Part of Carl's Christmas Puzzle Hunt: 2014

Trivia Quiz

See if you can crack this trivia! Then, read the first letter of each trivia answer to obtain another hint for the code.

  1. This Mars, Inc. candy bar was once advertised in this way to emphasize its unique packaging, "Crunchy shortcake twice, tasty caramel twice, covered in smooth milk chocolate---so nice."
  2. This name for girls was made popular by the playwright J.M. Barrie when he included it in his play, "Peter Pan". He based the name on a nickname given him by a childhood friend who had difficulty pronouncing the letter 'R'.
  3. In D-Day operations, American forces were assigned to two beaches with codenames taken from US locations. One was Utah Beach. What was the second?
  4. In what Oregon city were both The Goonies and Kindergarten Cop filmed?
  5. Often known as simply "Hagrid", the half-giant gamekeeper at Hogwarts has a first name that is the Latin word for "red". What is that name?
  6. In the film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", a con-artist Mr. Browne tries to convince the witch, Ms. Price to join forces with him by singing a song that rhymes her first name with the following lines, "Oh how you'll shine. Your lot and my lot have got to combine". What was her first name?
  7. For the scene in "A Christmas Story" where Ralphie's friend gets his tongue stuck to a frozen flag pole, the film crew used suction through a hole in the pole to simulate the freezing. What was the name of Ralphie's unfortunate friend?
  8. In Greek mythology, Daedalus warns his son not to fly to close to the sun or else his homemade wings would melt. What is the name of the ill-fated son who ignored his father's warning?
  9. The word "theobromine" has Greek roots (theo = "god", broma = "food"), suggesting it is the "food of the gods". This bitter alkaloid is found primarily in what tasty treat?
  10. True or False: The community of Boring, Oregon has teamed up with the village of Dull, Scotland and the town of Bland Shire, Australia to form what they designate as the "League of Extraordinary Communities" consisting of Boring, Dull, and Bland.
  11. Jukkasjärvi is a small village in Northern Sweden that has a tourist attraction which is a hotel built entirely from what? (Hint: No cursed magic is used in its construction.)
  12. A word such as "meow" or "boing" has a sound similar to what it is describing. Marvel comics has actually trademarked two such words of its own invention: the "thwip!" of Spider-Man's web shooter and the "snikt!" sound of Wolverine's claws. What is the fairly long word of Greek origin that describes words such as these?
  13. In the witch-trial scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a man backpedals with "I got better." after claiming that the witch had turned him into what animal?
  14. "The Legend of Korra" was a Nickelodean sequel to what elemental, animated series?
  15. In spite of this brand name appearing in the 3-word-title of this awesome, animated 2014 movie, (and millions of this company's products being shown in the film), this brand name is never spoken during the movie (really!)

[I'm not usually much on trivia, but the boys have been playing a trivia game a lot recently with their friends, so I thought it would be fun to incorporate that element into the puzzle hunt this year. I'm quite happy with how this one turned out. I was able to reference a bunch of books and movies that the boys like, as well as a couple of topics they have been studying recently, (Greek mythologoy and World War II). Then, there were a couple of interesting trivia items I knew that I wanted to share with them, (such as #10 and #11), and then a really surprising one that I learned only while doing my research for this. That's #15.

I think I got the difficulty just right. They had to work together to get all the answers, but they weren't reduced to tedious web searches to solve it all.]

Part of Carl's Christmas Puzzle Hunt: 2014