Any Questions: Recent Episodes
Ian Pickus
Tomorrow is the first day of October. Before January and February were added to the Roman calendar, October was the eighth month of the year (hence the prefix “octo-”) but it’s now the tenth month. To commemorate the start of a month with a (now) misleading name, our questions this week are about other things with misleading names.
Summer is running out. With any luck, we’ll have a few more weeks of warm weather to fit it all in. But before we change seasons to autumn, you might have a few more summer items on your to-do list.
Today is National Vinyl Record Day. Not to be confused with National Record Store Day, this observation is run by a non-profit that works to preserve vinyl music and culture. So today’s show is all about landmark albums.
Here in the Northeast, it’s been hot. Very hot. For a while now. It’s so hot that even our questions are affected by the heat this week.
This week, we’re going to attempt to find some common ground. I’ll give you three descriptions, and the names of the things I’m describing all share exactly one word. You tell me what that word is.
Tuesday, June 14, was Flag Day. The observance commemorates the adoption of the U.S. flag on that date in 1777. Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though Pennsylvania has observed it as a state holiday since 1937 and New York designates observation of Flag Day as the second Sunday in June. Tonight we’ll observe Flag Day with a game of Categories. I’ll give you a category and you name things in that category that being with each of the letters F, L, A, and G.
Proving once again that old is gold, the Rolling Stones kicked off their 60th anniversary tour earlier this month in Madrid with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood up front. At the same time, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are both on solo summer tours of the U.S. right now, including a Ringo concert at Tanglewood June 17th. So this week, in honor of our tenacious and indefatigable rock gods, I’ll give you a piece of a trivia about the groups, and you tell me if it applies to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or both.
This is our first show in June this year, and so much like it’s the beginning of June on the calendar, it’s also the beginning of June in the correct answers this week, which will each start with the letters JU.
In honor of the many cookouts that will be happening this weekend, we’ll have a cookout of our own tonight. We’ll start with some food, and you cook “out” some letters to get the right answers.
Today is Friday the 13th, a day thought by some people to be unlucky. Tonight we'll try to counteract some of that bad luck with some good luck.
At many campuses, it’s the end of the semester for college students and their weary instructors alike. And that got me thinking about some famous college graduates.
In honor of Earth Day, all of today’s answers can be found using letters in the name Earth Day.
This year, income taxes in the U.S. are due for most residents on Monday, April 18. Usually they are due today, April 15, but the deadline is pushed ahead to next week because Emancipation Day, a local holiday in the District of Columbia, was observed today. If you happen to live in either Maine or Massachusetts, you have until Tuesday the 19th to file because the 18th is Patriots Day in those two states. Tonight, we'll file our taxes, sort of. Each correct answer will be a two-word name, title, or phrase in which the second word rhymes with "tax."
After labor unrest and lots of hand-wringing, a slightly delayed but full 162-game baseball season kicked off yesterday. As always, 30 teams are kicking off the year with hopes of a World Series parade. Some are more likely than others to get there. In honor of the baseball season, each answer today is an abbreviated baseball stat in other words.
This weekend is the 44th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, directed by New York Times crossword editor (and onetime Any Questions? guest) Will Shortz.
On Sunday, the 94th Academy Awards – commonly known as the Oscars – will be handed out. The ceremony will take place, as it has since 2002, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles and will be co-hosted by Regina King, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes, marking the first time since 2011 where there will be multiple hosts. We'll hand out our own Oscars on tonight's show by having some questions about famous Oscars.
Next Monday, March 14th is Pi Day, a celebration of the mathematical constant pi, whose first three digits are 3, 1, and 4. The first Pi Day celebration was organized in 1988 at the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco. Even though Pi Day is officially Monday, our observation of it is tonight. Each correct answer this time will begin with the letters "pi".
This week’s show is a little different than usual. We’ll just jump into the questions and this week’s challenge will be figuring out the theme.
Grab a pencil, some paper, and your calculator because it's time for some musical word problems. I'll give you a problem based on songs with numbers in their titles and you figure out what the answer is.
Monday is Presidents Day. The holiday was originally meant to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, but was moved to the third Monday in February in 1971. In honor of Presidents Day, tonight we’ll turn to the silver screen. I’ll describe a movie president, you name the actor.
This week, Mike celebrates David Ortiz's election to the Hall of Fame with a game of categories.
We’ve played Categories on this show before, but since we’ve reached the end of the year, month-wise, we’re going to play a different version of Categories. I’m going to give you a category and you tell me the thing in that category that comes alphabetically last.
In honor of this much-needed holiday, today we’ll have a Thanksgiving break of our own. Every correct answer will begin with TH. You figure out the rest.
The 2021 World Series is in full swing. As always, we hope that if your favorite team is playing in the series, they have won more games than the other team. It also means that it is time once again for a now-annual tradition here on Any Questions?: our series category.
This week, five NFL teams are going to play our game, because each correct answer will contain the nickname of an NFL team in the singular (like “Dolphin” or “Cowboy”).
WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel take their inspiration from "Gunsmoke."