Weem is next week!

I've heard about Weem for about 10 years now, but have not managed to get to Chicago for it yet. I'm finally going to see for myself what it's all about. The program looks great, and Oriel's logic tournament is surely going to kick my @$$ as usual - last time for an unknown amount of time that I have an opportunity to finish 4 of the 6 puzzles correctly in time. (I only ever get 3 -- grrrr...) And with 240 games in the chapter's game collection, surely I'll wind up missing many/most of the programs I might want to attend because of being involved in gameplay.

Hope to see some of you there.

Are You Smarter Than a Young Mensan?

Test out your own skills with these questions, put together by yours truly for this Mensan take on the Jeff Foxworthy game show that I emceed at MWM's RG - A Capital Time - last weekend. I'm doing work on putting together questions for future such "shows".

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1^st Grade Music:

True or False: The trombone is a woodwind instrument.

2^nd Grade Spelling:

How many letters are in the word which means the same thing as getting a check-up at the doctor or the type of education where you play sports outdoors?

3^rd Grade Ancient Cultures:

This was the name of the Egyptian god associated with chaos – the jealous brother of Osiris who killed Osiris, despite Osiris being the divine ruler in Egyptian mythology. It is also the name of an 81-card card game which won the Mensa Mind Games® Mensa Select® seal back in 1991. What is this name held in common?

4^th Grade World Geography:

What is the capital of Australia?

5^th Grade Measurements:

If the spherical grapefruit that you ate this morning had a diameter of 6 inches peeled, what was the volume (in cubic inches) of the fruit you ate?

6^th Grade Social Studies:

Shot by Charles Guiteau in Washington, DC on his way back to our alma mater, Williams College, for his 25th reunion, he was the third U.S. President to fall victim to what was termed “Tecumseh's Curse.” Who was this 20^th President of the United States?

7^th Grade Algebra:

Factor the following trinomial: x³+x²-x-1

8^th Grade Grammar:

The following is part of a description of a Runespoor, a three-headed snake mentioned in Newt Scamander's (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling's) Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them: “The left head...is the planner. The middle head is the dreamer... The right head is the critic and will evaluate the efforts of the left and middle heads with a continual irritable hissing.” This has at least three examples of what literary device?

[NB: OK, so I was told that "grammar" isn't quite right for this category. Maybe "Literary devices" is more apt?]

9^th Grade U.S. History:

With the invention of the internet, Twitter and various other social media outlets, and the ubiquitous nature of cell phones, Samuel F.B. Morse's observation regarding the telegraph in 1844 is as apt today as ever. What was the first telegraph message?

10^th Grade Chemistry:

What common substance has the chemical formula C₆H₁₂O₆?

11^th Grade Shakespeare:

What is the name of the character who speaks the last lines of the play in Hamlet, “Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this / Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. / Go, bid the soldiers shoot”?

12^th Grade Poetry:

In Piers Anthony's “Juxtaposition”, the newly minted Citizen, Stile, was smuggled into the central court in a trash bin, given all those who are out to harm him. During the formalities, he emerges from the bin quoting “[h]is flashing eyes, his floating hair! / Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, / For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.” From what poem by what 19^th century poet does this verse originate?

College-Level Astronomy: Our Sun is approximately 29% less massive than this, the mathematical dividing line between where white dwarfs are massive enough to become black holes or not.

[NB: This is the original phrasing. Apparently, it's not as clear as I thought, as white dwarfs don't go directly from that state to black holes.]