The ITEs of March, Part 3 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Aluminum ore

Bauxite is the principal ore from which aluminum is made. Recycling has reduced the world's dependence on bauxite. Australia remains the largest producer of the ore on the planet. There is a town called Bauxite in Central Arkansas, near Little Rock, so named for the production of ore there.

Answer: Foolish speaking or speaker

Since 1650, blatherskite has referred both to a person who speaks much making little sense (e.g. a politician) and the actual nonsense spoken. The term relates to the Scottish "blather" of similar meaning. Synonyms for this species of talk include balderdash, baloney, bilge, blarney, blather, nonsense, bull, bunkum, codswallop, drivel, fiddle-faddle, folderol, hokum, horsefeathers, humbug, malarkey, nerts, piffle, poppycock, rot, rubbish, tommyrot, and twaddle.

Answer: Resident of Greater Seattle

According to the Urban Dictionary, Seattleites live in or near Seattle, Washington, dislike Californians, won't tell tourists where the original Starbucks, Microsoft or Kurt Cobain's house is located, are pretentious coffee snobs, recycle everything, and hate the EMP (Experience Music Project) which exists only for tourists.

Answer: Plant fossil

Petrified wood is technically a dendrolite, which means any part of a shrub or plant which becomes fossilized. The term comes from the Greek "dendron", meaning a tree, and "lithos", meaning a stone.

Answer: Roman Catholic monastic

The beginnings of the mendicant Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel are in the 12th century. The name Carmelite comes from the Latin Mons Carmelus, the name of the mountain in Northwestern Israel on which the earliest monks settled in imitation of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Reverses in the Crusades drove the Carmelites out of the Holy Land and into Europe. The first Carmelite nuns were vowed in 1452. Perhaps the most famous of these was St. Teresa of Ávila.

Answer: Having both male and female sex organs

In biology, at least as regards organisms which have both male and female sex organs (which not all plants and animals do), one which contains and displays both is called an hermaphrodite. This is normal in some creatures; when it occurs in humans, it can result in ostracism. The word is derived from the ancient Greek story of the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite: Hermaphroditus. The child had both male and female sex organs. In ancient Rome, such babies were drowned in the River Tiber.

Answer: Non-Hebrew tribe in the Bible

The Amorites were a Semitic tribe of nomads in the ancient Middle East. In their ascendence, they raised the city of Babylon to be the capital of an empire. Joshua had to kill large numbers of them to gain control of the Promised Land (Joshua 10-11). They dwindled in competition with other tribes until, around 1200 BC, they were no more.

Answer: Jew descended from Levi

A Levite is a member of the Tribe of Levi who can trace his (or, in some thinking, her) lineage back to Levi, the third son of Jacob and Leah. The tribe has religious duties in ancient Israel and includes a class of persons (Kohanim) who are hereditary priests. They included temple singers, temple musicians, and temple guards. There is little agreement among modern Jews as to the proper function and role of Levites, but most recognize some sort of hereditary specialness which remains.

Answer: Difficult (or impossible) to understand

The adjective recondite describes subject matter which is obscure, abstruse, complex, complicated, arcane, esoteric, profound, and/or involved. Recondite stuff is deep! The English word derives directly from the Latin "reconditus", which meant the same thing. It was first used in 1619. The "Collins English Dictionary" (2018) says the term is "used occasionally", which means not very often.

Answer: Fictional substance weakens Superman

In the "Superman" Universe of comics, television, radio, movies and video games, kryptonite is the ore form of a radioactive element from Krypton. It is most often green but many other colours have appeared. It saps Superman of his superpowers and, in time, could kill him, while it sometimes confers superhuman abilities on normal people.

In popular usage, kryptonite has come to mean a person's weakness or "Achilles' heel."