Season 20, Day 1 - “String of Pearls”
Season 20, Day 1 - “String of Pearls”
It's Good week, and today's quiz is inspired by The Good Earth.
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! The only slight change to the rules is #3. An incorrect first name will not be penalized when I would have accepted a last name by itself. (I should note that this is more lenient than a TV quiz show would be, so if/when you are training for that sort of opportunity, responding with the last name only is always the safest route.)
Free subscribers: Hope you enjoy this preview of Season 20! 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 usually acceptable unless otherwise specified (or unless the last name is already provided in the text of the question). 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. Other examples of this include Genghis/Kublai Khan and Katharine/Audrey Hepburn. An incorrect first name will not penalized when I would have accepted a last name by itself, so when in doubt, you can include the first name without fear. 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, when not signifying a quote or a title, mean that the correct answer contains the exact quoted word. Complete answers (including the quoted word) are generally preferred in case there’s any possible confusion as to where the quoted word appears in the answer.
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 previous week's quizzes are “due” on Monday at midnight ET, but I will generally accept late submissions if you can submit them in a reasonable amount of time. 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. 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.
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 (September 4). 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
The Good Earth
The Good Earth is a historical novel by Pearl S. Buck. Published in 1931, it’s the first book in her House of Earth trilogy (Sons, A House Divided). The book tells the story of a Chinese farmer named Wang Lung, who rises from peasant to landowner with the help of his wife O-Lan. The book’s opening line is “It was Wang Lung’s marriage day.” The daughter of American missionaries, Buck grew up in China and wrote the book based on her observations of Chinese village life. The Good Earth was the best-selling novel in the U.S. for 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and led to Buck winning the Nobel Prize for Literature (making her the first American woman to do so). It returned to the bestseller list in 2004 when it was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. The book spawned a short-lived Broadway adaptation in 1932 and a successful film version in 1937 starring Luise Rainer as O-Lan, who won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
Season 20, Day 1 - “String of Pearls”
[Q1] I’M SURE SPIKE LEE WISHES HE WAS COURTSIDE WHEN WILLIS REED AND EARL “THE PEARL” MONROE HELPED THIS NBA TEAM WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP IN 1973
[Q2] DOCUMENTED IN THE MOVIE “A MIGHTY HEART,” ON FEBRUARY 1, 2002 TERRORISTS IN PAKISTAN KILLED DANIEL PEARL, A REPORTER FOR THIS NYC-BASED NEWSPAPER THAT HAS THE LARGEST CIRCULATION OF ANY PAPER IN NEW YORK CITY
[Q3] THE PEARL RIVER FLOWS THROUGH THIS U.S. STATE CAPITAL, WHICH COMES FIRST ALPHABETICALLY ON A LIST OF THE STATE CAPITALS NAMED FOR PRESIDENTS
[Q4] THE JAPANESE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR TOOK PLACE ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, WHICH WAS THIS DAY OF THE WEEK
[Q5] THIS “PEARL” STARRED ON BROADWAY OPPOSITE CAB CALLOWAY IN AN ALL-BLACK VERSION OF THE MUSICAL “HELLO, DOLLY!”