With the passage of the Chinese New Year (Happy Year of the Stinkbug, by the way.), the holiday season is over. That can only mean one thing: it’s time for the next Odd Man Out. Can I get an appreciative groan from the audience? Thank you. Rest assured, my masochistic friends, your narrator has made a new year’s resolution that he actually intends to keep: no more hard questions! That’s right, you heard me, no more categories that will leave you feeling stupid, frustrated, angry or overcome with the vapors. Welcome to Easy Street, pilgrim. Such wily exercises in humiliation as Odd Man Out 33 are a thing of the past.
In keeping with this new attitude of lassitude, I hope that you, the intelligentsia of the Yahoo! Voices readership will let me know if I have made these next questions too insultingly easy. All right? Then, on with the insults!
Group 1
Eggs Benedict
Crepe Suzette
Apple Betty
Alice B. Toklas Brownies
Group 2
Sideshow
Man of La Mancha
Guys and Dolls
The Music Man
Group 3
Gomorrah
Brigadoon
Camelot
Constantinople
Group 4
New Mexico
North Carolina
Rhode Island
West Virginia
Group 5
Mary Baker Eddy
Martin Luther
Henry VIII of England
John Calvin
By way of this session’s space-waster, I will spare you another item from my nearly-depleted inventory of jokes, dumb or otherwise, and regale you with a few quotes from the late H.L. Mencken, one of the wittiest newspapermen of his or anyone else’s time.
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will make a better soup.”
“Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.”
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
“Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”
“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he believes to be idiots.”
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and both are right.”
There, I think we have taken up enough space. Now, let us move from wit to the appalling lack thereof.
Group 1
Eggs Benedict
Crepe Suzette
Apple Betty
Alice B. Toklas Brownies
This group is operating on the “first-in, first-odd” method of accountancy, so the answer is Eggs Benedict. You can give yourself half credit if you guessed the more boring reason that it is not a sweet, like the other three. The reason that will get you full credit is that the last three are associated with ladies’ names, including Bob Dylan’s favorite menu item, Suzette (“Could you please make that crepe?”). If it turns out, against all odds, you have a sister named Benedict, then please tell her I meant no insult.
Group 2
Sideshow
Man of La Mancha
Guys and Dolls
The Music Man
“Rats-a-roni, the San Francisco Treat!” you may be inclined to grumble, “It’s another one of those impossible theater questions.” True, it is, but, if you remembered your lore from past OMO sessions, you would have gone right to the Supporting Links section and checked out the helpful YouTube entries. They would not have provided you with the direct answer, but they might have given you a sizable hint.
Here’s the deal: three of these musicals feature a public-domain song not written by the composer of the show. In the case of The Music Man, the song is “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” Guys and Dolls features a rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Finally, in Sideshow, there is a verse of “Auld Lang Syne.” If I seemed to skip one of those shows, it is because it was both odd and out.
Group 3
Gomorrah
Brigadoon
Camelot
Constantinople
All four of these places are cities you will not find on a map. The first three have in common that, if they ever existed in the first place, they are no longer, whether due to the wrath of God or the whim of the playwright. That last one still exists as a geographical entity. It’s just that it is no longer known as Constantinople.
Group 4
New Mexico
North Carolina
Rhode Island
West Virginia
Okay, fine, it’s a list of two-name states. Where, you might wonder, is the oddity? Three of these are proper names preceded by a modifier. The third one is not. If you are in the habit of telling people, “My you’re looking mighty rhode today,” then you may want to seek help at some point.
Group 5
Mary Baker Eddy
Martin Luther
Henry VIII of England
John Calvin
Once again we have a seeming uniformity, within which is lurking an oddment. Remember, the Odd Man Out answers are never about gender, so forget about the only woman in the group, Mary Baker Eddy. Then, having done so, remember her again. She is it.
How did that come to pass? While all four of these leaders founded protestant religions, only Mrs. Eddy was a protestant to begin with. The last three, to their everlasting chagrin, were flagrant Catholics in their callow youth, eagerly awaiting the day when they might journey to Rome and kiss the pope’s foot.
There, that wraps up the first OMO of 2012. How many did you get right, five? Six? Seven? No matter, I’m sure you aced it. Sad to say (for whom, I have no idea), future Odd Man Out editions will not come with the same monthly regularity they have in the recent past. It is getting almost as hard for your narrator to think this stuff up as it is for some readers (not you, of course) to find the answers. Toodle-oo for now.
Sources
Wikipedia
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/H._L._Mencken
YouTube
Own imagined knowledge of geography