Season 29, Day 1 - "This Quiz Will Blow You Away"

It's Sea week, and today's quiz is inspired by the Beaufort Sea.

Hi everyone, welcome to Season 29 of School of Trivia!

Returning players: Welcome back! No changes to the rules, so feel free to skip that section.

Free subscribers: I hope you enjoy this preview! School of Trivia is supported by paid subscriptions. If you want to receive the Season 29 quizzes and have the option to play in the league, click below to join! I really think you’ll love it — we’ve got hundreds of players coming back month-after-month — but there’s a 30-day free trial period in case you decide it’s not for you.

Rules and other things to know

1. 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.

2. Scoring: for each quiz, you’ll assign point values of 5,4,3,2,1 to the five questions, 5 on the “easiest” question (highest confidence level) down to 1 on the most difficult, for a max daily score of 15. Based on the other scores in your division that day, this will be converted to an adjusted score (scale of 0-100). The total of your adjusted scores for the season will determine your rank and whether you move up, move down, or stay where you are. New players will start their first season in Group A of the Freshman division.

3. The bolded text in each question points to the type of answer that I'm looking for. If your answer does not match the bolded text, you may 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.

4. 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 needing a first name to distinguish between two people include Genghis/Kublai Khan and Katharine/Audrey Hepburn. An incorrect first name will not be 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.

5. 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.

6. 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."

7. Quotation marks in the bolded text of a question, when not signifying a quote or a title, indicate 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.

8. 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 multiple answers are provided when only one is needed.) 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). 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” and I will only evaluate the parenthetical if needed.

9. The official deadline for all Season 28 quizzes is Monday, June 10 11:59 PM ET, which is the Monday after the last quiz day of the season (Day 20).

10. I grade all of the quizzes manually, so don't worry if the quiz form marks you wrong for a typo or spelling error. 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.

11. 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 answers that are not specific enough or non-qualifying answers (e.g. the name of a person, when I’m asking for a country) to be equivalent to a blank response.

12. I’ll be sending out a sub-newsletter for paid subscribers called “The Answer Key” to make it easier to follow along if you’re not playing in the league. Don’t open that email if you don’t want to be spoiled on that day’s answers!

13. The season will run for 20 quiz days.

    Don't hesitate to reply to this email (or any email) 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 trivia game for you! I hope you all enjoy the season (and sorry for the extra reading material today).

Beaufort Sea

The Beaufort Sea is an Arctic Sea located north of Alaska. When Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the Beaufort Sea in 1905, he became the first to navigate the long sought-after route known as the Northwest Passage. Canada’s longest river (the Mackenzie) empties into the Beaufort Sea. Prudhoe Bay, the starting point of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, is an inlet of the Beaufort Sea. Frozen over for most of the year, the sea is named for Sir Francis Beaufort, a British navy commander who created a scale for measuring wind speed.

Season 29, Day 1 - "This Quiz Will Blow You Away"

[Q1] DOROTHY FROM “THE WIZARD OF OZ” MIGHT KNOW THAT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ISSUES WARNINGS FOR THIS 39-54 MILE PER HOUR WIND, EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN’T REACH THE LEVEL OF A “VIOLENT STORM” ON THE BEAUFORT SCALE

[Q2] OFTEN USED TO MEASURE WIND SPEEDS IN AVIATION AND MARITIME CONTEXTS, THIS UNIT IS EQUAL TO ONE NAUTICAL MILE PER HOUR

[Q3] SOMETIMES CALLED A WIND CONE, THIS LOW-TECH INDICATOR NAMED FOR ITS RESEMBLANCE TO AN ARTICLE OF CLOTHING FULLY EXTENDS AT WIND SPEEDS OF ABOUT 17 MILES PER HOUR OR GREATER

[Q4] FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, THE WORLD RECORD FOR THE FASTEST WIND SPEED EVER RECORDED WAS 231 MILES PER HOUR ATOP MOUNT WASHINGTON, PART OF THIS RANGE WITH A FITTING 12-LETTER NAME IN NEW HAMPSHIRE’S WHITE MOUNTAINS

[Q5] ALSO THE LAST NAME OF A CHILEAN NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING POET, THIS COLD WIND BLOWS THROUGH SOUTHERN FRANCE INTO THE MEDITERRANEAN AT SPEEDS OF UP TO 60 MILES PER HOUR