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Any Questions #390: "ENIAC”

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel are back with a show about a supercomputer. (No, not Mike.)

Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase FOLK SINGER. Rearrange the letters and you can spell a six-letter competitor and a four-letter verb associated with that type of competitor. What are the words?
Answer: GOLFER, SINK.

THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: E, N, I, A, C
On-air questions: On February 15, 1946, the computer known as ENIAC was officially dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania. In operation since December of 1945, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer was among the first general-purpose computers. It was designed to calculate artillery firing tables and the first program it ran was a feasibility study of a thermonuclear weapon. It could perform 5000 simple additions or subtractions per second and could run complex programs, some of which took days or weeks to correctly input into the machine. To commemorate ENIAC's dedication, this week our questions are about the letters E, N, I, A, and C.

1. While no chemical element on the periodic table has the symbol E, there are three whose symbols start with E: erbium (symbol Er), europium (symbol Eu) and an element with symbol Es, named for which scientist associated with a formula starting with the letter E?
2. A psychiatric patient is the title character of the novella N., which appears in a 1998 collection of stories called Just after Sunset. The novella mentions the cities of Castle Rock and Chester's Mill, the latter of which is the setting for the novel Under the Dome, and was written by what author?
3. A yellow lowercase I inside a black oval with an orange border is the logo on the costumes of what team of superheroes, a logo which is also used as one of the logos for the film in which they appear?
4. "A", the fifth song on the 1994 album Maybe You Should Drive, was released by what Canadian band, two years after their song "If I Had $1000000" and four years before their hit "One Week"?
5. Teams in the NHL are allowed to select one player to serve as captain, who wears the letter C on their jersey. To date, the only player to captain two NHL teams that won the Stanley Cup is Mark Messier, who did it five times with the Edmonton Oilers between 1984 and 1990 and again in 1994 with what team, who ended a 54-year drought with that championship?

Extra credit
1. Besides E, which letter among E, N, I, A, and C is also not used as the one-letter symbol for a chemical element?
2. In the English language version of Scrabble, which is the only letter among E, N, I, A, and C that is not worth one point?

This week's challenge
Start with the word COMPUTER. Change one letter to two of a different letter and you can rearrange the result to spell a two-word phrase (four letters, five letters) that means "break". What is the phrase?

ANSWERS
On-air questions

1. Albert Einstein
2. Stephen King
3. The Incredibles
4. Barenaked Ladies
5. New York Rangers

Extra credit
1. A
2. C
 

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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