News Quiz

No. 25: “Listless”

No. 25: “Listless”

By Randy Cohen

The list is: “lazy, tired, old, stiff, and stodgy.” List of what?

by 5 p.m. ET Sunday to e-mail your answer (NewsQuiz@slate.com).

Responses to Wednesday’s question (No. 24)–“Lizard King”:

Fill in the blank.

Observing a monitor lizard in Botswana’s Mokolodi Nature Preserve, President Clinton said it made him think “of all the people I would like that lizard to ______.”

“depose.”–Larry Amaros (Nancy Franklin, Dan Simon, and Gary Frazier explored similar legal territory.)

“dry hump.”–Marshall Efron (Jon Hotchkiss, Kenneth M. Schwartz, and Adam Bonin confronted similar adult themes.)

“be a pocketbook for.”–Patty Marx (Beth Sherman displayed similar fashion savvy.)

“catch between its slashing mandibles and store for food in the airless chambers of its colonies.”–Charlie “Charley” Rubin

Click for more responses.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

Sex and testimony were, of course, the predominant saurian subjects. But when Judge Susan Webber Wright threw out the Paula Jones suit, a monitor lizard and an entire nation could breathe easier. There will be no easy breathing for hard-working, reading-list subpoenaing Ken Starr, who, like all Americans, has a clear right to boorish and offensive behavior and who knows how to use it. “What are they going to do next?” asked Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers. “Go to Victoria’s Secret to see if she wore underwear?”

Fun Facts: Monitor lizards grow from 4 feet to 10 feet long and will eat almost anything they can kill–birds, small mammals, large insects, crustaceans, other reptiles.

According to the World Book encyclopedia, “When a monitor is cornered, it pretends to be ferocious.”

Answer

Clinton said the monitor lizard made him think “of all the people I would like that lizard to monitor.”

Leftover

“What if Congress doesn’t name names but just says no crucifixes in urine?”–Justice Antonin Scalia

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