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Cultural aptitude test
Dan Rottenberg
Test your cultural aptitude:
Twenty-four questions that could change your life, or not
DAN ROTTENBERG
Just in time for the holidays, here’s my present: an up-to-date cultural aptitude quiz that should delight true sophisticates while simultaneously weeding out the impostors who persist in visiting our website even though it’s obviously over their heads. To learn whether you belong here, scan the answers listed immediately below. Then review the questions underneath, and try to match the questions to the answers. The correct matches are at the very bottom. No peeking.
Oh, and have a wonderful Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Druid festival, whatever.
First, the answers:
1. Offenbach
2. Caesar
3. Lost Horizon
4. Ford Madux Ford
5. 9-W
6. A dominant fifth
7. Sudafed
8. Melatonin
9. Chase Utley
10. Donald Duck
11. Chopin Liszt
12. Haydn Sikh
13. “Where can I park?”
14. “Somebody Else, Not Me”
15. “Clothes Make the Man”
16. “Bush must go!”
17. “Jazz, sports and rock ’n roll”
18. Arab propagandists
19. Tupperware
20. Tina Brown
21. Buzz Bissinger
22. John Street
23. Dan Rottenberg
24. Kuwait
Now, match the answers above to the questions below:
A. If Britney Spears uses drugs during a performance, what should the police do?
B. When the actress Koo Stark broke up with Britain’s Prince Andrew, what did he say?
C. When a former Phillies centerfielder forgot the name of the car he was endorsing while taping a TV commercial, what did the director yell at him?
D. How would you describe the primary activity of Mel Brooks on Yom Kippur?
E. What substance killed F. Scott Fitzgerald?
F. What would you call a city block that’s predominantly populated by customers of prostitutes?
G. If the author of Friday Night Lights and A Prayer For the City barricades himself in an airport control tower, what should airborne pilots do?
H. What would you call a prostitute who wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings?
I. When Americans read investigative reports by the journalistic team of Donald Barlett and James Steele, they invariably discover that their problems have been caused by ….
J. If private citizens suffer financially as a result of Federal Reserve Board policies, what should they do?
K. If Donald Trump is pelted with rotten eggs by unhappy tenants or stockholders, what advice should his consultant give him?
L. What is the first prerequisite for a trip to the supermarket?
M. Did I tell you I ran into Jim Tupper, former director of the Penn Relays, the other day?
N. When Ivy League officials first gathered to choose their school colors (e.g., crimson for Harvard, royal blue for Yale), where was the representative of Princeton University?
O. If the Phillies’ second baseman is speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike, what should the state troopers do?
P. In any given situation, what is the first question a suburbanite asks?
Q. On the basis of a thorough survey of editorials, op-ed columns and letters to the editor written over the past 26 years, who is the only person in the world who was not standing on the 1200 block of Locust Street the night Mumia Abu-Jamal allegedly shot Officer Daniel Faulkner?
R. What are the only three subjects of interest to Tim Whitaker, editor of Philadelphia Weekly?
S. In the pages of the Jewish Exponent, the world is divided into two groups: “Friends of Israel” and…..
T. Herr Wagner, do you spell your name with a V?
U. To maintain a low profile, what do classical musicians in India often play?
V. What celebrated editor has yet to experience a profitable year at any magazine under her direction?
W. If the columns of D. Herbert Lipson in Philadelphia Magazine could be boiled down to a single idea, what would it be?
X. What is the one issue upon which Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, hawks and doves, Christians, Jews and Muslims, Americans, Europeans and Asians, Sunnis and Shiites, pacifists and terrorists and even Osama bin Laden can all agree?
The correct matches:
1-N; 2-A; 3-H; 4-C; 5-T; 6-E; 7-J; 8-D; 9-O; 10-K; 11-L; 12-U; 13-P; 14-I; 15-W; 16-X; 17-R; 18-S; 19-M; 20-V; 21-G; 22-F; 23-Q; 24-B.
To read a response, click here.
Twenty-four questions that could change your life, or not
DAN ROTTENBERG
Just in time for the holidays, here’s my present: an up-to-date cultural aptitude quiz that should delight true sophisticates while simultaneously weeding out the impostors who persist in visiting our website even though it’s obviously over their heads. To learn whether you belong here, scan the answers listed immediately below. Then review the questions underneath, and try to match the questions to the answers. The correct matches are at the very bottom. No peeking.
Oh, and have a wonderful Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Druid festival, whatever.
First, the answers:
1. Offenbach
2. Caesar
3. Lost Horizon
4. Ford Madux Ford
5. 9-W
6. A dominant fifth
7. Sudafed
8. Melatonin
9. Chase Utley
10. Donald Duck
11. Chopin Liszt
12. Haydn Sikh
13. “Where can I park?”
14. “Somebody Else, Not Me”
15. “Clothes Make the Man”
16. “Bush must go!”
17. “Jazz, sports and rock ’n roll”
18. Arab propagandists
19. Tupperware
20. Tina Brown
21. Buzz Bissinger
22. John Street
23. Dan Rottenberg
24. Kuwait
Now, match the answers above to the questions below:
A. If Britney Spears uses drugs during a performance, what should the police do?
B. When the actress Koo Stark broke up with Britain’s Prince Andrew, what did he say?
C. When a former Phillies centerfielder forgot the name of the car he was endorsing while taping a TV commercial, what did the director yell at him?
D. How would you describe the primary activity of Mel Brooks on Yom Kippur?
E. What substance killed F. Scott Fitzgerald?
F. What would you call a city block that’s predominantly populated by customers of prostitutes?
G. If the author of Friday Night Lights and A Prayer For the City barricades himself in an airport control tower, what should airborne pilots do?
H. What would you call a prostitute who wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings?
I. When Americans read investigative reports by the journalistic team of Donald Barlett and James Steele, they invariably discover that their problems have been caused by ….
J. If private citizens suffer financially as a result of Federal Reserve Board policies, what should they do?
K. If Donald Trump is pelted with rotten eggs by unhappy tenants or stockholders, what advice should his consultant give him?
L. What is the first prerequisite for a trip to the supermarket?
M. Did I tell you I ran into Jim Tupper, former director of the Penn Relays, the other day?
N. When Ivy League officials first gathered to choose their school colors (e.g., crimson for Harvard, royal blue for Yale), where was the representative of Princeton University?
O. If the Phillies’ second baseman is speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike, what should the state troopers do?
P. In any given situation, what is the first question a suburbanite asks?
Q. On the basis of a thorough survey of editorials, op-ed columns and letters to the editor written over the past 26 years, who is the only person in the world who was not standing on the 1200 block of Locust Street the night Mumia Abu-Jamal allegedly shot Officer Daniel Faulkner?
R. What are the only three subjects of interest to Tim Whitaker, editor of Philadelphia Weekly?
S. In the pages of the Jewish Exponent, the world is divided into two groups: “Friends of Israel” and…..
T. Herr Wagner, do you spell your name with a V?
U. To maintain a low profile, what do classical musicians in India often play?
V. What celebrated editor has yet to experience a profitable year at any magazine under her direction?
W. If the columns of D. Herbert Lipson in Philadelphia Magazine could be boiled down to a single idea, what would it be?
X. What is the one issue upon which Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, hawks and doves, Christians, Jews and Muslims, Americans, Europeans and Asians, Sunnis and Shiites, pacifists and terrorists and even Osama bin Laden can all agree?
The correct matches:
1-N; 2-A; 3-H; 4-C; 5-T; 6-E; 7-J; 8-D; 9-O; 10-K; 11-L; 12-U; 13-P; 14-I; 15-W; 16-X; 17-R; 18-S; 19-M; 20-V; 21-G; 22-F; 23-Q; 24-B.
To read a response, click here.
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