Specialkarah's Random Quiz

Answer: Kalamazoo College

He dropped out to begin a career in acting, but it must have fell through.

As the question notes, Ty Warner is most famous for the creation of Beanie Babies, which are animal toys stuffed with pellets. They have an aesthetic appeal that attracted collectors for a time; once they were the hottest toy on the market.

The "Ty" tag is very well-known, which is heart-shaped and has the letters t and y in lower-case. In 1999, Ty Warner announced that on December 31, all Beanie Babies would be retired. But in early 2000, he started making them again.

Answer: Sesquipedalian

An autological word is one which describes itself. Seventeen-lettered is autological because there are seventeen letters in it. Hyphen-ated is autological because, well, it has a hyphen.

Sesquipedalian is a word that means a foot-and-a-half. However, it also means a long word. But not only does sesquipedalian mean a long word, it is a long word. Therefore it is autological.

Bucolic is an adjective means "of or having to do with rural life."

A teetotaler is someone who has sworn to abstinence from alcoholic beverages, like Michael Henchard in Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge," who is a teetotaler for twenty-one years in order to make amends for selling his wife and daughter to a seaman.

Answer: Gutzon Borglum

Doane Robinson commissioned Borglum to build Mount Rushmore; the idea of four presidents' heads in the side of a mountain came from Robinson. Gutzon Borglum was sixty years old when he began working on it and did not stop until his death.

David Smith was another twentieth century sculptor associated with negative space and Abstract Expressionism. Cubi XXVIII is one of his famous works, and was the most expensive contemporary art piece sold in auction as of November 9, 2005, when it was bought for $23.8 million.

Lorenzo Ghiberti was an Italian sculptor born in Florence and active during the early Renaissance. He is famous for winning a contest against Filippo Brunelleschi for a sculpture representing the sacrifice of Isaac as detailed in the Old Testament. This induced Brunelleschi to give up sculpture and move to architecture, where he imagined a way to build a dome for Florence Cathedral, and thereby invented one-point perspective.

Answer: 315 degrees

A unit circle ranges from O to 2pi radians. 180 degrees is pi radians. 90 degrees is pi/2 radians. 270 degrees is 3pi/2 radians. Between 3pi/2 and 2pi, there are three radian values: 5pi/3, 7pi/4, and 11pi/6. 5pi/3 is 270 + 30, aka 300 degrees. There are 45 degrees between 270 degrees and 7pi/4 radians, which makes it 315 degrees.

Answer: Indri indri

A tautonym is a name in which both the genus and the species are the same, therefore "Indri indri" is the only one that works here. The indri is a sort of lemur that is native to Madagascar.

Struthio camelus is the genus and species for ostriches.

Ateles geoffroyi - a type of spider monkey

Tayassu tajacu - the collared peccary

Answer: Ayn Rand and James Joyce

Ayn Rand was born of February 2, 1905, and James Joyce on February 2, 1882. Ayn Rand is most famous for three books in particular--"Anthem", "The Fountainhead", and "Atlas Shrugged". They expound her philosophy, known as Objectivism. A quote from this philosophy is that "Man is an end in himself." According to Rand, the individual is superior to society, and should live for himself, and not succumb to collectivism. The altruist is degraded; the egoist elevated.

James Joyce wrote a couple of monster works: "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake", the latter of which is a prose poem. It uses a lot of invented words, including some that are a hundred letters long.

Joyce is also known for a collection of short stories called "Dubliners," which includes "Araby," a story referred to often for its style. Interestingly, Joyce proclaimed that scholars would be studying him for centuries, as can be surmised by the intense attention "Finnegans Wake" requires.

Stephen King was born on September 21, 1947, and Naomi Novik's birth date is April 30, 1973. King is perhaps the most famous contemporary author; anything he writes is guaranteed to be read. Novik is famous for her book "His Majesty's Dragon."

Katherine Mansfield was born on October 14, 1888, and Clive Cussler on July 15, 1931. There is a great short story by Mansfield called "A Cup of Tea," about an upper-class lady named Rosemary who takes in a woman from the streets and makes plans to show this woman that opulence doesn't corrupt ladies of higher status. Her husband comes in and remarks that the other woman is pretty, and Rosemary wants to know if she herself is beautiful.

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, and Henry James on April 15, 1843. Walker wrote "The Color Purple." Henry James was a very prolific writer, and some of his works include: "Washington Square", about a father who tries to convince his daughter that her suitor doesn't love her; "The Turn of the Screw", which is about a governess who may or may not have encounters with apparitions (the story reads as if it were written by a woman and is told in the first person, through the eyes of said governess); "The Golden Bowl"; "The Ambassadors"; and "The Wings of the Dove."

Answer: "Force of the Breaker"

"Yu-gi-oh!" is a card game involving Monsters, Spells, and Traps. The object of the game is to reduce your opponent's Life Points down to zero. (Both players commence with 8000 Life Points.) You are allowed to Normal Summon one monster per turn, and play Spell cards to "bend the rules." Only monsters that are level 4 or below can be summoned without tributes. A level 7 monster, for example, cannot be summoned unless you sacrifice two monsters already on the field. Traps are the most dangerous cards of all, and can be played during either your or your opponent's turn. (Spells can only be played during your turn, the exception being Quick-Play spells.)

When monsters battle, the one with the greatest ATK (attack power) remains on the Field, and the other is sent to the Graveyard. The player who owned the monster that lost gets a reduction in his/her Life Points equal to the difference between the two monsters' ATK. If a destroyed monster is in defense mode, the player who controlled it normally doesn't lose any Life Points.

"Shadows of Infinity" introduced the game to the three Sacred Beasts: Raviel, Lord of Phantasms; Uria, Lord of Searing Flames; and Hammon, Lord of Striking Thunder. Some people liken them to the Egyptian Gods, which are the most coveted cards ever created, despite the fact that you can't use them in Duels, which is what "Yu-gi-oh!" games are called.

"Enemies of Justice" released some D-Heroes, antagonist to the Elemental Heroes that Jaden plays on the show, "Yugioh GX." "Yugioh GX" is a cartoon series of the game, set a generation after the Duel Monster "Yu-gi-oh!" anime that followed the adventures of Yugi Motou and his friends, Joey Wheeler, Tea, Mai Valentine, Duke Devlin, and Seto Kaiba. There was a Shadow Realm where people would go when they lost duels. In "GX", Yugi has chosen a successor to be the King of Games, named Jaden Yuki, whose deck focuses on Elemental Heroes, a type of monster.

"Cyberdark Impact" is based largely on chain-linking. Chain Strike was a highly anticipated card prior to its release. Also in the set is Cyberdark Dragon, whose picture is featured on the booster packs.

"Force of the Breaker" will have some cards like Gem Beasts, Sky Devil Lords, and Riser the Wind Monarch. It is to be released in 2007, both in the U.S. and in Japan.

Answer: T.H. Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley was nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog" for strongly adhering to the theory of evolution.

Agnostics believe that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. The term comes from the Greek "a" meaning "without" and "gnosis" meaning "knowledge."

Answer: Wisconsin

Academic Decathlon is a competition solely for high school students. It involves ten subjects (hence the name "Decathlon"),which are Mathematics, Language and Literature, Science, Music, Economics, Essay, Speech, Interview, Art, and Super Quiz.

Each year it's based around a specific theme. In the 2005-2006 school year, it was based on the Renaissance, which meant Decathletes had to study Renaissance Music, history, and Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Much Ado About Nothing." They also had to learn about Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and some famous architects of the period.

In the 2006-2007 school year, the theme was China and its influence on the West. For Language and Literature, Decathletes had to read "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck. They had to study about Mao Zedong Thought and the Little Red Book, and communism in modern China. The Super Quiz topic was Climatology, with some focus on China.

The first Nationals competition for Academic Decathlon was held in 1981. Up to February 2007, California had won thirteen times, and Texas had won ten times. Wisconsin was the only state to beat either one. California had won four times in a row, from 2003 to 2006.

Answer: "Nicholas Nickleby"

"The Optimist's Daughter" won Welty the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973. It is a poignant tale in some places, especially concerning Laurel and her dying father.

"Mill on the Floss" was written by George Eliot; the rest by Charles Dickens. George Eliot's real name was Mary Anne Evans, and she also wrote "Silas Marner," about a kind-hearted miser who takes in a golden-haired girl and raises her as his daughter.