My Chair Exploded Trivia Quiz

Answer: armrest

Upper extremity = arm
Relax = rest
arm + rest = armrest

So there I was all nice and comfy in my recliner when I left to get a snack in the kitchen. Good thing I did because my chair exploded while I was gone and all that was left was an armrest.

In French, two different words are used for chairs depending on whether or not they have armrests - fauteuil (with) and chaise (without).

Answer: rarest

Rarest is called a superlative adjective, meaning it describes the highest quality or degree. In this case an exploding chair could certainly be considered one of the rarest of occurrences.

Answer: stare

When I reentered the room, all I could do was stare at the mess I found. What could cause such a thing? The word stare has roots in Old English that trace back to Proto-Germanic, Old Norse, and High Germanic origins. Originally staring did not connote rudeness as it does today.

Answer: seat

With the seat for my seat gone, I had no choice but to stand. In that sentence I used the word seat with two different meanings - one the place where I sat dating from 1200, and my posterior dating from 1600.

Answer: ate

I decided to sit on the floor and ate my snack while I waited for the investigators to show up. As I thought about the word ate I remembered that Atë (or Até or Aite) was the Greek goddess of infatuation and evil. In fact Shakespeare had Mark Antony invoke her name in the famous line from "Julius Caesar":
"And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Atë' by his side come hot from Hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war."

Answer: team

Soon a team of investigators from ATF showed up at my house. The ATF in the US is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (also BAFT or BAFTE) and is the part of the Justice Department that is usually tasked with investigating bombings.

Answer: meant

The ATF team looked through all of the evidence then told me what it all meant. Clearly someone had rigged my chair to explode making me the target of an assassination attempt. The news was shocking to say the least but as a federal prosecutor such things come with the job.

Answer: inmate

The ATF soon had a suspect in the bombing of my chair, an inmate at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona.

The word inmate traces back to the 1580s when it merely meant someone who lived in another's house, like a renter. It was not until 1834 that it came to mean someone incarcerated in a prison.

Answer: anytime

The ATF decided I needed protection since it seemed the suspect could attempt another attack at anytime. I was assigned a bodyguard until they could determine exactly what was used to blow up my chair and hopefully link it back to the mad bomber.

Answer: dynamite

My mad bomber had indeed used dynamite to blow up my poor chair. Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel in the 1860s. He found a way to stabilize highly volatile nitroglycerin by using an absorbent material that he then packed in a protective coating. He obtained patents in 1867 in both England and Sweden.

His invention was the first safe high explosive that was stronger than black powder. He named it dynamite after the Greek word for power - dynamis.