Season 17, Day 1 - "Blues Clues"
It's Elements week, and today's quiz inspired by cobalt.
New players: Welcome! For division placement, you can either: 1. play the preseason quizzes (linked below) and I will slot you in a division based on your results (please do this before completing today's quiz if you choose this option), or 2. simply start with this week's quizzes and I will place you in Freshman-B by default.
Previous players: Welcome back! No changes in the rules, so feel free to skip that section if you don't need a refresher.
Free subscribers: Hope you enjoy this preview of Season 17! Click below to join the league, get quiz newsletters every Mon-Fri and access to 300+ past quizzes.
Rules and other things to know
I think this pretty much goes without saying, but no Googling or any other form of research in attempt to find an answer is allowed. However, in the rare instance that you do inadvertently come across an answer in the course of life before you've submitted, that's OK.
The bolded text of each question points to the type of answer that I'm looking for. If your answer does not match the bolded text, it's possible you will still get credit if it is a form of, or adjacent to, the correct answer, but you are leaving it in the hands of the judges, so to speak. This is a pretty easy mistake to make and I see it a lot in grading, so it could help to double-check your answers before you submit.
For a question that asks for a name, a last name by itself is acceptable unless otherwise specified (or unless the last name is already provided in the text of the question), with at least one notable exception: for U.S. presidents named Adams, Harrison, Johnson, Roosevelt, and Bush, I will need the full name to distinguish between two possible answers. For fictional characters, first names are acceptable unless otherwise specified.
Correct spelling is not required unless otherwise specified, however there must be a possible pronunciation of your answer that matches a possible pronunciation of the correct answer. In general, adding or taking away a syllable, and adding or taking away an "s" on the end of a name, will unfortunately both usually result in answers that are not accepted.
Titles must be exact, except for the leading article (A, An, or The as the first word). Example: I will accept "Christmas Carol" or "The Christmas Carol" but not "For Whom A Bell Tolls".
Quotation marks in the text of a question are used in three main situations: a. for a quotation or a title, b. to signal that the answer contains the exact quoted word, or c. figuratively, as in the example "COLORFUL" MOVIE for the answer CRIMSON TIDE.
Try to be as specific as you need to be, and submit only one answer, unless more than one is required (I will take the first answer listed if more than one is provided.) It is possible for your answer to be not specific enough to be acceptable, despite not technically being incorrect. Example: for a monarch, I will generally need the name and regnal number unless otherwise specified (or unless there is only one monarch with that name). Another recent example: "mother's milk" was not accepted for the alliterative animal product "mare's milk." If you have any doubt as to how specific you need to be (hopefully this won't be the case often), you can put the more specific part in parentheses, e.g. "(blue) whale."
All of the week's quizzes are “due” on Sunday at midnight ET, but for anybody who needs an extra day I will accept submissions until Monday at midnight ET. Continuing with the school analogy, I like to think I'm the nice professor that really doesn't want to dock anyone's grade for lateness. So if you can’t get to a quiz by Monday, just let me know and I will generally still accept it if you can submit it in a reasonable amount of time. Any player who misses any quizzes (with the exception of the G and Fr divisions) will be separated from the season rankings to avoid demotion due to non-participation. However, such a player will still be demoted if their “implied rank” (their rank when their per-quiz average is extrapolated to a full season) lands them in the demotion zone.
I grade all the quizzes manually, so don't worry if the answer key marks you wrong. You can receive a copy of your answers by checking the box in the lower left-hand corner, and you can receive your score by email and/or check the leaderboard page, which I update throughout the week (the question stats tab is updated weekly).
In case of a misclick in assigning confidence points, I will automatically assign the lowest possible point value to any questions that are left blank. For this purpose, I will consider non-qualifying answers (e.g. the name of a person, when I’m asking for a country) to be equivalent to a blank response.
The season will run for 20 quiz days, with the next season starting on the first Monday of the month (June 5). Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about any of the above, or anything else. Thank you so much for being here and allowing me to run this little trivia league for you! I hope you all enjoy the season (and sorry for the extra reading material today).
Links
Cobalt
Cobalt is a silver-white metal with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is maybe best known for its use in blue pigments in paints, ceramics, and glass. Its name comes from “kobold,” the German word for a type of goblin. Along with nickel and iron, it’s one of three naturally occurring magnetic elements (alnico magnets are alloys of aluminum, nickel, and cobalt). Cobalt is also a common component of lithium-ion batteries. Cobalt-60 is an important radioisotope that has replaced radium as a safer option for cancer treatment. The region known as the Copperbelt in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo yields the majority of global cobalt production. In 1950, physicist Leo Szilard suggested that a theoretical nuclear weapon called a “cobalt bomb,” designed to contaminate a vast area with radioactive material, would be capable of acting as a doomsday device.
Season 17, Day 1 - "Blues Clues"
[Q1] THE BLUE ANGELS ARE A FLIGHT DEMONSTRATION TEAM THAT TOURS THE COUNTRY REPRESENTING THIS BRANCH OF THE U.S. MILITARY
[Q2] THIS DAY OF THE WEEK FOLLOWS “BLUE” IN THE NAME OF A COCKTAIL, A LESSER KNOWN GEORGE GERSHWIN OPERA, AND SONGS BY NEW ORDER AND FATS DOMINO
[Q3] CARL SAGAN COINED THE PHRASE “PALE BLUE DOT” IN REFERENCE TO A 1990 PHOTOGRAPH OF EARTH TAKEN BY THIS SPACE PROBE (THE FIRST OF TWO WITH THAT NAME), WHICH HAS BOLDLY GONE WHERE NO MAN-MADE OBJECT HAS GONE BEFORE
[Q4] “THE BLUE RIDER” IS A PAINTING BY THIS RUSSIAN ABSTRACT ARTIST WHO WAS A MEMBER OF AN INFORMAL EXPRESSIONIST PAINTING GROUP OF THE SAME NAME
[Q5] FROM THE GREEK FOR “DARK BLUE” (NOT GREENISH-BLUE, AS ITS NAME MIGHT SUGGEST), THIS -OSIS IS A BLUE DISCOLORATION OF THE SKIN CAUSED BY A LACK OF OXYGEN IN THE BLOOD