The Wombat File 2004 Quizvitational : Rules and ROUND 1

Welcome, dedicated lovers of the unimportant; devotees of the pompously rendered factoid; supplicants at the altar of Trivia (to be distinguished, we might add, from those who merely Pursue)!

Before we begin, some guidelines, procedures, and ceremonious lollygagging:

1. Who May Play

Any previous victor of our uncelebrated and now posthumous Weekly Quiz is a hereby credentialed participant. More succinctly: if you've ever played the weekly quiz and won, you're in.

(If you have won the quiz and used an anonymous email address [Terry? Doozy?] send a note to quiz at wombatfile dot com with something to demonstrate that you are who you are).

2. The Nature of the Quizvitational

More stupid questions, like the ones you've seen here for years, but a whole bunch at once. In three batches.

Some are a bit more straightforward and simple than the weekly ones. Some are just as baroque and tortured. I post, you send your answers. Each correct answer gets some points. Correct answers and standings posted each Friday. The player with the most points accumulated at the end of round 3 (on December 23) wins undying glory and an honest-to-dog real physical prize mailed to your home or office.

3. The Manner of Play

In each of three rounds beginning the first three Mondays in December, a set of questions will be posted here (first round questions are posted below). Players send their answers VIA EMAIL to quiz AT wombatfile DOT com. (Please put "quiz" somewhere in your subject line). Each correct answer will earn points (scoring elaborated below).

Later each week, some helpful clues will be posted (Thursday in rounds one and two, Wednesday in Round three). Players may continue to mail guesses until 12:01 AM Friday, Eastern Standard Time (Thursday in the last round). However, correct answers mailed in after the clues are posted will only receive HALF credit (diabolical, eh?).

Players may revise previously submitted answers, but only ONCE per round, and revised answers will be considered final. For example, if in answer to the question, "Who wrote Looking Backward?" your first (and correct) answer submitted was "Edward Bellamy" and then, in a fit of nervousness you dashed off, "No, wait, it was David Gergen!" you would, alas, recieve no points.

Because players are being asked to work from memory only, minor errors in spelling, misplaced articles etc., will be overlooked. However, if an answer omits crucial information (e.g. "Queen Elizabeth" for "Queen Elizabeth II") it may be docked some or all points.

4. The Honor System

As with the weekly quiz, you're on your honor not to consult search engines, reference works, librarians, or random experts from off the street. Additionally, although we have allowed it during the weekly quiz, refrain from consulting your your charming and brilliant life-partner. Do it on your own. Do it for you. Do it for the love of stupid, useless information.

You are encouraged, however, to use the comments field to boast, taunt, and whin(g)e. But please do not spoil it by posting big 'ol clues or the answers. Those who do will be disqualified with a wrathful swiftness.

5. The Scoring

Round One: 10 questions for (up to) 80 points apiece.
Round Two: 5 questions for (up to) 160 points apiece.
Round Three: 4 questions for (up to) 101 points apiece.

6. The Rounds

Round One:

Questions posted Monday, December 6
Clues posted Thursday, December 9 (deadline for full-points answers)
DEADLINE FOR ANSWERS: 12:01 AM EST Friday December 10

Round Two:

Questions posted Monday, December 13
Clues posted Thursday, December 16 (deadline for full-points answers)
DEADLINE FOR ANSWERS: 12:01 AM EST Friday December 17

Round Three

Questions posted Monday, December 20
Clues posted Wednesday, December 22 (deadline for full-points answers)
DEADLINE FOR ANSWERS: 12:01 AM EST Thursday December 23

7. Questions for Round One

Digested all of that? Then you're ready to play ROUND ONE!

All of the Round One questions refer to events that took place in the years 1904 or 1905.

1. A New York City policeman arrested a woman for what reason while she was sitting in an open car in Manhattan? ( He reportedly chided her, "You can't do that on 5th Avenue.")

2. Who wrote the following passage, first published in 1904?

Then everything happened, and with inconceivable rapidity. The fog seemed to break away as though split by a wedge, and the bow of a steamboat emerged, trailing fog-wreaths on either side like seaweed on the snout of Leviathan. I could see the pilot-house and a white-bearded man leaning partly out of it, on his elbows. He was clad in a blue uniform, and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was. His quietness, under the circumstances, was terrible. He accepted Destiny, marched hand in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke. As he leaned there, he ran a calm and speculative eye over us, as though to determine the precise point of the collision, and took no notice whatever when our pilot, white with rage, shouted, "Now you've done it!"

3. What technological/artistic "first" made Graz, Austria famous in 1904?

4. From what adventurous novel published famously in 1905-- by the daughter of a Hungarian Baron-- is the following excerpted:

"But, tell me, why should your leader--why should you all--spend your money and risk your lives--for it is your lives you risk, Messieurs, when you set foot in France--and all for us French men and women, who are nothing to you?"

"Sport, Madame la Comtesse, sport," asserted Lord Antony, with his jovial, loud and pleasant voice; "we are a nation of sportsmen, you know, and just now it is the fashion to pull the hare from between the teeth of the hound."

5. What two countries (which had been unified for nearly a century) separated in 1905 -- in the process turning a Prince Carl into a King?

6. In 1904 what company was founded as a joint venture between a former electric-doorbell manufacturer and the son of an English lord (who had chosen the unusual career as a professional engineer)?

7. In a June 1905 meeting, William Haywood, Eugene V. Debs and others met and founded an internationally focused organization that became widely known by a nickname. What was the nickname?

8. 1905-6 marked what "Period" in the painting of Picasso?

9. In 1904 the first international agreement against what kind of commerce was drawn up at an international conference in Paris? (The agreement has since been superseded by a broader 1949 U.N. Convention)

10. Paul P. Harris, of Chicago, founds this organization in 1904. In 1945, forty-nine members of the organization take part in the drafting of the U.N. charter in San Francisco. In 1990, the first Moscow branch opens. What is the name of the organization?

Email your answers to quiz at wombatfile dot com before 12:01 AM Friday. Please put "quiz" somewhere in the subject line.

Posted by BT at December 06, 2004 01:27 AM