Other Topics

Topics spanning several fields, alongside current events and general knowledge.

Use this final reference to connect everyday objects, customs, language, and institutions with the main subjects. Broad concepts come before narrow examples; cross-disciplinary terms retain their specific context.

Time, Calendars, and Life Events

Organize calendar terms and life events by the systems they belong to.

Time

• time limits
  • Deadline — Deadline is the time by which something must be completed or submitted. The term originally referred to a line in Civil War prison camps that prisoners could not cross without being shot. Deadline was also the title of a short-lived Dick Wolf series about a journalism professor and reporter at the New York Ledger.
• time spans
  • Five years — Five years is the span referenced by Soviet Five-Year Plans and by Juscelino Kubitschek’s promise of fifty years of progress in five. Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” also uses five years as a marker of elapsed time since his last visit to the River Wye.
• Time standards
  • Coordinated Universal Time — Coordinated Universal Time is the global time standard kept by atomic clocks worldwide and adjusted with leap seconds. It is abbreviated UTC and serves as the reference from which the world’s time zones are measured; in displayed time it matches GMT, though the two are not identical. It is used in contexts such as listing Atlantic, Alaska, Hawaii-Aleutian, and Samoa time zones.
• Time units
  • century — A century is a span of 100 years, and the term can also refer to the fin de siècle transition between centuries. In the Roman military, a century was a unit of about 100 soldiers, later associated with ten contubernia after Marius’s reforms.
• Astrological ages
  • Age of Aquarius — The Age of Aquarius is an astrological era associated with New Age hopes for enlightenment, universal brotherhood, and a blending of science and religion. It is also the title of the famous Hair song that begins with the moon in the seventh house and is linked with ‘Let the Sunshine In’.
• Calendar eras
  • AD — AD is the abbreviation for anno domini, meaning “in the year of our Lord.” It is the traditional designation used for years in the Gregorian calendar.
• Change

  • dynamic — Dynamic means changing over time or not fixed, as in dynamic programming, dynamic allocation, and dynamic RAM. In economics, the word also appears in topics such as dynamic inefficiency and dynamic stochastic general equilibrium. In semantics, dynamic theory describes context-changing speech acts such as assertion.

  • transition — Transition is a broad term for a change from one state or condition to another. It can describe labor, a genetic substitution, an economic shift, or the period in basketball when the offense attacks before the defense is fully set.

• Coincidence
  • coincident — Coincident means happening at the same time or by chance in a way that appears linked.

• hour — An hour, or hora, titles works by Clarice Lispector and Kate Chopin, including A Hora da Estrela and the story “The Story of an Hour.” These clues can point to Macabéa’s brief, tragic life in Lispector’s novel and Louise Mallard’s fatal realization at the end of Chopin’s story.

• 14 years — Fourteen years is the length of several classic quizbowl answers, including the term of a Federal Reserve governor and the residency requirement for the U.S. presidency. It is also the approximate run of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

• Timekeeping
  • calendar — A calendar is a system for reckoning time and assigning days within a year. Clues often mention Thoth’s 365-day Egyptian version, Gregory XIII’s Gregorian reform, and famous ancient calendars such as the Maya and Muisca systems.
    • leap days
      • Leap day — Leap day is February 29, the extra day added in leap years to keep the calendar aligned with Earth’s orbit. It is the date that creates the comic plot complication in The Pirates of Penzance.
  • calendars — Calendars are systems for organizing time into days and months, and clues often contrast Gregorian, Julian, Roman, and French Revolutionary forms. Mesoamerican examples such as the Maya Long Count are also common, along with literary works like A Shepherd’s Calendar.

    • Gregorian calendar — The Gregorian calendar is the modern civil calendar named for Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in 1582 to replace the Julian calendar. Its adoption standardized the year’s start on January 1 in Britain and remains the world’s most widely used calendar system.

    • Long Count calendar
      • Mayan Long Count calendar — The Maya calendar system counts days from a fixed starting point using units such as k’in/kin, winal, tun, k’atun/katun, and b’ak’tun/baktun. It uses a mixed base-20 and base-18 structure, with the tun as a special 360-day unit, and an early zero symbol represented by a seashell. It became especially famous because of the 13th b’ak’tun in 2012.

    • the Roman Calendar — The Roman calendar was the system of dates and months reformed from an earlier lunar scheme attributed to Numa Pompilius. Julius Caesar and later Augustus corrected it into the familiar 365-day form through the Julian reform.

    • Julian calendar — The Julian calendar was the Roman solar calendar replaced by the Gregorian reform. It uses the Roman terms calends, nones, and ides. Its average year length of 365.25 days made it a standard reference in astronomy and in many Orthodox observances. Orthodox churches and older English usage often kept it long after the reform, producing Old Style and New Style dating. The calendar is still associated with Russian Orthodox Christmas and the Eastern Orthodox Easter offset.

    • lunar calendar — A lunar calendar tracks months by the Moon’s cycles, so its dates drift relative to the solar Gregorian calendar. The Islamic calendar and the Jewish calendar are commonly discussed examples of lunar or lunisolar systems.
  • leap seconds — Leap seconds are irregular one-second adjustments added to or subtracted from UTC to keep civil time aligned with Earth’s slowing rotation. They are managed by international timing authorities and were first introduced in 1972.
• Timekeeping devices

  • clock — A clock is a timekeeping device that appears in art and literature as a symbol of measurement, repetition, or decay. Clues may point to decorative clocks, the Big Ben-style tower clock, the Groundhog Day clock, or famous surreal and cinematic uses of clocks.

  • watch — A watch is a portable timekeeping device worn on the wrist or carried in the pocket. In literature, it appears in “The Gift of the Magi,” where Jim and Della trade gifts tied to a gold watch and watch-chain.

• clocks
  • pendulum clocks
    • Grandfather Clock — A grandfather clock is a tall pendulum clock enclosed in a case. Such clocks appear in literature and fiction, including Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and the Weasleys’ house in Harry Potter.

Calendars and observances

• April — April is the month associated with Lenin’s April Theses, the Bulgarian April Uprising, and several other political upheavals. It is also the opening month of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” beginning with “The Burial of the Dead.”

• August 9 — August 9 is the date of several major historical events, including the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 and Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

• calendar dates

  • April 15 — April 15 is the date associated with events such as the sinking of the Titanic, Lincoln’s death, the beginning of the Tiananmen Square protests, and the Sacco and Vanzetti murders. In the United States it is also widely remembered as the federal income tax deadline.

  • July 31 — July 31 is associated with National Orgasm Day and with Harry Potter’s birthday. The date is usually treated as a recurring cultural reference rather than a single historical event.

• Calendar months
  • July — The seventh month of the year, named for Julius Caesar. Its original Latin name was Quintilis before Caesar renamed it for himself. The name appears in historical terms such as the July Monarchy, the July Days, and the 1830 July Revolution in France, which brought Louis-Philippe to power.
• Calendar units
  • months — Months are the calendar units that structure systems such as the French Republican and Islamic calendars. They also appear in medieval art as the “labors of the months,” which pair each month with seasonal work.

    • February — February is the shortest month of the year and gives its name to several revolutions and coups, including the February Revolution in Russia and the February Revolution in Paraguay. It is also associated with events like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and the 6 February riots in France.

    • January — January is the first month of the year, named for Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and doorways. Epiphany is celebrated in this month, which also marks a traditional start of the new year in many calendars.

    • June — June is the sixth month of the year and a frequent quizbowl answer because of its holidays, observances, and literary appearances. It is the month of Flag Day, Father’s Day in the U.S., and Juneteenth’s federal holiday observance.

    • May — May is the month associated with May Day, the May Fourth Movement, and several political upheavals named for dates in that month. It also appears in clues about the Buenos Aires May Revolution and the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.

    • Month — A month is a unit of time based on the lunar cycle, typically about 29.5 days. In the modern calendar, months vary in length, and some historical calendars assigned special names such as Ventôse and Thermidor.

    • November — November is the month of Thanksgiving in the United States, along with holidays like Veterans Day and Election Day. It also titles works such as Tchaikovsky’s penultimate piano piece in The Seasons and several other musical compositions. In literary references, it is the damp, drizzly season that Ishmael associates with feeling like he should go to sea.

• Federal holidays
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is the U.S. federal holiday observed on the third Monday in January. It honors Martin Luther King Jr. and is often marked by debate over its place alongside other commemorations in some states.
• Holidays

  • New Year’s — New Year’s is the holiday marked by the turn of the calendar year, including celebrations on December 31 and January 1. Common clues include “Auld Lang Syne,” the Vienna Philharmonic concert, Hogmanay, resolutions, and customs such as special foods or rituals in different countries and faiths.

  • Mother’s Day — Mother’s Day is the U.S. holiday celebrated on the second Sunday in May, associated with Anna Jarvis and Woodrow Wilson’s national proclamation. It also appears in pop-culture references from television and film, including episodes and holiday comedies built around the day.

  • Arbor Day — Arbor Day is the tree-planting holiday promoted by J. Sterling Morton in Nebraska, first celebrated there in 1872. It is observed on different dates in different places, but in the United States it is commonly marked on the last Friday in April.

  • April 1 observances
    • April Fool’s Day — April Fool’s Day is the spring holiday associated with pranks, hoaxes, and practical jokes. It falls on April 1st and appears in many works of fiction as a day for fabricated stories and tricks.

  • New Year’s Eve — New Year’s Eve is the holiday centered on the transition into the new year, often marked by parties and midnight celebrations. In Soviet practice it was promoted as a secular winter holiday with a decorated tree, and it is the occasion for the romantic reunions dramatized in films like When Harry Met Sally….

  • St. Valentine’s Day — The February 14 holiday associated with roses, chocolates, and hearts, and with the Christian feast day of Saint Valentine. Its traditions grew in the nineteenth century, though it was originally linked to feast days honoring martyrs and to the eve of Lupercalia. It is also associated with Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls and the medieval love poem credited to Charles, Duke of Orléans. In history it is remembered for the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, when Bugs Moran’s gang was killed in Chicago.
• Holidays and observances
  • December 26 — December 26 is Boxing Day in Canada and the United Kingdom, the day after Christmas. It also falls during the holiday period referenced by several national remembrance dates and year-end observances.
• Seasons
  • spring — Spring is the season behind Vivaldi’s first violin concerto from The Four Seasons, Schumann’s first symphony nickname, and Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring. It also appears in Botticelli’s Primavera and Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

• state fairs — State fairs are large annual exhibitions that grew out of 19th-century agricultural shows and draw broader crowds than county fairs. They are especially associated with events like the Iowa State Fair and the New York State Fair.

• writing challenges
  • National Novel Writing Month — National Novel Writing Month is an annual writing challenge in which participants aim to draft fifty thousand words during November. It began in the Bay Area under Chris Baty and became known for its online support network, municipal liaisons, and post-November celebration culture.
• Dates

  • July 1953 — The Rosenbergs were executed in July 1953. The month and year are often asked as a factual detail in connection with their espionage case.

  • September 11 — September 11 is the date on which the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks occurred in 2001. It is also marked by a wide range of historical events and observances, including the feast day of John the Baptist and the Rastafarian New Year.

• days of the week
  • Tuesday — Tuesday is the second day of the week in many calendars and is named for the Norse war god Tyr. It appears in many song titles, including Ruby Tuesday, Tuesday Afternoon, and Tuesday’s Gone.
• environmental holidays
  • Earth Day — Earth Day is an environmental holiday observed on April 22 and associated with the first modern wave of environmental teach-ins. It was promoted by Gaylord Nelson and later became a major symbol of environmental activism.
• Summer

  • summer time — Summer is the season celebrated in songs by artists from Andy Williams to Gershwin and the Lovin’ Spoonful. It is the warm half of the year associated with long days and easy living.

  • Dog days — The dog days are the hottest part of summer, traditionally linked to the rising of Sirius alongside the Sun. The phrase commonly refers to a late-summer stretch around August and was known to the Romans.

Life events

• Anniversaries
  • Birthdays — Birthdays are the annual anniversaries of a person’s birth. They appear in probability problems such as the birthday paradox and in songs like “In Da Club.” Literature and music often use birthday parties as scenes of revelation or embarrassment, from Our Town to The Birthday Party and popular party songs.
    • birthday — A birthday is the annual anniversary of a person’s birth, commonly marked with parties or celebrations, cake, and songs. The term also appears in the birthday paradox and in literary works such as Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party.

  • diamond jubilees — A diamond jubilee marks a 60th anniversary, especially of a monarch’s reign. Queen Victoria celebrated one in 1897, and Elizabeth II later did so in 2012.

  • Golden wedding anniversary — The golden wedding anniversary marks 50 years of marriage.

  • Jubilee — A jubilee is a celebratory anniversary, especially the naming for royal reign milestones such as silver, golden, and diamond jubilees. The term also comes from Leviticus, where it refers to a release or restoration year, and it has been used in African American cultural titles as well.
• Birth dates
  • Christmas Day
    • Born on Christmas Day — These people were all born on Christmas Day, or December 25. The list includes figures such as Clara Barton, Humphrey Bogart, Anwar Sadat, and Isaac Newton.
• Birthdays by date
  • July 4 birthdays — This topic refers to people born on July 4, a date shared by figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Giuseppe Garibaldi, P. T. Barnum, Calvin Coolidge, Neil Simon, and Geraldo Rivera. It is also the title of a film associated with Ron Kovic and the phrase ‘Born on the 4th of July.’
• causes of death
  • shot — A shot is a firearm discharge or impact that can also describe a way a character dies in a cartoon or a listed cause of death in a parody obituary. The same word can name the death method in an animated episode as well as a generic action verb used in other pop-culture clueing.
• Death
  • die — Die is the act of ceasing to live, often paraphrased as being buried or otherwise expiring. It is also the instruction Ellen gives Cotard through his earpiece at the end of the film mentioned in the clues.

• death and taxes — “Death and taxes” is the famous pair of certainties associated with Benjamin Franklin’s remark that nothing in life is sure except those two things. The phrase has also given its name to later books, profiles, and games.

• Deathbed sayings
  • Last Words — Last words are the utterances or reported final phrases spoken shortly before a person dies. The examples include famous reported deathbed remarks such as those attributed to Goethe, Kant, Beethoven, and Henry VIII.
• Deaths
  • laughing yourself to death — Laughing yourself to death is a legendary or fictional cause of death used in comedy and satire. It is associated with figures such as Chrysippus, Thomas Urquhart, and Monty Python’s famous sketch about a killer joke.
• Genealogy
  • posthumous children
    • posthumous — Posthumous is a term for someone born after the death of a parent, especially a child born after the father has died. It appears in royal naming and biography contexts such as John I, who was born after his father’s death and lived only five days.
• Human life events
  • births — Births are a recurring art-historical and religious subject, especially in works connected to childbirth imagery and ritual celebration. Clues here point to Renaissance birth trays and to Hindu festivals like Krishna Janmashtami and Ganesha Chaturthi, as well as depictions of childbirth in film.
• Royal jubilees
  • Diamond Jubilee — A Diamond Jubilee marks a sixtieth anniversary, especially of a monarch’s accession or reign. Britain celebrated one for Queen Victoria in 1897 and another for Elizabeth II in 2012.
• Tall people
  • Robert Wadlow — Robert Wadlow was the tallest human in recorded history, reaching 8 feet 11.1 inches. Born in Alton, Illinois, he died young from complications related to a leg brace and a septic blister.
• Burial structures
  • Tombs — Tombs are burial structures or places for the dead, ranging from simple graves to elaborate monuments. Examples include Egyptian and Chinese imperial mausoleums, the Tomb of Qin Shihuang with its terracotta army, Tutankhamun’s tomb, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the empty tomb in the resurrection narratives, tholoi, kurgans, and keyhole-shaped kofun. Tombs appear across many ancient cultures, including Mycenaean, Nuragic, Japanese, and Chinese examples.
    • necropolis — A necropolis is a “city of the dead,” a burial complex containing tombs for the dead over multiple generations. Examples include the Egyptian burial grounds at Thebes and the Catacombs of Kom al-Shoqafa in Alexandria.

• coffin — A coffin is the box used to bury the dead, often called a casket in modern usage. It appears in political satire and wrestling stipulations alike, including handbills attacking Jackson and bouts where a winner must close an opponent inside one.

• Burial containers
  • Coffins — Coffins are burial containers, including elaborate West African fantasy coffins and the Egyptian burial coffins placed inside sarcophagi. The term also refers to the coffin in Moby-Dick that serves as Ishmael’s life buoy, the title object in several literary stories, and substitute human figures in some of Magritte’s surreal paintings.
• Manner of death
  • Dying in a car accident — This answer refers to dying in a car accident, a manner of death used in James Agee’s A Death in the Family. It also appears in J. G. Ballard’s Crash, where characters become sexually fixated on automobile wrecks and collisions.
• Supercentenarians
  • Jeanne Calment — Jeanne Calment was the Frenchwoman long regarded as the oldest verified person ever, living to 122 years old. Clues about meeting Vincent van Gogh as a girl, enjoying cigarettes and chocolate, and her sardonic one-liners are all standard references to her remarkable longevity.
• Suicide

  • committing suicide — Committing suicide is a recurring dramatic and novelistic action in works such as Death and the King’s Horseman, Hedda Gabler, The Wild Duck, Things Fall Apart, and Anna Karenina. The clue set emphasizes ritual hanging, pistol suicide, and self-destruction as a response to dishonor or despair.

  • ritual suicide — Ritual suicide is the deliberate self-killing carried out as a prescribed ceremonial act. In Death and the King’s Horseman, Simon Pilkings prevents Elesin from performing this act, upsetting the play’s spiritual and social order.

• Suicide methods
  • self-immolation — The act of setting oneself on fire, often as a protest or ritual act. It has been associated with religious suicide and with examples such as sati, jauhar, Thích Quảng Đức’s protest, Mohamed Bouazizi, reports involving Falun Gong practitioners, and Russian Old Believer traditions.

Work, Agriculture, and Everyday Objects

Connect occupations and everyday objects to functions and materials.

People and occupations

• Antiquarians
  • John Aubrey — John Aubrey was a seventeenth-century antiquarian and biographer best known for Brief Lives. He also wrote about notable contemporaries and is associated with the rediscovery of the monument at Avebury and the ring of holes at Stonehenge.

• Arthur Young — Arthur Young was an English agriculturist and travel writer who criticized enclosure and documented farming practices across Britain and France. His writings on French agriculture became an important source for the conditions leading up to the French Revolution.

• Authority figures
  • boss — Boss is a slang title for a political machine leader or other dominant authority figure, as in Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall. The word also appears in pop-culture and computing clues, from a Mustang performance package and a looping command to the catchphrase “I’m the _____, applesauce!” and a TV series title.
• biographers
  • Marc Eliot — Marc Eliot is a biographer known for books on figures such as Phil Ochs, the Eagles, Walt Disney, and Bruce Springsteen. He also wrote Cary Grant: A Biography.
• British Marxist historians

  • Edward Palmer Thompson — Edward Palmer Thompson was a British Marxist historian, social critic, and English socialist historian associated with the CND and anti-nuclear activism. He is best known for The Making of the English Working Class and for influential writing on William Morris, William Blake, the moral economy of the crowd, custom, labor politics in early industrial Britain, time discipline, and the Black Act. Other works associated with him include Customs in Common and The Poverty of Theory.

  • Eric Hobsbawm — British Marxist historian best known for sweeping histories of modern Europe and the long nineteenth century, including The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes. He also wrote Nations and Nationalism since 1780, coedited The Invention of Tradition with Terence Ranger, and wrote on the dual revolution and social banditry.

• butler — A butler is a high-ranking household servant, often associated in literature with dignity, discretion, and the management of a large house. Famous fictional butlers include Stevens in The Remains of the Day and Jeeves in P. G. Wodehouse, though Jeeves is technically a valet. The profession also titles plays such as What the Butler Saw.

• butlers — Butlers are high-ranking household servants who manage a formal domestic staff and a great house, often appearing in British fiction as highly trained domestic staff and dignified professional foils. Literary examples include Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Jeeves in P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster stories.

• Divination occupations
  • fortune teller — A fortune teller is a person who claims to divine the future, often seen in carnival booths and theme-park machines like Zoltar. The profession also appears in literature, such as when Rochester disguises himself as one in Jane Eyre.

• Douglas Yetman — Douglas Yetman is a quizbowl player associated with NYU and later the University of Massachusetts. The evidence highlights his deep voice, his posts on quizbowl forums, and his role on strong NYU teams.

• elevators
  • operators
    • elevator operator — An elevator operator is the person who runs or attends an elevator, especially in older office buildings and department stores. The job is now largely obsolete, but it was once a common occupation in mid-twentieth-century urban buildings.
• French astrologers
  • Nostradamus — Nostradamus, or Michel de Nostredame, was a 16th-century French physician, apothecary, and astrologer. He is best known for the cryptic prophetic quatrains collected in his Centuries (Les Prophéties), which made him famous as a supposed prophet and later inspired attempts to link him to events ranging from royal politics and modern disasters to wartime propaganda.
• guild ranks
  • Journeyman — A journeyman is a craft worker who has completed an apprenticeship and may be paid for labor. In guild systems, this rank came before master status and the submission of a masterwork.

• Henry Francis du Pont — Henry Francis du Pont was a Delaware collector and philanthropist associated with Winterthur, whose decorative arts collection is among the most famous in the United States. The museum’s furniture, pottery, and objets d’art were assembled under his supervision.

• Historians
  • Historians of late antiquity
    • Peter Brown — Peter Brown is a historian of late antiquity at Princeton who helped define the modern study of the period. His works include The World of Late Antiquity, The Cult of the Saints, and studies of Augustine, the poor, and Christian asceticism.
• Human potential movement
  • Jean Houston — Jean Houston is an American author and lecturer known for work in human potential and spirituality. She was reported as a consultant to Hillary Clinton in efforts involving the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Hunters and conservationists
  • Jim Corbett — Jim Corbett was the British hunter and conservationist in India who wrote Man-Eaters of Kumaon about his tiger hunts. India’s first national park was later named after him, reflecting his turn from hunter to conservationist.

• Huxley — The Huxley family included several major scientists and writers, among them T. H. Huxley, Julian Huxley, and Andrew Huxley. Clues often point to Darwin’s Bulldog, the co-discoverer of the sliding filament theory, and Aldous Huxley, author of The Perennial Philosophy and Brave New World.

• Japanese tea ceremony
  • tea masters
    • Sen no Rikyu — Sen no Rikyū was a major Japanese tea master who developed wabi-cha and the wabi-sabi aesthetic. He served Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Hideyoshi forced him to commit suicide.

• Joanna Hiffernan — Joanna Hiffernan was an Irish model associated with James Whistler and Gustave Courbet. She appears in works such as Symphony in White No. 1, The Little White Girl, The Sleep, and Courbet’s La belle irlandaise.

• jobs
  • editors
    • newspaper editor — A newspaper editor is the profession of figures such as Perry White, J. Jonah Jameson, Ben Bradlee, and Lou Grant. In Our Town, Emily Webb’s father is also described as holding this job.

• John and Sylvia Sutherland — John and Sylvia Sutherland are the married couple identified in the referenced travel narrative. They are presented as companions of the narrator and Chris at the start of the trip.

• John Singer Sargent
  • Portrait of Madame X
    • Virginie Gautreau — Virginie Gautreau is the society portrait subject shown in John Singer Sargent’s scandalous Portrait of Madame X. The work is remembered for the altered shoulder strap and for the controversy surrounding its unveiling at the Paris Salon.
• journalism occupations
  • reporter — A reporter is a journalist who gathers and writes news, and the profession is common for newspaper and television characters. Batman stories often feature reporters such as Vicki Vale, while older contexts may simply identify the observer of a game as a reporter.

• Kiki de Montparnasse — Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin, was a famous model, actress, and muse in interwar Paris. She appears in Man Ray photographs such as Le Violon d’Ingres and is associated with the Montparnasse artistic scene.

• Maritime occupations
  • sailors — Sailors are people whose work takes them to sea, and they recur in art, literature, and musical theater. Clues often mention Winslow Homer’s seafaring scenes, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, and films like On the Town and Anchors Aweigh.
• Monarchs
  • king(s) — King is a title for a male monarch, and it appears in song titles and stage names such as King Princess and Elle King. The clue set also points to Shakespeare’s King Lear and to other works about kings or kingship.

• pilots — Pilots are people trained to fly aircraft, including airline, fighter, and stunt pilots. Quiz material often points to Yeats’s “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” Catch-22’s Yossarian, Top Gun, Airplane!, and early Black aviators such as Eugene Bullard and Bessie Coleman.

• Royalty

  • coronation — Coronation is the ceremony by which a ruler is formally crowned and presented with regalia such as an orb and scepter. Examples in the clues include British, French, and Scottish coronations, along with works like Boris Godunov and Il viaggio a Reims. The term also titles literary and operatic plots built around accession to the throne.

  • princesses

    • princess — A princess is a female royal, often a character in fairy tales, children’s literature, and popular culture. The term also appears as a motif in modern picture books and retellings, including works by Kate Beaton, Shannon Hale, and Robert Munsch, and as a stage name such as Princess Nokia.
• Science occupations
  • scientist — Scientist is the broad answer for characters such as Victor Frankenstein, Isaac Newton, and other figures who work in experimental or theoretical research. The clues mix fiction and philosophy, but the recurring identifying feature is a person engaged in scientific inquiry. These questions also nod to famous thought experiments and operas involving scientists, showing that the profession can appear in both literature and social science contexts. The safest identification is the general profession rather than a narrower specialty.
• security personnel
  • bodyguards — Bodyguards are protectors assigned to safeguard a ruler or other important person, and Belisarius’s early command and the somatophylakes of Philip II and Alexander the Great both fit that role. In Macedon, these guards often served as elite companions as well as protectors.

• shoemaker — The shoemaker is a common fairy-tale and historical disguise figure, from the helpful elves of folklore to George Hewes’s cover during the American Revolution. The profession also appears in stories of trickster craftsmanship and in plays where a character adopts a shoemaker’s identity to hide or transform himself.

• Sir Kenneth Clark — Kenneth Clark was a British art historian and broadcaster whose books included Leonardo da Vinci, The Nude, and Piero della Francesca. He is especially remembered for the television series Civilisation and for his presence in a famous Monty Python boxing sketch.

• tailor — A tailor is a maker or alterer of clothing, especially fitted garments. The profession appears in folk tales and in the history of bespoke menswear, especially on Savile Row.

• Thomas Hobson — Thomas Hobson was a Cambridge livery-stable owner whose customers could take only the horse nearest the door or none at all. His name became attached to the phrase Hobson’s choice, meaning a forced choice with no real alternative.

• Time Warner executives
  • Gerald Levin — Gerald Levin was a Time Warner executive who became chairman and CEO during the company’s expansion years. He is especially associated with the company’s major merger-era leadership alongside Ted Turner.

• Tinbergen — The Tinbergen family produced multiple notable Dutch scholars, including Nikolaas Tinbergen and Jan Tinbergen. Nikolaas won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, while Jan shared the first Nobel Prize in Economics.

• Titles of nobility
  • dukes
    • Duke — Duke is a surname and title associated with figures such as Doris Duke and James Buchanan Duke. It also appears as a noble title in European history and in fictional or humorous uses, such as Duke Vincentio in Shakespeare and Uncle Duke in Doonesbury.

• Toynbee — The Toynbee family produced figures such as Arnold Toynbee and Polly Toynbee, and gave its name to Toynbee Hall. Arnold Toynbee was the economic historian associated with the influential settlement house in London.

• translation
  • translator — A translator renders text from one language into another, and the occupation is central to works by writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Javier Marías, and Diego Marani. Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” is a famous meditation on the craft.
• Translators
  • William Weaver — William Weaver was an American translator best known for bringing Italo Calvino’s works such as If on a winter’s night a traveler, Cosmicomics, and T zero into English. He also translated numerous novels and essays by Umberto Eco.

• Rick Steves — Rick Steves is a travel writer and television host based in Edmonds, Washington. He is known for PBS travel programs and books that promote experiencing Europe as a “temporary local.”

• Travel writing
  • Eugene Fodor — Eugene Fodor was a Hungarian-American travel writer whose guidebooks became famous for their bright orange covers. His first bestseller, On the Continent, helped establish the modern annual travel guide. He later founded the company that continued publishing guidebooks under his name.
• Yeomen of the Guard
  • Beefeater — Beefeater is the colloquial name for the Yeomen of the Guard, the ceremonial warders of the Tower of London. The name is also associated with a British gin brand.
• Occupations

  • lighthouse keeper — A lighthouse keeper tended the lamp that guided ships safely past dangerous shores. Quizbowl clues often point to Grace Darling, Ida Lewis, Sally Snowman, or the grim ending of Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse.

  • chimney sweep — A chimney sweep was a laborer who cleaned soot and ash from chimneys, often by climbing into narrow flues. The profession became notorious for exploiting children and for causing occupational cancer from soot exposure.

  • waitress — A waitress is a person employed to serve customers at tables in a restaurant or café. The clue set points to recurring fictional waitresses such as Rachel Green and other television characters with that occupation.

  • fireman — A fireman, or firefighter, appears in literary clues ranging from Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano to Fahrenheit 451. Other references may point to Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” or to early films and comedies such as Life of an American Fireman and The Firemen’s Ball.

  • highwayman — A highwayman was the romanticized road robber who rode horseback to hold up travelers. Dick Turpin and literary figures like Alfred Noyes’s lover of Bess, along with characters from Rookwood and The Beggar’s Opera, are classic examples.

  • music teacher — A music teacher is a recurring literary profession, appearing in works from Nabokov to Hesse and Welty. The clue set points to teachers or masters of music, including Vivaldi’s work at the Ospedale della Pietà and disguised music teachers in comedy and fiction.

  • police officer — A police officer is a law-enforcement official. The profession is often called a cop or bobby in informal speech, and in fiction police figures recur as inspectors, constables, detectives, and sergeants, including Javert in Les Misérables and characters in detective fiction, comic novels, absurdist theater, Lovecraft, modern political satire, and works by Flann O’Brien and Mario Vargas Llosa.

  • slave
    • a slave — A slave is the role or condition invoked in several literary works about bondage, including Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and the autobiographical narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass. Shakespeare’s sonnets also use the word metaphorically for the speaker’s self-abasement before the beloved.

  • bakers — Bakers are the people who make bread and other baked goods, a craft tied to medieval guilds and occupational law. The profession appears in stories ranging from Saint Honoré and panettone legends to the rhyme “patty-cake” and the phrase “baker’s dozen.”

  • Bounty hunter — A bounty hunter is a professional tracker who captures fugitives or other targets for payment. Pop culture examples include Jubal Early and Boba Fett, both strongly tied to the profession.

  • Bus drivers
    • bus driver — A bus driver is a public transit or school transport worker who drives passengers from place to place. The job is often stereotyped in popular fiction as a rude or scary character, though it is a straightforward occupation. Bus drivers also appear as recurring characters or roles in films such as Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, where figures like Paterson and Everett are shaped by routes, routines, and chance encounters.

  • butchers — Butchers are the profession at the center of films such as Delicatessen and Le Boucher, where meat-cutters or shopkeepers become linked to murder. In Renaissance Florence, butchers belonged to the Beccai guild.

  • carpenters
    • carpenter — A carpenter is a woodworker or craftsman, and the profession appears repeatedly in literature from the Bible to Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll. The clue set also points to a surname used by John Carpenter, the Carpenters, and Sabrina Carpenter, which can create a separate identity ambiguity.

  • coopers — Coopers are craftsmen who make wooden casks, barrels, and tubs by fitting staves together with hoops. The profession appears in references to Habbakuk Bowditch and to older English trades attacked by the Marprelate controversy.

  • driver — A driver is someone who operates a vehicle for transport or professional service, as in a taxi driver or chauffeur. The clue set points to figures such as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and the professional drivers in works like Driving Miss Daisy.

  • firefighters — Firefighters were once organized as volunteer companies and rival urban crews, with early American examples tied to Benjamin Franklin and the Bowery Boys. The profession also includes the modern emergency workers who responded on 9/11, as well as ancient Roman equivalents like the Vigiles.

  • Fisherman — A fisherman is a person who catches fish for a living, and this occupation appears in works ranging from The Old Man and the Sea to the Arabian Nights. The clues point to Santiago, who loses his marlin to sharks, and to other fishermen who encounter a jinni or recover a ring in traditional tales.

  • Grocer — A grocer is a merchant who sells food and household supplies, especially in a retail shop. The word is historically connected to bulk trade and appears in literary prompts as a profession or social role.

  • impersonators
    • Santa Claus impersonator — A Santa Claus impersonator is someone hired to dress as Santa, often in malls, photo sessions, and other seasonal appearances. The role has its own labor culture, including real-bearded Santas and unions that represent them.

  • journeymen — Journeymen are craftspeople who have completed apprenticeship but have not yet reached master status. They often traveled between towns to gain experience and, in guild traditions, had to produce a masterpiece to advance.

  • Lumberjack — A lumberjack is a worker who cuts and hauls timber, a profession romanticized in North American folklore and songs like “The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks.” The image also appears in Paul Bunyan stories and in occupational terms such as whistle punk and high climber.

  • merchant — A merchant is a trader or seller, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice centers on Antonio, a Venetian merchant entangled with Shylock’s demand for a pound of flesh. The profession also titles plays such as The London Merchant and appears in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.

  • mining
    • gold prospector — A gold prospector searches for gold, often in the nineteenth-century rushes that shaped stories of the Yukon and the American West. The job appears in Jack London and Bret Harte, where mining camps and sudden strikes drive the action.
  • pirates
    • pirate — A pirate is a sea raider or corsair, the title profession associated with Jack Sparrow and Captain Hook. The clue set also points to the broad comic and literary use of the occupation, from Treasure Island to parody and fantasy.
  • plumbing
    • Plumbers — Plumbers are workers who install and repair pipes, fixtures, and drainage systems. Clues about this occupation range from Joe the Plumber and white-collar licensing disputes to the White House Plumbers who carried out the Watergate break-in. The occupation also appears in gaming contexts through the Mario brothers, who are portrayed as plumbers.
  • shoemaking
    • Shoemakers — Shoemakers, also called cobblers, make and repair shoes by assembling parts such as uppers, welts, eyestays, and eyelets. The profession appears in phrases like “stick to your last” and in words such as ultracrepidarian and cordwainer, which are tied to shoe-making lore.

  • Tailors — Tailors are the people who make and alter clothing, and they are the profession associated with sewing garments. They are also the occupation of Motel Kamzoil in Fiddler on the Roof and of other characters referenced in the clues.

  • tent-making — Tent-making is the manual trade traditionally associated with Paul’s support of himself. The clue also links the occupation to Omar Khayyam’s father.
• Professions
  • Librarian — A librarian is the learned keeper of books, and the word often appears in literary settings where a monastery or archive controls access to texts. It is also the profession associated with figures such as Philip Larkin and Edmund Gosse.
• Corporate executive titles
  • Chief Executive Officer — A chief executive officer is the top operating executive of a company. In corporate contexts, this role is often abbreviated CEO, as in the clue about Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.
• Nobility
  • Titles
    • Baron — A baron is a noble rank below viscount and above knight, and the title also appears in the term robber baron. The title is also used in names like Baron Samedi and in historical figures such as von Steuben and the Red Baron.
• Noble titles
  • Count — A count is a noble title that appears in works such as The Count of Monte Cristo and titles involving Count Dracula and Count Julian. Dantès adopts the title Count of Monte Cristo after his imprisonment and escape, making the rank a recurring literary clue.
• postal occupations
  • postmaster — A postmaster is the official in charge of a post office and mail delivery. In literature, the role is associated with Shpekin in The Government Inspector and with a character in The Cherry Orchard who flirts with Dunyasha.
• Postal workers
  • mailman — A mailman, also called a mail carrier, postal worker, or postman, is an occupation associated with characters such as Mr. McFeely, Newman, and Cliff Clavin. It appears in Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender,” James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Alice Munro stories, Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office, a Malgudi Days story about a postman who bends the rules, and Antonio Skármeta’s Il Postino, which centers on a man working as a postman.
• NPR hosts
  • Robert Siegel — Robert Siegel is a longtime NPR host associated with All Things Considered. He began as a radio reporter in New York and was recognized for major documentary and investigative stories.
• columnists
  • David Brooks — David Brooks is a New York Times columnist and commentator known for books such as Bobos in Paradise. His essays often contrast social classes and moral habits, especially in discussions of bourgeois bohemians and the Organization Kid.

Agriculture and gardening

• Agricultural methods
  • plowing — Plowing is the agricultural process of overturning and mixing the upper layers of soil. It is central to debates over no-till farming, which reduces erosion and preserves soil structure by avoiding repeated tillage.
• Agriculture
  • mowing — Mowing is the act of cutting grass with a scythe or similar tool. It appears in poems by Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Andrew Marvell, and Robert Frost.
• Bananas
  • curved yellow fruit — A curved yellow fruit is a comic name for an absurdly easy giveaway question, built from the familiar description of a banana. The phrase is used as a joke label for questions that become trivial after a string of difficult clues.

• farmer — A farmer is a person who cultivates land and raises crops, a figure central to many American literary works about rural life and dispossession. The clues point to tenant and yeoman farmers, Pa Joad, and biblical Cain, all framed through that occupation.

• Gardening
  • Topiary — Topiary is the art of training living trees and shrubs into decorative shapes. The practice has ancient roots and was revived in Renaissance Europe, where formal gardens and mazes made it popular again.

• Garth — A garth is a small enclosed garden, especially one found within a cloister. The same word is also famous as Wayne Campbell’s best friend in Wayne’s World.

• Horticulture
  • bonsai — Bonsai is the Japanese art of growing and training miniature trees in containers, often displayed with scrolls and accent plants. It uses pruning, wiring, and styles such as cascade or upright forms to create living miniature landscapes.
• landscape design
  • gardens — Designed outdoor landscapes that can be formal, geometric, or symbolic, including Persian charbagh layouts, Mughal and French parterres, and Japanese Zen dry gardens. They may integrate rocks, water, or carefully arranged trees, especially in Chinese and East Asian examples. Famous literary and mythic gardens include the Hesperides, Eden, Gethsemane, Shalimar, Versailles, The Secret Garden, and The Garden Party; biblical references often treat them as enclosed paradises with fourfold symbolism of Paradise.
    • shrubbery — A shrubbery is a decorative planting or arranged cluster of shrubs, and in one famous comedy it is demanded as tribute by the Knights Who Say Ni. The same joke later specifies that the ideal one should be set up in tiers with a small path down the middle.

• livestock brands — Livestock brands are hot-iron marks used to identify ownership of animals, especially cattle. Clues often mention mavericks, running W brands, brand books, and older decorative forms such as wattles or swallow-forks.

• Natural fibers
  • Jute — Jute is a natural plant fiber used for burlap, gunny sacks, twine, and other coarse textiles. It comes chiefly from Asian plants in the Corchorus genus and is especially associated with production in Bangladesh and West Bengal.
• Pastoral occupations
  • shepherding — Shepherding is the tending of sheep, a profession used in pastoral literature and in the title of works like The Shepheardes Calendar. The related metaphor also appears in the idea of shepherd moons, which keep planetary rings confined.
• Scarecrows — Scarecrows are straw-stuffed figures used to frighten birds, but in literature and games they often become uncanny or sentient beings. They appear in works ranging from The Wizard of Oz and Howl’s Moving Castle to horror fiction and video games.
  • Scarecrow — A scarecrow is the human-shaped figure used in fields to frighten away birds and other pests. It also appears in literature and folklore as a symbol of old age, emptiness, or rustic labor.

• slaughterhouse — A slaughterhouse is a building where animals are killed and processed for meat. The term also appears in literary and historical references, including a nickname for the Bowery Theatre and a scene in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

• Crop rotation
  • three-field system — The three-field system is a medieval crop-rotation method that divides land among spring crops, winter crops, and fallow ground. By reducing the amount of land left idle, it increased agricultural output and helped make legumes and oats more important in European farming.
• Hand tools
  • Hoes
    • hoe — A hoe is a hand tool or agricultural implement used to cut, scrape, and move soil or weeds. Clues may mention the seed drill, draw hoes, scuffle hoes, or the notorious short-handled hoe used in California agriculture.
• corn anatomy
  • corn cob — A corn cob is the woody core of an ear of corn after the kernels are removed. It can also appear as a crude implement in Southern backwoods settings, as in some fictional moonshiner scenes.
• conifers
  • pine — Pines are resinous coniferous trees with needle-like leaves and are familiar as softwood and Christmas trees. The genus includes species such as Monterey pine, Torrey pine, and white pines, and some are affected by the mountain pine beetle in North America. Pines recur in Japanese literature and classical music, including Respighi’s Pines of Rome, and are a common symbol in plays by Zeami and Chikamatsu.
• Sod — Sod is a layer of grass and the soil bound to its roots, often used to cover bare ground. It was historically used as a roofing or building material and is now also common in lawns and athletic fields.

Home and household

• Bathroom fixtures

  • bathtub — A bathtub is the household fixture used for bathing, and it is the place where Jean-Paul Marat was depicted and murdered in Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting. It is also the object named by clue lists of notorious deaths that include Marat and other historical or cultural figures.

  • bathtubs — Bathtubs are the domestic fixtures that recur in jokes and myths about hygiene, wealth, and history, from the Taft legend to stories about Marat and modern photography. They also appear in notable artworks and literary titles, including Marat/Sade, David’s painting of Marat, and Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.

    • a bathtub — A bathtub is the comic and domestic object that titles works ranging from Swiftian satire to stories in The Golden Ass and modern stage adaptations. Clues about it often point to Voyage around my bathtub-style parody, the Miller Tale’s flood escape, or Stella! in A Streetcar Named Desire.
• Bedding
  • mattresses — Mattresses are padded sleeping surfaces sold in many forms, including luxury models and coil-spring versions. In some U.S. regulations, mattresses must be labeled as new or used.
• Benches
  • park benches — Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and David Mamet’s The Duck Variations are set on park benches in a park, often treated as a public meeting place rather than a zoo.

• bidet — A bidet is a bathroom fixture used for washing the genitals and anus with a stream of water. The name comes from French and originally referred to a small pony or horse, and the fixture was once associated with aristocratic fashion.

• Bookshelves
  • bookshelf — A bookshelf is a piece of furniture used to store and display books, often in freestanding or wall-mounted form. Examples range from ordinary bookcases to famous flat-pack models like Ikea’s Billy.
• Furniture
  • Chairs
    • Barcelona Chair — The Barcelona Chair is a modernist chair designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for the 1929 Barcelona Exposition. It is famous for its sleek steel frame and black leather cushions, and is named for the city where it debuted.
• Furniture design
  • Thomas Chippendale — Thomas Chippendale was an English cabinetmaker and furniture designer whose name became attached to a fashionable eighteenth-century style of furniture. He is associated with The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, a catalogue that helped popularize rococo, chinoiserie, and Gothic designs; he described one blend of these as “Modern Taste.” His work is especially associated with ornate cabinets and pierced splats, and the Director became a standard reference point for later furniture design questions.
• Home improvement
  • home renovation — This refers to the act of renovating or fixing up a home, especially when paired with rebates or tax credits for repair costs.
• Household chores
  • ironing — Ironing is the household activity of smoothing clothes with heat and pressure. It opens John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and inspires Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing,” where it serves as the everyday backdrop for a reflective short story about motherhood. It also appears in literary references ranging from Duchamp’s readymades to those works.
• household paper products
  • Paper towels — Paper towels are the disposable absorbent sheets used for household cleanup and other messy tasks. The Puerto Rico clip about Trump throwing them into a crowd made the product briefly notable in political satire.
• Literary and mythological wells
  • well — A well is the title object in several literary works, including Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, a pioneering lesbian novel centered on Stephen Gordon. Wells also appear in myth and drama, such as Odin’s quest at the well of knowledge and Yeats’s and Synge’s plays.
• Mailboxes
  • Pillar boxes — Pillar boxes are British mailboxes used for sending letters, and many bear the royal cipher of the monarch reigning when they were installed. Famous variants include the gold boxes painted after Britain’s Olympic victories and the ornate Penfold design.
• Paper products
  • toilet paper — Toilet paper is the household product sold under brands such as Scott, Charmin, and Quilted Northern. It became infamous in a Johnny Carson joke about shortages and in advertisements featuring Mr. Whipple and cartoon quilters.
• rooms and spaces
  • the kitchen — In Langston Hughes’s “I, Too,” the speaker is sent to the kitchen when company comes. The kitchen is also a named area in pickleball, and it appears as a room in Clue’s Boddy Mansion.
• Utensils
  • spoons — Spoons are utensils that appear in everything from souvenir silverware and christening sets to ceremonial and royal examples. They also recur in literature and popular culture, from Prufrock’s life measured out in coffee spoons to Uri Geller’s claimed spoon-bending and the “runcible spoon” in Edward Lear.

• Water bottle — A water bottle is a container for holding drinking water or other liquids. It can also appear in pop-culture references, including a Kanye West joke and costume gag.

• Cleaning products

  • Formula 409 — Formula 409 is a Clorox household cleaner. It is also echoed in a Beach Boys title and in Green Day’s “409 in Your Coffee Maker.”

  • Murphy’s Oil Soap — Murphy’s Oil Soap is a cleaning product promoted for use on wood surfaces, including the floors of old churches and other historic buildings. It is an old household brand associated with gentle wood cleaning.

• Cleaning tools
  • Broom — A broom is a sweeping tool, and it also appears in wedding customs such as broom-jumping. The word can serve as the answer to a clue about the thing used to sweep someone off their feet.
• Food storage containers
  • Tupperware — Tupperware is the plastic food-storage brand famous for its direct-selling parties and “burping seal” containers. Its rise is especially associated with Brownie Wise and the party-plan sales model.
• Doors
  • doorways — Doorways are the object category used in several behavioral, legal, and causal metaphors, including the foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face techniques. They also connect to the Monty Hall problem, Norman doors, and mezuzot placed on Jewish doorways.
• Household objects
  • a fireplace — A fireplace is the domestic hearth image evoked in Descartes’ dream argument and in references to the Fireside poets. It serves as a recurring literary symbol of comfort, domesticity, and memory.

Objects and tools

• Ball
  • a ball — A ball is the object used in Pong and Breakout, and it is also the subject of the Berlioz movement titled “A ball.” The same object appears in video-game history from Arkanoid to the Amiga’s bouncing-ball demo that went viral at the 1984 Winter CES.
• Bells
  • a bell — A bell is a ringing metal instrument that tolls in John Donne’s meditation “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which also gave its title to a Hemingway novel. Poe’s “The Bells” and the church bell in John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano are other recurring literary clues.
• Bottles
  • wine bottles — Wine bottles are the objects that David Copperfield is forced to clean in the factory episode of Dickens’s novel. They are also a plausible subject for cellar collections, especially for an oenophile.
• cameras
  • a camera — A camera is the object repeatedly used in plots involving voyeurism, accidental killing, and staged performance. In An American Tragedy, it helps lead to Roberta Alden’s death, and in Peeping Tom it becomes the killer’s murder weapon.

• canes — Canes are walking sticks that can also serve as symbols of vanity, authority, or violence in literature and history. They appear in jokes about Balzac’s ornate cane, Tristram Shandy, and the caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks.

• Dials
  • Dial — A dial is the numbered disk on an old rotary telephone used to place a call. The same word also names a knob used for tuning and several magazines, including a Modernist literary journal and an early Transcendentalist periodical.
• Enclosures
  • cage — A cage is a ring- or box-like enclosure, from the octagonal UFC arena to the sub-boxes in variants of Sudoku such as KenKen and Killer Sudoku. The word also appears in chemistry in terms like caged compounds and the cage effect, where radicals are trapped by surrounding solvent molecules.
• Fasteners

  • buttons — Buttons are small fasteners, and the word also appears in Internet memes and in the name of a mushroom variety. The clues rely on the everyday object rather than a person or band.

  • pins — Pins are small fastening objects, and Adam Smith used their manufacture to illustrate the division of labor in The Wealth of Nations. The same object appears in clue sets about thumbtacks, push pins, and other variants of the basic fastener.

• Fireworks

  • hangfire — Hangfire is a fireworks term for a shell or chain of shells that fails to ignite properly and lingers before firing.

  • Pyrotech or pyrotechnician — A pyrotech or pyrotechnician is a person who works with fireworks.

• Glassware
  • drinking glasses
    • Tumbler — A tumbler is a flat-bottomed glass without a stem, handle, or foot. The word can also mean an acrobat or gymnast, and it names parts of locks and gunlocks as well.
• Hardwoods
  • ebony — Ebony is a dense black hardwood, also the name of a long-running African American magazine founded in Chicago. Clues point to the wood itself, its use in piano keys, and the magazine’s role alongside Jet and the Defender.
• John Keats
  • Ode on a Grecian Urn
    • urn — An urn is a pottery vessel, and John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is the classic literary clue for the object. The term also appears in Cleanth Brooks’s The Well Wrought Urn and in the tiny Ashes trophy associated with cricket.
• Knots
  • bowline — A bowline is a dependable rescue knot. It is commonly taught with the mnemonic of a rabbit coming out of a hole, around a tree, and back down the hole.
• Mailing stationery
  • postcards — Postcards are mailable picture cards often collected by deltiologists, with eras such as divided-back, undivided-back, and linen. They appear in clues about World’s Fair souvenirs, Curt Teich’s production, and early photography used to make mass-produced views.
• Monetary amounts
  • one million dollars — One million dollars is the amount Dr. Evil demands from the United Nations in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. It is also a standard phrase for a million-dollar prize or payment.
• Mountaineering tools
  • Ice axe — An ice axe, also called a piolet, is a mountaineering tool with a long handle used for support on snow and ice. Climbers use it for balance and self-arrest on frozen slopes.
• musical instruments

  • duduk — The duduk is an Armenian double-reed woodwind made of apricot wood, often played in pairs and associated with a second drone instrument. Its distinctive sound appears widely in film scores, and performers use circular breathing to sustain the melody.

  • electronic toys
    • Otamatone — The Otamatone is a toy synthesizer shaped like a musical note and played by sliding a finger on its stem. It is a Japanese novelty instrument whose mouth changes pitch depending on hand placement.
  • Musical instruments in myth — Mythic instruments include Hermes’s tortoise-shell lyre and magical instruments in West African epic traditions.

• net — A net is a mesh structure used to catch or contain things, such as fish or a badminton birdie, and the word also means an amount remaining after deductions. NET was the three-letter predecessor to PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service.

• plate — Plate is a word whose meanings include the English name of the river between Argentina and Uruguay and the home plate in baseball. It also names a type of medieval armor made from metal plates and a flat serving dish.

• Sabot — A sabot can refer either to a wooden shoe or to a projectile sleeve used with large-caliber guns.

• Sewing
  • stitches — Stitches are the loops that form the basis of textile arts, including the running stitch made of short dashes of thread. Rozsika Parker’s The Subversive Stitch treats embroidery as a form of resistance to femininity’s constraints, and the word can also name sewing someone back together.
• sewing tools
  • needles — Needles are sewing tools with a pointed end and an eye for thread, and the term also appears in the phrase “eye of a needle.” They appear in references from Buffon’s needle problem to biblical and folkloric images such as Jesus’s camel comparison and Koschei’s hidden soul.
• Shaving implements
  • Razors — Razors were used by the gangs of 1920s Sydney and also appear as one of the deadly houses in the Maya underworld of Xibalba. The item also shows up in discussions of gendered design, such as Gillette’s pink Venus line of razors.

    • Norelco — Norelco is the brand name of a Philips razor line. A James Bond tie-in model appeared in Die Another Day.

    • Quattro — Quattro is a Schick disposable razor line introduced in 2003 as a competitor to Gillette’s multiblade models. It was promoted with grooming content and sports sponsorships, and its design became part of patent and false-advertising disputes.

• Sheaths
  • scabbard — A scabbard is the sheath that holds a sword or similar blade when it is not in use. Arthurian legend also connects it to Excalibur, which was protected by a magical scabbard.
• smoking implements
  • pipe — A pipe is a smoking implement with a bowl and stem, often used as a recurring visual motif in art. It appears in works by Magritte, Picasso, and others, and can also refer to ceremonial pipes in Native American traditions.
• Tools

  • drill — A drill is a tool used to bore holes, and the word also names a military training exercise. It can also refer to an animal species or other specialized uses, but the basic identifying sense is the hole-making tool.

  • hammers — Hammers are the tools that title several musical works, from Julia Wolfe’s piece about John Henry to Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître. They also appear in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and in imagery of blacksmiths and divine craftsmen such as Vulcan and Sucellus.

  • mortar and pestle — A mortar and pestle are the paired tools used to grind substances into a fine mixture. They are named here because crushing nickel hydrazine perchlorate with them caused a laboratory explosion and serious injuries.

  • shovel — A shovel is a digging tool that appears in games and character art as a signature weapon or utility item. One famous gaming example is Shovel Knight, whose title character fights with a shovel in a retro-style platformer.

• wood — Wood is a natural resource and basic building and industrial material, also called timber or lumber, typically obtained by logging trees and sawing them at mills. It was especially valued for shipbuilding and as mast material for the Royal Navy, and historical discussions of its scarcity link it to forest regulation, charcoal use in metallurgy, bans on its use in glass production, the Ruhr occupation, Burmese extraction disputes, Montana and British Columbia, swidden agriculture, and fears of Holznot in Central Europe.

  • log — Logs are cut sections of tree trunks or wood. They are used as the raw material for dugout canoes and appear in ritual and folkloric fire traditions such as Yule logs and apotropaic customs against winter demons. The word also appears in idioms such as “rolling logs,” “a jam of logs,” and “a bump on a log.”

  • plank — A plank is a long, thin piece of wood used in construction and crafting, including in games and sports exercises. It is also the name of the inanimate character best known as Johnny’s friend in Ed, Edd n Eddy.

• Writing implements

  • Nib — A nib is the pointed tip of a pen, especially the metal tip of a calligraphic pen. The term comes from the tip of a feather quill.

  • pencil — A pencil is a writing implement whose graphite core can also become an improvised weapon in fiction and film. It is often contrasted with an eraser in the old saying about a pencil and a sharp memory.

• Writing instruments
  • pen
    • the pen — The pen is the writing instrument praised by Edward Bulwer-Lytton as mightier than the sword. Seamus Heaney also evokes the pen in “Digging,” where it replaces the spade in the poet’s hand.
  • pens — Pens are writing instruments such as ballpoints and fountain pens, which control ink flow with a nib or a rolling ball. They also appear in literature and Islamic calligraphy, where the qalam is associated with writing and the Qur’an.
• Writing materials

  • birch bark — Birch bark was a writing surface used for manuscripts, scrolls, and inscriptions in Indigenous North America, medieval Europe, and parts of Asia. It appears in Ojibwe wiigwaasabak scrolls, Novgorod birch-bark documents, and the Bower Manuscript from Central Asia.

  • parchment — Parchment is a writing surface made from animal skin that is scraped, stretched, and dried rather than tanned. Fine parchment made from calfskin is called vellum, and it was commonly used for illuminated manuscripts.

  • vellum — Vellum is a fine, expensive writing material made from prepared animal skin, especially that of young calves, lambs, or kids. A number of early printed books, including some copies of the Gutenberg Bible, were produced on vellum rather than paper.

• Containers

  • barrels — Barrels are staved containers used for aging and storing liquids, with related crafts using tools like the croze and flincher. Quiz clues often point to the Cooper surname, the angel’s share, and barrel vaults in Romanesque architecture.

  • bottles
    • Bottle — A bottle is a container for liquids, and in older British usage the word can also mean courage. It also appears in the Bottle Conjurer hoax, a 1749 Haymarket Theatre prank built around an advertised performer entering one.

  • canister — A canister is a container, often cylindrical, made from metal or other materials. The word can also refer to the filter housing in a gas mask or, historically, to case shot fired from artillery.

  • jar — A jar is a wide-mouthed container, and in mythology Pandora’s vessel is often called a jar or pithos rather than a box. The same word can also refer to an audible rattle or vibration, which is why the clue set pivots from myth to dictionary definition. One captured clue also plays on an internet meme involving a jar-shaped object, but the core answer remains the container itself.

  • money boxes
    • piggy banks — A piggy bank is a money box often shaped like a pig and used for saving coins. The term also appears in older terracotta savings jars from Java, showing the object’s long history across cultures.

  • treasure chests — Treasure chests are hinged boxes used for storage, ornament, and decoration, including Italian cassoni and other marriage chests. They recur in games and pirate lore, where they hold loot or coins and may serve as the image behind mimics and hidden booty.

  • a tub — A tub is the object in Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, a satire on religious dispute, and it also titles a Ben Jonson play involving Squire Tub. In older nautical lore, a tub could be thrown overboard to distract whales.
• Cutting tools
  • machetes — Machetes are large cutting knives used for clearing vegetation and for combat or revolt in various Latin American and Caribbean contexts. The object also appears in cultural references ranging from Haitian martial arts to the title character of Things Fall Apart.
• Office supplies
  • paperclips — Paperclips are the mundane office objects behind Operation Paperclip, the postwar program that brought German scientists to the United States. They also give their name to Nick Bostrom’s paperclip maximizer thought experiment, in which an artificial intelligence relentlessly turns resources into more paperclips.
• Optical instruments
  • binoculars — Binoculars are a pair of side-by-side refracting telescopes used to view distant objects. They are a common tool for birdwatching and other long-distance viewing.
• Physical testing
  • Heft — Heft is a quick field test for density or solidity, often done by comparing how heavy an object feels in the hand. It is an informal measure of whether something seems substantial or well-made.
• Courtroom tools
  • gavel — A gavel is a small mallet used by a chair, judge, or marshal to call a session to order or mark proceedings. It is often made of wood, though versions may also be made of metal or ivory.
• Push-buttons
  • button — A button is a pushable object often used in memes and jokes about making a choice or triggering an outcome. The clues point to the ordinary physical button rather than a specific branded or software meaning.
• crystal glassware
  • Waterford (Crystal) — Waterford is the Irish city associated with famous crystal manufacture, originally founded there by the Penrose brothers in the eighteenth century. The modern company continued the tradition, and Waterford crystal is also used for the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball.
• Weight measurement systems
  • AVOIRDUPOIS — Avoirdupois is the common system of weight measurement used for ordinary goods. In this system, one pound equals sixteen ounces.
• Weight systems
  • Troy weight — Troy weight is a system of weighing precious metals. It uses 12 ounces to the pound, 20 pennyweights to the ounce, and 24 grains to the pennyweight.
• Systems of measurement
  • metric system — The metric system is the decimal system of measurement built around units such as the meter and kilogram. It emerged from French Revolutionary reforms and was later formalized by international convention at Sèvres and Paris.
• Coatings
  • lacquer — Lacquer is the hard, glossy coating made from tree sap that was used widely in Asian decorative arts. It appears in techniques such as maki-e, urushi-e, and carved red lacquer such as diaoqi.
• Fragrant woods
  • sandalwood — Sandalwood is a fragrant wood prized for incense, paste, and oil, and it appears in South Asian religious practice and in the trade history of places like Hawaii. Quizbowl clues may mention its use in fire temples, tilaka, Mysore Sandal Soap, or smuggling by Veerappan.
• Ores and minerals
  • iron ore — Iron ore is the raw material behind the Swedish-Narvik shipping question and the Australian mining clues. It is central to Nazi Germany’s wartime dependence on northern Sweden and to major export mining in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
• Precious metals
  • silver and gold — Silver and gold were coveted goods that drove Spanish expeditions into the Southwest and also appear together as the objects Peter says he does not possess in Acts before healing a lame man.

Books, Media, Design, and Symbols

Distinguish media, design, and symbolic conventions through examples.

Books and publishing

• catalogs
  • Whole Earth Catalog — The Whole Earth Catalog was Stewart Brand’s influential countercultural catalog of tools, ideas, and mail-order resources. It became a National Book Award winner in 1971 and was famously described by Steve Jobs as “Google in paperback form.”
• Book titles
  • ten days — Ten days is a recurring title phrase attached to several books and stories, including John Reed’s account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World. The phrase also appears in works by Nellie Bly, Jane Smiley, and Ellery Queen.
• Books — Books are written or printed works, including illuminated manuscripts, medieval codices, and early modern printed volumes. The clues emphasize literary history, from the Book of Kells to manuscript culture and Gutenberg-era printing.

  • coffee table books — Coffee table books are large, glossy hardcover books meant for display rather than sustained reading. They often showcase photography, art, fashion, or other visually striking subject matter.

  • manuals and guidebooks
    • The Anarchist Cookbook — This controversial 1971 book gives instructions for making explosives, synthesizing LSD, picking locks, and phreaking phones. It became notorious for encouraging anti-government DIY violence and for a hoax ingredient called bananadine.
  • Trivia books
    • Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader — Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is a long-running series of trivia and odd-fact books designed for casual reading. Its volumes cover topics from dumb facts to history, the weather, puzzles, and other miscellaneous curiosities.
• Editors
  • magazine editors
    • Graydon Carter — Graydon Carter is the Canadian-born editor who ran Vanity Fair after earlier editing Spy. He was loosely portrayed by Jeff Bridges in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and is also associated with Manhattan’s Waverly Inn.
  • Thomas Bowdler — Thomas Bowdler was an English editor whose name became the verb bowdlerize, meaning to expurgate or sanitize text in a prudish way. He is especially remembered for Family Shakespeare, an expurgated edition of Shakespeare’s plays that removed material considered improper.

• Norman Cousins — Norman Cousins was an editor and writer best known for leading the Saturday Review for decades. He also wrote about the healing value of laughter in Anatomy of an Illness and was active in nuclear disarmament advocacy.

• Guidebooks
  • Let’s Go — Let’s Go is the student-written budget travel guide series published by St. Martin’s Press. It began as a guide to cheap European travel and expanded into dozens of books and map guides.

• How to Catch a Lion in the Sahara Desert — This is the absurd H. Petard manual How to Catch a Lion in the Sahara Desert, a parody of impossible problem-solving methods. Its clues mention approaches such as starting at Cairo, collapsing the target into an eigenstate by measuring its gender, using a dead rabbit, or entering a cage and performing an inversion.

• Isidore of Seville
  • Etymologiae — Etymologiae, also called The Etymologies or Origines, is Isidore of Seville’s seventh-century encyclopedia. It became a major source for medieval learning and bestiary traditions, covering subjects from the trivium and quadrivium to animals and human oddities.

• paper — Paper is the material repeatedly used as a title and image in music and magazines, including Paper magazine. It appears in pop-culture references ranging from fashion spreads to song titles and albums.

• Pius XII
  • Hitler’s Pope — This is the provocative title of a book about Pius XII subtitled The Secret History of Pius XII. The book argues that Pius XII ignored the plight of the Jews to strengthen the papacy.
• Satirical magazines
  • Punch, or the London Charivari — Punch, or the London Charivari, was a British satirical magazine associated with Victorian cartoons and political humor. Its title comes from the puppet character Punch, and it published famous cartoons such as Dropping the Pilot.
• South and Southeast Asia
  • manuscript materials
    • palm leaves — Palm leaves were a common manuscript material in South and Southeast Asia, including the Kerala school, the Pali Canon, and Majapahit texts. The curved shapes of some scripts are associated with writing on these leaves, which were also used to preserve Tamil epics.
• Technology magazines
  • Popular Mechanics — Popular Mechanics is a magazine centered on technology, engineering, and practical how-to material. Its covers often highlight flashy inventions or futuristic machines alongside articles on cars, sports, and consumer gadgets.

• Untitled — Untitled is a common title for works of art, music, and other media, especially when the creator intentionally leaves the work unnamed. One clue points to modular stacked-box installations, while another references songs and albums that were released without a formal title.

• Publishing Formats and Practices
  • Book formats
    • Quarto — A quarto is a book format made by folding a sheet of paper twice. It is a larger format than the octavo and is associated with many early printed editions, including pre-Folio Shakespeare plays.
  • Book series
    • Chicken Soup for the Soul — Chicken Soup for the Soul is the inspirational anthology series by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen built from short true stories. Its early success included many rejections before publication, and it spawned numerous themed editions such as Christian, pet lover, teen, and college volumes.
  • Early printed books
    • incunabula — Incunabula are books printed before 1501, especially the earliest products of the printing press. The term comes from Latin for a cradle, and the category is used for works from printers such as Gutenberg and Caxton.
  • Notebooks and manuscripts
    • notebooks — Notebooks are the object title of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, which intercuts Anna Wulf’s colored notebooks with the frame narrative of Free Women. The same clue category also points to Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and to major manuscript collections such as Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus.
  • Periodicals

    • Magazine — A magazine is a periodical publication containing articles and other features. The same word also names the compartment in a firearm that stores extra rounds of ammunition.

    • magazines — Magazines are periodical publications such as Look, The Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, The Paris Review, and The New Yorker. They often feature illustrated covers or literary and journalistic content.
      • Alternative magazines
        • Utne Reader — Utne Reader is a left-leaning magazine that reprints work from the alternative press. Its name comes from a Norwegian word meaning “far out,” and it has featured a broad mix of cultural and political topics.

      • American Mercury — American Mercury was a magazine founded in 1924 by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. Mencken edited it until 1933, making it one of the best-known vehicles for his skeptical cultural criticism.

      • Atlantic Monthly — The Atlantic Monthly is the Boston-based magazine founded in 1857 that published the 1982 Broken Windows article by Wilson and Kelling. James Russell Lowell was its first editor, and one early Harriet Beecher Stowe article helped trigger a wave of subscription cancellations.

      • cigar magazines
        • Cigar Aficionado — Cigar Aficionado is a quarterly magazine aimed at cigar enthusiasts. Published by Marvin Shanken, it covers cigars along with lifestyle topics such as drinks, gambling, sports, and restaurants.

      • Collier’s Weekly — Collier’s Weekly was a major American muckraking magazine associated with Norman Hapgood and with investigative reporting by Jack London and Upton Sinclair. It also published early science-fiction and adventure fiction, including works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ray Bradbury, and Richard Connell.

      • Forbes — Forbes is the surname behind the business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes. The name also appears in figures such as the naturalist John Forbes and in later public personalities, making it a clue word for the magazine and its lists like the Billionaires rankings.

      • GQ — GQ is the fashion and lifestyle magazine formerly known by its abbreviated title alone and associated with the rise of the term “metrosexual.”

      • Journal of Irreproducible Results — The Journal of Irreproducible Results was a parody science magazine that called itself the official organ of the Society for Basic Irreproducible Research. Its contents mocked scientific publishing with absurd article titles and trash-can cover art.

      • Reader’s Digest — Reader’s Digest is a long-running American general-interest magazine known for condensed reprints and features such as “My Most Unforgettable Character.” It was founded by DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace in 1922 and became one of the best-selling consumer magazines in the United States.

      • The American Mercury — The American Mercury was an iconoclastic magazine founded by H.L. Mencken in 1924 and known for his satirical and debunking style. Its contributors included Sinclair Lewis, Carl Sandburg, and Vachel Lindsay, and it later shifted under Lawrence Spivak into a more right-wing publication.

      • The New Republic — The New Republic is a liberal American political and cultural magazine founded by Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl. It became notorious for scandals involving Stephen Glass and for turmoil after Chris Hughes bought it and pushed the magazine toward a web-first format.

      • Time
        • Time Magazine — Time is the weekly news magazine founded by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, famous for its red border and its annual Person of the Year selection. Clues often mention its cover stories, its longtime rivalry with Newsweek, and articles such as the 1966 cover asking “Is God Dead?”.
          • founders
            • Henry Luce and Briton Hadden — Henry Luce and Briton Hadden were the Yale alumni who founded Time magazine in 1923. Their partnership helped establish one of the most influential American news magazines of the 20th century.
    • literary magazines — Literary magazines are periodicals devoted to fiction, poetry, criticism, and essays, and examples include Prairie Schooner, Granta, and The Paris Review. They are often founded or edited by writers and poets, such as Victoria Ocampo’s Sur or publications like Martín Fierro and Proa.
  • academic journals
    • Social Text — Social Text is the left-leaning academic journal that published Alan Sokal’s famous parody article on the sociology of science. It became notorious because the editors accepted a deliberately nonsense-filled piece that mocked postmodern academic jargon.
  • Publication ethics
    • Retractions — Retractions are formal withdrawals of published work or statements, often used for corrected or discredited scholarship. Augustine’s Retractions is also the title of a work in which he reviews and revises his earlier writings.
• Publication status
  • Posthumous works
    • Posthumous — A posthumous work is published after its creator’s death, often after tragedy cuts short a career. Examples in the evidence include albums by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joy Division, and Elliott Smith, as well as unfinished literary publications.
• Publishers

  • Henry R. Luce — Henry R. Luce was the founder of Time Inc. and one of the most influential magazine publishers in the United States. Born in China to missionary parents, he became a major force behind Time, Life, and related publications.

  • IDG Books — IDG Books was the publisher behind the For Dummies series.

  • political publishers

    • Verso Books — Verso Books is a radical left-leaning publisher known for politically charged nonfiction and translations. Its red V logo is a quick identifying clue, and it published Arundhati Roy’s essay collection Kashmir: The Case for Freedom.
• Publishing companies

  • American Media, Inc. — American Media, Inc. is a Boca Raton publisher of tabloids and magazines, including Country Weekly and several of the nation’s best-selling weeklies. It also drew notoriety as the site of the first anthrax-related death.

  • Beckett — Beckett is a surname associated with the publisher behind Baseball Card Monthly and the price-guide company Beckett Media. It also appears in baseball through pitcher Josh Beckett and in the arts through the playwright Samuel Beckett, though the evidence here centers on the publishing brand and surname clues.

  • Condé Nast Publications — American publishing and media company associated with magazines such as Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, Architectural Digest, and Brides. It is a major high-end lifestyle and fashion publisher and digital media owner, closely linked to the broader Condé Nast media brand.

  • Random House — Random House is the major American publishing company founded by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer in 1927. It later became part of Bertelsmann and has issued a wide range of trade books and reference works, including Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.

  • Simon and Schuster — Simon and Schuster is an American publishing company and one of the largest book publishers in the world. The set links it to electronic publishing growth and to titles such as Places I Never Meant To Be and The Obama Nation.

• Publishing houses
  • Faber and Faber — Faber and Faber is a British publishing house associated with T. S. Eliot as its first literary director. It is also known for publishing works such as Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man and for issuing William Golding’s Pincher Martin.
• Publishing imprints

  • Klutz Press — Klutz Press is a Palo Alto-based publishing imprint known for joke-laden activity books and spiral-bound guides on crafts, magic, juggling, and other hands-on projects. Its catalog has included branded novelty items and kid-focused spin-offs such as Chicken Socks.

  • Tor Books — Tor Books is a major New York-based science-fiction and fantasy imprint of Tom Doherty Associates. Its catalog includes writers such as Orson Scott Card, David Weber, Philip K. Dick, Cory Doctorow, and many other genre authors.

• Pulp magazines
  • Black Mask — Black Mask was a pulp magazine that helped launch and develop hard-boiled detective fiction. It was founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, published early work by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner, and under editor Joseph T. Shaw became closely linked to the genre’s rise.
• Socialist magazines
  • The Masses — The Masses was a socialist magazine edited by Art Young, Floyd Dell, and Max Eastman, and it was shut down in 1917 after anti-war controversy and Espionage Act prosecutions. It also featured work by George Bellows and Jack Reed.
• Printing
  • printer — A printer is a person who operates a printing press or produces books and other printed matter. The profession is associated with Johannes Gutenberg, William Caxton, and early modern innovations such as movable type and the printed Bible.
• Printing press
  • inventors
    • Johannes Gutenberg — Johannes Gutenberg was the Mainz craftsman credited with inventing movable type and the printing press, making possible the famous 42-line Bible. Clues often mention his disputes with Johann Fust, his hand molds and oil-based ink, and Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy.
• Microforms
  • microfiche — Microfiche is a flat microform sheet that stores reduced photographic images in a grid for viewing at high magnification. It became a common archival format in the twentieth century for compact storage of documents.
• Philately

  • Penny Black — The Penny Black was the first adhesive postage stamp and the first widely used adhesive postage stamp, issued by Britain in 1840. Its name comes from its black color and one-penny denomination. It helped standardize mail delivery in Britain and became a famous philatelic landmark often referenced in discussions of rare issues, artistamps, and other stamp designs.

  • postage stamps — Postage stamps are the adhesive labels used to prepay mail delivery and a major focus of philately. Clues often mention the Penny Black, rare issues like the Inverted Jenny, or artist-made and novelty stamps.

• postage
  • stamp — A stamp is a small printed adhesive label used for postage, and in dance the word can also describe a forceful footfall.
• postal codes
  • Zoning Improvement Plan — ZIP stands for Zone Improvement Plan, the Postal Service phrase behind the five-digit ZIP Code system introduced in 1964.

Media and journalism

• Broadcasting
  • radio broadcasting — Radio broadcasting is the transmission medium that dominated American mass communication before television and carried Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats. It is also associated with wartime propaganda voices like William Joyce and the better-known Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcasts.
• journalism — Journalism is the profession of reporting and writing news, from the inverted pyramid and AP style to gonzo first-person reporting. Clues often point to figures such as Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Nellie Bly, and Ida Tarbell.

  • Gonzo Journalism — Gonzo journalism is the highly personal, subjective style of reporting pioneered by Hunter S. Thompson. Its classic early example is “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” and later works include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Great Shark Hunt.

  • Investigative journalism
    • Muckraking — Muckraking was Progressive Era investigative journalism aimed at exposing corruption and social injustice. Its well-known practitioners included Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens, and Upton Sinclair.
  • journalists — Journalists investigate and report the news, often working for newspapers, magazines, television, or wire services. The profession includes figures such as Ernie Pyle, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and H. L. Mencken.

    • Al Neuharth — Al Neuharth founded USA Today in 1982 and later wrote Confessions of an S.O.B. He was known for a short, punchy journalistic style aimed at a broad audience.

    • Bernard Goldberg — Bernard Goldberg is a former CBS reporter and correspondent who became known for books arguing that mainstream media has a liberal bias. He wrote A Slobbering Love Affair, which criticized press coverage of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

    • broadcast journalists
      • Bob Woodruff — Bob Woodruff is a broadcast journalist who reported for ABC News and co-anchored World News Tonight Saturday. He earlier worked as a translator in China during Tiananmen Square before shifting into journalism and later survived a serious bombing injury in Iraq.

    • Cokie Roberts — Cokie Roberts was an ABC News correspondent and commentator who also wrote books on women in politics. She was born Corinne and was the daughter of Hale and Lindy Boggs.

    • Dan Okrent — Dan Okrent is a journalist and author who served as the first public editor of The New York Times. He is also credited with inventing rotisserie baseball and with writing about Prohibition in Last Call.

    • Ed Bradley — Ed Bradley was a longtime CBS journalist best known for a decades-long run on 60 Minutes. He won numerous Emmys and became known for high-profile interviews, including one with Timothy McVeigh.

    • Editors
      • Marie Mattingly Meloney — Marie Mattingly Meloney was an American journalist and editor who worked for the Washington Post, the New York Herald Tribune, and the Delineator. She organized the campaign that raised money to buy radium for Marie Curie and later served in the Better Homes in America movement.
    • investigative journalists
      • Seymour Hersh — Seymour Myron Hersh, known as Sy Hersh, is an investigative journalist best known for breaking the My Lai massacre story. He later reported on abuses at Abu Ghraib and other controversies, worked for the Associated Press and The New Yorker, and won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His books include Chain of Command, The Price of Power, The Samson Option, and The Dark Side of Camelot. He also published a controversial article on Nord Stream and the Abbottabad raid.

    • journalist — A journalist is a writer or reporter who gathers and presents news. The profession is associated with yellow journalism, New Journalism, and famous figures such as John Peter Zenger, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Jim Acosta.

    • Katie Couric — American broadcast journalist and author who co-anchored Today before becoming the first solo female anchor of CBS Evening News and the first female solo anchor of a major network weekday evening newscast. She later worked for Yahoo News and became associated with interviews of major public figures and health-awareness reporting.

    • Kurt Eichenwald — Kurt Eichenwald is an American journalist and author, best known for reporting in Newsweek and for books such as The Informant. He drew attention for a 2017 Twitter controversy and for public confrontations tied to his commentary on politics and the news.

    • Michael Kinsley — Michael Kinsley is a journalist and editor who was associated with The New Republic, Slate, and CNN’s Crossfire. He became notable as a provocative political commentator and as the founding editor of Slate.

    • Mike Barnicle — Mike Barnicle is a Boston journalist and columnist who wrote for the Globe and later appeared on television commentary programs. He became notorious after resigning amid plagiarism allegations involving jokes from George Carlin’s Braindroppings.

    • Miles O’Brien — Miles O’Brien is the CNN space correspondent and weekend anchor who covered NASA and later co-anchored with Heidi Collins. He is also the name of the Star Trek engineer played by Colm Meaney on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

    • Richard Piggott — Richard Piggott was a journalist for The Times who forged letters meant to implicate Charles Stewart Parnell in the Phoenix Park murders. The forgeries were exposed during the libel controversy that followed Parnell’s lawsuit.

    • Stephen Glass — Stephen Glass was the New Republic reporter who fabricated numerous stories in the 1990s, including the fabricated hacker tale “Hack Heaven.” His scandals led to his dismissal after his false reporting was uncovered.
  • Political commentary
    • Ezra Klein — Ezra Klein is a journalist and political commentator who co-founded Vox and writes for The New York Times. He wrote Why We’re Polarized and later co-authored Abundance with Derek Thompson.
• Marshall McLuhan

  • global village — Marshall McLuhan’s global village is the idea that modern communications collapse distance and make the world feel more interconnected. He developed the phrase in The Gutenberg Galaxy and related works about electronic media and cultural re-tribalization.

  • hot and cool media — Marshall McLuhan’s hot and cool media divide media by how much information they supply and how much participation they demand. Hot media are high-definition and data-rich, while cool media leave gaps for the audience to fill in.

  • The Gutenberg Galaxy — The Gutenberg Galaxy is Marshall McLuhan’s study of print culture, subtitled The Making of Typographic Man. It is one of the classic works behind McLuhan’s idea of the global village and his broader media theory.

  • Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

    • The Medium Is the Message — “The medium is the message” is Marshall McLuhan’s famous claim that the form of communication matters more than the content it carries. It comes from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and is associated with ideas like the global village.
• Media theory
  • message — Message is the key term in Marshall McLuhan’s phrase that the medium is the message. Mensagem is Fernando Pessoa’s Portuguese epic about national history and destiny, organized into sections such as The Castles and Portuguese Sea.
• Satellite television
  • VideoCipher — VideoCipher is a scrambling and encoding system used to encrypt satellite television signals so only paying subscribers can receive channels like HBO and ESPN.
• telephone area codes
  • area codes — Area codes are the three-digit prefixes in North American phone numbers that identify a geographic calling region. They also title songs by Ludacris and Sexyy Red, whose lyrics list different regional numbers.

• tests — A test is a trial or procedure used to evaluate whether something works, whether in sport, software, or science. In these clues, the word refers both to cricket and rugby union matches and to A/B, unit, and acceptance checks in software development.

• Trivia clues
  • stock clues — Stock clues are overused, highly familiar trivia clues that are recognized without context. Examples include references to The Wealth of Nations’ pin factory and the Laffer curve being described on a cocktail napkin.
• NPR programs
  • Morning Edition — Morning Edition is NPR’s long-running morning news broadcast, associated for many years with host Bob Edwards. It is one of National Public Radio’s best-known flagship programs.
• Public radio organizations
  • Public Radio International — Public Radio International is a Minneapolis-based public radio production and distribution organization. It has been associated with programs such as The World, Studio 360, and The Sound of Young America.
• Communication studies
  • communications — Communications, especially mass communication, is the process of conveying information through messages, media, and feedback between senders and receivers. The clue set points to models by Shannon and Weaver, Harold Innis, Stuart Hall, and Paul Lazarsfeld.
• Critics and columnists
  • Frank Rich — Frank Rich became known first as a theater critic, later as an opinion columnist for The New York Times. His books include Hot Seat, Ghost Light, and The Greatest Story Ever Sold, and he earned the nickname “the Butcher of Broadway.”
• Online criticism
  • Fisking — Fisking is a point-by-point, highly critical deconstruction of an article or argument. The term is named after journalist Robert Fisk.
• Outdoor magazines
  • Field and Stream — Field & Stream is a long-running outdoor magazine founded in the nineteenth century and focused on hunting, fishing, and related recreation. It is often described as the world’s leading outdoor magazine.

Design and dress

• Beauty patches
  • beauty marks — Beauty marks, also called beauty spots or moles, are facial features that became fashionable as artificial patches in early modern Europe. They were used to cover smallpox scars and were sometimes worn in shapes like hearts or stars.
• Boots
  • Ugg boots — Ugg boots are sheepskin boots originally associated with Australia and New Zealand. They became especially popular as tall winter footwear, though they were earlier used by pilots and surfers for warmth.
• Cosmetology
  • permanent wave — A permanent wave is a long-lasting hair treatment that changes the structure of keratin to create curls or waves. The process was developed in the 1920s and uses chemical reduction followed by oxidation to reset disulfide bonds.
• Designers
  • Clothing designers
    • Paul Frank — Paul Frank is a clothing and lifestyle designer whose bright character-based branding helped make Julius the Monkey famous. His company also produced accessories and home goods, and his logo features a house with two trees.
  • Charles and Ray Eames — Charles and Ray Eames were the husband-and-wife designers behind iconic molded-plywood furniture, including the Eames lounge chair. They also made the film Powers of Ten and created the Mathematica exhibit for IBM.
• Fabrics

  • denim — Denim is the sturdy cotton twill fabric traditionally dyed with indigo and used for blue jeans, jackets, and other workwear. Clues often mention selvedge denim, Levi Strauss 501s, copper rivets, and the “Canadian tuxedo.”

  • Pile fabrics
    • velour — Velour is a soft, closely woven fabric with a short pile and a surface similar to velvet. It is often used for upholstery, stage curtains, and clothing such as dancewear.
  • Satin — Satin is a glossy woven fabric with a smooth surface on one side and a duller side on the other. It is made by a weaving pattern that raises and lowers warp yarns to create a uniform sheen.
• facial hair

  • Goatee — A goatee is a small beard that covers the chin and is often trimmed to a point. The style is named for its resemblance to the beard of a goat.

  • Soul patch — A soul patch is a small patch of facial hair below the lower lip. The term entered English around 1991 and is also called a mouche or Attilio.

• gabardine — Gabardine is a tightly woven twill fabric with a smooth face and a diagonal rib on the reverse. Traditionally made from wool but also produced in cotton or synthetics, it is associated with Burberry and other weather-resistant outerwear.

• headwear
  • hats — Hats are head coverings that range from tricorns and Phrygian caps to fezzes, kufis, and Panamas. They appear in art, politics, and fashion alike, from Liberty Leading the People to the many regional styles named in clue lists.

    • Akubra — Akubra is the Australian hat company best known for wide-brimmed rabbit-fur hats. Its name has become closely associated with the traditional bush hat worn in Australia.

    • coonskin cap — A coonskin cap is a hat made from raccoon skin, long associated with Davy Crockett and frontier imagery. It appears as part of Sam Shakusky’s scout uniform in Moonrise Kingdom, and it inspired a widespread fashion craze after the Davy Crockett miniseries.

    • cowboy hat — A cowboy hat is the wide-brimmed headwear associated with Western dress and Hollywood Westerns. One iconic version is the Stetson, including the Boss of the Plains style first made in 1865.

    • hat — A hat is a piece of headwear that appears in art, religion, and literature, from Rembrandt and Vermeer to Rasta caps and Lucky’s role in Waiting for Godot. Quizbowl clues may emphasize specific forms such as caps, kippahs, or theatrical hats, but the core answer is this clothing item.

    • straw hat — A straw hat is a brimmed hat made of woven straw or similar material, and in some art and pop-culture clues it is the accessory worn by dancers, rioters, or anime pirates. The term can also refer more broadly to a summer hat or a character’s signature headwear, as in the Straw Hat Pirates.

• Japanese culture
  • Traditional clothing
    • kimono — A kimono is a traditional Japanese robe worn left over right and secured with an obi sash. Formal versions include wide-sleeved styles such as furisode, while the yukata is a casual summer form. These garments are associated with Japanese dress aesthetics and have influenced Western fashion. They are the classic clothing clue for Japanese traditional attire.
• jewelry
  • necklace — A necklace is a piece of jewelry often central to stories of loss, imitation, and social status, including Maupassant’s The Necklace. Related clues may point to pearl, diamond, or beaded forms and to mythic gifts of jewelry.
• Kimono accessories
  • Obi — An obi is a wide sash tied around a kimono, usually fastened in back with a large bow. Japanese obis come in styles such as fukuro and Nagoya, and they can support hanging accessories like inro.

• knitting — This fiber craft uses needles to make fabric from yarn, producing stitches such as purl, stockinette, and cables. It appears in both fashion and literature, from Mary Walker Phillips’s wall hangings to Madame Defarge’s secret revolutionary work.

• knitting techniques
  • casting on — Casting on is the knitting technique used to create the first row of stitches on a needle. Variants include long-tail, provisional, Turkish, Chinese waitress, and Judy’s Magic cast-ons.
• Materials

  • Leather — Leather is tanned animal skin, historically used for shoes, workwear, and protective gear like motorcycle jackets. Clues can point to tanning with unpleasant urine-based processes, the Burakumin tannery trade, or mythic references to Vidar’s shoe in Norse legend.

  • tortoiseshell — Tortoiseshell is a mottled brown-and-yellow material historically used for decorative objects and furniture inlay. It comes from the horny plates of sea turtles and is linked to the ancient Greek lyre.

  • yarn weights

    • laceweight — Laceweight is an extremely fine yarn weight, often used for airy shawls and other openwork knitting. It is thinner than standard fingering-weight yarn and includes the very delicate cobweb variety.
• Needlework
  • samplers — Samplers are embroidered cloth pieces once used by colonial girls to practice needlework and display letters, numbers, verses, and decorative motifs. They often included the maker’s name and served as demonstrations of sewing skill.
• Sashes
  • Cummerbunds
    • Cummerbund — A cummerbund is a pleated sash worn around the waist, especially with a tuxedo. The word comes from Persian and the garment originated among sepoy soldiers in India.

• shoeshine — Shoeshine is a polish used to freshen footwear, and it has been known by generic or brand-influenced names such as Nugget in some places. It was also once used as blackface makeup, and clues about it can point to the shoe-black profession or to the shine boys who applied it while customers read newspapers.

• Textiles
  • Cashmere — Cashmere is a soft fabric made from the wool of cashmere goats, named for the historic region between India and Pakistan. The term can also appear in trade discussions about Scottish textile production.

• tweed — Tweed is a rough woolen fabric woven in twill and used for coats and suits. The name also refers to Boss Tweed, the corrupt Tammany Hall politician.

• typefaces

  • Courier New — Courier New is a monospace typeface designed by IBM’s Bud Kettler as a New version of Courier for typewriter-like text. It was nearly called Messenger and was once used for official U.S. State Department communications.

  • Helvetica — Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface designed by Max Miedinger in 1957. Its clean style made it a signature of the International Typographic Style and a common choice for signage and branding.

  • humanistic — Humanistic typefaces imitate Renaissance manuscript lettering and usually have diagonal stress and low contrast. In type design, the term refers to a family of serif styles associated with older humanist letterforms.

  • Sans-serif typefaces
    • Futura — Futura is Paul Renner’s geometric sans-serif typeface, designed as a modern alternative to Fraktur. It became especially recognizable through its later use in the Supreme logo and in Barbara Kruger’s graphic art. The typeface also turns up in Wes Anderson films and on Vampire Weekend album covers. Variants such as Futura Bold Oblique and Futura Black are also acceptable names.
  • Times New Roman — Times New Roman is the serif typeface designed for The Times of London and later became a standard default font in Microsoft Word. It was designed by Stanley Morison with Victor Lardent’s drawing work and was introduced in London in 1932.
• Typography

  • font — A font is a complete style of type, with examples including Times, Helvetica, Garamond, and Courier. The word also names a basin of water used for Christian baptism, by extension a source or reservoir of something.

  • Leading — Leading is the amount of vertical space between lines of type, a term inherited from the metal strips once inserted by printers to create that spacing. It is a basic typography setting used to control readability and layout.

  • typeface — A typeface is a design for a set of letters, symbols, or characters, often distributed digitally as a font. Examples include Times New Roman, Calibri, Highway Gothic, and Computer Modern.

  • kerning — Kerning is the adjustment of space between individual letter pairs to improve the appearance and readability of text. It differs from tracking, which changes spacing uniformly across a whole run of letters.

  • italics — Italics are slanted type used to imitate handwriting and are often contrasted with Roman and blackletter. Aldus Manutius’s press popularized the style, and modern HTML uses it for emphasis in the em tag.

• umbrella — An umbrella or parasol is a handheld canopy used for rain or sun protection. Clues may connect it to Georgi Markov’s assassination, the Holy See’s coat of arms, and the “Umbrella Man” footage from the Kennedy assassination.

• verbs and phrases
  • wrapping
    • wrap — A wrap is a sandwich or advertisement format that covers something completely, such as a vehicle wrap. The word also appears in expressions like under wraps and in entertainment jargon meaning a scene or day of filming is finished.

• yarn — Yarn is the material that names games and art projects like Unravel and yarn bombing. It also appears in references to Kirby’s Epic Yarn and other whimsical platformers built around thread and wool imagery.

• Clothing

  • gloves — Gloves, including gauntlets and mittens, recur in myths, art, and everyday clothing. Norse stories give Thor iron gloves so he can wield Mjolnir, while works from paintings to viral tweets use them as a visual symbol of clothing and hands.

  • bloomers — Bloomers are loose Turkish-style trousers worn under a skirt and named for the women’s rights activist Amelia Bloomer. They became associated with the mid-nineteenth-century rational dress movement and with reform-minded female dress in the United States.

  • Breeches — Breeches are knee-length fitted trousers that historically gave their name to breeching ceremonies for boys and to cross-dressing operatic roles. The term also appears in references such as the Breeches Bible and related clothing traditions.

  • clothes — Clothes, or clothing, are the items discussed in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and in Skinners’s Walden Two. The same broad category also appears in references to Jain ascetic practice and in pop-culture lists of “Treat Yo Self” indulgences.

  • coats — Coats are the article of clothing referred to by the literary clues in these questions. The Plato clue centers on the idea that seeing a coat does not prove its wearer is alive.

  • codpiece — A codpiece is a padded or prominent covering for the groin, worn over the front of male clothing in the Renaissance. The name also appears in clues about Henry VIII and Edward III, especially as a symbol of exaggerated masculinity.

  • dress — A dress is a one-piece garment with a bodice and skirt, and quiz clues often focus on iconic fashion examples like Chanel’s little black dress, Dior, Givenchy, and the qipao. The category also covers related forms such as the sheath, wrap, and sack dress.

  • Garment features
    • pockets — Pockets are the sewn or hanging compartments in clothing used to carry small items like phones or coins. Historical discussions of pockets contrast them with reticules and note their earlier use tied to the waist.

  • headscarf — A headscarf is a garment worn as a religious or cultural covering for the hair and head. It is central to Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, where bans on women wearing headscarves become a political and religious flashpoint in Kars, fueling unrest in Turkey, protests, and the suicides of schoolgirls. Kadife removes her headscarf during a staged performance of The Spanish Tragedy, and the novel also references titles such as My Fatherland.

  • headwear
    • a hat — A hat is a common article of clothing, with examples ranging from the pileus of Roman festival wear to decorative game items. The clue set points to hats such as the Ghastly Gibus, the Minish Cap, and Mario’s captured disguises.
  • jeans — Jeans are a type of pants made from denim and often appear in popular music lyrics. Song titles and groups such as Blue Jeans, Mom Jeans, and NewJeans all play on the word.
    • blue jeans — Blue jeans are denim pants made famous by Levi Strauss and become a standard symbol of casual wear and mass culture. They spread from miners to wider fashion, helped by riveted construction and later styles such as stonewashed and branded designer versions.

  • pants — Pants, or trousers, are leg coverings whose blue denim form became iconic as jeans after Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis popularized riveted workwear. They also gave rise to political nicknames such as the Sans-culottes, literally those without knee-breeches.

  • shirts — Shirts recur in political nicknames such as blackshirts, brownshirts, and blue shirts, and the term also appears in the Peronist descamisados, literally the shirtless supporters. The clues also allude to shirts as a factory product and to the T-shirt, a modern kind of shirt issued by the U.S. Navy.

    • Hawaiian shirt — A Hawaiian shirt, also called an aloha shirt, is a colorful casual garment associated with island patterns and vacation wear. Its history includes mixed Asian and Filipino influences, local dress-code campaigns, and its later use as a symbol of relaxed Hawaiian style.

    • T-shirt — A T-shirt is the simple short-sleeved top whose name comes from its T shape. It became popular through mid-20th-century advertising and screen appearances by stars such as Marlon Brando and James Dean.

  • shorts
    • culottes — Culottes are loose knee-length women’s shorts that resemble a skirt. The name also recalls the French revolutionaries called the sans-culottes, literally the people without them.
  • skirts — Skirts appear in Mesoamerican myth and fashion clues alike, from Chalchiutlicue’s jade skirt to modern A-line designs. The same word can also point to women’s garments in fashion history.
    • crinoline — A crinoline is a stiff underskirt used to hold out a dress, especially in nineteenth-century fashion. Early versions used horsehair for stiffness before later designs adopted rigid hoops or watchsprings.
  • socks — Socks are a common clothing item that show up in internet jokes, song lyrics, and novelty mascots. They are also the subject of Pablo Neruda’s ode describing them as soft as rabbits.
    • Tabi — Tabi are traditional Japanese split-toe socks worn with geta or zori sandals.
  • stockings
    • nylon stockings — Nylon stockings are the clothing item Willy Loman gave The Woman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Linda’s mending of them becomes one of the play’s reminders of Willy’s infidelity and instability.

  • Suit — A suit is a set of coordinated clothing, and in fashion history it can refer to the women’s pantsuit or to formal male attire such as a tuxedo. Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent are key names in the development of the modern tailored suit for women. The word also appears in the title of Nelly’s 2004 album Sweat, Suit, and is common in music and clothing contexts alike.

  • support garments
    • pannier — An 18th-century skirt-supporting underskirt or side-extending support worn under women’s skirts, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, that widened the silhouette dramatically to the sides. Its basket-like shape could make passing through doors awkward, sometimes requiring the wearer to turn sideways.
  • underwear — Underwear is the general term for clothing worn under outer garments, including sacred or symbolic versions in some religious traditions. It is also a frequent answer in pop-culture wordplay clues, from songs to novelty references.

    • corsets — Corsets are structured undergarments once stiffened with whalebone to shape the waist and support the bust and hips. They were targeted by dress reformers for tight-lacing and the “wasp waist” silhouette, and later gave way to girdles.

    • crinolines — Crinolines were stiff petticoats, often made of horsehair, that created a fashionable bell-shaped silhouette. Vivienne Westwood’s mini-crini modernized the form and became influential in 1980s fashion.

• Clothing accessories

  • a scarf — A scarf is a long fabric worn around the neck, but in one famous accident it became fatal for dancer Isadora Duncan. The same object also appears in game and film clues as a distinctive wearable or symbolic item.

  • glove — A glove is a hand-worn accessory or device, and in virtual reality it can be a haptic or data glove. Clues may point to the Power Glove or to mythic stories in which Thor sleeps inside a giant’s glove.

  • sash — A sash is a ribbon or band worn over the shoulder as a formal decoration or by beauty pageant contestants. The word also names the movable glass panel in a window or fume hood.

• Cotton fabrics
  • calico — Calico is a printed cotton textile imported from India that became fashionable in Europe and then the target of import bans in England and France. It also underlies chintz and other patterned cottons, and its name comes from the Indian city of Calicut.
• Craft techniques
  • intarsia — Intarsia is a knitting and crocheting colorwork technique that creates blocks of color without carrying yarn across the back. The term also names a woodworking method that inlays pieces to form a mosaic-like design.
• Crochet techniques
  • amigurumi — Amigurumi is the Japanese craft of making small stuffed figures by crochet or knit. It is commonly used for animals, dolls, and other tiny decorative objects. The technique typically uses a spiral construction and became a major handmade-craft trend online and on Etsy.
• hair
  • red hair — Red hair is the distinctive trait repeatedly associated with Sherlock Holmes stories and with Pre-Raphaelite paintings of women by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It also titles the Holmes story “The Red-Headed League,” in which Jabez Wilson is hired for a bizarre copyist job because of that hair color.
• Hair color
  • blonde hair — Blonde hair is the light hair color often targeted in clues about actresses, fashion imagery, or genetic inheritance. It is also the feature associated with silent-film and horror imagery around figures such as the women in The Lodger.
• Suit jackets
  • vents — Vents are slits in a suit jacket that help the fabric move more naturally, especially when sitting. The same word can also refer to openings in a volcano through which lava is released.
• suits

  • zoot suit — A zoot suit is a flashy early-1940s style of clothing with oversized shoulders, baggy tapered trousers, and a long jacket. It is closely associated with the wartime Los Angeles zoot suit riots and Mexican-American youth culture.

  • Leisure suit — A 1970s menswear outfit consisting of a shirt-like jacket and matching pants, often made of polyester and marketed for casual versatility. It became a symbol of laid-back style and the era’s fashion excesses, and is often remembered in powder blue and mint green examples for its dated reputation.

• Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
  • Yarn Harlot — Yarn Harlot is the blog pseudonym of Canadian knitting writer Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. She is known for knitting humor books, popular patterns, and charity work through Knitters Without Borders.
• Knitwear designers
  • Jared Flood — Jared Flood is a knitwear designer and the founder of Brooklyn Tweed. He is known for patterns such as Koolhaas and Turn a Square, along with other modern textured hats and garments.
• Hedi Slimane — Hedi Slimane is a French fashion designer of Tunisian heritage known for slim menswear silhouettes. He led Dior Homme and later Yves Saint Laurent before moving to Céline.

Art and symbols

• Body parts
  • Callipygian — Callipygian is an adjective meaning having shapely buttocks.
• Hair symbolism
  • They Are Famous For Their HAIR — The shared trait of Medusa, Rapunzel, Samson, Lady Godiva, Absalom, and Lorelei is that they are famous for their hair. The group spans myth, scripture, and folklore, but each is associated with an especially memorable hairstyle or lack of hair.
• love in art
  • lovers — Lovers is a common title for artworks and films that center on a pair of lovers, including Leos Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge. The title also appears in the minimalist work Untitled (Perfect Lovers), with two clocks slowly falling out of sync.
• Love tokens
  • Mizpah coins — Mizpah coins are split love tokens made of two matching halves that symbolize separated but connected people. The name comes from the biblical Mizpah tradition and the monument associated with Jacob and Laban’s pact.
• Marble types
  • Carrara marble — Carrara marble is the white marble quarried in the Apuan Alps near Carrara, Italy, and prized since antiquity as Luna marble. It was used for works such as the Veiled Virgin and the drums of Trajan’s Column.
• Marks and impressions
  • footprint — A footprint is the mark left by a foot, and in literature it can signal a mysterious human presence on an empty beach. Religious traditions also preserve holy footprints, including stories connected to Ibrahim and to pilgrimages at Shuaib’s tomb.
• Nicknames

  • Butcher — Butcher is a sobriquet applied to several figures, including Valeriano Weyler in Cuba and William Poole of the Bowery Boys. The nickname also belongs to the Duke of Cumberland, who earned it after Culloden.

  • The Beast — The Beast is a nickname used for several powerful figures and creatures, from athletes to biblical monsters, and can also refer to a martial-arts villain in older quizbowl clues. It is also the name of a long wooden roller coaster at Kings Island.

  • Man in Black — The Man in Black is a nickname associated with Johnny Cash and also appears as the title or epithet of several other works and characters. It is especially linked to the Dark Tower villain Randall Flagg, who uses the name Walter O’Dim, and to the song that protests the Vietnam War.

  • The White Queen — The White Queen is a nickname associated with Mary, Queen of Scots, and is also the name of the sorceress Jadis in The Chronicles of Narnia. In comics, it is an earlier identity of Emma Frost.

• traffic signs
  • stop sign — A stop sign is the red octagonal road sign that requires drivers to halt. Earlier versions were yellow with black lettering, and some countries use different symbols, such as a raised hand in Israel.
• U.S. national mottos
  • IN GOD WE TRUST — In God We Trust is the national motto of the United States. It was suggested by Salmon P. Chase and later placed on U.S. currency and formally adopted by Congress in the 1950s.

• umbrellas — These objects appear as royal and religious symbols in South and Southeast Asia, from chhatra ornaments to the hti atop Burmese pagodas. They also name the 2014 Hong Kong pro-democracy Umbrella Movement and appear in songs like Singin’ in the Rain.

• Virginia motto
  • Sic semper tyrannis — A Latin phrase meaning “thus always to tyrants.” It is the motto of Virginia and is associated with John Wilkes Booth’s cry after assassinating Abraham Lincoln.
• Warning symbols
  • skull and crossbones — The skull and crossbones is a danger symbol closely associated with pirate flags and poison warnings. It also appears in the Yale secret society Skull and Bones and in military insignia such as totenkopf.
• Symbols, Regalia, and Commemoration
  • heraldry
    • coats of arms — Coats of arms are heraldic devices used to identify noble families, knights, and similar lineages. They are described in blazons and follow formal heraldic rules about tinctures and imagery.
  • Canadian heraldry
    • A lion and a unicorn — The Canadian coat of arms is framed by a lion and a unicorn, along with other royal heraldic symbols. The pair appears as the supporters on the shield.
  • Regalia
    • scepter — A scepter is a ceremonial staff that symbolizes royal authority and office. Monarchs may hold one in portraits or among the Crown Jewels, and similar staffs were used by kings in both Europe and Africa.
  • Royal regalia
    • crowns — Crowns are ceremonial royal headgear and a major symbol of sovereignty, rank, and royalty in many cultures. They appear in Christian iconography, including the crown of thorns placed on Jesus before the crucifixion, and in Catholic imagery the Virgin of Guadalupe is associated with a golden crown in her original image. Related examples include the Holy Crown of Saint Stephen, the Black Prince’s Ruby in British regalia, the double crown of ancient Egypt, and the corona radiata associated with Sol Invictus and Mithraic initiation imagery.
      • coronet — A coronet is a small crown traditionally worn by nobles below the rank of monarch. The word can also refer to several unrelated objects and uses, including architectural and zoological terms.
  • Military orders
    • a red cross — In Las Meninas, Velázquez wears the red Cross of Santiago on his chest, the badge of the Order of Saint James. The emblem is a heraldic red cross associated with that military order and appears in other modernist and surrealist artworks as well.
  • Monuments and memorials
    • cenotaph — A cenotaph is an empty tomb or monument built for someone buried elsewhere. The word is now often used for national war memorials.
  • symbols
    • orb — An orb is a round sphere, often shown as a symbol of authority or used as a small luminous object in art and symbolism. It appears in works ranging from religious painting, such as Salvator Mundi, to royal iconography and modern meme culture.
  • Symbolism
    • phallic — Phallic describes a form resembling or symbolizing a penis, especially in architecture and monumental design. The clue set points to structures such as obelisks, water towers, and the Torre Agbar as examples of this property.
• Color
  • cyan — Cyan is a blue-green color that, in subtractive printing, joins magenta and yellow as one of the primary colorants. In additive color mixing, it is the result of combining blue and green light.
• Color symbolism
  • whiteness — Whiteness is the quality or condition of being white, a color often loaded with symbolic associations in religion and literature. Melville uses whiteness in Moby-Dick as a source of terror and ambiguity, while Maman Brigitte is noted as an exception among the Guédé because she is associated with Ireland.
• Color theory
  • additive — Additive color is the light-mixing system used by screens and computers, where red, green, and blue combine to make white. The same adjective also appears in genetics, but the color clue identifies the visual-light meaning.
• Colors

  • green — Green is the color associated with chlorophyll, many chemical dyes, the British House of Commons benches, and the only single-color national flag in the world. It is the secondary color made by mixing blue and yellow. The term also names the Green Revolution, the Green Party, the Green card, and several environmental political movements, and appears in titles such as The Green Book.

  • red, white, and blue — Red, white, and blue are the colors associated with flags and works such as Jasper Johns’s Three Flags and the Three Colors trilogy. The phrase also evokes Patton’s flag speech and the title of Red, White & Royal Blue.

  • black — Black is a color answer that shows up in history, literature, fashion, and military epithets. Clues may include the Black Prince, the Black Death, the Black Hand, Black Beauty, Black Boy, and designers such as Yohji Yamamoto or Rei Kawakubo who favor black clothing. It also names many groups, works, and historical events rather than a single object.

  • Crimson — Crimson is a deep shade of red that appears in titles across music, comics, film, and print. Clues may point to King Crimson, Crimson Peak, Crimson Tide, or other works using the color as part of a title.

  • Orange — Orange is a color associated with the Dutch royal House of Orange and with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. It also names the herbicide Agent Orange and appears in the international orange used on the Golden Gate Bridge and other safety markings.

  • purple — Purple is the color associated with murex dye, potassium permanganate, iodine vapor, and crystal violet stains. In literature and cultural symbolism it can suggest royalty, and it is the title color in Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple.

  • red — Red is a color name used in clues ranging from river and sea names to literary titles like The Red Badge of Courage. In the cited material, it also serves as a prison nickname and appears in geographic names such as the Red River and the Red Sea.

  • Red — Red is a vivid color used in art, uniforms, dyes, and chemistry. It appears in Soviet-style imagery and sculpture, Edo and Qing paintings, Russian icons, and Hokusai’s prints. It is associated with pigments such as cinnabar, vermilion, and cochineal, with red ink used for Chinese seals, and with flame tests, staining techniques, oxygenated hemoglobin, and litmus in acid. Named artists associated with it include Robert Indiana and Claes Oldenburg.

  • red and blue — Red and blue are the paired colors that title the first two Pokémon games released in the United States. They also identify the factions in Red vs. Blue and appear together in the color symbolism of the early French tricolor.

  • Red and white — Red and white are the paired colors in the Welsh mythological manuscripts the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch. They also appear in heraldic and national flags, including Monaco’s red-and-white banner.

  • Shades of tan
    • khaki — Khaki is the dust-colored tan cloth or color that became associated with military uniforms in British India. The term comes from Persian and later entered civilian fashion, especially as a common fabric for trousers.

  • white — White is a color that appears in art-historical titles, in Melville’s Moby-Dick, and in political phrases such as White Friday and the White movement in Russia. Quiz clues also include works like Whistler’s Symphony in White and Manet’s Olympia.

  • Yellow — Yellow is the color shared by clues such as jaundice, nitroglycerin, sulfur, yellow fever, the Yellow Pages, and yellowjackets. It is one of the basic color words often used in word-association questions.
• Crosses
  • Maltese cross — The Maltese cross is the eight-pointed cross formed by four joined V-shapes and associated with the Knights Hospitaller and the Orders of St. John. A closely related earlier form appears in coins of the Duchy of Amalfi, while the familiar version is linked to the era of Jean Parisot de la Valette.
• Crosses and saltire symbols
  • Saint Andrew’s Cross — The Saint Andrew’s Cross is the diagonal white cross associated with Scotland and the Union Jack. The same cross appears on the flags of Alabama and Florida as a red saltire.
• Memento mori
  • human skulls — Human skulls are a classic memento mori image in painting and sculpture, used to symbolize death and transience. They appear in vanitas still lifes, in Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God, and in historical tales such as Tamerlane’s skull pyramid.
• Origami
  • paper cranes
    • paper crane — A paper crane is a classic origami figure and a symbol associated with Japanese culture. Clues often mention the thousand-crane tradition, Sadako Sasaki, and the related name orizuru.
  • Akira Yoshizawa — Akira Yoshizawa was the 20th-century origami master who repopularized the art with wet-folding and influential model design. He co-names the Yoshizawa-Randlett system, the standard diagramming method for origami folds.
• Painting techniques

  • morbidezza — Morbidezza is an art term for soft blending of tones in painting or the rounded modeling of sculptural edges. The word literally suggests softness or tenderness, and it is especially used for the rendering of human flesh.

  • plein air — Plein air is the practice of painting outdoors rather than in a studio. It is especially associated with Impressionism and with artists such as Constable.

• Printing colors
  • Magenta — Magenta is the color represented by the M in CMYK printing and is produced by mixing red and blue-violet light. Pantone later highlighted a vivid “viva” magenta as a color of the year and built a “magentaverse” around it.
• Printmaking

  • Intaglio — Intaglio is a printmaking method in which the image is cut below the surface and ink is held in recessed grooves. It is used in engraving and etching, where the plate is wiped clean so only the incised lines transfer to paper.

  • intaglio printmaking

    • aquatint — Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique that uses powdered resin and acid to create broad tonal washes rather than sharp lines. It was later refined by artists such as Goya and is often contrasted with mezzotint for its watercolor-like shading.
• pottery — Pottery is clay-based ceramic art or fired clay objects, typically formed by hand or on a wheel and then fired in a kiln. It includes earthenware, stoneware, terracotta, and porcelain. Associated examples and traditions include red-figure and black-figure decoration, amphorae, coiling, kintsugi, Jomon ware, Ming blue-and-white porcelain, the Nok figures, Jingdezhen, Delft, Pueblo work, and modern technical ceramics such as silicon carbide.

  • black-figure pottery — Black-figure pottery is the Archaic Greek style in which dark silhouettes are painted on a light clay ground and then detailed by incision. It was later superseded by red-figure pottery, which reversed the color scheme for figures and background.

  • fritware — Fritware, also called stone-paste, is a Persian ceramic body made from quartz, clay, and ground glass. It was valued for imitating the thin, translucent look of Chinese porcelain and later influenced Iznik pottery.

  • potters — Potters appear in ancient Egyptian and biblical clues, from Khnum’s creation of humans to the Potter’s Field bought with Judas’s silver. The profession also names an oracle text tradition and a burial field for strangers in the Gospel of Matthew.

    • Josiah Wedgwood — Josiah Wedgwood was an English potter and industrial designer associated with jasperware, Queen’s Ware, and creamware. He developed a pyrometer, founded the Etruria works, and was noted as an abolitionist for the medallion reading “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”
• British Crown Jewels
  • Koh-i-Noor — The Koh-i-Noor is a famed diamond whose name means “Mountain of Light.” It passed from Indian rulers to Nadir Shah and then into British royal possession. It was later recut for Queen Victoria and remains part of the British Crown Jewels, most visibly in a royal crown.
• St. Stephen’s Crown — St. Stephen’s Crown is the Holy Crown of Hungary, the coronation crown of the Hungarian kings. It is famous for its tilted cross and for its association with the first Christian king of Hungary, Stephen.

Travel, Organizations, and Public Life

Place organizations and travel terms within their practical contexts.

Travel and transport

• SS Andrea Doria — The SS Andrea Doria was an Italian passenger liner that collided with the MS Stockholm off the coast of Massachusetts in 1956. It sank hours later, and most of the deaths came from the initial collision rather than the sinking itself.

• Air America — Air America was a CIA-front airline used for covert operations in Southeast Asia. It is also the title of a 1990 film that later inspired a syndicated television series.

• Airline professions
  • flight attendant — A flight attendant is the airline employee who provides service aboard an airplane. This profession appears in films and television stories ranging from Jackie Brown to Pan Am and Archer.

• Cutty Sark — Cutty Sark is the famous clipper ship whose name came from the nickname of the witch in Burns’s “Tam o’Shanter.” The same name later became a whiskey brand, and quiz clues often connect it to the Scottish phrase meaning “short shirt” or “short skirt.”

• driving — Driving titles both a Paula Vogel play about abuse and a road-movie style filmic motif, while Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy centers on Hoke Colburn chauffeuring Miss Daisy. The clue set points to the act of operating a motor vehicle, especially as a service for an elderly passenger.

• encampments
  • bivouac — A bivouac is a temporary overnight encampment, often without tents or shelter. The word comes from French military usage for an army’s night watch or camp.
• Funeral vehicles
  • hearse — A hearse is a funeral vehicle used to transport a coffin or casket. The word is associated with Ambrose Bierce’s definition ‘death’s baby carriage’ and with an etymology from the Roman word for a rake.

• Journey — Journey is a title word that appears in French novels and several video games, including Journey to the End of the Night and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The clue set also points to the idea of a quest or odyssey, especially a long travel narrative or homeward return.

• lodging houses
  • inns — In literary and film clues, inns are lodging places that often frame early chapters, tales, or martial-arts duels. They appear in works ranging from Moby-Dick and Tales of a Wayside Inn to wuxia films set in Dragon Gate-type establishments.
• Maritime mysteries
  • Mary Celeste — The Mary Celeste was a merchant brigantine found adrift in the Atlantic in 1872, near the Azores, with its crew missing and its cargo largely intact. The ship’s abandonment became one of the classic maritime mysteries, prompting explanations ranging from waterspouts and piracy to sea monsters and other exotic theories, and it has often been linked to concern over an alcohol cargo.
• Rail accidents
  • train derailment — A train derailment is the kind of accident that can scatter wreckage and spill cargo, as in the disasters referenced in The Namesake and in East Palestine, Ohio. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, Ashoke survives such a crash in Calcutta, an event that shapes his son’s life and naming.

• road — Road is the common word in titles ranging from Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel to Erskine Caldwell’s Georgia story and Kerouac’s On the Road. It also appears in cultural references such as Road to Wigan Pier, country songs, and the road race event in cycling.

• Taxis
  • taxicabs — Taxicabs are hired passenger vehicles that can be hailed on the street, with famous examples including London cabs and the yellow cars associated with city travel. The Hansom cab was a low-slung predecessor, and Gershwin’s An American in Paris famously uses four saxophones meant to imitate Parisian taxis.
• Titanic
  • Captains
    • Edward J. Smith — Edward J. Smith was the captain of the RMS Titanic. He is often identified by a quote about an uneventful career at sea before the ship’s disaster.
• train incidents and groups
  • Sunset Limited and Sons of Gestapo — The Sunset Limited is the Amtrak train that derailed in Arizona, while Sons of Gestapo was the anti-government group named in the note found at the scene.
• Transportation
  • rickshaws — Rickshaws are human-powered passenger carts, originally pulled by a driver and now often bicycle- or motor-powered across South and East Asia. Clues include Lao She’s warlord-era Beijing novel Rickshaw Boy, Balram’s father in The White Tiger, and colorful cycle rickshaws and tuk-tuks common in places like Kolkata and Dhaka.
• Travel

  • hitch-hiking — This is the act of asking strangers for a ride by standing roadside with a thumb out. The clue set links it to The Incredible Hulk’s closing narration and to parodies in Family Guy.

  • wanderlust — Wanderlust is a strong urge or desire to travel and wander.

  • hitchhiking — Hitchhiking is the roadside practice of seeking a ride from passing vehicles, usually by extending a thumb. Douglas Adams made it famous in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and it appears in a wide range of literary and film references.

• travel groups
  • Caravans — Caravans were long-distance groups of travelers, especially merchants and pilgrims, that moved together for safety and trade. They are closely associated with Silk Road travel and with caravanserais, the roadside inns that served them. The term also appears in titles and cultural references such as songs and band names.
• Vehicle types
  • school buses
    • school bus — The school bus is the iconic vehicle used in Magic Trip by the writers who traveled in the bus called Further. It also appears as the vehicle the Joker drives away in near the start of The Dark Knight.
• vehicles
  • carts — These objects supply the epithet in Chrétien de Troyes’s story of Lancelot, who becomes the Knight of the Cart after riding in one to pursue Guinevere’s abductor. They also appear in devotional processions such as Odisha’s Ratha Yatra, where large decorated examples are pulled through the streets.
• Yachts
  • The Sea Cloud — This luxurious sailing yacht was built for heiress Marjorie Post and once required a crew of about fifty. Its elaborate rigging made it one of the most famous private yachts of its era.
• Ships, Seafaring, and Maritime Language
  • Passenger ships
    • cruise ship — A cruise ship is a passenger vessel built for leisure voyages rather than simple transport. It is the setting of David Foster Wallace’s essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” and appears in clues involving the Achille Lauro and fictional luxury liners. Cruise ships have ranged from historic ocean-liner disasters like the Titanic and Lusitania to modern vacation routes in the Caribbean and Baltic, and recent questions about them often focus on pollution, themed voyages, and accidents such as the Costa Concordia and the MS Estonia.
  • Sailing ships
    • Clippers — Clipper ships were fast, sharply streamlined 19th-century sailing vessels built for speed rather than cargo volume, especially in the tea and China trades. They were prominent in the mid-19th century and included famous examples such as Baltimore clippers, the Cutty Sark, the Great Republic, the Champion of the Seas, and the Flying Cloud. They were among the last commercially viable sailing ships before steam power and the Suez Canal undercut them.
  • Sailing vessels
    • Sloop — A sloop is a sailing vessel with one mast and a single jib and mainsail. The best-known example in the clues is the John B.
  • Maritime terminology
    • flotsam and jetsam — Flotsam and jetsam are the paired maritime terms for goods floating on the water after a shipwreck or thrown overboard. The phrase is often used more broadly for assorted floating wreckage or discarded material.
  • Maritime terms
    • Jetsam — Jetsam is cargo or other goods deliberately thrown overboard to lighten a ship in distress.
  • Ship officers
    • quartermaster — A quartermaster was a sailing ship officer responsible for the helm and related navigation duties. The clue contrasts this role with the army quartermaster, who handled supplies such as food and clothing.
  • ship captains — A ship captain is the person in charge of a vessel, a title that also appears in literature through figures like Ahab and Wolf Larsen. In Pokémon contexts, captains hand out key items or technical abilities aboard ships and in port cities.
• Cruise lines

  • Carnival Cruise Lines — Carnival Cruise Lines is the major cruise company known for ships with cheerful names such as Fantasy, Destiny, and Victory. Its fleet is often tied to pop-culture references like Kathie Lee Gifford and the old Holiday and Celebration ships.

  • Royal Caribbean — Royal Caribbean is a major cruise line whose ships include Vision of the Seas. It is one of the large cruise brands often identified by its “Royal Caribbean” name alone.

• Costa Cruises
  • Costa Concordia — Costa Concordia was the cruise ship that ran aground off Giglio in January 2012 and partially sank after a severe list. Its disaster became notorious after captain Francesco Schettino’s navigation error turned a passenger cruise into a major maritime accident.
• Ocean liners

  • Norway — The clue appears to refer to the ocean liner Norway, a former passenger ship celebrated as one of the largest of its time.

  • RMS Lusitania — British Cunard ocean liner sunk by German U-20 off the Irish coast in 1915 during World War I, killing about 1,200 people including Elbert Hubbard and Alfred Vanderbilt. The ship had once held the Blue Riband, was the sister ship of Mauretania, and the sinking became associated with debate over munitions cargo; it is the subject of Erik Larson’s Dead Wake.

• Oil tankers
  • Exxon Valdez
    • the Exxon Valdez — The Exxon Valdez was the tanker that ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, causing the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Its captain, Joseph Hazelwood, was convicted of negligence after the disaster.
• Maritime disasters

  • shipwrecks — This topic refers to shipwrecks and other maritime disasters in which boats or ships sink or are wrecked.

  • shipwreck — This type of disaster befell the Titanic and the Lusitania, and it is central to The Raft of the Medusa and other maritime artworks. Literary treatments often focus on survival, wreckage, and tragic loss at sea.

• Oil spills
  • Exxon Valdez oil spill — The Exxon Valdez oil spill was the 1989 Alaska environmental disaster caused when the tanker Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. The spill killed wildlife, led to major litigation, and helped spur stronger tanker safety rules.
• Public transit
  • metro systems
    • BART — BART, short for Bay Area Rapid Transit, is the San Francisco Bay Area’s metro system and a public transit option for riders who do not have a car. It has also been targeted in protest and hacktivist commentary, and can be clued by the nickname Bart and by references to an unlicensed Three Card Monte booth.
• Privateers
  • Captain Henry Morgan — Henry Morgan was a famous seventeenth-century privateer who raided Spanish holdings in the Caribbean and Panama. He later became deputy governor of Jamaica and is associated with the rum brand that bears his name.
• submarines
  • wrecks
    • sunken submarines — These were the targets of Project Azorian, the CIA operation involving the Hughes Glomar Explorer and the origin of the phrase “we can neither confirm nor deny.” Robert Ballard later used the Alvin in searches for two of them before finding the Titanic.

Organizations and awards

• Orders of chivalry
  • Order of the Garter — The Most Noble Order of the Garter is England’s oldest and highest order of chivalry, founded by Edward III in 1348. Its motto is “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” rendered in English as “Shame come to him who thinks evil of it.” Members include the sovereign and a limited number of knights companions. Winston Churchill received the order in 1953.

• Académie française — The Académie française, or French Academy, was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in the seventeenth century to regulate and preserve the French language. It is limited to forty members, traditionally called immortals or the council of immortals, and Léopold Senghor was the first African elected to it. The academy is associated with the classic hierarchy of genres, with protecting French language standards, and with literary prizes such as the Grand Prix. It was also linked to the official Salons of French art, the Académie’s Rome branch, and the Prix de Rome scholarship, which influenced academic painting and sculpture; writers such as Marguerite Yourcenar and Anatole France were connected with it.

• Ig Nobel Prize — The Ig Nobel Prize is a satirical award series presented by the Annals of Improbable Research and timed to coincide with the Nobel Prizes. It honors research and projects that make people laugh and then think, rewarding absurd or improbable work; past winners have included studies on donut shops, sheep-dragging, teapot spouts, dog-bark translators, and ostrich behavior.

• Awards and prizes
  • PILLSBURY Bake-Off Grand Prize ($1 million) NOBEL Peace Prize — The Pillsbury Bake-Off Grand Prize is a major cash award tied to the Pillsbury cooking contest. It appears in list-style questions about the relative value of prizes and honors, where it can be contrasted with awards such as the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Canadian historians
  • Pierre Berton — Pierre Berton was a major Canadian historian and author known for books on the Canadian Pacific Railway, the War of 1812, and the Klondike. His works such as The National Dream, The Last Spike, and Klondike made him one of Canada’s best-known popular historians.
• Cannabis organizations
  • Cannabis Cultivators Club — CCC stands for Cannabis Cultivators Club. The group is described as operating illegally before reopening to customers in a marijuana-related joke context.
• Cartoonist awards
  • Reuben Award — The Reuben Award is the National Cartoonists Society prize for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. It was formerly called the Billy DeBeck Award and is named for the cartoonist who created Professor Butts.
• Fraternal organizations
  • Freemasonry — Freemasonry is a fraternal lodge-based society associated with square-and-compass symbolism, ranks and degrees, secret ritual, and Grand Lodge organization. It traces itself to stonemasons and is often described as an Enlightenment-era surrogate religion centered on religious toleration and a required belief in a Supreme Being. The modern organization was formally organized in 1717 and reached America in the 1730s. Members and associated figures mentioned in these records include George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Mozart, Cherubini, and Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace. Notable associated topics include Prince Hall Freemasonry, the disappearance of William Morgan in 1826, the anti-Masonic movement and Anti-Masonic Party, anti-clerical French controversies over the Grand Orient, and opposition from the Catholic Church.

• Guggenheim — The Guggenheim name refers to the philanthropic family behind museums in New York, Venice, and Bilbao, as well as the foundation named for Solomon Guggenheim. Quiz questions often point to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

• Kennel clubs
  • American Kennel Club — The American Kennel Club is the large U.S. purebred dog registry that sanctions events including the National Dog Show. It recognizes hundreds of breeds and is distinct from rival kennel organizations such as the United Kennel Club.
• NAACP awards

  • Spingarn Medal — The Spingarn Medal is the NAACP’s annual award for outstanding achievement by a Black American. Named for NAACP leader Joel Elias Spingarn, it has gone to figures such as Duke Ellington, Henry Aaron, Maya Angelou, and the Little Rock Nine.

  • The Spingarn Medal — The Spingarn Medal is the annual NAACP award for the highest achievement by a Black American. Its recipients include Langston Hughes, Hank Aaron, L. Douglas Wilder, Alex Haley, George Washington Carver, Julian Bond, and Martin Luther King Jr.

• Postal service
  • United States Postal Service — The United States Postal Service is the federal agency responsible for mail delivery in the United States and the successor to the older Post Office Department. Its modern form grew out of the colonial postal system associated with Benjamin Franklin. It has been associated with rural free delivery, the Star Route Scandal, the 1970 postal strike, ZIP codes for faster sorting, and modern reforms and controversies under Louis DeJoy.
• scientific societies

  • Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge — The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge is the major London scientific society chartered in the 1660s. Its members and presidents have included Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Humphry Davy, and Samuel Pepys.

  • The Royal Society — The oldest national scientific institution in Britain, founded in 1660 as the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. It grew out of the Invisible College and elects fellows as one of the highest honors in British science. It publishes Philosophical Transactions, and its motto is Nullius in Verba, meaning roughly “on no one’s word.” Its early presidents included Isaac Newton and Joseph Banks; Franklin received the Copley Medal.

• Service organizations
  • USO — The USO is a nonprofit organization that has long provided entertainment and recreation for American troops, especially through touring stage shows. Bob Hope was one of its most famous performers, and the organization was once chaired by Prescott Bush.

• Seven Sisters — The Seven Sisters is a name for the Pleiades, for a group of elite women’s colleges in the northeastern United States, and for northeastern Indian border states. It also names several other clusters or groups, including oil companies and Stalinist skyscrapers.

• United States awards
  • Presidential Medal of Freedom — The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award in the United States, presented for especially meritorious service to the nation. It was established by Harry Truman and has been awarded to figures such as Robert F. Dole and many other public figures.
• United States national laboratories
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory — Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a Tennessee research lab that grew out of the Manhattan Project and was used for uranium enrichment. It has housed major scientific facilities such as the X-10 graphite reactor, the Spallation Neutron Source, and the SUMMIT supercomputer.
• Veterans’ organizations
  • American Legion — A major U.S. veterans’ organization founded in 1919 after World War I, with national headquarters in Indianapolis. It sponsors Boys State and Boys Nation, as well as baseball leagues and other civic programs for veterans and youth. It is associated with the 1976 Philadelphia outbreak that gave legionnaires’ disease its name.
• Conservation organizations
  • World Wide Fund for Nature — An international conservation organization known for its panda logo. It campaigns to protect habitats and species and has used the slogan “for a living planet.” World Wildlife Fund was its former common name; it later became the World Wide Fund for Nature. It was involved in a trademark dispute with World Wrestling Federation over the WWF initials.
• Environmental organizations

  • Conservation International — Conservation International is an environmental organization focused on protecting biodiversity hotspots. It was reported to receive major funding for global conservation efforts in 2001.

  • Green Belt Movement — The Green Belt Movement is a Kenyan environmental organization founded by Wangarĩ Maathai. It promotes tree planting, conservation, women’s rights, and community-based land stewardship.

  • Sierra Club — The Sierra Club is the environmental organization co-founded by John Muir and named for a mountain range. It became famous for conservation campaigns such as the fight over Hetch Hetchy and later for broader environmental activism and publishing.

• Nonprofit organizations
  • Habitat for Humanity — Habitat for Humanity is a Christian nonprofit that builds affordable homes with volunteer labor and donated materials. Jimmy Carter’s work with the organization helped raise its profile, including the Jimmy Carter Work Project.
• Organizations
  • Service organizations
    • Kiwanis International — Kiwanis International is a service organization founded in Detroit in 1915 and now headquartered in Indianapolis. Its youth affiliates include Key Club and Circle K.
  • trade associations
    • NADA — NADA is the National Automobile Dealers Association, a U.S. trade group for car dealers. It often appears in contexts about auto industry scheduling, lobbying, and conventions.
• Orders, decorations, and medals
  • British gallantry awards
    • George Cross — The George Cross is a British decoration for civilian or noncombatant bravery, and Malta was awarded it collectively for enduring Axis bombardment in World War II. The medal appears on Malta’s flag, making the island itself one of the best-known recipients.
  • French orders of merit
    • Legion of Honour — The Legion of Honour is a French order of merit whose members may be made chevaliers and receive its cross. Flaubert received it after Madame Bovary appeared, and Barnes famously pointed to it in the novel’s ending as a marker of bourgeois success.
• Nobel Prizes

  • December 10 — Nobel Prizes are awarded on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

  • Nobel Peace Prize — The Nobel Peace Prize is the Nobel award given for efforts toward peace, distinct from the other Nobel Prizes. Among its winners are Henri Dunant, Desmond Tutu, Yasser Arafat, Barack Obama, Malala Yousafzai, Nadia Murad, and Abiy Ahmed.

Crime and violence

• Accidents
  • Falling down an elevator shaft — Falling down an elevator shaft is a notorious and usually fatal accident often cited in absurd or dramatic examples. The clue set points especially to the death of Rosalind Shays on L.A. Law, which became a famous pop-culture instance of the trope.
• Ammunition
  • bullets — Bullets are small projectile munitions fired from guns and rifles, often discussed in relation to ballistics and terms like sectional density. They also appear in figurative speech, as in Malcolm X’s phrase “the ballot or the bullet.”
• Assassination devices
  • an umbrella — An umbrella was used in the assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov by a ricin pellet fired from a concealed device. The case became a notorious Cold War killing and a classic example of covert assassination.

• Bandit — Bandit is a common clue word for an outlaw or thief, and it also appears in pop-culture references ranging from a Spanish bullfighting novel to a Johnny Quest dog. In gaming and fantasy contexts, it can even name a cloaked fast-moving troop that dashes after locking onto a target.

• beheading — The act of cutting off a person’s head, historically associated with execution, ritual challenge stories, and mythic or literary scenes in which the severed head remains active or symbolic afterward. Examples include John the Baptist, Salome, Saint Denis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the guillotine, Judith and Holofernes, Medusa, Mimir, and Shiva’s punishment of Ganesha.

• Bludgeons
  • club — A club is a wooden bludgeon used as a weapon. The word also means an organization or group, such as an after-school club.
• Brothels
  • Mustang Ranch — Mustang Ranch was a famous Nevada brothel founded by Joe Conforte in 1955 and later became one of the first legal houses of prostitution in the state. It was seized after tax problems and closed in 1999, making it a notorious symbol of legalized prostitution in Nevada.
• Burglary
  • safecracking — Safecracking is the burglary skill associated with Jimmy Valentine in O. Henry’s “A Retrieved Reformation.” The story turns that criminal talent into a redemption plot when Valentine uses it to save a child and win Annabel’s approval.

• cages — Cages are enclosed spaces or holding structures, and Hsieh’s endurance piece involved living with one for a year while RAICES later used them in protest performances over detention conditions. They also appear in Kafka-inspired and animal-story settings, including a narrator recalling life in one between decks and another character repeatedly forced to leave one every forty days.

• Criminal occupations
  • thief — A thief is someone who steals, whether in biblical stories, films, or video games. Clues often point to Michael Mann’s Thief or the stealth-game series starring Garrett, whose occupation is built around theft.

• gang bang — A gang bang is a group sex act in which one person has intercourse with multiple partners in sequence or at once. The answer space here points to the sexual practice rather than a broader euphemism.

• glory holes
  • sexual usage
    • Glory hole — A glory hole is an opening in a partition, usually in a restroom stall, that allows anonymous sexual contact between people on either side. The same term is also used for openings in industrial contexts such as furnaces, spillways, drilling, and mining.

• hitmen — Hitmen are paid killers, the profession of Ben and Gus in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin also plays with the same idea of hired violence.

• Hoaxes
  • Cardiff Giant — The Cardiff Giant was a famous nineteenth-century American hoax in which George Hull buried a large gypsum figure and passed it off as a petrified man. The fake giant was found in upstate New York and later inspired a replica by P. T. Barnum.

• human flesh — Human flesh is the substance associated with cannibalism and revenge tales like Procne’s feast for Tereus. It is also the title substance in Agustina Bazterrica’s 2017 novel Tender is the Flesh.

• killing
  • killing them — This is the act of ending another person’s life, a subject that appears both in discussions of ethics and in depictions of biblical vengeance. Artemisia Gentileschi’s paintings of Judith and Jael use it as a recurring heroic action against enemies such as Holofernes and Sisera.
• Physical actions
  • Slap — A slap is the action of striking someone with an open hand. One clue ties it to How I Met Your Mother’s annual slap bet, while another uses it as a physical action in a reality-show setting.
• Pistols
  • Walther PPK — The Walther PPK is the compact pistol associated with James Bond. In Dr. No, it replaces Bond’s Beretta after Major Boothroyd recommends the change.
• Power outages
  • blackouts — A blackout is a widespread loss of electricity, often discussed in urban history, infrastructure, and disaster contexts. Clues here point to New York’s 1965 and 1977 blackouts, the 2003 Northeast blackout, and modern load-shedding in Africa.
• Quicksand
  • drowning in quicksand/swamp — Drowning in quicksand or a swamp is a fictionalized death scenario often used in adventure stories and films. The body sinks into mudlike ground while the victim slowly asphyxiates or drowns.

• Shotgun — Shotgun is a firearm name that also appears in music, games, and slang for a front-seat riding guard. The word also names a poker variant and a football formation in which the quarterback stands several yards behind center.

• Texas prisons
  • Connally State Prison — Connally State Prison is a Texas prison associated with a notorious 2000 escape that ended in the killing of Aubrey Hawkins. Its name also recalls John Connally, the Texas politician who was riding in the limousine when Kennedy was assassinated.
• Theft

  • shoplifting — Shoplifting is the theft of merchandise from stores and has become easier with self-checkout systems. It is associated with shrinkage, organized retail fraud debates, and works such as Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book.

  • thievery — Thievery is the broad criminal activity that includes pickpocketing, burglary, and stealing. It is central to works such as Oliver Twist, The Book Thief, and Every Day Is for the Thief, all of which focus on theft or thieves.

• thieves
  • pickpockets — Pickpockets are thieves who steal from people’s clothing or bags, often in crowded public places. Films by Bresson, Jia Zhangke, and Samuel Fuller have all used them as central criminal figures.
• Torture
  • Chinese water torture — Chinese water torture is a form of restraint-and-drip torture that involves repeated drops of water on the head or face. Its name also appears in stage-magician lore, including references to a “Chinese water torture cell.”
• Torture methods
  • Strepalo — Strepalo is a torture method in which a prisoner’s arms are tied behind the back and the body is repeatedly dropped so the shoulders take the shock. The form is noted as having been used in Italy.
• Violence
  • Matricide — Matricide is the killing of one’s mother. It is associated in literature and myth with Orestes, Alcmaeon, Norman Bates, and Pascual Duarte.
• weapons — Weapons are the broad class of objects used in combat, from guns and knives to more exotic science-fiction examples such as phasers and lightsabers. They also figure in studies of violence perception and in art made by fusing together discarded weapons, such as the Mozambican Tree of Life and Throne of Weapons.
  • bladed weapons
    • sword — A sword is a bladed weapon that turns up in myth, legend, and history, from Excalibur and Dyrnwyn to Durendal and Kusanagi. Quizbowl clues often involve the sword in the stone, the Lady of the Lake, and famous heroes such as Arthur, Beowulf, Sigurd, and Roland. It is also a standard symbol of knighthood and justice.

  • Corkscrew — A corkscrew is a household tool used to remove a cork from a bottle. The clue points to the object as the murder weapon in a novel’s ending confrontation.

  • Gunblade — A gunblade is a hybrid weapon that combines a firearm with a sword, but it does not actually fire projectiles like a normal gun. It is especially associated with Final Fantasy VIII characters Seifer Almasy and Squall Leonhart.

  • knives — Knives are the objects behind clues about kris, bolo, balisong, and other blades used in ritual, combat, and symbolic contexts. They appear in Southeast Asian cultural references such as the Katipunan, Malay weapon symbolism, and Balinese dances.
    • a knife — A knife is the blade that appears in a samurai suicide in Rashomon and becomes the murder weapon in Twelve Angry Men. It also turns up in stories and films from Borges and Zhang Yimou, including the title weapon in “The House of Flying Daggers.”

  • mace — A mace is a blunt, heavy striking weapon associated with heroes such as Prince Marko, Bhima, and Vishnu’s Kaumodaki. Slavic and Polish variants include the pernach and the buława, and the weapon can also be used as a ceremonial baton.

  • naginata — The naginata is a Japanese polearm with a long curved blade mounted on a shaft. It is especially associated with female warriors and with tengu in Japanese folklore.

  • shuriken — A shuriken is a thrown blade or star-shaped weapon associated in Western popular culture with ninjas. It was designed to distract or disable an opponent rather than serve as a primary weapon.

  • tomahawk — A tomahawk is a hatchet-like weapon historically associated with Native American use, and the name is also used for a powerful basketball dunk. It appears in modern references ranging from motorcycles to military hardware such as the BGM-109 missile.

  • Swords — Swords are bladed weapons that recur in mythology, religion, and fantasy. Named examples include Excalibur and Durendal in Arthurian legend, Gram and Tyrfing in Norse tradition, Zulfiqar in Islam, Kusanagi in Japanese myth, and classical Roman gladii and cavalry spathae; other variants mentioned include the claymore, Katzbalger, and zweihander.

    • Claymore — A claymore is a large Scottish broadsword, traditionally used with two hands and often described as double-edged or basket-hilted. The term can also refer to a Scottish-themed military landmine in some contexts.

    • katana — A katana is the curved Japanese longsword associated with samurai warfare. It is typically described as the main samurai sword and is longer than a companion blade such as the wakizashi.

    • Rapier — A rapier is a slender early modern sword associated with Italian and Spanish fencing traditions. It was favored for dueling and later influenced the development of the modern épée.

  • handgun — A handgun is a small firearm designed to be held and fired with one hand, with common examples including pistols and revolvers. It is the category of weapon referenced by the Brady Bill and by weapons such as the Glock and the .357 Magnum.
• Combat
  • dueling
    • duels — Formal fights of honor, usually fought with pistols or swords, in which participants tried to settle disputes by combat. Duels recur throughout Russian literature and Shakespeare, and famous examples include the fatal duel between Eugene Onegin and Lensky, Pushkin’s own death in a duel, the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, and the Hamilton–Burr duel.
• confidence games
  • Three-card Monte — Three-card Monte is a confidence game in which a dealer hides a winning card among three cards and the player tries to find it. It is also known as Find the Lady and appears as a central game in Topdog/Underdog.
• confidence tricks
  • fake storefronts
    • big store — A big store is a con-man’s term for an elaborate fake storefront used in a long con. Such setups imitate gambling joints, brokers’ offices, horse parlors, and similar establishments.
• Criminals
  • serial killers — Serial killers are criminals who commit multiple murders in separate events, and they are a frequent subject of modern fiction and true-crime writing. The clues point to figures such as Patrick Bateman, Jack the Ripper, H.H. Holmes, and other notorious killers.

    • Albert Fish — Albert Fish was an American serial killer and cannibal known for the murders of Grace Budd and Billy Gaffney. He was notorious for grotesque behavior at his trial and for nicknames such as the Gray Man and the Moon Maniac.

    • Edward Theodore Gein — Edward Theodore Gein was a Wisconsin murderer and grave robber known for exhuming bodies and fashioning trophies and clothing from human remains. His crimes inspired fictional killers such as Norman Bates and influenced Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.

    • H. H. Holmes — H. H. Holmes was the notorious American serial killer associated with Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and his ‘Murder Castle.’ He is often linked to The Devil in the White City and is also known as Herman Webster Mudgett.

    • John Wayne Gacy — John Wayne Gacy was the Chicago serial killer who hid victims under his house and dressed as Pogo the Clown. He became notorious for the rape and murder of dozens of young men and boys and for using the clown persona in community appearances.

    • Luis Alfredo Garavito — Luis Alfredo Garavito is a Colombian serial killer convicted of murdering large numbers of children. The clues describe his use of disguises such as a vendor, monk, beggar, and cripple while evading suspicion.

    • Velma Barfield — Velma Barfield was the only woman executed in the United States after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. She became infamous as a convicted serial poisoner.

• Daggers

  • kris — A kris, or keris, is a traditional Southeast Asian dagger known for its wavy blade and ornate pamor patterns. It appears in Javanese legend and in stories about figures such as Ken Arok, Hang Tuah, and Hang Jebat.

  • tanto — A tanto is a short Japanese dagger traditionally associated with seppuku. It was later largely replaced in that role by the wakizashi.

• Martial arts weapons
  • Bo Staff — A bo staff is a long, blunt wooden pole weapon used in martial arts and fiction, often treated as a nonlethal striking weapon. It appears as the weapon of characters such as Donatello, Gambit, Sun Wukong, and Aerith Gainsborough.
• Nonlethal weapons effects
  • Stun — To stun someone is to incapacitate them temporarily without causing serious injury. In science fiction settings, phasers or similar weapons are often set to a stun setting to disable rather than kill.
• Organized crime
  • Murder, Inc. — Murder, Inc. was the Mafia’s assassination wing, associated with Albert Anastasia and hired gunmen such as Abe Reles, Meyer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel. It carried out contract killings for organized crime in New York during the interwar years and into the 1930s and 1940s.
• Organized crime groups
  • Triads — Triads are Chinese organized crime syndicates that grew out of older secret societies and later became prominent in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Groups such as 14K and Sun Yee On are major examples, and the term is also used more loosely for the broader Chinese mafia.
• Outlaws and bandits
  • bandits — Bandits are lawless armed robbers or outlaws, including forms such as dacoits, klephts, haiduks, and bushrangers. Eric Hobsbawm’s work on social banditry is a common clue, along with figures like Ned Kelly and brigands in southern Italy.
• Pablo Escobar
  • Plata o Plomo — Plata o plomo, meaning “silver or lead,” is the phrase associated with Pablo Escobar’s blend of bribery and intimidation. It captures the choice he offered officials: take the money or risk being killed.
• prison escapes
  • escaping from prison — Escaping from prison is the act of illegally leaving confinement, whether by tunnel, disguise, vehicle, or other means. Famous examples include the escapes from Alcatraz and the prison break plots in several films.
• prisoners — Prisoners are the people confined in jails or penal institutions. They appear in questions on prison labor, the Stanford prison experiment, and the prisoners’ dilemma in game theory.
  • Robert Stroud — Robert Stroud was the federal prisoner nicknamed the Birdman of Alcatraz. He was convicted of murder, had his sentence reduced, and later gained notoriety for his prison bird studies.
• Prisons
  • Sing Sing Correctional Facility — Sing Sing Correctional Facility is the Hudson River prison in Ossining, New York, famous for its electric chair and early adoption of the Auburn system. It is the source of the phrase “sent up the river” and is often referenced in crime stories and films.
• projectile weapons

  • a arrow — An arrow is a projectile weapon carried in a quiver and typically made by a fletcher. Historical and literary clues mention broken arrows in nuclear-weapons accidents, the Spartan remark at Thermopylae, and the French at Agincourt.

  • arrowhead — An arrowhead is the pointed projectile tip used with a bow and arrow, and medieval broadheads were later supplemented by bodkin designs to pierce armor. The weapon is sometimes discussed in connection with the Bayeux Tapestry and Harold Godwinson.

• Projectiles
  • cannon ball — A cannon ball is a heavy round projectile, also used as a large marble in some games. The term can also appear in cartoon slapstick, where the object is launched or rolls with destructive force.
• Prostitution establishments
  • brothel — A brothel is a house of prostitution, often called a bordello or whorehouse. Quizbowl clues here point to the title setting of Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Green House and to the brothel run by Bella Cohen in Ulysses.
• Punishment devices
  • pillory — A pillory was a public punishment device that trapped the head and hands between wooden boards. Unlike the stocks, it was used to humiliate offenders in public, as in the punishment of Titus Oates.
• Spears
  • assegai — The assegai is a traditional Nguni throwing spear associated especially with the Zulu military reforms of Shaka. Shaka shortened it for close combat, creating the iklwa from the older spear form.
• Operation Car Wash — Operation Car Wash was the massive Brazilian corruption investigation that exposed bribes, money laundering, and kickbacks centered on Petrobras. It became associated with Sergio Moro and ensnared major political figures including Lula and Dilma Rousseff.

Businesses, Brands, and Consumer Products

• Companies
  • Automakers
    • Mazda — Mazda is a Japanese automaker known for cars such as the Miata and Tribute. It is also associated with rotary-engine development.
  • Automotive companies
    • Tesla, Inc. — Tesla, Inc. is the electric-car company led by Elon Musk and known for models such as the Model S and Model X. It also makes home energy products such as the Powerwall.

  • Haggerty Enterprises — Haggerty Enterprises is the company associated with the Lava Lite, the classic lava lamp product. The clue set identifies it simply as the manufacturer behind that iconic novelty lamp.

  • McCulloch Oil Corporation — McCulloch Oil Corporation is the company name referenced in the clue about who bought London Bridge. The answer text identifies a corporate owner rather than a legal or historical case.

  • Restaurant chains
    • Planet Hollywood — Planet Hollywood is the celebrity-themed restaurant chain founded by Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis. It became widely known in the 1990s and was the target of a 1998 bombing in Cape Town.
  • Technology companies
    • Niantic, Inc. — Niantic, Inc. is the American company behind Pokémon Go, and it began as a spinoff of Google. Its other games include Ingress and Field Trip.
  • Telecommunications companies
    • PSINet — PSINet was a telecommunications company that bought the naming rights to the Baltimore Ravens’ stadium before later collapsing in bankruptcy.
  • Video game publishers
    • Activision Blizzard — Activision Blizzard is the video game publisher formed from the merger of Activision and Blizzard Entertainment, best known for Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Clues about the company often center on Bobby Kotick, the 2021 harassment and misconduct lawsuits, and the Microsoft acquisition announced in 2022.
  • Wurlitzer — Wurlitzer is the German-American company name associated with jukeboxes, nickelodeons, and early electric organs. It also produced the “Mighty Wurlitzer” keyboard instrument.
• Clothing brands

  • Famous Stars and Straps — Famous Stars and Straps is a clothing line founded by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. It is associated with the stylized “Badge of Honor” logo and women’s designs by Shanna Moakler.

  • Members Only — Members Only was a clothing brand famous for its zip-front jackets with a small chest tag and no collar. The brand became closely associated with 1980s fashion and later resurfaced in vintage and hipster style.

  • Mossimo — Mossimo is a California clothing brand founded in Orange County in 1987 and known for surf and youth-oriented apparel. It became widely recognized through its logo-driven marketing and later through licensing and retail deals with Target.

  • Timberland — Timberland is a footwear and clothing company best known for its weatherproof boots. Its products became especially prominent in hip-hop culture, and the company later became known for its service program and its acquisition by Hasbro is not part of its history.

  • Zubaz — Zubaz is the clothing brand associated with brightly patterned, loose athletic pants, especially the zebra-striped style. It began with comfortable weightlifting shorts and later became known for its garish prints and defunct Arena Football League tie-ins.

• Clothing companies
  • Benetton — Benetton is the Italian clothing company founded in 1965 that became famous for colorful apparel and the United Colors slogan. It is also notorious for provocative ads involving religion, race, and shocking visual contrasts.
• clothing retailers

  • Eddie Bauer — Eddie Bauer was the Seattle-based clothing retailer founded in 1920 by its namesake, who invented the down parka after nearly freezing on a fishing trip. The company became known for outdoor apparel, catalog sales, and its goose logo. It was also associated with early goose-down insulated garments and a long-running unconditional guarantee in retail.

  • H&M — H&M, short for Hennes & Mauritz, is a Swedish clothing retailer. It has been associated in these clues with labor controversies and with a fashion line sold in its stores.

• Cosmetics brands

  • Clinique — Clinique is an Estée Lauder cosmetics brand known for products like Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion and City Block sunscreen. Its fragrance lines include names such as Happy and Aromatics.

  • CoverGirl — CoverGirl is a cosmetics brand formerly owned by Noxzema and later sold to Procter & Gamble. It is known for products such as Clump Crusher mascara and for spokeswomen including Christie Brinkley and Drew Barrymore.

  • L’Oréal Paris — L’Oréal Paris is the cosmetics brand line associated with the French company L’Oréal, whose portfolio includes Maybelline, Lancôme, and Garnier. It has also attracted criticism over animal testing practices and its acquisition history, including Aesop.

  • Revlon — Revlon is a cosmetics brand associated with products such as Street Wear, Moon Drops lipstick, and ColorStay foundation and lipcolor. The company was also promoted by celebrity spokesmodels including Cindy Crawford, Salma Hayek, and others.

  • Urban Decay — Urban Decay is a cosmetics company founded in 1996 by Sandy Lerner with David Soward and Wende Zomnir. It became known for unconventional lipstick and nail-polish colors and for slogans like “Does Pink Make You Puke?”

• Cosmetics companies

  • Estée Lauder — Estée Lauder was the cosmetics company founded by Josephine Esther Mentzer, who adopted a French-sounding name for the brand. It became known for products such as Youth Dew and prestige beauty lines including Clinique and Origins, and it expanded through acquisitions and brands such as Donna Karan and Tommy Hilfiger. Saks Fifth Avenue helped give the company an early break.

  • L’Oréal — L’Oréal is the French cosmetics giant behind brands such as Lancôme, Garnier, Maybelline, and NYX. It became notorious in France for scandals involving Liliane Bettencourt and political donations linked to Nicolas Sarkozy’s circle.

  • Neutrogena — Neutrogena is a cosmetics and skincare company known especially for its gentle soap and later skin-care products. It began with an association with a mild soap developed in Belgium and eventually became a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary.

• Cosmetics entrepreneurs
  • Dineh Mohajer — Dineh Mohajer is an entrepreneur who founded Hard Candy cosmetics. She created shades such as Urban Decay and Trailer Trash after making makeup to match her shoes.
• cleaning brands
  • Swiffer — Swiffer is a Procter & Gamble cleaning brand best known for its lightweight mop-and-broom substitutes with replaceable pads. The line has included products such as WetJet and has been the subject of parody advertising.
• Coffee brands
  • Folgers Coffee — Folgers Coffee is the well-known American ground-coffee brand identified by the slogan “the best part of waking up.” Its advertising history includes Mrs. Olson and the long-running Christmas campaign with Peter returning home for the holidays.
• Coffee chains
  • Starbucks Coffee — Starbucks is the Seattle-based coffee chain founded by Howard Schultz and frequently cited in debates over labor, race, and corporate branding. Its recent history includes the #RaceTogether campaign, union drives in Buffalo, and controversy over its response to the Israel-Hamas war.
• Collect calling services
  • 1-800-COLLECT — 1-800-COLLECT was a MCI collect-calling service advertised heavily in the 1990s. Its commercials featured the slogan about saving up to 44 percent.
• Collectible card companies
  • Topps — Topps is the company best known for baseball cards, including the celebrated 1952 Mickey Mantle card. It also created Garbage Pail Kids and had long produced Major League Baseball cards.
• Confectionery companies

  • Cadbury — Cadbury is the British confectionery company best known for Dairy Milk and Creme Eggs. It grew out of a Quaker family business linked to Fry’s and Bournville, and it was later split from Dr Pepper Snapple before Kraft acquired it in 2010. Clues about its factories include the closure of Somerdale and an early salmonella fine at Marlbrook.

  • M&M/Mars — M&M/Mars is the confectionery company associated with M&M’s, Mars bars, Skittles, Snickers, and Starbursts.

• Convenience stores
  • 7-Eleven — 7-Eleven is the convenience-store chain that originally operated as Tote’m Stores before adopting its current name in 1946. It is famous for Slurpees, summer promotions, and its international presence in places like Japan and Taiwan.
• copy shops
  • Kinko’s — Kinko’s was a nationwide copy-shop chain founded by Paul Orfalea in 1970 in Isla Vista near UC Santa Barbara. It became known for 24-hour stores and later expanded internationally before becoming a major office-services brand.

• Corel — Corel is the software company known for taking over products such as WordPerfect, WinZip, and QuattroPro. Its best-known suite includes CorelDraw and related graphics tools such as Capture, PowerTrace, and Photo-Paint.

• condom brands

  • Durex — Durex is a condom brand marketed internationally. The clues describe it as a leading brand with products sold in flavored and enhanced varieties.

  • LifeStyles — LifeStyles is a condom brand known for being among the first major manufacturers to sell flavored condoms. Its ultra-sensitive model was marketed with the slogan “almost like using nothing at all.”

• Crayola
  • Binney & Smith — Binney & Smith was the company that became famous for Crayola crayons and later became a Hallmark division. Its early products included An-Du-Septic Dustless Chalk, and the firm also acquired Silly Putty in 1977.
• Cranberry products
  • Ocean Spray — Ocean Spray is a cranberry cooperative and juice company founded in 1930 by Marcus L. Urann. It is a major producer of cranberry products and juice drinks owned by growers.
• Dairy processing
  • Homogenization — Homogenization is the process of forcing milk through fine openings at high pressure to break up fat globules and prevent cream separation. It is commonly paired with pasteurization in dairy processing.
• Novelty retailers
  • Archie McPhee — Archie McPhee is a Seattle-based novelty retailer known for absurd gifts such as Jesus action figures, rubber chickens, and squeaky oddities. Its name comes from a 1920s jazz-band leader, and the company markets itself as an outfit for popular culture.
• oil companies
  • Texaco — Texaco was a major American oil company, later merged into Chevron, and its name appeared in sponsorships such as the Texaco Star Theater hosted by Milton Berle. The company later drew national attention for a 1991 discrimination case and subsequent public controversy.
• Oral hygiene
  • toothpaste — Toothpaste is the abrasive whitening paste used in everyday oral hygiene. It is also the punchline in a webcomic title and a brand-name example in questions about toothpaste brands in different countries.
• oral-care brands
  • Oral-B — Oral-B is a toothbrush and dental-care brand originally created by Dr. Robert Hutson in 1950. It later became a Gillette brand and is known for products like its Stages line and dental floss.
• Outdoor retailers

  • Cabela’s — This outdoor retailer began as a mail-order fishing-supply business in Sidney, Nebraska, in 1961. It later became known for large destination stores and was acquired by Bass Pro Shops in 2017.

  • L.L Bean — L.L. Bean is the Maine outdoor outfitter founded by Leon Leonwood Bean in 1912 and centered in Freeport. It is known for its guarantee, its flagship store, and a mail-order business that made the brand a shorthand for preppy outdoorswear.

• Printing and copying businesses
  • copy shop — A copy shop, also called a print shop, is a place to make photocopies and printed handouts. Kinko’s is the best-known chain name often associated with this kind of business.
• Procter & Gamble brands

  • Febreze — Febreze is the Procter & Gamble odor-eliminating brand marketed for removing smells from fabrics and air. Its product line has included variants such as Air Effects, Noticeables, and Scentstories, and it was promoted with the #NoseBlind campaign.

  • Ivory Soap — Ivory Soap is the long-running Procter & Gamble soap brand famous for being advertised as 99 44/100 percent pure. Its creation is linked to a machine being left on at lunchtime, which produced a frothy bar that floated.

• sales methods
  • auction — An auction is a sale in which buyers compete by bidding, either publicly or in sealed form. The clue set points to the English and Dutch auction formats and to the title of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.
• Smokeless tobacco
  • Skoal — Skoal is a brand of chewing tobacco introduced in 1934. Its name comes from a Scandinavian toast, and the product has been sold in several flavors including wintergreen and mint.
• Snack cake brands
  • Hostess — Hostess is the snack brand associated with Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, and King Dons. Its old advertising campaigns often featured superheroes defeating villains by offering snack cakes instead of fighting.
• sneaker brands
  • PF Flyers — PF Flyers are a sneaker brand originally made by BF Goodrich and remembered as a rival to Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars. They are especially associated with the line that they are guaranteed to make the wearer run faster and jump higher, and with Benny’s shoes in The Sandlot.
• soap brands
  • Lifebouy — Lifebuoy is the old soap brand remembered for being used to wash someone’s mouth out in A Christmas Story.
• Soft drink companies
  • The Coca-Cola Company — Atlanta-based soft drink company founded from John Pemberton’s original cola formula and later built up by Asa Candler after he bought the rights to Pemberton’s flagship product. Its history includes the classic five-cent bottle, the Spencerian-script logo, the 1985 New Coke controversy, later lawsuits over discrimination and branding, and advertising campaigns associated with Santa Claus imagery, the slogan set to “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” and polar bears. Coca-Cola became one of the world’s most recognizable symbols of consumer culture.
• Soft drinks

  • 7-Up — 7-Up is a lemon-lime soft drink originally sold as Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda. It was renamed in the 1930s and later advertised as the “Uncola.” The brand is associated with Fido Dido and inspired the Cool Spot video games and related licensed tie-ins.

  • Coca-Cola or Coke — Coca-Cola, or Coke, is the Atlanta soft drink created by John Pemberton and later sold worldwide. Its clues often mention the 1971 “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” ad and the company’s long history of advertising and regulation controversies.

  • Dr. Slice — Dr. Slice was a short-lived Pepsi product that mixed Dr Pepper flavor with citrus soda branding. It was part of a lineup of novelty soft drinks that were later discontinued or replaced.

  • Mecca Cola — Mecca Cola is a soft drink brand launched in the early 2000s as a Coke alternative marketed with anti-American or pro-Palestinian sentiment. It was founded by Tawfik Mathlouthi and promoted with overtly religious branding.

  • Orange Crush — Orange Crush is a soda brand that also gave its name to the Denver Broncos’ famous 1977 defense. The drink was originally developed by Neil Ward and was sold in a distinctive crinkly bottle.

  • Orbitz — Orbitz was a Clearly Canadian beverage made with floating gelatinous balls suspended in a clear fruit-flavored liquid. It was marketed as a novelty drink with unusual packaging and flavors like Raspberry Citrus and Vanilla Orange.

• Software companies

  • Adobe Systems — Adobe Systems is the software company behind products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and PageMaker. It has also been associated with Acrobat-based controlled distribution of encrypted eBooks.

  • Salesforce — Salesforce is a software company best known for customer relationship management products. It was founded by Marc Benioff and later acquired Tableau. The clues also mention its San Francisco tower and its stock ticker CRM.

• Sony

  • Akio Morita — Akio Morita was the cofounder of Sony with Masaru Ibuka and later became closely associated with the Walkman and the company’s global image. He wrote Made in Japan and helped rename the company from Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo to Sony.

  • Sony Corporation — Sony Corporation is the Japanese electronics and entertainment conglomerate behind the PlayStation line, Columbia Pictures, and Sony Music. It became notorious in quizbowl for the PlayStation 3 hacking scandals, the OtherOS controversy, and the 2005 rootkit scandal tied to its music CDs.

• Sportswear brands
  • Under Armour — Under Armour is an athletic apparel company founded by Kevin Plank and closely associated with performance gear, footwear, and major endorsement deals. Its long-running marketing emphasized hard-nosed competition with slogans like “Protect This House,” and its products were linked to major sports figures such as Stephen Curry and Tom Brady.
• Standard Oil successors
  • Exxon Corporation — It was one of the successor companies created after the breakup of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, later a major Dow Jones Industrial Average component and a company charged as a monopoly under the Sherman Act. In 1972 it renamed itself Exxon Corporation after losing the right to use the Esso name.
• Spreads
  • Fluff — In some subcultures, fluff is a disparaging term for overly sentimental or immature beliefs, especially among otherkin groups. The word also names a marshmallow spread marketed under the brand Fluff.

Customs, Knowledge, and Cross-Disciplinary Terms

Use cross-disciplinary vocabulary to connect the other study paths.

Rituals and customs

• Abstention
  • abstain — To abstain is to deliberately refrain from doing something, such as drinking alcohol, having sex, or voting. The word is used for voluntary nonparticipation rather than simple inability or refusal.

• April Fools’ Day — April Fools’ Day is observed on April 1 and is associated with pranks that are revealed by calling out the holiday’s name. It has become a recurring date for hoaxes in literature, media, and news reports. Famous examples include the BBC spaghetti-tree broadcast and Volkswagen’s “Voltswagen” stunt.

• birthday parties — Birthday parties are celebrations marking a person’s birth date, often with cakes, candles, and guests. Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party and scenes in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof both use them as dramatic settings.

• Bodily functions
  • farting — Farting is the bodily function of releasing intestinal gas, a comic talent associated in clues with performers like Le Pétomane and Mr. Methane. It also appears in absurd or satirical references such as He-Gassen, Mark Twain’s suppressed joke, and stories about shameless court entertainers.
    • fart — This bodily function is a rude release of gas from the digestive tract, the sort of comic flatulence that turns up in Chaucer, Jonson, and Prior. Clues point to a fart, the answer to a string of literary gag references.
• Bowing
  • curtsy — A curtsy is a respectful lowering of the body, usually associated with women greeting royalty. It involves placing one foot behind the other and bending the knees in a half-kneel.
• Christmas
  • Christmas trees — Christmas trees are decorated evergreen trees that became a major American holiday symbol in the nineteenth century. Quizbowl clues often mention New York sidewalk sales, artificial trees with color wheels, and literary or Russian titles built around the same seasonal image.
• Gestures

  • High-Five — A high five is a celebratory slap of raised hands, often used after a success or joke. The gesture can be left hanging when the other person does not reciprocate, and pop-culture examples include the card game “High-Five” in Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel.”

  • holding hands — Holding hands is a simple gesture of affection, separation, or communal unity, and it appears in art and literature from Beatles songs to Paradise Lost. It can also describe circular dances and other collective scenes of joined hands.

  • Middle finger gesture — This gesture is the middle finger, also called flipping off or the one-finger salute. Famous photographs of it include Ai Weiwei’s series at world landmarks and Johnny Cash’s 1969 San Quentin image.

  • pointing — Pointing is the gesture of directing attention with an extended finger or hand. It appears in religious painting and in visual memes, including the famous Spider-Man pointing pose.

  • thumbs up — A thumbs-up gesture is a raised-hand signal often used for approval, hitchhiking, and digital “like” icons. It also appears in Roman forms of pollice verso and in modern pop culture, including the Fallout Vault Boy logo.

• Kwanzaa
  • symbols
    • kinara — A kinara is the seven-branched candleholder used in Kwanzaa celebrations. Its candles represent the holiday’s seven principles, and it is sometimes mistaken for a menorah.
• Mottos
  • Ich dien — Ich dien is a German motto meaning “I serve.” Edward the Black Prince adopted it at the Battle of Crécy as the motto of the Prince of Wales.
• Sinterklaas tradition
  • Zwarte Piet — Zwarte Piet is the controversial blackface helper associated with Dutch Sinterklaas celebrations. He traditionally appears alongside Sinterklaas and hands out sweets such as pepernoten or spice nuts.
• Superstitions
  • knocking on wood — Knocking on wood is the superstition of touching wood after a boast or hopeful remark to avoid bad luck. It appears in songs by Eddie Floyd and Amii Stewart, and it is used as a phrase for warding off tempting fate.
• time capsules — Time capsules are caches of objects or documents buried or sealed for opening in the future. Famous examples include Westinghouse’s world’s fair capsules and the Crypt of Civilization at Oglethorpe University.

Science and pseudoscience

• Ancient astronaut hypothesis
  • Erich von Däniken — Swiss author associated with the ancient astronaut hypothesis, especially in Chariots of the Gods? (also Chariots of the Gods). The book argues that ancient aliens influenced early civilizations; he later wrote Gods from Outer Space and promoted related claims about the pyramids, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Nazca Lines. He became known for suggesting that sites such as the pyramids and Nazca Lines were built with help from extraterrestrials, and he later admitted to faking some evidence.
    • Chariots of the Gods? — Chariots of the Gods? is Erich von Däniken’s best-known speculative work about ancient astronauts. Its ideas also inspired a 1974 film and later UFO-religion speculation about ancient technology.
• archaeology
  • excavation — Excavation is the archaeological process of removing soil and material to expose artifacts and record evidence of human activity. A classic method uses a square grid with balks to preserve stratigraphy between trenches.
• Astrology

  • The Age of Aquarius — The Age of Aquarius is the astrological era associated with the precession of the equinoxes and a hoped-for age of peace and humanism. It became widely familiar through the song from Hair that declares the dawn of a new age and was popularized by the 5th Dimension.

  • Ascendant
    • Rising sign — The rising sign, or ascendant, is the zodiac sign on the eastern horizon at the time of birth. In modern astrology it is often contrasted with the sun sign as the part of a birth chart associated with outward presentation.
  • astrologers
    • astrologer — An astrologer is a practitioner of astrology, traditionally thought to interpret celestial signs and cast horoscopes. Clues can point to figures such as Joan Quigley and Cyril Fagan, both associated with this profession.
  • horoscope — A horoscope is a prediction or advice column based on zodiac signs and the supposed influence of the stars. In All My Sons, Frank Lubey makes one for Larry to reassure Kate Keller.

• Charles Fort — Charles Fort was the collector of strange reports whose name gives us Fortean phenomena and Fortean Times. His Book of the Damned gathered accounts of out-of-place objects, rains of animals, and other unexplained events.

• Fire
  • on fire — “On fire” describes something burning or ablaze. The phrase can point to religious fire imagery, like the burning bush, or to the visual effect used in album art such as Wish You Were Here.
• fires
  • Burned down — Several famous literary homes and institutions are destroyed by fire, including Thornfield Hall, Manderley, and the library in The Name of the Rose. The common fate linking them is that they burned down.

• gray — Gray is a color between black and white, formed by mixing roughly equal amounts of red, green, and blue light. The word also names gray matter in the brain, the crescent marking the future dorsal side of a frog embryo, and the SI absorbed-dose unit gray, symbolized Gy, equal to one joule per kilogram or 100 rads.

• Mesoamerican artifacts
  • Crystal Skull — Crystal Skull refers to the alleged Mesoamerican artifacts later exposed as modern forgeries in museum collections and sensational treasure stories. They appear in Indiana Jones and Stargate SG-1, where they are linked to aliens, Akator, and the Mitchell-Hedges skull.
• Natural phenomena
  • short-lived phenomena
    • The Center for Short-Lived Phenomena — The Center for Short-Lived Phenomena was a Cambridge-based organization once part of the Smithsonian. It collected reports on fleeting natural and industrial events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, whale strandings, oil spills, meteorite falls, and radioactive waste leaks.

• nuclear waste — Nuclear waste is the harmful byproduct of nuclear power and weapons production, including spent fuel and other radioactive leftovers. Clues about it often point to storage sites such as Yucca Mountain, Hanford, WIPP, or Finland’s Onkalo repository.

• Pseudoscience
  • Catastrophism
    • Immanuel Velikovsky — Immanuel Velikovsky was a controversial catastrophist writer who argued for a radically revised chronology of ancient history. He is best known for Worlds in Collision, where he proposed dramatic planetary encounters and other world-shaping disasters, and for Ages in Chaos.
      • Worlds in Collision — Worlds in Collision is Immanuel Velikovsky’s pseudoscientific 1950 book arguing that planetary catastrophes shaped ancient myths. It links Venus and other celestial bodies to a cosmic war and was later rejected by mainstream science.

• taxidermy — Taxidermy is the practice of preserving and displaying dead animals through skinning, tanning, stuffing, and mounting. Its history includes figures such as Carl Akeley, Walter Potter, and John Hancock, along with surrealist or artistic offshoots like rogue taxidermy.

• UFO lore
  • Wright-Patterson — Wright-Patterson is the Dayton, Ohio air base linked to the Hangar 18 UFO legend.
• UFO phenomena
  • alien abduction — Alien abduction is the alleged experience of being taken by extraterrestrials and later returned to Earth. Accounts of the phenomenon often involve the Hill case, the idea of a hybrid child, and a staged encounter aboard a spacecraft.
• Wilhelm Reich
  • orgone energy — Orgone energy was Wilhelm Reich’s pseudoscientific life force, supposedly generated by sexual release and collected in special accumulators. Reich also linked it to cloudbusters, body armor, and other bizarre claims about health and weather.
• Collections and Public Science
  • science museums
    • The Exploratorium — The Exploratorium is San Francisco’s hands-on science and art museum, founded by Frank Oppenheimer and located at the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District. Its attractions have included the Tactile Dome, an indoor volcano, and wind-played and interactive installations tied to its maker-oriented exhibits.
  • Scientific symbols
    • N — N is a common symbol in chemistry, biology, and physics, where it can denote nitrogen, the principal quantum number, or the N-terminus of a protein. It also appears in psychology for intuition and sample size, showing up in several unrelated disciplines.

  • American Museum of Natural History — The American Museum of Natural History is a major New York City museum founded in the nineteenth century and associated with Albert Bickmore. It is famous for its taxidermied displays, Memorial Hall, and research expeditions such as the Jesup North Pacific Expedition.

  • zoos — Zoos are institutions for the public display and study of animals, often featuring historic menageries, moats, and famous residents like quaggas or gorillas. Quizbowl clues also reference the London Zoo, Hagenbeck-style exhibits, and Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story.
    • Zoo — A zoo is a place where animals are kept and displayed, and it appears often in literature, film, and internet culture clues. Standard references include The Zoo Story, Harambe, and YouTube’s first video, Me at the Zoo.
  • Zoos and aquariums
    • aquariums — Aquariums are facilities that display aquatic life, often in seawater exhibits such as kelp forests, jellyfish, and manta rays. They appear in clues about public institutions such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Georgia Aquarium, and in historical accounts of Victorian animal display.
      • fish tank — A fish tank is a container used to keep fish, whether in saltwater or freshwater form. The clues point to both the household object and the film title Fish Tank, so the answer is the aquarium sense of the phrase.
• conspiracy theories

  • Chemtrails — Chemtrails are the conspiracy-theory claim that airplanes expel mysterious substances into the sky. The idea is often contrasted with ordinary contrails, which are normal condensation trails.

  • Lizard people — Lizard people are a conspiracy-theory race of shapeshifting reptilian beings said to secretly control governments. The idea is strongly associated with David Icke, who links them to figures such as the Annunaki and to imagined origins like Atlantis, Lemuria, or the Draconus Alpha system.

  • Nuclear weapons hoaxes

    • red mercury — Red mercury is a supposed exotic substance that appears in conspiracy theories and black-market scams tied to nuclear weapons. It is often described as a fictional or apocryphal mercury compound, with stories claiming implausible uses ranging from explosives to uranium enrichment.
• Creationism

  • scientific creationism — Scientific creationism is the modern pseudoscientific claim that the Book of Genesis gives the correct account of origins. It was associated with figures such as John Whitcomb, Henry Morris, and Duane Gish, and was challenged in Edwards v. Aguillard.

  • Young Earth creationism

    • The Genesis Flood — The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris was an influential young-earth creationist work focused on geology and biblical flood geology. It is often treated as a foundational text for the modern creationist movement.

• crop circles — Crop circles are geometric patterns flattened into fields, usually in grain crops. They have often been treated as UFO-related mysteries, though many famous examples were admitted hoaxes made with simple tools.

• Cryonics
  • Alcor Life Extension Foundation — The Alcor Life Extension Foundation is a cryonics organization based in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is known for preserving bodies in liquid nitrogen, including the famous preservation of Ted Williams.
• Cryptids

  • Bear Lake Monster — The Bear Lake Monster is a reported cryptid from the Utah-Idaho border’s Bear Lake, later linked by folklore to the name Isabella. Its legend grew from newspaper stories, local sightings, and attempts to explain strange activity in the lake.

  • Bigfoot — Bigfoot is a legendary North American cryptid, usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid or ape-like creature. It is commonly linked to footprints, wilderness sightings, Pacific Northwest lore, and the Patterson-Gimlin film, and it also overlaps with Indigenous traditions of forest beings. Some accounts extend the legend to the Himalayas, where it is compared with the Yeti.
    • the Yeti — The Yeti is a Himalayan cryptid, also called the Abominable Snowman, said to roam Nepal and Tibet.

  • Chupacabra — The chupacabra is a Latin American cryptid whose name literally means “goat-sucker.” It is blamed in folklore for mutilated and blood-drained livestock, and accounts usually describe it as a spiny, reptilian creature reported from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and elsewhere in the Americas.

  • Lake cryptids
    • Loch Ness Monster — The Loch Ness Monster is the legendary creature said to inhabit Loch Ness in Scotland. It is often described as a long-necked, plesiosaur-like lake cryptid and is known by the nickname Nessie. Its legend is linked to Saint Columba, the 1934 Surgeon’s Photograph, later sonar claims, and ongoing skepticism that it may be a large fish rather than a surviving prehistoric reptile.

  • Skunk Ape — The Skunk Ape is a Florida Bigfoot-like cryptid, often linked to the swamps of Big Cypress and described as foul-smelling. Reports connect it to the Bardin-Booger and to a famous crouching photo, and it was also said to have rattled the Perky Bat Tower.

  • Trunko — Trunko is the nickname of a mysterious carcass reported from South Africa in 1924 after an alleged battle with killer whales. Descriptions gave it the look of a giant polar bear with a lobster-like tail and an elephantine appendage.
• Cryptozoology — Cryptozoology is the study of animals that are rumored to exist, especially creatures like the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and other legendary or unverified beasts. It often deals with reports of supposedly extinct, unknown, or out-of-place animals rather than established zoological species.
  • Globster — A globster is an unidentified mass of organic material that washes ashore and lacks obvious bones or defining features. The term is associated with Ivan T. Sanderson and cases such as the St. Augustine Monster and the Tasmanian specimen.

• crystal skulls — Crystal skulls are famous clear-quartz skull carvings linked to claims of ancient Mesoamerican origin, though many were exposed as 19th-century European fabrications. One especially famous example is the Mitchell-Hedges skull, and the legend also inspired the Crystal Head vodka brand and the fourth Indiana Jones film.

• Pseudohistory
  • New Chronology — The New Chronology is a fringe historical theory associated with Anatoly Fomenko that radically compresses ancient history into a much later timeline. It overlaps with claims about invented medieval centuries and alternative reconstructions of Egyptian and biblical chronology.
• Purported phenomena
  • Spontaneous human combustion — Spontaneous human combustion is the supposed death of a person by fire without an obvious external source. It appears in literature such as Bleak House and in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland.
• Psychics and faith healers
  • Edgar Cayce — Edgar Cayce was an American psychic, faith healer, and trance-medium known as the “Sleeping Prophet.” In trance-like sleep, he gave readings on illness, spirituality, reincarnation, Atlantis, and apocalyptic predictions, leaving thousands of stenographic records after his death in 1945. He became one of the best-known figures in early twentieth-century paranormal culture.
• Spiritualism

  • ectoplasm — Ectoplasm is the supposed ghostly substance that spiritualist mediums were said to materialize during séances. It also appears as a biology term for the outer layer of protoplasm.

  • Mediums and psychics

    • A medium or psychic — A medium or psychic is someone believed to communicate with spirits or transmit hidden information. The clue points to automatic writing, a practice associated with spiritualist mediums.
• Occultists
  • John Dee — John Dee was the Elizabethan mathematician, astrologer, and occultist who advised Queen Elizabeth I. He worked with Edward Kelley on angelic scrying, wrote on Monas Hieroglyphica, and helped popularize the phrase and idea of a British Empire.
• mentalists and psychics
  • Uri Geller — Uri Geller is the Israeli mentalist and spoon-bender famous for stage psychic claims and controversy over his demonstrations. He is often linked to claims about bending cutlery, defeating skeptics, and appearing on television challenges involving preselected spoons.

Names, Terms, and Cross-Disciplinary References

• Ambergris — Ambergris is the waxy, valuable substance produced by sperm whales and prized in perfumery. It is also known as gray amber and was historically associated with medicine and aphrodisiac uses. The clues describe it as a secretion that helps perfume last longer and as one of the most valuable products by weight from the sea. Its French name and whale origin are the main identifiers.

• Amusement parks

  • amusement park — An amusement park is a recreational site built around rides, attractions, and themed entertainment. Films and novels often use it for chase scenes, Ferris wheels, and carnival-style settings.

  • amusement park — A recreational venue built around rides, games, midway attractions, and themed entertainment. Examples and literary uses include Coney Island, Tivoli Gardens, the Prater, Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!, George Saunders’s “Pastoralia,” the Joker’s hideouts in Batman stories, and comic misunderstandings in Seinfeld.

  • Kennywood — Kennywood is a historic amusement park near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, known for classic roller coasters such as the Jack Rabbit and for its old dark rides. The park has appeared in film and includes attractions like Garfield’s Nightmare and The Turtle.

  • Kings Dominion — Kings Dominion is the amusement park in Doswell, Virginia, known for coasters such as the Grizzly, Anaconda, and Hypersonic XLC. Opened in 1975 and later purchased by Paramount, it also featured a miniature Eiffel Tower and Lion Country Safari-themed origins.

  • Kings Island — Kings Island is an amusement park in Mason, Ohio, known for rides such as The Beast and the former Son of the Beast. Other clues point to attractions like The Racer and Banshee, as well as its history under Paramount and Cedar Fair ownership.

  • Six Flags — Six Flags is an American amusement park chain whose parks have been associated with rides like Kingda Ka, Goliath, Viper, and Superman. Quizbowl clues often mention its former parks such as Astroworld and its expansion to locations including Magic Mountain and Great Adventure.

• Animal symbolism
  • Lizard symbolism
    • Lizard — In myth and literature, lizards can symbolize tricksters, omens, or transformation, as in stories involving Socrates or Demeter. They also appear in Native American and African traditions, including associations with twisters, horses, and the Zulu.

• auditing — Auditing is the independent examination of financial records, often producing qualified or unqualified opinions about whether the accounts give a true and fair view. In Scientology, the same word refers to a counseling practice that uses an E-meter and is part of the path toward becoming “clear”.

• Campbell — Campbell is the surname shared by Joseph Campbell, whose “hero’s journey” and monomyth shaped myth criticism, and Donald T. Campbell, known for Campbell’s law. Other clues may point to the bluebird speed-record family or to Campbell’s influence on construct-validity methods.
  • The Hero with a Thousand Faces — The Hero with a Thousand Faces is Joseph Campbell’s study of the monomyth and the recurring pattern of separation, initiation, and return. It became hugely influential in storytelling theory and pop culture, especially after Christopher Vogler circulated it in Hollywood.
• Charles Mackay
  • Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds — Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is Charles Mackay’s classic study of mass hysteria and speculative frenzy. It surveys episodes such as alchemy, witch hunts, and financial bubbles like the South Sea Bubble and Mississippi Scheme.

• Clairol Hair Coloring — Clairol Hair Coloring is the brand associated with the slogan “Does she or doesn’t she?” The line plays on whether a woman is natural- or bottle-blonde.

• Classics scholars
  • American classicists
    • Mary Lefkowitz — Mary Lefkowitz is a classics scholar at Wellesley College known for criticizing extreme Afrocentrist claims. Her best-known book, Not Out of Africa, argues against the more sweeping historical claims made in works like Black Athena.

• Colgate — Colgate is the family name behind the toothpaste brand that became famous for its breath-freshening advertising and for the company that merged with Palmolive-Peet. The surname also belongs to the former namesake of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and to William Colgate, who helped found the American Bible Union.

• Colin Powell
  • Alma Powell — Alma Powell is the wife of former U.S. general and statesman Colin Powell. The clues point to her public and charitable work, including involvement with youth-oriented organizations in the Washington, D.C. area.
• college mascots
  • Cougars — Cougars is a nickname used by several college teams, including Brigham Young University, Washington State University, and Houston. The word also appears in pop culture and slang, especially for an older woman pursuing a younger partner.
• color terms

  • redness — Redness is the visual property associated with the color red, as in red tides, red dwarfs, and red giant stars.

  • Shades of red

    • maroon — Maroon is both a dark reddish-brown color and a verb meaning to abandon someone in a place from which rescue is unlikely. The word also has an older historical sense tied to runaway enslaved people from the Caribbean.
• comics — Comics are a visual narrative medium that includes comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels. Roy Lichtenstein famously adapted their style with Ben Day dots, while Scott McCloud analyzed the medium’s closure, masking, and panel structure.
  • Comic series
    • Planetary — Planetary is Warren Ellis and John Cassaday’s comic series about a genre-crossing team investigating the hidden history of the world. Its core members include Jakita Wagner, Elijah Snow, and the Drummer.
  • manhwa — Manhwa are Korean comics, often published in color and read left to right rather than in the Japanese manga format. Quizbowl clues for the medium often cite webtoons such as Tower of God, Lookism, and Noblesse.
• Comics creators
  • Scott McCloud — Scott McCloud is the comics theorist and artist behind Understanding Comics, also subtitled The Invisible Art. He is known for the Creator’s Bill of Rights, the 24-hour comic concept, and his self-caricature with blank glasses and a lightning-bolt shirt.

• Mark Millar — Mark Millar is a Scottish comics writer known for Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates, Kick-Ass, and Civil War. He also created Wanted and later wrote projects such as Nemesis and Jupiter’s Legacy.

• Condoms

  • French tickler — A French tickler is a condom with textured ridges or bumps that make it distinctive. The term is also used as the name of a cocktail in some trivia contexts.

  • Trojan condoms
    • Trojan Magnum XL — Trojan Magnum XL is an enlarged condom style in the Trojan line, marketed as wider at the base than standard versions.
  • Trojan Twisted Pleasure — Trojan Twisted Pleasure is a Trojan condom model distinguished by its spiral head design for mutual stimulation.
• Conductors
  • Paul Sacher — Paul Sacher was a Swiss conductor and patron best known for commissioning major twentieth-century works from composers such as Bartók, Stravinsky, and Honegger. He also founded the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, making him a central figure in early music revival and modern composition patronage.
• Conservationists
  • Aldo Leopold — Aldo Leopold was an American conservationist, naturalist, environmental writer, and wildlife ecologist known for applying ecological ideas to game management. He wrote A Sand County Almanac, helped establish wildlife management as an academic field at the University of Wisconsin, and shaped modern conservation ethics through his land ethic, which extended moral concern to wild animals and land itself and included wilderness preservation.
• contenders
  • a contender — A contender is someone who is in the running for a title, prize, or position. The phrase is especially associated with On the Waterfront’s line “I coulda been a contender.”
• Content labels
  • Parental Advisory — Parental Advisory is the black-and-white label used on music releases with explicit or mature content. It was pushed into prominence by the PMRC and the RIAA’s 1985 labeling agreement.

• corporal — A corporal is a military rank above private first class and below sergeant. The word also refers to the body, making it a common English homograph.

• Costco
  • Kirkland Signature — Kirkland Signature is Costco’s private-label brand, named for the Washington town where Costco had an early headquarters. It appears on a wide range of Costco products, from groceries to gasoline and even the hot dogs sold in the chain’s food courts.
• countries
  • Australia
    • The Commonwealth of Australia — Australia is the country associated with composers such as Percy Grainger, Peter Sculthorpe, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Carl Vine, and many others. It is also the home country of writers like Patrick White, David Malouf, Kate Grenville, and Oodgeroo Noonuccal.

• court jesters — Professional entertainers at royal courts who were allowed to mock nobles and rulers. They often wore motley or cap-and-bell attire and performed by juggling, joking, and telling witty stories. Notable examples include the Polish jester Stańczyk, and folkloric figures such as Tenali Rama, Birbal, and Gopal Bhar are often cast in this role. Literary traditions also depict fools and fools’ ships or societies such as Narragonia.

• Crayons — Crayons are colored wax or chalk sticks used in drawing and coloring. Binney & Smith, the maker of Crayola, is a standard clue associated with them. They also appear in jokes and pop-culture references about Marines and in certain board or puzzle games. The word usually signals a simple art-material clue.
  • Crayola Crayons — Crayola Crayons are the classic boxed crayons known for their bright colors and long-running brand identity. The line has expanded over time as new colors were added and some older names were renamed, but the yellow box remains a trademark image.
• Criticism
  • Review — Review is a general survey or critical appraisal of a subject or past events. The word also appears in campus newspapers and in the study habits of students before a test.
• crossword editors
  • Will Shortz — Will Shortz is the editor of the New York Times crossword and the longtime host of its weekly NPR puzzle segment. He succeeded Eugene T. Maleska and became widely associated with modern crossword culture and large puzzle events.
• Currency
  • coins — Coins are currency objects used as motifs in fiction and film, including coin flips that decide fates and stories centered on rare or valuable pieces. They appear in works by Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, David Mamet, and in films such as No Country for Old Men and Lincoln-related scenes.

    • a coin — A coin is the object lost and found in the parable that Jesus compares to repentance and divine rejoicing. Coins also appear in Charon’s obol and in the famous coin-flip opening of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Other clues can point to a coin used by Magneto or to Two-Face’s decision-making.

    • Dimes — Dimes are ten-cent U.S. coins first coined under the Coinage Act of 1792. The Mercury dime design was used from 1916 to 1945 before being replaced by Roosevelt.

    • penny — A penny is the one-cent coin of the United States, also called a cent. It is the small copper-colored U.S. coin bearing Abraham Lincoln. Collectors prize varieties such as the 1909 VDB and 1955 doubled-die cents.

• cyborgs
  • cyborg — A cyborg is a being that combines organic and machine elements, a concept popularized by Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto.” The term also names Victor Stone, the Justice League hero known as Cyborg after being rebuilt with cybernetic implants.
• Dairy workers
  • milkmaids — Milkmaids are women who milk cows or work around dairying, and in South Asian religious imagery they can overlap with the gopis associated with Krishna. The art clues point to famous depictions such as Vermeer’s The Milkmaid and Goya’s milkmaid paintings.

• Darrell Mease — Darrell Mease was a Missouri murderer whose death sentence was commuted to life without parole after papal intervention. He had confessed to killing Lloyd Lawrence, Lawrence’s wife, and their grandson in 1988.

• David Harvey
  • Social Justice and the City — David Harvey is a Marxist geographer known for Social Justice and the City, Rebel Cities, and The Condition of Postmodernity. His work is closely associated with the right to the city, flexible accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, and critiques of neoliberal urbanization.
• David Mamet
  • Glengarry Glen Ross
    • Patel — Patel is the surname in a controversial line from David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross and in the play’s later revision history. The name is used as a target of contempt for supposed deadbeats and people who “like to talk to salesmen.”

• David Remnick — David Remnick is a journalist and editor who became editor of The New Yorker after Tina Brown’s departure. He also wrote Lenin’s Tomb, a book about the collapse of the Soviet Union based on his reporting there.

• DC Comics
  • crossovers
    • Blackest Night — Blackest Night is a 2009–2010 DC Comics crossover in which the entity Nekron resurrects dead heroes and villains. The title also echoes the Green Lantern oath line about the “blackest night.”

• Diop — Diop is a surname shared by several Senegalese and Francophone African artists and writers. Quizbowl clues may point to filmmakers Alice and Mati Diop, or to poets and intellectuals such as David, Birago, and Alioune Diop.

• Equines
  • horse — A horse is the hoofed mammal central to many mythic, literary, and religious clues, from the steeds of the Four Horsemen to Buddha’s horse Kanthaka and the Ashvamedha sacrifice. Quizbowl clues often point to equine imagery in poetry, such as Joy Harjo’s collections and Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” as well as the famous paradox of a white horse that is not a horse.

• Evans — Evans is a common surname that appears in several unrelated clues, including a chess opening, literary references, and multiple musicians. The evidence does not identify a single unambiguous subject, so this entry should remain broad.

• everything — “Everything” is the title word in the phrase “everything is awesome,” and it also answers the revolutionary question posed by Abbé Sièyes about the Third Estate. The word can signal totality, universality, or the answer to a political identity question.

• fairy tales — Traditional short folktales, often involving magical or enchanted elements, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, The Story of the Three Bears, and Thumbelina. They were famously collected and standardized by the Brothers Grimm, commonly classified using the Aarne-Thompson system, and have been influentially reworked or interpreted by writers and scholars such as Angela Carter and Bruno Bettelheim.

• fantasy classes
  • ranger — A ranger is an outdoor warrior or tracker class, especially in fantasy settings like Dungeons & Dragons and the Forgotten Realms. The class is often associated with Aragorn, who exemplifies the woodsman-hunter role.
• Festivals
  • Arts festivals
    • Burning Man — Burning Man is the desert arts festival that creates Black Rock City and ends with the burning of a giant wooden effigy. Its culture includes mutant vehicles, radical self-reliance, decommodification, and the Ten Principles codified by Larry Harvey. Clues often mention its origins at Baker Beach and later rain or mud disasters in the Black Rock Desert.
• Fictional powers
  • teleportation — Teleportation is the instant relocation of a character or object from one place to another, whether in video games, fantasy portals, or superhero powers. The clue set points to the same action in contexts from Pokémon and Super Mario Bros. to Nightcrawler, Blink, and quantum information.
• Final Fantasy
  • Crystal Chronicles
    • Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles — Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is the GameCube-era action RPG centered on caravans gathering myrrh to recharge a crystal and keep miasma from overrunning the world. It is especially remembered for requiring Game Boy Advance connectivity for multiplayer and for its quest to purify the title object by finding Mana water.

  • Final Fantasy Tactics — Final Fantasy Tactics is a Square strategy RPG for the PlayStation, later remade as The War of the Lions. It follows Ramza Beoulve in the setting of Ivalice amid the aftermath of the Fifty Years War and the conflict over the throne.

  • Final Fantasy VII Remake — Final Fantasy VII Remake is the 2020 expanded retelling of the opening chapter of Final Fantasy VII. It follows Cloud, Tifa, and Avalanche, and its production included recasting the English cast and using technology for facial animation, camera selection, and multilingual lip sync.
• Firearms manufacturers
  • Glock — Glock is the Austrian firearms manufacturer famous for its polymer-framed pistols. Its handguns became widely known through action films and gangsta rap references.
• flight powers
  • ability to fly
    • the ability to fly — This is the ability to fly, a power associated with Ravana’s pushpaka vimana and with characters such as Bérenger in the Ionesco plays referenced here. The clue set points to the general concept rather than a named character or object.

• Flying — The action or state of moving through the air rather than walking or jumping; it also covers literal levitation or weightless motion. It is a recurring surreal motif in Marc Chagall’s paintings, where lovers, brides, and even the artist himself float above towns and rooftops, and it is commonly associated with scenes of characters like E.T., Gandalf, and the cast of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defying gravity.

• Folklore
  • Amulets
    • Toadstones — Toadstones are folkloric stones, often identified with fish teeth or fossils, that were believed to detect poison or cure epilepsy when set in rings.
  • egg balancing
    • balancing an egg on its end — Balancing an egg on its end is a folk activity associated in some traditions with the Dragon Boat Festival and the vernal equinox. The feat became famous through legends involving Columbus and later popular demonstrations that it is possible at other times too.

• Forensic science — Forensic science is the scientific study of physical evidence in criminal investigation, including evidence from crime scenes and human remains, and is also used in identifying bodies. It is associated with the application of scientific methods to criminology and with Locard’s exchange principle, the idea that every contact leaves a trace. Related specializations include forensic anthropology and forensic pathology.

• Frantz Fanon
  • Black Skin, White Masks — Black Skin, White Masks is Frantz Fanon’s study of colonialism’s psychological effects on Black identity. Quizbowl clues often mention epidermalization, the dependency complex, the chapter on language, and its critique of Octave Mannoni’s ideas about Malagasy dependence.
• gemstones — Precious stones prized for their rarity, brilliance, and use in jewelry and trade, including diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. They are associated with lapidary traditions and medieval ideas about natural and therapeutic properties, and they appear in contexts from Renaissance commerce and speculative fiction, including Fitzgerald’s The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

  • cat’s eye — Cat’s eye, or tigereye, is a gemstone known for chatoyance, the shimmering band of light across the surface. Cymophane is the rarest form of this stone.

  • Pearls — Pearls are nacreous gemstones formed inside oysters and prized in cultures from the Persian Gulf to Japan. They recur in literature and art, from Steinbeck’s The Pearl and Pearl-Prynne in The Scarlet Letter to references involving famous historical gems like La Peregrina. They also appear in paintings such as the Ghent Altarpiece and Vermeer’s works like Woman with a Pearl Necklace, and title Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and related tronie paintings with a dark background and jeweled ornament.

  • Peridot — Peridot is a gem variety of olivine, often a yellow-green or olive-green stone. It is sometimes called chrysolite and is known as the birthstone for August.

  • the Hope Diamond — The Hope Diamond is the famous blue gem once owned by Harry Winston and later donated to the Smithsonian. It is notorious for legends of a curse involving former owners such as Marie Antoinette and Evalyn McLean.

• Golf
  • golf club — A golf club is the setting of Fitzgerald clues such as the party in “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and Dexter’s summer work in “Winter Dreams.” The phrase can also point to a golf club in New York photography clues involving a construction beam or an astronaut.
• Hittite mythology
  • Telipinu — Hittite agriculture and fertility god who disappears in anger, causing crops and human fertility to fail. In the myth, a bee and the goddess Kamrusepa help restore him after his rage sends him away to the underworld or a moor. His stories can also involve a bee sting and the kurša fleece sack tied to the king’s eyan tree, and he is treated as a return-and-loss figure like other dying-and-rising deities.

• Hodgkin — The surname Hodgkin identifies several scientists, including Dorothy Hodgkin, whose crystallographic work solved structures such as penicillin and vitamin B12. It also belongs to Thomas Hodgkin, namesake of Hodgkin lymphoma, and Alan Hodgkin of the Hodgkin-Huxley model.

• Howe family
  • Howe — Howe is a notable surname shared by several figures, including British commander William Howe and his brother Richard Howe in the American Revolution. It also belongs to Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and to historian Daniel Walker Howe.

• hunting — The practice of pursuing and killing wild animals, especially in ancient or aristocratic contexts. It is associated in myth with Artemis, Actaeon, Orion, the Calydonian boar hunt, and the sacrifice of Iphigenia; Xenophon wrote a treatise on it. Later references include shikaris, the Boone and Crockett Club, duck hunting with decoys, hunting scenes and hunters in snow in art, and works by Rubens, van Dyck, and Brueghel such as Charles I at the Hunt and paintings titled for the hunt or the Wild Hunt.

• Jewish music
  • Klezmer music — Klezmer music is the expressive Jewish folk tradition of Eastern Europe, heavily featuring clarinet and dance-like instrumentation. It appears in concert works by composers such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Mahler, and Golijov, and in revived ensemble performance.

• jumping — Jumping is a common clue word in clues about jazz titles like “One O’Clock Jump” and in photographs by Philippe Halsman, Yves Klein, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. It also appears in video games and in references to the jiangshi, the Chinese undead that move by hopping.

• literary criticism
  • literary critics — Literary critics are writers who review, interpret, and judge books, a role that has been mocked in essays and satires aimed at famous reviewers like James Wood and Michiko Kakutani. Quizbowl clues often point to the profession through targets such as Martin Walser’s fictionalized Marcel Reich-Ranicki or Colson Whitehead’s parody of James Wood in “Wow, Fiction Works!”
• Martin Bernal
  • Black Athena — Black Athena is Martin Bernal’s controversial thesis arguing that Greek civilization owed major debts to ancient Egypt and Africa. It is frequently paired in clues with Mary Lefkowitz’s rebuttal, Not Out of Africa.
• masks

  • face mask — A face mask is protective gear worn over the face, and in sports it can shield the nose and jaw. The term also covers theatrical and ceremonial masks, such as Noh masks and the character masks of kyogen and Peking opera.

  • mask — A mask is a face-covering object that appears in a range of literary and mythic titles, including Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask. It is also a major item in The Legend of Zelda, where masks such as Majora’s Mask and the Fierce Deity mask alter Link’s abilities.

• monk — A monk is a Buddhist or other religious ascetic, and the title Monk also points to Thelonious Monk, the jazz pianist and composer. The clues range from Journey to the West and Akutagawa stories to the television detective Monk and Monk compositions like “Blue Monk” and “‘Round Midnight.”

• Motion
  • moving — Moving can describe physical motion, residential mobility, or shifting one’s position in an argument. The phrase “moving the goalposts” names the fallacy of changing the criteria after a point has been made.
• Movement disciplines
  • parkour — Parkour is the French movement discipline in which traceurs run, jump, climb, and vault through urban obstacles. It developed from the Yamakasi and was later popularized in freerunning and in films and games.
• Musical ensembles
  • concert bands
    • concert band — A concert band is a large woodwind, brass, and percussion ensemble without strings, also called a wind band or symphonic band. It is common in schools, military units, and civic groups. Its repertoire includes Holst’s suites, Sousa marches, and other works written for this medium.
• musicians — Musicians are a common poetry and painting subject, ranging from Langston Hughes’s “The Weary Blues” to the portraits of jazz and nightclub performers in twentieth-century verse. Clues may point to singers, guitarists, or more specific kinds of performers, but the broad answer is the profession of making music.
  • Drummers
    • drummer — A drummer is the percussionist in a band, and several famous film characters and real musicians in the clues aspire to or exemplify that role. The clue set points to the general profession rather than a single named person.
• Nintendo
  • Publications
    • Nintendo Power — Nintendo Power was Nintendo’s official house magazine in North America. It began as the Nintendo Fun Club Newsletter and featured recurring sections such as Howard and Nester and the Pulse.
• Nintendo Entertainment System games
  • Faxanadu — Faxanadu is an NES action role-playing game, the lone Dragon Slayer title released for the system. It uses mantras as passwords, is set around Eolis and the World Tree, and was named by blending Famicom with Xanadu.
• Nintendo Switch
  • Joy-Con — Joy-Con is the paired controller for the Nintendo Switch, designed to attach to the console for handheld play or detach for use when docked. It features motion controls, HD Rumble, and an IR camera, and its drift issues became widely notorious.
• Nintendo Switch accessories
  • Nintendo Labo — Nintendo Labo is a cardboard accessory line for the Switch built around do-it-yourself Toy-Con kits. Its kits include a piano, fishing rod, robot, and motorbike, and the slogan “Make, Play, Discover” introduced the project.
• Nintendo Wii accessories
  • Wii Balance Board — The Wii Balance Board is the motion-sensing accessory bundled with Wii Fit and used to measure a player’s center of pressure. It was also used in games and experiments involving tilting, balancing, and other full-body control schemes.

• nuclear war — Nuclear war is the large-scale use of nuclear weapons, often imagined as a world-ending conflict. It appears in apocalyptic religious speculation and in literary settings like the outside world of Lord of the Flies.

• nudism — Nudism, also called naturism, is the practice of living or socializing without clothes, often in organized “free body culture” movements. Clues may mention German FKK groups, East German public nudity rules, or Jain Digambara asceticism.

• Numismatics — Numismatics is the scientific study of money, especially coins, and it treats objects as historical evidence rather than as mere collectibles. Bartolomeo Borghesi is cited as a key figure in establishing it as a science in the nineteenth century.

• NutraSweet — NutraSweet is the brand name that became widely associated with aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in diet drinks and other sugar-free foods. Its logo and branding were especially familiar before Monsanto’s patent on the product expired.

• Nutrisse — Nutrisse is a hair-dye brand, identified here through a celebrity endorsement clue involving Sarah Jessica Parker. The clue points to the shade name “Sugercane” as part of the brand’s advertising.

• obelisks
  • Cleopatra’s Needles — Cleopatra’s Needles are the pair of ancient Egyptian obelisks originally erected at Heliopolis by Thutmose III. One now stands on the Thames Embankment in London and the other in New York’s Central Park.
• objects
  • gourds
    • calabashes — Calabashes are gourds often hollowed out for containers, bowls, and drinking vessels. They appear in Pacific and African cultural settings, including Melville’s descriptions of island feasts and the use of gourds for palm wine storage.

• obsolescence — Obsolescence is the process by which products or technologies become outdated or less useful. Planned obsolescence is the deliberate design of goods to wear out or seem unfashionable quickly.

• Orcas
  • Keiko — Keiko was the captive orca who starred in Free Willy and later became the focus of an effort to return him to the wild. He lived in Mexico City and then at the Oregon Coast Aquarium before his release attempt in Iceland.
• Organizing methods
  • Marie Kondo — Marie Kondo is the Japanese organizing consultant behind The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and the KonMari method. Her approach emphasizes keeping only items that spark joy and organizing by category rather than by room.
• Orientation
  • horizontal — Horizontal describes arrangements or processes that run across rather than up and down. In economics it appears in horizontal integration and horizontal demand, and in biology it contrasts with vertical transmission in forms of horizontal gene transfer.
• Pairs of people
  • Albert Arnold GORE, Jr. and Tommy Lee JONES — The clue identifies Albert Arnold Gore Jr. and Tommy Lee Jones, both of whom were said to have inspired the character Oliver in Love Story. This pair is treated together as a roommates clue linking a politician and an actor.
• Paul Bunyan
  • Johnny Inkslinger — Johnny Inkslinger is Paul Bunyan’s famously efficient clerk, remembered for bookkeeping tricks that save ink. He appears in the tall tales surrounding Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, alongside other exaggerated feats that explain the creation of lakes, canyons, and frontier landmarks.
• poems
  • Nobody — Nobody is the name Odysseus gives Polyphemus to trick the Cyclops into thinking no one attacked him. The same word also titles a poem in which Dickinson’s speaker asks, “Who are you?” after calling herself a public nobody.
• Prehistoric earthworks
  • henges — Henges are Neolithic earthworks consisting of a circular bank enclosing a large flat area, with famous examples in Wiltshire and the Orkney Islands. Stonehenge is the best-known example named for the stone circle within such a structure.
• Presentation devices
  • Teleprompter — A teleprompter is the device that displays a script while allowing a speaker to keep eye contact with the camera. It is also called an Autocue in Commonwealth usage, and mirrored versions are sometimes used to hide the text from the audience.
• Presidents of Brazil
  • Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira — Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira was the Brazilian president associated with the slogan ‘fifty years of prosperity in five.’ His government commissioned Brasília and left its initials on landmarks such as the JK Memorial.
• Presidents of Israel
  • Chaim Weizmann and Ezer Weizman — Chaim Weizmann and Ezer Weizman are the first and one of the later presidents of Israel, whose surnames sound nearly the same. The clue asks for the pair of Israeli presidents with similar surnames but different first names.

• Primal Rage — Primal Rage is an Atari fighting game set on Urth, where dinosaur-like gods battle as part of a conflict between Virtuous and Destructive powers. It became known for gory finishers and censored moves, including Chaos’s infamous Golden Shower attack and a cut sequel concept involving the undead dragon Necrosan.

• primeval — Primeval means ancient or from the earliest times. Longfellow uses it in the famous opening description of the Acadian forest in Evangeline, and one clue also points to the crocodile thriller titled Primeval.

• Pritzker family
  • Pritzker — The Pritzker family is associated with the Hyatt Corporation and with major philanthropic naming rights in Chicago. Their name appears on the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the Pritzker School of Medicine, and on the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
• Professional wrestlers
  • Bill Goldberg — Bill Goldberg is a former NFL player turned professional wrestler who became one of WCW’s biggest stars in the late 1990s. Known for the spear and jackhammer, he famously won the WCW World Heavyweight Title after building an unbeaten streak.
• Projection
  • project — Project can be a noun for a planned undertaking or a verb meaning to cast or extend outward. In mathematics and psychology, it also appears in technical senses such as projecting onto another surface or projecting one’s feelings onto others.
• Puzzle video games
  • Tetris Attack — Tetris Attack is the Western-localized SNES puzzle game originally released in Japan as Panel de Pon, later remade as Pokémon Puzzle League. Its cast was reskinned with characters from Yoshi’s Island, including Poochy, Wiggler, and Blargg, making it a distinctive Nintendo puzzle title.

• Quarry — A quarry is an open excavation for extracting stone, and the word can also refer to an animal pursued by hunters or a diamond-shaped lattice window. The term’s multiple meanings make it a common vocabulary answer.

• Queer anarchism
  • slogans
    • being gay and doing crimes — Being gay and doing crimes is a queer-anarchist slogan linking same-sex desire with criminality as a political provocation. The clue set points to The Mary Nardini Gang, Leopold and Loeb, and Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith.

• quest — Quest is a general word for a search or journey, and in literary-religious contexts it can name works or principles involving a pursuit. The evidence also points to theological scholarship on the historical Jesus, where “quest” appears in book titles and research program names.

• seals — Seals are stamp-like objects used in administration and trade, from Mesopotamian cylinder seals to Chinese imperial seals. In mythology, seals also appear in shape-shifting stories involving Heimdall, Loki, and selkies.

• John Gray — John Gray is the self-help author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. The clues point to his relationship-advice formula and his frequent media presence, especially as a popular talk-show guest.

• Size
  • being small — This is the trait of being small, tiny, or miniature, as in myths about little people or dwarves. It is also the fate of characters turned into dolls or otherwise reduced in size in games like Grounded and It Takes Two.
• Snow figures
  • a snowman — A snowman is a figure built from snow and often associated with winter imagery. It appears in songs and poems, including the Disney song “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” and Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man.”
• Social gatherings
  • a dinner party — A dinner party is a formal shared meal or festive gathering, often used in fiction as a social occasion that structures conversation and reveals character. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway centers on Clarissa Dalloway’s preparations for one, while Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls opens with historic women meeting at one.
• Sony virtual reality hardware
  • PlayStation VR — PlayStation VR is Sony’s virtual-reality headset for the PlayStation 4 family of consoles. It uses a visor and motion-tracking accessories such as the DualShock or Move controllers for games like Here They Lie, Farpoint, and Astro Bot: Rescue Mission.
• Spacecraft programs
  • Soyuz — Soyuz was the Soviet crewed spacecraft series whose nineteenth mission supported the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. The program followed Vostok and Voskhod and later became a symbol of détente through Soyuz-Mir collaborations.
• sports and games
  • blood sports
    • baiting — Baiting was a blood sport in which dogs, bulls, or bears were set upon one another, with bear-baiting especially popular in Tudor England. The term has also been extended to online provocations such as rage-baiting.
• Sports equipment
  • basketballs — Basketballs are a recurring prop in pop-culture references from Space Jam to recent superhero and horror films. They also appear in conceptual art, such as John Baldessari’s photographic work and a Jeff Koons piece involving three balls in a tank.
• Sportswriters
  • Roger Kahn — Roger Kahn was an American sports writer best known for The Boys of Summer, his classic book about the Brooklyn Dodgers. He also wrote nonfiction about boxing and baseball, along with novels such as The Seventh Game and But Not to Keep.
• Spy fiction
  • Spy — A spy is an intelligence agent or undercover operative who gathers information covertly, often while infiltrating a rival organization or working for a government or other organization. Spy fiction centers on this profession, and examples in the evidence include James Bond, George Smiley, Nathan Hale, the Culper Ring, the protagonist of Our Man in Havana, and the protagonists of Native Speaker and The Sympathizer.
• Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove
  • Curtis LeMay, Henry Kissinger, and Edward Teller — Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove is often said to draw on Curtis LeMay, Henry Kissinger, and Edward Teller. The cited trio includes a bomber strategist, a secretary of state, and a Hungarian-born Manhattan Project scientist.
• Star Wars
  • Malastare — Malastare is a Star Wars planet associated with pod racing and with Ree Yees’s species. It is mentioned as a world besides Tatooine where pod racing takes place.
• Star Wars video games
  • Star Wars: TIE Fighter — Star Wars: TIE Fighter is the LucasArts space combat simulator that follows Imperial pilot Maarek Stele. Its missions and expansions involve Imperial intrigue, the Secret Order, and campaigns against Admiral Harkov and Grand Admiral Zaarin.

• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron — Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is a LucasArts flight-action game series focused on Rebel starfighter missions. Its entries include the Nintendo 64 and GameCube titles developed by Factor 5, with the first game tied to the Hidden X-Wing and an Expansion Pack.

• stone — Stone is a broad material clue used for megaliths, sculpture, and ancient tools. It appears in references to Stonehenge, Skara Brae, Avebury, Olmec heads, Inca and Aztec ritual objects, and modern land art such as Spiral Jetty.

• Stone circles
  • Sunhoney — Sunhoney is a stone circle in Scotland set on a hill and surrounded by old trees. Its engraved cups have been linked to lunar phases or other celestial phenomena.

• Stoner’s Pot Palace — Stoner’s Pot Palace is a fictional store name used for a joke about false advertising, since it sells pottery rather than marijuana. The clues point to a comic store-name gag rather than a real retail brand.

• strategy — Strategy is the long-term planning concept that underlies military, business, and grand-strategy thinking. In game studies it also names a genre that includes grand strategy and series like Civilization and XCOM.

• Strategy & Tactics — Strategy & Tactics is a long-running wargaming magazine that began as a fanzine in 1966 and was later acquired by Jim Dunnigan. It became known for pairing each issue with a new wargame and for its computerized customer-feedback system, before passing from SPI to TSR and later Decision Games.

• Street preaching
  • Brother Jed — Brother Jed was the street-preaching persona of George Edward Smock, a campus evangelist associated with fiery religious sermons. He was linked to Indiana University and described as a crusading preacher who toured campuses across the country.
• Striking techniques
  • Punching — Punching is the act of striking someone with a fist. It is the manner in which Ezio defeats the pope at the climax of Assassin’s Creed II in the supplied clue set.
• String instruments

  • fiddle — The fiddle is the folk and bluegrass instrument often treated as the violin’s informal counterpart. It appears in Celtic, old-time, and country-associated performances, including players such as Alicia Svigals, Gillian Welch collaborators, and bluegrass performers.

  • kora — The kora is a 21-string West African lute-harp traditionally associated with Mandinka griots. It is played with rapid ornamental figures and rhythmic ostinatos, and players like Ballaké Sissoko and Toumani Diabaté are common clues.

  • tamboura — A tamboura is a long-necked string instrument that typically provides the drone in much Hindu music. It is often used alongside the sitar and tabla and usually has four to six strings.

• Structuralism
  • structures — In linguistics and anthropology, structures can refer to underlying patterns such as Chomsky’s deep structure or Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist kinship forms. These analyses look for recurring relations beneath surface appearances.
• submergence
  • sinking — Sinking is the fate of cities or landmasses that disappear beneath water or subside into it, as in legends of Atlantis, Ys, and Kitezh. The clue set also extends the term to land subsidence and water loss in karst or groundwater systems.
• Substances
  • goo — Goo is a sticky, amorphous substance that can appear in game and science clues alike. It names Gooigi in Luigi’s Mansion 3 and the World of Goo puzzle game, and in another clue it is contrasted with water for flow experiments.
• Wives
  • his wife — The clue answer refers to a wife, or more generally a spouse. It is the person a character may try to deceive in a death-faking scene or rush toward in a final imagined reunion.

Games, Puzzles, and Play

• Backgammon
  • Doubling cube — The doubling cube is the backgammon device used to raise the stakes in a game. Its faces show powers of two, and rules like the Crawford rule govern when it can or cannot be used in match play.
• Chess
  • Chess sets
    • Lewis chessmen — The Lewis chessmen are a group of medieval chess pieces found on the Isle of Lewis and famous for their walrus-ivory construction. They include carved kings, queens, knights, and warders, and are often cited as one of the most distinctive surviving sets of medieval chessmen.
  • Chess variants
    • Alice chess — Alice chess is a two-board chess variant inspired by Alice in Wonderland. When a piece moves, it passes ‘through the looking glass’ to the other board, and legality is checked only on the board where the piece starts.

  • en passant — En passant is the French chess rule that lets a pawn capture an opposing pawn that has just advanced two squares. It is a special pawn move that can only be made immediately after the double-step advance.

  • playing chess — Chess is the board game of kings, engines, and grandmaster world championships, famously associated with Fischer, Spassky, Kasparov, and Deep Blue. It also appears in art and culture, from Duchamp to Eakins, and in computer science through search, endgames, and engine ratings.
• Chess grandmasters
  • Hikaru Nakamura — Hikaru Nakamura is the Japanese-American grandmaster and popular streamer associated with the Bongcloud, PogChamps commentary, and a long run of Speed Chess Championship success. He was also a former world number two and appeared in Billions.
• Chess openings

  • Evans Gambit — The Evans Gambit is a chess opening in the Giuoco Piano beginning with an early b4 pawn push. It is named for British sea captain William Davies Evans and aims at rapid development after sacrificing a pawn.

  • French Defense — The French Defense is a chess opening that begins 1.e4 e6 and often continues with 2.d4 d5. Common branches include the Winawer, Tarrasch, Exchange, and Advance variations.

  • Sicilian Defence — The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening for Black that begins with 1.e4 c5 rather than occupying the center immediately. Its major branches include the Najdorf, Scheveningen, and Accelerated Dragon variations.

• Chess pieces

  • bishop — A bishop is a chess piece that moves diagonally and is informally worth three points. The term also refers in church usage to a high-ranking clergy member who oversees a diocese, with an archbishop presiding in places like Canterbury.

  • bishops — Bishops are the chess pieces that move diagonally and are worth three points each. They are often discussed in openings through fianchettoes, the Greek gift sacrifice, and distinctions between light-squared and dark-squared bishops.

  • knight — An armored warrior of chivalric literature, exemplified by Gawain and Lancelot, and by Don Quixote’s self-image. The word also names the chess piece that moves in an L-shape and can perform a knight’s tour.
    • Paladin — A paladin is a heroic knight or champion, and in some contexts the word also names the lead character from the television western Have Gun, Will Travel. The term is also used for one of Charlemagne’s twelve peer knights.
  • Rook — The rook is the chess piece that moves horizontally or vertically and also travels with the king during castling. It is the piece sacrificed in the exchange and appears in motifs such as the Arabian Mate and “pigs on the seventh rank.”
• Chess players

  • Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov — Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian chess grandmaster who became world champion after Bobby Fischer forfeited the title in 1975 and held the World Championship from 1975 to 1985. He was one of the dominant players of the 1970s and 1980s, spent many weeks as world number one, and is also known for the long title matches he played against Garry Kasparov.

  • Boris Spassky — Boris Spassky was the eleventh world chess champion, defeating Tigran Petrosian in 1969 before losing the famous 1972 match to Bobby Fischer. He is best known in quizbowl for his Reykjavik loss and later rematches with Fischer.

  • Emmanuel Lasker — Emmanuel Lasker was an early twentieth-century German chess master who held the world championship for the longest time. He defeated Wilhelm Steinitz to win the title and later lost it to José Raúl Capablanca. He also earned a doctorate in abstract algebra and remained a strong tournament player well into older age.

  • Garry Kasparov — Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster and former world champion. He founded the Professional Chess Association, was known for his rivalry with IBM’s Deep Blue and Vladimir Kramnik, held one of the highest chess ratings ever recorded, and later became active in politics.

• Collectible games
  • POGs — POGs are the collectible milk-cap discs that fueled a major 1990s playground craze, played by slamming a stack with a heavier disc called a slammer. The name comes from passion-orange-guava juice ads and the game was revived in modern form through organized tournaments and themed sets.
• Construction toys
  • LEGO bricks — LEGO bricks are the Danish interlocking plastic building toys made by the company founded in Billund; the name comes from a phrase meaning “play well.” They are sold in sets with minifigures and themed lines, and their stud-and-tube pieces can be combined into large-scale models, amateur animations, and theme-park sculptures. Notable references include the LEGO House in Billund, The LEGO Movie, Nathan Sawaya’s brick sculptures, and Ai Weiwei’s attempt to buy them in bulk.
    • Duplo — Duplo is LEGO’s larger brick line for younger children, introduced in 1969. Its oversized pieces are compatible with standard LEGO bricks, and the line has been associated with preschool-themed sets and a bunny logo.
• Crosswords

  • crossword puzzles — Crossword puzzles are grid-based word games in which answers are entered across and down from clues. Quizbowl clues often mention Will Shortz, The New York Times, cryptic crosswords, rotational symmetry, and the famous 1996 election puzzle by Jeremiah Farrell. They are also associated with cruciverbalists and tournament solving.

  • Cryptic crosswords — Cryptic crosswords are a British crossword form built from clues that combine a definition with wordplay. They are associated with cruciverbalists and are credited to E. Powys Mathers, who wrote under the pseudonym Torquemada.

    • cryptic — Cryptic crosswords are the British-style crossword format whose clues use wordplay rather than straightforward definitions. Their clues may rely on anagrams, substitutions, and other riddling constructions instead of a simple synonym.
• Hand games
  • Rock, Paper, Scissors — Rock, paper, scissors is the hand game in which players choose among three symbols to decide a winner by non-transitive matchups. It is also known as roshambo and has variants such as lizard-Spock.
• Number puzzles
  • Kakuro — Kakuro is a number puzzle often described as a cross-sums or cross-addition crossword. Its clues are sums that constrain the digits in each horizontal and vertical run.
• poker hands

  • Dead man’s hand — Dead man’s hand is the poker nickname for a two-pair holding, specifically aces and eights, often described as two black pairs. The name comes from Wild Bill Hickok’s famous final hand when he was shot in Deadwood.

  • royal flush — A royal flush is the highest poker hand, consisting of ten through ace in the same suit. It is also called an ace-high straight flush.

• Puzzles

  • Jigsaw puzzle — A jigsaw puzzle is made of interlocking pieces that fit together to form a picture or map. The form was popularized in the eighteenth century by John Spilsbury as a geography teaching tool.

  • jigsaw puzzles — Jigsaw puzzles are interlocking picture puzzles assembled from many pieces to form a scene. They also appear in literature and art, including Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, where puzzles structure the novel’s central conceit.

  • speedsolving

    • solving a Rubik’s cube — Solving a Rubik’s cube is the task of restoring the colored faces of the famous six-sided twisty puzzle to uniform colors. Common speedsolving methods include CFOP, Petrus, ZZ, and Roux, and world records are measured by completion time.
• Social deduction games
  • Town of Salem — Town of Salem is a social deduction game inspired by Mafia and set in a colonial-era town. Its roles include the Amnesiac, Arsonist, Janitor, Jester, Blackmailer, and Sheriff.
• Steve Jackson Games
  • Dork Tower — Dork Tower is a Steve Jackson Games board game based on John Kovalic’s comic universe. It parodies fantasy gaming, with characters like Amazona and Elrond Hubbard. Its design echoes the old Dark Tower game and features a central three-dimensional tower structure that players rotate. The game is tied to Kovalic’s webcomic about role-playing geeks and related misadventures.
• Stuffed toys
  • teddy bears
    • teddy bear — The teddy bear is a stuffed toy named for Theodore Roosevelt and inspired by a 1902 Clifford Berryman cartoon involving Roosevelt and a bear cub. Morris Michtom turned the image into a toy that became a classic children’s object, later popularized in children’s literature and song. It appears in literary references such as Sebastian Flyte’s Aloysius and John Betjeman’s poems.
• Playground equipment
  • swings — A swing is the garden conveyance featured in Fragonard’s The Swing and in other Rococo and modern art works. The clue set points to the simple suspended seat used for playful or decorative motion, rather than a specific sport or dance term.

Circus, Magic, and Popular Performance

• circus — A circus is a traveling entertainment business centered on acrobats, animals, clowns, and big-top performance. The clue set points to both the traditional circus and its modern theatrical descendants, especially Cirque du Soleil and famous parade or stage depictions in art.

• Circus families
  • The Flying Wallendas — The Flying Wallendas are a famous family of circus tightrope walkers known for spectacular pyramid stunts. Their notoriety deepened after a deadly 1962 pyramid collapse and the later death of patriarch Karl Wallenda in a fall from a wire.

• Jumbo — Jumbo was the famed elephant from P. T. Barnum’s circus whose name became a byword for something very large. He was bought from the London Zoo, later stuffed for display at Tufts, and was killed when struck by a train in Ontario.

• Daredevil stunts
  • Going over Niagara Falls — Going over Niagara Falls is the notorious daredevil stunt first documented by Annie Edson Taylor, who survived the descent in a barrel in 1901. The feat also recalls later stunt attempts and other dramatic incidents involving the Horseshoe Falls on the U.S.-Canadian border.

• David Blaine — David Blaine is a magician and endurance performer known for street magic and extreme stunts. His feats include being buried alive, frozen in ice, staying above the Thames in a box, and attempting a long underwater endurance stunt.

• Magic
  • Curses — Curses are maledictions or hexes, and in the Roman world they were often written on lead defixiones or curse tablets. Examples from Bath were thrown into Sulis Minerva’s spring and often appealed to underworld powers to recover stolen goods.
• Magic users

  • sorcerer — A sorcerer is a practitioner of magic, often contrasted with a wizard or magician in fantasy settings. The clues point to the profession of Egyptian wonder-workers in Exodus and other spell-casters from ancient literature and film.

  • wizard — A wizard is a magician-like expert, and the word also appears in software helpers that guide users through step-by-step tasks. The clue set also points to related uses in the titles Wizards of the Coast and The Wizard of Oz.

• Magic words
  • Abracadabra — Abracadabra is a cabalistic charm once written on amulets in a triangular form and used as a supposed protection against illness or evil. It is also the title of a Steve Miller Band hit from the early 1980s.
• Puppets
  • Ventriloquist’s dummies
    • Ventriloquist’s dummy — A ventriloquist’s dummy is the puppet-like figure controlled by a performer speaking for it. The Goosebumps villain Slappy is one of these, and he appears in the film adaptation of the series.
• stunts
  • Niagara Falls barrel stunts
    • Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel — Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel is the famous stunt first performed by Annie Edson Taylor in 1901. Later daredevils repeated the feat, including Karel Soucek, and some attempts ended in death despite the stunt’s outlawed status.
  • survived going over Niagara Falls — The answer is the feat of surviving a trip over Niagara Falls, which several stunt performers attempted in barrels, drums, or other makeshift craft. Named examples include Annie Taylor, Bobby Leach, Jean Lussier, Roger Woodward, Steven Trotter, and Kirk Jones.

Names, Expressions, and Shared Terms

• Given names

  • Adam — Adam is a Polish first name associated in the clues with writers such as Adam Zagajewski and Adam Mickiewicz. The prompt points especially to the author of Pan Tadeusz and to a poet whose work includes the line “Try to praise the mutilated world.”

  • Barbara — Barbara is a recurring first name in literature and the arts, appearing in Shaw’s Major Barbara, Whittier’s poem “Barbara Frietchie,” and Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen’s novel Barbara. It also identifies figures such as Barbara Strozzi and Barbara Streisand, whose names recur in clues about music and film.

  • Becky — Becky is a female given name that appears in pop lyrics, internet memes, and a Mattel doll released in a wheelchair in 1997. The name is also used in songs and gossip as a shorthand for a certain kind of young woman.

  • Carl — Carl Sandburg was an American poet associated with Chicago and Grass, famous for calling his home city “City of the Big Shoulders” and describing fog as arriving “on little cat feet.” Carl Jung was the Swiss psychotherapist who developed archetypes, the collective unconscious, anima and animus, and the idea of synchronicity. Carl Schurz was a German-born American politician and senator, while composers with the first name Carl include Carl Orff, known for Carmina Burana.

  • Carlos — Carlos is a common given name and royal name that appears in music, politics, and sports clues. It can refer to composers such as Carlos Chávez, Spanish kings named Carlos, the Brazilian politician Carlos Lacerda, or the basketball player Carlos Boozer.

  • Cordell — Cordell is a male given name most famously attached to Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. A clue may point to the first name shared with television’s Walker, Texas Ranger.

  • Cynthia — Cynthia is the first name shared by poets and fiction writers such as Cynthia Zarin and Cynthia Ozick. It also appears in classical poetry as the name Propertius gives to Hostia, a recurring beloved in Roman elegy.

  • Donald — Donald is the first name shared by several American poets, including Justice and Hall. The clues point to the given name rather than a specific full surname identity.

  • Eileen — Eileen is a female first name that titles a novel by Ottessa Moshfegh and the Dexys Midnight Runners song “Come On Eileen.” It also appears in pop-culture references ranging from Bloodborne’s Eileen the Crow to skier Eileen Gu.

  • Gary — Gary is a common first name in the clues, appearing in references ranging from the actors Gary Busey, Gary Coleman, and Gary Oldman to the economist Gary Becker. It also titles Gary, Indiana and appears in the title of Taylor Mac’s sequel play Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus.

  • Joe — Joe is the shared English given name of the gangster in Black River, the actor Shishido, and composer Joe Hisaishi. Hisaishi is the composer associated with Hayao Miyazaki films and with the theme for Spirited Away, while Shishido is the yakuza-film actor known for his augmented cheeks.

  • Johnny — Johnny is a common clue-word in titles and folk culture, from literacy books like Why Johnny Can’t Read to shanties and children’s songs. It also appears in names such as Johnny Appleseed and Johnny Inkslinger.

  • Masculine given names
    • Kenny — Kenny is a common first name appearing in jazz clues such as Kenny Barron, Kenny Clarke, and Kenny Burrell, as well as in fictional characters from Breaking Bad and South Park.

  • Max — Max is a given name that appears in clues about Max Planck, Max the dog from the Grinch, and other characters and authors. It can point to the title character of Where the Wild Things Are or to the detective duo Sam and Max.

  • Melanie — Melanie is a given name associated with characters such as Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind and with two of the Spice Girls. The name is often traced to a Greek root meaning dark or black.

  • Oscar — Oscar is a common first name for literary figures including the protagonists of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. It also points to Oscar Wilde, the playwright of The Importance of Being Earnest, and to the Academy Award’s colloquial name.

  • Peter — Peter is a common first name shared by figures ranging from the apostle Peter to Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Peter O’Toole, and Peter Pan. The clues deliberately gather several unrelated namesakes and ask for the shared forename rather than a single individual.

  • Roger — This first name belongs to Jack Merridew’s ruthless follower in Lord of the Flies and to Hester Prynne’s husband in The Scarlet Letter. It also names a medieval Sicilian king and the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

  • Sebastian — Sebastian is a recurring Shakespearean and literary name, most famously the brother of Viola in Twelfth Night. The name also belongs to Sebastian in The Tempest, Alonso’s weak-willed brother, and to Sebastião I of Portugal, whose death at Alcácer Quibir led to the Sebastianist hope for his return.

  • Sophie — Sophie is the title figure in works ranging from literary protagonists to the late electronic musician SOPHIE, who helped pioneer hyperpop. The name appears in novels by Danticat and Styron, and in high-profile hate-crime cases involving Sophie Lancaster and Sophie Elliott.

  • Stanisław — Stanisław is the Polish given name shared by writers such as Stanisław Lem and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. It is also the name of Stanisław II Augustus Poniatowski, the last king of Poland, who abdicated during the Third Partition.

  • Trevor — Trevor is a common first name used to identify several people in the clues, including Trevor Berbick, Trevor Ariza, Trevor Immelman, and Trevor Hoffman. The examples range from boxing and basketball to golf and baseball.
• Number phrases
  • number one — Number One is a title phrase that can refer to the first-ranked spot or to a first-place identity. It also appears in literary and pop-culture titles such as I Am Number Four and The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.
• Profanity
  • fucking — Fucking is the profane gerund that titles several songs and artworks in the clues, including a Tenacious D song and a Pantera track. The word also appears in titles of contemporary art pieces by artists such as Damien Hirst, Maurizio Cattelan, and Jake and Dinos Chapman.
• proverbs
  • A rolling stone gathers no moss — “A rolling stone gathers no moss” is a proverb about constant movement preventing accumulation or settling. It is expressed in several languages, including Latin, Italian, and French, in the clues here.
• pseudonyms
  • generic pseudonyms
    • Mr. X — Mr. X is a generic pseudonym for a hidden identity, used by writers and spies who want to remain secret. The name is associated with George Kennan’s byline and other fictional or anonymous pursuits. The name is also used by Homer Simpson in one parody of a media insider persona.
• Punctuation marks

  • angle brackets — Angle brackets are the punctuation marks used for bra-ket notation, expectation values, and inner products. They are also called chevrons or greater-than-and-less-than signs.

  • Sentence-ending punctuation

    • periods — Periods are punctuation marks used to end sentences, and British English also calls them full stops. In chemistry, periods are the horizontal rows of the periodic table.
• Shared terms
  • shells — Shells are a broad clue answer because the word names several unrelated ideas, from turtle shells and shell mounds to shell beads. In science they appear in nuclear shell models and in chemistry via VSEPR, while in history and anthropology they are tied to wampum and cowrie money. The term also refers to command-line interpreters such as Bash that run programs in a terminal. Because the clues mix zoology, computing, and material culture, the safest study focus is the shared word rather than any one specialized use.
    • seashells — Seashells appear in art and archaeology as shells used as chariots, decorative objects, and even currency. Cowrie shells in particular were widely used as money and show up in sites from the Jomon era to the Kongo kingdom.
• Independent concepts
  • turns — Turns are alternating periods in JRPG combat systems and also a word for nonrepetitive protein secondary-structure motifs. The word also names major intellectual shifts such as the linguistic turn and the pictorial turn.
• Concepts
  • Discipline — Discipline is a word that can mean a field of study, training within rules, or punishment intended to correct behavior. Its etymology points back to Latin for instruction.
• Grouping concepts
  • cluster — A cluster can mean a grouping of stars, galaxies, grapes, consonants, or other things gathered together. In medicine, it also names a type of severe headache, and in psychology it can refer to grouped personality disorders such as Cluster B.