Final Beans

The final bunch.

Robo-questions, or, These are not the droids you're looking for:

• In what film did Jude Law play a robot? (They got it.)
  
• Name a famous astromech droid? (Zip was on it!)
  
• What is Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-Class? (No problemo.)
  
• The robot in the Oz stories? (Crickets. Lots of crickets. I would have suggested a Menickean lifeline, but this was the elimination round.)
  

Water, water everywhere:

• Where is Easter Island? (No, Disney World is not the correct answer.)
  
• Name three countries surrounding the Japan sea. (They got it.)
  
• The Coral Sea is between what two countries? (They got it. I'll bet you didn't.)
  

Our special feature star was the Beeb. No one could possibly know any of these, and they didn't. Neither should you.

• How many Madame Toussaud's have wax figures of him?
  
• How many Twitter followers does he have - 3 million, 33 million, 330 million?
  
• What was his highest Klout score?
  
• (I didn't ask this one, and it may be the only one you might know.) In what movie did he appear as an alien (on TV monitors)? I'll give you the answer: MIB3.
  

Then there were thingummies.

• What is a lunula? (They knew it. I was stunned.)
  
• What is a dewclaw? (Nope.)
  
• What is a philtrum? (Another surprise correct answer.)
  

And finally, a few slogans:

• Life's short, play more. (They should have gotten this.)
  
• It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. (They knew what sort of item it was, but not the maker. Not good enough.)
  
• Just do it. (They did it.)
  
• A mind is a terrible thing to waste. (No, which meant one less Dan Quayle joke for the night.)
  
• Breakfast of champions. (Nope. Sailors don't eat breakfast, I guess.)
  

And so another bout of Beans bit the dust. Lots of questions in these categories were left over, so I'm ready to pick up where I left off at the drop of a hat.

Virtual Beans #8

Probably the easiest category was this one, food with place names:

• A hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage. (They liked the sound of it even if they couldn't identify it.)
  
• A cake filled with custard and frosted with chocolate. (They got it.)
  
• A thinly sliced beef sandwich with cheese and onions. (They got it.)
  
• Deep fried potatoes. (As I said, easy.)
  
• A pastry with cheese or prune preserves. (Now that we're eliminating panivorous types right and left, the team will eat anything. They got it.)
  
• A sandwich with ham and cheese and pickles. (Finally, another one they hadn't had for lunch that day.)
  
• Eggy bread. (A piece of cake, so to speak.)
  

Then they had to translate the following from British to English:

• zed (yes)
  
• kip (surprisingly, yes)
  
• starkers (nope)
  
• gormless (nope)
  
• fagging (nope — thought it had something to do with cigarettes)
  
• mufti (nope)
  
• barmy (nope)
  
• c of e (nope, and honestly, that's not even a Britishism, but I threw it in as a gimme. I didn't have to gim it.)
  
• quid (nope)
  
• shirty (yes, again surprisingly, considering their bad record on this category)
  
• bespoke (nope, but then again, given that the latest Sailor fashion statement at a tournament was fuzzy slippers, what do you expect?)
  
• knackered (nope)
  
• gobsmacked (nope, although when I demonstrated it the answer was clear)
  
• codswallop (needless to say, given the nature of Sailordom, they did indeed understand the concept of codswallop)
  
• a dicky ticker (yes, but only because I was demonstrating furiously as I awaited the answer)
  

Virtual Beans 7

So you'd think that Sailors might know something about NYC, being that if you stacked them one on top of the other the highest one would be able to see it on a clear day? Well, you'd be wrong.

• What is Tudor City? (They thought it might be a restaurant.)
  
• What kind of restaurants do you find on Mott Street? (All they could say was, "Can you spell Mott?" And tell me what street / compares to Mott Street / in July...)
  
• What kind of restaurants do you find on Mulberry Street? (Their answer was mulberry restaurants.)
  
• Who was Laguardia? (I am still recovering from the shock of hearing the correct answer to this one.)
  

And then there was Latin. They got all of these wrong except for one.

• Ecce homo
  
• Habeas corpus
  
• E pluribus unum
  
• Non compos mentis
  
• In hoc signo vinces
  
• In media res
  
• Cave canem
  
• Alea iacta est
  
• Ars longa vita brevis
  

Which one? Okay, apparently they watch a lot of lawyer shows on TV.

Virtual Beans 6

Another one of my favorite categories: Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse.

I had to explain it about a hundred times...

• The guitarist for the Sex Pistols? (They had no idea.)
  
• A grungy guy who shot himself? (You'd think that grunge, repeated and emphasized, would have given it away. It didn't.)
  
• He liked to light his guitar on fire. (They got it.)
  
• He died behind the wheel of his Porsche. (Lost them on that one.)
  
• She sang with Big Brother and the Holding Company. (Not a clue.)
  
• From "The Day the Music Died" name one of the people who, well, died that day. (They didn't get it. Instead, they told me it was the guy who died behind the wheel of his Porsche. The 50s are a blur to these people.)
  
• Finally, a 19 year old who was burned at the stake. (Even when I threw in that she's a nickname at a diner, no reaction.) (French fries, if you didn't know it already.) (I should have asked about Noah's wife.)
  

Then all they had to do was identify which actor portrayed James Bond in the following movies. The third one was the only one correctly answered, which proves that, when it comes to pop culture, the Sailors totally get it backwards. (Except, of course, pop spelled backwards is, shockingly enough, pop, but that's not my fault): Diamonds are Forever, The World is Not Enough and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Virtual Beans 5

Three more categories:

I'll name the characters, you name the musical. The Sailors got all 3:

• Conrad, Albert, Rosie
  
• Jean, Marius, Fontine
  
• Skimbleshanks, Jennyanydots, Rumpleteazer

Ikea meatballs (AKA horses):

• What did Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed do that is very rare? (Not a clue.)
  
• Who is the author of Black Beauty? ("I read that seven times." Pause. "There was a horse in it?" Lifeline was drawn and failed.)
  
• Who was Bucephalus? (They didn't know, but spent about six hours not knowing it.)
  
• What's a farrier? (Panivore, Jr., could, and did, answer this in his sleep. I'm not sure why he was sleeping, though.)
  
• What is the source of the phrase "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts"? (Frankly, I was looking for the author, but with this group, I accepted the general idea.)
  

And famous pairs. I provided one, they provided the other. Or not:

• Siegfried and ... (Got it.)
  
• Butthead and ... (Got it, of course.)
  
• Gilbert and ... (Glazed expression.)
  
• Jake Blues and ... (Well, they at least knew it was a relative, but not the name.)
  
• Bertie Wooster and ... (I would not have accepted House, but then again, nothing but blank stares were offered.)
  
• Pyramus and ... (This was known, surprisingly enough.)
  
• Heloise and ... (Even when I told them the answer, the stares remained blank. I kept my "Ouch" jokes to myself.)
  

Virtual Beans 4

Happiness is just a thing called Joe. That was the category. You had to name the Joe.

• A husband of Marilyn Monroe. (They knew this, which surprised me.)
  
• A Polish author writing in English. (Meh knew that it was the author of Secret Agent, but couldn't conjure the name. A lifeline text to O'C yielded no response [oh, the horror], but then it finally occurred to her. Who thinks of Secret Agent first? Weird.)
  
• The founder of a religion. (They missed it.)
  
• The father of a political clan. (I might as well have been talking about the 11th Emperor of Oogabooga.)
  
• Who is Joseph Ratzinger? (Nope. But to be fair, I pronounced it Joe. Rat. Zinger. Still.... How soon they forget.)
  
• A Russian leader. (No sweat.)
  
• A tailgunning anti-communist. (Once again my miracle freshman pulled it out of the air at the last moment. She came in 3rd overall.)
  

Virtual Beans 3

The "Audrey or Kate" category (it can be the same in both) only got hit once. Which Hepburn was in War and Peace? Which Hepburn was in Robin and Marian?

Ditto the Woody or Hitch category: Which one directed Notorious? Love and Death?

My favorite category required you to say if a character was from Nostrum, Star Wars, Oz or Dickens. It only came up once. Again, it doesn't have to be one of each. Go!
Rogue Riderhood
Salacious B. Crumb
Sally Brass
San Hill

And then, there was the category of doctors, real and fictional:

• Who is Theodor Geisel? (Easy peasy.)
  
• Dr. Cliff Huxtable was played by? (They got it, which surprised me.)
  
• In what movies do you find Dr Evil? (Nope. Are those movies dead already?)
  
• What was Dr. Kevorkian famous for? (Answered correctly. Apparently one never wants to wake up in a hospital and see Dr. Kevorkian's name on the chart.)
  
• Name a TV show about doctors in the Korean war? (Piece of cake for them.)
  
• Who was the doctor who helped Clarice Starling? (The Sailors are nothing if not perverted. They got it.)
  
• Julius M. Hibbert is personal physician to whom? (Not a clue. To be honest, I thought it was a gimme for them, but then again, I had had to look it up.)
  
• George Clooney was a doctor on what show? (Got it.)
  
• Doctor McCoy was the physician where? (Didn't have a clue.)
  
• Neil Patrick Harris played what doctor? (This was one of those questions everyone knew except the person who was supposed to know it. There was much discussion of NPH's hair on that show.)
  

Virtual Beans 2

There was a category where Sailors simply had to rattle off the names of something in a given category. This was too broad in most cases, and just led to bean overflow. A limit to this category, say Star Trek series, would help. That was indeed one of the categories, for the freshmen, who only managed to come up with "New Generation." They were so pathetic and it was close enough so I accepted it. Of course, you can name all five of the series. Correctly. (Excluding animation.)

And then, next up, some questions in the category called "Art and Artists." When I mentioned this category for the first time, someone asked, "What exactly does that mean?" I admit to being unable to explain it any more clearly. Obviously a failure on my part to communicate effectively.

Let's see how you do:

• What exactly did Michelangelo paint on ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? (This was probably too easy, since they got it right away. Then again, maybe Meh is a cardinal and she just happened to spend a lot of time last week looking up.)
  
• Describe the work of M.C.Escher. (There was an Escher print in the classroom, but this one was still a gimme.)
  
• What artist was famous for his Brillo pads? (The idea that an artist could be famous for Brillo left them, literally, agape.)
  
• The artist is famous for painting water lilies? (This was identified correctly. Appropriately enough, by Lily.)
  
• Who signed a toilet with the name R Mutt and called it Found Art? (All this got was a sniff of disdain. Obviously no Caveman fans around anymore.)
  
• In what century did the post-Raphaelites paint? (The answer they gave was close, just 200 years off.)
  
• Who is the musical "Sunday in the Park with George" about? (It disappointed me that our theater people were unable to identify him.)
  

Virtual Beans 1

I've got these questions, and last night the Sailors had at them. I'll tell you how they did with them, but the real issue is, how well can you do with them?

Your first category: World War II.

• Who did Germany invade, thus starting WWII? (They all knew this one.)
  
• What is the ETO? (They had to lifeline this one. O'C knew it, and then his phone died. Discretion, I guess, was the better part of his valor.)
  
• Who was Quisling? (The fact that they thought he was French did not leave them in good stead on this one.)
  
• What are fat man and little boy? (They got this in a snap.)
  
• Who led Free France? (They had no idea what Free France was, much less its leader, possibly because they were so confused by Quisling. At least this time they were correct in offering that it had something to do with the French; I'm not sure what gave it away.)
  
• General Anthony McAuliffe officially responded with one written word when the Germans asked for unconditional surrender at the Battle of the Bulge. What was that word? (Once you know this, you never forget it, but they didn't know it.)
  
• Who was the Desert Fox? (Maybe they're all golfers, because they knew this instantly.) (And if you don't get the golf reference, then you've never holed out of a sand trap.)
  
• The Allies first invaded Europe in 1943 in Operation Husky. Where was it? (Reason was used to deduce the correct answer, something that hardly ever happens at these events.)
  
• What WWII leader's dead body was hung upside down on a meathook? (I was in awe of the freshman girl who answered this correctly. She was obviously a ringer.)