Botticelli, Feb. 2012

Thread Games
101

John Dos Passos.

All right, that gives us four final DQs to play with. Any further thoughts, folks? To repeat:

P.

  1. Real person
  2. Male
  3. No longer alive
  4. American
  5. Born before 1900
  6. Born after 1800
  7. Last name starts with “P”
  8. Not at all a political figure
  9. Born East of the Mississippi, lived a long time West of it, became famous and died East of it again.
  10. Died before 1950
  11. Best known as either a singer, songwriter, actor, director or writer
  12. Not involved in music
  13. Never personally involved in movie making
  14. I did all my best-known work before WW2
  15. Best known as an author
  16. Not a novelist
102

Author, but not a novelist. Could that mean Historian? Poet? (American poet, last name ‘P’, that period? Beats me…) Playwright? Short stories but no novels? A religious writer, like Joseph Smith only starting with a ‘P’?

Just because the best known work was done before WWII doesn’t nail it down that much. It might be worth knowing whether this person died before 1900, or whether the famous work(s) in question were written between the US Civil War and WWI…

Just throwing some ideas out there…

103

Good ideas.

DQs:

Dead before 1900?
Best known for fiction?

Two DQs remain.

104
  1. Real person
  2. Male
  3. No longer alive
  4. American
  5. Born before 1900
  6. Born after 1800
  7. Last name starts with “P”
  8. Not at all a political figure
  9. Born East of the Mississippi, lived a long time West of it, became famous and died East of it again.
  10. Died before 1950
  11. Best known as either a singer, songwriter, actor, director or writer
  12. Not involved in music
  13. Never personally involved in movie making
  14. I did all my best-known work before WW2
  15. Best known as an author
  16. Not a novelist
  17. Pretty much exclusively known for fiction.
  18. Still alive after 1900 (but not long after)
105

I won’t give hints yet, but I will swear that the person in question is very famous- not obscure. And I remain convinced that the right IQ would narrow it down very quickly, and someone would get it.

106

It’s starting to look as if no one is playing this game any more except me and Elendl’s Heir…

I’ll start to put this game out of its misery and will probably take an extended hiatus from Botticelli for a while.

Hints:

  1. The person in question gained fame in the city where I was born and the city where I now live (you’ll find a museum and two junior high schools here named after him here).

  2. His REAL last name began with P, but he was much better known by another name.

  3. He specialized in short stories.

  4. Bonus: a century before Jann Wenner, he founded a magazine called Rolling Stone.

107

What the Hell was Saki’s real name? I think the dates are too early, anyway, but clearly it’s someone like that…

BTW, it is not that I find the game uninteresting - it’s just been a ridiculously busy couple of weeks…

108

Munro, wasn’t it? No “P” there.

Still stumped.

109

A few more hints…

Bette Midler starred in a comedy based (loosely) on my best-known story.

My second best-known story is re-told or re-enacted every Christmas.

I did some jail time, and some say my pen name came from the real name of a prison guard.

110

Again, I won’t know it without looking it up, but could that be O. Henry going by his real name? I’m thinking of ‘Gift of the Magi’ for the Christmas story…

111

And Ruthless People, starring Bette Midler, was loosely based on “The Ransom of Red Chief.” I don’t know O. Henry’s real name, though (and suspect most people wouldn’t, thus failing the Botticelli rule).

112

You got it- **William Sydney Porter **became famous as O. Henry.

Here in Austin, he started a magazine called Rolling Stone. He also embezzled money from a bank here, and eventually went to prison for it.

Austin has an O. Henry Junior High School and a Porter Junior High School, both named for him.

113

Well, here’s the thing - we’ve been pretty aggressive in both IQs and subjects about picking initials that are not necessarily the first initials that come to mind. For instance, most folks wouldn’t have a problem deriving ‘Mozart’ from a W., an A. or an M., but there’s also a J. and a C. in there - Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilius Mozart was the actual name on his baptismal certificate.

At any rate, of course, I’ve heard of O. Henry, and I also have known since high school that is a pseudonym. I can remember at least two high school english teachers telling me his real name, along with Saki and a few others - it’s just that, like all their other wise words, they went in one ear and out the other.

Or, to quote the witch in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, “It’s a fair cop.”

114

I’m not so sure, but OK. Why don’t you start a new thread for the March round(s), Ministre.

115

In case you missed it, there is a March thread right here. Come on over and play!