Famous Trios Quiz

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and we’re joined once again by one of our quiz guys, Greg Pliska. Hi, Greg.

Hello, Martha. Hello, Grant.

Howdy, Greg.

What’s going on?

Well, it’s very good to see you. You know, I didn’t realize until we got together last week how much I missed you.

Oh, really?

You didn’t realize until then?

Yeah, well, I mean, I knew I missed you. I just didn’t realize how much I missed you.

Oh, my gosh.

Free coffee in the lobby.

What have you got for us?

I’ve got a little quiz that, well, it’s really just a straight-up trivia quiz spanning a range of subject areas.

-oh.

Yeah.

But it should be easy for clever folks like the two of you.

I call it Who’s on Third?

And here’s how it works.

I’m going to give you two members of a well-known set of three, and you have to tell me the third.

For example, if I said Nina and Pinta, you would say?

Santa Maria.

Santa Maria, the three ships that Columbus sailed when he discovered the New World.

Right.

Now, I won’t always give these to you in the most obvious order like that.

Of course not.

No, I don’t want to make it too easy.

But I will always give you two, and you’ll name the third.

Okay.

Now, here’s your first one.

Okay.

Truth and justice.

American way.

The American way, that’s right.

The things that Superman fights for.

From the 1940s TV show.

Here’s another one.

Doric, Ionic.

And Corinthian.

Very nice.

Corinthian, two for two.

You know, I figured Grant would get the Superman one, but I knew Martha would get the Greek one.

Pitch, roll.

Yaw.

Yaw.

Yes, those are the three axes of movement for an airplane.

All right, here’s one for you.

Alvin, Simon.

Theodore.

Theodore.

Those are the chipmunks.

Here’s a different realm for you.

Okay.

Lies, damned lies.

And statistics.

And statistics, yes.

Famous phrase popularized by Mark Twain, though it’s not actually clear who originated it.

Going back to the ancient Greeks, unity of action, unity of time.

This is the three unities that are the core of a certain kind of storytelling, right?

That’s correct.

These are Aristotle’s dramatic unities.

So unity of action, unity of time, and unity of place.

Unity of place, exactly.

Very good.

Exactly.

Commonly the sort of rules of thumb for dramatic work.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Steve Martin, Martin Short, and…

Martin Sheen.

Two guys who are funny, one guy who isn’t.

No.

I don’t know.

Steve Martin, Martin Short.

Martin Lawrence.

Famous trio, the three…

Oh, yeah, the three Caballeros.

The three Amigos.

Three Amigos, yeah.

Oh, Caballeros was the Disney animated film.

I can tell you have a young child.

Steve Martin, Martin Short, and…

Chevy Chase.

Chevy Chase is the third.

Oh, I missed that one.

Fran, Ali…

Cukla.

Cukla.

Oh, nice.

Fran and Ollie, remember?

Yeah, you have to be of a certain age to know about this stuff.

That’s why I got it.

Those are the famous characters in an early TV show.

Fran the human, Kukla the clown-like puppet, and Ollie the one-toothed dragon.

How about this one?

Batting average, home runs.

RBIs.

RBIs.

Very good.

Sabermetrics.

I don’t know.

Those are the three stats that make up baseball’s batting triple crown.

Well, I’ll give you one more before we go.

All right.

Placido Domingo, or Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti.

And Willie Nelson.

And Willie Nelson, the three greatest country singers.

Who is the third tenor?

I don’t know.

I don’t remember.

The Spanish guy.

Jose Carreras.

You took the least known one.

Tricky, tricky.

Oh, yeah, that last one was difficult.

It’s weird.

You could do a full mental map of what Martha and I know about the world by these quizzes.

But why would you want to?

Strange big holes in knowledge.

Well, Greg, that was a lot of fun.

It was pretty interesting, too.

It sounds like you do a lot of work on these, and it shows.

Well, I try to earn my keep.

If you’d like to talk to us about grammar, slang, punctuation, words, or throw a few puzzles of your own at us, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.