Last week's challenge
Start with the name ZAC TAYLOR, head coach of the Bengals. Rearrange the letters and you can spell a two-word phrase that might describe an unemployed person in Los Angeles. What is it?
Answer: LAZY ACTOR.
THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: OLYMPIC HOST CITIES
On-air questions: OK Ian, the 2022 Winter Olympics officially opened last Friday, with some preliminary events taking place the two days before that. The Games will run through February 20th, when the closing ceremony will be held in Beijing National Stadium. This week, not only are we in the middle of the Winter Olympics, but our answers are too: each correct answer can be spelled using letters from the name of a Winter Olympics host city. (I'll give you the city for each answer.)
1. [1992: Albertville] What writing system, named for its creator, was based on a system called "night writing", developed at the behest of Napoleon who wanted a way for his soldiers to communicate silently and without the need for a light source?
2. [2002: Salt Lake City] What town in upstate New York was home to Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of painting, and is the setting for the Washington Irving story "Rip Van Winkle"? [Catskill] ["Cat's creek" in Dutch; named by Dutch settlers but nobody really knows why "cat"]
3. [1932 and 1980: Lake Placid] The name of what Spanish dish comes from the Catalan word for "frying pan" and traditionally consists of rice, beans, rabbit, and chicken cooked in olive oil and broth to which is added saffron, which gives the dish its characteristic yellow color? [Paella] [Guinness Book of World Records: largest paella made in 1992; weighed over 27,000 kilograms and fed 100,000 people; 5000 kg of rice, 1000 L of olive oil]
4. [2018: Pyeongchang] 1963's V., 1997's Mason & Dixon, and 2009's Inherent Vice are three of the eight novels written to date by an author with what last name? [Pynchon] [1974: Pulitzer Prize fiction jury recommended Gravity's Rainbow for the award; PP board vetoed the recommendation: unreadable, turgid, overwritten and in parts obscene]
Extra credit
1. [2010: Vancouver] What Italian city is the setting for two of William Shakespeare's plays, one in which the city name appears in the opening line and one in which it appears in the title?
2. [1956: Cortina d'Ampezzo] A rhombus and a parallelogram are special versions of what type of quadrilateral?
This week's challenge
Start with the names of the Olympic host cities GRENOBLE and SOCHI. Rearrange the letters to spell a two-word phrase (five letters, eight letters) that describes a person living in the apartment next door. What is the phrase?
ANSWERS
On-air questions
1. Braille
2. Catskill
3. Paella
4. Pynchon
Extra credit
1. Verona
2. Trapezoid