A key to success in these puzzles are picking up on Quizzmaster Bheka's hinting style.

Join in as I do an occasional hint analysis for score improvement.

I can give you a starting tip too. My good friend and our quiz-creator Bheka Pierce is a writer and literature expert originally from Boston and, like us Detroiters, is consequently a die-hard homer. See no. 11 above. Like a pitcher with a slight twitch before throwing a curve, watch for New England / Boston-leaning tipoffs.

Hint Analysis for Nov 28 above:
Three categories
1. Whaaaat? [Huh? I have no idea. Do you? Tell me.]
2. Got it! [And how I got it. How did you?]
3. Coulda/Shoulda? [Idea for where no hint was offered or offer your alternative where one exists.]

Whaaaaat? Huh? I had no clue. [Answers] were added later.

4. Hint: Western saloon keeper.
A. William Blake [As in Amanda Blake > Miss Kitty the saloon-keiper of > TV Show Gunsmoke fame

7. Hint: Wren Church
A. Paul Schaffer [Wren as in Christopher Wren architect of St. Paul's cathedral in London]

6. Hint: It’s all his own work.
D. Randy Newman [As in Paul Newman and his own line of condiments. A bit too obscure for me.]


Got it! [And how I got it. How did you?]

Hint: Babe the Blue Ox
B. John Bunyan
Easy for us in Lumber staters like Michigan who know the mythical giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his ox.

Hint: Calif. Gold Rush.
D. Claude Lévi-Strauss
Levi Strauss [no hyphen] who made his fortune selling denim jeans to gold rush miners

Hint: Wilbur Post’s horse.
D. Ed Harris
From the TV show Mr. Ed – the talking horse. Coulda/Shoulda Alternative? “A horse is horse of course, of course.”

Coulda / Shoulda? [Idea for where no hint was offered or offer your alternative where one exists.]

8. Potluck: After Eve and Adam ate the apple, God kicked them out of Paradise and sent them where?
C. East
Coulda / Shoulda? hint: “James Dean & Julie Harris”

1. Hint: An all-around genius born 3 years before Shakespeare who wrote all Shakespeare’s plays for him.
A. Henry Bacon
^Come on… One to a be a literature geek for this one. I only got this because I vaguely knew it and knew they were contemporaries. For those of us in the masses my coulda/shoulda? is Hint: "six degrees of separation”