I’m your Quizmaster, Aimee Lucido, and good news, the new edition of Pointed is live and ready for you to complete. Some of this week’s categories: Taylor Swift, eras and gold.
But first, Alphadots is in its second week, this time with clues from Rebecca Goldstein! Rebecca is a research scientist developing novel immunotherapies for cancer. A New Yorker at heart, she lives in the Bay Area with her wife. I loved Rebecca’s Thursday puzzle. Clue: [“That’s rich!”] Answer: SET FOR LIFE. My brain lights up whenever a clue reimagines an existing phrase to mean something totally different. Plus, even though I’d seen this puzzle before, I totally forgot what the answer was and had to spend a full minute trying to think of three-letter words that weren’t “and” and “the.” Thanks, Rebecca!
I knew we were making last week’s quiz hard, but I didn’t know we were making it that hard.
oct-3-2025-pointed
The average was pretty good–71 points, which is only 4.5 points lower than the week before–but some of the individual questions were really tough. The question about Pandora’s new CEO had a 33% get-rate, the question about Rolliefest had a 29% get-rate, yet neither was the hardest. That dubious honor goes to the…
Hardest Question of the Week
Not all of the US government is shutting down. The federal agency in charge of which duties was instructed to ignore precedent from the 2013 shutdown and stay open?
A) Park services B) Mail delivery C) Border patrol D) Economic data collection
The clue here is that we’re looking for something that’s remaining open during this shutdown but was closed during the 2013 shutdown. First, you can remove mail service as a possible answer because mail service continues through government shutdowns. You can also remove economic data collection as a possible answer because it was reported that the shutdown would delay the release of an upcoming jobs report. That leaves border patrol and park services, and it’s a tricky coin flip. 60% of you guessed border patrol, but border patrol workers still worked in the 2013 shutdown. It was park services that closed in 2013 but stayed open in both 2018 and now. And park workers aren’t particularly happy about that fact.
Trivia From Outside the News Cycle
I couldn’t be more excited for my close personal friend Taylor Swift, who launched her 12th album this week. One of my favorite songs is named for which man-made gemstone? I’m an October baby so the natural gemstone it simulates is close to my heart.
Oh, and here’s the answer to last week’s Trivia From Outside the News Cycle question. The question was: “On Sept. 28, a certain European capital city hosted its first ever NFL regular-season game. Which city is it? The game was hosted at Croke Park, the national stadium of the country and the headquarters of the GAA.″ The answer is Dublin! The stadium usually hosts GAA games (Gaelic Athletic Association) but this was its first NFL game. Audiences loved the game–it was the second most-watched NFL Network International Game ever, behind only the 2023 Miami Dolphins-Kansas City Chiefs game in Frankfurt, Germany.
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