Number Nine - Random Trivia Answers

• A1) World Series of Poker (Main Event). Last year, the annual No Limit Texas Hold 'Em tournament began delaying its final table by four months to allow publicity to build for the event and its last nine contenders.
• A2) Tennis. The concept was introduced under the awkward title, "Championship Series, Single Week" in 1990, became the Tennis Masters Series in 2000, and has been called the ATP Masters Series since 2004.
• A3) Turnberry. The course on the Firth of Clyde features Turnberry Lighthouse, which was built over the ruins of Turnberry Castle, where Robert the Bruce, the Scottish King from 1306 to 1329, was born.
• A4) 17. 35,396 different puzzles are known that start with only 17 squares filled in. A minimum of 18 are needed for a symmetrical puzzle.
• A5) 501. The total can be achieved with three identical sets of three darts: a triple 20, a triple 19 (these first two darts can be swapped), and a bullseye (worth 50; the very last dart must be a double-score or a bullseye).
• A6) 3. The 1-5, 2-8, and 3-9 are the double woods that make it hard to see how many pins you have standing.
• A7) North America. Australia and South America each consist of four territories, Africa six, Europe seven, and Asia twelve.
• A8) 55. A Double 6 set has 28, a Double 12 set has 91, and so on, easily calculated using the formula for triangular numbers, (n*(n+1))/2, where n is one higher than the number of the set because of the blanks (e.g., Double 6 -> (7*8)/2 = 28).
• A9) NHL. Glenn Anderson, Andy Bathgate, Johnny Bucyk, Clark Gillies, Adam Graves, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull (two teams), Lanny McDonald, and Maurice Richard all wore #9. Six Major League Baseball players and two NBA players have had their number 9 retired, but no NFL team has ever retired the number (Drew Brees could eventually be the first if last year wasn't an anomaly).
• A10) Yellow. It matches the 1-ball, as the solid and striped balls that are eight apart share the same color.
• A11) 9 of Diamonds. Among other stories, Sir John Dalrymple supposedly authorized the Glencoe Massacre on February 13, 1692 using the nine of diamonds playing card. His family's coat of arms bears sports nine diamonds, almost in the same pattern as on the card.
• A12) Lefty Grove. By turning the trick on August 23 and September 27, 1928, the Philadelphia Athletics hurler became the first pitcher to ever accomplish the feat twice in an entire career. Only Sandy Koufax, in 1962 and 1964, and Nolan Ryan, in 1968 and 1972 have since tied the latter record.

Number Nine - Random Trivia Questions

Since Wednesday will be 9/9/09, this week's random quiz is all about the number 9 in the Sports and Games category.

Number Nine Questions

• Q1) What international event features the November Nine?
• Q2) What sport's second-most important events were known as the Mercedes-Benz Super 9 from 1996 to 1999?
• Q3) What golf course's 9th hole is known as Bruce's Castle?
• Q4) What is the fewest number of prefilled digits needed for a 9-by-9 Sudoku puzzle to have a unique answer?
• Q5) What version of darts allows for a variety of different perfect games known as nine dart finishes?
• Q6) In ten-pin bowling, what pin stands directly in front of the 9-pin?
• Q7) In the board game Risk, what continent contains exactly nine territories?
• Q8) How many tiles are in a complete Double 9 domino set?
• Q9) In which major North American sport (MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL) has the uniform number 9 been retired for exactly nine players?
• Q10) What color is the stripe on the 9-ball in pool?
• Q11) Which playing card is known as the Curse of Scotland?
• Q12) Who is the only Major League Baseball pitcher to strike out the side on nine pitches twice in a single season?

We're #1! (Part Two) - Random Trivia Answers

Each group is listed with the year they were founded, any omitted founding member, and their #1 songs.

• A1) Foreigner. Founded 1976. "I Want to Know What Love Is" in 1984. The band's previous album, 4, reached number one on the album chart, but had just fallen short with "Urgent" (#4) and "Waiting for a Girl Like You" (#2), both of which topped the Mainstream Rock chart.
• A2) Def Leppard. Founded 1977. "Love Bites" [link to The Hit Co. version] in 1988. The song ends with producer Mutt Lange's filtered sentence, "Yes it does, bloody hell", not a stronger curse about Jesus as some have speculated.
• A3) The Human League. Founded 1977. "Don't You Want Me" in 1981 and "Human" in 1986. Although usual backup singer Susan Ann Sulley took the female lead on "Don't You Want Me", the song is merely Philip Oakey's fiction inspired by the movie A Star Is Born and is not about any romance between the two.
• A4) INXS. Founded 1977. "Need You Tonight" in 1987. The single is often combined with "Mediate" (also spelled "Meditate" on some album versions), the next song on the Kick LP.
• A5) Toto. Founded 1977. "Africa" in 1982. The group's signature tune almost didn't make it onto Toto IV because of how long it took to record and how different it is from the other songs on the album.
• A6) Berlin. Founded 1978. "Take My Breath Away" in 1986. The love song from the Top Gun soundtrack won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.
• A7) Dexys Midnight Runners. Founded 1978. "Come On Eileen" in 1982. The essence of a one-hit wonder, at least in the U.S., the British band never even cracked the Hot 100 before or after.
• A8) Simple Minds. Founded 1978. "Don't You (Forget About Me)" in 1985. The single was the only song from The Breakfast Club soundtrack to chart and was followed soon after by Once Upon a Time, which landed "Alive and Kicking" at #3 and took two other songs into the top thirty.
• A9) Survivor. Founded 1978. "Eye of the Tiger" in 1982. In the movie Rocky III, for which the song was written at Sylvester Stallone's request, a tiger's roar can be heard.
• A10) UB40. Founded 1978. "Red Red Wine" in 1988 and "Can't Help Falling in Love" in 1993. The former was written and initially recorded by Neil Diamond in 1968 but the band says it was only familiar with Tony Tribe's reggae version from the following year.
• A11) Men at Work. Founded 1979. "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under" in 1981. The latter is such an Australian favorite that the band performed it at the closing ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
• A12) Tears for Fears. Founded 1981. "Shout" in 1984 and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" in 1985. Producer Chris Hughes added the latter to Songs from the Big Chair to appeal to Americans and was rewarded with the album's second chart-topper.
• A13) a-ha. Founded 1982. "Take on Me" in 1985. The band's only top ten hit benefitted greatly from its groundbreaking, partially-animated video. The group couldn't even crack the Hot 100 with the theme song to the James Bond movie The Living Daylights.
• A14) Mr. Mister. Founded 1982. "Broken Wings" in 1985 and "Kyrie" in 1986. The phrase Kyrie eleison, which is part of the song, means "Lord, have mercy" in Greek.
• A15) Bon Jovi. Founded 1983. Omitted: Jon Bon Jovi. "You Give Love a Bad Name" in 1986; "Livin' On a Prayer" in 1987; "Bad Medicine" in 1988; and "I'll Be There for You" in 1989. The group's string of #1 songs began when they started working with songwriter Desmond Childs.
• A16) Fine Young Cannibals. Founded 1984. "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing" in 1989. Rush Limbaugh briefly used the former as the theme song for his talk-radio show.
• A17) New Kids on the Block. Founded 1984. "I'll Be Loving You (Forever)" and "Hangin' Tough" in 1989 and "Step by Step" in 1990. The last of these outsold both of the others, with a total of over six and a half million copies.
• A18) Extreme. Founded 1985. "More Than Words" in 1991. The heavy metal band enjoyed their greatest success with their love ballads, also reaching #4 with "Hole Hearted" from Pornograffitti.
• A19) Ace of Base. Founded 1987. "The Sign" in 1994. The single spent four weeks at #1, dropped down, then regained the top spot for another two weeks between March and May.
• A20) Barenaked Ladies. Founded 1988. "One Week" in 1998. The song and its funky, semi-improvised, pseudo-rap topped the charts for two weeks in October.
• A21) Boyz II Men. Founded 1988. "End of the Road" in 1992; "I'll Make Love to You" and "On Bended Knee" in 1994; "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey) in 1995; and "4 Seasons of Loneliness" in 1997. "End of the Road", from the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang, stayed at #1 on the Hot 100 for a record thirteen weeks.
• A22) Destiny's Child. Founded 1990. Omitted: Beyonce Knowles. "Bills, Bills, Bills" in 1999; "Say My Name" and "Independent Women Part I" in 2000; and "Bootylicious" in 2001. The "Independent Women" were Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu as the 2000 version of Charlie's Angels.
• A23) TLC. Founded 1991. "Creep" in 1994; "Waterfalls" in 1995; and "No Scrubs" and "Unpretty" in 1999. T-Boz, Chilli, and Left Eye's cautionary "Waterfalls" helped CrazySexyCool win a Best R&B Album Grammy.
• A24) Black Eyed Peas. Founded 1995. "Boom Boom Pow" in 2009. Digital downloads topped a million in only three weeks, the second fastest ever behind Flo Rida's "Right Round".
• A25) Matchbox 20. Founded 1995. "Bent" in 2000. Rob Thomas's first real love song, about a co-dependent relationship, was not intentionally named for the British slang for "homosexual".
• A26) Nickelback. Founded 1995. "How You Remind Me" in 2001. The rock single was determined to be Billboard Monitor's #1 Most Played Song of 2002 in the U.S.
• A27) 'N Sync. Founded 1995. Omitted: Justin Timberlake. "It's Gonna Be Me" in 2000. The single from No Strings Attached, the group's second consecutive #1 album, pushed three spots higher up the charts than the previously released "Bye Bye Bye".
• A28) Coldplay. Founded 1997. "Viva la Vida" in 2007. The song views the world from the perspective of a king who knows he won't get into heaven because of all the people he has killed, a message of caution to religious zealots who think they'll be rewarded for blowing up buildings.
• A29) 98 Degrees. Founded 1997. "Thank God I Found You" in 2000. Mariah Carey released this single from her Rainbow album, but the song also appears on 98 Degrees' The Collection [sorry, not one of the songs in the linked album].
• A30) Maroon 5. Founded 2002. "Makes Me Wonder" in 2007. The Grammy Award-winning single set a record by leaping from #64 to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 between May 5 and May 12.