemic of women's legs, feet, and strappy shoes. But I can't help but note that over at MacAdam/Cage, they're pioneering a particular photographic variation on the subject. Deglamorized, grubbily Lolitesque legs and feet these -- the highbrow "this-ain't-your-trashy-chick-lit" treatment. My feeling is that these decapitated -- indeed de-trunk-itated -- female forms speak volumes about the attitudes toward fiction prevalent in the marketplace today: wink heavily, and leave the heady stuff out, if at all possible.

In one of the slipshod attempts at topical humor which occasionally shows up on our site, we last week referred to Tommy Thompson in connection with the recent Condition-Orange-ification of this otherwise red-blooded land. Of course, we were thinking not of our leader in the War on Fat but of Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor tasked with making our homeland secure.

In an effort to help those, like myself, who confuse these two figures, I offer the following EZ-2-use guidelines for telling who's who:

Those of you who wondered at last week's unannounced quiz hiatus may have been fearing that the Quiz would not return for a third calendar year. Put your anxieties to rest, for our resolve to lighten your weekly load has never been greater. Happy New Year, my factoidal friends: Onward we march toward the Hundredth Quiz!

2004's very first Wombat groan-inducer:

Headquartered in Texas, a recently-founded American association of sporting "professionals" announced a historic event in November of 1999 -- a first-ever (it claimed) multi-day tournament with substantial cash prizes going to the winning teams (first place took $5,000). Previous competitions offered prizes that had to be donated to charity. The association's announcement noted: "Top [competitors] spend decades [working to achieve] national recognition but have had no arena in which to "strut their stuff" for prize money like in most other sports."

Competition kicked off at the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi campus. Because of the nature of the competition, questions were raised about how the winner would be determined. President of the association Robert Benton said, "'It may be hard to believe, but [competitors in this sport] are basically honest ethical folks. Their hard earned reputations among peers are worth far more than the $10,000 (total prize moneys awarded) at stake.'"

What sport did this groundbreaking tourney involve?

First correct answer posted to comments wins an extra-large woolen beret that blew off of the head of a Brooklyn Francophile last week and landed in front of our building. No Googling or pursuing an advanced degree in cultural studies (those of you already holding such degrees should type with your eyes closed). One guess per comment, please, but comment as frequently as you like.