DAILY DOUBLE #1

MUSEUMS & COLLECTIONS

In Bogotá, you’ll find the Museo del this 3-letter palabra (what kings & conquistadors thirsted over)

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

LEADERS

In a eulogy, his successor Ingvar Carlsson said, “we stand united in anger & grief” & he “made the world the concern... of us all”

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

YO-YO MA MEETS THE GREAT COMPOSERS

I’m told that for regular “Jeopardy!” “this Hungarian composer” is usually Béla Bartók; for you masters, it’s going to be this friend of Béla’s, whose cello sonata stretched the instrument more than anyone since Bach

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

BRANDI CARLILE & FRIENDS

Jam sessions I organized led to the incredible Joni Mitchell returning to this city’s festival in 2022 for the first time since 1969 for her first full-length concert in over 20 years

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

THE VILLAINOUS SIDE OF JOHNNY GILBERT

“Now the Southland will mend / Now the bloody war will end / Because someone slew the tyrant / Just as Brutus slew the tyrant”

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

ALL KINDS OF WRITERS

The title of this 2015 bestseller by historian Mary Beard is an abbreviation for a Latin phrase

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

THE LAWS OF STYLE WITH LAW ROACH

Try method dressing. For the world premiere of “Dune: Part Two,” I dressed Zendaya in a robot suit from this French designer’s 1995 collection, and it was perfection

TRIPLE STUMPER #6

FONDLY REMEMBERED

“The New York Times” 2024 obit of this author called him the patron saint of literary Brooklyn

BONUS CLUE #1

RECENT COUNTRY MUSIC

“I only talk to God when I need a favor”, sang this man with a prominent cross tattoo

BONUS CLUE #2

THE VILLAINOUS SIDE OF JOHNNY GILBERT

To seduce a woman famous for strict morals... & the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?\”“,

BONUS CLUE #3

HAVE A SEAT

2 animals that don’t typically get along combine in this folksy term meaning a position of great advantage

DAILY DOUBLE #1

MUSEUMS & COLLECTIONS

In Bogotá, you'll find the Museo del this 3-letter palabra (what kings & conquistadors thirsted over)

***ORO***

Bogotá is the capital of the South American country of Colombia. The name Bogotá is based on the indigenous name of the area, Bacatá. Found in the center of the country, it is 8,660 feet above sea level in a branch of the Colombian Andes called the Cordillera Oriental (meaning “Eastern Range”). The city is at the base of two mountains: Guadalupe and Monserrate. The city shares its name with the Bogotá River (a tributary of the Magdalena), which plunges at the 515-foot-tall Tequendama [teh-ken-DAH-mah] Falls (located just west of the city). They were depicted in an 1854 painting by Frederick Church (see below). Bogota is nearly an antipode of Jakarta, Indonesia. Bogotá is by far the most populous city (7 million) in Colombia. Its second biggest city is Medellín (2.4 million), which was home to a Pablo Escobar drug cartel. Other big cities in Colombia include Cali, (2.2 million), and Barranquilla (1.2 million).

Simón Bolívar (nicknamed “The Liberator”) took the city of Bogotá after his victory over the Spanish at the Battle of Boyacá (around 100 miles away) in 1819. Bogotá was then capital of Gran Colombia, which included present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. In 1828, Simón Bolívar’s long-term partner Manuela Sáenz helped him escape an assassination attempt by persuading him to leave via window while she confronted the would-be assassins and led them on a wild good chase. After that, Bolívar started calling Sáenz the “Liberator of the Liberator.”

A period of Colombian history from 1948-1958 is called La Violencia, in which around 200,00 civilians were killed. It was mainly fought in the countryside between the country’s Conservative and Liberal parties. A common method of execution involved cutting a victim’s throat and pulling the tongue through the wound to dangle down, thus creating a “Colombian necktie.” Another common atrocity involved replacing a pregnant woman’s unborn fetus with a rooster. The Violence was sparked by the 1948 assassination of the Liberal Party’s presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. That event led to a ten-hour period of rioting called El Bogotazo that killed 2500 people.

The current president of Colombia, who took office on August 7, 2026, is Abelardo de la Espriella [es-pree-EH-yah], who was born in Bogotá. He founded the far-right Defenders of the Homeland party. He was preceded by Gustavo Petro (2022-2026), who was the country’s first left-wing president and had previously served as mayor of Bogotá. Another former mayor of Bogotá is Claudia López, who was the first woman and first openly LGBT person to be elected to the position. In order to lower rates of domestic violence, she introduced the Calm Line, which is an anti-machismo helpline that men can call to manage their emotions.

Bogotá is home to the Museo Botero, which is named for the Colombian painter Fernando Botero. He is known for depicting people in an exaggerated and voluptuous volume. Other museums in the city include the Museo del Oro (or “Gold Museum). The most famous work in the museum is the Muisca [MWEE-skuh] raft, which is named for an indigenous people. It inspired the El Dorado legend, which has a name meaning “The Golden One” and centers on a figure who has a body dusted in gold who is aboard a raft in a lake and tossed gold objects overboard as offerings. Perhaps appropriately, Bogotá’s main airport is El Dorado International Airport. Bogotá is home to the corporate headquarters of Colombia’s flag carrier Avianca, whose name is an acronym of a Spanish phrase meaning “Airways of the Americas.”

A few random facts:

• Shortly before the 1970 World Cup, England’s captain Bobby Moore was detained for four days after being accused of stealing a bracelet from a Bogotá shop.

• From 1974-1990, the country was home to the 19th of April Movement (aka M19). In 1985, it carried out the Palace of Justice siege and held the country’s Supreme Court justices hostage. It was possibly funded by Pablo Escobar in order to destroy court files. The military soon initiated a raid that ended the siege, but led to the deaths of 11 of the 25 Supreme Court justices.

• In 2022, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died in Bogotá after experiencing chest pains.

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

LEADERS

In a eulogy, his successor Ingvar Carlsson said, “we stand united in anger & grief” & he “made the world the concern... of us all”

***OLOF PALME***

Sweden’s prime minister Olof Palme was born in Stockholm in 1927. He received a bachelor’s from Kenyon College in Ohio and wrote his thesis on the UAW (United Auto Workers), which at the time was led by his hero Walter Reuther [ROO-thur]. He returned to Sweden for his law degree. In 1953, he became the personal secretary for Tage Erlander, who served as Sweden’s PM for 23 years (1946-1969). Palme entered parliament in 1958 and became minister of communication in 1965 and minister of education and ecclesiastical affairs in 1967.

Olof Palme succeeded Erlander as PM in 1969 and served until 1976, when the Social Democrats were defeated for the first time in 44 years. In 1972, he angered the United States by comparing the bombings of Hanoi to the bombing of Guernica and the extermination of Jews at Treblinka. Palme and the American actress Shirley MacLaine were lovers in the 1970s. According to her, they also had sex 1200 years earlier when he was Charlemagne and she was a Moorish peasant girl. In 1982, Palme was re-elected PM.

In 1986, Palme was assassinated by a gunman while walking home from the movies with his wife Lisbeth. They had just seen the Swedish comedy The Mozart Brothers, which centers on an unconventional opera director during a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Palme is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik Church, which is named for a Swedish king who reigned from 1751-1771. Christer Pettersson was initially convicted of the crime in 1989, but was acquitted on appeal one year later. The show The Unlikely Murderer dramatizes how Stig Engström (1934-2000), a man who claimed to be a witness to the assassination, may have actually gotten away with the crime. He was nicknamed “The Skandia Man” because he worked at the head office of the Skandia Insurance Company, which was close to where the crime occurred. As of 2026, the identity of the assassin remains unknown.

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

YO-YO MA MEETS THE GREAT COMPOSERS

I’m told that for regular “Jeopardy!” “this Hungarian composer” is usually Béla Bartók; for you masters, it’s going to be this friend of Béla’s, whose cello sonata stretched the instrument more than anyone since Bach

Read more

This week’s brand new recap will focus on Need to Know clues ($800, $1000, $1600, and $2000 clues) from the episodes re-airing on Monday 8/17 through Friday 8/21. As always, the first half of the recap includes just the clues so you can quiz yourself if you want. The second half gives you some (hopefully) interesting information about the clues and/or some related info.

NEED TO KNOW #1

TRADE IN HISTORY

This city at the edge of England’s West Country was a leading British slave trading port in the 18th century

NEED TO KNOW #2

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

This Paul Thomas Anderson film features a plague of frogs pelting the streets of Los Angeles

NEED TO KNOW #3

LATIN LOVERS

These 2 words follow “Carthago” in an ultimatum given by Cato the Elder in the Third Punic War

NEED TO KNOW #4

VEXILLOLOGY

A 15-year-old designed the flag of this Pacific Island nation that gained full independence in 1975

NEED TO KNOW #5

RAGS & RICHES

This cat breed is noted for its blue eyes & named for how it supposedly goes limp when held

NEED TO KNOW #6

“N” THE CITY

Hump it to Mauritania’s capital, this city created in 1960 that’s home to a local camel market

NEED TO KNOW #7

SOMEBODY CALL ME A DOCTOR!

“Baby Doc” Duvalier was 19 as president of this nation he’d later flee to avoid a trial for abusing human rights

NEED TO KNOW #8

SPORTS

Based in the Hammersmith & Fulham borough of London, this British pro soccer team is nicknamed “the Blues”

NEED TO KNOW #1

TRADE IN HISTORY

This city at the edge of England’s West Country was a leading British slave trading port in the 18th century

***BRISTOL***

The city of Bristol is located in South West England and is about 120 miles west of London. The city’s population is around 500,000. Bristol is also one of England’s 48 ceremonial counties and is located between Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. The city names the Bristol Channel, which separates South Wales from South West England. The River Severn drains into the channel, which is home to an island owned by the National Trust called Lundy. The island fittingly takes its name from a Norse word meaning “puffin” since many seabirds breed on it. The Gower Peninsular (home to the city of Swansea) juts into the Bristol Channel.

The town of Bristol was incorporated in 1155 and has long been a major port. In 1497, John Cabot sailed from Bristol on the Matthew and likely landed at Labrador in present-day Canada. In 1656, a Quaker named James Nayler (who was part of the Valiant Sixty) entered Bristol in a procession that imitated Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. He was charged with blasphemy and was branded with the letter B on his forehead. Bristol was the birthplace of the 18th-century English poet Thomas Chatterton, who committed suicide at the age of 17. He is most famous for writing poems that he attributed to the fictional 15th-century monk Thomas Rowley. Chatterton was the dedicatee of the long John Keats poem Endymion, which begins “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”

In the 1810s, the engineer John Loudon McAdam (namesake of macadamizing) improved Bristol’s roads using his namesake process that uses tightly packed layers of small stones. In 1909, Winston Churchill was attacked with a whip by Theresa Garnett at a railway station in Bristol for opposing women’s suffrage. In 1963, the city was the site of the Bristol Bus Boycott because the Bristol Omnibus Company refused to hire Black or Asian bus crews. West Indian cricketer and lawyer Learie Constantine played a key role in the boycott. Constantine later became the first Black person to sit in the House of Lords. In 2020, BLM protesters pulled down a statue of the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and pushed it into the city’s harbor, which is often called the Floating Harbour.

The electronic band Portishead originated in Bristol, although it is named for a nearby town. Beth Gibbons is the lead singer of the band, whose 1994 debut album is titled Dummy. It includes the trip hop song “Glory Box,” whose title refers to a storage trunk that unmarried women once used to collect items for marriage and their future home. A more famous group that originated in Bristol is Massive Attack, which released the 1998 trip hop album Mezzanine. It contains the song “Teardrop,” which later served as the opening theme to the TV show House. Massive Attack’s only consistent member has been Robert Del Naja, who earned his nickname of “3D” during his early days as a graffiti artist.

The city of Bristol is home to the headquarters of Aardman Animations, which is where many stop-motion and clay animation movies are produced (e.g. Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit). Bristol was the setting of the E4 teen drama Skins, whose first two seasons starred Nicholas Hoult. The show rotated its cast every two seasons, thus creating three generations of characters during its six total seasons. Bristol was also the setting for the first two seasons of the show Being Human. It centered on a vampire, werewolf, and ghost who try to hide their true natures and live normal lives in human society.

The city is home to the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which was the site of the first modern bungee jumps in 1979. The bridge spans the River Avon, which is one of many in the U.K. with that name because “Avon” comes from a word meaning “river.” The city is the namesake of Bristol blue glass, which gets its color from the addition of cobalt oxide. The city is also the namesake of the Connecticut city of Bristol, which contains the headquarters of ESPN. The Bristol stool scale, which classifies human feces into seven different types, was named for a hospital in the city called the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Types 1 and 2 indicate constipation, while types 6 and 7 indicate diarrhea.

NEED TO KNOW #2

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

This Paul Thomas Anderson film features a plague of frogs pelting the streets of Los Angeles

***MAGNOLIA***

The director and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson (or PTA) was born in 1970 in Los Angeles. He was taught by David Foster Wallace while at Boston’s Emerson College. He dropped out of film school at NYU after only two days. He has directed multiple music videos for Fiona Apple, with whom he was in a relationship from 1997-2002. Anderson has four children with Maya Rudolph, with whom he has been in a relationship since 2002.

Anderson directed and wrote the 1999 movie Magnolia. The music of Aimee Mann inspired the movie, which centers on 24 hours in the lives of interrelated characters in California’s San Fernando Valley. The trailer for the movie (see below) uses whip pans to introduce the major characters, including the motivational speaker and sleazy pick-up artist Frank T.J. Mackey, played by Tom Cruise. Near the end of the movie, frogs fall from the sky, which is a reference to Exodus 8:2.

Anderson often works with the same people. One example is costume designer Mark Bridges, who won an Oscar for Phantom Thread and received a Jet Ski from host Jimmy Kimmel for giving the shortest speech. PTA also often works with the casting director Cassandra Kulukundis. She won the first ever Oscar for Achievement in Casting for One Battle After Another. Jonny Greenwood (lead guitarist of Radiohead) has scored every Anderson movie since There Will Be Blood.

PTA’s other nine movies are:

• Hard Eight (1996) - a veteran gambler played by Philip Baker Hall (the library cop on Seinfeld) mentors a drifter (played by John C. Reilly) who falls in love with a cocktail waitress / prostitute played by Gwyneth Paltrow; the movie’s title refers to a high-risk craps bet in which a shooter must roll a pair of fours before rolling an easy eight (i.e. 6 and 2, 2 and 6, 5 and 3, or 3 and 5) or a seven

• Boogie Nights (1997) - centers on the rise, fall, and resurgence of the adult film star Dirk Diggler, played by Mark Wahlberg; PTA threw a chair across a room after the movie didn’t win any Oscars, according to Fiona Apple

• Punch-Drunk Love (2002) - offbeat movie in which Adam Sandler’s lonely character finds romance with a woman played by Emily Watson

• There Will Be Blood (2007) - based on the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, the movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the oil prospector turned oil tycoon Daniel Plainview; a memorable scene occurs when Plainview tells the preacher Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano) “I drink your milkshake” (a line inspired by Albert Fall’s testimony during the Teapot Dome scandal) and murders him with a bowling pin

• The Master (2012) - inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, the movie depicts the complex relationship between a charismatic guru (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and one of his disciples (played by Joaquin Phoenix)

• Inherent Vice (2014) - an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name that stars Joaquin Phoenix

• Phantom Thread (2017) - stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a dressmaker whose pursuit of perfection causes tension in his romantic relationships

• Licorice Pizza (2021) - set in the 1970s, the movie centers on a 15-year-old high-school student (played by Cooper Hoffman) who befriends a free-spirited 25-year-old young woman (played by Alana Haim); the movie’s title was taken from a sign at a food court in Fast Times at Ridgemont High

• One Battle After Another (2025) - inspired by Pynchon’s novel Vineland, the movie centers on the former revolutionary Bob Ferguson (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who seeks his missing daughter Willa (played by Chase Infiniti), who is held hostage by Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (played by Sean Penn)

NEED TO KNOW #3

LATIN LOVERS

These 2 words follow “Carthago” in an ultimatum given by Cato the Elder in the Third Punic War

Read more

This week’s brand new recap will focus on Need to Know clues ($800, $1000, $1600, and $2000 clues) from the episodes re-airing on Monday 8/10 through Friday 8/14. As always, the first half of the recap includes just the clues so you can quiz yourself if you want. The second half gives you some (hopefully) interesting information about the clues and/or some related info.

NEED TO KNOW #1

WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?

I can’t stop listening to this 1995 album that featured the songs “Wonderwall” & “Champagne Supernova”

NEED TO KNOW #2

MOUNTAINS

The highest point in the Atlas Mountains is this peak that’s south of Marrakech

NEED TO KNOW #3

LAWYERS

Mary L. Bonauto of GLAD Law argued on behalf of this Ohio man in a landmark Supreme Court case in 2015

NEED TO KNOW #4A & #4B

MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER

Like its NFL counterpart, MLS’ New England Revolution plays its home games at this stadium in Foxborough

Of the 3 Canadian teams in the league, this one is based farthest west

NEED TO KNOW #5

DOCUMENTARIES

Albert & David Maysles are known for this documentary on Edith Bouvier Beale & daughter Little Edie

NEED TO KNOW #6

FOREIGN LEADER FIRSTS

Kwame Nkrumah was the first president of this new country, the first in Sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from colonial rule

NEED TO KNOW #7

NONFICTION TO FILM

Winona Ryder helped usher this Susanna Kaysen memoir to the big screen after suffering from anxiety attacks herself

NEED TO KNOW #8

DEBUT ALBUMS

One of Britain’s biggest bands of the early 2000s, they broke the ice with “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”

NEED TO KNOW #1

WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?

I can’t stop listening to this 1995 album that featured the songs “Wonderwall” & “Champagne Supernova”

***(WHAT’S THE STORY) MORNING GLORY?***

The rock band Oasis (originally called Rain) formed in Manchester, England in 1991 and was named for the Oasis Leisure Centre in the town of Swindon. The band’s most famous members were the Gallagher brothers (vocalist Liam and lead guitarist Noel), who had a volatile relationship. The band’s other members included Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs (rhythm guitar), Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan (bass) and Tony McCarroll (drums). The band was part of the Britpop movement (along with Blur, Suede, and Pulp). During the so-called Battle of Britpop, Noel Gallagher said that he hoped members of Blur would “catch AIDS and die.” Oasis released their first album, Definitely Maybe, in 1994. The album’s cover includes a poster of Burt Bacharach in the bottom left corner. The album’s lead single was “Supersonic,” whose lyrics include “I'm feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic.”

The band’s second album was (What’s the Story) Morning Glory (1995). Its UK #1 hits included “Some Might Say” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” the latter of which included the lyrics “And so Sally can wait / She knows it's too late / As we're walking on by / Her soul slides away / But don't look back in anger / I heard you say.” The album’s ballad “Wonderwall” only hit #2 in the UK, but is arguably the band’s most enduring song. Anyway, here’s some lyrics from the song: “Because maybe / You're gonna be the one that saves me / And after all / You're my wonderwall.” Another single from the album was “Champagne Supernova,” whose lyrics include “Someday you will find me / Caught beneath the landslide / In a champagne supernova in the sky.”

In 1996, Liam claimed he had a sore throat and backed out of an MTV Unplugged performance. He then drunkenly heckled his brother from the audience after Noel took over lead vocal duties. The third album by Oasis was Be Here Now (1997), and their fourth album was Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (2000). Noel Gallagher quit the band in 2009 after Liam allegedly attacked him with a guitar. Liam formed the band Beady Eye with the remaining members of Oasis. Noel later formed his own band called Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. The brothers eventually reunited and went on tour in 2025 after releasing the statement “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”

NEED TO KNOW #2

MOUNTAINS

The highest point in the Atlas Mountains is this peak that’s south of Marrakech

***JEBEL TOUBKAL***

The Atlas Mountains extend for more than 1,200 miles in the northwest African countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The mountains are primarily inhabited by Berber populations. The mountains are named for a Titan from Greek myth who was turned to stone by Perseus, who used Medusa’s severed head. The mountains are divided into sections including the Aurès Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tell Atlas, Middle Atlas, Anti-Atlas, and High Atlas. The last of those sections is home to Jebel Toubkal (or Mount Toubkal, since “Jebel” means “mountain” in Arabic). It is 13,665 feet tall and is about 40 miles south of the Moroccan city of Marrakesh. The Rif Mountains are also in Morocco, but are not part of the Atlas Mountains.

Cities in the Atlas Mountains include Ifrane, which is popular for skiing and is nicknamed “Morocco’s Switzerland.” Also in Morocco is the Todgha Gorge, which is a series of river canyons. The Atlas Mountains are home to most of the world’s population of Barbary macaques. They were formerly home to the Atlas bear and Barbary lion, both of which went extinct due to human hunting. The mountains were the site of a secret prison called Tazmamart, which was used by Morocco’s King Hassan II during the Years of Lead.

NEED TO KNOW #3

LAWYERS

Mary L. Bonauto of GLAD Law argued on behalf of this Ohio man in a landmark Supreme Court case in 2015

Read more

12/7, 12/14, 12/21, 1/4, 1/11, 1/18, 1/25, 2/1, 2/8, 2/15, 2/22, and 3/1

There are 5-10 questions in each of these categories:

Academic, Fine Arts, Geography, History of the Americas, Literature, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Television, Science, Sports, and World History.

Many of the questions are pretty hard, so I’d say a score of around 48 correct answers or more is very good (out of 96 total questions).

For hundreds of more questions, check out these previous Recap Quizzes:

• 3/26/23 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 7/9/23 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-7923-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 12/10/23 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-121023-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 3/17/24 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-31724-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 6/23/24 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-62324-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 3/2/25 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-3225-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 3/30/25 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-33025-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 5/25/25 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-52525-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 7/27/25 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-72725-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 8/17/25 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-81725-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 3/8/26 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-3826-recap-quiz-special-edition

• 3/22/26 = https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-32226-recap-quiz-special-edition

ACADEMIC

1. James Garfield’s campaign biography (titled From Canal Boy to President) was written by what man, who is probably better known for his novel Ragged Dick?

2. What southeast U.S. city was either named for a soldier who died in the Seminole Wars or the character from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It who wins the love of Rosalind?

3. Who wrote a 1979 book that focuses on Project Mercury and the seven astronauts who were selected to fly spacecraft for it?

4. Who wrote the books The Princess Bride and Marathon Man, both of which were adapted into movies for which he wrote the screenplay?

5. In Norse myth, Heimdall uses what instrument to awaken the gods for the Battle of Ragnarök?

6. What two-word French term, which means “to speak the truth,” is used to determine if a juror is biased or cannot deal with the issues fairly?

7. Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford opens with what seven words, followed by “the rain fell in torrents”?

8. The title character gives the St Crispin’s Day Speech before the Battle of Agincourt in what William Shakespeare play?

9. What cat, who inspired Domenico Scarlatti’s “Cat Fugue” by walking on the keys of the harpsichord, shares its name with a Stravinsky ballet and a masked commedia dell’arte character?

10. The painter Lucas Cranach the Elder is probably best known for painting portraits of what man (seen below) and his wife Katherina von Bora?

1. ***HORATIO ALGER***

2. ***ORLANDO***

3. ***TOM WOLFE*** (the book is The Right Stuff)

4. ***WILLIAM GOLDMAN***

5. ***GJALLARHORN*** [GYAH-lur-horn]

6. ***VOIR DIRE*** [vwar-DEER]

7. ***IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT***

8. ***HENRY V***

9. ***PULCINELLA***

10. ***MARTIN LUTHER***

FINE ARTS

1. In 1955, Marian Anderson became the first Black soloist to perform at the Metropolitan Opera when she played the fortune-teller Ulrica in what Giuseppe Verdi opera in which a king wears a black cloak and a red ribbon at the title event?

2. What composer, whose opera Europa riconosciuta (meaning “Europa Revealed”) was performed at the opening of La Scala in 1778, had several famous students, including Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt?

3. Ko-Ko sings “I’ve Got a Little List” (also called “As Some Day It May Happen”) in what Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera?

4. What artist depicted the large woman Sue Tilley lying on a couch in the 1995 realistic nude painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping?

5. George Gershwin’s 1924 piece Rhapsody in Blue was orchestrated by what man, whose own compositions include the Grand Canyon Suite?

6. What 1927 Edward Hopper painting (seen below) depicts a woman wearing one glove and starring at a coffee cup inside the empty title establishment, where food and drink is obtained from vending machines?

1. ***A MASKED BALL***

2. ***ANTONIO SALIERI***

3. *** THE MIKADO***

4. ***LUCIAN FREUD***

5. ***FERDE GROFÉ***

6. ***AUTOMAT***

GEOGRAPHY

1. What world’s largest artificial lake by volume is formed by a dam shared between Zambia and Zimbabwe on the Zambezi River?

2. Located in the Snowy Mountains and named for a Polish general, what mountain in New South Wales is Australia’s highest peak?

3. Prince Edward Island is connected to New Brunswick by what eight-mile-long bridge, which formerly cost $50.25 per car to cross?

4. The Orange River, whose main tributary is the Vaal, is the longest river in what country?

5. What two-letter river flows through the city of Novosibirsk [noh-vuh-sih-BEERSK], which is in southern Russia and is the main city in western Siberia?

6. What is the only state that is both named for a woman and has a capital that is also named for a woman?

7. What German cartographer (1470-1520) published the first map (Universalis Cosmographia) using the name America (in honor of Amerigo Vespucci) for the New World?

8. Manaus is the capital of what Brazilian state (pictured below) that is the largest by area and is named for a body of water?

Read more

This week’s brand new recap will focus on Need to Know clues ($800, $1000, $1600, and $2000 clues) from the episodes re-airing on Monday 7/27 through Friday 7/31. As always, the first half of the recap includes just the clues so you can quiz yourself if you want. The second half gives you some (hopefully) interesting information about the clues and/or some related info.

P.S. Next week’s issue will be a recap quiz featuring ~100 questions based on regular recaps from 12/7/25 to 3/1/26.

NEED TO KNOW #1

HISTORIC NAMES

As its name implies, the Sistine Chapel was named for a pope with this name (confusingly the IV)

NEED TO KNOW #2

LITERARY BEGINNINGS

This Hugo & Nebula-winning author of works like “Kindred” was the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship

NEED TO KNOW #3

SO LONG, FAREWELL, JUST KIDDING

This band, which may sometimes just be James Murphy alone in a studio, held a farewell concert in 2011; years to next tour: 5

NEED TO KNOW #4

MEMOIRS

Presumably rejecting “Olaf Me”, actor Josh’s memoir has this title, punning on our national motto

NEED TO KNOW #5

MEMOIRS

The title of Kim Gordon’s “Girl in a Band” refers to this post-punk outfit she co-founded

NEED TO KNOW #6

THE GOLDEN GLOBES

This actor & show creator who’s taken casts to hotels all over the world accepted the 2023 Golden Globe for Best Limited Series

NEED TO KNOW #7

U.S. BODIES OF WATER

Named for a duke, this nearly 700-mile-long river rises in Kentucky, flows through Tennessee, then back into Kentucky

NEED TO KNOW #8

ADAPTED FOR HIGH SCHOOL

Rian Johnson adapted what he called the weirdly poetic style of Dashiell Hammett for high school in this film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt

NEED TO KNOW #1

HISTORIC NAMES

As its name implies, the Sistine Chapel was named for a pope with this name (confusingly the IV)

***SIXTUS***

Pope Sixtus IV was born with the name Francesco della Rovere in 1414 near Genoa. He succeeded Paul II to become Pope and served from 1471-1484. In 1478, he authorized the the Spanish Inquisition, also known as the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Also in 1478, he backed the Pazzi conspiracy, which failed to overthrow the Medici rulers of Florence. Sixtus IV commissioned Giovanni dei Dolci to build a papal chapel (the Sistine Chapel) within the Vatican Palace. The Sistine Chapel is where the Sacred College of Cardinals elect a new pope.

The Sistine Chapel’s north wall has six frescoes depicting events from the life of Jesus Christ, while its south wall has six more depicting events from the life of Moses. The Sistine Chapel’s ceiling include frescoes by Michelangelo that were commissioned in 1508 by Pope Julius II (the nephew of Sixtus IV, who was a big fan of nepotism). Michelangelo also painted a fresco on the west wall titled The Last Judgment (inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy), which was commissioned by Pope Clement VII in 1534. Much of the nudity in The Last Judgment was later covered up by Daniele da Volterra, who was nicknamed “The Trousers Maker” or “The Breeches Maker.”

NEED TO KNOW #2

LITERARY BEGINNINGS

This Hugo & Nebula-winning author of works like “Kindred” was the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship

***OCTAVIA BUTLER***

The Black sci-fi author Octavia Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena. She was encourage to write by Harlan Ellison, whose own works include the post-apocalyptic story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” She was one of the seven founding authors of the independent publishing company Seven Stories Press. She won a MacArthur Fellowship (aka “Genius Grant”) in 1995. She is the namesake of a landing site within the Jezero crater on Mars, which is where the Perseverance rover touched down in 2021.

Butler’s works include:

• Patternmaster (1976) = her first novel, which was part of a five-volume series about mentally linked telepaths ruled by a 4,000-year-old African named Doro

• Kindred (1979) = novel modeled on a slave narrative in which the Black woman Dana Franklin is transported back in time to a plantation, becomes a slave, and repeatedly rescues her slave-owning ancestor Rufus in order to ensure the survival of her family line

• “Speech Sounds” (1983) = set in a world where most people have lost the ability to communicate, the story centers on characters named Rye and Obsidian forming a deep bond during a ride; the work won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story

• “Bloodchild” (1984) = set on an alien planet, the human Gan has to bear the eggs of an insect-like species called the Tlic; the work won both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award for Best Novelette

• Dawn: Xenogenesis (1987) = first novel in the Xenogenesis trilogy, (now better known as Lilith’s Brood) which is about the intermingling of aliens and humans

• The Parable of the Sower (1993) = dystopian novel in which the hyper-empathetic teenager Lauren founds a new belief system called Earthseed (whose central tenet is “God is Change”) and founds the community of Acorn; the novel was part of the planned Earthseed trilogy, which includes Parable of the Talents (1998); Butler died in 2006 before the third book, Parable of the Trickster, could be completed

NEED TO KNOW #3

SO LONG, FAREWELL, JUST KIDDING

This band, which may sometimes just be James Murphy alone in a studio, held a farewell concert in 2011; years to next tour: 5

Read more

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES

Marlee Matlin is a lifetime honorary trustee of this DC school, & was one of its commencement speakers in 2022

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

Named for an explorer, it’s alphabetically first of the seas surrounding Antarctica

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

BEYOND THE SEA (the correct response is beyond the word “sea” alphabetically)

This terrier named for a Welsh estate is said to be brave & spirited

TRIPLE STUMPER #4A & 4B

BRITISH TV CRIME SHOWS

In “Dept. Q”, this actor plays Carl Morck, an Englishman wearily solving cases in Scotland

TS - The show’s title tells us eccentric Horace Rumpole is a defense lawyer working here, the central criminal court of England

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

BOOKS & AUTHORS

Virginia Evans had a sleeper hit with this 2025 novel whose title refers to the letter-writing Sybil Van Antwerp

TRIPLE STUMPER #6

ONE-WORD ALBUM TITLES

“You Need To Calm Down” & “Cruel Summer” are tracks on this 2019 offering from Taylor Swift

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

POP CULTURE NICKNAMES

This star, director & writer who won an Oscar for his 1996 film was called “the hillbilly Orson Welles” by Robert Duvall

DAILY DOUBLE #1

ON THE MOVIE POSTER

1986: 2 dog tags in place of 2 “O”s in a title

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

Anna Karina’s first husband was what Frenchman who directed the 1960 movie Breathless?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

Washington’s three national parks are Mount Rainier NP, Olympic NP, and what other national park that has a cardinal direction in its name?

BONUS CLUE #1

TIPPLES IN LIT

The title of this Kurt Vonnegut novel doesn’t mean a Wheaties slogan--it’s how a cocktail waitress in the book refers to martinis

BONUS CLUE #2

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

South of Tahiti, Pitcairn Island was settled by this man, formerly a first mate

BONUS CLUE #3

BIRTHSTONES

In Native American lore, this December birthstone was believed to be pieces that fell from the sky

BONUS CLUE #4

POETRY IN MOTION PICTURES

Featured in the trailer, "28 Years Later" included a 1915 reading of "Boots" by this British poet, about Boer War marchers

BONUS CLUE #5

5 SIXTHS

Elected in 1492, corrupt & worldly Pope Alexander VI was from this vastly powerful family

BONUS CLUE #6

I'M OUTTA HERE

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz was the 1st Fortune 200 exec to resign -via tweet; he wrote this type of poem suited to the medium

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES

Marlee Matlin is a lifetime honorary trustee of this DC school, & was one of its commencement speakers in 2022

***GALLAUDET UNIVERSITY***

Gallaudet [GAL-uh-det] University is a school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington DC. The land for the university was donated by Amos Kendall, who served as Postmaster General from 1835-1840 for Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Dr. I. King Jordan became the university’s first deaf president in 1988 following the Deaf President Now protests. The university’s football team pioneered the huddle in the 1890s to prevent other teams from seeing their sign language. Its mascot is Gally the Bison. The university is named for Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), who co-founded the first American school for the deaf in 1816 in Hartford, CT. He was inspired to create the school after the girl Alice Cogswell went deaf and lost her speech as a result of an illness.

The deaf actress Marlee Matlin was born in 1965 in Illinois. At the age of 21, she became the youngest person to win the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in the 1986 movie Children of a Lesser God. The movie centers on a deaf custodian (played by Matlin), who marries a speech teacher (played by William Hurt). Conflict arises when he wants her to assimilate into the hearing world, while she wants to communicate using only ASL. Along with being the first deaf performer to win an Oscar, Matlin is one of four women to win Best Actress in their screen debut. The other three women are Shirley Booth (1952’s Come Back, Little Sheba), Julie Andrews (1964’s Mary Poppins), and Barbra Streisand (1968’s Funny Girl).

Matlin played the title character on a 1993 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Lip Reader.” She had a recurring role from 1993-1996 on the CBS drama Picket Fences, which was created by David E. Kelley and focused on the eccentric residents of Rome, Wisconsin. Her character, Laurie Bey, goes from being a bank robber nicknamed “The Dancing Bandit” to mayor. Matlin co-starred in the 2021 movie CODA, which was directed by Sian Heder and won Best Picture.

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

Named for an explorer, it’s alphabetically first of the seas surrounding Antarctica

***AMUNDSEN SEA***

The explorer Roald Amundsen was born in 1872 in Norway. He was part of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897-1899), which was the first to spend the winter in the Antarctic. Aboard the Gjøa (1903-1906), he led the first expedition that traversed the Northwest Passage (sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific that goes through the Arctic).

In 1911, Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole. He did so five weeks before Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. Amundsen used sled dogs to transport supplies across Antarctica, while Scott used ponies and died on the way back. Amundsen wore Burberry clothing, which protected him from the cold, but didn’t trap sweat.

In 1926, Amundsen became the first to fly over the North Pole, doing so in the airship Norge with the Italian pilot Umberto Nobile and American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, among others. In 1928, Amundsen died while trying to rescue Nobile, whose airship crashed near the North Pole. The author Roald Dahl, who was born in Wales to Norwegian parents, was named for the explorer.

Antarctica is surrounded by the Southern Ocean, which contains twelve seas. The Amundsen Sea is located off the coast of a portion of West Antarctica called Marie Byrd Land. It is named for the wife of Richard Byrd and is Earth’s largest unclaimed territory. The largest of the dozen seas is the Weddell Sea, which is bordered by the Antarctic Peninsula. It is where Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance became trapped in ice and sank.

For more about Robert Falcon Scott, check out Daily Double #1 from this past recap: https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-february-3-2023

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

BEYOND THE SEA (the correct response is beyond the word “sea” alphabetically)

This terrier named for a Welsh estate is said to be brave & spirited

Read more

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

MOVIES ABOUT MOVIES

A 2025 film with Guillaume Marbeck as Godard & Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg looks back at this 1960 French movie

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

CARS & TRUCKS

The name of this Toyota truck comes from a Native American name for Mount Rainier

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

REAL & METAPHORICAL ROADS

"Life is difficult" is the first line of this classic self-help book by M. Scott Peck

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

GIMME 5 SYLLABLES

It’s the fear of words, which would be pretty terrible to have right now in the middle of a language category

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

WORLD CITIES

In October 2023 Hurricane Otis hit this Pacific resort area, the largest city in Mexico’s Guerrero state

TRIPLE STUMPER #6

ASTRONOMY

The constellation Taurus includes both the Hyades & this star cluster, M45

DAILY DOUBLE #1

POEMS

Milton’s poem this man “Agonistes”, meaning enduring a struggle, describes him as “eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves”

DAILY DOUBLE #2

TALKIN’ TED TALKS

This Brit’s talks have included “A Magna Carta for the Web” & “The Year Open Data Went Worldwide”

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

What Frenchwoman wrote the plays ‘Art’ (1994) and God of Carnage (2006)?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What Brazilian actor played Pablo Escobar on Narcos and was nominated for an Oscar for starring in the 2025 movie The Secret Agent?

BONUS CLUE #1

GREAT SCOTS!

His name lives on in the waterproof garments he developed using a special rubber preparation between layers of cloth

BONUS CLUE #2

WORLD CITIES

It’s the African capital where locals shouted “Ali, bomaye” before a heavyweight bout in 1974

BONUS CLUE #3

IN BETWEEN

Henry VIII is buried next to this wife who came between Anne Boleyn & Anne of Cleves

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

MOVIES ABOUT MOVIES

A 2025 film with Guillaume Marbeck as Godard & Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg looks back at this 1960 French movie

***BREATHLESS***

The 1960 movie Breathless (or À bout de souffle, which means “Out of Breath” in French), was the first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Part of the French New Wave movement, the movie popularized jump cuts. The film’s premise was provided by fellow New Wave director François Truffaut. The movie stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as the Bogart-loving petty crook Michel, who kills a policeman. He flees to Paris where he tries to win over the aspiring American journalist Patricia (played by Jean Seberg), but she eventually betrays him to the police. A 1983 remake of the movie starred Richard Gere and was set in Los Angeles. The 2025 movie Nouvelle Vague (whose name means “New Wave”) chronicles the shooting of the original Breathless. Jean Seberg was played by nepo baby Zoey Deutch [DOYTCH]. Her father is Howard Deutch (directed Pretty in Pink) and her mother is Lea Thompson (played Lorraine in Back to the Future).

The director Jean-Luc Godard was born in 1930 in Paris. He wrote for the film magazine Cahiers [kah-YAY] du Cinéma (meaning “Notebooks on Cinema”). He directed the short 1958 documentary Operation Concrete, which was inspired by his time working as a construction worker on the Grande Dixence Dam in Switzerland. Along with Jean-Pierre Gorin, he co-founded a Marxist filmmaking collective called the Dziga [DEE-guh] Vertov Group (named for a Soviet documentarian) in 1969. Quotes attributed to Godard include “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun” and “The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” He called 1960s French students “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” Godard died in 2022 after undergoing an assisted suicide procedure in Switzerland.

Godard was married to the Danish-born actress Anna Karina from 1961-1965. She was born Hanne Karin Bayer, but took her Tolstoy-esque stage name from a suggestion given by Coco Chanel. She starred in A Woman Is a Woman (1961), which was Godard’s first color movie. It is a musical romcom starring Karina, whose character of Angéla wants to have a baby, but her lover doesn’t; a notable scene in the movie involves them silently arguing by pointing to book titles.

Other movies by Godard include:

• Contempt (1963) - focuses on the disintegration of a marriage and is titled for the emotion that Camille (played by Brigitte Bardot) feels for her submissive husband, the screenwriter Paul (played by Michel Piccoli); Paul is hired to rewrite a film adaptation of The Odyssey that is directed by Fritz Lang (who plays himself); Camille leaves Paul for the movie’s producer (played by Jack Palance), but they soon die together in a car crash

• Bande à part (1964, its title means “Band of Outsiders”) - two small-time criminals (Franz and Arthur) convince their classmate Odile (played by Karina) to help them steal cash at her aunt’s villa; a memorable scene from the movie involves the three main character successfully breaking the world record for running through the Louvre (9 minutes and 43 seconds); the movie’s title inspired the name of a film production company co-founded by Quentin Tarantino (A Band Apart), and a scene in the movie inspired the dance sequence in Pulp Fiction

• Alphaville (1965) - tech noir movie in which the secret agent Lemmy Caution (played by Eddie Constantine) travels to the title dystopian city (governed by the supercomputer Alpha 60) and attempts to kill the city’s creator (Professor Von Braun) and save his daughter Natacha (played by Karina) by teaching her love

• Pierrot le Fou (1965, its title means “Pierrot the Fool”) - focuses on the bored man Ferdinand (played by Belmondo), who runs away with his former lover Marianne (played by Karina), who is being chased by the OAS; after Ferdinand kills Marianne for betraying him, he paints his face blue and blows himself up

• Weekend (1967) - black comedy that begins with Roland and Corinne planning to kill her mother for the inheritance, but ends with Corinne joining a cannibalistic gang and eating him; the movie was inspired by the Julio Cortázar story “La autopista del Sur” (”The Southern Thruway”)

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

CARS & TRUCKS

The name of this Toyota truck comes from a Native American name for Mount Rainier

***TACOMA***

Mount Rainier [ray-NEER] (14,410 feet tall) is the highest mountain in the state of Washington. It is about 40 miles southeast of the city of Tacoma and 60 miles southeast of Seattle. Its three major peaks are Liberty Cap, Point Success, and Columbia Crest, the last of which is the summit. It was seen by the explorer George Vancouver in 1792 and was named for his friend and Royal Navy officer Peter Rainier. Mount Rainier is home to the largest glacier by volume (Carbon Glacier) and the largest by area (Emmons Glacier) in the continental U.S. Glaciers on the mountain form the Puyallup River, which flows for about 45 miles before emptying into Puget Sound. Marianne Moore’s poem “An Octopus,” which describes a trip up the mountain, has a title that refers to the glaciers that covers the top of the mountain.

Mount Rainier is the 17th tallest mountain in the U.S., and out of the 50 tallest peaks, it is the only one not in Alaska, California, or Colorado. The mountain is the namesake of Rainier cherries, which are yellow. They were developed by a Washington State University researcher and are a cross between the Bing and Van types. Washington’s state quarter depicts a king salmon breaching the water in front of Mount Rainier, along with the year it became a state (1889) and its nickname (”The Evergreen State”). Mount Rainier is also the highest mountain in the Cascades, which are about 125 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean and stretch from southern British Columbia to northern California. The Cascades include Mount Hood (highest peak in Oregon) and Mount Saint Helens (volcano in Washington that erupted in 1980 and killed 57 people).

The state of Washington contains three national parks. One is named for Mount Rainier and the other two are:

• North Cascades National Park = located along the US-Canada border in north-central Washington, it is divided into two sections by the Skagit River; the national park contains the tallest waterfall in the continental U.S. (Colonial Creek Falls, which falls more than 2500 feet)

• Olympic National Park = located on the Olympic Peninsula in northwestern Washington, it contains the Olympic Mountains (including Mount Olympus) along with rainforests such as the Hoh and Quinault; the national park is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

REAL & METAPHORICAL ROADS

“Life is difficult” is the first line of this classic self-help book by M. Scott Peck

Read more

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

PLAYS & PLAYWRIGHTS

In this deity-titled play by Yasmina Reza, parents who get together to discuss their unruly kids end up throwing tantrums themselves

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

FILMS FROM THE 2020s

Before the Brazil-set “The Secret Agent”, Wagner Moura was a journalist in a war-torn U.S. in this film

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

BAND BOOKS

“Nikki is set on fire to the eminent displeasure of the carpet” is an early line in “The Dirt”, about this ‘80s metal band

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

BUILDING PROJECTS

An unofficial “race” between Japanese & Korean firms led to the construction of these, well southwest of both nations

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

ALLITERATIVE LITERATURE

This collection begins with a poem not by the credited author but by his rival Ben Jonson, commenting on an engraving

DAILY DOUBLE #1

ISLE 5

This Greek archipelago is so named because it forms a rough circle around the island of Delos

DAILY DOUBLE #2

QUOTATIONS

This Supreme Court justice in 2023, a year after being sworn in: “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life”

DAILY DOUBLE #3

ECONOMISTS

This former treasury secretary has been called “the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of economics”

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

What woman’s poem about “purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain” was inspired by a trip to the top of Pikes Peak?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What 1962 work by John Steinbeck is subtitled “In Search of America” and is titled for his French poodle?

BONUS CLUE #1

LITERARY RIDES

TS - The wreck of the Pequod liberates one of these containers as a “life-buoy” for Ishmael; it was originally built for an ailing Queequeg

BONUS CLUE #2

OHHH, MONSIEUR

Imagine a Frenchman in 1881: "Mon dieu, Pasteur! Immunizing cattle to eradicate this awful bacterial disease! C'est incroyable!"

BONUS CLUE #3

TRIBUTES

To her 1910 funeral, “the survivors of the Balaclava Light Brigade Charge” sent an arrangement “to our benefactress & friend”

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

PLAYS & PLAYWRIGHTS

In this deity-titled play by Yasmina Reza, parents who get together to discuss their unruly kids end up throwing tantrums themselves

***GOD OF CARNAGE***

The author Yasmina Reza was born in 1959 in Paris. Her play ‘Art’ premiered in France in 1994. It centers on three friends (Serge, Marc, and Yvan) who argue over a work of modern art (a completely white painting with some slightly-less white lines by the fictional artist Antrios) after Serge pays two hundred thousand francs for it. For the work, Reza won Molière Awards for Best Playwright and Best Author. The play premiered on Broadway in 1998 (starring Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina) and won a Tony for Best Play.

Reza is also known for the play God of Carnage (or Le Dieu du carnage in the original French), which premiered in Zurich in 2006. The play centers on two couples who discuss a fight between their 11-year-old sons (Ferdinand and Bruno). It premiered on Broadway in 2009 and starred Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, and Marcia Gay Harden. It won the Tony for Best Play, making her the only woman to have won two Tony Awards for Best Play. The only person with more than two wins for Best Play is Tom Stoppard, who has five. The play God of Carnage was adapted into the 2011 movie Carnage, which was directed by Roman Polanski. It starred Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz.

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

FILMS FROM THE 2020s

Before the Brazil-set “The Secret Agent”, Wagner Moura was a journalist in a war-torn U.S. in this film

***CIVIL WAR***

The actor Wagner Moura [VAHG-ner MOR-ah] was born in 1976 in the city of Salvador (Portuguese for “savior”), which is the fifth-most populous Brazilian city (after São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and Fortaleza). The city is the capital of the state of Bahia (Portuguese for “bay”), which is in northeast Brazil and is located on the Bay of All Saints (named for being visited by Amerigo Vespucci in 1501 on All Saints’ Day aka November 1).

Moura made his Hollywood debut as a hacker in the 2013 movie Elysium, which starred Matt Damon. He learned Spanish to play the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar on the first two seasons of the Netflix TV drama Narcos (2015–17). The show co-starred Pedro Pascal as a DEA agent tasked with bringing him down. Along with Parker Posey, Moura had a recurring role as a seasoned spy on the Amazon Prime Video show Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024), which starred Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as new spies. Moura played a Reuters journalist in the 2024 movie Civil War, which co-starred Kirsten Dunst and was written and directed by Alex Garland. Moura starred in the 2025 movie The Secret Agent, which is set during Brazil’s military dictatorship. Nominated for an Oscar, he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Actor in a Drama at the Golden Globes.

Moura directed the 2019 movie Marighella, which is titled for the Brazilian guerrilla fighter Carlos Marighella, who was also born in Salvador, Bahia in 1911. Marighella founded the group ALN (stands for National Liberation Action when translated from Portuguese), which opposed Brazil’s military dictatorship. He funded the group by robbing banks and kidnapping foreign diplomats. He wrote the book Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla.

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

BAND BOOKS

“Nikki is set on fire to the eminent displeasure of the carpet” is an early line in “The Dirt”, about this ‘80s metal band

Read more

DAILY DOUBLE #1

A THING OF BEAUTY

Katharine Lee Bates’ line about “purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain” was inspired by a trip to the top of this mountain

DAILY DOUBLE #2

STEINBECK

This novella says certain gems “were accidents, & the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God”

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

20th CENTURY NOVELS

David Ben-Gurion called this 1958 book “as a piece of propaganda... the greatest thing ever written about Israel”

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

NAMES IN ENTERTAINMENT

Among his numerous accolades are 3 Tonys, 3 Emmys, 5 Grammys & a 2016 Pulitzer Prize

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

TV

“Frolic”, a circusy sounding march by Italian film composer Luciano Michelini, was used as the theme to this HBO series

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

TABLE SCRAPS

“Table” in Latin, this constellation was mapped by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

MONEY

This country’s 200 peso note honors the martyred Mirabal sisters who led a resistance movement against dictator Rafael Trujillo

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

FRONT & SENATOR

On May 15, 1967 Governor Ronald Reagan had a debate about Vietnam with this first-term senator from New York

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

What actress played Princess Anne on seasons three and four of The Crown and played Briony, who gives Jamie a psychiatric evaluation, on the show Adolescence?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

In 1990, Tupac Shakur joined what Oakland hip-hop group as a roadie and was a backup dancer on their hit song “The Humpty Dance”?

BONUS CLUE #1

TABLE SCRAPS

The Vicious Circle was another name for this celebrated group that first met for lunch in 1919

BONUS CLUE #2

WINE, WOMEN & SONG

In 1966 this “Sinnerman” legend sang, “I made wine from the lilac tree, put my heart in its recipe”

BONUS CLUE #3

GIVE ME SOME “SKIN”

This title of a Pulitzer Prize play about a family evading disasters ends the dentally wrong cliché “We escaped by...”

BONUS CLUE #4

NORTHERN EUROPE

This country is said to have more islands than any other in the world; there are 30,000 just in the archipelago named for its capital

BONUS CLUE #5

LET US SING OF BIOPICS

Punk before “Punk’d”, Gary Oldman did it his way as this British sort-of-singer

BONUS CLUE #6

19th CENTURY LITERATURE

In this novel a murderer tells the title character a story that he in turn tells a ship captain in the Arctic

DAILY DOUBLE #1

A THING OF BEAUTY

Katharine Lee Bates’ line about “purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain” was inspired by a trip to the top of this mountain

***PIKES PEAK***

Pikes Peak is located in central Colorado about ten miles west of Colorado Springs. It is part of the eastern portion of the Rockies called the Front Range. Its elevation is 14,115 feet, making it the easternmost of the 96 fourteeners in the U.S., most of which are in Colorado (53). It is the most visited mountain in the U.S. and second in the world (behind only Mount Fuji). The peak was encountered in 1806 by Zebulon Pike while exploring the Louisiana Purchase. Pike later named La Crosse, Wisconsin before participating in the War of 1812 and dying at the Battle of York (in present-day Toronto). Pikes Peak lacks a punctuation mark due to United States Board on Geographic Names, which generally does not recognize the use of possessive apostrophes.

The view from the summit of Pikes Peak inspired the Katharine Lee Bates poem “America the Beautiful,” which was later turned into a song and became a patriotic anthem. The first woman to officially finish a marathon, Arlene Pieper, did so in 1959 by completing the Pikes Peak Marathon. It involves using the 13-mile Barr Trail, which has an 11% grade, to make the ascent and descent. Winning times are usually around four hours. The mountain is also home to an automobile race called the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, which is nicknamed “The Race to the Clouds.”

DAILY DOUBLE #2

STEINBECK

This novella says certain gems “were accidents, & the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God”

***THE PEARL***

The author John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in the California city of Salinas, which is in Monterey County. His 1947 short story “The Pearl” centers on a Mexican pearl diver named Kino, who finds a valuable pearl. After being set upon by greedy townsfolk, he throws the pearl back into the ocean. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for his “realistic and imaginative writings” that combine “sympathetic humor and keen social perception.”

Steinbeck’s works include:

• Of Mice and Men (1937 novella) - centers on the migrant laborers George Milton and Lennie Small, who dream of owning a farm with rabbits and living off the fat of the land; Lennie is mentally challenged and accidentally kills a woman; George shoots Lennie in the head rather than let him be captured by a vengeful lynch mob; its title comes from a line from the English version of the Robert Burns poem “To a Mouse” (“The best-laid schemes of mice and men / Go oft awry”); the novella’s original title was Something That Happened; it was adapted into a 1992 movie starring Gary Sinise (George) and John Malkovich (Lennie)

• The Red Pony (1937 novella) - its four stories include “The Gift,” in which Jody is given the title animal, named Gabilan, but it catches a cold and dies

• The Grapes of Wrath (1939 novel) - set during the Great Depression, it centers on the Joad family migrating from the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma to California, which is flooded with surplus labor; the novel ends with Rose of Sharon breastfeeding a starving man; its title comes from “Battle Hymn Of The Republic”

• East of Eden (1952 novel) - a re-creation of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel; its title refers to the land of Nod, where Cain dwelt after he murdered Abel; the novel’s characters include the farmer Adam Trask and his two twin sons, Cal and Aron, who were abandoned by their parricidal mother Cathy Ames, who owns a brothel

• Travels with Charley (1962 travelogue) - subtitled “In Search of America,” it is about Steinbeck’s experiences as he drove across the U.S. in the camper Rocinante (named for Don Quixote’s horse) along with the titular French poodle

For more about Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row, check out Daily Double #1 from this past recap: https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-june-4-2023

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

20th CENTURY NOVELS

David Ben-Gurion called this 1958 book “as a piece of propaganda... the greatest thing ever written about Israel”

Read more

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

KUDOS

Brit Stephen Graham won Emmys for writing, producing & acting in this 2025 series that explored the impact of social media on strangers

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

MUSICAL POTENT POTABLES

Hennessy pioneered Black representation in ads & years later this rapper titled a song for it on his posthumous album “Loyal to the Game”

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

NOTABLE GEOGRAPHY

This smallest Central American country is also the only one that doesn't border the Caribbean Sea

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

THE LONG & SHORT OF IT

At 33 days, he had the shortest papal reign since the 1600s

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

She’s the forensic pathologist in best-sellers by Patricia Cornwell & played by Nicole Kidman in a 2026 Prime Video series

TRIPLE STUMPER #6

(SONG TITLES) (Give the part of the title outside the parentheses)

Shaboozey, checking in from 5th Street: “(Tipsy)”

TRIPLE STUMPER #7

TENNIS

It’s the only Grand Slam to have been played on 3 different surfaces: grass, clay &, since 1978, hard courts

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

OPERA CHARACTERS

Her aria “un bel dì, vedremo” says, “One fine day we will see... a strand of smoke over the far horizon... & then the ship appears”

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Justice Denied in Massachusetts” protested the 1927 execution of what duo?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What Booker Prize-winning 2024 novel by Samantha Harvey centers on six astronauts aboard the International Space Station over the course of one day?

BONUS CLUE #1

A CHEEKY CATEGORY

In “On the Waterfront”, Brando says, “I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody instead of a” this

BONUS CLUE #2

POORS

In an 1862 novel he wrote the line “Jean had no work. The family had no bread... seven children”

BONUS CLUE #3

HISTORICAL HODGEPODGE

This son of a Magyar chieftain founded abbeys & bishoprics during his reign & was canonized along with his son in 1083

BONUS CLUE #4

FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

Sinclair Lewis caused an uproar with his novel about this flawed but charming evangelist, played on film by Burt Lancaster

BONUS CLUE #5

LITERARY STRUCTURES

Adam Dalgliesh solves the murder of an author found hanged in “The Lighthouse”, a mystery by this baroness

BONUS CLUE #6

BLANK VERSE

From “Invictus”: “I am the master of my fate; I am the ____ ____ ____ ____”

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

KUDOS

Brit Stephen Graham won Emmys for writing, producing & acting in this 2025 series that explored the impact of social media on strangers

***ADOLESCENCE***

The British show Adolescence was released on Netflix in 2025. It centers on a 13-year-old named Jamie. who is accused of fatally stabbing a female classmate. The show’s four episodes center on his arrest, the investigation, his psychiatric evaluation, and his family members. Each episode (~60 minutes) is one continuous take. Jamie was played by Owen Cooper, who made his film debut as Young Heathcliff in the 2026 movie Wuthering Heights. Jamie’s dad (and “appropriate adult”) was played by Stephen Graham, who also co-created and co-wrote the show. Jamie’s psychiatric evaluation was made by Briony, played by Erin Doherty, who previously played Princess Anne on seasons three and four of The Crown. At the 2025 Emmy Awards, the show won Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, while Cooper, Graham, and Doherty all won acting awards.

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

MUSICAL POTENT POTABLES

Hennessy pioneered Black representation in ads & years later this rapper titled a song for it on his posthumous album “Loyal to the Game”

***TUPAC SHAKUR***

The rapper Lesane Parish Crooks was born in 1971 in Brooklyn. His mother was Afeni Shakur, who was part of the Black Panthers. She was part of a group called Panther 21, who were accused of plotting violent attacks (e.g. bombing police stations). While pregnant, she represented herself at trial and helped reveal that undercover cops incited the violence. Tupac’s original last name of Crooks was in honor of fellow inmate Carol Crooks. At the age of one, he was renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur in honor of the 18th century Peruvian revolutionary Túpac Amaru II, who rebelled against Spanish rule.

In 1990, he joined the Oakland hip-hop group Digital Underground as a roadie and was a backup dancer on their hit song “The Humpty Dance.” In 1991, he released his debut solo studio album 2Pacalypse Now. It includes the song “Soulja’s Story,” whose lyrics state he’d rather shoot a cop than let one shoot him (“Drop them or let ‘em drop you? / I chose droppin’ the cop”), which prompted Dan Quayle to say “This music has no place in our society.”

Tupac co-starred in the 1992 movie Juice, whose title is a slang term for respect and power. Along with three other Harlem teenagers (including one played by Omar Epps), his character Bishop robs a convenience store and fatally shoots the owner. Bishop spends most of the rest of the movie trying to cover his tracks. Tupac also co-starred in the 1993 movie Poetic Justice, in which Janet Jackson made her film debut and played a poet / hairdresser named Justice. She gets a lift to Oakland with her friend Iesha (played by Regina King) and a postal clerk / aspiring rapper named Lucky (played by Tupac). The poet Maya Angelou wrote the poems attributed to Justice and had a small role as well as Aunt June. The movie was directed by John Singleton.

Tupac released his second album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z... in 1993 and was in jail for sexual abuse when his third album Me Against the World was released in 1995. The latter hit #1 on the Billboard 200 and included the song “Dear Mama.” Its lyrics include “You always was committed / A poor single mother on welfare, tell me how you did it / There’s no way I can pay you back / But the plan is to show you that I understand / You are appreciated.” Tupac’s fourth album All Eyez on Me was released in February of 1996. The album hit #1 as did its songs “California Love” and “How Do U Want It.” The latter song featured K-Ci & JoJo, who are probably best known for their 1998 hit “All My Life.”

Tupac was killed as a result of a September 1996 drive-by shooting. Earlier in that evening, he watched the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson boxing match at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, which “Iron Mike” won via TKO in less than two minutes. Duane Davis was arrested for the shooting and his trial is currently scheduled for August 2026. Duane Davis is the uncle of Orlando Anderson, who was attacked by Tupac’s entourage after the boxing match. A member of Tupac’s entourage claimed that Anderson had previously stolen a necklace from him. Two months after 2Pac’s death, his posthumous album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory was released under the stage name Makaveli. Tupac’s other posthumous albums include Loyal to the Game (2004), which includes the song “Hennessey.” Tupac’s ashes were moved to Soweto in South Africa in 2006.

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

NOTABLE GEOGRAPHY

This smallest Central American country is also the only one that doesn’t border the Caribbean Sea

Read more

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

WRITERS’ ALMA MATERS

We wonder if she burned the candle at both ends while studying at Vassar; she graduated in 1917

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

ALL KINDS OF LIT

2025 Booker Prize winner “Flesh” by David Szalay is about István, a young man born in this country

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

GREAT LEGS

Odin’s steed was this 8-legged horse

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

TV PERSONALITIES

Perhaps destined for success, she has 1st & last names that are associated with the Hindu goddess of prosperity & good fortune

DAILY DOUBLE #1

THE 1930s

Marguerite Perey discovered this element in 1939 but had to wait a little while to name it for her homeland

DAILY DOUBLE #2

8-LETTER CITIES

Check out the nightclub MECA for dancehall music in this world capital

DAILY DOUBLE #3

GO WITH THE FLOW

The Dong Nai & Ben Cat join this river, which still goes by its original name, unlike the former capital it flows through

DAILY DOUBLE #4

GREAT LEGS

In 2025 this international sports star nicknamed “Mr. Spice” said he never skipped leg day as a pro

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

Paul Mescal played William Shakespeare in a 2025 movie that was based on a novel by what author?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

Griffin Dunne starred in and Martin Scorsese directed what 1985 movie, which inspired an episode of Ted Lasso focusing on Coach Beard?

BONUS CLUE #1

TV: WHO SAID IT? (name the character)

To her schoolmates at Nevermore Academy: “It’s amateurs like you who give kidnapping a bad name”

BONUS CLUE #2

CLASSICAL MUSIC

This Austrian composer’s symphony No. 2 of 1894 is popularly known as the “Resurrection” symphony

BONUS CLUE #3

MOVIES BY CHARACTERS

Set in South L.A.: Doughboy & Furious Styles

BONUS CLUE #4

UNLIKELY AUTHORS

Set around Tikrit, "Zabibah & the King" is a historical romance novel from 2000 attributed to this man

BONUS CLUE #5

The prestigious Fields Medal for mathematics depicts him on one side & his sphere inscribed in a cylinder on the other

BONUS CLUE #6

ESSAYS

TS - In “Street Haunting” she takes readers on a romp through 1920s London while on an outing to buy a pencil

BONUS CLUE #7

ESSAYS

His collection "The Purple Decades" includes the essay "The Me Decade & the Third Great Awakening"

BONUS CLUE #8

AROUND THE WORLD

The only places in mainland Africa where the euro is official currency are in territories of this nation

BONUS CLUE #9

DON’T TRUST YOU

Keep it on the down low! The group at the heart of this Donna Tartt novel accidentally killed a guy & covered it up

BONUS CLUE #10

HOLIDAYS & OBSERVANCES

July 6, 2025 was designated a “Day of Compassion” & the start of a “Year of Compassion” in honor of his 90th birthday

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

WRITERS’ ALMA MATERS

We wonder if she burned the candle at both ends while studying at Vassar; she graduated in 1917

***EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY***

The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Maine. Her first acclaim came when her work “Renascence” appeared in a 1912 collection of contemporary poetry. The poem begins “All I could see from where I stood / Was three long mountains and a wood; / I turned and looked another way, / And saw three islands in a bay.” Her 1920 collection A Few Figs from Thistles included the poem “First Fig,” which begins “My candle burns at both ends.”

Millay’s 1922 work The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems included many sonnets, including one that begins “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, / I have forgotten.” Another sonnet from the collection begins “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.” In the collection’s title poem (”The Ballad of the Harp Weaver”), a poor mother weaves clothing for her son using a magical harp, but freezes to death in the process.

Millay’s 1927 poem “Justice Denied in Massachusetts” protested the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. It begins “Let us abandon then our gardens and go home / And sit in the sitting-room.” Millay is mentioned in the official slogan of the firemen in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451: “Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then burn the ashes.” According to British author Thomas Hardy, “America has two great attractions: the skyscrapers and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

ALL KINDS OF LIT

2025 Booker Prize winner “Flesh” by David Szalay is about István, a young man born in this country

***HUNGARY***

Recent Booker Prize winners include:

• 2020 = Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (born in Scotland, but has lived in the U.S. since 2000) - set in the 1980s in Glasgow, the title youth attempts to care for his alcoholic mother Agnes

• 2021 = The Promise by Damon Galgut (born in South Africa) - set in between 1986 and 2018 on a farm near Pretoria, a dying white family’s matriarch (Rachel) makes her husband (Manie) promise to give the family’s Black domestic worker (Salome) ownership of the house and land she lives on, but her children (Anton, Astrid, and Amor) refuse to honor it

• 2022 = The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (born in Sri Lanka) - set in 1989 in Colombo and written in second-person, the title photographer has seven “moons” (days) to figure out who murdered him and whether to be reincarnated or linger as a ghost

• 2023 = Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (born in Ireland) - set in Dublin in the near-future, the mother Eilish Stack tries to protect her family while Ireland slips into a totalitarian regime

• 2024 = Orbital by Samantha Harvey (born in Kent, England) - centers on six astronauts aboard the International Space Station over the course of one day (16 orbits around Earth)

• 2025 = Flesh by David Szalay [SOL-oy] (born in Montréal, Québec to a Hungarian father) - a Hungarian man serves in Iraq, moves to England, becomes a driver for a wealthy businessman, and has an affair with the businessman’s wife

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

GREAT LEGS

Odin’s steed was this 8-legged horse

Read more

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

SAY THE CELEB’S NAME RIGHT!

A type of drink leads folks to screw up this “Hamnet” star’s name, but put the stress on the first syllable instead

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

THAT’S 2 HOURS OF MY LIFE...

In “The Year of Magical Thinking”, Vanessa Redgrave played this “poet of the great Californian emptiness”

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

MOVIE MUSICALS

Satine is dying of tuberculosis in this 2001 flick, but she’s got songs to sing, & mon dieu! The show must go on!

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

BIRDS

There are several species of this colorful Central American flyer; the resplendent one is Guatemala’s national bird

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

BODIES OF WATER WITH FEMALE NAMES

Rising in County Cavan, this river is named for a goddess who opened a well to the Celtic underworld

TRIPLE STUMPER #6

HISTORY ON TV

Tom Tykwer, known for directing “Run Lola Run”, returned to the same city to co-create the Weimar Republic drama “Babylon” here

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

21st CENTURY TV

The title of this series that premiered in 2012 goes back to a colloquial word coined by Alben Barkley’s grandson

DAILY DOUBLE #1

THAT’S 2 HOURS OF MY LIFE...

A one-man show about this man who defended Leopold & Loeb, among others, is titled “A Passion for Justice”

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

What man, who shared the 1901 Nobel Peace Prize with Frédéric Passy, co-founded the Red Cross?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What first president of the UAE is the namesake of a Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi and that city’s main airport?

BONUS CLUE #1

CHILDREN'S VERSE

A Robert Browning poem about this legendary figure begins, “Hamelin town’s in Brunswick / By famous Hanover City”

BONUS CLUE #2

UNLIKELY MEETINGS

A 1959 luncheon brought together Marilyn Monroe, Carson McCullers & this author, aka Isak Dinesen

BONUS CLUE #3

BEACH READS

A Colson Whitehead novel is set in the summer of 1985 at this title Long Island village, the center of the “Black Hamptons”

BONUS CLUE #4

MAMMA MIA!

Born in Canada & raised in Iowa, Hulda Minthorn was the mother of this U.S. president

BONUS CLUE #5

WEST SIDE STORIES

He introduced us to characters like Chief Bromden & Randle McMurphy, who were stuck in an Oregon psychiatric hospital

BONUS CLUE #6

"W"HERE IT HAPPENED

In 1815 the Duke of Wellington & General Blucher celebrated at an inn called la Belle Alliance just south of this village

BONUS CLUE #7

LANDSCAPE ART

Combining a double portrait & a landscape, “Mr. and Mrs. Andrews” is by this Englishman also famous for a “Blue” portrait

BONUS CLUE #8

THE SAME NAME GAME

A Depression-era gangster & a “Bloody Valentine” musician from Ohio

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

SAY THE CELEB’S NAME RIGHT!

A type of drink leads folks to screw up this “Hamnet” star’s name, but put the stress on the first syllable instead

***PAUL MESCAL***

The actor Paul Mescal [MESS-cull] was born in 1996 in County Kildare in Ireland. He co-starred with Daisy Edgar-Jones in the steamy BBC/Hulu miniseries Normal People (2020), which centers on the on-again, off-again romance of Connell and Marianne. It was based on a Sally Rooney novel. He had a small role in the 2021 movie The Lost Daughter, which was based on an Elena Ferrante novel. Mescal starred in the 2022 movie Aftersun (which you can watch for free on YouTube), in which he plays a father who hides his depression while taking his daughter on vacation to a Turkish resort. He co-starred with Andrew Scott in the 2023 movie All of Us Strangers, which was based on Taichi Yamada’s novel Strangers.

Mescal starred in the 2024 sequel Gladiator II, in which his character Lucius gets enslaved and is forced to fight in the Colosseum. Mescal played William Shakespeare in the 2025 movie Hamnet, which co-starred Irish actress Jessie Buckley as his wife Agnes [AHN-yes] Hathaway. The movie centers on their grief after their 11-year-old son dies. It was directed by Chloe Zhao and was based on a Maggie O’Farrell novel.

Paul Mescal will play Paul McCartney in The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, which will be released in 2028. Harris Dickinson will play John Lennon, Joseph Quinn will play George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan will play Ringo Starr. You will have to wait even longer to see Mescal in Merrily We Roll Along, which is being directed over 20 years by Richard Linklater and will be released in the 2040s. Mescal previously dated Phoebe Bridgers and appeared in the music video for her 2020 song “Savior Complex.” Mescal is currently dating another singer, Gracie Abrams (daughter of the filmmaker J. J. Abrams), whose hit songs include “That’s So True.”

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

THAT’S 2 HOURS OF MY LIFE...

In “The Year of Magical Thinking”, Vanessa Redgrave played this “poet of the great Californian emptiness”

***JOAN DIDION***

The author Joan Didion was born in 1934 in Sacramento and was a pioneer of the New Journalism movement. She got her start writing film reviews for Vogue, but got fired for writing a negative review of The Sound of Music (”Just whistle a happy tune, and leave the Anschluss behind”). Her first novel was titled Run River (1963) and centers on the disintegration of a California family. In 1964, she married fellow writer John Gregory Dunne (whose nephew was the actor Griffin Dunne, who starred in the 1985 movie After Hours). Didion’s second novel, Play It as It Lays (1970), centers on a young unemployed actress named Maria Wyeth, who drives aimlessly around California and Nevada. Didion and her husband, along with the director Frank Pierson, co-wrote the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born, which starred Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

Didion’s essays collections include Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), whose title was inspired by a line from the Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” The collection’s title essay centers on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Her essay collection The White Album (1979) shares its title with the common name of a 1968 self-titled album by The Beatles. The collection opens with the title essay, which begins “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Didion wrote about her experiences with grief following the 2003 death of her husband in the 2005 memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. The 2005 death of their 39-year-old daughter Quintana Roo (named for a Mexican state on the Yucatán Peninsula) was the subject of the 2011 memoir Blue Nights.

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

MOVIE MUSICALS

Satine is dying of tuberculosis in this 2001 flick, but she’s got songs to sing, & mon dieu! The show must go on!

Read more

DAILY DOUBLE #1

COINING SOME WORDS

On a 1995 German coin, this man’s name appears above a big “X” & 2 images of a hand, one showing just the bone

DAILY DOUBLE #2

WORLD CITIES

This Middle Eastern city, alphabetically first in national capitals, was once a pearl-fishing port

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

IDIOMS & EXPRESSIONS

In the 1830s cities on the Mississippi banned cardsharps, creating more of these, now meaning one who takes big risks

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

U.S. DEMOGRAPHY

The United States’ 3 most densely populated municipalities lie along a 3.5-mile stretch of Palisade Ave. in this state

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

CELEBRITY MEMOIRS

A skinny white sax player joining the band of non-skinny Black singer Barry White is one of the stories in “Life in the Key of” this

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

SHAKESPEARE GOES POP! (name the Bard-isized song)

“Kiki, dost thou possess passion towards mine person? Art thou horsed?”

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

LORD STANLEY'S GREATES HITS

Coming back from a 3-0 deficit in a best of seven series is almost unheard of in sports; but the Islanders did it in 1975 behind goalie Glenn Resch, nicknamed this after Freddie Prinze‘s TV character

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

I’M A LITTLE BIT VERKLIMT

After a long battle Maria Altmann gained ownership of Klimt’s portrait of her aunt, known as this, like the Helen Mirren film about it

BONUS CLUE #1

THE GLORIOUS FIRST OF JUNE

1533: No. 2 in a series, she’s crowned Queen of England, briefly

BONUS CLUE #2

20th CENTURY NOVELS

An introductory note to this novel offered gratitude to “the great profession of architecture and its heroes”

BONUS CLUE #3

LITERARY GENRES

Biography... well, more like a bio of a bio: Adam Sisman’s this man’s “Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson”

BONUS CLUE #4

A DELUGE OF RIVERS

Along the banks of this river in the Dutch capital is the Stopera, a combo opera house & city hall

BONUS CLUE #5

THE TONY AWARDS

2025’s Best Revival of a Musical went to this bloody good show that had Joe Gillis singing out on 44th Street, not on...

BONUS CLUE #6

YOU IN DANGER, LITERARY GIRL

After she sets Thornfield ablaze, it doesn’t end well for Mr. Rochester’s unstable first wife, named this

DAILY DOUBLE #1

COINING SOME WORDS

On a 1995 German coin, this man’s name appears above a big “X” & 2 images of a hand, one showing just the bone

***WILHELM RÖNTGEN***

Wilhelm Röntgen (or Roentgen) was born in 1845 in present-day Germany. He is most famous for discovering X-rays, for which he earned the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. He also coined their name and used the letter X to indicate their unknown nature. One of the first X-rays (Hand mit Ringen) was of his wife’s hand, which includes some rings. Upon seeing the image, his wife Anna said “I have seen my death.” Röntgen is the namesake of an old-timey unit for measuring radiation exposure. He is also the namesake of element #111 (roentgenium), which has the symbol Rg.

The first winners in other Nobel Prize categories include:

• Chemistry (1901) = Jacobus Henricus van ‘t Hoff [vahn ut HAWF] (Dutch) - “discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions”

• Physiology or Medicine (1901) = Emil von Behring (German) - “serum therapy, especially its application against diphtheria”

• Literature (1901) = Sully Prudhomme (French) - “his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism”

• Peace (1901) = Henry Dunant (Swiss) - “his humanitarian efforts to help wounded soldiers” & Frédéric Passy (French) - “lifelong work for international peace conferences, diplomacy and arbitration”

• Economics (1969) = Ragnar Frisch (Norwegian) & Jan Tinbergen (Dutch) - “developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes”

DAILY DOUBLE #2

WORLD CITIES

This Middle Eastern city, alphabetically first in national capitals, was once a pearl-fishing port

***ABU DHABI***

Abu Dhabi (or Abu Zaby) is the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which was formerly called the Trucial States. The city contains the Sheikh Zayed [ZAH-yed] Grand Mosque, which is named for the first president of the UAE (served from 1971-2004). It is also home to Zayed International Airport, which is a hub for Etihad Airways. Attractions in the city include the theme park Ferrari World, which contains Formula Rossa (formerly the world’s fastest roller coaster at 149 mph). The theme park is on Yas Island (named for the Bani Yas tribe), which is also home to the Yas Marina Circuit (hosts the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix).

The city is home to a skyscraper called Capital Gate, which is also known as the Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi. It was designed to incline 18 degrees, which is three times more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Abu Dhabi is also home to the spherical Aldar Headquarters building. The city is home to Louvre Abu Dhabi, which was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. Located on Saadiyat Island (meaning “Island of Happiness”), it is also home to New York University Abu Dhabi, whose professors include Monica Marks. Other interesting places in the city include the world’s first falcon hospital. A running gag in the comic strip Garfield involves the title orange cat attempting to mail the kitten Nermal to Abu Dhabi.

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

IDIOMS & EXPRESSIONS

In the 1830s cities on the Mississippi banned cardsharps, creating more of these, now meaning one who takes big risks

Read more

P.S. Here is a link to the first Pop Culture Jeopardy! issue (episodes #1-10): https://jaqr.substack.com/p/pop-culture-jeopardy-1-special-edition

Episode #11

NAME THE L.A. MUSICIAN (DD)

“Last Time That I Checc’d,” the Crenshaw & Slauson intersection was renamed in his honor after his 2019 death

Episode #12

JUKEBOX MUSICALS (DD)

“You Oughta Know:” this Tony-nominated musical features the songs of Alanis Morissette

Episode #13

BOLD-FASHIONED (DD)

Quite dapper as a British agent, this actor said Elton John’s rather extreme sense of flair rubbed off on him

Episode #14

GEOGRAPHY LESSON (FJ)

A hub of Black life and music, the 3rd of this city’s historic 6 wards is the childhood home of a world-famous singer and her sister

Episode #15

AT THE MOVIES (FJ)

The director called this film about a bunch of Gen Zers with no cell service “‘Lord of the Flies’ meets ‘Mean Girls’”

Episode #16

THE MOVIE’S SOUNDTRACK (FJ)

The soundtrack of this 2010 movie includes “We Built Our Own World” and “Dream Within a Dream”

Episode #17

YOU AUGHTS-TA KNOW (DD)

After the pilot, every episode title of a Jennifer Beals series that ran from 2004 to 2009 started with this letter

Episode #18

4-LETTER ALBUM TITLES (DD)

This self-titled 1991 album contains the lyric “but we’re never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy”

Episode #19

LONG-RUNNING SERIES (FJ)

This weekly series began in Chicago and ran from 1970 to 2006; an awards show that uses its name has been ongoing since 1987

Episode #20

CORPORATE CELEBS (DD)

Desperate no more, she’s in the tequila biz with Casa Del Sol and part-owner of L.A.’s women’s pro soccer team Angel City FC

Bonus Clue #1

LET’S WORK IT OUT ON THE REMIX (DD)

Everywhere I go, every smile I see, I know this 1997 Janet Jackson single has the R&B “Deep” remix and the soul “Deeper” remix

Episode #11

NAME THE L.A. MUSICIAN (DD)

“Last Time That I Checc’d,” the Crenshaw & Slauson intersection was renamed in his honor after his 2019 death

***NIPSEY HUSSLE***

Nipsey Hussle was the stage name of the rapper Airmiess Joseph Asghedom, who was born in Los Angeles in 1985. After releasing several mixtapes, he released his first and only album titled Victory Lap in 2018. It includes the song mentioned in the clue, “Last Time That I Checc’d.” That song features the rapper YG, whose name is short for Young Gangsta. The song opens with the lyrics “Last time that I checked / It was 5 chains on my neck / It was no smut on my rep / Last time that I checked / I was sellin’ in the set / Make a quarter mill no sweat / Last time that I checked.” Another popular song by Nipsey Hussle is “Racks in the Middle,” whose title refers to having thousands of dollars of cash in the middle console of a car. One month after that song was released, he was killed outside his Marathon Clothing store in South L.A.

Nipsey Hussle’s stage name was inspired by the comedian Nipsey Russell, who was born in 1918 in Atlanta. He worked at a drive-in restaurant called The Varsity and realized he got bigger tips if he made customers laugh. He became the first Black person to be a regular panelist on a network game show when he joined Missing Links in 1964. On that show, celebrities tried to fill in missing words in unusual stories told by studio contestants. Russell later appeared on many other panel games (e.g. Match Game) and was known for reciting short humorous poems. One example was “The girl who would make my life complete / need not be young and fair / Just be a nymphomaniac / and a multimillionaire,” to which Betty White replied “I’m not a multimillionaire but one out of two ain’t bad.” Russell played Officer Anderson on the 1960s TV show Car 54, Where Are You? and was a police captain in the 1994 movie of the same name. He co-starred in the 1970 sitcom Barefoot in the Park, which notably had a predominantly Black cast. He played the Tin Man in the 1978 movie The Wiz, which also starred Diana Ross as Dorothy, Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow, Richard Pryor as The Wiz, and Lena Horne as Glinda.

Episode #12

JUKEBOX MUSICALS (DD)

“You Oughta Know:” this Tony-nominated musical features the songs of Alanis Morissette

***JAGGED LITTLE PILL***

The album Jagged Little Pill was released in 1995 by the Canadian singer Alanis Morissette (aka God, at least in the Kevin Smith movies Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Songs on the album include:

• “You Oughta Know” = scornful takedown of a former lover, widely believed to be Dave Coulier aka Uncle Joey on Full House (her 2008 album Flavors of Entanglement was inspired by Ryan Reynolds breaking off their engagement); its chorus is “And I’m here, to remind you / Of the mess you left when you went away / It’s not fair, to deny me / Of the cross I bear that you gave to me / You, you, you oughta know;” it features the RHCP members Dave Navarro and Flea playing the guitar and bass, respectively; it was recently performed at karaoke by Dr. Trinity Santos (played by Isa Briones) and Dr. Mel King (played by Taylor Dearden, the daughter of Bryan Cranston) in a post-credits scene at the end of Season 2 of The Pitt

• “Hand in My Pocket” = optimistic song whose music video is set during a parade; its lyrics include “And what it all comes down to / Is that everything’s gonna be fine, fine, fine / ‘Cause I’ve got one hand in my pocket / And the other one is givin’ a high five;” the song was the original choice for the theme song of the TV show Dawson’s Creek, but its rights couldn’t be secured

• “Ironic” = ironically lists a bunch of scenarios that are actually just unfortunate coincidences or dramatic turns of fate; its chorus states “It’s like rain on your weddin’ day / It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid / It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take / And who would’ve thought? It figures;” the music video is set in a car in which she plays four different characters

• “You Learn” = about personal development and embracing life’s lessons; its chorus is “You live, you learn, you love, you learn / You cry, you learn, you lose, you learn / You bleed, you learn, you scream, you learn;” its line “Swallow it down (like a jagged little pill)” inspired the title of the album

• “Head over Feet” = about falling in love with your best friend; the song may have originated the term “friend with benefits;” its chorus begins “You’ve already won me over / In spite of me / And don’t be alarmed if I fall / Head over feet”

Episode #13

BOLD-FASHIONED (DD)

Quite dapper as a British agent, this actor said Elton John’s rather extreme sense of flair rubbed off on him

Read more

DAILY DOUBLE #1

"LOL"

A book by Simone de Beauvoir is titled “Brigitte Bardot and the” this literary character “Syndrome”

DAILY DOUBLE #2

CABINET MEMBERS

Just like Kiefer Sutherland on the TV show, the 2010 choice as this was the HUD secretary, Shaun Donovan

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

AMERICAN LITERATURE

He won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930 shortly after his novel “Dodsworth” had been published

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

ON YOUR MERRY WAY

Hanna Glawari, the title character of this operetta, does a spirited Kolo dance in the second act

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

THE GREAT DAYS OF JAZZ

NYC’s first racially integrated nightclub, Café Society opened in 1938 & this singer hooked audiences with “Strange Fruit”

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

RECORD LABELS

After releasing Nirvana’s low-budget debut album in 1989, this Seattle-based label became synonymous with the grunge movement

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

SPORTS VENUES

Surface material laid down in 1909 gave a landmark venue this nickname; a 36-inch strip remains today

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

What actor played the cameraman Larry in Groundhog Day, Roland Schitt on Schitt’s Creek, and Lily’s dad on How I Met Your Mother? He and his daughter Abby have both been cast members on SNL.

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What Black woman has directed the movies Candyman (2021), The Marvels (2023), Hedda (2025), and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)?

BONUS CLUE #1

AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE

In the 1930s an automobile showroom occupied the first 2 floors of this building at 42nd & Lexington in Manhattan

BONUS CLUE #2

TV SHOWS BY COUPLE

Dylan & Brenda, upscale sweethearts

BONUS CLUE #3

20th CENTURY NAMES

Shunned by his religion when he went to study law in England, he met Christians who helped him awaken a “religious quest”

BONUS CLUE #4A

BONUS CLUE #4B

U.S. NATIONAL PARKS

Bryce Canyon National Park is known for these rock formations created by millions of years of weathering & erosion

You’ll need a permit for the Angels Landing hike in this national park about 160 miles northeast of Las Vegas

BONUS CLUE #5

THE GREAT DAYS OF JAZZ

John Coltrane’s liner notes to a masterpiece say God’s “way is in love, through which we all are. It is truly--” this title

BONUS CLUE #6

A REPUBLIC

The pink Palacio de López in Asunción is where this republic’s government business gets done

BONUS CLUE #7

WHERE THE RESOURCES ARE

This stuff doesn't occur in metallic form in nature, but if you want to make it, maybe talk to bauxite-rich Brazil

BONUS CLUE #8

GEOGRAPHY “B”

Beginning in the Himalayas, this big river flows some 1,800 miles before joining the Ganges & emptying into the Bay of Bengal

DAILY DOUBLE #1

“LOL”

A book by Simone de Beauvoir is titled “Brigitte Bardot and the” this literary character “Syndrome”

***LOLITA***

The feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir was born in 1908 in Paris. She attended the Sorbonne, where she met her lifelong partner Jean-Paul Sartre. They were not monogamous though, and her lovers included Nelson Algren (American author of the novel The Man with the Golden Arm). Beauvoir is best known for the 1949 work The Second Sex. She refuted the concept of the “eternal feminie” with the line “One is not born, but rather becomes, (a) woman.” The book’s introduction states that historically “He is the Subject ... she is the Other.”

Beauvoir also wrote the 1954 novel The Mandarins, which was dedicated to Algren. It centers on a group of Parisian intellectuals (likened to ancient Chinese elites) who grapple with the fallout of World War II. It is a roman à clef [roh-mahn ah KLAY], meaning “novel with a key” (e.g. Henri Perron is modeled on Albert Camus). The novel won the Prix Goncourt, which is the most prestigious French literary award.

Beauvoir’s 1959 essay “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome” was first published in the magazine Esquire. It argued that the outrage directed at the title actress in France was caused by the inability to cope with a woman operating sexually on equal terms with men. Beauvoir’s petition known as the Manifesto of the 343 was published in 1971. It called for the legalization of abortion and was signed by title number of women, who all declared that they had an abortion, which was illegal at the time. The manifesto helped pave the way for the Veil Act in 1976, which decriminalized abortion in France.

For a little about the novel Lolita and other works by Nabokov, check out Final Jeopardy #2 from this past recap: https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-january-27-2023

DAILY DOUBLE #2

CABINET MEMBERS

Just like Kiefer Sutherland on the TV show, the 2010 choice as this was the HUD secretary, Shaun Donovan

***DESIGNATED SURVIVOR***

The Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland was born in England in 1966. His father Donald played the title detective in the 1971 movie Klute and President Coriolanus Snow in the first four Hunger Games movies (2012-2015). Kiefer was named for the film director Warren Kiefer, who directed Donald’s first credited movie (1964’s Castle of the Living Dead). Kiefer Sutherland’s mother Shirley Douglas also did some acting and was the daughter of the Baptist minister Tommy Douglas. He established a system of state-run health care while serving as premier of Saskatchewan (1944-1961) and later was the first leader of the New Democratic Party (1961-1971).

Kiefer Sutherland played the gang leader Ace in the 1986 movie Stand by Me, which centers on a group of Oregon boys (played by Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell) who are searching for the dead body of a missing boy. He played a leader of a vampire motorcycle gang in the 1987 movie The Lost Boys. Sutherland co-starred with Julia Roberts in the 1990 movie Flatliners, which centers on a group of medical students who conduct experiments that produce near-death experiences. He played one of the title characters (along with Charlie Sheen and Oliver Platt) in the 1993 movie The Three Musketeers. He took a sabbatical in the mid-90s to work as a professional cowboy on the rodeo circuit.

Sutherland is best known for playing the counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer on the Fox drama 24. His character prevents assassination attempts, stops nuclear bombs from detonating, and infiltrates Mexican drug cartels. Elisha Cuthbert played his oft-kidnapped daughter Kim, Mary Lynn Rajskub [RICE-kub] played the analyst Chloe O’Brian, and Dennis Haysbert played the U.S. President David Palmer. The show had eight seasons from 2001-2010, along with a 2008 TV movie titled 24: Redemption and a half-length season in 2014 titled 24: Live Another Day.

Kiefer Sutherland has also starred on the TV drama Designated Survivor. His character, Tom Kirkman, begins the show as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In the pilot episode, he serves in the title role during the State of the Union address and becomes U.S. President after there is a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. Kal Penn played the White House Communications Director, and Maggie Q played a CIA officer who investigates the attack. The show’s first two seasons were on ABC (2016-2018), and its third and final season aired on Netflix (2019).

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

AMERICAN LITERATURE

He won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930 shortly after his novel “Dodsworth” had been published

Read more

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

FILMS OF THE 1990s

In French, this 1993 film is called “Un jour sans fin”

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

PLAY CHARACTERS

This title character of an 1890 play is often called “the female Hamlet”

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

BIG OLD CHUNKS OF TIME

The name of the oldest geologic eon, when Earth looked like a fiery hellball, is a reference to this Greek god

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

AROUND THE WORLD

In 2025, 4 of this king’s fairytale castles in Bavaria, including Neuschwanstein, made UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

COLD WAR HISTORY

The U.S. fought its longest war against this country known for harsh winters; in the early years, fighting waned during cold weather

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

THE CELEBRITY’S FAVORITE TEAM

Kid Rock, who got to party with the Stanley Cup

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Alison Bechdel of “Fun Home” fame loves “Mansfield Park” & identifies with this lead character

TRIPLE STUMPER #6

TRAVEL & TOURISM

Take a tour of the Vienna State Opera House & see the frescoes depicting Papageno, a character in this Mozart opera

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

What man, who served as Secretary of State for John Tyler (and William Henry Harrison and Millard Fillmore) negotiated the treaty that followed the Aroostook War?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What city on Lake Tanganyika is Burundi’s most populous and was replaced as the capital by Gitega?

BONUS CLUE #1

WORK UNION

He made a few enemies during his service from 1957 to 1971 leading what was then America’s largest union

BONUS CLUE #2

AROUND THE WORLD

Less than 3% of the people in Zambia & this next door neighbor, directly north of Namibia, are age 65 or over

BONUS CLUE #3

WORLD HISTORY

In 1454 the future Pope Pius II saw the work of this man at the Frankfurt Fair & marveled at the “extreme elegance & accuracy”

BONUS CLUE #4

This big lake named for a French marine minister begins its name with a way that official might conceivably cross the body of water

BONUS CLUE #5

THE “G.B.”s

On June 3, 1875, 3 months after the premiere of his opera set in Seville, heart issues killed this Frenchman at 36

BONUS CLUE #6

IT’S ALL HISTORY

A failed attempt to convert a chieftain to Christianity led to this man’s death at the Battle of Mactan in 1521

BONUS CLUE #7

GOOD HANG

In the atrium of the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington hangs a large & gently spinning work by this American artist

BONUS CLUE #8

INSPIRED BY

This 1982 No. 1 hit was inspired by “Splendor in the Grass”, a classic film about the failed expectations of teens Wilma & Bud

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

FILMS OF THE 1990s

In French, this 1993 film is called “Un jour sans fin”

***GROUNDHOG DAY***

The 1993 movie Groundhog Day stars Bill Murray as the TV weatherman Phil Connors. He is is trapped in a time loop and wakes up each day to Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” The movie co-stars Andie MacDowell (aka Margaret Qualley’s mom) as his love interest Rita Hanson. Chris Elliott (aka Roland Schitt from Schitt’s Creek) plays the cameraman Larry, while Stephen Tobolowsky (that tall bald dude) plays the annoying insurance salesman Ned Ryerson. The movie was directed by Harold Ramis, who also directed Caddyshack and National Lampoon’s Vacation. The movie was filmed in Woodstock, Illinois. If you google the name of the movie, you get the message “Did you mean: Groundhog Day,” which could potentially result in an endless cycle of clicking.

Groundhog Day is observed every year on February 2, which is also when Candlemas is celebrated. Groundhog Day is named for the rodent Marmota monax, which is also known as a woodchuck. The holiday centers on Punxsutawney [punk-suh-TAW-nee] Phil, who is named for a location in west-central Pennsylvania. The holiday is inspired by a German one called Badger Day. Canada’s version of Punxsutawney Phil is Wiarton Willie, which is a groundhog with white fur who is named for a town in Ontario.

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

PLAY CHARACTERS

This title character of an 1890 play is often called “the female Hamlet”

***HEDDA GABLER***

Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen wrote the 1890 play Hedda Gabler. The title character is bored by her marriage to the scholar George Tesman. Her former schoolmate Thea leaves her husband for George’s rival Eilert, who was once in love with Hedda and is a recovering alcoholic. Hedda jealously encourages Eilert to attend a party, where he gets drunk and loses the only copy of his manuscript. Hedda gets her hands on the lost manuscript and secretly burns it while saying “Now I am burning your child.” Hedda sends Eilert one of her father’s pistols and successfully convinces him to kill himself. Judge Brack finds out what Hedda did and tries to sexually blackmail her, but she kills herself with a pistol instead. The plays ends with Judge Brack exclaiming “Good God!—people don’t do such things.”

In a 2006 play titled Heddatron, a Michigan housewife is kidnapped by robots, transported to a South American jungle, and is forced to play the title role in Hedda Gabler. That play was written by Elizabeth Meriwether, who created the TV show New Girl (2011-2018). Tessa Thompson starred in a 2025 queer movie adaptation titled Hedda, which was directed by Nia DaCosta (who also directed The Marvels and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple).

For more about Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, check out Final Jeopardy #3 from this past recap: https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-october-5-2025

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

BIG OLD CHUNKS OF TIME

The name of the oldest geologic eon, when Earth looked like a fiery hellball, is a reference to this Greek god

Read more

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

1840s AMERICA

Massively unpopular, he faced the threat of impeachment over his veto of a national bank bill

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

TOTAL VALLEY SPEAK, DUDE

It was not rad in East Africa when a 6.8 earthquake in 2005 was centered under this oldest & deepest of the Rift Valley lakes

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

MATERIALS

tennis.com said 1989 was the last time a tour event was won with a wood racquet, actually this type of melded material, wood & graphite

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

21st CENTURY TV THEME SONG LYRICS (name the show)

A recent Jagger little pill: “Surrounded by losers, misfits & boozers... you made one mistake, you got burned at the stake”

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

FAMOUS LISTS

A famous list of this many items is found on the 1972 comedy album “Class Clown”

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

THE CANADIAN ALBUM CHARTS

In 2025 Taylor Swift tied Drake & this singer for the most no.1 albums on Billboard's Canadian Albums chart, with 15

FINAL JEOPARDY #3

PLAYS & PLAYWRIGHTS

The first version of a 1960s play by this man had a slightly different title, ending with “Meet King Lear”

DAILY DOUBLE #1

SCHOOL OF LIT

Sharing the title of a Dostoyevsky novel, this Elif Batuman book is about a smart but also clueless Harvard freshman

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

Lake Louise and the eponymous Mount Little (which is part of the Valley of the Ten Peaks, whose French name is Vallée des Dix Pics) are in what Canadian national park?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

The title character initially supports the reform politician Wally O’Hara in what Lorraine Hansberry play set in Greenwich Village?

BONUS CLUE #1

WE’LL NEED SOME “I.D.”

It was the pen name of Danish author Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke

BONUS CLUE #2

LIMINAL SPACES

Viewers might be struck by how strangely familiar urban spaces are in works like “New York Movie” by this 20th c. painter

BONUS CLUE #3

FEELING YOUR OATS

His 1755 dictionary: “oats...a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

1840s AMERICA

Massively unpopular, he faced the threat of impeachment over his veto of a national bank bill

***JOHN TYLER***

John Tyler, the tenth U.S. president, was born in Virginia in 1790. He served as Virginia’s governor from 1825-1827 and U.S. Senator from 1827-1836. The Whig Party nominated William Henry Harrison for president and Tyler for vice-president in 1840. They used the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” because Tyler led forces that defeated The Prophet (a younger brother of Tecumseh) at the Battle of Tippecanoe in present-day Indiana in 1811. Harrison and Tyler defeated Martin Van Buren and Richard Mentor Johnson in the general election. For more about the latter, check out the third/final paragraph of Final Jeopardy #1 from this past recap: https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-january-28-2024

John Tyler took office upon the death of William Henry Harrison, who only served 31 days. Most people were taught that he died of pneumonia after giving a long inaugural address, but modern research suggests he died of typhoid (the White House’s water supply was downstream of public sewage). Tyler vetoed bills aimed at re-establishing a national bank, resulting in most of his Cabinet resigning, him being expelled from the Whig Party, and being nicknamed “His Accidency.” He was the subject of the first ever impeachment proceedings against a president, although the resolution was rejected. His wife Letitia Christian died in 1842. He became the first president to marry while in office when he married Julia Gardiner in 1844.

Events during John Tyler’s presidency included the signing of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which was negotiated by his Secretary of State Daniel Webster and followed the Aroostook War. The first override of a presidential veto occurred near the end of his time in office when he was a lame duck. He signed a bill annexing Texas a few days before leaving office. After leaving the White House, he moved to a plantation called Sherwood Forest and died in 1862. He is buried in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery, which is also home to James Monroe and Jefferson Davis.

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

TOTAL VALLEY SPEAK, DUDE

It was not rad in East Africa when a 6.8 earthquake in 2005 was centered under this oldest & deepest of the Rift Valley lakes

***LAKE TANGANYIKA***

Lake Tanganyika [TANG-gan-YEE-kah] is the world’s sixth-largest by surface area. It is the world’s third-largest by volume, thanks in part to being the world’s second deepest (4800 feet; Lake Baikal is 5400 feet deep). Lake Tanganyika is one of Africa’s Great Lakes and is the second largest by surface area in Africa (after only Lake Victoria). The lake it more than 400 miles long, but only 10-45 miles wide. The lake is bordered by the DRC to the west, Zambia to the south, Tanzania to the east, and Burundi to the northeast. The lake is connected to Lake Kivu (known for its limnic eruptions that release carbon dioxide) to the north by the Ruzizi River.

The first Europeans to visit Lake Tanganyika were Richard Burton and John Speke, who reached the town of Ujiji (in present-day Tanzania) in 1858. Ujiji is also where Henry Stanley found David Livingstone in 1871. Gombe [GOM-bay] National Park, where Jane Goodall researched chimpanzees, is located on the lake. Cities on the lake include Burundi’s most populous city, Bujumbura, which was replaced as the capital by Gitega.

The world’s oldest passenger ferry, which has been used for around 100 years, is the MV Liemba, which connects Kigoma in Tanzania to Mpulungu in Zambia. The ferry was originally a German ship called the Graf Goetzen, which Germany used to try to control the lake during World War I. The ship was built in 1913, taken apart, and then shipped in 5000 boxes to Kigoma, where it was rebuilt. The ship was scuttled in 1916 after the Battle for Lake Tanganyika, which was won by British and Belgian forces. It was the basis for a warship in the C.S. Forester novel The African Queen. It was adapted into a 1951 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

MATERIALS

tennis.com said 1989 was the last time a tour event was won with a wood racquet, actually this type of melded material, wood & graphite

Read more

DAILY DOUBLE #1

ON THE “M”AP

The name of this Alberta city refers to an actual accessory called a saamis

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

PLAYWRIGHTS

When she was 7, her family moved to the mostly white Chicago neighborhood of Woodlawn, leading to attacks & a Supreme Court case

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

SPORTS & THE MOVIES

In 2026 a New Year’s Day college football game featured these 2 team names that are both Gene Hackman movie titles

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

ENTERTAINING DEMISES

The Season 1 finale of “Barry” killed off Detective Janice Moss, to the dismay of many viewers & of Gene Cousineau, played by him

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

NEARER MY POD TO THEE

“Don’t Hitchhike” & “Never Get in a White Van” are among the “Life Rules” followed by superfans of this hit podcast

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

PLAYING SOME RECENT HITS

In “Taste”, this powerhouse sang that she leaves “quite an impression, 5 feet to be exact”

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

THE STREETS ARE WATER!

Stunning views & Gianni Versace’s onetime mansion line this Miami Beach drive named for the big wet thing nearby

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

CLOCK IT

Housed in a Dutch museum, the oldest surviving pendulum clock was created in 1657, based on a design by this Dutch scientist

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

The Mönch, Jungfrau, and Eiger mountains are in what range of the Alps that is named for a canton of Switzerland?

LAST WEEP RECAP #2

What red-haired “Galloping Ghost” wore #77 for the Chicago Bears and led them to the NFL title in 1932 and 1933?

BONUS CLUE #1

PLAYS & PLAYWRIGHTS

The title object of this Oscar Wilde play is both a fashionable accessory & a mark of femininity

BONUS CLUE #2

CLOCK IT

Not much fruit to be seen in his still life called “The Black Marble Clock“ painted circa 1870

DAILY DOUBLE #1

ON THE “M”AP

The name of this Alberta city refers to an actual accessory called a saamis

***MEDICINE HAT***

Alberta is the alphabetically first of Canada’s ten provinces. It was named for the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria. The rat-free province of Alberta is the westernmost of the three Prairie Provinces and is in between British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Edmonton is the capital of the province. Calgary (located about 175 miles to the south and known for its annual Stampede held every July) is the most populous city in the province. Calgary is named for a castle on the Scottish Isle of Mull, which is the second largest of the Inner Hebrides (after Skye). Other major cities include Lethbridge (in the southwest), Medicine Hat (in the southeast and whose residents are called Hatters), Red Deer (in between Edmonton and Calgary), and Fort McMurray (in the northeast and surrounded by the Athabasca oil sands). Medicine Hat is near a geomorphological feature called the Badlands Guardian, which is an example of pareidolia [par-ih-DOH-lee-uh] (the tendency to perceive faces in random patterns). The term Medicine Hat refers to the headdress worn by medicine men among the Blackfeet people.

National parks entirely within Alberta include Banff (includes the Valley of the Ten Peaks and Lake Louise, the latter of which is known for its blue-green color due to sunlight reflecting off glacial silt), Elk Island (wildlife sanctuary that contains the Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve), Jasper (contains Mount Columbia, the province’s highest peak), and Waterton Lakes (home to the Prince of Wales Hotel and a hiking attraction called the Crypt Lake Trail). Alberta’s two CFL (Canadian Football League) teams are the Edmonton Elks and Calgary Stampeders. Its two NHL teams are the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers. For more about one of those teams, check out Triple Stumper #2 from this past recap: https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-september-14-2025

The three UNESCO World Heritage sites that are entirely within Alberta are:

• Dinosaur Provincial Park = known for its dinosaur fossils (more than 44 species)

• Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump = named for a 36-foot-tall cliff over which hunters chased bison; it is the intended destination of Dr. Robbie’s “vision quest” mentioned in Season 2 of The Pitt

• Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi - contains lots of rock art made by the Blackfeet people

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

PLAYWRIGHTS

When she was 7, her family moved to the mostly white Chicago neighborhood of Woodlawn, leading to attacks & a Supreme Court case

***LORRAINE HANSBERRY***

The playwright Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago in 1930. She is best known for the 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, whose title was inspired by a line from the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes (”What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?”). It was the first play by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. In its first act, members of the Younger family debate how to use a $10,000 insurance check after the death of the family’s patriarch. The widow Lena wants to move from their cramped apartment, her son Walter wants to open a liquor store, and her daughter Beneatha wants to go to medical school. In the second act, Lena puts down a $3500 deposit on a house in the all-white neighborhood of Clybourne Park. She gives the rest to Walter, but the money is stolen.

In the third and final act of A Raisin in the Sun, the family moves into their new house, despite being offered money by their new white neighbors to stay out of the neighborhood. On Broadway, Walter was played by Sidney Poitier, who also played the character in the 1961 film adaptation. Bruce Norris was inspired by the work to write the 2010 play Clybourne Park. Its first act is set in 1959 and includes the white couple who sell their house to the Younger family. The second act is set in 2009 and includes a different white couple who want to the buy the same house, which is now in a gentrifying all-Black neighborhood. It is one of four plays in the book Reimagining A Raisin in the Sun, which also includes Neighbors by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

Hansberry’s second and final play was The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, which is set in the 1960s in Greenwich Village. In the first act, the title character puts a sign in his window supporting the reform politician Wally O’Hara. In the second act, Sidney’s wife Iris leaves him after getting tired of supporting him. In the third act, we learn that Wally is actually corrupt and he admits that nothing will change. Sidney and Iris are reunited when Iris’s sister commits suicide after her boyfriend leaves her upon learning she is a prostitute, not a model. Iris was originally played on Broadway by Rita Moreno. Hansberry died in 1965 at the age of 34 from pancreatic cancer. Her ex-husband Robert B. Nemiroff turned her letters, interviews, and journal entries into a play titled To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. That same title was used for Nine Simone’s song written in her memory.

FINAL JEOPARDY #2

SPORTS & THE MOVIES

In 2026 a New Year’s Day college football game featured these 2 team names that are both Gene Hackman movie titles

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FINAL JEOPARDY #1

MOUNTAINS

“Heidi” was set in Maienfeld, which is northeast from this 13,642-foot peak with a name that describes what Heidi is

DAILY DOUBLE #1

OLD NAMES FOR THINGS

This NFL team first took to the field in 1920 as the Decatur Staleys

DAILY DOUBLE #2

BIO 201

Chapters in a bio of this president include “The Heat in the Kitchen” & “The Moon, the Stars, and All the Planets”

DAILY DOUBLE #3

ART FOR ART’S SAKE

The Glasshouse in Seattle is a one-of-a-kind structure holding a 100-foot sculpture by this artist

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

FAUXK MUSIC

“Never Did No Wanderin’” is a song by The Folksmen, a folk band that gets back together in this Christopher Guest mockumentary

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

POST-APOCALYPTIC PAGE-TURNERS

The 1961 Hugo for Best Science Fiction Novel went to Walter M. Miller Jr., author of “A Canticle for” this last name

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

RECENT HITMAKERS

In 2025, Ella Langley topped the country charts singing “She’s from...” this state; “I can tell by the way he’s two-steppin’ round the room”

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

MARK TWAIN TRACKS

“Mr. Wilson stood elected... within a week he had lost his first name”; this one “took its place”

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

Who designed the Sagrada Família and Park Güell in Barcelona?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What bay, which is the easternmost arm of the Bering Sea, inspired the name of Sarah Palin’s oldest daughter, who had a baby named Tripp with Levi Johnston?

BONUS CLUE #1

THE FAMILY IN THE PLOT

The Clarkes’ marriage is breaking up in this, Roddy Doyle’s Booker Prize-winning novel about their 10-year-old son

BONUS CLUE #2

NUNS THE WISER

17th c. nun Mariana Alcoforado is said to have penned the “Portuguese Letters” that influenced this “Sonnets to Orpheus” poet

BONUS CLUE #3

THE TALE END

Near the end of a 1947 tale from this author, we learn that “the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good”

BONUS CLUE #4

AMAZING ANDREWS

A note that he wrote to his mum inspired “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, a hit for WHAM!, of which he was half

BONUS CLUE #5

FAMILIAR PHRASES

This phrase meaning a commotion over something little predates the Shakespeare title

BONUS CLUE #6

THE 1950s

The announcement declaring this safe & effective was made April 12, 1955, the 10th anniversary of the death of a famous American

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

MOUNTAINS

"Heidi" was set in Maienfeld, which is northeast from this 13,642-foot peak with a name that describes what Heidi is

***JUNGFRAU***

The mountain Jungfrau [YOONG-frow], whose name means “maiden,” is located in Switzerland near the town of Interlaken (named for being between Lake Brienz and Lake Thun). It is part of the Bernese Alps, whose other mountains include the Eiger and the Mönch. The mountain separates the Swiss cantons of Bern and Valais [vuh-lay]. The first people to reach its top were the Meyer brothers (Rudolf and Hieronymus) in 1811. Jungfrau is the namesake of the highest railway in Europe (11,332 feet). The railway can be used to access the nearby Sphinx Observatory (solving a riddle is not required for admission).

Jungfrau is mentioned in several literary works. One example is Lord Byron’s work Manfred, which is a closet drama (a play not intended to be performed on a stage). In the first act, the title character contemplates throwing himself off the mountain before encountering a chamois [sha-mee] (goat-antelope) hunter. The mountain is also mentioned in the William Carlos Williams poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower:”

Do you remember 

                 how at Interlaken 

                             we were waiting, four days, 

to see the Jungfrau 

                but rain had fallen steadily. 

                                   Then 

just before train time 

               on a tip from one of the waitresses

                                  we rushed 

to the Gipfel Platz 

              and there it was! 

                                in the distance 

covered with new-fallen snow.

The mountain is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site called Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch, which is partly named for the largest glacier in the Alps. Switzerland’s other UNESCO World Heritage sites include:

• Lavaux [la-voh] Vineyard Terraces - 2100 acre area that overlooks Lake Geneva (from the Chateau de Chillon to the outskirts of Lausanne) in the canton of Vaud [voh] in the French-speaking western part of Switzerland; they date back to the 11th century, when Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries controlled the land

• La Chaux-de-Fonds [show-duh-FON] & Le Locle [LOCK-luh], Watchmaking Town Planning - located in the canton of Neuchâtel [noo-shah-TELL] in the Jura Mountains near the border with France; it is home to many watchmakers and features many long, parallel streets with south-facing buildings to maximize natural light

• Three Castles, Defensive Wall, and Ramparts of the Market Town of Bellinzona - located in the Swiss canton of Ticino [tih-CHEE-noh] (the southernmost one, it borders Italy and is the only one where Italian is the sole official language), its three castles (Castelgrande, Montebello, and Sasso Corbaro) were built by various Dukes of Milan in the 13th-15th centuries

DAILY DOUBLE #1

OLD NAMES FOR THINGS

This NFL team first took to the field in 1920 as the Decatur Staleys

***CHICAGO BEARS***

The Chicago Bears were originally called the Decatur Staleys because they were founded in Decatur in Central Illinois by the businessman A.E. Staley, who specialized in cornstarch. George Halas (nicknamed “Papa Bear”) was both a player (wide receiver) and the first coach of the team, who was sometimes called the Starchworkers. The team defeated the Moline Tractors 20-0 in their first game and finished the season 10–1–2, finishing in second place in the APFA (American Professional Football Association) to the undefeated Akron Pros (8-0-3).

The team moved to Chicago for the 1921 season, played home games at Cubs Park (later renamed Wrigley Field), and controversially won the league championship (“The Staley Swindle”). They had the same record as the Buffalo All-Americans (9-1-1), but won the tiebreaker since they beat Buffalo the second time the two teams played. In 1922, the Staleys were renamed the Bears and the APFA was renamed the NFL (National Football League). The team finished runner-up three straight seasons (1922-1924), the first two of which were to the undefeated Canton Bulldogs. The team’s best player in these early days was Edward “Dutch” Sternaman, who scored many rushing touchdowns and also kicked many field goals.

In 1925, the Bears signed the red-haired University of Illinois alum Harold “Red” Grange whose nicknames included “The Galloping Ghost” and “The Wheaton Iceman.” He led the team to the NFL title in 1932 and 1933. His teammates included the fullback Bronko Nagurski. The Bears have since retired the numbers 3 (Nagurski), 7 (Halas), and Grange (77). The inaugural class of 17 enshrinees for the Pro Football Hall of Fame included those three individuals. In the 1940s, the Bears were nicknamed “The Monsters of the Midway.” They won four more NFL championships, including in 1940 when they beat Washington 73-0 in the championship game. They were still coached by Halas, who introduced the T-formation offense, and were led by the quarterback Sid Luckman.

DAILY DOUBLE #2

BIO 201

Chapters in a bio of this president include “The Heat in the Kitchen” & “The Moon, the Stars, and All the Planets”

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FINAL JEOPARDY #1

WORLD LANDMARKS

In 2025 a church begun in 1882 became the tallest building in this city

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

STATE GOVERNMENT

Local governments mostly have 2 tiers: cities & towns, aka municipalities, & counties, which in Alaska are called these

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

START ME "UP"

The title of this classic British TV series & its later revival refers to the living quarters of the wealthy versus the servants

TRIPLE STUMPER #3

QUOTABLE NOTABLES

At the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, he announced, “There it is. Take it”

TRIPLE STUMPER #4

MASTERPIECE ON PBS

This Nobel laureate wrote the novels that inspired multiple adaptations, both past & future, of “The Forsyte Saga”

TRIPLE STUMPER #5

FELINE FINE

Janet Jackson had a No. 1 hit with this song that mentions “nine lives”

DAILY DOUBLE #1

LEVELING UP

In 1826 this city became a state capital taking over for Murfreesboro

DAILY DOUBLE #2

GEOGRAPHY

Mainland France has 12 metropolitan regions that are further divided into 94 of these, like Hautes-Alpes

LAST WEEK RECAP #1

What two-word title is shared by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s autobiography and a John Coltrane album that includes the songs “Naima,” “Syeeda’s Song Flute,” and “Mr. P.C.”?

LAST WEEK RECAP #2

What man, who helped create the shows Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place, wrote and produced episodes of the US version of The Office, on which he played Dwight’s brother Mose?

BONUS CLUE #1

INSPIRED LIT

Set in contemporary Baltimore, Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler’s “Vinegar Girl” is a retelling of this 1590’s comedy

BONUS CLUE #2

NOTABLE AMERICANS

In 1909 she joined the Socialist Party & later published “Out of the Dark”, her writings “On Physical & Social Vision”

BONUS CLUE #3

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Nominated for a 2026 Grammy, the guitar duo album “Slavic Sessions” includes 2 of this Czech composer’s “Slavonic Dances”

FINAL JEOPARDY #1

WORLD LANDMARKS

In 2025 a church begun in 1882 became the tallest building in this city

***BARCELONA***

The tallest building in Barcelona, Spain is a church called the Sagrada Família (meaning “Sacred Family” or “Holy Family”), which was designed by Antoni Gaudí [gow-dee]. Construction began in 1882 and was less than 25% complete when Gaudí died 1926 (after being hit by a tram). When asked why it was taking so long to build, Gaudí purportedly said “My Client is not in a hurry” (Client = God). It became the tallest church in the world in 2025 when it surpassed Ulm Minster in Germany.

The Sagrada Família was structurally completed in February 2026, although decorative details will be worked on until around 2034. Gaudí ensured that the church would be slightly shorter than the nearby hill Montjuïc [mon-zhoo-eek] since he believed human creations should not exceed God’s work. The church’s three facades are named Nativity, Passion, and Glory. Each of the three facades are flanked by four towers that represent apostles. The middle section of the church has six larger spires representing the Four Evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus.

The architect Antoni Gaudí was born in Spain in 1852. After graduating from the University of Barcelona’s School of Architecture, his teacher said “We award this degree to a madman or a genius, only time will tell.” He is the subject of a 1984 documentary that was directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and was scored by Toru Takemitsu.

Other works by Gaudí include:

• Casa Batlló [bah-YOH] - it is also known as Casa dels Ossos (meaning “House of Bones”) because of its skeletal facade; its balconies resemble masks and the roof resembles the back of a dragon; it is part of a row of houses called the Block of Discord

• Casa Milà [me-LAH] - it is also known as La Pedrera [pud-RARE-uh] (meaning “The Stone Quarry”) due to its rough-hewn appearance; the chimneys on the roof are known as espanta bruixes (meaning “witch scarers”)

• Park Güell [gwell] - its two gatehouses resemble gingerbread houses; its multicolored mosaic salamander near the entrance is called El Drac and exemplifies the trencadís [tren-kah-DEES] style (or broken tile style); its Hypostyle Room includes 86 striated columns; the park has a serpent-shaped bench designed by Gaudí’s assistant Josep Maria Jujol [zhoo-ZHOL]; the park was commissioned by and is named for the textile magnet and entrepreneur Eusebi Güell

TRIPLE STUMPER #1

STATE GOVERNMENT

Local governments mostly have 2 tiers: cities & towns, aka municipalities, & counties, which in Alaska are called these

***BOROUGHS***

Alaska has 19 county-like organized boroughs. It also has one Unorganized Borough, which is around 56% of the state’s area and is divided into 11 census areas. Somewhat confusingly, Aleutians East is a borough, but Aleutians West is a census area. Some boroughs merged with their namesake cities to form unified city-boroughs (e.g. Anchorage, Fairbanks North Star, Juneau, Ketchikan Gateway, Sitka, and Skagway).

Some of Alaska’s other boroughs include:

• Bristol Bay Borough= the first borough in Alaska, it was named for the easternmost arm of the Bering Sea, which is home to the world’s largest salmon run; it contains a place named King Salmon, which ironically is the capital of a different borough (Lake and Peninsula Borough)

• Kenai [KEE-ny] Peninsula Borough= located south of Anchorage, it also contains a mainland portion that is west of the Cook Inlet; the borough contains Kenai Fjords National Park and the city of Seward (a popular stop for cruise ships)

• Kodiak Island Borough = named for the second-largest U.S. island (behind only Hawaii aka The Big Island), it shares its name with a species of bear that, along with the polar bear, is the largest type of bear (both weigh up to 1500 pounds and stand over 10 feet tall)

• Matanuska-Susitna Borough = located in between Denali and Anchorage, the borough is named for two rivers; the borough contains the city of Wasilla (whose former mayors include Sarah Palin)

• North Slope Borough = it is named for the area that is located on the northern slope of the Brooks Range; the borough includes the city of Utqiagvik (formerly called Barrow) and is south of the Beaufort Sea (a part of the Arctic Ocean)

TRIPLE STUMPER #2

START ME “UP”

The title of this classic British TV series & its later revival refers to the living quarters of the wealthy versus the servants

Read more