By Sam Gross
Welcome to the first quiz from West Side Rag, with questions spanning Upper West Side history. We’d love to know how you do in the comments.
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C’mon I got #1 right, spelling Edgar Allan Poe correctly. You entered Edgar Allen Poe as correct answer. Nevermore!
Because of you I got it wrong. I enteted Edgar Allen Poe. Spelling shouldn’t count.
Thank you for pointing this out and apologies on the oversight!
Please do more these quizzes. Very enjoyable!
The answer to Question 1 is Edgar Allan Poe, not Edgar Allen Poe. I spelled his name correctly and the quiz told me my answer was wrong!
There’s an error in your first answer. Middle name is Allan not Allen (as you say) – and the correct spelling is in your own reference. Embarrassing! Need a proofreader?
Sorry for the mistake, Nancy. Fixed in the quiz and I’ll get some proofreading support for next time.
Fun! Did it fast while slurping my first Sunday morning coffee and got a 70, which I suppose is the low end of ‘pass.’
The multiple choice questions offered just the right combination of possible and impossible selections — perfect for guessing. Thanks, Sam. I’m looking forward to more of these.
Replying to myself: I spelled Allan correctly. Now that it’s been fixed in the quiz, does my score go up?
your score was up all along! The spelling issue isn’t relevant.
Damn – 80%. And I forgot that one of the people in the last question attended Hunter College High, per a classmate!
OK. You lost me at “Allen.” I wrote the correct spelling of Poe’s name (“Edgar Allan Poe”) and you marked me incorrect, telling me the correct answer was Edgar Allen Poe. You are wrong and I am done doing this quiz. Get a copy editor, please.
me too
That is perfectly fair, sorry for the mistake on that one!
I think Theo Dixon’s name is also misspelled.
I bombed. I did not know Nicki Minaj went to La Guardia. The only reason why I got it right was because I knew Jennifer Aniston and to mother Chalamet went there and that Lin Manuel Miranda has gone to Hunter. Very cool
LOL, all I knew was that Miranda went to HCHS, as I went there too (waaaaay before him – I was just a few years ahead of Elena Kagan). Didn’t know anything about the other people, but obviously LMM was the answer.
In the meantime, everyone who is (correctly) pointing out the error in #1 is giving away the answer!!
Why would someone scroll down to the comments before doing the quiz?
A neat trivia quiz instead of a puzzle. Maybe you should alternate these on Sundays?
BTW, Question #2 actually has more than one answer, though you didn’t include other “correct” answers. As well, the answer to #5 may soon change, and all four will be incorrect.
Re Question #1 — When I was in 7th grade (almost 60 years ago), my English class had a poetry unit. At the end, the teacher gave us lines from a poem we had studied and we had to identify the poem and author. One of the poems was The Raven. Unsure of how to spell Poe’s middle name, I raised my hand and asked if spelling counted. My teacher, said yes. Hoping to finesse things, I wrote Edgar A. Poe, but the teacher marked my answer wrong. Many years later I found out that when Poe published his work, it was credited as Edgar A. Poe, exactly what I had written. Still galls me!
We also had to identify the author of Buffalo Bill ‘s, but I don’t remember whether we got marked off if we capitalized e.e. cummings’ name.
Rather to my surprise, I got 7 out of 10 (though it thought I got 6, due to the spelling issues on Poe’s name).
It might interest people to know that even the City got it wrong: when they first created a sign for the street , his middle name was misspelled. The City had to go back and remake the sign. True story.