Big Boy?
Tainted win?
Last night Tinfoil Hat Brigade eked out a one-point win in Brit’s Pub’s monthly trivia contest (119 to 118 of a possible 136; there were approximately 24 teams). One question in the final round was “Name the city hit by the ’Big Boy’ bomb.” I immediately thought of Nagasaki. Smarter members of my team knew that the names of the two bombs dropped in World War II were “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” (I can only plead in my defense that I was remembering that the second bomb was given the bigger-sounding codename.) What to do? We were sure (based on smarter team member’s memories of the Paul Newman movie “Fat Man and Little Boy”) that the quiz master—who, by rule if not by past performance, is always right—was in fact wrong. We went with Nagasaki after considering the possibility that a bomb named “Big Boy” was dropped quite recently—perhaps on the Moscow airport.
In fact, Nagasaki was the answer He-who-shall-not-be-questioned accepted. But much Internet research (Google searches and Wikipedia) find no evidence of a “Big Boy” bomb. It is true that Doctor Evil launched himself into space on a rocket disguised as a “Bob’s Big Boy” statue, but as far as we know the rocket was not weaponized and did not fall on a city.
We will enjoy our $100 first prize without shame.[1] After all, we have been on the wrong side of this situation before:
- We answered “Redmond, Washington” to the question “In which American city is Microsoft headquartered?” Quiz master accepted only “Seattle.”
- Our answer of “orange” was deemed incorrect to the question “Bergamot is a variety of what fruit?” His answer, “pear.”
- In a music round, the quiz master played “The Wedding March” from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but called Richard Wagner the composer (confusing it with Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus”).
One of our super-subs, Paul, sat in for Tim last night and provided at least one answer that none of the other four of us would have come up with. He knew that Roy Lichtenstein painted “Whaam!” and “The Drowning Girl.”
See the Tinfoil Hat Brigade information page for more trivia about the trivialists.
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Notes
- For all we know, the second-place team may have also answered “Nagasaki” to that question. [^]
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