Quiz Time!
In the wake of the procrastination extravaganza that was the Dean’s Date Liveblog, we here at The Ink feel a little guilty about our unintentional, but, we fear, effective, complicity in achieving the grade deflation quotas.
Sadly, we can’t do much to help you out with that orgo final. But we can help you bone up on your Princeton knowledge, and maybe rekindle the trivia love that got us on Sporcle’s top 25 colleges last semester.Quiz time!1) How many pizzas were consumed at the dodgeball tournament? How many free t-shirts?2) What’s the farthest spot from campus Princeton’s flag flies?3) The first Ivy Leaguers to make the cover of Sports Illustrated were from Princeton. Which team took the honor, and in what year?4) Which Princeton building lent its name to a chemical reaction?5) What hidden message is embedded in the bricks of the computer science building?
6) The statues outside Nassau Hall weren’t always tigers. Who brought them to campus, and what did they replace?7) When was the last Cannon Green bonfire? When will it happen again?
Answers:1) 2,900 shirts were given out, and we devoured 200 pizzas (it’s usually 300, but they switched it up and gave us pizza and barbecue this year).2) Pete Conrad ’53, the third man to walk on the moon, kicked off the University’s quest for intergalactic domination when he planted a Princeton pennant along with the US flag on the Ocean of Storms lunar plain.Also in the “Princeton in Space” category: there’s an asteroid, 508 Princetonia, named for the university.3) Trick question – it was the Princeton University Band that graced the cover of the October 17, 1955 issue.4) The “Old Nassau reaction” is a clock reaction discovered by Princeton undergrads in the 1970s, in which solid orange mercury iodide forms until the mercury is used up, at which point the excess iodide and iodate react to form a black starch iodine complex. See? We’re not totally useless for actual academics.5) It says, “P=NP?” in ASCII code. It’s a major unsolved problem in computer science that basically asks whether there are efficient algorithms to solve a category of difficult problems, like the traveling salesperson problem or breaking encryption standards like the one used to keep your credit card info secret when you shop online. If you’re curious, read more here. The bricks can be altered to say “P=NP!” if it's ever solved.6) Woody Woo’s Class of 1879 donated the bronze tigers outside Nassau Hall in 1911, but listen to the full story before you applaud their generosity. See, the 1879-ers also donated a pair of lion statues the year they graduated from Princeton, before we’d really cemented the tiger as our mascot. The 1911 gift was just making up for the fact that they’d accidentally put Columbia’s mascot in front of campus headquarters.7) Students last set the cannon ablaze – a tradition observed whenever Princeton football sweeps Harvard and Yale in a season – in 2006, the 25th such sweep in Princeton history. When will it happen again? As a Cubs fan, I know the answer to that one: there’s always next year…