Time for Nerd Jeopardy! (A Literary Trivia Game Show)
Hosted by Ryan Chapman, with Special Guests Rebecca Dinerstein Knight and Jerry Saltz
Ryan Chapman hosts Nerd Jeopardy, the online literary game show. Tonight Ryan is joined by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, author of Hex, and Jerry Saltz, author of How to Be an Artist.The show—which takes place on Zoom—is being simulcast below via YouTube, so just like normal Jeopardy, you’re just going to have to follow along at home, yelling at the screen. This week’s indie spotlight is Deep Vellum Books, and a hearty thank you to Kristen Radtke, who let us borrow her artists’ portraits this week.
Sign up here for next Wednesday’s live show.
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This episode’s categories, questions, and answers…
ROUND ONE
C1: STUCK AT “HOME”
100: In what is probably a first–I’m too lazy to fact check–this is the only Tony-winning musical to be based on a graphic novel by a MacArthur “Genius.”
[Fun Home]
200: Yaa Gyasi’s “Homecoming” follows two half-sisters from this country and their many descendants.
[Ghana]
300: In Thomas Wolfe’s sprawling debut novel Asheville, North Carolina is fictionalized as “Altamont, Catawba.”
[Look Homeward, Angel]
400: “The Home and the World” is third novel by this Bengali polymath, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
[Rabindranath Tagore]
500: Sheila Burnford’s “The Incredible Journey,” about a 300-mile trek by two dogs and a cat, was adapted by Disney into this film (twice).
[Homeward Bound]
C2: THAT’S SO METAL
100: While she has a PhD in immunology, Barbara Ehrenreich is best known for her political activism and journalism on labor, such as this breakthrough 2001 book.
[Nickel and Dimed]
200: DAILY DOUBLE
In Grant Morrison’s comic series “DC One Million,” the Flash oversees a habitable form of this celestial body.
[Mercury]
300: This pirate steals the titular booty in “Treasure Island” and… maybe starts an affordable seafood franchise.
[Long John Silver]
400: This Hergé creation encompasses comics, film adaptations, and even a few statues around Brussels.
[Tintin]
500: This Nelson Algren work about a Chicago Polish neighborhood nabbed the National Book Award in 1950.
[The Man With the Golden Arm]
C3: WE’RE IN HELL
100: If you don’t believe the devil gets all the best lines, look no further than this Milton epic.
[Paradise Lost]
200: CLUE CREW WITH JERRY SALTZ
Starting with limbo and ending with treachery, Dante’s vision of hell is divided into this number of circles.
[Nine]
300: Sartre’s famous line “Hell is other people” comes from this play.
[Huis Clos/No Exit]
400: “Hell Is the Absence of God” is this author’s Hugo Award-winning story, later collected in “Stories of Your Life and Others.”
[Ted Chiang]
500: In Greek myth, which is very permissive when it comes to incest, Hades kidnaps his niece to make her queen of the underworld.
[Persephone]
C4: FACE TIME WITH KRISTEN RADTKE
100: Few writers are the subject of a feature-length documentary, like this writer and 2019’s “The Pieces I Am.”
[Toni Morrison]
200: This author has seen his novel “High Fidelity” adapted for film in 2000, and this year as a series on Hulu.
[Nick Hornby]
300: Here’s Kristen herself. You may know her from this graphic nonfiction book, which spans ruins in Iceland, the Philippines, and the American midwest.
[Imagine Wanting Only This]
400: Rapper Jean Grae recently added a new title to her CV: advice columnist for at this Vegas-based magazine.
[The Believer]
500: This author of the memoirs “Whip Smart” and “Abandon Me” credits Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” as a primary influence.
[Melissa Febos]
C5: THE FRENCH
100: This week the New York Times reported the forthcoming publication of “The Inseparables,” a posthumous novel from this “Second Sex” author.
[Simone de Beauvoir]
200: In a masochistic wink, “The Map and the Territory” features the brutal murder of this novelist.
[Michel Houellebecq]
300: After the success of “The Perfect Nanny” Emmanuel Macron asked her to lead the International Organisation of La Francophonie.
[Leïla Slimani]
400: This “Germinal” scribe wrote “J’accuse!”, possibly the world’s most famous op-ed.
[Émile Zola]
500: Friends and family told him to give up after the tepid reception to his “Cromwell”; thankfully, he persevered with “La Comédie humaine.”
[Honoré de Balzac]
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ROUND TWO
C1: SEQUELS
200: Ann Brashares’s “The Second Summer of the Sisterhood” concerns four friends and these itinerant trousers.
[Traveling Pants]
400: After “Get Shorty,” loan shark Chili Palmer has gone Hollywood in this author’s “Be Cool.”
[Elmore Leonard]
600: Anne Rice broke through with “Interview with the Vampire.” After a few historical works and erotic novels, she returned with this sequel.
[The Vampire Lestat]
800: DAILY DOUBLE
Dodie Smith’s “The Starlight Barking” followed this canine hit from 1956.
[One Hundred and One Dalmatians]
1000: In this “Catch-22” sequel–also a pretty decent Semisonic hit–Yossarian is an old man in 1990s New York City.
[Closing Time]
C2: CROSSWORD CLUES “Q”
200: Humbert Humbert’s antagonist (6)
[Quilty]
400: “Q Is for” this word in Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone mystery; maybe she finds some limestone? (6)
[Quarry]
600: Shakespeare saw his works published in this format, smaller than a folio. (6)
[Quarto]
800: This Philadelphia publisher gave us “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”; also a synonym for an eccentricity. (5)
[Quirk]
1000: This co-founder of Oulipo is known for “Exercises in Style” and “Zazie in the Metro.” (7)
[Queneau]
C3: LITERARY GAMES
200: In this Hesse doorstop, sometimes translated as “Magister Ludi,” characters are obsessed with a complex sport whose rules are never fully articulated.
[The Glass Bead Game]
400: Tim Crothers’s “The Queen of Katwe,” adapted into a film with Lupita Nyong’o, centers on teen prodigy Phiona Mutesi’s mastery of this game.
[Chess]
600: Despite Evan S. Connell’s prolific output and long career he was best-known for this debut novel, about a Kansas City homemaker.
[Mrs. Bridge]
800: In this Cortázar novel the reader can choose their own path through its non-linear structure.
[Hopscotch]
1000: This author, oft invoked at pool parties, dictated “Books of the Marvels of the World” from a Venetian jail.
[Marco Polo]
C4: LIFE STORIES
200: This Michigan-based blogger and author published “Meaty” with Curbside Splendor in 2013; Vintage reprinted it in 2018.
[Samantha Irby]
400: Sarah M. Broom won both the National Book Award and the NBCC John Leonard Prize for “The Yellow House,” set in this city.
[New Orleans]
600: Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” recounts, among other things, a thousand-mile hike of this American path.
[The Pacific Crest Trail]
800: You’d be forgiven for thinking Robert Caro wrote “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” which was penned by this presidential scholar.
[Doris Kearns Goodwin]
1000: Write what you know? Arnold Schwarzenegger titled his 2012 memoir after this 1990 film.
[Total Recall]
C5: WRITERS ON SCREEN
200: CLUE CREW WITH REBECCA DINERSTEIN KNIGHT
Faithfully depicting the charm that all writers possess, this actor has portrayed an aspiring novelist in two films, “The Words” and “Limitless.”
[Bradley Cooper]
400: Molly Shannon, Cynthia Nixon, and Hailee Steinfeld have all played this bard of Amherst.
[Emily Dickinson]
600: Most would call this celebrated “Myra Breckinridge” author a man of letters. In “With Honors,” Joe Pesci’s character calls him an asshole.
[Gore Vidal]
800: Sarah Jessica Parker and Burt Lancaster have both added metropolitan glamour to onscreen portrayals of this journalism gig.
[Columnist]
1000: The 1994 film “Il Postino,” based on an Antonio Skármeta novel–itself adapted from Skármeta’s own film from 1983–is about a fictional friendship between a mailman and this Chilean poet.
[Pablo Neruda]
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FINAL JEOPARDY
Category: THESE UNITED STATES
Clue: Michael Chabon, Jack London, and Eowyn Ivey have all set novels in this state, whose motto is “North to the future.”
[Alaska]
