Trick or treat! It's the day before All Saints Day, and the ghosts and goblins are out in force. Halloween is kind of just another day at the office for the Certification Magazine team. There's work to be done, bills to pay, and so forth. On the other hand, there's also a fantastic Halloween luncheon, and there will be a swarm of trick-or-treaters passing through this afternoon.

These words are being written to the seasonally appropriate rhythm of YouTube's "Darth Vader Breathing 10 Hours" (and typed by the ungloved hands of the Big D himself), while Buddy the Elf and Santa Claus hold court next door, and dreams are coming true in the Snuggly Duckling tavern two doors down. So, yeah, we know how to party.

Being that it's a bit of a slower business day than usual, we're posting one of our always loved holiday quizzes. We hope that you'll enjoy the trivia now, and the treats (and tricks) tonight. Have a Happy (and Safe) Halloween!

1. Slicing and dicing pumpkins is the way to go in the United States, but what countries inspired that practice by defacing large turnips?

2. Which caped and/or masked crimefighter inspired the top superhero costume  for kids in 2017?

3. Which Halloween candies are most beloved among Americans?

4. What is the most popular horror film streamed by Amazon users this year?

5. Who gets rocks instead of candy while trick-or-treating in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?

6. When is the last time there was a "black moon" on Halloween night? (The next one won't occur until 2081.)

7. What famous filmmaker who lorded it over the American box office with a trio of beloved blockbusters was born on Halloween in 1961?

8. Which brunette singer-songwriter tweeted on Halloween in 2014, "People keep asking me what I will be for Halloween and my answer is that I am Halloween"?

9. What is the most common "Halloween color" other than black and orange?

10. Which famous Roman statesman included in his letters a detailed account of his villa at Athens being haunted by a ghostly apparition of an old man with a long beard rattling chains?





ANSWERS

1. Seasonal grins and grimaces carved into turnips and mangel wurzels in Ireland and Scotland are believed to have inspired the jack-o-lanterns we know today.

2. Batman. The Caped Crusader narrowly beat out Spider-Man as the year's hottest Halloween superhero.

3. Chocolate reportedly blows everything else off the map, with candy corns rating a distant second. The top chocolate treats are Reese's and Snickers.

4. The hottest horror title at Amazon.com in 2017 is the 1990 miniseries version of Stephen King's It. The suburban chiller Get Out, from Jordan Peele of Key & Peele fame, is No. 2

5. Charlie Brown, of course. Amusingly enough, the 10-year-old child actor who gave voice to Charlie Brown, Peter Robbins, also got rocks when he trick-or-treated in 1966, the year that It's the Great Pumpkin first aired.

6. Just last year, in 2016. A so-called "black moon" is the second new moon to fall in the same calendar month, making it the opposite of a blue moon, or the second full moon to fall in the same calendar month.

7. Peter Jackson, director of a beloved trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Other celebrities of note to be born on Halloween are rapper Vanilla Ice and actress Piper Perabo.

8. New Zealand-born recording artist Lorde (real name: Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor).

9. For a variety of reasons, including its rarity as a naturally occurring hue and its natural balance with orange and green, purple is generally believed to be the most common and widely used "Halloween color" after orange and black.

10. Pliny the Younger contributed one of history's first written ghost stories with this vivid account from the first century A.D.