| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| The Triple Alliance of this empire fought the Flower Wars against their neighbors. Farmers in this empire grew crops in lakes using chinampas. Jaguar warriors and eagle warriors fought for this empire against Spanish invaders during La Noche Triste, which occurred after the death of King Moctezuma II. The capital city of these empire, which was built on Lake Texcoco [tesh-coco], was Tenochtitlan. For the point, name this Nahuatl [nah-waht-ull] speaking Mesoamerican empire which was conquered by Hernan Cortes. | Aztec Empire |
| Archimedes is said to have invented the block-and-tackle, combining several of these devices. In an ideal system, these are massless and frictionless. A swinging pendulum attached to one of these other objects can produce chaotic motion, but a simple Atwood’s machine has one of these with a mass on either side, each with the same acceleration. This simple machine changes the direction of a cable and creates tension for lifting loads. For the point, name this simple machine paired with a rope that is a wheel on an axle. | pulleys (prompt on “simple machine” until it is said) |
| In this novel, Demoiselle Alisande a la Carteloise tries to save a group of pigs and names her baby Hello-Central. The Boss plants explosives in a tower to detonate during a thunderstorm in this novel, and is later cursed to sleep for 1,300 years. In this novel, Hank Morgan uses prior knowledge to predict an eclipse and discredit Merlin. For the point, name this novel in which a man from the east coast is magically transported to Camelot. | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court |
| The Star of the West attempted to resupply the defending forces in this battle, but an attack by students from The Citadel forced it to retreat. Exactly four years after surrendering at this battle, Robert Anderson returned to this battle’s location to raise the American flag. P.G.T. Beauregard reinforced Confederate positions along Charleston Harbor during this battle. For the point, name this siege of a South Carolina fort, where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired. | Battle of Fort Sumter |
| This author compared killing a child to destroying a manuscript in one work. One of this author’s protagonists takes out a loan to finance a recuperative trip to Italy, but forges her father’s signature on the deed. This author wrote a play in which Krogstad’s knowledge of a crime is used as blackmail against Torvald, whose insensitivity and ignorance causes his wife, Nora Helmer, to leave him. For the point, name this author of Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House, the foremost Norwegian playwright. | Henrik Ibsen |
| This man’s painting Storm on the Sea of Galilee is still missing after a 1990 robbery at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The dissection of a criminal’s corpse demonstrated in this artist’s painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. At the center of his most famous painting, a man dressed in yellow talks to Frans Banning Cocq, who is wearing black with a red sash. For the point, name this Dutch painter of The Night Watch. | Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (accept either underlined name) |
| This statement includes a namesake constant equal to 0.0821 liter-atmospheres per mole-Kelvin. The van der Waals equation adds terms to this statement to account for particle volume and attractions, which increase near condensation temperature. This equation can be re-arranged to find the density of the gas. For the point, name this law that combines Avogadro’s, Boyle’s, and Charles’ laws to model the properties of a hypothetically “perfect” gas. | ideal gas law (or ideal gas constant) |
| This man dabbled in mathematics with a 1921 Treatise on Probability. He described the sum of investment, consumption, and government spending as “aggregate demand,” a quantity that falls at a government’s peril. To that end, this economist argued for government spending to alleviate recessions. For the point, name this British founder of macroeconomics, the author of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. | John Maynard Keynes |
| An important early text in this philosophy includes a story asking whether a man dreamt of being a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly dreaming of being a man. The idea that people should act naturally, or acting “without action,” is one goal within this philosophy called wu wei [woo way]. The complementary nature of yin and yang is a common symbol of, for the point, what ancient Chinese spiritual tradition based on the writings of Lao Tzu [lah-oh TSOO]? | Taoism (or Daoism) |
| This man ties rocks to his feet to sink to the bottom of a river only to have his plan foiled when a snake eats a plant. This son of Ninsun enters the Cedar forest after defeating the demon Humbaba. This legendary figure seeks Utnapishtim [oot-nah-PISH-teem] to learn the secret of eternal life after slaying the Bull of Heaven sent by Ishtar, and wears animal-skins while mourning the death of Enkidu. For the point, name this Divine king and namesake of a Mesopotamian epic. | Gilgamesh |
| Jeff Weaver claimed that this organization’s leader was “throwing shade” on another member of this group, whose supporters allegedly threw chairs during a meeting in Nevada. This organization has come under fire for its method of opposing grassroots activism via superdelegates. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz leads the National Committee of, for the point, what political party whose 2016 Presidential nomination race is contested between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton? | Democratic Party (or Democratic National Committee or DNC) |
| When randomly choosing a real number, you will pick a number from this set’s complement set essentially 100% of the time. This countably infinite set is symbolized with a blackboard-bold Q. For the point, name this subset of the real numbers that includes one-half but not pi, defined as numbers that can be written with a terminating or repeating decimal expansion or, as more befitting its name, as a fraction. | rational numbers (prompt on fractions before mentioned) |
| A river near this city, which is found near the ruins of the ancient Sassanid city of Ctesiphon, allegedly turned black after it was sacked by Hulagu Khan. Harun al-Rashid ordered the construction of the House of Wisdom in this city. A heavily secured international zone in this city is called the Green Zone. For the point, name this city on the Tigris River, which was once the capital of the Abbasid caliphate and is now the capital of Iraq. | Baghdad |
| Cactus pads are flattened forms of these structures specialized for photosynthesis. Underground ones like rhizomes store starch and nutrients in ground tissue surrounded by dermal tissue. Vascular bundles contain xylem and phloem to transport water and nutrients through this structure, a main axis of growth in vascular plants. These structures have internodes between nodes that support fruit, buds, and leaves. For the point, name this herbaceous or woody main structural support in plants. | stem |
| Frank Grimes described this building as a palace while attending a lobster dinner party here. George Bush and Gerald Ford once moved in across the street from this house, which once stored an Olmec head in the basement and whose backyard treehouse annually becomes a Treehouse of Horror. Ned Flanders technically owns and rents out this building at 742 Evergreen Terrace in Springfield. For the point, name this 4-bed, 3-bath building in which Maggie, Bart, and Homer live. | the Simpson’s house (accept synonyms for house; accept 742 Evergreen Terrace before mentioned) |
| During this decade, Gary Hart was photographed on the yacht Monkey Business. At the end of this decade, the Keating Five were implicated in a scandal during the savings and loan crisis. Oliver North was convicted in another scandal during this decade, which began after America attempted to free hostages in Lebanon by selling arms to Nicaraguan insurgents. The Iran-Contra affair occurred in, for the point, what decade that contained Ronald Reagan’s presidency? | the 1980s (prompt on “the Eighties”) |
| The protagonist of this novel purchases a recording of “Little Shirley Beans” for his sister, and wonders where the ducks in the park go in the winter. Towards the end of this novel, the protagonist watches his little sister Phoebe ride a carousel at the zoo. The protagonist of this novel flunks out of Pencey Prep, and hates “phonies”. For the point, name this novel about the rebellious Holden Caulfield, written by reclusive author J.D. Salinger. | The Catcher in the Rye |
| Theocritus relates how this god’s mother laughed when he was stung trying to steal honey from a beehive, due to the similarity between this god’s primary role and a bee’s sting. In a story from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, this god forbids his wife from looking at his face; that wife is Psyche [SIKE-ee], whom he marries despite his divine mother’s envy of Psyche’s beauty. This god is commonly depicted with arrows whose heads have either lead or gold. For the point, name this son of Venus, a Roman god of love. | Cupid (accept Eros or Amor) |
| This man was given the nickname “the Lucky” after saving a shipwrecked crew he found while sailing home. The Norwegian king Olaf gave this man the mission to introduce Christianity to Greenland. This man’s most famous discovery was named for the grapes found by his men. This man’s father was exiled from Iceland, and later founded the first Norse colonies on Greenland. For the point, name this man, considered the first European to land on North America, the Viking son of Erik the Red | Leif Erikson |
| One work by this composer is nicknamed for the left hand A-flat’s soft repetition. His second piano sonata includes a well-known funeral march, and this composer of a Fantasie Impromptu was inspired by the 1830 November Uprising to write one of his numerous pieces meant for piano training. For the point, name this Franco-Polish composer of the Raindrop and many other preludes, the Revolutionary ´etude, and numerous mazurkas and polonaises. | Frederic Chopin |
| The silica content of these things determines whether they are felsic or mafic. Plutons are large slabs that are formed of this sort of rock. They are classified as intrusive or extrusive depending on whether they form below or above the surface. Crystals do not form if these things cool too quickly during their formation, which can result in obsidian. For the point, name this type of rock made from the cooling of magma or lava. | igneous rocks (prompt on rocks) |
| A set of exactly four weights can be used to measure any integer weight from 1 to 40 if those four weights weigh 1, this value, this value’s square, and this value’s cube. Because every power of 10 is equal to 1 modulo this prime number, simply adding the digits of any number and testing the sum can be used as a divisibility test for this number. The ternary counting system uses a base of, for the point, what value, the smallest odd prime number? | |
| A chase scene across this structure is the climax of Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest. This sculpture was completed by its creator’s son, Lincoln, after his 1941 death. That man started building it after production stalled on Georgia’s Stone Mountain. Gutzon Borglum designed this granite sculpture, which is located in the Black Hills. For the point, name this monumental sculpture in South Dakota that depicts the heads of four U.S. presidents. | Mount Rushmore National Memorial |
| A rock formation known as the “sacred footprint” is found in this country’s Central Highlands. This country’s largest ethnic group is the Sinhalese, though the LTTE fought for the independence of its Tamil minority. Separated from the mainland by Adam’s Bridge and the Palk Strait, this island was formerly known as Ceylon. For the point, name this country with capital at Colombo, located directly south of India. | Sri Lanka |
| In this musical, the main characters go to the “most swankified place in town” and invite the wheelchair-bound Nessarose who, with Boq and Fiyero, sings “Dancing Through Life.” The protagonist’s friend shows her “what clothes to wear” to make her “Popular” despite her unusual skin tone, and the protagonist sings that “nobody is ever gonna bring [her] down” in the song “Defying Gravity.” For the point, name this musical by Stephen Schwartz about Elphaba, who becomes a Witch of the West. | Wicked |
| This poet wrote “I like to think some boy’s been swinging” in a poem about “Birches.” In another of this man’s poems, Mary and Warren consider employing Silas, but instead witness his demise, and this man wrote that “for destruction ice / is also great / and would suffice” in the poem “Fire and Ice.” For the point, name this poet whose Americana collection North of Boston includes “Death of the Hired Man” and “Mending Wall.” | Robert Lee Frost |
| A device meant to collect this resource was described in Freeman Dyson’s paper “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation.” That device would use a non-solid sphere, or probably just a series of rings, to collect this resource. The IKAROS spacecraft was propelled by sails pushed by this resource as it traveled to Venus. For the point, name this form of energy that takes roughly eight seconds to travel from its source to the Earth’s surface, where it is collected by reflective panels. | solar power (accept descriptions of radiation from the Sun and/or any other stars; do not accept heat) |
| This man assumed command of an army after the death of Joseph Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines. James Buchanan authorized this man to lead troops against John Brown at Harpers Ferry. In 1864, this man’s home at Arlington was converted into a National Cemetery, in part because he had led the Army of Northern Virginia. For the point, name this Confederate general who surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, ending the Civil War. | Robert E (dward) Lee |
| One ghost town in this state, named for a nearby marble quarry, is Carrara. Boy Scout Canyon lies in the far south of this state, also the home of Valley of Fire State Park. This state’s southern border includes Black Canyon, the site of the Hoover Dam. Area 51 is located in, for the point, what desert state where almost three-quarters of residents live in Clark County, home to the “Entertainment Capital of the World,” Las Vegas? | Nevada |
| Hierarchies of these figures include orders like Dominions and Thrones. One of these figures is responsible for weighing the souls of the deceased during the Last Judgment. Lot offered his daughters in place of two of these creatures to the people of Sodom before its destruction. Seraphs and Cherubs are among the highest ranking of these figures. For the point, name these winged messengers of God which include Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel. | angels (accept archangels) |
| The LIGO and Virgo collaboration teams observed waves of this fundamental force in February 2016. In general relativity, Albert Einstein reasoned that masses curving the space-time continuum create this force, keeping the planets in orbit. Isaac Newton created its universal inverse square law. In a thought experiment, Galileo tested the equivalence principle of this force by dropping lead balls. For the point, name this fundamental force that attracts objects with mass and gives objects weight. | gravity |
| A character created by this author proposes avoiding trees in case a jagular dropped down to attack them and hurt himself. Another of this man’s characters receives a pot and a deflated balloon for his birthday, and helps find a home for a friend who spells “Owl” “W-O-L.” A game in which a pair of sticks are raced downstream under a bridge is played in this man’s novels by characters like Rabbit and Roo. For the point, name this English author who created Eeyore and Piglet in his books about Winnie-the-Pooh. | A (lan) A (lexander) Milne |
| This empire agreed to the Concordat of Worms with Pope Calixtus II, ending the Investiture Controversy. Francis II dissolved this empire after losing to Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. Scholars debate whether this empire began with Otto I in 962 or Charlemagne in 800. For the point, name this collection of Germanic states that, as Voltaire satirically noted, didn’t live up to any of the three words in its name. | Holy Roman Empire (or HRE) |
| For their roles in this film, Olivia de Havilland was nominated and Hattie McDaniel won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. McDaniel was prevented from attending this film’s Atlanta premiere due to Jim Crow laws. Because it was a literary quotation, the line “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” did not earn this film a fine for profanity. For the point, name this 1939 film, the all-time inflation-adjusted box office leader, which stars Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. | Gone With the Wind |
| With the exception of the limbless caecilian, these animals are exothermic tetrapods. The chytrid fungus is killing one species of this class through their skin. Their eggs may be externally or internally fertilized and are covered by a jelly that may contain green algae. Species of this class have gilled larvae that usually undergo metamorphosis, such as tadpoles becoming frogs. For the point, name this class of animals that spends part of its life cycle on land and part in water. | amphibians |
| This author wrote about Leo Percepied catching up with a group of friends in San Francisco in his novel The Subterraneans. Another novel by this author focuses on Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith’s experience with Buddhism, The Dharma Buns. His most famous work models characters on Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. In that work, Dean Moriarty inspires Sal Paradise to head out west. For the point, name this author of On the Road. | Jack Kerouac (or Jean-Louis Lebris de K/’erouac) |