WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel swap seats for a show that requires some long division.
Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase U.S. PRESIDENTS. Add a letter and you can rearrange the result to spell a three-letter word and a ten-letter word that both name things you might wear with a suit. What are the words?
Answer: If you add an E, you can spell TIE and SUSPENDERS.
THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: MATH PROBLEMS
On-air questions: The spring semester is back in full swing, despite COVID, and some of us are teaching math courses. With you on the hot seat today, I thought it was a good time to give you a busman’s holiday and give you some math problems to solve, Any Questions style.
1. The number of defensive baseball players on the field times the number of innings in a regulation baseball game plus the number of World Series won by the Arizona Diamondbacks = this number, the amount of regular season games a team plays in a normal NBA season?
2. The number of angry men in a 1957 Sidney Lumet film title times the title number of years Solomon Northup spent in bondage in a 2013 Steve McQueen film.
3. The minimum number of Electoral College votes it takes to win the White House plus the number of pieces of silver for which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus times two = what number that repeats in a Tennyson poem?
4. The number of miles the narrator of The Proclaimers’ biggest hit is willing to walk in that song’s chorus divided by the only number in any Gabriel García Márquez novel title.
5. The three-digit number that follows Reno in a police mockumentary series that originally ran on Comedy Central in the early 2000s minus the Brooklyn precinct in a police comedy that has run on both FOX and NBC minus the title car in an NBC police sitcom that ran for two seasons in the early 1960s.
Extra credit
1. The number of U.S. states that are commonwealths times the number of U.S. capitals with the word “city” in their name.
2. As “RENT” taught us, the number of minutes in a year plus the number of trombones leading “The Music Man’s” big parade plus Jean Valjean’s prisoner number in “Les Miserables.”
This week's challenge
Start with a common chemical symbol. Add three letters and you can spell the namesake of a famous paradox. Drop the last letter from that name and add two new letters and you can spell the namesake of a famous principle. What are the words?
ANSWERS
On-air questions
1. 82 (9 times 9 plus 1)
2. 144 (12 times 12)
3. The 600 (270 plus 30 times 2)
4. 10 (1,000 divided by 100)
5. 758 (911 minus 99 minus 54)
Extra credit
1. 16 (4 times 4; Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, Kentucky; Jefferson City, Carson City, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City)
2. 550,277 (525,600 plus 76 plus 24,601)
