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Eclectic Lunchbox of Delights

The Brobdingnagian Sooper-Dooper Genius Quiz!
Presented proudly (?) by Chris Street

It's fun.
It's free.
It'll make your head hurt.

Worse than anything the Oxford Triumvirate could throw at you. Hilbert's Problems are a snap compared to these chestnuts. Think you're smart? Think you're wise? Think you've got everything there is to know about the world stored away in your chest and locked up in your pocket? Well, think again, and take...
THE BROBDINGNAGIAN SOOPER-DOOPER GENIUS QUIZ

Rev. 1.0.0a, 29-Sep-1999

As submitted by

DR. REGINALD K. ROOTINTOOTIN,
University of Upper Dogpatch, Surrey,

and patiently reviewed by

DRS. HY E. KNUPH,
JULIA M. MIKIWEIS,
and I. M. ALWEISS-LETZT.

INSTRUCTIONS.

Please review this section carefully as it includes important information which may boost your score on this test and keep your head from exploding.

These instructions pertain to the taking of the quiz in general. More specific instructions will be given in each section, and in any applicable question as appropriate. This test is void where prohibited by law; official rules are posted at the nearest Burger Barn™ restaurant.
I. Who should take this quiz?
Students which have memorized the 10 million phone numbers in the New York City area telephone directories and who have subsequently forgotten them are the central target audience for this exam. However students which have successfully completed a two-year intensive training program in Underwater Basket-Weaving, Film Animation Studies, and Polymorphic Modelling of Cute Little Puppies Using Jell-o and Sporks are also welcome to take this examination. People that hold advanced degrees in Classical Literature, Greek, Latin, or Hebrew, are encouraged to take this test, provided that they also hold degrees in Music, Astrophysics, Mathematics and Theology, or at least believe in themselves.
Of course, any old slob can try as well.
II. What is required to take this quiz?
It depends on what you mean. Equipmentwise, the only thing you are required to bring to the testing area is a Number 2 pencil. (Number 1 pencils are only for show-offs and are so not allowed.) Other equipment will be provided by the Test Administrators.
However, the first page of Section One alone requires a memory like a steel trap and a degree of familiarity with at least two non-Romance languages. To complete the entire test correctly within the time constraints will require incredible genius and stamina beyond any mortal human's capacity. You have been suitably warned.
III. What aids are allowed on this test?
The following aids have been approved by the committee which approves these kind of things:

Two (2) pieces of scratch paper, each of dimensions not exceeding 8½ x 11 inches.

One (1) VHS copy of your favorite (or least-liked) Jerry Lewis film

One (1) VHS video cassette player to view said videotape.

One (1) handheld calculator, without symbolic algebra abilities.

One (1) security blanket, to hold on to tight when things get tough.

A bottle of pills. We won't ask what kind of pills that they are, but it's highly suggested that you should take whatever you think that you need.

Anything else, including, but not limited to, extraneous notes, computing devices, and magical amulets, is strictly verboten.
IV. What kind of score is expected of me?
If you don't do poorly, it's a miracle.
V. Guessing
If, at any time, it becomes apparent that you are guessing the answers to this test, we will summon up a magical imp which will track your family down and plague you and your descendants to the fourth generation with bad impressions of Carrie Fisher.
VI. If you must eat during the test...
...then please chew with your mouth closed.
VII. How can I keep my head from exploding?
Since the Brobdingnagian Sooper-Dooper Genius Quiz is of an extremely taxing nature and requires great mental concentration, it is not entirely unknown for a subject's head to explode suddenly and with little warning. This must be avoided at all costs. Not only is it extremely painful, but it creates an unfair distraction for all of the test-takers whose heads have not yet exploded.
If you, at any time during the test, feel intense pain shooting from temple to temple or hear a loud incessant buzzing, immediately take the following steps to keep your head from blowing up:

Clamp your hands with crushing force upon both sides of your head.

Leap uptop your assigned Test Taking Desk and shout, "Whee-whee-whee-whee!"

If the pain or buzzing still has not stopped, scream the numbers backwards from 100 to 1.

If another test-taker is now at the "Whee-whee...!" stage, join them in a stirring rendition of The Chatanooga Choo-Choo.

Finally, deliver, in as somber a voice as you can muster, the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Return to your seat and proceed to finish the test.

If you follow these rules carefully and rigorously, you will not only save your head, but also ensure that other test-takers will not be unnecessarily disturbed.
VIII. Cheating
Don't. Cheating is strictly frowned upon, which means it will grow up to be an absolutely noisome adult. It is bad. Ew. Yuck.
Thirty or forty Test Administrators will be patrolling the test area throughout the duration of the quiz. You will recognize them by their snarling, rapier sharp teeth and their amazingly solid, developed musculature.

SECTION ONE.

You have thirty minutes or so to complete this section of the test. Do not begin until you see the Head Test Administrator wave the enormous checkered flag. Please disregard the television set; Ms. Knepps simply cannot function without her daily soaps. Do not make any noise whatsoever, except during the commercials.
Remember that there is no "wrong" answer to some of these questions, and there is no "right" answer. That means you're pretty much hosed over from the start.
If you complete this section before the rest of the class, please go over your answers until the fat lady in the front sings.
Q1. What element is missing from this curious list? (60 pts.)
Cock, A, Mam, Ie, Sch, en, na, dy, Par, Si, Mony, Qw, Kj, Fo, S*, Blah, Blah, Blah... ?

Q2. Robert O'Brien is to Richard O'Brien as Captain Kirk is to...? (22½ pts.)
a) Columbia b) Little Nell c) Frank N. Furter d) None of the forementioned
Q3. You want to hold a Tupperware^TM party and you invite all of your friends over. You know that Mrs. Rhodes is going to come over with her new baby and that she'll steal all of the attention away from your party. What's more, she's a better dresser than you are and she has a lot more money. You are selfish and mean-spirited, so you decide to do what to ensure that your party is the most successful in your area code?
Q5. Determine the location of Question 4, and write it (and answer it!) here: (50 pts.)

Q6. Attempt to read the test composer's mind, and write the answer to Question 6 here: (50 pts.)

Q7. Cartoon Mice Who Ride On Birds
Mrs. Brisby takes off from Omaha at 3:00 pm (local time) riding Jeremy, a crow. Bernard and Miss Bianca take off from Pasadena at 2:25 pm, riding Wilbur, an albatross. Fievel and Tanya Mouskewitz take off from New York at 5:10 pm, riding Henri, a French pigeon. Assume optimal weather conditions and that all our travellers are headed for Pierre, South Dakota. Where does all the luggage go? (You notice that they're never carrying it around in the movies after getting to their destinations!) (This question is worth the weight of the smallest Test Administrator, divided by 500 lbs.)
Q8. Quotations.
Please match the famous movie quotation on the left to the character from Dickens' "Great Expectations" who would have been most likely to utter it. I will not provide a character list; however, you may use the Yellow Pages sitting at the front of the room as a reference. (8 pts. each, or 98.6 pts. if you get all ten... yeah, right.)
a) "You had me at 'Hello!'" ______________________________
b) "Rosebud!" ______________________________
c) "Love means never having to say you're sorry." ______________________________
d) "It's only a flesh wound!" ______________________________
e) "Obi Wan has taught you well." ______________________________
f) "People come and go so quickly here!" ______________________________
g) "Play it, Sam." ______________________________
h) "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn." ______________________________
i) "Are you feeling lucky?" ______________________________
j) "I'm the king of the world!" ______________________________

Q9. Provide conclusive evidence proving either the existence or nonexistence of God. If you believe that there is no evidence that can prove either statement, please justify this statement using a complete proof of unprovability in predicate logic, and offer up a sacrifice in the back room to appease any deity that you may have insulted:

Q10. Please compose a one-act comic operetta in which George W. Bush and Bill Clinton star as two wacky Italian gondiliers competing for the affections of a prima donna ballerina while being pursued by a hippopotamus, that has escaped from a circus. Using a precision electron microscope (available in the front of the classroom), engrave your opera on a grain of salt and Scotch tape it into the ridiculously small space provided below:

(This question is worth 100 pts. for each part of your opera the Test Administrators can sing. Performances will be given after the test on the Placid Veranda; free lemonade will be served.)
Q11. Please compose an miniessay (with no more than 99 words and no fewer than 100 words) comparing and contrasting your opera (from question 10) to Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.
(Worth a random number of points, to be assigned by the Head Test Administrator.)

SECTION TWO.

You have twelve minutes, forty-five seconds to complete this section of the test. To open cage, lift latch. You are allowed two minutes of prayer time to the applicable deity. Please do not tie the laces of the person behind you together. If you complete this section before the rest of the class, erase all of your answers and start again. Try not to chortle even though this test is absolutely ridiculous.
And no bemoaning over how you are being tormented by the Fates!

Q12. Do you like the taste of fried chicken? (8 pts.)
Q13. Skipped due to Ms. Knepps' triskaidekaphobia... continue on to Q14
Q14. Who composed Mozart's Requiem, and who was the first American president? Answer these questions without using vowels.

Q15. Explain, in one hundred words or fewer, how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was an elaborate fabrication of Sherlock Holmes, and how Holmes maintained to the rest of the world that it was he that was fictional, and how he used this ruse to finally catch Moriarty, who is somehow still alive to this day:

At this point in the test, please clip your fingernails. They're disgusting.
Q16. Banjo the Woodpile Cat is to William Raleigh as Muddy Waters is to... ? (18.3 pts.)
a) John Cleese b) the Stanley Steamer c) the Statue of Liberty's torch d) Mr. and Mrs. John Upbury of Humptulips, Washington e) None of the forementioned
Q17. Your sister's had a bad day of it. It started when you stole her hair bow and gave it to a burly hardhat worker to use in nest construction. At first it seemed like an innocent bit of mischief... and gee, did it make that construction overseer happy. You remember the eager glimmer in his eye - it made your day seem worthwhile. Unfortunately, you have just learned that your sister is now being tormented by voices inside her head, that she has lost her ability to hiccup, and that her pet beetle doesn't love her anymore. You can't help but feel a little responsible. Something has to be done to remedy the situation. The question is, what?
a) Go on an incredible quest to retrieve her hair bow, singing lots of dandy songs along the way
b) Play Guggenheim with the Angel of Death for her soul
c) Get a new sister
d) Go find an evil banker who deserves it and stab him in the back

Q18. It's a bit of a problem. You see, you've been exiled to deepest Siberia, and it's the middle of winter. Your legs are frozen to the point that you cannot stand up without collapsing right back to the floor again, and the only way that you and your one child stay alive is to keep the fire burning at all hours. So your daughter has to go outside three or four times a day to get fuel for the fire. But today she has come down with a mysterious sleeping sickness and the doctor says that she'll transform into a Wild Gyrating Senator if she goes outside. You'd rather keep her as she is, so whatdaya do?
a) Find a magic, mystical soup spoon that will instantly resolve your troubles and turn you into a superheroine
b) Legally change your name
c) Deliver a 50-page speech in iambic pentameter about the Meaning of Life and forget your troubles
d) Blow soap bubbles

Q19. How come we human beings sit down in stuffy little rooms and take ridiculous tests like this on things that don't matter, when we could be out doing something?
a) Because we have to
b) Because we have to
c) Because we have to
d) Because we're afraid that if we go outside and play, others will think us to be weird

SECTION THE LAST.

You have eternity minus one minute to finish this section of the test. If you have been unable to complete the first two sections of this test due to some problem you have about the wording of a question, a seemingly unresolvable contradiction in the directions, etc., please write your difficulty on one of your pieces of scratch paper and pass it forward to the Head Test Administrator so that your question may be placed on future revisions of the Brobdingnagian Sooper-Dooper Genius Quiz. When (if) you have finished this final section of the quiz, please follow carefully each of the post-test directions. If you complete this section before the rest of the class, please recite the choicest passages from Voltaire's Candide, or stick your nose in the corner of the room.

Q20. What's the first thing you'll do, once you have your freedom again?
(Apollo's special number of points.)
a) Pray for forgiveness
b) Dance around in a taco seasoning and tapioca paste
c) Ponder the mysteries of being
d) Trade in some of the worn parts in my car for gumballs

Q21.

(The Test Administrators will herd you into the Electrified Floor Maze for this question. There, we will reenact some of the greatest experiments of behavioral psychology.
After your will is sufficiently broken and you have entered a state of learned despair, you will be carried back into the room and the test proper will continue.

You will be docked 12 points for even taking this stupid test in the first place.)

At this point in the test, please pause and make sure that the heads of the test takers next to you have not exploded.
THE FINAL QUESTION: Q22. The very last! The top of the hill! The end of the world! The stunning conclusion! The grand finale! The breathtaking climax! The inspiring finish! The dramatic exit! The wonderful postlude! The pinnacle of your highest aspirations! The ultimate of all of the great questions, and it's...
Eh... wait, we seem to have forgotten it.

(If you got this far, you deserve all of the points.)

STOP YOUR WORK.
No, don't look guilty! You've reached the end of the test! That's it... you're done!
After you've finished your five heaving sighs of relief, put your pencil down and carefully follow all of the Post-Test Directions which we've prepared to make life more difficult yet for you.

POST-TEST DIRECTIONS.

Be sure to go over this helpful checklist to assure that your test is properly graded and not merely discarded like the worthless rubbish it is.

Have you actually answered all of the questions?
Be sure that you do not miss a single question. This is actually harder than it sounds: even though it may appear that you have dutifully answered every question on the page, you may have missed every one of the questions printed in thermosensitive Invisible Ink. At some point during the quiz, a Test Administrator will provide you with a source of heat. Gently and carefully warm your test sheet from behind, and voila! about fifty zillion new questions will appear in a marginally legible rust-colored ink, like so many wildflowers after a desert rain.

A safety note: we should probably be passing around something fairly safe to warm your test sheet, like a small space heater, but politics and budget constraints being what they are, we will probably provide you with something like a welding torch. Some care should be exercised when heating your paper.

Be aware further: you must answer the Invisible Ink questions in Invisible Ink. This makes it kind of hard to correct a mistake, but then, we aren't the kind to be making mistakes, are we?

Once again, if we had the money, we would pass out actual Invisible Ink for you to write with. But, times are hard, and you're going to have to do with milk. At some point in the quiz, a Test Administrator will pass out pint cartons of milk. (Don't worry, health nuts, this will be 1% milk.) Milk makes a passable Invisible Ink, but only if you use a lot of it. So don't be shy! Dallop your pen in the Milk (er, Invisible Ink) and soak your page in it.

Have you turned in your bright orange ticket?
Everybody has been assigned a seat at sign-up time (you should have been given a bright orange ticket, which you should be wearing tied around your forehead.) This bright orange ticket you are required to return with your completed test at the end of the test period.
Theoretically, we could determine which test was yours by your ticket number. However, there may or may not be a game of Musical Chairs in between Sections Two and the Last, so please write your name on the test to entirely eradicate the risk of confusion (see the item immediately following.)
Any test which is turned in without a bright orange ticket is to be refused. Indeed, it is to be declared Rabat by the Head Test Administrator, who will then be required to throw his left sandal at you.

Have you written your name on the top sheet of the test?
Two spaces have been provided on the top of the first sheet of the test. Please print your name neatly in the top space, and print the name of your next-of-kin in the bottom space.
It may seem an obtuse fastidity to ask you to write down your name on the top sheet of the test, but you would be surprised how many people are confused by the two spaces, and write their first name in the top space and their last name in the bottom space. These entries are of course unacceptable, and will be used as cage liners for Ms. Knepps' pet parakeet. Some might wonder why we do not label the first space "YOUR NAME" and the second space "NAME OF NEXT-OF-KIN", but had these people taken the time to follow the directions and carefully warmed the top sheet of the test with their warming torch, these explanatory captions would have indeed appeared in the marginally legible rust-colored ink, clear as crystal. So, of course, when anybody comes to us with a persnickety complaint like that, we merely write their orange ticket number down in our black book and, crossreferencing it with our records, carefully note the name and address of the complainant for further hassling.

Have you made friends with Ms. Knepps?
Sure, she looks scary. And I know she secretly reminds you of the old witch that lived in the dingy, decrepit mansion down the street in your childhood hometown. How did you know she was a witch? Oh, everybody on the schoolyard knew. And I know. Yes, I do. Kids went in to her house and were never heard from again. And everybody knew what she did to them. She turned them into frogs, or lizards, or mice, or she locked them up in her basement to work as her slaves.
But none of that has anything to do with Ms. Knepps. Oh, dearie, no. Sure she gives you the creeps. Sure she's got an eerie spark in her eye. Sure she was giving you weird looks throughout the duration of the test. But she's really a nice lady. And she makes a mean sugar cookie... Oh, she knows those are your favorite. Of course she knows. And I know. That's why we give the tests, and you take them. So go over and say 'hello' to Ms. Knepps... it can't hurt... that much. Go on. I dare ya.

Is your answer sheet intact?
Entries which are folded, spindled, multilated, torn, scorched, or stained with milk will be deemed UNACCEPTABLE and will be summarily incinerated.

FINAL WORDS.

If you're sure you're finished, please hand your paper in a respectful manner to the Head Test Administrator. You will then be brought alone into a windowless side room before a panel of spare Test Administrators, and will be required to answer for any unsuitable test behavior which the Administrators may ascribe to you. You may then be sent into quarantine for a period not exceeding two weeks to rehabilitate and reorient you for the outside world again. (This will be done for your benefit.) Hopefully you will soon be a happy and productive member of society again before you know it.
Your test will be graded and posted in a prominent position in the town square some time between 6 weeks and 27 years after submission, unless it is deemed unsubmissable, in which case you never really submitted it in the first place, but only thought you did, so it was really a nontest and may as well never have happened.
Good luck!

visits since 7:23 PM PST 02 Feb 2003