This week’s questions:
1) How many Star Wars performers appeared in all six films in the popular sci-fi adventure series?
2) What does the squirting cucumber plant squirt?
3) What Hollywood costars cofounded a nonprofit humanitarian organization called Not On Our Watch in 2007?
4) What was the official name of Niña, one of the three ships that sailed to the Americas with Christopher Columbus in 1492?
5) Who was the only player on a losing team in National Basketball Association history to be named a Finals Most Valuable Player?
This week’s answers:
1) Only two. The diminutive Kenny Baker, who played R2-D2, and Anthony Daniels, who played C-3PO.
2) Seeds and slimy fluid–as far as 20 feet. The strange plant, native to the Mediterranean region, looks like a normal cucumber, but as it ripens it begins filling up with a slimy juice that builds such intense pressure inside the cucumber that it shoots off its stalk, spewing seeds and fluid in its wake.
3) Ocean’s Thirteen costars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and Don Cheadle, along with the film’s producer Jerry Weintraub and human-rights lawyer David Pressman. The group’s stated goal is “drawing upon the voices of cultural leaders to protect and assist the vulnerable.”
4) The Santa Clara. It was common for ships at the time to have both an official religious name and a nickname, which sometimes was the feminine form of the owner’s name.
5) Hall of Fame guard Jerry West, in 1969, when his team, the Los Angeles Lakers, lost to the Boston Celtics.
Source: Workman Publishing/”Page-A-Day”