Puzzle Description:

Inspired by Belita's fun series. I hope this isn't too obscure!

#1: Kristen Vognild (kristen) on Jul 26, 2021 [SPOILER]

tiny potassium? :)

There's a great song about the elements, but I don't know if it was ever in a movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs&ab_channel=BBC

Daniel Radcliffe knows who Tom Lehrer is! Coolness!!

Little Red Element?
Elements of stop and go?
Three elemental square meals and dessert?
Hm.

Is that the chemical formula for a Spoonful of Sugar?

One of those looks like Magnesium.
Is this the theme song from "Heavy Metal"?

I'm lost!

That's a section of the Periodic Table, in the upper left. Potassium (K) goes in the mostly-empty box.

Tom Lehrer's songs are all wonderful.

I still remembr the day I did an internet search to find a website called "A Webpage Wasted on Tom Lehrer," along with annotations to parts of the song that I didn't understand.

This probably was too obscure. I will give one clue, then an answer in 24 hours. It's from a fake documentary, between 2000 and 2009, which had a sequel a year or two ago.

And yes, it's something about the potassium.

The line was instantly memorable to me, because it was so wrong, but other people probably remember other parts of the movie more.

"Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world
All other countries are run by little girls
Kazakhstan, number one exporter of potassium
Other countries have inferior potassium
...."

Back before the Internet was popular, one of my friends from high school once telephoned Tom Lehrer with a question. He actually reached him. Lehrer was surprised that anybody still listened to his music. I think my friend was looking for a copy of a hard-to-find album and Lehrer mailed it to him. Anyway, I thought the whole thing was pretty neat, and I was impressed that it was possible to just call up Tom Lehrer on the phone, and that my friend had the courage to do it.

Hm. I searched Wikipedia's list of Mockumentaries for the word "sequel," but the answer didn't leap out at me. I don't think I've seen this movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mockumentaries

Valerie--wow! That is a really awesome story. Tom Lehrer seemed like a really good person even before that. I always enjoyed his comment on teaching math:

"But it's a real math class," he says. "I don't do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly."

I hope David's answer made things clearer to you. Many people might not have noticed the sequel was A Thing.

Also, high five, David! And not a "too slow" one either.

The phrase "inferior potassium" always made me laugh, because it seemed like such a silly thing to brag about.

Doesn't Sheldon Cooper sing this in the episode where he gets drunk right before accepting an award? Big Bang Theory

The most important alkaline elements...

Andrew, alas, I have still entirely missed the clue. I think it's something I haven't seen.

Valerie, the little red K is the "inferior potassium" (as mentioned in comment #9). I think it's a lovely idea for a puzzle about song lyrics. It's a pretty obscure idea for a "famous lines from movies" series. :)

I utterly didn't recognize the phrase "inferior potassium," so I did a web search to find out what movie it's from. The movie is called Borat, and I've never heard of it, so that explains why I was confused!

Goto next topic

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