Day Two: Tuesday, October 27 at the 2026 Tri-Cities Regional

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What’s My Name?

This Day in History - October 27 Birthdays

The five self-describing historical figures below were all born on October 27. Can you name them and place their birth years in chronological order? (Hint: the five people are in alphabetical order by surname.) Answers below.

“I’ve been telling people for years and years: it rhymes with ‘cheese;’ if you remember that you cannot possibly mispronounce my surname as so many do. As so many did and still do, I emerged from the Cambridge Footlights and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe into television, culminating in Monty Python and later Fawlty Towers, and still later A Fish Called Wanda and dozens of others. Now in my emeritus years, I host a Sunday evening show called The Dinosaur Hour on a new right-leaning British network, just to irritate people with small minds.”
“I was a writer when I was younger; then I got writer’s block and it stayed with me for decades. I still have an editor, who says correctly that being my editor is the easiest job in the world. What little I did write, collected into books, has kept me famous for half a century, and now people will come to hear me talk. I don’t know why; they just do. A few hours of talking for Marty Scorcese’s cameras resulted in a Netflix hit (Pretend It’s A City) that pays the bills so I can continue to avoid writing and using modern gadgets and just enjoy my Manhattan apartment and my ten thousand book library.”
“I was vice president when word reached me that the President had died from wounds recieved in an assassination attempt. During my time as President, I wanted a ‘Square Deal’ for everyone and stopped the development of powerful and dangerous business cartels, promoting regulations and progressive policies. I won the Nobel Peace Prize by brokering an deal between Japan and Russia ending their war. Construction of the Panama Canal began and the first National Parks and protected forests and monuments were established during my presidency. I served the last three and a half years and won a second term, then tried to win another term after my successor took some wrong paths. That didn’t go so well...”
“At first, I worked for the U.S. Army in Korea and Tokyo starting in 1959, but in Tokyo I did side work for United Press International and became UPI's Saigon bureau chief after my discharge in 1962.”Two years later I was working for the New York Times covering the Vietnam War and later becoming the Pentagon correspondent. In 1971 I was told about the Pentagon Papers which Daniel Ellsberg had copied. I convinced him to let me take volumes with me instead of reading and taking notes where they were stored, and was able to copy them in Boston-area shops so the Times analysts could get a close look. This led to their publication after the Supreme Court ruled against the government's wish that publication be halted.
“I left home at the age of twelve, joined a traveling group of actors, and became the troup fixer for anything that needed fixing. I sold my first patent for big money, a machine to drill rock, and a second patent for a machine for carving wood and metal was less successful, but while working on it I was asked to look at broken sewing machines. I figured out how to improve their reliability and make them cheaper to mass-produce, and obtained a patent for this new method. This led to my successful international business and my name remained on sewing machines a full lifetime after my death.”

This Day in History - October 27 Birthdays - Answers

(The clues are above).

Isaac Singer ( 1811 - 1875 ) — American actor, businessman, and inventor who improved the sewing machine and founded a corporation to mass-produce the popular improved models.
Theodore Roosevelt ( 1858 - 1919 ) — American colonel and politician, Nobel Prize laureate and 26th President of the United States.
Neil Sheehan ( 1936 - 2021 ) — American journalist and author who was instrumental in obtaining the Pentagon Papers for the New York Times.
John Cleese ( born 1939 ) — English actor, comedian, screenwriter and producer, tallest member of Monty Python‘s Flying Circus.
Fran Lebowitz ( born 1950 ) — American writer, public speaker, and cultural critic known for her sardonic social commentary on American life from a New York perspective.

For those of you who used to like the puzzles I printed in the old bulletins, here is a link to an online version: one of the puzzles that I used to feature in the old paper Bulletins, but it is easy to play on a computer as well. Not so easy on a tablet or phone, since most of the puzzles require right-clicks, not easily done in a tablet or phone environment (but there are apps listed on the page linked to below that allow easy tablet or phone play). Signpost challenges you to find the path from #1 at the top left to the highest number at the bottom right, following the arrows from number to number: 1 points to 2, 2 points to 3, etc., but the distance between consecutive numbers may be one cell, or many, in the indicated direction. Strategy: Check the instructions provided with the game for how to use several useful tools to help you solve these without guesswork. You can, for example, mark a sequence of cells that connect together with a letter and connect a number later, or you can right-click on a cell to see which other cells point to it. Click on the puzzle you want to try at the right (or the caption below) to go to the page with all the instructions you'll need. These puzzles come from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (see below) and there are links there to apps for most devices.	Easy puzzle (McBruce’s time: 1min 27sec)
	Medium puzzle (McBruce’s time: 2min 13sec)
	Tricky puzzle (McBruce’s time: 6min 52sec)

2026 Tri-Cities Regional, Day Two: Tuesday, October 27

Pairs Day #1 (Except For Survivors in the Knockouts That Began Yesterday)

What’s My Name?

This Day in History - October 27 Birthdays

Attendance So Far

Today’s Schedule — Day Two — Tuesday, October 27

Morning-Afternoon Events (10:30am, 3:30pm)

Not On This Year’s Schedule

Masterpoint Leaders thru Tuesday

Should be up by about 9pm

Overall Leaders

Non-Life Master Leaders

Brain Workout Section!

This Day in History - October 27 Birthdays - Answers

Tomorrow’s Schedule — Day Three — Wednesday, October 28

Morning-Afternoon Events (10:30am, 3:30pm)

Morning-only Events (10:30am)

Afternoon-only Events (3:30pm)

Not On This Year’s Schedule

Non-Life Master Leaders
Masterpoints will be updated first on the masterpoints page. Leaders will appear here later, when the results are posted.