WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel turn on the dark.
Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase DAILY DOUBLES. Rearrange the letters and you can spell a two-word phrase that describes best friends. What are the words?
Answer: LOYAL BUDDIES.
THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: IN THE DARK
On-air questions: It’s not quite the shortest day of the year yet, but it’s certainly getting dark earlier and earlier these days. It’s quite likely that it’s dark as folks are listening to this, and so our questions this week are about dark things.
1. What two-word phrase, first used in a political context to describe James K. Polk when he secured the 1844 Democratic nomination for president, originates in an 1831 novel to describe the unexpected winner of a race that “rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph”?
2. The notoriously troubled musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark holds the record for the most expensive Broadway production ever staged with a $75 million budget. Despite mediocre to scathing reviews from critics, the cast album was given three stars in Rolling Stone, praising the songs written by two members of what rock band?
3. A 2019 Netflix series subtitled Age of Resistance is a prequel series to what 1982 Jim Henson fantasy film featuring a race of characters called Gelflings, one of whom has a pet named Fizzgig?
4. Taken from the first sentence of an 1830 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and often cited as an example of melodramatic writing, what seven-word phrase is frequently used by Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip as the opening of the novels he writes in his persona of the World Famous Author?
5. Currently, the packaged candy assortment known as Hershey’s Miniatures consists of four varieties: traditional Hershey bars, the peanut-filled Mr. Goodbar, the crisped rice-filled Krackel, and what other variety of Hershey’s chocolate?
Extra credit
1. The 2000 album Selmasongs, the soundtrack to the film Dancer in the Dark, was released by which musician who also portrayed Selma in the film?
2. In Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, the line preceding “But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep” describes the woods using what three adjectives?
This week's challenge
Start with the phrase DARK COMEDY. Change one letter to a U and you can rearrange the result to spell the five-letter title of a movie from the 1970s and the five-letter title of a TV series from the 1970s. What are the titles?
ANSWERS
On-air questions
1. Dark horse
2. U2
3. The Dark Crystal
4. “It was a dark and stormy night”
5. Special Dark
Extra credit
1. Björk
2. Lovely, dark, and deep
