Hi there!
Thank you to all of those who have followed up about this edition. We broke our routine in the most fabulous way possible, to the extent that I never thought I would write the fourth chapter of the newsletter. But, anyway, here we are.
I am going to try and keep it simple, this time though. Just with all that is going on in parallel, I don’t think I would be able to keep a scoreboard for this month and I am sorry about that. However, even if it is only for kicks, I urge you to send in your answers, if you have been doing so in the past.
Let’s start with the answers for the trivia covered in the last newsletter:
JIRA
The Roland 808s
Boar on The Floor (Succession)
Whatsapp
Larry David; Curb Your Enthusiasm End Credits
Internet of Things
Commonwealth Territories
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Circle Back
Make It Till You Fake It
I am excited to share the list of the next 10 questions with you all. If you are new here, this is how the newsletter works:
There are 10 trivia questions below; none of them require studying a particular topic
I would suggest that you read and re-read the question; the answer is only your first guess away
You can, if you want to, respond to this email with the list of answers that you think are correct
I will share the answers for this quiz in the next newsletter
In 1996, three industry leaders, Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia, met to plan the standardization of this short-range radio technology to support connectivity and collaboration between different products and industries.
During this meeting, Jim Kardach from Intel suggested _____ as a temporary code name. Kardach was later quoted as saying, “King Harald _____ was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link.”
What innovative technology are we talking about?By the early 1940s, Rausing began developing dairy packaging that could compete with loose milk. Erik Wallenberg, an assistant in the Åkerlund & Rausing lab, came up with the idea to construct a X-shaped package out of a tube of paper in 1944.
On March 27, 1944, Rausing filed a patent for the idea.
Rausing's wife Elisabeth reportedly came up with the idea of continuously sealing the packages through the milk while filling the tube in the manner of stuffing sausages. In 1946, the company introduced the first prototype X-package filling machine.
What product/company are we talking about?There is a general consensus among New Yorkers that bodega Blue Sky Deli (formerly Hajji's) is the birthplace of the _____ _____, but exactly who invented it and why is less clear. According to the New York Times, each employee at the bodega tells a slightly different version of the story, but most fingers ultimately point to the late Carlos Soto, who spent more than two decades helming the grill.
One version of the tale claims that Soto wanted to make a burger but didn't have any round buns, so he X-ed the meat up to fit a hero, while others claim that he simply wanted to make a burger easier to chew since he had dental issues.
But the most intriguing theory behind the _____ _____ says that Soto was inspired by his Yemeni coworkers, pointing to the sandwich's surprisingly diverse background.
It's this last theory that is endorsed by Salah Alhubaishi, the longtime manager of the store. First We Feast notes that Alhubaishi is just one of many Yemeni immigrants who has made his living managing a bodega, and he cites one particular dish from his native cuisine as a direct influence on the _____ _____: an Arabic sandwich called 'dagha yamneeya,' a dish made with meats like beef or lamb with a mix of vegetables.
Coming from the Dominican Republic, Carlos Soto may have been responsible for adding another international flair in the form of adobo seasoning, essential to a true _____ _____, per Greater Long Island.
What is the food item being described here?When X shifted from propeller airliners to jets in the late fifties, it began its numbering anew with the ABC. Like pi, it’s a number familiar to many engineers: A, B and C are the first three digits in both the sine and cosine of 45 degrees.
Swept wings — wings that angle toward the back of a plane’s fuselage rather than sticking out at 90 degrees — were new at the time.
Story goes that the name ABC came from the angle of the plane’s wings. It’d be a fitting tale if it was true, but the ABC wing sweep was only 35 degrees, not 45.
What is A, B, C and X?AB was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called a stock A, which printed abbreviated company names as alphabetic symbols followed by numeric stock transaction price and volume information.
The term "A" came from the sound made by the machine as it printed.The AB revolutionized financial markets, as it relayed information from trading floors continuously and simultaneously across geographical distances.
Paper AB became obsolete in the 1960s, as television and computers were increasingly used to transmit financial information.
What is AB?X is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince, written in 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. Although he privately circulated The Prince among friends, the only theoretical work to be printed in his lifetime was The Art of War, which was about military science.
His works are sometimes even said to have contributed to the modern negative connotations of the words politics and politician, and it is sometimes thought that it is because of him that Old Nick became an English term for the Devil.
More obviously, the adjective Y became a term describing a form of politics that is "marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith". Y-ism also remains a popular term used casually in political discussions, often as a byword for bare-knuckled political realism.
Who is X and what is Y?In June 2005, the software company ScanSoft was looking for someone to be the voice for a database project involving speech construction. They inquired with GM Voices and selected Bennett, who happened to be present when the scheduled voice-over artist was absent.
She worked in a home recording booth in July 2005, more than four hours each day, reading phrases and sentences. The recordings were then concatenated into the various words, sentences, and paragraphs used in the X voice.
Bennett became aware she was the voice of X when a friend emailed her about it in October 2011.
Y has never acknowledged or confirmed its use of Bennett, but audio-forensics experts hired by CNN expressed 100% certainty that Bennett was the voice of X.
What are X and Y?"The problem was, we'd already made six or seven episodes which meant that whoever was going to get the job as the replacement voice was going to have to ADR and match the timing of the previous actor. Simultaneously, just before this, X’s agent had reached out and said, 'X is an enormous comic book fans, a huge fan of Y, and would love to be part of the series. So, I brought him in as a guest and he did a great job, telling all sorts of fabulous stories to everybody in the room and was wonderful in the role."
"The auditions for Z replacement came up, we gave X a shot, and he was stunning! Absolutely remarkable. His timing was right on, he came up with this terrifying voice and an iconic laugh and I think that's the voice everybody hears when they think of Z. Even when they're seeing on camera performances, they can't help but reference X in their minds."
What are X, Y and Z being discussed in this excerpt from an interview with comicbookmovie.com?Akhtar was reacting to Asif Ali, a cricketer he had pinned his hopes on to win the game, dropping a catch during the match, which ultimately led to Australia beating the Pakistan team by 40 runs. His expression was immediately picked up by the stadium’s camera and live streamed globally.
“It was a pretty disappointing moment, but it’s not in my nature to shout abusive words or use expletives, so instead I made this expression,” Akhtar told VICE over video call. “It was only when the match presenter came to interview me after the match was over that I realised I had gone viral.”
Which popular meme template are we talking about?Matej Gaspar, Born: 1987
Adnan Mevic, Born: 1999
Sadia Sultana Oishee, Born: 2011
Vinice Mabansang, Born: 2022
What is the common underlying factor uniting the 4 names mentioned above?
I hope you have a great weekend ahead.
Thank you,
Sameer on behalf of About Blank