Chocolate Doesn't Count on Friday Quiz

Answer: Friday's child is loving and giving.

The nursery rhyme predicts the fate that will befall a child, based on the day of the week on which the child was born. "Monday's child is fair of face," it begins in its most common variant. Not all of the predictions are positive (poor "Wednesday's child is full of woe"), but Friday's is: "Friday's child is loving and giving. Saturday's child works hard for a living." This formulation might seem a bit backwards to office workers and students accustomed to Saturday as a day of leisure!

Answer: Friday I'm in Love

"I don't care if Monday's blue," croons the singer. "Tuesday's gray and Wednesday too. Thursday, I don't care about you. It's Friday I'm in love." The Cure, an English alternative rock group, released this single from their album "The Wish," and it had a fantastic reception: Number 6 on the UK Singles Chart and Number 1 on US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks.

A gently sung song with an appealing up-beat, it never fails to start me swaying when it comes on the radio -- Friday or not!

Answer: They are allowed to dress more casually.

The formal business dress code in the West -- suits, complete with jacket and tie, for men and women's suits or skirts and blouses for women -- is regarded by many office workers as uncomfortable and stultifying. Casual Friday is a chance to escape from these requirements and dress down a bit at work.

Of course, the name of the day can be a bit misleading; many offices impose a bare-minimum "business casual" standard, which is still more formal than leisure wear. (For example, on Casual Friday you might be permitted to wear khaki pants rather than suit pants, but jeans are usually out of the question.)

Answer: Retail merchants

According to legend, the term "Black Friday" arose from the old accounting practice of recording losses in red ink and profits in black ink. Retail merchants -- who run stores catering to ordinary consumers, selling things from DVDs to books to clothing -- are thought to operate at a loss for most of the year, their books "in the red." It's only the Christmas shopping season, the legend goes, that compensates for those losses and allows shops to turn a profit for the year -- and Black Friday, the traditional first day of that season, is thus supposed to be the first day all year when retail stores are "in the black."

Why is Black Friday such a big shopping day? There are two major reasons. The first is that, for American Christians, Thanksgiving is the last big holiday before Christmas -- so it's natural to turn one's attention to Christmas gifts only after the turkey is safely digested. The second is that, since Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday, many Americans receive both Thursday and Friday off from work and school. Thursday is devoted to culinary celebrations, but on Friday, well, you have to do something. Why not shop?

Answer: Since it's bad luck for a ship to begin a voyage on Fridays, she'll have an extra day with her husband.

In the West, Friday has often been considered an unfortunate day to make new beginnings; this superstition is often traced to the death of Jesus Christ, which happened on Good Friday. As with many superstitions, this one became much more powerful in the hands of sailors; when your life and safety are at the mercy of the unpredictable, powerful sea, it's natural to seek control over your fate in any way you can.

The poet Robert Southey, in his 1834 book "The Doctor, &c.", wrote of this superstition: "But many a good ship has lost that tide which might have led to fortune, because captain and crew thought it unlucky to begin their voyage on a Friday. You were in no danger of being left behind ... if it were possible for the captain to devise any excuse for remaining till the morrow in harbour."

Answer: Traditionally, Roman Catholics have avoided meat from land animals on Fridays.

Roman Catholics commemorate the death of Jesus Christ -- who is believed to have given up His life in order to save humanity -- on Fridays. In memory of this sacrifice, and in penance for personal sins, Catholics have for centuries given up meat on Fridays. (Seafood is okay, giving rise to the grand tradition of the church fish fry.) Since the 1960s, this has no longer been a firm rule for most Fridays, although Catholics are still supposed to give up Friday steaks during the forty-day penitential season of Lent. The precise dates of Lent vary from year to year, but it usually takes place in the northern hemisphere's early spring. Many Eastern Orthodox Christians also abstain from meat on Fridays.

Palm fronds are indeed given out at Catholic churches, but only on one day a year: Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, and they aren't meant for fodder!

Answer: The high school football team played on Friday nights.

"Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams," the book jacket tells us. "...But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true." In the book, Bissinger, a former sportswriter for the "Philadelphia Inquirer", follows the teenaged players as they seek a state championship for the team and college scholarships for themselves. The book becomes an indictment of the town's focus on athletics, as well as of the tensions that lurk beneath the surface.

The 2004 movie kept the same, based-on-true-life characters, but in the film the Panthers were more successful than they actually were in the 1988 season. The television series, which began its run on NBC in 2006, moved the action to a fictional town, but kept the same theme of exploring of small-town life through the lens of high-school football.

Answer: Jason Voorhees. You can recognize him by his hockey mask.

In the dozen-odd "Friday the 13th" films, the root of the evil is someone named Jason Voorhees, who as a child was left to drown at summer camp by a pair of neglectful teenage camp counselors. In the first movie (released in 1980), it's his mother who goes on a murderous rampage, killing counselors at the new camp; subsequently, it's Jason himself. The second movie reveals that he didn't actually drown as a child; this is never satisfactorily explained. Also not satisfactorily explained is the fact that people keep resurrecting him (with lightning rods, mad scientist facilities, and so forth) at the beginning of new sequels. This story contains two important lessons for us all:

1. Never build a summer camp at Crystal Lake.
2. If you must resurrect somebody, for goodness' sake, practice your technique on an elderly grandmother with no criminal record.

The other choices are also stars of extended horror movie franchises. Freddy Krueger terrorizes teenagers' dreams in "A Nightmare on Elm Street"; Michael Myers demonstrates poor knowledge of knife safety in "Halloween"; and Leatherface perpetrates "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Answer: A mother and a daughter switch bodies one Friday and gain a new appreciation for each other.

The tale of "Freaky Friday" was first told by Mary Rodgers, who wrote it as a children's book in 1972. The story was quickly picked up by the Walt Disney Company, which proceeded to make movies from it no fewer than three times. In 1976, Barbara Harris starred as the mother, with Jodie Foster as her daughter; in a 1995 television film, they were replaced by Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffmann; and in a 2003 theater version, Jamie Lee Curtis played the mother to Lindsay Lohan.

The precise details of the body switch vary in the telling. In the book, it's organized by the mother; in the 1976 film, it's prompted when both mother and daughter wish the other could walk a mile in her shoes; and in the 2003 movie, it's the result of a magic fortune cookie. But in all cases, a mother and daughter with a rocky relationship come to a greater appreciation for each other, and end the movie on a much better footing. And there's great hilarity along the way!

Answer: A chain of restaurants

T.G.I. Friday's is a casual-dining restaurant chain, based in the U.S. but with establishments everywhere from Argentina to Vietnam. Specializing in standard American fare -- burgers, steaks, pasta and cocktails -- the restaurants have distinctive red-and-white-striped awnings and often use old street signs to help create a 1960s atmosphere inside.

U.S. workers aren't the only ones to adopt an initialism as code for joy on Fridays; their British and Australian counterparts use the acronym POETS, which stands for "Push Off Early: Tomorrow's Saturday." POETS doesn't seem to have had the same financial success as TGIF, although it did inspire the name of a campus pub at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.