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Any Questions #159

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel welcome a special guest player to the show.

Last week's challenge
Start with the word QUARTET. Change one letter to an S and you can rearrange the result to spell the hyphenated name of an instrument a draftsman might use. What is it?
Answer: If you change one of the Ts to an S, you can spell T-SQUARE.

THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: EXCLAMATION POINTS
On-air questions: It's Special Guest Answerer Time again! Deb Amlen is the writer of Wordplay, the crossword puzzle blog of the New York Times and, when she's not hocking people about crossword puzzles, she is the humor columnist for David Pogue's Yahoo! Tech. Deb says she likes sunsets, rainbows and schadenfreude, but not necessarily in that order.
Since Deb writes a humor column for Yahoo! Tech, and Yahoo! famously has an exclamation point in its name, today we've got some questions for her about exclamation points.

1.  An exclamation point is placed next to words that are not listed in the official players' dictionary but are on the list of acceptable words for use in tournaments and clubs by players of what board game?
2. After Elaine's boyfriend doesn't put an exclamation point at the end of a phone message, an argument ensues which ends with him breaking up with her. This happens in a 1993 episode of what TV series?
3. The title of a 1986 comedy starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase as actors who must help a Mexican town defend itself from a bandit is written with two exclamation points, one upside down at the beginning and one at the end. What is the title of this movie?
4. Hello, Dolly! Is one of three musicals with an exclamation point in their title to win the Tony Award for Best Musical. What veteran of the stage originated the role of Dolly Gallagher Levi in the 1964 Broadway production?
5. Often written as two separate characters, the punctuation mark known as an interrobang is a combination of an exclamation point with what other punctuation mark?

Extra credit
1. Born Alecia Moore, what pop singer often stylizes the I in her stage name as an exclamation point?
2. In mathematics, when an exclamation point is placed next to a number (as in 4!) it signifies the multiplication of all the integers from one to that number. What name is given to this operation?

This week's challenge
Start with the word EXCLAMATION. Change one letter to an M (not the one that's there) and you can rearrange the result to spell the names of two countries that both begin with M. What are they?

ANSWERS
On-air questions

1. Scrabble
2. Seinfeld
3. ¡Three Amigos!
4. Carol Channing
5. Question mark

Extra credit
1. P!nk
2. Factorial
 

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.