The Third-Annual Rainy-Day Happy Wanderer Trivia Quiz
A Summer Vacation Post
Hopefully we’re so busy enjoying the sunshine and fresh air and spending time with friends and family that we don’t want to be scrolling on our phones for hours on end. But for those inevitable rainy days, here is the third-annual Happy Wanderer trivia quiz. (You can find the previous two quizzes here and here.) As is the case in every quiz, we’re invoking the rules of my friend Quizmaster Clive: 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: Stuff We Think We Know
My dad loved to research and prepare trivia quizzes for every occasion—family holiday celebrations, neighborhood get-togethers, dinners with friends, church coffee hours, and the like. He would even quiz cleaning ladies and handymen, for example by asking them how many lightbulbs or windows there were in the house, and then he would reward the person whose guess was the closest with $5. Below is a quiz he wrote for our family last December.
How many airports are there in the US?
A. 203,622
B. 5,541
C. 19,633
D. 32,245
Not counting humans, which is the most intelligent animal?
A. Dolphins
B. Chimpanzees
C. Elephants
D. African Gray Parrots
What is the category of food that is most frequently stolen worldwide?
A. Fruit
B. Cheese
C. Meat
D. Milk
How long did the shortest war in history last?
A. 18 seconds
B. 38 minutes
C. 6 days
D. 3 months
How long did the longest war in history last?
A. 56 years
B. 100 years
C. 265 years
D. 770 years
Which country produces the most oranges?
A. Brazil
B. USA
C. Chile
D. Spain
Which country produces the most cheese?
A. Switzerland
B. USA
C. France
D. Germany
Which food has the longest shelf life?
A. Honey
B. Twinkies and other processed snacks
C. Spam
D. Canned beans
Which state has the smallest population?
A. Vermont
B. Washington DC
C. Wyoming
D. Alaska
Which sport was Abraham Lincoln a champion in?
A. Ice-skating
B. Archery
C. Wrestling
D. Running
Round 2: Funny German Words and Expressions
Because German is a close cousin to English, it has many expressions that are identical to ours—for example, Die Wände haben Ohren means “the walls have ears,” and Schlafende Hunde soll man nicht wecken translates as “let sleeping dogs lie.” German even has an expression—Das ist kein Ding—which we could loosely translate as “ain’t no thing.”
But other expressions are quite different from English, sometimes amusingly so. See if you can match the literal translations of the following German expressions to their colloquial meanings.1
Literal translations
Old Swede (Alter Schwede).
You have a bird though (Du hast doch einen Vogel).
That doesn’t work on cowhide (Das geht auf keine Kuhhaut).
That is cold coffee (Das ist doch kalter Kaffee).
That is a fat dog (Das ist ein dicker Hund).
Colloquial meanings
A. That’s boring.
B. That’s a ridiculous and impractical idea.
C. That’s crazy.
D. Wow!
E. That’s really terrible.
Next, see if you can figure out what these nonsense German words mean:
Nonsense words
Dingsbums (pronounced “dinks-booms”; the other nonsense words are pronounced as they’re spelled)
Remmidemmi
Papperlapp
Schnickschnack
Ruck zuck
Meanings
F. Noise and chaos
G. Total nonsense
H. Unnecessary stuff; bells and whistles
I. Super fast
J. Thingamajig
Round 3: That’s a Real Job!
Some of the jobs below are real,2 and some are made up. Can you tell which is which?
Pizza fortune-teller. These fortune-tellers walk from table to table in pizza parlors and read the pizzas as though they were tea leaves. (They are paid in tips.) The fortunes they tell could be just for fun, or—who knows?—they could come true!
Waterslide tester. These workers go around the world sliding down waterslides to make sure that everything is working ok. They also measure the length and angle of the slides.
Trash detective. These workers prowl the streets for litter. When they find trash that has been illegally dumped, they try to trace it back to the person who discarded it so they can issue them a fine.
Goldfish bowl interior designer. These consultants will help you design a beautiful and harmonious habitat for your beloved fish.
Golf-ball scuba diver. Ever wonder what happens to all the golf balls that land in water hazards? These scuba divers retrieve them and sell them on the secondhand market.
Warning-label writer. These paralegals are employed in the legal departments of companies that make consumer products. They dream up every possible way, no matter how absurd, that any given product could be dangerously misused. They write warnings against these misuses to shield the company from lawsuits.
Breakup facilitator. If you’re having trouble breaking up with your significant other or quitting your job, you can hire one of these workers to do it for you, gently and tactfully, and sometimes, if you order the “luxury package,” with balloons and cake.
Water sommelier. These workers have sensitive palates and advise fancy restaurants on the best kinds of bottled waters to serve with their dishes.
Frisbee calibrator. The frisbees used in disc golf carry numerical ratings for how fast they fly. To establish these ratings, frisbee companies employ people who have a special talent for throwing consistently and accurately. Frisbee calibrators toss each frisbee multiple times, and other workers measure the distance for each throw and then assign the numbers.
Scream instructor. These teachers help singers in heavy-metal bands learn to scream safely so they can perform multiple concerts per year without pain or injury.
The Answers
Don’t peek! While you are noting down your answers, please enjoy this photo from (where else?) a hike. When you’re ready, scroll down to see if you were right.
Round 1
1. C
2. D. Octopuses would like a word with the author of this question.
3. B
4. B. Our family’s resident historian, Noah, offers an amusing account of how this 38-minute war went down:
In the Victorian age, Zanzibar was a protectorate of the British Empire. At some point the pro-British sultan was murdered by his brother, who declared “I am against Britain now.” In response, Britain took its warship that was already in the harbor out to sea, fired one cannonball at the sultan’s palace, and the sultan was like, “You know, I’m gonna abdicate.” And then Britain put the son of the murdered sultan on the throne and that was the end of the war.
5. C. My dad’s quiz had D, 770 years, as the correct answer. However, Noah rightly objects that this war, the Reconquista, is not a single war:
The Reconquista was actually dozens of wars between the Catholic kingdoms of Iberia—the Spanish monarchs—and the Muslims of Iberia. Calling all these wars one war is like saying that the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a single war. In both cases, we’re talking about multiple wars.
Noah argues that the correct choice is C, 265 years:
Spain and Iceland were at war with each other as part of a larger war, and then because Iceland was so insignificant to the conflict,3 both countries just forgot to make peace. And they didn’t realize that they were still technically at war for centuries, until some historian uncovered the fact that they were still at war. In the nineties Spain and Iceland signed a formal peace treaty, thus ending the war.
Noah has a final fascinating fact: “The other amusing anecdote is that because of this conflict, Iceland had a law on the books until the 1960s that it was legal to kill a Spaniard.” Someone should incorporate this fact into a courtroom drama or a Scandinavian noir thriller!
6. A
7. D
8. A
9. C. Trick question! Both Wyoming and Vermont have smaller populations than Washington DC (and Alaska’s population is only slightly larger than DC’s). And yet DC has no representation in Congress, which is why DC’s motto is “Taxation without representation.”
10. C
Round 2
1. D
2. C
3. B
4. A
5. E
6. J
7. F
8. G
9. H
10. I
Round 3
Numbers 1, 4, 6, and 9 are fake. (Thanks to my husband and daughter for thinking up the pizza fortune-teller and the goldfish-bowl decorator, and to my nephew Harrison—an avid disc-golf player—for coming up with the frisbee calibrator. These all should be real jobs!)
The imagined job in number 6 comes from way back when my brother was in high school and spent the summer working as a painter. He came home from work one day with a twelve-page (!) warning label he had torn off an aluminum ladder. Among other misuses, the label warned against using the ladder during an electrical storm, propping it against an electrical wire, using it as a bridge to cross between buildings, and duct-taping it to another ladder to make an extra-tall ladder. Ever since then, I have thought that it would be fun to write a novel about the kind of person—highly vigilant and anxious, no doubt!—whose job it would be to write these warning labels.
Amazingly, the other jobs are real. Can you imagine a more stereotypically German job than trash detective? And wouldn’t it be fun to be a waterslide tester?
How about you, readers? How’d you do on the quiz? And do you have a favorite trivia fact or funny word from another language? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
In honor of funny German words and expressions, here are two bilingual puns, which my daughter made up in her high school German class:
Joke 1: No man is an island, unless he is an incel. (“Insel” is the German word for island.)
Joke 2: A German man and an American man go for a hike in the woods. The German man has to pee, but there is no bathroom around, so he pees against a tree. “Oh gross!” says the American man. “Danke!” says the German man. (“Gross” means big and “danke” means thank you in German.)
All of these examples come from Katharina Heydenreich, “Das bringt mich auf die Palme!” [That makes me very angry] and “Deutsch in Alltag” in Deutsch Perfekt, December 2023.
The source for all the real jobs is Deutsch Perfekt’s special issue on careers, March 2024.
This is a message to my friend Svanhvít, who is from Iceland: I’m sorry! I’m just reporting what Noah said! I think Iceland is very significant!
Really fun post. I got almost none of these. There were a couple of jobs that I knew were real, and assumed that perhaps they all were. I guessed the war one, but thought it was the Faulklands.