Hiya Skeleton Crew,

Didja catch any of the World Cup games yesterday? England was playin the DRC, so as ya can imagine everyone here in London was glued to the teevee: folks standin outside of pubs & watchin the game from the sidewalk, that sorta thing. Pretty cool! Even though I’m not a huge soccer guy, it’s kinda hard not to get caught up in the fun a li’l bit.

But I can’t chat! I’m in the middle of a kinda sorta errand, ya see. I found this cool … I guess ya’d call it— an artifact? It’s a cool thingamajig, at any rate. Only thing is it’s kinda … well, it’s doggone HUGE is what it is! I’m strugglin to find a box big enough to ship it back to the States.

But none of that’s neither here nor there! So let’s get to business – TRIVIA business!

Trivia 1

What comedian was moderator for the National Geographic Society’s Geographic Bee from 2016 to 2019, & also played Vice Principal Douglas Panch in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee on Broadway?

A geography AND a spelling bee? I guess this guy loves bees!

Or maybe it’s just that he’s a trivia nerd: after all, he was also on Jeopardy! a coupla times, PLUS he’s a regular on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

Trivia 2

An idiophone might sound like some kinda insult, but actually it just means an instrument that makes sound by its own vibrations – & NOT with strings or membranes or blowin air through it or whatever. What idiophone, which shows up ’specially often in Latin music genres like son cubano & guaracha & bomba, probably traces its origins back to Indigenous American ethnic groups like the Araucanians or the Guaraní – but was also probably independently developed in multiple parts of the world?