Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

The 4th of July: Independence Day

Today is Independence Day in the US — the 4th of July.  It’s the perfect day to enhance our trivia knowledge of America.  Here are some odds and sods of information that will make you totally superior to other Canadians (or Americans, for that matter) who do not possess this specialized knowledge.  Enjoy!

Nearly 25% of all Americans have been on TV.

In Washington, DC, there are over 75 lobbyists for every United States senator.

At any given time, approximately 60,000 Americans are flying.

From space, the brightest thing on Earth is Las Vegas.  That’s why the aliens always show up there.

There are more cows in Montana than people.

There are more cars than people in Los Angeles.

If California was a separate country, it would have the 7th largest economy in the world.

The deepest gorge in the United States is not the Grand Canyon.  It’s Hells Canyon on the Snake River in Idaho and Oregon.

The Sears Tower in Chicago is so big it has its own ZIP Code: 60606.

Only 12 people have ever stood on the moon – all Americans.
The last time anybody checked, which was 2006, the United States gave – gave! – other countries $22.828 billion dollars in foreign aid.  That’s in a single year, directly from the US government, and not the Red Cross, Unicef, Save the Children or any other charity — including Bill Gates.

The United States is weirdly shaped.
Buffalo, New York, which is on Lake Erie directly south of Toronto, Canada, is further east than Jacksonville, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which are all on the Atlantic Ocean.

El Paso, Texas, is closer to San Diego, California than it is to Houston, Texas.
Reno, Nevada is further west than Los Angeles, California.
Louisville, Kentucky is closer to Windsor, Ontario than it is to Memphis, Tennessee.
And Windsor, Ontario is actually south of Detroit, Michigan.

There are more hazelnuts grown in the Willamette Valley, Oregon than everywhere else in the world — combined.  In fact, Oregon produces 98% of the world’s commercial hazelnut crop.

The most popular tourist destination in the world is San Francisco.  Paris, France is #2.

Pocahontas was the first woman to appear on US currency.  Martha Washington was second.  Minnie Mouse (featured on the Disney five dollar bill) was third — but that doesn’t count.
As of today, the most widely recognized symbol in the world is the Coke — followed by Facebook, Pepsi and Google.

Finally, here are a couple of facts that could win you untold numbers of drinks in a bar.  Just remember to phrase them properly.

1 – How many states are there in the United States of America?  Most people (who aren’t dolts) and every reference book will say 50.  This is not true.  There are only 46 states in the U.S.A.   However, there are also four Commonwealths: Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts — which round the number up to an even 50.

2 – How many presidents were born in Kentucky?  Even the mighty Google tells us only one, Abraham Lincoln.  Nope, wrong again.  There were two: Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis his Confederate counterpart during the Civil War.

To all my American friends: Happy 4th of July!

Another Puzzle!

Remember back in high school when you spent two semesters in algebra hunting for X as if he stole something?  Remember how everybody thought it was so-o-o important – but you?   Remember how you don’t remember any of it ‘cause you’ve never found a practical use for (X2 + 3 = 12.)?  This is a puzzle that looks an awful lot like algebra but isn’t.  Every letter represents a value that has direct relationship to the other letter (or letters) in each example.  Although they are all connected, they must be solved separately.  The groupings are random, and you can start anywhere.  Your first correct answer will lead you to every other solution.  Here’s a hint.  The key is finding the connection which gives you your first solution.  From there, it’s only a matter of deductive reasoning.  Good luck!

24 H in a D

90 D in a R A

Zero A in a F H
There are 2 S to every A
6 S. on a S.S.

3 S and you’re O

There are 8 N in an O

 

8 P in the S.S. plus P

1 P is worth 1,000 W
7 W of the A W

1 W on a U

 

64 S on a C B

20,000 L under the S

G and the 3 B

 

1 is the L N

12 L of H

28 D in F except in a L Y

 

Every C has 9 L

12 D of C

4 S in a S D of C

2 is C; 3 is a C

 

76 T led the B P

12 M in a Y

K 2 B with 1 S

 

13 in a B D

3 B M

 

1001 A N

4 H of the A

3 P in a H G

40 D of R in the G F

4 Q in a D

 

6 P on a S F

12 S of the Z

S W and the 7 D

Last Week’s Solution

Since we think spatially, the best method of solving last week’s quiz is to draw five boxes on a sheet of paper.  Then, write each variable on something like a Post-it note so you can move it around.  Begin by joining the values that go together.  For example, we know the Spaniard owns a dog, so those two would be connected.  Next, position the values we know to be true.  Again, we know the Norwegian lives in the first house, so place him there, etc.  Then use the connected clues to eliminate impossibilities.  From Clue 4 we have the Green House connected to Coffee and from Clue 6 we know that it’s to the right of the Ivory House.  Therefore, since we know the second house is blue and milk is drunk in the middle house, we can conclude the 4th house is Ivory and the 5th house is green.  We now know the Englishman lives in the middle house.  Then it’s only a matter of following the clues to discover the Norwegian drinks water and the Japanese guy has a zebra.

Travel TV: A Word to the Wise

When I was a kid, I loved travel programs.  In my teenage years, I must have spent a month of crappy Sunday afternoons going places I’d never been.  I’m not one to brag, but aside from North Korea, there are not too many places my electronic friends and I didn’t see on this little planet of ours.  Yep, those were the days; slinging my pack around the world that wasn’t even in colour yet.  Ah, but the innocence of youth is fleeting, and even though I continued to watch travel programs, when I grew up, I resolved to see these marvelous places for myself.  On the first trip I ever took that required a passport, I discovered almost immediately that those wonderful television personalities I’d befriended over the years were a bunch of lying bastards.  Their sanitized version of getting from here to there is Nixonesque in its duplicity.  Even the mighty Pinocchio himself would be scandalized by such fraud.  So, as a public service to all those other armchair travellers out there, I’m going to point out a few things about these charlatans.

Let’s start at the beginning.  Where’s their luggage?  Gandhi carried more stuff than these guys do.  Nobody on travel TV, not even the kids who are supposedly backpacking through central Asia, ever carries anything bigger than a handkerchief.   Then the smug buggers have the audacity to tell the rest of us how to pack!  They hold up a bag the size of Paris Hilton’s purse and say something like, “I like to put everything in my carry-on; a few interchangeable items to mix and match, toiletries, and, of course, a good pair of walking shoes.”  But notice: they never actually try to stuff that stuff into the bag.  No, it’s always a cut to the next scene — when they’re rolling it off the Eurorail like it was made of Styrofoam.  If you and I packed like that, after a week, we’d look like we’d been attacked by monkeys.  The mix and match would be what do I want to wear today: stained or soiled?  And that’s not the end of their chicanery.

Every single hotel, motel, hostel and people’s home they stay at has a view to rival Victor Emmanuel’s balcony in Rome.  They always find these marvels on some crooked side street that you couldn’t Google if you wanted to because it doesn’t even have a name it’s so quaint.  The place is never full, nobody else is at the counter when they check-in, and the room itself looks like the good bits of Kubla Khan’s Pleasure Dome at Xanadu.  These palaces never smell like cabbage.  I’ve stayed in a few places in my time, up to and including a converted telephone exchange, but I’ve never run across such earthly delights.  I’ve never even met anybody who has, and I run with some of the worst braggarts this side of Texas.  But wait!  These folks aren’t finished yet.

The next morning, they wake up to a breakfast that would make Gordon Ramsey clean up his mouth.  It turns out the owner’s brother is a Cordon Bleu chef who gave up cooking for the crowned heads of Europe to help his sister run her B & B.  (Who knew?)  Not only that, but it seems this is the one week of the year when aardvark is in season, and the bro is planning an aardvark fiesta for that very night!  (What are the chances?)  Meanwhile, a troupe of traditional musicians who have been rehearsing in the basement of the Florentine church across the street, just happen to love aardvark.  And it goes on and on.

It never rains in television travel land.  The wind doesn’t blow.  It might do that misty cloudy thing you write poetry about, but you never see a gut-wrenching storm come slashing out of nowhere when you’re eight miles from shelter.

It’s never crowded, either.  There are no lines for the Eiffel Tour, the Crown Jewels or (I assume) the Second Coming.  It’s hop on/hop off at every tourist attraction from the Great Buddha at Kamakura to the Brandenburg Gate.

Nobody’s rude.  Everybody’s interesting.  There are no jerks in faraway lands, and certainly no idiot tourists busy poisoning the water for the rest of us.  It’s all one big Disneyland with a foreign accent.

I realize that television, by its very nature, is the willing suspension of disbelief.  I understand that you can’t build a half hour program around waiting in line to see the Mona Lisa.  I’ve written for TV.  It’s show ‘em what you’re going to say; don’t tell ‘em.  The nuances tend to get lost.  However, there should be disclaimers on travel TV or some explanation that the intrepid kid looking at the camera has an army of invisible sherpas, sweating the details.  There’s a huge difference between going somewhere with a producer, director and camera crew — and you and the boyfriend grabbing a flight to Bangkok off the Internet.  Honestly, if you’re going to distribute travel information, at the very least, it should be useful.  For example, why is there never a travel program that tells you: “Dragging 25 kilos of laundry around India is stupid.  Clothes are cheap there.  Buy as you go.”  Or “Restaurant X serves Mystery Meat, keeping looking.”  Or, every once in a while: “Hey, folks!  Don’t come here.  It sucks!”

Now, that would be information you can use.