The OLM Quiz:
Do Not Go Gentle!
Well, the pygmies have danced their ritual dances under the full jungle moon, the fire-ants have amassed in their unthinking multitudes under the forest canopy, the gnats have swarmed with a thickness to blot the sun, and as a result, another noble behemoth is brought low. Having fended off the “it’s-too-hard,” “nobody-can-solve-it” squawks for lo, these many months (including more than a few coming from certain site editors who shall remain nameless), the Open Letters Quiz at last succumbs to the atavistic forces of nature red in tooth and claw, and descends after this month into that same darkness that once claimed the glories of Nineveh and Tyre. Some variety of ‘cross-word-puzzle’ will likely take its place, and no doubt all the enthusiasts of that bizarre exertion will get out their crayons and have themselves a regular Banker’s Holiday. But before that final curtain falls, let one last clarion call of impenetrability sound in the gathering gloom!
1. In Agatha Christie’s final Hercule Poirot novel, Curtain, she takes the rare step of killing off her leetle-gray-cell-wielding hero: how does he go?
2. What devastating event looms on the horizon of Arthur Conan Doyle’s last Sherlock Holmes story?
3. Martha, late (in both senses of the word) of Cincinnati?
4. What unexpected occurrence interrupts the well-earned festivities at the close of the modern-day classic High School Musical 2?
5. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ last John Carter of Mars novel is incomplete – and therefore a doozy of a cliffhanger! What momentous story is in mid-swing when the book stops?
6. Who hit the last home run ever pounded in Ebbets Field, before the heathens tore it down, much as they’re tearing down the Open Letters Quiz?
7. In which Star Trek movie does the gallant Captain Kirk meet his end, and what are his last words?
8. While we’re on the subject of last words, what are the apocryphal ones belonging to Jimmy Durante? Oscar Wilde? Goethe?
9. Who was the last Roman Emperor in the West, and what was his fate?
10. Also apocryphally, but at least hinted at by the author himself, what are the final fates of Gimli and Legolas in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?
No word on where to send your answers, since when Romper Room commences next month, it’s unlikely anybody will be bothered looking up from their Sudoku to care, but attempts – however inevitably futile – to score respectably can always be sent to quiz [at] openlettersmonthly [dot] com.
Last month we made amends for our ill-received April Fool’s quiz with a quiz based entirely on reconciliation—and John Clancy of Newton, Massachusetts put down his grudges and answered a stunning six questions correctly. John will receive a pretty UK edition of Ian McEwan’s Atonement; and the rest of you can reconcile yourselves to the answers below:
1. The Declaration of Independence states, “we hold these truths to be self-evident” – without ‘refreshing your memory’ at any wiki-media, recite which truths those are (bonus points if you can do this and are an American)
–All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
2. On his deathbed, what famous personage is alleged to have said that he felt as if “the great ocean of truth” lay all undiscovered before him?
–Sir Isaac Newton
3. What vile wretch – obviously not in step with our healing voyage here – once quipped “It’s better to be quotable than honest”?
–Tom Stoppard
4. An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told,” writes Shakespeare – in which (most unlikely, all things being considered) play?
–Richard III
5. Who was it who said – in a humor not much better than #3’s – “Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth”?
–Sir Walter Raleigh
6. In American letters, who gets this grudging note of support, and from what unlikely source? “There was things that he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”
–Mark Twain
7. “My way of joking is to tell the truth,” said somebody who might therefore have a lot to teach the repentant Open Letters Quiz … who was this virtuous savant?
–George Bernard Shaw
8. Who instructed us all to “seek for the truth in the groves of Academe” – perhaps because, for a brief interlude, he could not find it in the Open Letters Quiz?
–Horace
9. What poet consoles those who feel they’ve been shafted by writing, “Truth never is undone;/Its shafts remain”?
–Theodore Roethke
10. And lastly, in a tremulous note of hope for future Quizzes, we turn to a great sage who wrote, “who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” Name the sage, and then depart in peace.
–John Milton
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[...] The OLM Quiz: Do Not Go Gentle! You couldn’t hack it—you whined and sniveled—and so this month it ends! Dance, ye monkeys of mediocrity! [...]