Weekly Geek - Trivia Answers

A couple of good answers, this week - here's the answers, if you wanted to knows...

1. What do the characters in the Hitchhiker's series discover to be the question to which '42' is the answer? Those of you who answered this are ALMOST right. The giant computer in Hithchikers was built to give the answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything. After many centuries of thought, it gave the answer - 42. It is then revealed nobody actually knows what the great question of Life the Universe and Everything actually is. As such they build a much larger computer (the Earth) to calculate what the question is. It is suggested (though arguable) that the question is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
2. Which author owned each of the following dogs:
   • Keeper, a mastiff: Keeper was the dog of Emily Bronte. Emily Bronte was a great animal lover, and the people of the moors largely indentified her with her dog. The dog outlived Emily, and when Emily died, it followed the procession to her grave, and is said to have acted as if it were in morning for the rest of it's life.
   • Carlo, a newfoundland: Carlo was Emily Dickinson's dog - for bonus points, she named her dog after St. John Rivers' dog in Jane Eyre.
   • Flush, a spaniel: Flush was given to Elizabeth Barret Browning after she was bedridden with one of the first of the debilitating illnesses that eventually killed her. She was initially sorry to accept the dog, since it would have to be confined to her bedroom for it's entire life, and she thought this would make the happy little creature miserable.
   • Charley, a poodle: John Steinbeck, whose book 'Travels With Charley' recounts his travels across America in a pickup-camper with his dog.
   • Toby-Chien, a bulldog: Colette, the french authoress, owned a number of bulldogs throughout her life, and had a great affinity for animals in general. Her story 'Barks and Purrs' is told from the vantage point of her bulldog and her cat.
3. What is the only subject in which William Blake received formal training? William Blake was apprenticed to an engraver, and the subsequent training in engraving was the only formal training he ever received.
4. What is the origin of the name "Fiver" in Watership Down? For extra credit, what is his name in the original Lapine tongue? Fiver's name is translated from Hrair-Roo, in the Lapine language (the language rabbits speak. Because rabbits cannot count higher than four, the word for any number or amount greater than four is 'hrair'. Roo means little. "Little Thousand", or "Fiver" refers to the fact that Fiver was the runt of a large litter of rabbits.
5. What animal swallows Gepetto in the book Pinocchio? Yes, to you guys! He was swallowed by a shark, not a whale, or more precisely, a giant dogfish.