The Second-Annual Happy Wanderer Family Trivia Quiz
A Special Vacation Post
It’s summer, and hopefully we’re all so busy enjoying the sunshine and fresh air with friends and family that we don’t want to be reading long posts on our phones. So herewith I present the second-annual Happy Wanderer family trivia quiz, a short post that you can enjoy together on a rainy day. As was the case in last year’s quiz, the quiz-master-Clive rules apply: If you find a different answer online later, it doesn’t matter, because the correct answer for the purpose of resolving disputes is the one that appears in this post. Good luck, and no googling!
Round 1: Shakespeare’s Guide to Love and Marriage
My daughter, Casey, is a huge fan of Shakespeare, and a few years ago, when she was writing an essay on Shakespeare for her high school English class, we put together this little quiz just for fun.
Identify the plays in which the following eccentric romantic strategies appear:
Look exactly like the person she’s actually in love with.
Take a magical drug and stumble around in the woods.
Stumble around in the woods and staple poetry to trees.
Tell her stories about your adventures and give her a handkerchief. Hope she doesn’t lose it!
Argue with each other until your friends conspire to set you up, if only to stop your bickering.
Solve a puzzle so absurdly easy that one third of the contestants should have gotten it right just by guessing randomly.
Want to spice up your marriage? Kill the king!
Or kill her husband, who is also the king.
Or kill her cousin.
Or woo her over her husband’s corpse.
Round 2: German Animal Names
One of the many delights of the German language is its charmingly literal names for some animals. For example, the German word for rhinoceros, Nashorn, means “nose horn.”
See if you and your kids can guess the animal from the following translations of their German names. (Warning: They start out easy and get tougher!)
Stink animal
Flutter mouse
Ice bear
Ink fish
Shield toad
Lazy animal
Spike pig
Naked snail
Beak animal
Wash bear
Water pig
Trampling animal
Little earth man
Mumbling animal
Ate a lot
Answers
Don’t peek! While you are noting down your answers, please enjoy this photo from (where else?) a recent hike. When you’re ready, scroll down to see if you were right.
Shakespeare’s Guide to Love and Marriage
Twelfth Night. The Countess Olivia is in love with Viola, who is disguised as a man, Cesario. Luckily, Viola has a twin brother, Sebastian, to whom Olivia transfers her affections. As Duke Orsino (whom Viola loves) says when he sees the twins together for the first time, “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons” (V.1.213).
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oberon describes the magic flower, whose juice “on sleeping eyelids laid / will make or man or woman madly dote / upon the next live creature that it sees” (II.1.170–72).
As You Like It. The lovesick Orlando hangs poetic paeans to Rosalind on trees: “O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books, / and in their barks my thoughts I’ll character, / that every eye which in this forest looks, / shall see thy virtue witness’d everywhere” (III.1.5–8).
Othello. Othello tells stories about his run-ins with cannibals, victories in battles, and escape from enslavement, and Desdemona would “come again, and with a greedy ear / devour up my discourse” (I.3.151–52).
Much Ado about Nothing. To while away the time before Hero and Claudio’s wedding, Don Pedro plans to “undertake one of Hercules’ labors, which is, to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection th’ one with th’ other. … If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods” (II.1.347–50, 366–68).
The Merchant of Venice. Suitors for Portia’s hand must choose from three caskets: “The first, of gold, who this inscription bears / ‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire’; / The second, silver, which this promise carries, / ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.’ / This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, / ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’” (II.7.4–9). Do these people not read fairy tales? Obviously it’s the third casket!
Macbeth. Lady Macbeth goads Macbeth into murdering King Duncan: “When you durst do it, then you were a man; / and, to be more than what you were, you would / be so much more the man” (I.7.50–52).
Hamlet. Horatio says he has come to see Hamlet’s father’s funeral, and Hamlet cynically remarks, “I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student; / I think it was to see my mother’s wedding” (I.2.177–78).
Romeo and Juliet. After Romeo kills Tybalt, the Nurse scolds Juliet, “Will you speak well of him that kill’d your cousin?” and Juliet replies, “Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?” (III.2.96–97).
Richard the Third. Richard kills Anne’s husband, and Anne curses his future wife: “And be thy wife—if any be so mad— / more miserable by the life of thee / Than thou hast made me by my dear lord’s death,” only to discover that “my woman’s heart / grossly grew captive to his honey words / and proved the subject of mine own soul’s curse” (IV.1.74–76, 78–80).
German Animal Names
Skunk (Stinktier)
Bat (Fledermaus)
Polar bear (Eisbär)
Squid (Tintenfisch)
Turtle (Schildkröte)
Sloth (Faultier)
Porcupine (Stachelschwein)
Slug (Naktschnecke)
Platypus (Schnabeltier)
Raccoon (Waschbär)
Capybara (Wasserschwein)
Camel (Trampeltier)
Meerkat (Erdmännchen)
Marmot (Murmeltier)—Incidentally, this name cracks me up. Marmots live all over the mountains, but because I am always with my dog on hikes, they hide from us. I often hear their warning signals to each other, which are extremely loud, high-pitched whistles. Mumbling animals do NOT mumble!
Wolverine (Vielfraß)
Many of these names I knew already, but I found the rest here. Kids might enjoy this site, which includes a silly flowchart for how to name an animal in German. (Hint: An inordinate number of animals have “pig” in their names for some reason.)
How about you, readers? Who was your group’s winner? And do you have any interesting trivia questions of your own? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
In addition to being a Shakespeare aficionado, Casey loves to tell jokes, and she has some good ones! Below is a kid-friendly joke she told me several years ago, which she found online. There’s a cute story behind this joke: A group of high school friends told it in their yearbook. Each guy took a line and made it his yearbook quote under his senior photo. Each quote would end with the words, “See [name of next guy]’s photo for the next line.” (I updated the joke in one place for 2023—see if you can spot where!)
Joe walks into a bar and sees a guy with a huge orange head sitting by himself at the end of the bar. “What’s the deal with that guy’s head?” Joe asks the bartender.
“That’s Steve. Tell you what: If you buy him a beer and just ask him, he’ll tell you. He’s used to questions.”
So Joe buys Steve a beer, introduces himself, and sits down next to him. “Hey, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m curious. What happened to your head?” he asks.
Steve sighs and says, “It’s a long story. I was walking along the beach one day when I tripped over this bottle. I picked it up, dusted it off, and pulled out the cork. Out popped a genie! The genie offered to reward me by granting me three wishes. So of course the first thing I wished for was to become incredibly rich.”
“Uh oh,” Joe said. “Did that backfire?”
“No way!” said Steve. “I’m as rich as Elon Musk was before he blew $44 billion on buying Twitter. No, that’s not the problem. Anyway, my second wish was that my dog would live as long as I do.”
“Let me guess,” said Joe, thinking of “The Monkey’s Paw.” “Your dog is getting old, and you just found out that you’re both going to die soon.”
“Nope,” replied Steve. “I’m in perfect health, and so is my dog. It’s really great. No, the trouble started with my third wish.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I wished for a huge orange head.”
That was fun....! Louise
Helen Keller walks into a bar.