Let's Take Five Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nickels

Let's take COINS, a five letter word, from DISCONTINUE to leave us with UNTIED. Appropriately, nickels are 5-cent coins. Nickels, by the way are only about 25% nickel. The other 75% is copper.

Answer: Hackneyed

Let's take these five letters from EXTRATERRESTRIAL: "TRITE". This word means hackneyed; something that is cliched, overused and therefore not very original or fresh sounding.
It comes from the from Latin "tritus" meaning worn, oft-trodden.
And speaking of COINS (see previous question) a "trite" was also a denomination of coin in ancient Greece that was equivalent to one third of a stater.

Answer: That car's physical state

The five letters we took away from PROCRASTINATES were INERT in order to leave us with STOPS A CAR. And INERT is a description of that car's physical state once stopped, inert.
Car brakes will stop a car; on modern cars with hydraulic brakes, one pushes the brake pedal which pushes the brakes against the master cylinder. Then a piston pushes the brake pad against the brake disc and the car slows down.

Answer: Lung locale

From the phrase CATCH ONE'S BREATH, Let's Take Five letters--and those five letters were CHEST, which is where your lungs for breathing are located.
Those spongy internal organs that fill up with air when we breathe in, are positioned on either side of the thorax. Your windpipe, aka trachea, funnels that air into the lungs through tubular branches called bronchi.

Answer: Period of rest

Let's Take Five letters from TAKE A BREATHER to be left with A THEATRE. The five letters we took away spell BREAK, which is a period of rest when you Take Five.
The phrase to TAKE A BREATHER originated in the early 1900s. Before that, in the 1800s, it had another meaning--a meaning that is actually quite the opposite, but it meant to exercise vigorously to the point of faster breathing.

Answer: Groups of three

I took away TRIOS which are groups of three. Speaking of prestidigitation and speaking of the number three, three is often seen as a sort of magic number. In communications for instance there is "the rule of three" which tells us that words grouped into threes have a more appealing cadence and are easier to remember.

The reason for that psychologists say, is that brains naturally seek out patterns, they look for relationships and meaning in the world around us. Three is the smallest number required to form a pattern, the perfect combination of succinctness and rhythm. Marketing research has revealed that messages designed to have a persuasive effect, such as advertisements or speeches are effectively done with three groups of claims, but once you add a fourth....ABRACADABRA---scepticism is suddenly aroused in the listeners and the initially positively received message may even reverse the impression.

Answer: Intended

Starting with the word ENTERTAINMENT, I took away the 5-letter word MEANT to leave us with INTERNET. And MEANT is meant to mean "intended." The varieties of entertainment the internet has provided over the past few years seems to grow exponentially. Music listening/sharing on countless sites such as Spotify and Pandora. Movie and TV show watching with internet-linked devices such as Roku; searching through the catalogues of Netflix and Amazon Prime etc. yield more TV viewing possibilities than a person could conceivably view even watching around the clock every single day. And even on YouTube one can access almost any song you can think of. And then I haven't even mentioned the online gaming potential unwrapped by the internet.

In addition to playing a game by yourself, you can also play multiplayer games involving your friends from around the world via the internet.

Answer: Produce text

When we took five letters away from INTERRUPTION to get the word ROUTINE, the five letters we took were PRINT. The image of a parent taking five in the morning before starting the work ROUTINE by sitting with a cup of coffee at the breakfast table and reading all the news that's fit to PRINT in the morning newspaper is engraved in our conscious by countless TV shows, movies, and advertisements. Perhaps not everyone felt that this was a welcome routine. Take writer Meredith Nicholson in his essay, "The Cheerful Breakfast Table": "I should certainly exclude it from the breakfast table as provocative of discord and subversive of discipline.

The liberal social scientist William Graham Sumner was once a guest at best-selling author Nicholson's house once, and rose early to read the morning newspaper before breakfast.

But Nicholson observed that Sumner liked to read it standing up. Upon Nicholson inviting Sumner to be seated, Sumner answered, "No, always read a newspaper standing; you won't waste time that way."

Answer: A spy

Starting with the word ASSUAGEMENT, we take away the 5-letter word AGENT to arrive at AMUSES. And an agent especially a secret one, is a spy. "Spy vs. Spy" is a wordless comic strip published by Mad Magazine that AMUSES a lot of people along with the cartoon based on it.

It was another in a long line of animated funnies famous for cartoon violence as two spies, one dressed in white the other dressed in black planned and perpetrated various schemes and antics against each other. It was created by Cuban cartoonist Antonio Prohías as a parody of Cold War politics, and it debuted in Mad Magazine back in 1961.

Answer: Courageous

"Take these Five" letters: BRAVE from DAVE BRUBECK to get to our outro, BUCKED. And that word BRAVE means "courageous." Indeed it is often a BRAVE choice to buck the expectations people have of you and to follow your passion. As Dave Brubeck himself explained: "I wanted to be like my father who was a cattleman and a rodeo roper.

He was my hero. And we moved to a 45,000-acre cattle ranch, and all summer I worked with my father." Brubeck's mother however was a musician, and she persuaded him to go to college, where he pursued a pre-veterinary program before about-facing and moving onto music. Guess what convention he bucked while at the conservatory? He couldn't read music! When one professor discovered this he went to the dean to have Brubeck held back, but a band of other teachers rose to his defense telling the dean that Brubeck wrote the best counterparts they'd ever seen. Dave Brubeck BUCKED all kinds of conventions from time signatures to the racial make-up of the audiences he played for: his band had a huge following at black universities, African-American universities.