All For One, And One For All? Trivia Quiz

Answer: owl

Though owls produce between 1-12 offspring a season depending on food source, climate, and species, they generally have 3-4 owlets in the nest at once making for an excellent comparison to the Three Musketeers. Sadly, owls also generally do not hunt or live in groups preferring to remain solitary or in a mating pair.

Answer: awl

An awl is used in both leather and woodworking. It is a sharp pointed tool for making holes. In leatherwork it is used for putting holes in belts or as a starter for buttonholes. In woodworking, I have most often used it for creating a starter hole for a nail or screw.

In 2014, a 7,000-year-old awl was found along the border between Jordan and Israel. It was the oldest metal tool ever found in that region.

Answer: Juan

Juan Ponce de León, a famous Spanish explorer and conquistador known for explorations in Puerto Rico and Florida, supposedly spent much of his time in what would become the Sunshine State looking for the Fountain of Youth. Though this myth has been told since the early 1600s and was included in my high school textbook back in the 1980s, modern historians generally believe that it is a total fabrication and that Juan was actually looking for the headwaters of Bimini.

Answer: Oyl

Though we tend to think of Olive Oyl as being kind of a side piece for the comic's main character, Popeye, the fact of the matter is that Olive predates Popeye by a decade. In the original strip where they both first appeared, "Thimble Theater", Olive Oyl was the girlfriend of the other main character, Harold Hamgravy.

They were an interesting pair and got into all sorts of scraps with Olive being as rough and tumble as her boyfriend, a far cry from the Fay Wray type she would later become. Popeye originally entered the comic as a seaman the pair hired to pilot them to an illegal gambling island. Of course, as the years went on Popeye took over the strip and Oyl left Ham Gravy for her eventual lover.

Answer: Haul

To haul these days means to move or remove something by the act of pulling, but originally it had an almost exclusively nautical meaning. This becomes apparent when you think about "hauling in the nets", "a good haul of fish", or "having hauled up the anchor". Though not used as often in the US, "haulage" often refers to the transportation of goods by road or railway.

Answer: fur

While there is no such thing as a cheap fur coat, some are far more expensive than others. On the low end, in 2024 dollars, a silver fox coat will set you back a cool 12,000 USD while a mink is nearly triple that at 30,000. Moving up the scale, a chinchilla will run you about 75,000 and a sable 100,000. Finally, a Canadian lynx coat will dent your pocketbook about 200,000 for a belly-fur three-quarter length coat. Happy shopping!

Answer: oil

Though the oil boom in the US started with wildcatters sinking wells in the Northeast, the first well being sunk in Titusville, PA, production very quickly moved west and south with the two most prominent areas for speculative drilling being in Texas and southern California.

The absolute amorality and vicious selfishness of this time can be seen in the fantastic movie, "There Will Be Blood", based on the even better book by Upton Sinclair, "Oil!".

Answer: hall

Yeah, back in the day elementary school could be a terrifying place. Act up or act out and you were likely as not to get a switching from your teacher or at least a ruler on the knuckles, often administered in front of the class, but just as often outside the classroom where the other students could hear and imagine the beating, but not see the consequences. And what is worse, is that you always knew that when you got home your parents were just as likely to give you a second whooping for the same offence.

Answer: fir

Native to the Rocky Mountain areas of the US and Canada, the Douglas fir is a common evergreen tree used for softwood timber production and famously as Christmas trees. The largest Douglas fir ever known to have been felled was one at Loop Ranch in Washington.

It stood at 465 feet and was 33 feet around. Compare that to the largest specimen known in 2024, the Red Creek fir which is 32 feet around and stands 242 feet tall.

Answer: LOL

LOL, or the internet shorthand for "Laugh Out Loud" is very young. Etymologist and linguistic historians love tracking down the first instances of an expression appearing in print, and the provenance of LOL can be traced back to a man named Wayne Pearson who used it in an online chatroom when reacting to a friend's joke.

Interestingly though, the OED lists an earlier use of LOL from the 1960s, but this one meant "Little Old Lady".