Making "Cent"s of It All Trivia Quiz

Answer: French

Like "ciento" (Spanish) and "cem" (Portuguese), the French word "cent" derives from the Latin word "centum." Through the development of the French language, the pronunciation of the word changed (to sahN, with a nasal N at the end), but the spelling remained similar. The German word for 100 -- "hundert" -- betrays the fact that German is not a Romance language and did not evolve from the Latin. (As I'm sure you noticed, it also betrays the fact that English and German are closely related!)

The Latin "cent" shows up in a wide variety of English words, including many that you'll find in this quiz. A centimeter is a hundredth of a meter; a centenarian has reached the impressive age of a hundred years. You'll see a few more such examples in the next 19 questions!

Answer: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

In "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," the second book in J.K. Rowling's wildly popular series, Harry, Ron and Hermione raced against time to identify the Heir of Slytherin and stop him or her from attacking Muggle-born students. Persuaded that the culprit must be one of their fellow students in the famously arrogant Slytherin House, the friends brewed Polyjuice Potion so that they could take on the appearance of Slytherin students and secretly listen to conversations among their peers. Although Ron and Harry successfully posed as their classmates Crabbe and Goyle, Hermione's cat-hair potion required her to spend more than a month recovering in the infirmary.

This particular mission turned out to be a bust, but the tenacious trio didn't give up -- read the book to find out more!

Answer: Italy

Before the August 1914 outbreak of war, Germany and Austria-Hungary belonged to the Triple Alliance with Italy. When fighting began, they called on Italy to join them according to the terms of that alliance -- but Italy refused, arguing that the Triple Alliance was strictly defensive, and that the declaration of war on Serbia made the war an offensive one. A year later, Italy joined the war on the side of the Allies.

The other two Central Powers -- Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire -- entered the war slightly later. The Ottomans allied themselves with Germany in August and began military action against Russia in October; Bulgaria joined in an invasion of Serbia in 1915. Last to enter the war, Bulgaria was also the first Central Power to leave it, making a separate peace in September 1918; the Ottomans, now in their death throes as an empire, followed suit in October. Austria and Hungary split from each other on October 31 and signed separate ceasefires with the Allies in the following days; Germany's armistice came on November 11.

Answer: William Butler Yeats

"The Second Coming" treats the decline and collapse of Western civilization, which Yeats believed to be imminent. "And what rough beast," the poem asks in response to the hope of a Second Coming of Christ, "its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Chinua Achebe's classic novel "Things Fall Apart," which tells the story of the collapse of a native Nigerian civilization in the wake of colonization, takes its title from these lines.

Answer: Paul Gauguin

Gauguin (1848-1903) and van Gogh (1853-1890) met in Paris the year before van Gogh's breakdown. This was a fruitful time in van Gogh's life; the Impressionist colors and uses of light that he first encountered in Paris had a great impact on his own post-Impressionist work.

When van Gogh moved to Arles in 1888, he invited several artists to join him in painting there, but his dreams of forming an artists' colony were dashed when Gauguin was the only one to come. The month they spent painting together seriously damaged their friendship, and Gauguin left after van Gogh's breakdown. Van Gogh killed himself a little over a year after this event; Gauguin struggled all his life with mental illness, but was renewed artistically and emotionally when he moved to the south Pacific in 1891.

Answer: No

Reba McEntire's first marriage, to rodeo star Charlie Battles, failed in 1987 after 11 years; she was 32. They had no children, however; Reba waited for motherhood until her second marriage, to manager and steel guitar player Narvel Blackstock. Their son Shelby Steven McEntire Blackstock was born in 1990.

At the time "Reba" ran (and, indeed, at the time of this writing) the McEntire-Blackstock marriage was going strong, so Reba had to draw on her imagination and acting talents to portray her character's trials raising three children after her divorce. Her work won her a People's Choice Award in 2002, a Family Television Award in 2005, and a Golden Globe nomination in 2004.

Answer: Cornelius

Chapter 10 of the Book of Acts tells the story. Peter received a vision of unclean animals made clean by God, but was unsure what it might mean -- and then who should come to his door but Cornelius, not only a Gentile but a soldier of Rome, instructed by an angel to ask Peter about God. "You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile," Peter told them, "but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean" (Acts 10:28).

He then taught Cornelius and his companions about Jesus Christ, they were touched by the Holy Spirit and began speaking in many languages, and finally they were baptized.

The controversy over Gentile involvement in the early church continued, but Cornelius's conversion set Christianity on the path to becoming a widespread world religion rather than a local one.

Answer: Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Born Curtis James Jackson III in 1975, 50 Cent had a troubled early life. His mother, only fifteen when he was born, dealt cocaine on the streets; although she was murdered when he was only eight, he later turned to drug dealing himself. He could have been a statistic; he could have become a casualty of the streets, his name forgotten by all but his family. That he didn't is due to two things: the 1997 birth of his son, Marquise, who inspired him to seek a more peaceful career in music; and to luck, which saved him from a 2000 attack in which he was shot nine times at close range.

"Get Rich or Die Tryin'," produced by rappers Dr. Dre and Eminem, was a smashing success -- especially for a debut album. Two singles from the album ("In da Club" and "21 Questions") hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. His musical success, combined with his compelling biography, explains the moderately successful movie "Get Rich or Die Tryin'", in which 50 Cent plays a character based on himself.

Answer: eccentric

The word "ecCENTric" refers to something that is bizarre, strange, or off-kilter. In geometry, an oval is regarded as an eccentric circle; a very narrow oval, so thin as to be a straight line, has an eccentricity of one hundred percent. A fun but cynical saying sums up its use with respect to people: "The poor are insane; the rich are eccentric".

Answer: A pair of poison claws on the first body segment

Despite their name -- "centipede" comes from the Latin for "hundred feet" -- the several thousand worldwide centipede species can have anywhere from 30 legs to nearly 400, with one pair of legs per body segment. (Millipedes, "thousand feet," have two pairs of legs per segment, for a total of between 80 and 750 legs.) The structure of their eyes also varies immensely from species to species, and mating does not occur individual-to-individual for any centipede -- instead, the male deposits a sperm capsule, which he then tries to lure the female into accepting.

All centipedes, however, have poisonous claws (instead of legs) on the segment closes to the head, which helps make them fearsome predators in their weight class. The largest known centipede, Scolopendra gigantea, hails from the Amazon and is known to devour bats -- it can reach about a foot (30 cm) in length!

Answer: Snooker

The sports listed are all cue sports, played using a long stick (a cue) to move billiard balls around on a table. Tables for straight and three-cushion billiards lack pockets; instead of sinking the balls, the challenge is to strike two balls (and, in the three-cushion version, three rails) with the cue ball. Eight-ball does use pocketed tables, with players attempting to sink either the striped balls or the solids, and finish up the game with the solid-black ball marked with a number eight.

Snooker has more complex rules: it begins with fifteen red balls (each worth one point) and six colored balls (with values ranging from 2 to 7 points). The object is to use the cue and cue ball to pocket these balls in a specific order -- a red ball, then a colored ball (which is immediately replaced on the table), a red ball, and so on. When the red balls have all been pocketed, the colored balls are sunk in point order. A single game (from all object balls on the table to none) is called a frame; a single turn at the table is called a break; and a century break is thus a player scoring 100 points in a single turn. Traditionally, the highest-scoring possible break yields 147 points.

Answer: Marge Simpson

Artie, who made his fortune on a device that creates easy listening music out of modem noise, has been obsessed with Marge Simpson (nee Bouvier) since high school. Having blown their prom date with his "busy hands", Artie has since converted his mansion into a rather creepy shrine to Marge -- but despite this history, Marge accepts his offer in order to pay for anti-snoring surgery for Homer. Can Marge's and Homer's marriage be saved?

This episode parodies the 1993 movie "Indecent Proposal," in which Robert Redford makes a similar offer to a young wife (Demi Moore).

Answer: Comics Code Authority

"Seduction of the Innocent", filled with juicy anecdotes and lavishly illustrated with objectionable scenes from comic books, caused a minor panic when it was released. Although many of Wertham's arguments (such as the alleged concealment of naughty images in the shading of muscles or tree bark) seem rather strange today, and others (such as Wonder Woman as a subversive role model for young girls) are downright laughable, in other areas he did have a point: gruesome crime stories were marketed to children -- complete with advertisements for knives -- and comic shop owners sometimes felt coerced by publishers into carrying titles that made them uncomfortable.

The resulting Comic Code Authority (CCA), founded by the comic book publishers in fear of government censorship, was a mixed bag. It banned the most grotesque scenes and storylines, but also insisted that all storylines must end with the punishment of the malefactor and a victory by good over evil. It made no distinction between comic books read by children and those read by adults, denying those adults a free choice of reading matter. And some of its prohibitions were overly strict, as the makers of "Spider-Man" discovered when they ran a 1971 story -- at the request of the U.S. government -- showing drug use as dangerous and ugly. This story was denied a CCA seal because it mentioned drugs at all! The CCA is now much less powerful than it was -- Marvel Comics, for example, decided in 2001 to switch to its own internal ratings system -- and some parts of the code have been changed with the times.

Answer: Blindness

Medically discharged after having been blinded in an accident, the colonel seeks one last, wild weekend in New York City before committing suicide. The student, facing financial difficulties as well as disciplinary trouble at school, is hired to take care of the colonel -- never expecting that this simple trip will turn out to be of such importance.

Pacino was roundly praised for his acting in "Scent of a Woman", a remake of a 1974 Italian movie ("Profumo di donna"). When he won his Oscar for Best Actor, the only surprise most observers admitted to was that it had not come sooner!

Answer: Nepal

Everest straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet (which China annexed in 1951); its south face, along with the easiest climbing route, is in Nepal, while its north face is in China. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, who in 1953 became the first people to reach the summit, used this southerly route to achieve their goal.

Of course, "easiest" is a relative term. The high altitude of the peak means the summit is in a "death zone" (yes, that's really what they call it) -- featuring lack of oxygen, a slippery landscape, high winds, and intense cold. Even before reaching the death zone, climbers must face deadly, shifting ice in the Khumbu icefall, rope climbs, and occasional storms. Up to 15 people a year die on the slopes of Mount Everest. I think I'll stick to reading about it!

Answer: Achilles

Chiron, a half-brother of Zeus, was different from the other centaurs (who traced their ancestry to the union of a murderous king and a Hera-shaped raincloud). Where Chiron was educated and civilized, the others were drunk, violent, and best known for their attempt to carry off a whole tribe's worth of women (the Lapiths) for their own nefarious purposes. Nevertheless, numerous mythological parents were able to overcome these stereotypes and trust to Chiron's true, virtuous nature. In addition to raising Achilles (after Thetis left her family) and his friend Patroclus, Chiron also taught Jason (of Argonaut fame), Actaeon (later transformed into a stag and eaten by his own dogs), and Asclepius (demigod of medicine).

Also considered a trusted figure by more modern authors, Chiron guards the seventh circle of hell in Dante's "Inferno," assists Faust in Goethe's play of the same name, and is a prominent character in John Updike's "The Centaur."

Answer: 0.8

80% is equal to 80/100, a fraction that reduces to 4/5. In decimal form, this is equal to 0.8, or eight tenths.

Percentage problems remind many people uncomfortably of primary-school math class, but being able to convert between percentages and other number formats is a handy skill. If you're considering an elective surgery with an 80% success rate, it's useful to understand that the surgery fails for one out of every five patients. If you're considering whether clipping a 5% coupon is really worthwhile for a $20 purchase, it's helpful to be able to calculate that 5% of $20 = 0.05 * $20.00 = $1 off from the purchase price. And even more useful is the knowledge that, after answering this question, you're 85% done with the quiz!

Answer: Mezcal

Tequila, perhaps the most famous agave-derived spirit, can only legally be made from the blue agave (Agave tequilana); spirits derived from the Century plant are called mezcal. The central bulbs of an agave plant are removed, baked in underground ovens, and carefully smashed to extract a sweet juice, which is then distilled to produce the mezcal.

The Century plant is named for its long life cycle, which is actually closer to 25 years than to 100. When it flowers, which it does only once before its death, the plant's cluster of spiky leaves produces a 25-foot (8-meter) stalk to support its yellow blossoms. Mezcal farmers chop off this stalk once it begins to form, so that the plant's energy is redirected towards its juicy center.

Answer: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

"Sid Meier's Alpha CENTauri" plays much like the "Civilization" series, but on another world. The colony group from Earth, having suffered ship malfunction and even the assassination of their captain, splits into seven factions (one per escape pod), which must each build bases, conduct research into new technologies, and (naturally) fight wars with their neighbors. Never quite as popular as the series from which it arose, it nevertheless did quite well, even gaining a record high rating (98%) from "PC Gamer" magazine in April 1999.

Answer: 75

Semi- gives us one half, sesqui- gives us one and a half, and centennial gives us one hundred years. A sesquicentennial is thus 1.5 * 100 years = 150 years -- and a semisesquicentennial is half of that, or 75 years. Somehow "75-year anniversary" seems a little less of a mouthful!

I hope you've enjoyed playing this quiz as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I'm looking forward to the next hundred quizzes!