Botticelli - May 2017

Thread Games
481

IQ: Did you teach Jody Tiflin all about horses, to help him care for his new red pony?

482

Take a DQ.

483

Drat. Steinbeck’s character of Billy Buck from The Red Pony seemed to check every one of the DQ boxes. Thought that might have been it.

I’ll reserve the DQ, since I had the last one.

484

Ok, one more and I’ll stop:

Are you an impotent expat journalist who lived in Paris?

485

DQ: Did the novel(s) win any major awards?

486

I’ll ask an EH standard.

DQ: Does the story take place in NYC?

holding 1 DQ

487

Take a DQ.

B.

  1. fictional
  2. male
  3. last name starts with B
  4. first appeared as a character in a novel
  5. American
  6. has been portrayed in a movie
  7. first appeared before 1950
  8. would/could be alive today, if real, but seems unlikely
  9. protagonist of the novel/movie
  10. not considered a comedic character
  11. movie made before 1960
  12. not a genre novel (SF, fantasy, western, mystery, &c)
  13. created after 1900
  14. novel written by a man
  15. character has not appeared in 3 or more books written by the same author
  16. novel won major award
  17. story does not take place in NYC
488

Another swing and a miss by me. This would have been Jake Barnes, protagonist of The Sun also Rises. It was more of a direct guess than an IQ. I won’t take a DQ for this (I still have one in reserve).

489

We’ve asked game guesses as IQs before. Take the DQ.

490

Here’s a DQ: Is the novel regularly taught in high school English classes or college American lit courses?

(I know schools teach everything from Stephen King to Quentin Tarantino these days, but I hope you get my drift)

491

DQ: Novel would be found in the Adult Fiction section of a library?
One DQ reserved.

492

IQ: Are you the title character of a Sinclair Lewis novel?

493

Agreed. It functions as a valid IQ in this context.

Not Babbitt.

B.

  1. fictional
  2. male
  3. last name starts with B
  4. first appeared as a character in a novel
  5. American
  6. has been portrayed in a movie
  7. first appeared before 1950
  8. would/could be alive today, if real, but seems unlikely
  9. protagonist of the novel/movie
  10. not considered a comedic character
  11. movie made before 1960
  12. not a genre novel (SF, fantasy, western, mystery, &c)
  13. created after 1900
  14. novel written by a man
  15. character has not appeared in 3 or more books written by the same author
  16. novel won major award
  17. story does not take place in NYC
  18. unsure if the novel is regularly taught in high school English classes or college American lit courses (although it is regarded as a classic)
  19. would be found in the Adult Fiction section of a library

I’ll answer the next three already-earned DQs. First come, first served.

494

DQ: Does story take place during the Great Depression era?

495

DQ: Main setting of the story is in the US, west of the Mississippi?

496

DQ: Did the “movie made before 1960” adaptation win an Oscar in any category?

497

B.

  1. fictional
  2. male
  3. last name starts with B
  4. first appeared as a character in a novel
  5. American
  6. has been portrayed in a movie
  7. first appeared before 1950
  8. would/could be alive today, if real, but seems unlikely
  9. protagonist of the novel/movie
  10. not considered a comedic character
  11. movie made before 1960
  12. not a genre novel (SF, fantasy, western, mystery, &c)
  13. created after 1900
  14. novel written by a man
  15. character has not appeared in 3 or more books written by the same author
  16. novel won major award
  17. story does not take place in NYC
  18. unsure if the novel is regularly taught in high school English classes or college American lit courses (although it is regarded as a classic)
  19. would be found in the Adult Fiction section of a library
  20. story takes place during the Great Depression era
  21. main setting of the story is in the US, but unclear if west of the Mississippi
  22. movie made before 1960 won several Oscars

Right. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. Please ask your earned “Are you Firstname Lastname?” questions by noon EST Fri.

498

Are you Jack Burden?

499

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Yes, I am

Jack Burden

Narrator and world-weary protagonist of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-winning political novel All the King’s Men: All the King's Men - Wikipedia

Good job, divemaster! How’d you figure it out?

500

Yay!

The light bulb dinged on, as it were, with the answer to DQ21:

  1. main setting of the story is in the US, but unclear if west of the Mississippi

From that, the story had to be either one that never gave a clue as to where it was set (very unusual for American fiction of that era) OR, it had to be set in a place like Louisiana, which is bisected by the Mississippi River. And the highly regarded novel that fit was All the King’s Men.

Ironically, you had answered my DQ18

  1. unsure if the novel is regularly taught in high school English classes or college American lit courses (although it is regarded as a classic)

…when in fact, this was assigned reading for my college freshman English class. This was at LSU, in Baton Rouge, which is of course one of the main settings of the novel and is bisected by the Mississippi River.

So it all fell together very quickly once I saw DQ21 and remembered my own class assignment with DQ18.

My turn to host? I am

J.