Median-81 Race Intro-Instruction
The Median-81 Race
by JonMichael Rasmus
This challenge tends toward the middle.
In each Group below, there are three questions. Each question has a positive integer answer. Then in each Group select the median of the three answers for that Group. Then repeat that process with the median Group answers for each Set and again with the median Set answers in each Subfinal. This leaves you with three answers. The median Subfinal answer is the answer to the contest.
Now, I've seen the kinds of people we have 'round these parts. They are ready for ANYTHING, including these somewhat easy questions (although there are a few blind alleys and wacky connections). So, instead of a deadline for contest entries: this will be a race... a blitz, if you will. The first player to correctly submit the final answer to jumbledpile -at- yahoo.com will be the winner. They will win a fine MENSA puzzle book. Other players may submit for place rankings after the winner is selected. The contest will close when the winner is selected but the answers will not be published until October 10, 2004. This way, those who want the glory of figuring out the answers won't have their contest spoiled.
Players can only submit 1 e-mail per day and only 3 e-mails per week. Any additional e-mails will be ignored. Players must submit their answer, their name and their city in the e-mail. The subject line must read: "81". Any e-mail without this will be ignored.
Feel free to discuss any questions. While all of these clues are researched, other good answers could exist and I'll clarify anything that is either vague or just plain wrong. Thanks to Bob Lodge without whom none of us would be here, Don & Sue and Andrew who have shown how good the internet can stack up in the trivia contest department and Nichole for her support despite having to read these questions 6 or 7 times.
Subfinal ONE Set I Group A
1. The clue "Striking model lusts again" occurs in a numbered on-line puzzle. Find the sum of the puzzle's number, the number of this clue's entry and its enumeration.
2. Size rank of the state beginning with "V" containing eight letters and around seven million people that isn't Virginia.
3. The integer portion of the quotient whose dividend is the answer to K in the All-World Trivia Challenge minus the answer to O in Ultimate Calculatrivia and whose divisor is the answer to 13 in the Prime Time Trivia Challenge.
Subfinal ONE Set I Group B
4. In the Apple II BASIC computer game "GAMBLER", the number of combinations of lottery tickets that could be purchased plus the number of spaces on the random turn board that led to a horse race.
5. Number of times that "no" or "nobody" appears in the song "Nobody But Me" by the Human Beinz plus the number of unique words in the song "The Hustle".
6. Last three digits of the ZIP code of the town where the Simpsons live (according to the "Behind the Laughter" episode, if you believe that sort of thing).
Subfinal ONE Set I Group C
7. Number of times the narrator says the phrase "Zombo-com" in the opening Flash movie at zombo.com.
8. The smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.
9. According to the 2000 census, population of a city with a zip code that prime factors into 2, the year of the publishing of "Three Blind Mice" and one-tenth of seven more than the infantry number "created" in the movie "Wag the Dog".
Subfinal ONE Set II Group D
10. Volume of "Dragonball Z" released on DVD on 11/9/99 (the one whose title starts with the letter worth more points in Scrabble.)
11. Complete this analogy. Sitting cross-legged on the floor:2::Being without you takes a lot of getting used to: ______. (The answer is not 20)
12. The sum of the worst-numbered two-digit and three-digit US interstate highways.
Subfinal ONE Set II Group E
13. Longest number of full years between the ratification of two amendments to the US Constitution plus the number of the amendment that ended the gap.
14. In the 2001-2003 Rutgers University in Newark catalog, the 3-digit course number for the class where you would learn: "Sets, relations, functions, graphs, trees, formal expressions, mathematical induction, and some algebraic structures; applications to probability and computer science and enumerative problems in combinatorial analysis."
15. The number of minutes into the day when Jamey Farrell's body is found bleeding from the wrist.
Subfinal ONE Set II Group F
16. Item number of a board game when translated from binary into decimal. This game was released in 2003 and bears the ISBN 1832369095 where exactly two digits (but not the last one) are off by one.
17. Number of things needed by Navin Johnson (that he trades for a thermos).
18. The order of entry times the number of letters in the capital of the state named on the property most likely to be landed on in Monopoly (excluding jail).
Subfinal ONE Set III Group G
19. According to the "Wernham Hogg News", the number of staff that did not attend Joan Reynolds' going away party at the Four Horseshoes.
20. Distance in whole miles rounded down from town A to town B according to mapquest.com, where town A is referenced in a #12 Billboard Hot 100 hit single from the 70s by a band with multiple #1's that (the song's title) is a synonym of the biggest hit by a band from England whose name comes from a headline about another singer's acting career, and where B is the name of a city in an adjacent state whose letters anagram to REQUEST SOUTH CONCERN.
21. Thousands of points needed to get the "Pro Score" in London in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.
Subfinal ONE Set III Group H
22. The number out of the original 81 answers that are prime in this contest.
23. According the book "Rough Draft", the number of Elvis fans that can't be wrong.
24. Atomic number of the only element to appear in the same ordinal position in Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" as it does in the periodic table.
Subfinal ONE Set III Group I
25. Largest number that cannot be made of a sum of 5 and 7. For example, 10 is two fives, twelve is a seven and a five and nineteen is two sevens and a five.
26. Number of US presidents that were president during a prime numbered year.
27. European men's shoe size most closely given by American shoe size 9 1/2.