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Any Questions #236

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel try to stay perfect this week.

Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase NATIONAL PARK. Rearrange the letters and you can spell the names (4 and 8) of two foods often used in Southern cooking. What are they?
Answer: The foods are OKRA and PLANTAIN.

THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: S. P.
On-air questions: On March 4, 1957, the S&P 500 stock index was introduced. The "S&P" stands for "Standard and Poor’s," the financial services company that introduced their first stock index in 1923. The 500 refers to the 500 companies whose stocks comprise the S&P 500, although there are actually 505 individual stocks on the list. (Google and 20th Century Fox are two of the companies that have two stocks on the index.) In honor of the S&P 500’s introduction, each correct answer will be a name, title, or two-word phrase with the initials S.P.

1. Despite the evidence that Ireland never had any snakes to begin with, what bishop known as the "Apostle of Ireland" is credited with chasing all the snakes in Ireland into the sea after they attacked him during a fast he was undertaking at the time?
2. Based on a 1947 book by James Michener and featuring the songs "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Bali Ha'i," what 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical won 10Tony awards and became the second-longest-running Broadway production to date, after Oklahoma!?
3. In baseball, what name is given to the sequence of events in which the batter bunts with a runner on third base, with the intention of being thrown out at first base, allowing the runner on third to score?
4. What Russian composer wrote an opera based on Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace and a ballet based on Romeo and Juliet, but is perhaps best known for his 1936 symphony Peter and the Wolf?
5. Before starring in To Sir, With Love, In The Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, what actor became the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in 1964's Lilies of the Field?

Extra credit
1. What fictional character shared a house with Blanche Devereaux, Rose Nylund, and Dorothy Zbornak?
2. The reading from the medical instrument known as a sphygmomanometer is usually expressed as one number "over" another. By what name do we know the first of those two numbers?

This week's challenge
Start with the phrase SOUTH POLE. Change one letter to an R and you can rearrange the result to spell a word that names things explorers might look through. What are they?

ANSWERS
On-air questions

1. Saint Patrick
2. South Pacific
3. Squeeze play
4. Sergei Prokofiev
5. Sidney Poitier

Extra credit
1. Sophia Petrillo
2. Systolic pressure
 

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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