WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel try to outfox one another.
Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase STRANGER THINGS. Drop an R and you can spell a two-word phrase that describes what happens when a tropical storm becomes a hurricane. What are the words?
Answer: GAINS STRENGTH.
THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: FOXES
On-air questions: On December 7, 1930, Boston experimental television station W1XAV aired video from a portion of a CBS Radio broadcast featuring an orchestral work called The Fox Trappers. The radio show was sponsored by I. J. Fox Furriers, and contains an advertisement for that business which is often considered the first television commercial broadcast in the United States. The commercial was prohibited by the Federal Radio Commission (which later became the Federal Communications Commission) because of a lack of agreement about whether experimental stations could air commercials. To commemorate the broadcast of The Fox Trappers, this week our show is about foxes.
1. Journalist Fox Butterfield has spent most of his career working for the New York Times, and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his work with the team that published the Pentagon Papers. In 1990, Butterfield wrote an article for the Times about the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, a man named what?
2. "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing", a quote by Greek poet Archilochus, inspired the fox logo of what numerically-named data journalism website founded by Nate Silver, which began as a political polling-related blog before branching out to cover science, economics, pop culture, and other topics?
3. In the game called Fox and Hounds, four playing pieces – the hounds – are placed on the four dark squares on one edge of the board and another piece – the fox – is placed on a dark square on the opposite edge of the board. The pieces move until either the fox has reached the other side of the board or the hounds prevent the fox from moving. On what type of gameboard is Fox and Hounds played?
4. The 2018 film Isle of Dogs was the second stop-motion animated film directed by Wes Anderson. What was the first, released in 2009 and based on a 1970 children's book of the same name by Roald Dahl?
5. What name is missing from this otherwise complete list: Meredith Baxter, Michael Gross, Justine Bateman, Tina Yothers, Brian Bonsall?
Extra credit
1. The 1981 studio album The Fox, preceded by 1980's 21 at 33 and followed by 1982's Jump Up!, features what artist collaborating with lyricists Tom Robinson and Gary Osborne, in addition to his longtime collaborator?
2. By what name do we commonly refer to the species of flowering plant known as Digitalis purpurea?
This week's challenge
Start with the phrase FOX TERRIER. Change one letter to a D and you can rearrange the result to spell a two- word phrase (five letters in each word) that might be displayed on a screen after a problem is resolved. What is the phrase?
ANSWERS
On-air questions
1. Barack Obama
2. FiveThirtyEight
3. Checkerboard
4. Fantastic Mr. Fox
5. Michael J. Fox
Extra credit
1. Elton John
2. Foxglove
