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(Here is a copy of the tossups from a packet by Eric Hillemann submitted for the 1998 Illinois Salute to Mediocrity Masters Tournament)
1. Act One begins and ends with the same character saying the same one-word line: "Jesus." Act Two begins with Nick saying "I . . . guess . . . she's all right. She . . . really shouldn't drink." Act Three begins: "Hey, hey. . . . Where is everybody . . . ?" These acts are titled "Fun and Games," "Walpurgisnacht," and "The Exorcism." Its title question is finally answered by Martha, saying "I . . . am . . . George . . . I . . . am." For 10 points--name this play by Edward Albee.
answer: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
2. Among his last words are supposed to have been "Qualis artifex pereo," or roughly: "What an artist the world is losing in me." The occasion for this parting reflection was his suicide, prompted by the revolt of his Praetorian Guard in AD 68. For 10 points--name this wannabe artist, poet, and Olympic charioteer, the successor to Claudius as Roman Emperor.
answer: Nero Claudius Caesar (or Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus)
3. This animal's many appearances in folklore include those of Kilkenny in Ireland, who devour one another after arguing fiercely. In mythology, they are sacred to Freya, whose chariot is drawn by them. It is also the form taken by the Egyptian goddess Bast. For 10 points--name these proverbially mysterious animals reputed to live many lives.
answer: cat(s)
4. Chopin described her voice as "surrounded not only by an ordinary halo, but by a kind of northern lights." She was guaranteed an extraordinary $1000 per performance during her sensational American tour of 1851-52 by promoter P. T. Barnum. For 10 points--name this soprano, famed as the "Swedish nightengale."
answer: Jenny Lind
5. Nearly all of the 1700 or so species comprising some 120 genera are native to the Americas, where--contrary to what many assume--they range from Canada to the tropics. The fleshy green stems of these succulents perform the functions of leaves, which are typically absent or nearly so. For 10 points--name this family of plants often characterized by largy showy flowers, and which may grow as tall as 70 feet in the variety called saguaro.
answer: cactus or cacti or Cactaceae
6. He broke into the majors in 1959, going 4 for 4 against Robin Roberts, and proceeding to bat .354 and win the Rookie of the Year award. Ten years later he was an MVP, batting .320 and leading the league with 44 home runs and 126 RBI. His 18 career grand slams is the National League record. For 10 points--name this first baseman known as "Stretch," who played most of his career for the San Francisco Giants.
answer: Willie (Lee) McCovey
7. Rousseau, in his Émile, says that this book, above all others, furnishes the happiest treatise on natural education. The character Gabriel Betteredge, in The Moonstone, says that he has found it his friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. The book so praised, published in London in 1719, concerns the life and "strange surprising adventures" of a mariner of York. For 10 points--what fiction was based on the factual adventures of Scottish mariner Alexander Selkirk?
answer: The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner
8. During his first year in the White House he proposed an anti-lynching bill and an interracial commission on race relations, and told a segregated crowd in Alabama that democracy would be a sham so long as black Americans were excluded as "full participants in the benefits and duties of American citizenship." Shortly before his death in office he attacked the "hatred, prejudice and violence" of the Ku Klux Klan. For 10 points--name this U.S. President whose relatively progressive racial stance was not hinted at in the slogan "Back to Normalcy."
answer: Warren Gamaliel Harding
9. It is connected to the Kattegat by the Oresund, and the Great and Little Belts. Its islands include Bornholm, Saaremaa, Gotland, and Zealand, and it is fed by rivers such as the Angerman, Niemen, and Western Dvina. For 10 points--name this sea whose indentations include the gulfs of Bothnia, Finland, and Riga.
answer: Baltic Sea
10. Unlike the Cockcroft-Walton accelerator whose high voltage is produced by charging a bank of capacitors in parallel, and then connecting them in series, this type of electrostatic particle accelerator achieves high voltage via a continuously recharging moving belt to deliver charge to a terminal consisting of a hollow metal sphere. For 10 points--this tool invented in the 1930s bears the name of what American physicist whose given names were Robert Jemison?
answer: Van de Graaf accelerator (or generator)
11. They are either eight or nine in number, depending on whether verses 10 and 11 of the 5th chapter of Matthew are counted as one or two. They come at the commencement of the Sermon on the Mount. For 10 points--what Latin-derived name is usually given to these utterings which begin with "Blessed are the poor in spirit"?
answer: Beatitudes
12. Long before coming to the throne he lived for more than 20 years with his actress-mistress, Mrs. Jordan. As king, his ministers included Earl Grey, Viscount Melbourne, and Sir Robert Peel. The great political event of his seven-year reign was passage of the Reform Act of 1832. For 10 points--name this British monarch succeeded by his niece, Victoria.
answer: William IV
13. "In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw." For 10 points--this is the description provided what villainous pirate by author J. M. Barrie?
answer: Captain James Hook
14. Called the soroban in Japan, by the end of World War II its use was part of the curriculum of fourth and upper grades, and skilled users could earn licenses acknowledging their proficiency. Ancient Romans, needing to simplify arithmetic with Roman numerals, employed a bronze tablet variety with grooves rather than wires. For 10 points--what is this computing instrument typically using beads as counters?
answer: abacus
15. Director of the psychology laboratory at the Sorbonne from 1894, in collaboration with Théodore Simon he authored the book Mentally Defective Children, and devised the series of tests with which his name is most associated. For 10 points--name this psychologist whose tests, with revisions such as the Kuhlmann, Herring, and Stanford, were innovations in the testing of human intelligence.
answer: Alfred Binet
16. Its last full line of dialogue is "Oh, good, for a moment there I thought we were in trouble." It opens with a silent film portrayal of a train robbery. Directed by George Roy Hill, with music by Burt Bacharach, its cast includes Katharine Ross, as Etta Place. For 10 points--name this 1969 "buddy" film featuring the song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," and starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman.
answer: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
17. Based on a British design by Hubert Scott-Paine, those predominant in the Pacific were built by the Elco yacht division of the Electric Boat Company in Bayonne, New Jersey. They were 80 feet long, with three 1,250-horsepower Packard V-12 engines, and were designed to skim across the top of the water like a speedboat. For 10 points--name these World War II-era naval craft, one of which was commanded by John F. Kennedy.
answer: PT Boats or Patrol Torpedo Boats (or MTBs, or Motor Torpedo Boats)
18. "Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, / Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, / I heard a Negro play. / Down on Lenox Avenue the other night / By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light / He did a lazy sway. . . . / He did a lazy sway. . . . / To the tune o' those Weary Blues." For 10 points--what poet of "The Weary Blues" also produced such other volumes as Fields of Wonder, Shakespeare in Harlem, and Montage of a Dream Deferred?
answer: (James Mercer) Langston Hughes (prompt on "The Weary Blues")
19. Arched, blocky, dome, pinnacled, valley, and weathered are terms used in their classification. The northern variety tend to be irregularly shaped and peaked, while southern ones are tabular. In the Northern Hemisphere most of the 16,000 or so that are annually calved originate in Greenland. One of the converging twain in a Thomas Hardy poem was--for 10 points--what type of object fatal to the Titanic?
answer: iceberg(s)
20. In August 1998 this 82 year-old was ordered by presiding magistrate Victor Lugaju to pay a fine of $1,600 or serve a year in prison after being found guilty of contempt for refusing to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about his knowledge of bombings, murders, and other atrocities carried out by government security forces targeting anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s. For 10 points--name this man who stepped down in 1989 as president of South Africa.
answer: P(ieter) W(illem) Botha
21. The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature calls him "the original superfluous man . . . a disillusioned aristocrat who is drawn into tragic situations through his inability or unwillingness to take positive action to prevent them." His tragedy is that when Tatyana loves him, he rejects her; later, when he loves Tatyana, she rejects him to remain faithful to her marriage vows. For 10 points--name this title protagonist of a Pushkin novel and Tchaikovsky opera.
answer: Eugene (or Yevgeny) Onegin
22. His election as president in 1940 followed several years where he had already been de facto ruler as chief of staff of the army. In 1933, as an army sergeant, he had helped to overthrow the government of Gerardo Machado. The repression and notorious corruption of his second term as president, beginning in 1952, led to an uprising that culminated in his flight to the Dominican Republic on New Year's Day 1959. For 10 points--who was this dictator ousted from Cuba by Fidel Castro?
answer: Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar
23. At the age of 13, he was the youngest Eagle Scout in the U.S. A bit older, he married a certain Miss Hilliard, who had been the vocalist for a band he led. Together, they were regulars on The Red Skelton Show on radio, and later, on television from 1952 to 1966, his family became one of America's best known. For 10 points--name this famed pater familias, the father of David and Ricky, and husband of Harriet.
answer: Oswald George "Ozzie" Nelson
24. It is a white, crystalline monocyclic, saturated, secondary terpene alcohol with antiseptic properties. Because it imparts cooling and tingling sensations, it is widely used in skin fresheners and after-shave lotions. It may be prepared synthetically from coal tar, but is more commonly derived from peppermint oil. For 10 points--name this minty substance used to freshen some cigarettes.
answer: menthol
25. He is the subject of a 1996 documentary film, The Line King. The Army once funded a $60,000 experiment in training bomber pilots to spot camouflaged targets by having them scan rapidly flashing slides of his drawings, trying to spot the hidden "Ninas." For 10 points--name this longtime caricaturist of theater personalities for The New Yorker.
answer: Al Hirschfeld
26. Between 1878 and 1890 he worked his way up from shop-floor worker to chief engineer at the Midvale Steel Works, but his main career began after he became a management consultant, a job he helped invent. Aiming at greater prosperity for both employer and employee, his method was to increase efficiency through systematic study of how work was done. For 10 points--name this Philadelphia-born theorist of, and evangelist for, the principles and methods of scientific management.
answer: Frederick Winslow Taylor
