It was easier to integrate U.S. states and Canadian provinces for this week’s trivia challenge, as things turned out. Here we go:
California has the most of these, by far, with 74.
Illinois is next with 30. Then New York (27), Pennsylvania (24), and Michigan (22).
Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Washington have 19 each. North Carolina is close with 18.
12: Connecticut, Missouri, and Montana.
11: Indiana, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Vermont.
10: Mississippi and West Virginia.
9: Colorado.
8: Arizona and Wisconsin.
7: Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oregon.
6: Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ontario, and Oklahoma.
5: Arkansas, Georgia and Nebraska.
4: Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Utah.
3: Alabama, Nevada, and Rhode Island.
2: Delaware, Quebec, and Tennessee.
1: British Columbia, D.C., and Idaho.
0: Every other state, province, and territory in the United States and Canada.*
* Alaska, Alberta, American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northern Mariana Islands, the Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, Puerto Rico, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, U.S. Virgin Islands, Wyoming, or Yukon. And zero in all of Mexico.
Quick “similar-state” comparisons: North Dakota (7), South Dakota (0). Colorado (9), Wyoming (0). New Hampshire (4), Vermont (11).
My first thought was “cities above a fixed threshold in population,” but the North Dakota and Vermont numbers screw that up.
I’m going to go with State Route numbers (i.e. SR-74 in California, SR-30 in Illinois, etc.).
Definitely not that. I know Hawaii has a bunch.
Tuesday hint: Not only was I very surprised that California headed up the list (I’d figured Illinois would be first, followed by the Atlantic Seaboard states) but I was also quite surprised that any Canadian provinces made the list at all as the subject matter of the list is (at least in my mind) strongly associated with the United States of America.
‘Course, if I lived in Canada I might have thought differently but I don’t so, well, there you go.
High school football stadiums with over N seats.
That’d be Texas.
Over N seats and no guns allowed in the stands.
You’d have to start with Texas, I reckon. And there’d be no reason for Burt to suspect the east coast of dominating.
If that were the answer I might have suspected Florida instead of Texas for thetop rank, but I’d still have put my money on Texas.
The amended guess still applies.
Politicians charged/convicted of felonies?
Very clever! Incorrect (happily, for California) but a clever guess.
Wednesday hint: The answers to the puzzle are sessile — edifices, to be specific — and relate intrinsically with vagile objects. Both the specific kind of edifices which answer the puzzle and the mobile objects associated with them are intended for and (absent unusual and typically unpleasant circumstances) suitable for use by human beings.
Skyscrapers (or elevators) taller than X.
Vagile… teehehehe…
Not only that, it has an edifice complex.
Parks with rollercoasters?
Bridges longer than some length X.
Thursday hint: Glyph’s guess of parks with rollercoasters was quite close to the mark, although the reality is typically not quite as intensely fun as Glyph’s guess.
…The judges are also looking for a specific name.
Rapid transit systems (perhaps light rail systems only)
This is a good guess. Ever since Burt said he was surprised Illinois didn’t top the list, I was trying to think of what Chicago has more of, and I thought sykscrapers and the El (but I didn’t know how to translate “The El” into something other places have too.)
If you translate it into Spanish you get “El El”.
Again close to the mark but not there yet.
…The judges are also looking for a specific name.
Tracks at all “Union Station” in the state.
Light rail lines operating or under construction? At the least, Colorado does have 9 of those. Although given the counts, I would suspect that heavy rail mass transit lines (eg, the BART and some of LA’s system) would have to be included.
Irving.
Or “Subways”.
Tracks for car races? (If so, you shouldn’t be too surprised about Canada; Montreal, at least, is quite into car racing.)
Amtrak stations.
And we have a winner!
I’d have thought Illinois would have the most stations because it seems every route other than Acela runs through Chicago. But nope, there’s stations all up and down California.