This is the Reference Challenge. There is no particular point to it, except to see if you know stuff about the same stuff that I do. Or something. If you believe you have the answers, and you feel like it, email 'em to me. Perhaps one day I'll just have a little web form where you can submit the answers. Until then, you'll just have to suck it up and do it the long way. Now to the challenge.

The Reference Challenge consists of a bunch of questions, fill in the blanks, quotes, etc. that pertain to things I know. Some of them have more than one correct answer, some have only one (that is, in my mind). Points will be given for correct answers or extremely creative answers. You may redeem your points with God at the Day of Judgement.

Now, on the first of these challenges, the people who came closest to a perfect score were Jer Welter and Phil Darnowsky, with 180 out of 240 possible points...we'll see if anyone actually does better with this one. So here it is.

  1. "Your sermon on the mount from the ____ of your ___."
  2. AJ is to Torg as Illiad is to whom?
  3. Samuel Beckett originally wrote most of his plays in what language?
  4. Fran Drescher made her mainstream acting debut in what film?
  5. What does XML stand for?
  6. "Big hand's on one-twenty, little hand's on ___..."
  7. What does Jake Stonebender do for a living?
  8. What is T.S. Eliot's dedication to Ezra Pound for the poem "The Wasteland" in English?
  9. Was technology or nature demonized in the movie Princess Moninoke?
  10. What does the third level of the Dementate discipline do?
  11. In what city is the Lowell Observatory located?
  12. What's the best fortune-cookie fortune you've ever heard for adding "in bed" on the end of?
  13. Complete the line: "The pyramid is opening!" 'Which one?'
  14. Who stars in Forbidden Planet with Anne Frances?
  15. According to Dave Barry, where does the ancient Mayan calendar say that celestial objects such as the moon and venus will be?
  16. Name two "place" nebulae.
  17. What color are the rocks in Sedona, Arizona?
  18. What is Puck's full name?
  19. "Time takes a cigarette, and puts it in your mouth, you pull on your finger, then another finger, then _________"
  20. What do Blackfriars, Moorgate and Queensway have in common?
  21. Complete the line: "How is it?" "It's exactly like licking a ___ _______."
  22. What do the towns of Bath, England and Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic have in common?
  23. What is unusual about the street lights in Flagstaff, Arizona?