Is Your Number Up? Trivia Quiz

Answer: 7

In case you are too young or you've forgotten "The Waltons" (1971-1981), John Walton Sr. (Ralph Waite) and Olivia Walton (Michael Learned) lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia during the Depression years. They had 7 children (that we know of): John-Boy, the oldest from whose point of view the story is told, Jason, Mary Ellen, Jim-Bob, Erin, Ben and Elizabeth.

Answer: 26

In the non-metric world of the United States, a marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards or, decimally speaking, 26.2 miles or 42.195 kilometers. In 490 B.C., a Greek messenger ran from the site of the Battle of Marathon to Athens to tell of the Greek victory over the Persians; after making the announcement the runner collapsed and died. To commemorate the event, in the Modern Olympics in 1898, held in Athens, a marathon of 40 kilometers (or 25 miles) was begun; in the 1908 Games in London, the distance was extended (to what it is today) in order to accommodate the British Royal Family.

Answer: 21

Did you know that the singular of dice is one die, and that two dice have the same number of dots as Douglas Adams' answer to everything, i.e., 42. Therefore,, since I promised there would be no math, I will do the calculation for you: if two dice equal 42, then one die would contain 21 spots - 21, the winning number for blackjack.

Answer: 3.14159

Ah, pi, the mathematical constant of 3.14 - that mysterious number that seems to solve so many things, e.g., the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It is an irrational number (you should see it when it gets angry) which can be extended infinitely; in fact, on the tombstone of Ludolph van Ceulen of the Netherlands is engraved his 35-digit approximation of pi (with which I will, mercifully, not trouble you).

Answer: 32

O.K., here again I will do any mathematical calculation required, i.e., if the total number of pieces in a chess game is 32, then each one of the two players gets 16 pieces: 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights and 8 pawns. The game of chess originated in India before the 6th century AD or possibly in China before that, and is played on a board which has 64 squares of alternating colors.

Answer: 8

Sleipner is an 8-legged horse belonging to Odin in Norse mythology, said to have been created around the 13th century; he is the offspring of Svadilfari (his father) and Loki (while in the form of a beautiful mare). Odin rides Sleipner to the gates of "Hel" which is associated with Ragnarok ("The Doom of the Gods"), i.e., the name the Norse had for the "end of their mythical cycle during which the cosmos is destroyed and subsequently re-created".

Answer: 12

Instead of asking how many lords a leaping or ladies dancing, I decided to go for the entire holiday, as described in "The 12 Days of Christmas", first published in England in 1790. In order to buy all the items from the song (364 items), in 2013 the cost rose 6.9% from the previous year to $114,651, but only 1.4% to $116,273 in 2014.

Answer: 21

The TV series was called "21 Jump Street" (1987-1991) which gave us the character of Officer Tom Hanson, and officially introduced us to the wonderful actor, Johnny Depp (excepting "The Lone Ranger" and "Mortdecai"). On the show, Tom (Johnny) was part a squad of police officers who could pass for high school or college students so they could operate undercover to investigate crimes committed by or against young people.

Answer: 2005

Was it really so many years ago when the Category 5 Hurricane Katrina arrived (August 23, 2005 - August 31, 2005) to wreak havoc on Eastern North America, Ontario, Georgia, Mississippi, the levees of New Orleans, Kentucky, Alabama, Cuba, West Virginia, Bahamas, Ohio, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Florida? It was one of the costliest natural disasters of all time, as well as of the deadliest.

Answer: 23

The 2007 thriller "The Number 23", directed by Joel Schumacher, stars Jim Carrey as Walter Sparrow, who comes across an obscure book about the number 23. He becomes obsessed with the book and begins to believe that it is based upon his life, but the book has grave consequences for the main character, which leads Walter into his "descent into darkness".