Great Hits from the Playboy Advisor

All right, you guys. Quiz time. We've been answering all reasonable questions--from fashion, food and drink, stereo and sports cars to dating dilemmas, taste and etiquette--for 15 fun-filled years. Now it's your turn. (Did you think you were going to get off scot free?) The following pertinent, provocative queries were previously presented in the pages of The Playboy Advisor. To a certain extent, they reflect the changing concerns of a generation of Americans. At the beginning, it seemed we answered as many questions about sartorial splendor as about the kind in the grass. In the politically paranoid atmosphere of the late Sixties, we addressed ourself to the question that was plaguing everyone: Is it legal to remove the tags from pillows and mattresses? Recently, the Advisor has gotten more into the nitty-gritty aspects of sexual freedom: What is the caloric content of sperm? Is kinky sex before marriage a proof of love? Take out your pen. Match wits with The Playboy Advisor.

1. Gold and silver threads can be found woven into the lining of many ties. Ranging in number from one to six, the threads indicate (A) the quality of workmanship of the tie, (B) the weight of the fabric used to line the tie, (C) the number of times the wearer has made it with his secretary, (D) none of the above.

2. Is it possible to improve your cunnilingual skills by removing corks from champagne bottles with your tongue?

3. Why is this man writhing? Describe the activity pictured above.

4. We respect sage advice when we hear it. Match the following pearls of wisdom with the original oyster. (For extra points, guess the context.)

(A) "Every act an animal act."

(B) "Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them."

(C) "In your amours, you should prefer old women to young ones. They are so grateful."

(D) "In this world there are only two tragedies: One is not getting what you want and the other is getting it."

(E) "Distaste is da best taste in da world."

(1) Oscar Wilde

(2) Benjamin Franklin

(3) P. T. Barnum

(4) Nathaniel Bynner

(5) Abraham Lincoln

5. Your butler brings you Henry Kissinger's calling card. The upper right-hand corner is creased, indicating that (A) Henry the K sat on his wallet, (B) he is making a personal call, (C) one of his aides is making a call in his name, (D) someone from the State Department has tried to break into your house, using Kissinger's card to jimmy the lock on your front door.

6. A French letter is (A) an erotic postcard with text, (B) that portion of the anatomy sealed with a French kiss, (C) a contraceptive, (D) the last vowel in Story of O.

7. Should the pleats of a cummerbund open up or down?

8. Most of the 150 marques defined as classics by the Classic Car Club of America were built between 1925 and 1942; a few were built after World War Two. Which of the following cars is recognized as a postwar classic (A) the Lincoln Continental, (B) the Corvette, (C) the Aston Martin DB5, (D) the Ralph Nader Memorial Corvair.

9. A woman is most likely to attain orgasm during intercourse if she is (A) on her side, (B) on her back, (C) on top, (D) tied spread-eagle to a magic fingers vibrabed, covered with Miracle Whip, licked clean by a nearsighted escargot and allowed to open her own charge account at Bergdorf's.

10. Why is this man writhing? Describe the activity pictured above.

11. True or false? Bird's-nest soup is actually made with birds' nests.

12. Who was Zig-Zag?

13. Dogs become locked in a carnal embrace when the penis is trapped by the contracted muscles of the vagina. Is penis captivus possible in humans? (A) yes, (B) no, (continued on page 211)Playboy Advisor (continued from page 103) (C) yes, but only if you get the K-Y jelly confused with the superglue.

14. "Wear dark, solid-color suits. Never mix stripes with plaids. Make sure your socks match your trousers and keep your shoes shined. Turn out the light before you take off your clothes, then go gently into that good night. By the time she notices anything different (if she notices anything beyond her own pleasure), you will have hidden or disposed of most of the evidence." This was the advice. What was the problem?

15. Take a deep breath and name that tune: What is the longest song title?

16. According to H. L. Mencken, how many kinds of cocktails can be mixed from the ingredients found in most first-class bars?

17. How many cubic centimeters of blood are needed to fill the average-size penis? (In case you're tempted to look it up, the formula for finding the volume of a cylinder is V = pr2h.) (A) 10 c.c., (B) 100 c.c. (C) 300 c.c., (D) 750 c.c.

18. On which finger should you wear your class ring?

19. What living creature has the largest penis in relation to its body size?

20. What do lycopodium, silicon and French talc have in common?

21. You are involved in a group activity described as a concatenation of erotic contact "in which each participant simultaneously does to someone else more or less what someone else is doing to him or her." What are you doing? (Hint: It is not an obscene conference call.)

22. Which of the following groups have something in common and why? (A) cups, swords, coins and batons, (B) dogs, ducks, falcons and stags, (C) lions, elks, masons and moose, (D) Commies, pinkos, dykes and queers.

23. Racing stripes are used to distinguish Grand Prix teams from different nations. The color that is now used for the stripes used to be the color of what part of the automobile?

24. What was the lowest sticker price ever posted on an American automobile?

25. What is the average life span of a sperm cell?

26. Plastic covers should be removed from record albums. Why?

27. During the course of the Chinese basket trick, a woman climbs into a basket suspended from the ceiling by a block and tackle, lowers herself until her genitals come into contact with her partner's, then slowly twists the ropes. What is the variation of this technique known as the Chinese picnic basket?

28. Is sterility inherited?

29. To what did Saint-Amant refer as the "gentle jam of Bacchus"?

30. A Brough Superior is (A) a Cuban cigar, (B) an English motorcycle, (C) an esoteric sexual position, (D) a Scottish wine.

31. Is it proper to clean a pipe with a combination tool in mixed company? On formal occasions?

32. Which of the following games of skill did cardsharp Edmond Hoyle not write about? (A) poker, (B) whist, (C) quadrille, (D) piquet.

33. You find yourself kissing your girlfriend's face and breasts while her roommate performs oral sex on you. The ménage à trois is marvelous. Obviously, you must be doing something right, but what exactly are you doing? (Name the technique.)

34. Where did James Bond buy his cigarettes?

35. This land is your land: Is it possible to homestead in the United States?

36. Why is rum sometimes known as Nelson's blood? (Hint: The answer may put you off rum for the rest of your life.)

37. At a cocktail party, you overhear a woman discussing her new wardrobe, something about a double-breasted grope suit in English leather. Her companion asks if it would clash with his Brooks Brothers hair shirt with the oxford collar. What is a grope suit?

38. True or false? Vodka is less likely than whiskey to give you a hangover.

39. How long can a man's cigarette holder be before it is considered affected-looking?

40. "Tell your boyfriend that one erogenous zone is as vulnerable as the next and that you know a girl who has a jar full of what appear to be mushrooms." This was the advice. What was the problem?

Pretty easy quiz, right? After all, we did give you the answers in advance. But just in case you missed them the first time around, here they are again. If you didn't get any of the questions right, contact Bob Guccione for a job giving advice to the readers of Penthouse. If you got fewer than ten questions right, we know your problem, and it's nothing that reincarnation won't cure. Ten to twenty right; it's time to stop taking Playboy to "show and tell" and start that remedial-reading class. Twenty to thirty right; not bad. Thirty plus right; you don't need any help from us. Forty right;we might give you our job. (By the way, it is OK to remove the tags from the pillows in your apartment, the caloric content of sperm is less than that of most diet colas and kinky sex before marriage is a proof of love.)

1. September 1970: B. The number of threads indicates the weight of the fabric used to line the tie--one is lightest, six heaviest. We still get letters asking us to confirm or deny this information. Apparently, since we ran our answer, someone has been going around the country accosting businessmen in bars and saying, "Hey, I bet five dollars you don't know what the threads in your tie mean."

2. November 1973: No, opening champagne bottles with your tongue will not improve your cunnilingual skills. Our answer: "Football players who run through rows of old tires get better at running through rows of old tires. The exercise does little for their broken-field running (opponents seldom behave like rows of old tires)." Unless, maybe, they happen to be the Chicago Bears.

3. August 1974: The man is engaged in a popcorn surprise, a masturbatory technique that is the rage in porno movie theaters. Having first cut a hole in the bottom of a container of popcorn (large, with butter), he then camouflages his erection in the popcorn--then invites his partner to help herself. Hence the phrase "Coming soon in a theater nearest you."

4. A3--We quoted P. T. Barnum, the world's greatest showman, in a July 1964 response to a letter from a young woman whose two-legged dates were unusually aggressive. B5--In July 1973, we quoted Abraham Lincoln in a short essay on bondage and discipline. Of course, we admit that the famous Rail Splitter may have had some other kind of bondage in mind. C2--Benjamin Franklin's advice to young men on older women was given years before anyone had even heard of Margaret Mead. We repeated it in answer to an October 1971 letter on the same subject. D1--We've quoted Oscar Wilde more often than we have any other sage. The October 1973 letter that elicited this reference was from a guy who had always dated small-breasted girls. (Their "cup sizes equaled their grade averages; they have all been dean's-list caliber.") He was about to marry but had second thoughts about future happiness, having never experienced a well-endowed partner. E4--October 1974: Nathaniel Bynner's quip was repeated in an answer on the pleasures of cunnilingus.

5. January 1972: B. The creased corner indicates that Kissinger is making a personal visit. In the international diplomatic code of etiquette, a flat card would indicate that an aide was making the house call.

6. September 1967: C. A French letter is the late--19th Century English slang term for a condom. Interestingly, the French term for the same item is une capote anglaise, or "an English hood."

7. March 1965: The pleats of a cummerbund should open up: They form pockets for mad money, hotel-room keys and French letters.

8. May 1967: A. The Classic Car Club of America says that Lincoln Continentals, built as late as 1948, should be considered classics. (Also acclaimed are the 1947 Cadillac limousine and a few assorted Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and Packards. What do they know?)

9. August 1968: C. A woman is most likely to attain orgasm during intercourse when she is on top. Ride 'em, cowgirl.

10. June 1975: The couple is engaged in a flying Philadelphia fuck. Leave it to Philadelphians to misname what is obviously an act of fellatio. (When done by members of the same family, the incestual flying fuck is known as the Whistler's Mother Bicentennial Blow Job.)

11. January 1969: True. Bird's-nest soup is made with genuine swifts' nests (thoroughly cleaned). The nests are found along the coasts of China and on some islands in the Indian Ocean.

12. October 1974: Monsieur Zig-Zag--the guy who looks like a Shriner, whose picture graces a certain counterculture product--was a Zouave, an Algerian recruited by the French army to fight in the Crimean War.

13. January 1968: B. No. The Carpetbaggers aside, there is no medical evidence of penis captivus' ever occurring in humans.

14. August 1974: "Having an 11-inch penis can be a problem. Whenever I get to the point where sex is possible with a girl, she usually takes one look at my club and refuses to join." That was some problem.

15. June 1962: The song with the longest title is a 1941 hit: I'm Looking for a Guy Who Plays Alto and Baritone and Doubles on a Clarinet and Wears a Size Thirty-seven Suit. Can we have that again, from the top?

16. March 1967: H. L. Mencken and a friend once employed a mathematician to calculate how many kinds of cocktails could be fashioned out of the materia bibulica ordinarily available at a first-class bar. The number was 17,864,392,788. Mencken and his associate "tried 273 at random and found them all good, though some, of course, were better than others."

17. March 1974: B. Even at maximum distention, the average penis holds no more than 100 c.c. of blood. The average adult male has a total blood volume of almost five liters (5000 c.c.). The formula for finding the volume of a cylinder is misleading; as Alexander Woollcott once remarked, "There is less in this than meets the eye." For example, if you assumed a height of 15.24 centimeters (six inches) and a radius of 2.54 centimeters (one inch), the volume would appear to be over 300 cubic centimeters. Wrong. You forgot to account for the flesh. Of course, if you left that volume constant and chose as your radius .50 centimeter, you would have a cylinder with a height of 393.29 centimeters. Old needle dick the bug fucker rides again.

18. March 1963: Your class ring goes on the little finger of your left hand.

19. January 1970: No, it is not John Dillinger or John C. Holmes, nor is it Moby Dick; the common household flea has the largest penis in relation to body size.

20. December 1973: Lycopodium, silicon and French talc are the powders used to lubricate condoms. Obviously, the lubricant should be changed after every 10,000 inches.

21. July 1973: The activity is known as a daisy chain--usually oral and almost always circular, it is graphically represented as the figure 696969696969696969.

22. November 1966: A and B. Cups, swords, coins and batons, and dogs, ducks, falcons and stags have something in common. They are, respectively, the Spanish/ Italian and German precursors of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades--the markings on cards. If lions, elks, masons and moose have anything in common with Commies, pinkos, dykes and queers, you know something that we don't.

23. May 1965: Now you see it, now you don't! The chassis was visible on early racing cars, and international teams used a different-color paint for the body and the chassis. When streamlining was introduced, the chassis disappeared from view and the color was transferred to the stripes and the trim.

24. July 1962: The lowest sticker price ever posted on an American automobile was the $295 tag on the 1923 Ford Model T. Cheap at ten times the price.

25. March 1970: The average life span of the sperm cell is 24 to 48 hours. Short, perhaps, but it has a lot of fun.

26. July 1973: Plastic covers should be removed because they can shrink and cause the records to warp.

27. February 1974: In the Chinese-picnic-basket trick, you throw a block and tackle into a basket, drive to the country, set up the rig on a suitable tree and go to it. Under the spreading chestnut blonde the village smithy lay.

28. June 1973: Is sterility inherited? No, unless "the child is the product of immaculate conception."

29. July 1973: Brie cheese is the gentle jam of Bacchus.

30. September 1967: B. A Brough Superior is an English motorcycle. Called the Rolls-Royce of two-wheelers, 400 of the handmade bikes were produced between 1921 and 1939. Lawrence of Arabia owned six of them and was killed riding one in 1935.

31. December 1965: Decidedly not. Ditto.

32. September 1964: A. Poker. Hoyle wrote treatises on whist, quadrille and piquet, but he never played or wrote about poker. Instead, he gave his name to all subsequent books of the kind. Charles Goren wrote the Hoyle used by you and your poker cronies.

33. January 1975: You won't find it in Hoyle. The arrangement in which a man is kissed by one woman while another fellates him is known as the queen of hearts. The man has the sense of making love to a two-headed lady. We should be so lucky.

34. September 1966: James Bond acquired his cigarettes, a special blend of Balkan and Turkish tobaccos, from Morland & Co., 83 Grosvenor Street, London W.I.

35. May 1973: Technically, it is still legal to homestead in any of the 50 states. Unfortunately, agricultural land in the public domain has virtually disappeared. Alaska has some land available, but you'd have a hard time finding it.

36. September 1970: Admiral Nelson's body was shipped home in a cask of rum. Thirsty sailors tapped the cask for a drink of rum laced with Nelson's blood. Hence the name.

37. August 1975: A grope suit is a piece of exotic attire that is supposed to drive women wild; it consists of textured cups over the nipples and a G string with a small vibrator or vaginal plug. To our knowledge, the grope suit is still not available right off the rack.

38. April 1974: True. Vodka is less likely than whiskey to give you a hangover, because it has fewer congeners--those demon molecules that form when alcohol is stored in wooden barrels and that are the primary cause of acute membrane outrage.

39. August 1963: Exactly four inches.

40. December 1973: Our advice was directed to a young girl whose boyfriend had looked at her in astonishment and asked, "You mean you still have both of your nipples?" He told her that a woman's nipples are often removed by a man in the heat of passion and that one person he knew had a whole jarful. "They looked like dried apricots." Either this letter was a put-on or there are people out there who are a whole lot weirder than we thought.