Don’t be sheepish about taking this Lunar New Year quiz

Happy Lunar New Year!

Let’s pop a cork and start celebrating the yang all year long. And by “yang,” we mean sheep. Although some people mean goat. And others, ram.

See, according to the Chinese zodiac, which assigns years to one of 12 animals, 2015 is the Year of the Yang. But “yang,” in that language, can mean any number of furry creatures you might find roaming a meadow in the mountains, including sheep, goats, rams or even antelope.

Which is causing confusion for some revelers around the world — and that’s before any champagne is poured.

We decided to assign the year to our favorite “yang” species, the sheep. Known for being docile and mindless, sheep are often given short shrift. When someone is called a black sheep, sheepish, woolly or a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” well, it’s not exactly as flattering as being called a fox.

But we like sheep. The underappreciated mammals rarely cause trouble, they’re cute and fluffy, and they provide us with meat to fill our bellies and wool for keeping warm.

The Travel China Guide (www.travelchinaguide.com) says people born in the Year of the Sheep are “tender, polite, filial, clever and kindhearted. They have special sensitivity to art and beauty. … They are wise, gentle and compassionate and can cope with business cautiously and circumspectly. … They are kind in heart and commonly have symmetrical figures and features.”

Pop culture likes sheep, too. As a shout-out to sheep, take this quiz, give yourself a point for each correct answer and see how you scored at the end. Just keep in mind that an adult female sheep is a ewe, an adult male sheep is a ram (or a wether if castrated), and a young sheep is usually referred to as a lamb.

1. Which former Beatle sang a song based on the famous 19th-century nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb?

A. George Harrison

B. John Lennon

C. Paul McCartney

D. Ringo Starr

2. The St. Louis Rams football franchise began as the Cleveland Rams in 1936. After leaving Cleveland and before moving to St. Louis, the team played in which city?

A. New York

B. Chicago

C. Seattle

D. Los Angeles

3. In 1996, a year after they teamed up in Tommy Boy, Saturday Night Live alumni Chris Farley and David Spade appeared in what widely panned feature film?

A. Black Sheep

B. Grey Sheep

C. Sheep Impact

D. Sheeping With the Enemy

4. The British stop-motion animated television series Shaun the Sheep was spun off from which Nick Park-created franchise?

A. Animal Shelf

B. The Wind in the Willows

C. Wallace and Gromit

D. Chicken Run

5. Which novelist wrote the 1968 sci-fi classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Hint: The book was loosely adapted to the silver screen as Blade Runner (1982).

A. Isaac Asimov

B. Philip K. Dick

C. Richard Matheson

D. Robert Heinlein

6. Where did the idiom “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” which refers to someone who appears harmless on the outside but is actually dangerous, originate?

A. The Bible

B. Aesop’s Fables

C. Shakespeare’s King Lear

D. Little Red Riding Hood

7. In the classic nursery rhyme “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” how many bags are full of wool?

A. 1

B. 2

C. 3

D. 4

8. Which British prog-rockers recorded the song Sheep, originally titled Raving and Drooling? Hint: It’s on their 1977 album, Animals.

A. Electric Light Orchestra

B. Pink Floyd

C. Genesis

D. Jethro Tull

9. In George Orwell’s literary classic Animal Farm, which phrase do the sheep mindlessly chant?

A. “Sheep are cheap.”

B. “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

C. “We want our wool.”

D. “You heard us, you can’t herd us.”

10. The video game Sheep, which lets players select from four herders (two humans, two dogs), was inspired by what ubiquitous strategy/puzzle game?

A. Tetris

B. Pac-Man

C. Scrabble

D. Lemmings

11. In 1996 in Edinburgh, Scotland, a team of scientists cloned a sheep. It was the world’s first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. What was the sheep’s name?

A. Dolly

B. Molly

C. Woolemina

D. Mary

12. If you order lamb at a restaurant, you will probably get meat from a sheep that is younger than a year old. Edible meat from older sheep is known as what?

A. Venison

B. Mignon

C. Mutton

D. Veal

13. Which of these is the name of a popular character from Disney’s Doc McStuffins children’s series?

A. Lambie

B. Lambrusco

C. Lamb-Lamb

D. Lambada

14. In what television drama did the character Lord Tywin Lannister say, “A lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep”?

A. Dexter

B. Game of Thrones

C. Breaking Bad

D. Downton Abbey

15. What famous American ventriloquist and entertainer performed with a sock puppet named Lamb Chop?

A. Johnny Carson

B. Buck Cody

C. Shirley Dinsdale

D. Shari Lewis

1. C, Paul McCartney. The left-handed bassist recorded Mary Had a Little Lamb in 1972 with his post-Beatles band, Wings. In 2013, Rolling Stone ranked it No. 4 on its list of “The 12 Weirdest Paul McCartney Songs.”

2. D, Los Angeles. In 1946, team owner Dan Reeves moved the Rams to Los Angeles to avoid competing with the upstart Cleveland Browns franchise. The team relocated to St. Louis in 1995.

3. A, Black Sheep. On the TV show Siskel & Ebert, critic Gene Siskel said that Black Sheep was the first movie he had walked out of in a theater since 1971’s Million Dollar Duck. To which Roger Ebert replied, “I envy you.”

4. C, Wallace and Gromit. Shaun first appeared in the 1995 Wallace and Gromit short A Close Shave. In the film, Wallace gives him the name “Shaun,” which is a play on the word “shorn.”

5. B, Philip K. Dick. The post-apocalyptic story takes place after “World War Terminus,” when what’s left of the populace keeps electronic animals as pets.

6. A, the Bible. In the Matthew 7:15 (King James Version), Jesus is quoted as saying: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

7. C, 3. When asked if he has any wool, the black sheep says, “Three bags full; one for the master, and one for the dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”

8. B, Pink Floyd. In addition to Sheep, Animals, which is loosely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm, contains Pigs on the Wing (in two parts), Dogs and Pigs (Three Different Ones).

9. B, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” By the end of the novel, the sheep chant the similar-sounding but antithetical “Four legs good, two legs better.”

10. D, Lemmings. As in Lemmings (1991), Sheep has players indirectly guiding mindless creatures to their destination.

11. A, Dolly, named after country singer Dolly Parton. First revealed to the public Feb. 22, 1997, Dolly’s birth created a storm of controversy.

12. C, Mutton. While Westerners typically prefer lamb, which has a mild taste, Middle and Far Easterners traditionally favor the stronger flavor of mutton.

13. A, Lambie, a stuffed lamb with a pink bow and tutu, is a sweet, cuddly main character on Doc McStuffins voiced by Lara Jill Miller.

14. B, Game of Thrones. The quote is from the Season 1 episode “You Win or You Die.”

15. D, Shari Lewis (1933-98) appeared in several famous network TV shows, including her Emmy-winning Lamb Chop’s Play-Along, which ran for five years on PBS beginning in 1992.

0-5 points: Thanks for playing, but you are obviously the black sheep of the quiz-taking family.

6-10 points: Decent score, but you are still a little sheepish when it comes to answering trivia questions.

11-14 points: Ewe did great!

15 points: Perfect score! You are clearly baaaad to the bone!

Sources: www.imdb.com, www.allmusic.com, www.britannica.com

This story was originally published February 17, 2015 at 1:29 PM with the headline "Don’t be sheepish about taking this Lunar New Year quiz."