Welcome back, lovers of the recondite, While we're all diverted by l'affaire Frey (I refer you, incidentally, to Ron Hogan's GalleyCat for any comment), we have the small matter of clues toward the fiendish puzzlement offered in Round Two's questions.
Correct answers sent in to bt AT wombatfile DOT com from this point until 12:01 AM tomorrow morning will receive 1/2 credit. There have been on-the-ball responses submitted so far to all questions but one.
1. The two countries whose territory were at the core of this little-remembered Empire were, until 1993, one nation. They had been so, in a variety of political arrangements, since 1918. Both are democracies. One of these countries contains the birthplace of a very famous man who said (among other things) "At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father" -- although this man is not usually associated with the region of his birthplace, and became famous a short distance away. The remaining four modern nations into which this Empire's largest historical boundaries penetrated currently almost completely surround the two "core" nations (there's a sliver of border that is an exception, where a country not part of the historical empire buts up against one of the two "core" nations). All four of the "secondary" countries are larger in area (and larger than or equal in population) to the two core countries.
2. This procedure gets its name from a historical personage who -- despite the legend -- was not involved with the procedure. This procedure plays a role in Shakespeare's Macbeth, although it happens prior to the action of the play.
3. It's a metal, and there's a simple lexical reason why it might have been Lehrer's choice as a lead-off element in his tune, which is based on one of the most notable examples of the "patter-song" genre.
4. One of the author's other extremely famous songs was written a couple of years later, and included in the musical George Washington, Jr. It originally had the word "rag" in the title, but the writer changed that after some were offended, to the form we know today. However, the two songs we are speaking of were from the older musical. One begins "I'm the kid that's all the candy..." The other contains the couplet "With tear-dimmed eye they say goodbye, they're friends without a doubt;/When the man on the pier shouts loud and clear, as the ship strikes out..." before launching into the chorus. He was given the Congressional Medal of Honor by FDR, and there is a statue of him in Manhattan.
So, get your post-clue revisions or first-time guesses in by midnight. Lightning round tomorrow? Who knows...
let me be the first to say that I'm flummoxed (which may be the answer to #2--though I did not do it to myself).
Posted by: art on January 12, 2006 06:54 PMi'm also confused about the day of the week--do I have 5 hours left or 29 hours left?
Posted by: art on January 12, 2006 06:56 PMa bit less than four. . .
Posted by: Scott on January 12, 2006 08:29 PMI screwed the pooch. I was unable to get my poor guesses in yesterday due to "actual" work. And I think I half knew part of one of the answers, too.
Posted by: James on January 13, 2006 09:28 AM