Guild Lang Syne Quiz | Thematic Fun

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Excited about the thought of pretending that it was New Years, Uglybird announced that we must have a first footer. He started to look around for the appropriate objects to take with him, when he realized that he was not a suitable candidate for the position. Those of us with Scottish heritage knew what he was talking about but others had to have the concept explained. According to Scottish Hogmanay (New Year) traditions, the first man to set foot in one's house, brings all of the years luck, favorable or unfavorable, with him. Which of the following is a desirable characteristic for the "first-footer"?

Answer: Dark hair

The first-footer is, ideally, a dark-haired stranger bearing gifts, traditionally a lump of coal for the fire, a bottle of whiskey and a bannock (cake). Doctors, gravediggers and ministers do not count as first-footers. Men with eyebrows meeting in the middle are disqualified as well. Possibly because of their historical association with Scandinavian raiders, blondes are also undesirable.

It is traditional to sing "Auld Lang Syne" as the bells chime at midnight, and Scottish poet Robert Burns penned the words for the version of "Auld Lang Syne" from which the currently-used version is taken.

2. After the Guilders had sung a particularly stirring rendition of "Auld Lang Syne", Bruyere started thinking about other songs that were about new beginnings. She had a particular interest in the hauntingly beautiful song "Begin the Beguine", and wanted to share some of her knowledge about it with us. When Cole Porter wrote "Begin the Beguine" in 1934 for "Jubilee", it did not go over as well as when it was used in the "Broadway Melody of 1940", and danced to by Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. Artie Shaw popularized a swinging clarinet version of the tune in 1938. Which of these however, is NOT true about the "Beguine"?

Answer: "Begin the Beguine" was a very short composition, about 40 measures long.

This song was known for being very, very long...180 measures! I fell in love with this melody when I was in an oldies dance band in high school, that played old big band charts. Artie Shaw's clarinet was about the smoothest thing you could imagine. It's easy to imagine this song catching on and selling an enormous amount of records.

The Beguine has apparently fallen out of fashion amongst the official ballroom dancing crowds and the rumba or bolero is preferred. Now comes the link between the beguine and the dance.

In French, the word b�guin or "avoir le b�guin" is used for having a crush on someone. Some have surmised that this came from the women going overboard religiously and devoting themselves to something...in that when you're in love, you're hopelessly devoted. Regardless, the dance's name may have been given to it for 'avoir le b�guin' as it's very close to your partner and moves those hips. If you are interested in the Beguines or the b�guinages where they lived, there are many famous ones to visit in Northern Europe and Ghent in Belgium in particular.

3. Not to be outdone by Bruyere, Gretas had some wonderful trivia to share about the song "We've Only Just Begun", a song that used to be a favourite at weddings back in the 70s and early 80s. "We've Only Just Begun" was a soft rock smash for Karen and Richard Carpenter in 1971. Despite its lasting power as a seventies love anthem, the song was originally composed by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols as background music for a California TV commercial. What type of business was the commercial--and the song--originally written for?

Answer: a bank

The song was originally used as the background for a TV commercial in which a young couple are "just starting out" with the help of a California bank. Richard Carpenter reportedly heard the song and recognized the singer as songwriter Paul Williams. He subsequently contacted Mr. Williams and a hit song was born.

4. Stuthehistoryguy gave his head a shake and said that he too had thought of a song that was about new beginnings, and ironically, like "We've Only Just Begun", it was also performed by an artist who was no longer with us. John Lennon had just released a new album, "Double Fantasy", when he was killed in 1980. Ironically enough, what was the first track on this multi-platinum effort?

Answer: (Just Like) Starting Over

"Double Fantasy", co-credited to Lennon's wife Yoko Ono, was a remarkable posthumous success, and was the only post-Beatles Lennon album to reach number one on the Billboard sales charts. It won the 1982 Grammy for Album of the Year, and boasted the #1 Pop Singles "(Just Like) Starting Over" and "Woman".

5. Pu2-ke-qi-ri decided that it was time to lighten the mood, and informed us that no discussion about new beginnings was complete without visiting the quirky and wonderful world of Country Music. She promised us that we were going to enjoy her question, and set it up by giving us a little introduction- Country Music Cliche: The narrator is having some problems in his personal life. He goes into a bar, where he meets an old man who gives him some advice that turns his life around, and our narrator becomes a new man. Of course, the Austin Lounge Lizards had to have a little fun with this cliche in their song "Old Blevins". We have the narrator who goes into a bar and meets an old man, Old Blevins himself, but what does this old geezer say?

Answer: "Blah blah blahblahblah blah blah blah."

In fact, the refrain consists entirely of Old Blevins' blatherings:
He said "Blah blah blahblahblah blah blah blah.
In Tijuana, blah blah blah, back in 1963,
Blah blah blahblahblah blah blah blah.
You should have been there blah blah blah.
Is what Old Blevins said to me."

But, our narrator does emerge a new man from the experience:
"Old Blevins was still talking when I seized my chance to flee.
Back home she's never known I'm not the fool I used to be.
But I know that a man and a woman's lives were somehow changed,
By a loathsome toothless geezer, incoherent and deranged.
And my memories of that evening fuel an inner mounting fear,
That I might become Old Blevins anywhere that they sell beer!"

Be careful, or you might turn out like the people you hang out with!

The Austin Lounge Lizards are a group out of Texas whose trademark is their humourous and often irreverent approach to their songs.

6. Ing scratched her head for a minute before cracking a big smile. She said. "My question about new beginnings is actually about a television show, but instead of quizzing you on the name of the show, I think I'm going to ask about the name of the theme song." In the BBC comedy "Fresh Fields", we follow a middle-aged suburban housewife as she tries various hobbies to combat her rising boredom. With lyrics (appropriately) by Dorothy Fields, the theme was which Jerome Kern tune?

Answer: Pick Yourself Up

"Fresh Fields" was a mild but occasionally hilarious comedy which followed the exploits of Hester Fields (Julia McKenzie), and her endlessly supportive and patient husband William (Anton Rodgers). Written by John Chapman, it ran from 1984-1986, when it became "French Fields" and - with the addition of writer Ian Davidson - ran until 1991. Supplementary plot-lines were provided by a particularly endearing supporting cast, with Fanny Rowe as Hester's mother Nancy Penrose, and Ballard Berkeley as her charming ex-husband Guy. Ann Beach appeared as friend and nosy neighbour "It's only" Sonia Barratt, and Debby Cumming was daughter Emma, who only ever appeared as a breathless, disembodied voice at the other end of a telephone line.

All the songs listed were written by Jerome Kern (1885-1945) and Dorothy Fields (1905-1974) for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film "Swing Time" (1936). "A Fine Romance" was used as the theme for the sit-com of the same name starring Judi Dench (before she was a Dame!) and Michael Williams. "The Way You Look Tonight" won the Academy Award for Best Song in 1936, and is a movie soundtrack favourite. It was quite poignantly used in the 1991 Steve Martin film "Father of the Bride", and sung beautifully by the ensemble cast (including Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh) in "Peter's Friends" (1992).

7. Nannanut scratched her head and announced that while interesting, the conversation needed some fresh blood injected into it, in the form of some trivia that wasn't about music. She sat up with a sparkle in her eye and said "I know, what this party needs is a little sports' trivia." Australia is a country known for its love of all things sporting. The New Year is right in the middle of the summer holidays and sporting contests abound. Which of the following sports holds the first of Australia's major sporting events each year?

Answer: Cricket

Traditionally the first major event on the Australian sporting calendar is the New Year's Day test match held in Sydney. Australia plays a visiting team from one of the world's leading cricketing nations each year. Cricket test matches are scheduled to be played over five days.

The Australian Open Tennis Tournament is the first of the Grand Slam events and is held over the last two weeks of January in Melbourne.

Australian sailing holds its major event of the year - the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race - starting on December 26th. So while it is a major Summer sport - it falls at the very end of the calendar year.

Rugby League is a winter sport with pre-season matches only starting in March.

8. CellarDoor nodded her approval of the change in focus, and then challenged us to think about the real new beginning, the beginning of the Universe. Everything has a beginning -- even the Universe, although this "Big Bang" idea was once unpopular with scientists. In the 1930s, one physicist tried theorizing that the Universe has had multiple beginnings: each Big Bang is followed by an expansion, then a contraction (into a "Big Crunch"), then a new beginning in a new Big Bang. Which of these famous physicists, a guest star on "The Simpsons" as well as "Star Trek: The Next Generation", proved this idea wrong using the laws of thermodynamics?

Answer: Stephen Hawking

The second law of thermodynamics is one of the most famous rules in physics: the disorder (entropy) of a closed system always tends to increase. This is the law that makes perpetual motion machines impossible. Hawking, in a collaboration with Roger Penrose, showed that this law applies to oscillating universes (which were proposed by CalTech scientist Richard Tolman). Over many cycles, the universe (which is by definition a perfectly closed system) must become very disordered -- much more chaotic than what we observe today. So there has been no new beginning for the Universe we live in; this time around is all that we have.

Hawking is world-renowned for his brilliance (among other things, he holds Isaac Newton's professorship at Cambridge University). He also has a popular following, thanks in part to books like "A Brief History of Time", and in part to his image as a man who has made incredible achievements in the face of incredible adversity: a decades-long battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. He appeared on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in the episode "Descent: Part I" as a holodeck character playing poker with Data, Einstein and Newton; he was the first person ever to portray himself on "Star Trek". In the "Simpsons" episode "They Saved Lisa's Brain", he even won a fistfight with Homer (using a spring-loaded boxing glove) before listening to his theories about a "donut-shaped universe".

9. "Interesting that you should talk about the beginning of the Universe." Polaris101 chimed in. "As I was just reading something really interesting about a space mission that was trying to gather some data about that very thing." Launched in August 2001, the goal of NASA's Genesis mission was to obtain new samples that could be compared with existing data on various planets, in order to better understand the beginnings of our solar system. What kind of samples did the Genesis spacecraft collect?

Answer: solar wind particles

The Genesis spacecraft was inserted into a Halo orbit around L1, one of the points where the gravity between the Earth and Sun balance out. Three collector arrays, which consisted of wafers made of various materials in which the solar particles became embedded, gathered samples from December 2001 through April 2004.

The sample return capsule re-entered Earth's atmosphere on September 8, 2004, but crash landed after its parachute failed to deploy. Despite the impact, solar particles were obtained from wafer fragments. "Search for Origins" was the slogan for the Genesis mission, which was part of NASA's Discovery Program.

Other missions include Stardust, which collected comet dust; Pathfinder, which explored Mars; and NEAR, which landed on the asteroid 433 Eros.

10. All heads turned expectantly towards skunkee, the only one present not to have contributed to the discussion. "Well I hope you're not expecting me to talk about astro-physics or the likes." She muttered defensively. "Actually it seems that we have exhausted this New Year's celebration...maybe it's time to move on to Chinese New Year. Hey, wouldn't it be neat if it actually did turn out to actually be Chinese New Year? Does anybody have a calendar handy?" Does Chinese New Year fall on the same date every year?

Answer: No

Chinese New Year is usually celebrated on the second new moon occurring after the Winter Solstice. However there are some years when extra months are added to the calendar, to allow for the fact that there are differences in the lengths of lunar and solar cycles.

In these years, Chinese New Years falls on the third new moon after the Winter Solstice. The celebrations last for 15 days, ending on the full moon with the Festival of Lanterns. Similar to the Scottish custom of First Foot, discussed by Uglybird, the Chinese have superstitions regarding the first person you encounter on the New Year and the first words that you hear spoken.

These are said to portend what kind of year lies ahead for you.

Source: Author skunkee

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor ozzz2002 before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Guild Lang Syne Trivia Quiz

Some members of the Guild were sitting around celebrating New Years because...well just because it wasn't New Years Eve. The conversation seemed to turn naturally towards new beginnings, and many strange and wonderful things were discussed.

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>