Today’s Study Guide jumps from Alfred Mosher Butts’s Depression‑era invention of Scrabble and his New York Times letter counts to the Brent/WTI crude oil spread, BookTok‑fueled “romantasy” bestsellers, Tunisia’s UNESCO‑recognized harissa, German gender quirks like das Mädchen, and the iconic 1941 Captain America cover where Steve Rogers decks Hitler.(en.wikipedia.org)

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Study Notes

Question 1: Scrabble and Letter Frequencies

Q1. GAMES/SPORT - A detailed analysis of newspaper front pages during the 1930s by Alfred Mosher Butts reportedly informed an integral element of what board game, which was trademarked under this current name in 1948?

Alfred Mosher Butts used frequency counts from the front page of The New York Times to set tile distributions and point values for his word game, later renamed Scrabble and trademarked under that name in 1948 by James Brunot.(en.wikipedia.org)

Connections

  • Depression‑era game design: Hasbro’s history notes that Butts, an out‑of‑work architect during the Great Depression, systematically analyzed letter frequencies and existing games when creating his prototype Lexiko/Criss‑Crosswords—background often discussed in Scrabble retrospectives and game histories.(en.wikipedia.org)
  • Competitive Scrabble culture: The documentary Word Wars: Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Circuit follows four expert players preparing for the 2002 National Scrabble Championship, offering a vivid look at the modern tournament scene that grew from Butts’s design.(en.wikipedia.org)
  • Inside the pro circuit in print: Stefan Fatsis’s book Word Freak (and related coverage) chronicles elite Scrabble players and notes how Butts’s letter‑frequency‑based design shaped high‑level strategy.(en.wikipedia.org)
  • Scrabble as horror‑movie clue device: In Roman Polanski’s film Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary uses Scrabble tiles on a board to work out an anagram (“All of Them Witches”), a famous scene where the game literally helps reveal the plot.(en.wikipedia.org)

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Question 2: Brent/WTI Spread and Crude Oil

Q2. BUS/ECON - The “Brent/WTI spread” is a term used for the price difference between two major benchmarks for what global commodity?

The Brent/WTI (or WTI–Brent) spread is the price difference between Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate crude, two leading benchmark grades of crude oil used to price much of the world’s petroleum.(oilpriceapi.com)

Connections

  • Oil‑market explainers: Trading and data sites like OilpriceAPI, BrentChart, and others routinely publish guides to “WTI vs Brent” and the Brent–WTI spread, aimed at investors and energy analysts; these are exactly the kinds of resources trivia‑minded readers might browse.(oilpriceapi.com)
  • Macro & defense reports: U.S. Government Accountability Office analyses of Defense Department fuel budgeting explicitly graph differences between Brent and WTI benchmarks, so anyone reading about military logistics or fuel costs sees this spread discussed.(gao.gov)
  • Oil‑focused podcasts: Shows such as S&P Global’s Oil Markets and independent podcasts like Let’s Talk Energy devote episodes to explaining oil pricing benchmarks (Brent, WTI) and how spreads move with geopolitics and infrastructure—great background if you’re an audio‑learner.(podcasts.apple.com)
  • Cinema about oil booms: While set long before Brent and WTI existed, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood dramatizes the early‑20th‑century California oil boom and the emergence of ruthless oilmen, helping ground how central crude oil is to modern economics and politics.(en.wikipedia.org)

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Question 3: Romantasy (Romance + Fantasy)

Q3. LITERATURE - A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, and From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout are often cited as prototypical examples of a literary subgenre combining magical or supernatural settings with a central love story. Popularized through discussions on BookTok and Goodreads in the late 2010s and early 2020s, this subgenre is best known by what portmanteau name?

The portmanteau “romantasy” (romance + fantasy) is widely used for romantic fantasy novels where a central love story unfolds within a richly built fantasy world, a subgenre that surged in visibility through TikTok’s #BookTok community and Goodreads in the 2020s with series like A Court of Thorns and Roses, Fourth Wing, and From Blood and Ash.(en.wikipedia.org)

Connections

  • Genre labels in the press: The Guardian explicitly describes “romantasy” as a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy” applied to blockbuster series by authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, underscoring how the term has become a marketing category in itself.(theguardian.com)
  • BookTok phenomenon: ABC News, Marie Claire, and other outlets trace how BookTok drove enormous sales for romantasy—Fourth Wing and its sequels, ACOTAR, and similar series—by generating billions of views for related hashtags and reviving backlist titles.(abc.net.au)
  • Mainstream coverage of specific series: Articles on Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses routinely call them “romantasy” and highlight their intense fandoms, while publisher copy for From Blood and Ash markets it as high fantasy with an intense central romance that even won Goodreads’ 2020 Romance Choice Award.(en.wikipedia.org)
  • TV adaptations and cross‑media buzz: A planned TV adaptation of A Court of Thorns and Roses and development news around romantasy properties keep the term in entertainment headlines, so even non‑readers may encounter “romantasy” in TV and streaming coverage.(marieclaire.com)

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Question 4: Harissa – Tunisia’s Chili Paste Condiment

Q4. FOOD/DRINK - The 15th-century arrival of chili peppers in North Africa led to the creation of what condiment, often compared to sriracha though typically thicker and less sweet, and made from rehydrated dried chilies blended with garlic, caraway, coriander, and olive oil? Popular across the region and its diaspora communities, it is widely considered the national condiment of Tunisia.

The condiment is harissa, a hot chili pepper paste native to Tunisia, typically made from dried red chilies (often baklouti), garlic, caraway, coriander (and often cumin), blended with olive oil; it became possible after New World chili peppers reached North Africa via the Columbian Exchange and is widely described as Tunisia’s national condiment, now listed by UNESCO as part of the country’s Intangible Cultural Heritage.(en.wikipedia.org)

Connections

  • UNESCO heritage status: UNESCO inscribed “Harissa, knowledge, skills and culinary and social practices” on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2022, generating international news coverage and cementing its status as a symbol of Tunisian identity.(ich.unesco.org)
  • Global food writing and TV: Encyclopedic entries and articles on Tunisian cuisine repeatedly mention harissa as a hallmark sauce, and chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi feature it in cookbooks, columns, and MasterClass lessons on modern Middle Eastern cooking—so watching or reading contemporary food media is an easy way to encounter it.(en.wikipedia.org)
  • Festivals and diaspora culture: Harissa festivals in Nabeul and elsewhere celebrate the paste with music, demonstrations, and tastings, while diaspora communities use it in everything from sandwiches to couscous—frequent subjects of human‑interest food stories.(en.wikipedia.org)

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Question 5: Das Mädchen and German Grammatical Gender

Q5. LANGUAGE - In an example of the occasional inscrutability of grammatical gender in the German language, what definite article is used for the singular noun Mädchen in the nominative case?

In standard German, the noun Mädchen (“girl”) takes the neuter definite article das in the nominative case, because nouns formed with the diminutive suffix ‑chen are always grammatically neuter regardless of the natural gender they refer to.(skrause.org)

Connections

  • Grammar patterns, not “real‑world” gender: German grammar resources emphasize that grammatical gender is a noun‑class system: masculine (der), feminine (die), and neuter (das) are assigned by form and suffix, not by biological sex. Guides often use das Mädchen alongside der Mann and die Frau to show this mismatch.(skrause.org)
  • Diminutives everywhere: Articles on forming diminutives explain that suffixes ‑chen and ‑lein always yield neuter nouns—hence das Mädchen (from die Magd), das Fräulein, das Häuschen, etc.—a pattern that pops up constantly in fairy‑tale names like Rotkäppchen (“little Red Hood”).(polymind.org)
  • Linguistics and cross‑language comparisons: General overviews of grammatical gender in linguistics frequently cite Mädchen as a textbook example where natural female sex contrasts with neuter grammatical gender, illustrating that gender systems are partly arbitrary.(fp-004.flexxmedien.com)
  • Language‑learning culture: Blogs and learner sites, like Signum’s “What’s German for Girl?” article, use das Mädchen as a kind of meme example—one many students first meet through online German‑learning communities and language‑learning social media.(signumstore.com)

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Question 6: Captain America Punches Hitler

Q6. LITERATURE - The cover of the 1941 debut issue of a comic created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon famously depicts Adolf Hitler getting massively punched by whom?

The figure punching Adolf Hitler on the cover of Captain America Comics #1 (cover‑dated March 1941, on sale December 20, 1940) is Captain America himself, the patriotic superhero created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as an explicitly anti‑Nazi symbol before the United States entered World War II.(en.wikipedia.org)

Connections

  • Iconic Golden Age cover: Histories of Captain America Comics emphasize that issue #1’s cover shows Captain America punching Hitler and that the book sold nearly a million copies, making it one of the most famous Golden Age covers and a bold political statement in 1940–41.(en.wikipedia.org)
  • Museum‑level artifact: In 2026 the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum announced its acquisition of an original Captain America Comics #1, calling the cover of Captain America punching Hitler “one of the most culturally significant comic books in American history” for its early anti‑Nazi message.(ushmm.org)
  • Marvel’s own retrospectives: Marvel’s official description of Captain America Comics (1941) #1 notes that “decking Hitler” on the cover was the perfect introduction for a flag‑clad hero during World War II, reinforcing how central that image is to the character’s mythos.(marvel.com)
  • Film homages: The 2011 movie Captain America: The First Avenger includes a stage‑show propaganda sequence where Steve Rogers knocks out a Hitler impersonator—deliberately echoing the original 1941 cover for modern audiences.(marvel.fandom.com)

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