242: Fun Quiz with Fun Prizes

Hi everyone, I am Dr. Marie Murphy.  I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  And what that means is, if you are cheating on your partner, or having an affair, or you’re the “other person,” or you’re engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgements.  I know very well that engaging in infidelity can be exhilarating, and life-affirming, and wonderful in so many ways, and for so many reasons.  And I also know that engaging in infidelity can be exhausting, and stressful, and a total drain on your precious time and energy.  So when you’re ready to start dealing with your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, I can help you do it.  There are two ways you can have me as your coach: we can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my private, online course, You’re Not the Only One.  To get started with either of these options, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.

Okay folks.  We’re going to do something fun and different today.  We’re going to do a little quiz for prizes.  I’m going to ask you a series of questions about me, and you will have the opportunity to submit your answers through the contact form on my website.  I’m going to offer you 10 questions to answer.  The first person to answer each single question correctly wins complimentary access to my online course, You’re Not the Only One, which contains essential, non-judgmental guidance for folks who are engaging in any kind of infidelity.  Now what I mean by that is, the first person to answer question number four wins complimentary access to my course.  The first person to answer question seven gets complimentary access to my course.  I do not mean that you have to answer all ten questions correctly to win this prize.

The first person to answer two or more questions correctly wins a complimentary introductory coaching session with me. 

And the first person to answer three or more questions correctly wins both complimentary access to my course, and a complimentary introductory coaching session with me.  I’ll go over the process for submitting your answers again, and with more detail, later in the episode.

Are you ready?  Let’s get started with the questions.

When I was younger, I, like many other people, loved Guns’n’Roses.  As in the band.  Maybe you did, too.  And when I actively listened to Guns’n’Roses, I liked many of their songs, but I had a definite favorite.  And then I stopped listening to Guns’n’Roses completely for many years and didn’t give them much thought, but then one day, a few years ago, I was like, hey, maybe I should listen to Guns’n’Roses again.  Let’s give that a try.  Why not?  So I did, and what I discovered was, I didn’t much care to listen to Guns’n’Roses anymore.  I’ve been there and done that and I don’t need to do it anymore.  But I also discovered that my old favorite song of theirs was still my favorite song of theirs. 

So the first question you may answer if you like is, what is my favorite Guns’n’Roses song?

I will give you two hints.  It is not November Rain, thank you very much, and it is not some obscure song that was on some bootleg recording or anything like that.  It’s a song on one of their LPs.

Here is the second question you may answer if you like.

What literary character did I – intentionally or otherwise – draw a significant amount of personal influence from?  And by that I mean, this fictional character informed my sense of my identity, or who I am, and the way I inhabit the world.  Perhaps to a slightly embarrassing degree, but then again, perhaps not so embarrassingly at all.

Here are your clues for this question.  The fictional character in question appears in books – and primarily one book - written by an American writer, which were published in the second half of the 20^th century.

The third question is, what is my favorite animal that only lives in Africa – or at least, only lives in the wild in Africa?  It’s not some totally obscure animal or subspecies that no one except experts in African wildlife have ever heard of.

The fourth question is, what is my favorite cocktail?  Again, it isn’t something totally obscure that no one other than cocktail nerds has ever heard of.  Let’s see how many times I can use the word “obscure” in this episode, shall we?

The fifth question is, what are my two favorite colors?  You have to get both colors right in order to get the question right.  And you don’t get any clues for this one, but I’ll tell you that you can name the most basic variants of each color and get the answer right.  I’m not looking for like, a really specific shade of a common color. 

Sixth question: what is my favorite condiment?  I’ll accept a general answer to this question – I’m not expecting anyone to guess my favorite brand or variant of this condiment.  The answer to this question is NOT ketchup, but if it were, you could just say ketchup, and you would get the question right.  You wouldn’t have to name a particular brand of ketchup.

Seventh question: what condiment do I refuse to eat?  Again, all you have to do is correctly name the general condiment, not any specific brand.

The answers to those last questions were presented publicly at one point, and might still be in some public document or interview or something somewhere.  So if you think you’ve heard me mention the answers to the condiment questions before, it’s entirely possible that you have.

Eighth question: what was my favorite movie of 2025?  Meaning, the movie came out in 2025.  This movie was not a Hollywood blockbuster, but it wasn’t something totally obscure, either.  The clue I’ll give you is that it was directed by someone who has directed other movies that received critical acclaim.    

The ninth question pertains to Top Chef, the Bravo TV show.  I happen to LOVE Top Chef.  It’s changed a bit, in recent seasons, and although I can imagine the reasons for why they’ve made some of the changes they’ve made and if I’m even partially right about those reasons, I respect them.  But even so, I’m still very sad about the ways the show has changed.  I miss the good old days of stew room misbehavior.  I have met several Top Chef “cheftestants,” and I have found these meetings perhaps a little too exciting, and I may or may not have acted a little weird during these encounters.  I’ve met one Top Chef winner - although it might be a bit of an overstatement to say that I “met” this person.  I was introduced to them, and I was really excited to meet them, and what they said to me was, “Hey, what’s up.”  And that was it!  I thought we were going to have at least a bit of small talk unrelated to Top Chef, but of course, I had been HOPING for a long, drawn out question and answer session about their Top Chef experiences.  But no, all I got was, “Hey, what’s up.”  All my hopes and dreams went down the drain in an instant.  So sad!  I won’t recount the details of my other encounters with cheftestants, but, as you can probably tell by now, they all meant something to me!

So question number nine is, who is my favorite Top Chef contestant ever?  I will give you two hints.  The first is that it is not Marcel.  The second is that it was not someone who was eliminated on the first or second episode of their season.

The last question, question number ten, is who was my favorite person on television when I was little?  And when I say little, I guess I mean under the age of six.  For context, I am in my late forties, so the person I am talking about was on television in the early 1980s.

And to be clear, I am talking about an actual human person – not a cartoon version of a human, and not a Smurf or one of the non-human Sesame Street characters or anything like that.  So those are a couple of clues, or at least parameters… and I will tell you that there is another hint as to who this person is that is hiding in plain sight.

So, to recap, the 10 questions are:

One: what is my favorite Guns’n’Roses song?

Two: what literary character did I draw a significant amount of personal influence from?

Three: what is my favorite animal that only lives in the wild in Africa?

Four: what is my favorite cocktail?

Five: what are my TWO favorite colors?

Six: what is my favorite condiment?

Seven: what condiment do I refuse to eat?

Eight: what was my favorite movie of 2025?

Ninth: who is my favorite contestant on Top Chef?

Tenth: who was my favorite person on television when I was little?

HERE IS HOW YOU CAN SUBMIT YOUR ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS:

Option one is to go to the contact form on my website.  The URL for that is mariemurphyphd.com/contact, and I’ll make sure that’s in the show notes for this episode.  Use the contact form to submit your questions.  OR you can email [email protected].  If you email your answers, please use a subject heading that is either “answers to quiz questions” or something very close to that.  If you reach out to me through Instagram or Facebook, I may not see your message, and even if I do, your answers will not count.  So please use the contact form on the website or the support email address to submit your answers.

When you submit your answers please specify the number of the question you are answering, and succinctly state your answer to the question.  So, if you’re answering one of the condiment questions, write the question number and write the name of the condiment.  If you’re answering a question about a person, just write the question number and that person’s name. 

You can answer as many or as few questions as you would like.  You do not have to answer all ten questions! 

Now this is important: YOU MAY NOT ENTER MULTIPLE ANSWERS – OR MULTIPLE GUESSES – TO ANY SINGLE QUESTION.  If you send multiple answers to any question – other than the question about my two favorite colors, of course – your submission will be disqualified.

Please make sure to sign off with your name.  It can be a pseudonym, if you like, but if you win one of the prizes, we will need to contact you, and we would like to address you by name.

The contest will be open for two weeks, starting the date this episode goes live. 

As I said earlier, in order to win, you have to be the first person to answer a particular question correctly.  So if ten people correctly guess both of my favorite colors, only the first person who submitted the correct answer wins the prize.  And, as a reminder, the prize for getting one correct answer is complimentary access to my online course, You’re Not the Only One.  The first person to get two correct answers will win a complimentary introductory coaching session with me.  And the first person to get three correct answers will receive both a complimentary introductory coaching session with me and complimentary access to my online course. 

Only one entry per person, please.  If you send multiple emails, only your first email will be considered.  And in case it doesn’t go without saying, please don’t email us and ask for extra hints or anything like that.  If you do that, rest assured that we will generously ignore your message.

I have never done this before, so I have no idea how many responses to anticipate.  And what that means for you is, if we get bombarded with responses, you may only receive a reply if you are a winner.  However, if we don’t get that many submissions, we may be able to write back to everyone, even if it is only to say, “Thanks for your submission, but you didn’t get any correct answers.” 

I will of course announce the answers to all ten questions on a future podcast episode!  Just to reiterate, you get two weeks after this episode is released to submit your answers either by using the contact form on my website, which you can find at mariemurphyphd.com/contact, or by emailing [email protected].

Now, I realize you may have some questions for me at this point, and the first may be, “How the fuck are we supposed to be able to know the answers to any of these questions?”  And the answer is, you very well might not be able to.  But then again, you just might!  Or you might just be a little psychic, and that’s fair game, as far as I’m concerned.  But that feeds into what I imagine your second question might be, which is, “Why are you doing this quiz thing, anyway?  What’s the point of all of this, especially if it’s unlikely we’re going to know the answers to the questions you’re asking?”

The answer to that second question is twofold.  One, I did it for fun.  For my own amusement, and hopefully for yours, too.  Sometimes the joy in considering a question isn’t in getting the answer right.  It’s in thinking about things we’ve never thought about before, or stretching our imagination, or considering something that’s familiar to us from an unfamiliar angle.  Doing this can be intrinsically enjoyable!

And feeds into the second reason why I made this episode.  I hear WAY too many people complaining that their spouse or their partner or their affair partner or the new person they’re dating or whoever has become totally boring to them.  People tell me ALL THE TIME that they know everything there is to know about their partner.  Or whoever it is they’re talking about.  And on the one hand, I’m sympathetic to these kinds of assessments.  But the problem is, a lot of people don’t think of these assessments as assessments.  They think of them as the objective, absolute truth!  People think they truly, literally know every single thing they could possibly know about their person.  People truly believe that their person is, objectively and fundamentally, boring.  And I want to suggest is that you are probably wrong about either or both of those things.

Now, I want be very clear about something: if you are not interested in someone and don’t want to be interested in that someone, that is fair enough.  You are allowed to choose who you want to be interested in.

But here’s the thing.  In order to find someone interesting, we have to take an active interest in them.  So often we think that people are either interesting or not interesting, but I would argue that you are either interested in someone or not interested in them.

If you want to find someone interesting, you have to be interested in them.  Actively.  And so often, we get really lazy about being interested in other people.  We think that if someone were interesting, they would captivate our attention all the time by continuously doing things we happen to find fascinating.  And we tend to think that it’s their responsibility to be fascinating to us all the time, if they want to sustain our interest.

But I repeat: we can only find someone interesting if we choose to be interested in them.  We can only be fascinated by someone if we are open to finding them fascinating.  This doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to have preferences about who we find interesting and who we don’t.  We most certainly are.   But even though that’s true, that isn’t the important point for now.  For now, the important point is that finding someone interesting or fascinating or engaging has as much to do with us as it does with the other person.  And so often we fail to be curious, and then we blame other people for not being interesting.

So this little quiz of mine was created with the intention of getting you thinking about what you COULD find interesting about other people.  What might you be interested in knowing about someone that you’ve never thought to be interested in before?  What questions might you ask of someone that you’ve never thought of asking?  If your curiosity were unlimited, what would you want to know about someone?  The things you’re interested in or the questions you ask can be silly or serious, profound or superficial.  It’s all potentially interesting.

If you have a hard time coming up with things to be interested in, or questions to ask people, there are like a zillion and twenty decks of question cards that are designed to help you get to know people better, or to talk to people you think you know well about things you’ve never talked about before.  And there are also books like this with questions in them.  I don’t have any specific ones to recommend, but if you don’t feel naturally inclined towards curiosity, these sorts of resources could help spark yours.

Curiosity is a superpower, and it is a superpower that you can cultivate, and I encourage you to cultivate it.  Curiosity makes life so much more fun.  And curiosity makes relationships so much more fun and enjoyable and satisfying.

What exactly does this have to do with infidelity, you may ask?  A lot, but that’s another story for another day.  We’ll talk about that another time.

But, on the subject of infidelity, if you would like my help dealing with any aspect of your infidelity situation, there are two ways you can have me as your coach.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my online course, You’re Not the Only One.  To get started with either of these options, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.

Thank you all so much for listening!  I hope to receive your responses to these quiz questions soon.  Bye for now.