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Any Questions #273

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel are back for a hoppin' good quiz.

Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase SECOND TIME. Change one letter to an R and you can rearrange the result to spell a five-letter word for things you might have in your pocket and a five-letter word for a machine you might put those things in. What are they?
Answer: If you change the D to an R, you can spell COINS and METER.

THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: FROGS
On-air questions: On November 18, 1865, the Mark Twain short story that came to be known as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published. Originally titled "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog, the story was published in the New York Saturday Press. An expanded version was published the following month with the now-familiar title. A limited-edition book soon followed: 1000 copies were published with one of seven different colored covers, and now fetch thousands of dollars at auction. To, um, celebrate Twain's jumping frog, this week our questions are about frogs.

1. What character, whose prototype was made from an old coat belonging to the creator's mother and two ping-pong ball halves, debuted in 1955 on a show called Sam and Friends, but gained prominence as one of the original characters on Sesame Street?
2. "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs" describes the second of ten plagues that were inflicted upon Egypt to persuade the Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery. These ten plagues are detailed in what book of the Old Testament?
3. Debuting during Super Bowl 29 in January, 1995, and ranked as one of the top Super Bowl commercials of all time, an ad featured three frogs sitting in a swamp at first randomly croaking their names and then in an order that forms the name of the product they are advertising. What company produced this ad?
4. The Horned Frogs are the athletic teams of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU became a member of the Big 12 Conference in 2012, after leaving what conference, whose member schools are located in Colorado, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming?
5. Elliott is in biology class and the students are about to dissect frogs. The title character is in Elliott's house, drinking beer and watching television. Elliott starts to feel drunk, and, empathically picking up on the title character's feelings of wanting to be rescued, he leads the class in a frantic mission to free the frogs from their jars. This takes place in what classic 1982 film?

Extra credit
1. By what name do we more commonly know the French dish called cuisses de grenouille?
2. According to his creator, what famous literary character and his friends are, at some point beyond the events of the novels, featured on a series of collectible trading cards that come with Chocolate Frogs, a magical sweet enjoyed by wizards?

This week's challenge
Start with the phrase THE FROG PRINCE. Change one letter to a T (not the one that's already there, as usual) and you can rearrange the result to spell a three-word phrase (five letters, two letters, six letters) that describes where an outfielder might play during a defensive shift. What is the phrase?

ANSWERS
On-air questions

1. Kermit the Frog
2. Exodus
3. Budweiser
4. Mountain West Conference
5. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Extra credit
1. Frog legs
2. Harry Potter
 

A lifelong resident of the Capital Region, Ian joined WAMC in late 2008 and became news director in 2013. He began working on Morning Edition and has produced The Capitol Connection, Congressional Corner, and several other WAMC programs. Ian can also be heard as the host of the WAMC News Podcast and on The Roundtable and various newscasts. Ian holds a BA in English and journalism and an MA in English, both from the University at Albany, where he has taught journalism since 2013.
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