Pop Culture 2010s
Video Games
Washington DC
Ivy League
Travel
100
Which critically acclaimed AMC crime drama about a chemistry teacher turned drug lord ended its run in 2013?
Breaking Bad
100
What are 3 of the 6 best-selling video games of all time?
Any 3 of the following 6:
Tetris
Minecraft
GTA V
Red Dead Redemption 2
Wii Sports
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
*Snake may unofficially have the #1 title as it was shipped on many millions of Nokia devices in the 90s and 00s, but the game itself was free to play on those devices, so it was excluded from this list
100
What is the name of the park in which you can find the Lincoln Memorial?
The National Mall
100
What are the names of at least 5 of the 8 schools belonging to the Ivy League?
• Brown
• Columbia
• Cornell
• Dartmouth
• Harvard
• Penn
• Princeton
• Yale
100
[Double Points!]
A flight from IAD (Washington Dulles) to LHR (London Heathrow) covers approximate 3,680 miles. A plane traveling from IAD to LHR travels at approximately 460 miles per hour.
Which of the following equations represents d ,the distance, in miles, remaining for a plane traveling from IAD to LHR, x hours after departing?
A. d = 460x + 3680
B. d = 460x - 3680
C. d = 3680 - 460x
D. d = frac{3680}(460}x
C. d = 3680 - 460x
200
Which female solo artist was ranked #1 of the 2010-2019 decade by Billboard?
Taylor Swift
(then Rihanna, Adele, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga in that order)
200
What is the most downloaded mobile game of all time (across all platforms, paid and unpaid)?
Subway Surfers
200
[Double Points!]
The Washington Monument is 555 feet tall. A marketing team develops a t-shirt cannon that fires t-shirts at extremely high speeds and launches them at the National Mall. One marketer decides to launch a shirt over the Monument.
The height of the shirt can be modeled by h, where h(x)=-16x^2+192x-5, in feet, x seconds after launch. By what distance, in feet, does the height of the shirt at its highest point exceed the height of the Washington Monument?
16 feet
200
Which Ivy League school did the owner of Loudoun Test Prep, Vinay, attend for his undergrad?
Penn
200
What are 6 North American/South American/Caribbean countries that have a total population greater than 10 million? (In total, there are 15 such countries)
Any 6 of the following:
United States of America (320.2 M)
Brazil (203.1 M)
Mexico (119.7 M)
Colombia (47.7 M)
Argentina (42.6 M)
Canada (41.5 M)
Peru (30.8 M)
Venezuela (30.2 M)
Chile (17.7 M)
Ecuador (15.8 M)
Guatemala (15.8 M)
Cuba (11.1 M)
Haiti (10.7 M)
Dominican Republic (10.3 M)
Bolivia (10.0 M)
300
[Double Points!]
The global population was approximately 7,020,000,000 by the end of 2010. From the end of 2010 to the end of 2014, the population increased by approximately 5.2%. From the end of 2014 to the end of 2018, the population increased by approximately 4.6%.
What was the approximate global population by the end of 2018?
7,724,751,840
300
How many base species of Pokémon are there, according to the Official National Pokédex?
1025
Gen 1: 151
Gen 2: 100
Gen 3: 135
Gen 4: 107
Gen 5: 156
Gen 6: 72
Gen 7: 88
Gen 8: 96
Gen 9: 120
300
What is the address of the White House?
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
300
What year was Harvard founded?
1636
300
What is the longest (regularly-scheduled) non-stop passenger flight in the world?
Any of the following are acceptable:
•city-to-city/airport-to-airport names
•flight number & operator
•distance of the flight (in miles) or duration of the flight (in hours)
New York(JFK)-to-Singapore(SIN)
SQ 23, Singapore Airlines
9,537 miles, about 19 hours
400
What charitable social media craze involved dumping freezing water over your head in 2014 to raise money for ALS?
Ice Bucket Challenge
400
What was the first true video game created? (or at least, considered to be the first true video game)
Tennis for Two (1958 game created for visitor entertainment at Brookhaven National Lab)
Other "games" were created prior to this, but served to demonstrate computing power, and were not released or publicized as being "for fun" like Tennis for Two.
Pong was the first arcade game to achieve widespread notoriety among people not "into tech", in 1972
400
What are 4 of the 20 (or more!) Smithsonian-sponsored museums & institutions currently operate in the DC metro area?
Any 4 of the following 20:
•Anacostia Community Museum
•Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
•Arts and Industries Building
•Freer Gallery of Art
•Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
•National Air and Space Museum
•National Air and Space -- Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
•National Museum of African American History and Culture
•National Museum of African Art
•National Museum of American History
•National Museum of the American Indian
•National Museum of Asian Art
•National Museum of Natural History
•National Portrait Gallery
•National Postal Museum
•Renwick Gallery
•S. Dillon Ripley Center
•Smithsonian American Art Museum
•Smithsonian Institution Building (The Castle)
•National Zoological Park
400
[Triple Points!]
MIT notoriously considers Harvard to be a crosstown rival, despite MIT not being an Ivy League member (Harvard typically views Yale as its primary rival). MIT frequently pulls pranks on Harvard as a community.
MIT pulls a prank on Harvard by building a (right) square pyramid in Harvard's undergraduate Quad overnight.
The pyramid has a total surface area (including the base touching the ground) of 82,280 square feet. The combined surface area of the four visible faces of the pyramid is 53,380 square feet.
How tall is this pyramid, in feet?
132 feet
400
What were (at least) 2 of the 7 Wonders of the World, as compiled in the original list found in the 1572 Octo Mundi Miracula?
Any two of the following:
Great Pyramid of Giza
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse of Alexandria
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Temple of Artemis
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
500
What was the first song to hit 1 billion streams on Spotify?
One Dance - Drake
(followed by:
Closer - The Chainsmokers
Shape of You - Ed Sheeran
Lean On - Major Lazer
Thinking Out Loud - Ed Sheeran)
500
[Triple Points!]
In the Pac-Man grid below, there are three cherries.
Assume that an xy-plane is drawn over this grid, placing (0,0) over Pac-Man's location in the maze. Then, for example, the cherry location nearest to Pac-Man would have coordinates (3,2).
What is the area in square units of the triangle created by directly connecting the cherries to each using three line segments?
78
500
What is the name of the architect who was commissioned to design Washington DC in 1791?
Pierre Charles L'Enfant
500
How many US Presidents attended an Ivy League school, either for undergraduate or for graduate studies?
16, spanning 5 schools: (with some presidents having attended multiple, typically for undergrad/grad school)
Harvard: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Rutherford B. Hayes, JFK, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama
Yale: William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush
Princeton: James Madison, Woodrow Wilson
Penn: William Henry Harrison, Donald Trump
Columbia: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Barack Obama
500
What is the name of Jeff Bezos' yacht? (or its support ship?)
Main yacht: Koru
Support ship: Abeona