I am pleased to report that My Favorite Team got every one of this week's questions correct except for the "toss-up" questions whose answers are some random number that one just tries to answer closer than everyone else.

What is the distance between the center of a circle and its perimeter?

What genomics company filed for bankruptcy in March 2025?

What Latin American dessert consists of spongecake soaked in a mixture of whole, evaporated, and condensed milk?

What is the name of Percy Jackson's friendly hellhound?

What manicure style is characterised by a natural base and white tips?

What disease was treated by the earliest vaccinations?

What basketball coach led UCLA to seven straight NCAA championships?

What board game includes the characters Frostine, Plumpy, Gloppy, and Gramma Nutt?

What singer who died in 1995 was called the Queen of Tejano Music?

What are the birthplace countries of the following actors?  Heath Ledger, Ryan Reynolds, Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman, Lupita Nyong'o

What newsworthy country in 2025 is the world's largest island (not also reckoned as a continental landmass)?

What is the correct spelling of the region that includes Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and many other islands?

What is the only country with a non-quadrilateral flag?

What "Goonies" actor also voiced teenage mutant ninja turtle Donatello in two movies and Slash on TV?

Silk production begin during the Neolithic in what country?

Who was the author of "Don Quixote", often considered the first modern novel?

Cusco was the capital of what empire until the 16th century?

What actress and wife of Harrison Ford stars in "Curse of the Starving Class" with Christian Slater?

What civil rights activist was memorialized by Barack Obama for his legacy in the farm labor movement?

What annual event was inaugurated in 1985 at Madison Square Garden, with Muhammad Ali as a referee and Liberace as a timekeeper?

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radius; 23&me; tres leches? in this economy?; guess: Cerberus; French manicure; smallpox; Wooden; (no idea); Selena; Australia, Canada, Ukraine?, Israel, Kenya; Greenland; Caribbean; Nepal; guess: Corey Feldman; guess: China; Cervantes; the Inca Empire, or the Tawantinsuyo if you wanna get fancy; Flockheart; Chávez; (no idea)
20 right! The hellhound had multiple choice answers which I do not remember, but we had a youthful Percy fan on our team to get it. I was useless on most of the birthplaces, but she also got the surprising correct answer for Lupita. They did not get fancy with the Inca, but I bow to your masterful flourish. We only bet a minimal amount on the final question, but all the teams did get it right. A sport-like entertainment?
I know some but not all of these (without looking at @rone's answers). Guess which ones I know.
Nice - congrats! I got som of those, but very far from all.
 

Long-awaited semi-finals were going well at first, but our second half was not good enough.

What state has the Crayola factory and also the first US oil well?

Baylen Dupree of "Baylen Out Loud" has what unusual condition?

In what country is Ushuaia, the world's most southermost city?

What assassinated president had campaigned on the slogan "A Full Dinner Pail"?

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I actually know one without cheating for a change!
I’m stumped by all except for #1.
I don't recall visiting the Crayola factory, but I have now learned that their 100,000,000,000th crayon was made by Mr. Fred Rogers.
That’s beautiful.
 

The last question thwarted us again and disproved my Guessability Theory.

What is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea?

What 1958 film is about a fan who'd sell his soul to aid the Washington Senators?

Who responded to Barry Goldwater's "In your heart you know he's right" slogan with "In your guts you know he's nuts"?

What song ranked #3 by Rolling Stone and #1 on its list of protest songs begins with the following lyrics?

"I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh, and just like the river, I've been running ever since"

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What's your Guessability Theory?
"The final answer is almost always something you could have guessed, even if you didn't." I guess that "almost" means it wasn't totally disproved, but it's a pretty good counter-example.
Ah, that does happen to me maybe half the time.
That anti Barry Goldwater slogan reminds me of "they're weird," but with more heat and mockery.
 

Tesla's sales are down 13% globally in Q1, compared to Q1 of last year.

It was worse in China, and in most of Europe.

I want to celebrate, but this still leaves me wondering about the math. If sales tanked worse in most countries, then they may have improved somewhere else to balance at 13%.

Guess where "somewhere" is gonna be... guess what country we don't have sales numbers for yet 🤣

There are other explanations though, the Model Y just got a refresh that some people were waiting for. That bump won't last.

So I am still hopeful that Americans will be either too smart or too dumb to buy a Tesla!

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4/2
 

Finished week 2 at Google (on contract). It's quite a relief to get a job where i'm given a task and am not micromanaged (even if all my various facets of existence within the Google hivemind have yet to fully coalesce, which hindered my ability to work until this Wednesday).  I've had to thrash against the limits of my ignorance yet, after establishing the initial parameters, managed to surpass obstacles on my own, needing only once to ask for clarification.

Plumbing and electric work on the new house is nearly done, which will allow us to insure it.  The garage at the current house has been obliterated and removed, and the dogs are greatly loving the new roaming grounds.  Memo hates shovels and, when faced with the Bobcat that remained overnight (the garage demolition took two days), felt that it was his duty to bite the largest shovel he'd ever seen.

four stylized capybaras with too-small bodies, three wearing Wayfarers, drawn in dark pencil

Our grandson Elliott drew some capybaras during his last visit. They now grace our fridge.

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Capybara: Hippocleides of Rodentia.
Love these.
 

The semifinals aren't happening yet, but My Favorite Team did get tripped up by the final question this week.  My post-mortem advice was that the final answer is almost always something you could have guessed, even if you didn't.

What character created by Stan Lee was supposed to be unlikeable because "everyone hates war"?

What tech company founded in 1939 was named based on the flip of a coin?

What was Elvis Presley's first number one hit?

What automobile device was first used to try to gain an advantage in the 1894 Paris-Rouen race?

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There are many, many posts of yours that I enjoy but am not clever enough to craft a response to. This is one of those.
 

My wife is watching a video titled "Pride and Prejudice 1995 More Things You Might Have Missed".  My immediate thought was "Good grief, that's a lot of things to have missed!"

And then I laughed and laughed and laughed at myself.  

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Goofball.



The movie is being re-released, saw a trailer for it recently.



I dropped a reference to it in a song once, so this is my big moment to rack up twos, maybe even threes of listeners.
MP3! MP3!
 

Still rocking, My Favorite Team is in the semifinals.  We'll see how we do against tougher competition. 

Rehoboam is the name of an AI in what dystopian sci-fi series on HBO?

What sportswear company founded in 1938 is named for a river in Oregon?

Miss Trunchbull is the headmistress in what novel by Roald Dahl?

After his death in 2022, whose nickname was added to his home country's dictionary as a synonym for "exceptional, incomparable, unique"​​​​​​​?

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3/21
 
 

Fan(s?) of nerdsholmferret crosswords will recognize the first one, which I answered with glee.  Do not get me started on "Rick Pitino" or "Malcolm Gladwell", which I nearly answered, with gnashing of teeth.

In the movie "Better Off Dead", Johnny the paperboy repeatedly demands what quantity of money?

What Paul Simon song starts with "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all" ?

What movie features this quote:  "We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they've come" ?

What 18th century Prussian monarch composed flute sonatas and corresponded with Voltaire about philosophy, in addition to waging wars of conquest?



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I know the first two.

The second one has a great performance as a medley with "Maybelline" on an album I won't mention because it would ruin it for anyone who's trying to solve the puzzle.