The Dilemma: Everyone’s running around in total chaos (and you kind of want to join in).

People You Can Impress: Anyone who knows what kabbadi is.

The Quick Trick: Are the players over 10 years old? Congrats, you’re watching kabaddi (we hope!)

The Explanation:
Tag is a simple child’s game. Kabaddi is a simple child’s game taken to maddening heights of silliness. To clarify “tag,” we’re talking about freeze tag, blob tag, “you’re it” tag, team tag, and any other of the variations of the game where the object is to touch another person, thereby rendering him or her “out” or “it.”

To clarify “kabaddi,” we mean breath-holding, scary, chanting tag. Enjoyed primarily in India, kabaddi is a team sport played on a bisected field about the size of a volleyball court. Each team consists of twelve players, with seven of them taking the court at a time. The teams alternate offense and defense. The offensive team designates a “raider”—a player chosen to infiltrate enemy territory and “tag” as many opposing players as he can. The tricky bit? He’s only allowed one breath’s time to do all his tagging. To prove that he hasn’t drawn another breath, the raider is required to chant the name of the sport the entire time he’s on enemy soil. “Kabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddi . . .” If he can’t get back to his team’s side before stopping his chant, he’s out. Strangestrangestrangestrangestrange. . . .

Good to Know
While you probably won’t need a translation service to join in a foreign game of tag, you just never know (kids can be so cruel). So, in an effort to make sure words don’t provide any sort of stumbling block, we’ve provided a handy translation guide to help
you out.

Tag’s Pseudonyms Across the Globe

Japan: Onigokko (where “It” is called “Oni”)
England: It, dobby, tic, or tig
Ireland: Chasing
Brazil: Pega Pega (“catch catch”)
Australia: Tiggy, tips, or chasey
Finland: Hippa
Colombia: La Lleva (“the carrying”)
France: Chat (“cat”)

The Dilemma: You’ve heard watching both these games feels like an eternity. But which mind-numbing sport is the right one for you?

People You Can Impress: Mystified fans of either sport who don’t understand the other.

The Quick Trick: Is the bat round? You’re watching baseball. Is it flat? Then it’s cricket. (A slightly slower trick would be to hang around for five days. If the game’s still going on, it’s cricket!)

The Explanation:
The technical aspects of these games are very different. Base- ball has nine players, cricket has eleven; cricket has two bases, whereas baseball has four. But their foremost difference is philosophical. In short, baseball favors defense, while cricket favors offense. Consider the 2003 baseball season in which the prolific Boston Red Sox scored 961 runs in a 162-game season. By comparison, the average cricket team scores 320 runs in a single match. There is also a faster rotation of players in baseball. A rotation of nine batters will have their chance at the plate, or be “put out,” four or five times in a game. In cricket, however, it takes about six hours to retire (or call out) eight men.

A cricket batsman can be retired in one of three ways: The bowler (pitcher) can knock over the offense’s wickets—a set of sticks set up behind the batsmen; a field player can catch a battled ball before it bounces; or a fielder may tag the base the batter is trying to reach before he gets there. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. In fact, since a cricketer bats until he’s retired, it’s not uncommon for a batsman to drive in 50 to 100 runs in a single turn. (Can you imagine Barry Bonds hitting a homer, trotting around the bases, and then picking up the bat to hit again, and again, and again?)

So why are these cricket batsmen so hard to call out? Number one, they never have to swing. In baseball, if you let pitch after pitch go by, you’ll either walk or be struck out, ending your time at the plate. But in cricket, you can swing whenever the mood strikes. Plus, even when a cricketer does make contact, he’s not required to run. If he doesn’t like his chances of making it safely to the other base, he can just stay there and try again. Other cricketer advantages include the ability to hit the ball in any direction (no foul lines here) and a hefty 6-run score for batting the ball over the fence. Six runs? That means Barry Bonds’s record-setting 73 single-season homers would have been worth 438 runs. Wow. Then he wouldn’t even have needed steroids (allegedly).

The Dilemma: Three football players—an American, a Canadian, and an Aussie—walk into a bar. Who has the worst limp?

People You Can Impress: manly sports enthusiasts in former British colonies

The Quick Trick: If the players don’t have padding, it’s Australian for football.

The Explanation:
Rather than rip off American football, the Canadian Football League actually started as modified English rugby, then borrowed heavily from its American counterpart until the two were almost identical. The first difference you’ll notice about Canadian football is the field. It’s huge—110 yards long (with two 50 yard lines and a center line), 65 yards wide, with end zones 20 yards deep.

Canadian play is similar to American football, with interesting differences. There are 12 players to a side. The game moves fast, as the play clock is only 20 seconds and you have to go ten yards in only three downs. The backfield can have unlimited motion before the snap, so you can have receivers and “slot backs” moving at once, even toward the line of scrimmage (so they can be at a full run when the ball is snapped). There’s an added way to score, too. On a kickoff, punt, or—get this—missed field goal, the receiving team must advance the ball out of the end zone or the kicking team gets a point (called a single, or rouge).

Today the CFL is composed of nine teams, including the Montréal Alouettes (“The Als”) and the Edmonton Eskimos, with the perennial powerhouse (or powerhoos if you’re Canadian) being the Toronto Argonauts. They’ve won the coveted Grey Cup (their Super Bowl) 14 times.

Australian Rules Football (“Aussie Rules” or, more charmingly, “Footy”) is what happens when a penal colony decides to play rugby. The huge field is a modified cricket oval, but there’s no standard size. You’ve got a center square, two 50-meter arcs, two 10-meter goal squares, and four posts at each end (two very tall goal posts flanked by shorter “behind posts”). Each side gets 18 players, with cool positions like ruckman, rover, ruck rover, half-forward, and back pocket.

Play starts with a “centre bounce” (or “ball up”) and the ruckmen jump for it. The ball is bigger and rounder than an American football. You can kick or punch the ball but not throw it. You can also run as far as you want with it, but you have to bounce it every 15 meters. If you’re tackled, you must kick or punch the ball away to a teammate. If you catch a kicked ball cleanly, that’s called a mark, and you get a free kick toward the other team’s goal. Kick the ball between the two center posts for a goal (six points), or between one of the center poles and a behind pole for a “behind” (one point). As for scoring, you can tell who just scored what by watching umpires in white lab coats and funny hats make appropriate pointy motions.

The sport is one of constant motion and an absolute blast to watch. The tackling is truly brutal, and acrobatic “high marks” or “species” are spectacular. Plus, they don’t wear pads. Heck, their “guernseys” don’t even have sleeves.

The Dilemma: You want to exercise, but you prefer something that chills you out instead of buffing you up. Should you take yoga or Pilates?

People You Can Impress: Indian guys with incredibly long beards or instructors with incredibly developed core muscles

The Quick Trick: There is no quick trick to exercise. It takes commitment!

The Explanation:
We in the western hemisphere tend to think of yoga as a way to stretch out or shed stress. But the practice began as something very spiritual. Those who practiced yoga (yogis) did so to control their bodies and free themselves from temptation and achieve nirvana. In fact, yoga actually predates Hinduism.

The main yoga practiced outside India today is called hatha yoga. The point is to balance your body and your mind through controlled breathing (pranayama), mental focus, and a series of postures called asanas, like the well-known Lotus (padmasana) and Downward-Facing Dog (adho mukha svanasana). Some ascribe a spiritual dimension to the practice akin to its Eastern origins. This kundalini yoga uses asanas to release life energy clustered in seven chakras, or centers of spiritualenergy.

Bikram, a kind of “hot yoga” named after its originator, increases flexibility (and sweating) by doing yoga in a really hot room. Bikram, by the way, is not quite as exotic as it sounds: The main studio is on La Cienega Boulevard in L.A.

Pilates, on the other hand, combines the idea of mind-and-body union with an emphasis on physical development and fitness. It was originally named Contrology by its inventor, Joseph H. Pilates, and although it’s not as old as yoga, it’s older than you’d think. Pilates came up with the exercises while working as a nurse during World War I! His focus was to “control” the muscles with the consciousness. Instead of lots of repetitions of simple movements (like dumbbell curls), Pilates stressed doing fewer reps of more skilled movements, thereby engaging the mind. He came up with over 500 of these (today there are thousands). Of course, his original method involved a lot of specially designed machines as well (basically modified gymnastics apparatuses, with springs added for resistance), including the Spine Corrector Barrel and the Cadillac, the latter involving a bench and parallel bars and looking an awful lot like a torture device.

The Pilates method gained popularity in the U.S. when it was espoused by two dance giants of the era: Martha Graham and George Balanchine. Along with yoga, it saw a huge resurgence in the 1990s, when it was heavily endorsed by Madonna.

Celebrity Roundup
Every celebrity faces a stark choice during his or her ride on the fame train: Will I choose yoga or Pilates?

Yoga: Ricky Martin, Meg Ryan, Jerry Seinfeld, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Gwyneth Paltrow

Pilates: Jennifer Aniston, Lucy “Xena” Lawless, Hugh Grant, Patrick Swayze, Daisy Fuentes, and Rod Stewart

The Dilemma: You’ve got to defend your honor, you’re just not exactly sure how.

Materials Needed: a tolerance for French words

People You Can Impress: your aforementioned mortal enemy, Zorro, and fans of The Princess Bride

The Explanation:
To the uninitiated, fencing can be a bit baffling. For instance, in modern fencing, the touches are registered electronically but there’s still a referee (also called a president) who can call hits that didn’t register electronically or overrule ones that did. But all that’s beside the point. To begin with, fencing can be broken down into three major categories.

The first is foil, the lightest and most flexible of the fencing weapons. In foil, the only valid target is the opponent’s trunk (roughly from the top of the collar to the crotch in front, and to the top of the hipbones in the back). The arms, legs, and head are no good, and only hits with the foil’s tip are counted. Basically, foil fencing is a modernized form of what was, traditionally, sword-fighting practice—like, if someone made a sport out of hitting tackling blocks.

If you are really dueling with a seriously sharp rapier, any touch anywhere on the body would smart. And that’s the origin of the épée, a heavier, more rigid version of the foil, with a triangular blade and a larger, “bowl-shaped” blade guard (to protect the hand). In épée, a person’s whole body is fair game, including the head. Like foil, épée touches must be made with only the tip, and both disciplines require the fencers to stop after each touch is made, whether on a valid target area or not.

The last discipline is saber, an incredibly fast-paced whack fest that’s a hand-me-down from the days of cavalrymen slashing away on horseback. The fencing saber is heavier and has a large, curved hand guard. The target area is anything from the waist up (the parts you’d be swinging at if you and your opponents were both on horses). But two big differences make saber the most frenetic of the disciplines. First, the edge of the saber can be used as well as the point, so slashes are valid hits; and second, the bout does not stop after an off-target hit, so the opponents will whack and slash at each other until a legal hit is registered, making it a hoot to watch.

Vocab Lesson
Like ballet, fencing is of (mostly) French origin and uses a list of French words longer than the average baguette. For instance, the strip on which the bouts take place is the piste. An attack that strongly grazes the opponent’s blade is a froissement. One that starts before a stoppage in play but lands after is called a coup lancé. And a leaping, running attack is called a flèche.

The Dilemma: Not knowing what game you just played is Dilemma #1. Not knowing how to tell your wife you just lost the house?That’s a tad trickier.

People You Can Impress: guys named after cities

The Quick Trick: Look at the table: If it’s bigger than the standard American pool table, you’re playing billiards or snooker. If there are more than three balls on this big table, it’s definitely snooker.

The Explanation:
When it comes to distinguishing pool from other billiards games, size—and we’re talking about tables here—definitely matters. Pool, for instance, is the game you’ll probably find in most American bars, using tables that are generally 41⁄2′×9′ (although tables can be as short as 7′). Billiards and snooker, on the other hand, are played on a huge table 6′×12′.

Of course, there are other differences as well. The most common pool games are 8-ball and 9-ball. In 8-ball, a player must pocket all the balls of his type (stripes or solids) before sinking the eight ball. Nine-ball, however, only uses the balls numbered 1 through 9. And while the balls can be sunk in any order, the first ball struck every time must be the lowest-numbered one on the table. The first player to sink the 9-ball, even if other balls are still on the table, wins.

As for billiards and snooker, the first (semantic) rule of thumb is that balls are “potted,” not “pocketed.” English billiards uses only three balls: two cue balls and a red object ball. Billiards players can accumulate points in three ways: winners (potting the red ball), losers (potting your cue ball off the red ball), and canons (hitting the red ball and the opponent’s cue ball in one stroke). If you’re looking to rack up points, try combining these shots. Just like everything British, there are lots of rules—not to mention variations (including some that don’t involve potting balls!). Generally, however, players alternate turns when one fails to pot a ball or fouls, and play continues until one of the players reaches a predetermined score.

Snooker, on the other hand, is a British obsession invented by Neville Chamberlain (he of appeasing Hitler fame). It uses 22 balls: 15 red; one each of yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black; and a cue ball. It too has lots of rules, but the basic object is to alternately sink red balls and colored balls. Each red is worth one point, and the others range from two points for the yellow up to seven for the black. Oh, and red balls stay in the pockets and colored balls keep coming back out until all the reds are gone. Then the game finishes with everyone trying to sink the colors in the correct order. Whatever individual or team has the most points wins. Whew! And you thought calculus was hard.

Good to Know
According to the Billiard Congress of America, during the Civil War billiard results often received wider coverage than war news.

The Dilemma: That smug show-off at the gym is definitely doing something when he laps you—you’re just not sure what it is.

People You Can Impress: track nerds and, well, more track nerds?

The Quick Trick: Check out the feet. The rules of racewalking are specific about what should be happening down there. No matter how fast you’re going, as long as at least one of your feet is always touching the ground, and as long as you’re not bending your knees, you’re racewalking.

The Explanation:
With roughly 400 years of history under their collective belt (or fanny pack, as the case may be), racewalking enthusiasts have had plenty of time to pin down exactly what their sport entails. The whole thing began when (apparently bored) English nobles started holding races between their footmen, wagering on whose servant was the fastest. By the 19th century, racewalking was the second-biggest betting sport in America behind horse racing, and in 1908 it became an Olympic event. These days, the true champions of the sport can walk a mile in less than six minutes.

Jogging, on the other hand, has a much shorter history. It began as a conditioning activity for retired runners and gained popularity in America with the 1967 publication of Jogging, cowritten by University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman and cardiologist Dr. Waldo Harris. Only then did average Americans begin regularly participating in “light running” as a way to stay in shape.

The Dilemma: Both are styles of medieval architecture that you associate with churches—but that’s all you’ve got.

People You Can Impress: Europeans (no mean feat for Yanks these days)

The Quick Trick: If it has flying buttresses, pointed arches, and rose windows, it’s Gothic.

The Explanation:
You can’t swing un chat mort in Europe without hitting a really old cathedral. And after your first three or four, they all start to look alike: stone, majestic, impossibly huge. But if they were built between 800 and 1500, there’s a darn good chance they fall into one of these categories.

Prevalent from the ninth through 12th centuries ce, Romanesque architecture combined the influences of Roman and Byzantine styles. In fact, the architecture got its name (in the 1800s, by the way) because one of its key features, the barrel vault, bore such a resemblance to the classical Roman arch. At the time, religious pilgrims were traveling to various shrines throughout Europe, creating the need for buildings much larger than the traditional basilica-style churches. The use of barrel vaults thus allowed for huge interior spaces built entirely of stone. But that also meant the roofs were extremely heavy, so the walls had to be tremendously thick to prevent buckling. Strong walls also meant fewer windows, so the insides of Romanesque churches often look dim and feel like fortresses.

As for Gothic architecture, although the word is now primarily associated with excessive eyeliner and trench coats, the style was born in the mid-12th century with the intention of making churches look like heaven: soaring, colorful, and bright. The biggest difference in Gothic style was the use of flying buttresses. These support structures or towers, set off from the main walls and attached by arches, displaced the pressure from the roof outward. Essentially, this meant the buildings could get taller, walls could get thinner, and there could be a lot of stained-glass windows. Gothic churches sport huge, ornate, petaled round masterpieces called rose windows. Further, Gothic cathedrals were also much pointier than their predecessors, with pointed arches and tall spires (instead of blunt towers) characterizing the style.

Name-Dropping
Buildings to mention when discussing the Romanesque and Gothic styles:

Romanesque: the Cathedral of Pisa (which includes the Leaning Tower), Italy; France’s Mont St. Michel.

Gothic: Westminster Abbey, London; the Abbey of St. Denis and Notre Dame Cathedral, both in Paris; St. Peter’s in Rome (a Renaissance example); and Chartres Cathedral in France

The Dilemma: You’re a god-king and you’d like to get a little closer to your fellow deities. So should your 20,000 slaves build you a pyramid or a ziggurat?

People You Can Impress: archaeologists, Egyptologists, the gods

The Quick Trick: South America and Egypt built pyramids. Mesopotamia built ziggurats, which look like South American pyramids with ramps.

The Explanation:
We’ll start with the most famous, the Egyptian pyramids. Today it’s generally believed these towering structures were tombs. What has been found inside, however, is precisely executed layouts. For example, inside each pyramid a narrow shaft extends from the innermost chamber to the outside, aligned exactly with the polestar. Thus archaeologists have argued that the pyramids were thought to be a vessel or machine to get the pharaohs to the heavens.

The pyramids are spooky for many reasons. The stones are laid so exactly that you can’t even fit a knife blade between them. They’re almost perfectly square, and aligned to the points of the compass with uncanny accuracy. And while there are pyramids at several spots in Egypt, the best known are at the Giza “Necropolis” (City of the Dead). Of course, the jewel of these structures is the Great Pyramid of Khufu, a pharaoh of the fourth dynasty who you may also know by his Greek name, Cheops. In fact, until the 14th century, the Great Pyramid was the world’s tallest building.

A debate has long raged about how the darn things got built. The current leading theory is that a ramp spiraled up from the quarry and around the rising structure. The ton-and-a-half stone blocks were moved on wooden sleds most likely lubricated by water or, as some have suggested, milk. As impressive as the pyramids are today, picture them in their original form, covered with gleaming white blocks of smoothed limestone.

The pyramids of South America, no less impressive, have a stair-stepped design that reflects their different purpose. These structures were temples to the gods, and each was fronted by a massive staircase and topped with a temple. In the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), for example, there was a huge pyramid called Templo Mayor where at one ritual in 1487, 20,000 people were supposedly sacrificed.

Egypt and South America don’t have a monopoly on pyramids, however. There are 16 of them in Greece, some even older than those at Giza. China has ’em, too, as does Sudan.

Ziggurats are a lot like the South American pyramids, with their stair-stepped shape and temple tops. But ziggurats were not places of worship; to the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians that built them, they were the gods’ actual homes. In fact, only priests could enter. And while South American pyramids have long staircases, ziggurats have ramps and steps. Many ziggurats also had seven tiers, representing the seven known planets or the seven heavens. For the most part, the ziggurats that still exist can be found mainly in Iran and Iraq.

The Dilemma: After being rescued from a supervillain’s lair by a guy in tights, you offer to pay for his dry cleaning. So who do you make the check out to, DC Comics or Marvel Comics?

People You Can Impress: geeks, nerds, Sons of Krypton, and teenagers bitten by radioactive spiders

The Quick Trick: Marvel’s biggest names—Spiderman, The X-Men, The Hulk, Fantastic Four. DC’s biggest names—Batman, Superman, Justice League of America, Wonder Woman.

The Explanation:
The Marvel vs. DC dogfight has raged since the beginning of comic book time. DC is older, taking its name from 1937’s Detective Comics. In June 1938, the company released what would become the most valuable comic ever: Action Comics #1, introducing a fella from Krypton called Superman. This essentially launched the Golden Age of comics, in which DC introduced icons like Bob Kane’s Batman (in the also ridiculously valuable Detective Comics #27, 1939), The Flash, Hawkman, and The Green Lantern (all in 1940), Aquaman (in 1941), and Wonder Woman (in 1942).

Meanwhile, the company’s rival, Timely Comics, staked its claim with Marvel Comics #1 in 1939, introducing future mainstays the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner. A new hero, Captain America, debuted the next year when the legendary writer Joe Simon and incredible artist Jack Kirby combined powers.

After waning through the ’40s and ’50s, the costumed hero genre rose again in the late ’50s with DC’s Justice League of America. In 1962 Timely, now called Marvel Comics, introduced the Fantastic Four, the brainchild of Kirby and a writer pennamed Stan Lee. The Silver Age had begun, and it would introduce the biggest hero of the era: Spider-Man. The creation of Lee (who would later go on to lead Marvel) and artist Steve Ditko, Spider-Man debuted in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15.

As for differences, one big distinction between the companies is characterization and setting. Marvel gets credit from fans for making heroes out of more realistic characters (think of the teen misfit Peter Parker as Spider-Man, or Logan, the angry, dangerous alter ego of Wolverine) who live in real places, like New York City. DC fans counter with the dark, tormented persona of Batman’s Bruce Wayne, although DC has often based its action in fictional places like Gotham, Metropolis, and Smallville.

In the 1970s, Marvel attempted to buy DC and all its characters. In true comic fashion, DC screamed “Never!” and sold to Warner Communications instead. Since then, Warner has revived DC franchises with the huge Batman movies and Superman TV shows Lois and Clark and Smallville. Graphic novels from DC and its subsidiary imprints have also been hugely successful, like The Watchmen and The Sandman series, or made into movies, including The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Marvel, too, has continued to roll with the success of its Spider-Man, The X-Men, The Hulk, and Fantastic Four franchises.

The Dilemma: You wouldn’t know an Ionic entablature if it bit you on your portico.

People You Can Impress: snooty neighbors with big columns on their porches

The Quick Trick: The more syllables, the more ornate: Dor-ic, I-on-ic, Cor-in-thi-an.

The Explanation:
Although invented by the ancient Greeks, these three architectural orders are still very much alive thanks to the popular Greek Revival styles of government buildings, churches, and museums.

To begin with, the three names refer to orders, or overall styles, but their most recognizable distinctions are in their columns. The simplest and earliest style is the Doric (seventh to fifth centuries bce). Doric columns have no base, the shafts are usually fluted (or grooved), and they’re topped with simple, flared capitals. On top of that lies a square slab known as the abacus. The columns also support the entablature (containing the frieze), which in turn supports the triangular pediment (or basically, the roof). All that’s to say that these features are all pretty plain in the Doric order, and any ornamentation is generally simple and understated. For a (mostly) Doric example, check out the Parthenon.

Next in chronology and complexity comes the Ionic order, arising in the sixth century bce in Greek Ionia. You can’t miss Ionic columns: They have scrolls (or, to be fancy, volutes) at the top and simple bases at the bottom. The tablature is more decorative, including bas-relief carvings of historical events or myths on the frieze. Next time you’re at the Acropolis, note the Erechtheum (it’s not what it sounds like). It’s as Ionic as they come.

That brings us to Corinthian (fourth century bce and later), an order used more in classical revivals than it ever was in classical architecture. Corinthian is the fanciest of the three, and there’s only one word you need to know: leaves. Intricately carved, the leaves and rosettes of Corinthian capitals are said to have been developed by the architect Callimachus and were inspired by an acanthus plant he saw growing through a woven basket on a grave. The base is multilayered, the abacus is concave on each side, and the entablature is divided into many more highly ornamented layers. To see the height of Corinthian-ness, go to D.C. The U.S. Capitol building has more Corinthian columns than it knows what to do with.

Extra Credit
Italian Renaissance architects recognized two additional orders: the Tuscan, a style even plainer than Doric, with unfluted columns and unadorned entablatures, common in Georgian architecture; and the Composite, a ridiculously ornamented style that combined Corinthian leaves, Ionic volutes, and anything else you wanted to throw in there.

The Dilemma: You’ve just sidled up to someone very attractive at an art museum. She asks you if you like the Impressionists. You think she means Darryl Hammond.

People You Can Impress: art collectors, fans of water lilies, ghostly guys screaming on bridges

The Quick Trick: If it looks like something recognizable but not too detailed, it’s Impressionism. If it doesn’t look like much of anything, it’s Expressionism. If it really doesn’t look like anything, it’s Abstract Expressionism.

The Explanation:
Fact is there is no such thing as a cut-and-dried art movement. For the most part, the labels we give ’em just represent the trends that influence artists at a particular time. Which means movements are basically fluid and they always overlap. But knowing that, take a look at a few broad “strokes” to be aware of.

Impressionism arose around the mid-19th century as painters began to realize that they no longer needed to represent reality in stark detail; after all, photography had taken care of that. Instead they began painting their subjects more vaguely, with more emphasis on light and feeling than on detail—in short, capturing the impression the subject made on artist and viewer. For the most part, they used thickly textured paint to connote movement and a spirit of spontaneity. Despite the fact that Impressionism was in part a reaction to photography, it also ended up borrowing from the medium, mainly mimicking photography’s composition, motion, and candor. Frequently working outdoors, Impressionists often painted the same subject in different lights (Monet’s series of Venice, for example). Interestingly enough, “impressionism” was originally used as a pejorative. But artists quickly hijacked the intended insult and wore it proudly. Naturally, the Impressionists were followed by the Postimpressionists, who weren’t so much copycats as artists that pushed the limits even farther, taking greater and greater license with conventional representation. Giants of Postimpressionism include Seurat, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and a fella named Van Gogh.

About the only things Impressionism and Expressionism have in common is that they both included paint and they kind of rhyme. While Impressionism was all about the effect of the subject on the viewer, Expressionism was the artist expressing his or her own interior. It arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and brought us artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Edvard Munch, whose works convey raw feelings, angst, or movement. It also gave us writers like Franz Kafka and composers like Arnold Schoenberg. As for blurring the lines, some regard Van Gogh as a proto-Expressionist because of his enormous influence on the movement.

Keeping It Abstract
As for America’s modern contribution to the arts, it didn’t arrive until after World War II, with Abstract Expressionism. It’s abstract because the art was about pure feeling and less about representing the subject, if there even was one.

The Dilemma: You don’t want to look like an idiot on Antiques Roadshow.

People You Can Impress: architecture buffs, art collectors, absinthe addicts, and flappers

The Quick Trick: It all comes down to “flowery” vs. “streamlined.” Art Nouveau is the decorative one. Art Deco is sleeker.

The Explanation:
Both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements emerged as reactions to major world events; the Industrial Revolution and World War I, respectively. While both embraced modernist elements, they’re easy to distinguish if you know what to look for.

Art Nouveau (it means “new art,” but you probably figured that out) reigned from roughly 1880 until just before World War I. Art Nouveau embraced Europe’s new industrial aesthetic rather than challenging it. It features naturalistic but stylized forms, often combined with more geometric shapes, particularly arcs, parabolas, and semicircles (think of the paintings of Gustav Klimt, or the arches of the Eiffel Tower). The movement brought in natural forms that had often been overlooked, like insects, weeds, even mythical faeries, as evidenced by Lalique jewelry or Tiffany lamps. The black and gold robe Kate Winslet doffs in the erotic portrait session scene in Titanic is quintessentially Art Nouveau.

Art Deco, on the other hand, emerged after World War I. In fact, the deprivations of the Great War years gave way to a whole new opulence and extravagance that defined the Jazz Age and the Art Deco aesthetic. The movement, prevalent from the 1920s until roughly the start of World War II, took it’s name from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (say that ten times, fast), held in France and is characterized by streamlined and geometric shapes. It also utilized modern materials like chrome, stainless steel, and inlaied wood. If Art Deco dabbled with natural materials, they tended to be graphic or textural, like zebra skin or jagged fern leaves. As a result, Deco featured bold shapes like sunbursts and zigzags and broad curves. In fact, if you check out the spire of the Chrysler Building, the hotels of Miami’s South Beach, or the “coffin nose” of a 1935 Cord Model 810, you’ll be staring at the very definition of Deco.

Of course, you don’t have to go outdoors if you’re looking for Deco. Furniture from the period—like the black leather and chrome chaise longue by Le Corbusier or the Barcelona chair by Bauhaus giant Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—is still coveted by design aficionados and can be found in finer hotel lobbies everywhere.

The Dilemma: To the untrained eye, Monet and Manet come across like the kids from The Parent Trap. They have similar names, both were French, they’re both heavily associated with Impressionism, and worst of all, they were friends.

People You Can Impress: people who like arts and crafts

The Quick Trick: Take a step closer to the painting. If you’re looking at tiny dabs of paint working together to create a landscape, chances are you’ve got a Monet in front of you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking at loosely painted images of chubby Parisians, you’re probably staring at a Manet.

The Explanation:
Édouard Manet (eh-DWAHR mah-NAY) laid the groundwork for Impressionism, while Claude Monet (clode moh-NAY) perfected it. Born eight years before his contemporary, Manet’s use of broad, simple color areas and his vivid, quick brush technique influenced painters like Monet and Renoir to fully develop Impressionist style. While imbued with the belief that art should reflect the ideals of the present rather than the past, Manet refused to exhibit his work as an Impressionist. The style was considered revolutionary at the time, and Manet preferred the adulation of more conservative audiences. So he stuck to studio drawing, painting over his penciled sketches.

Claude Monet, on the other hand, was an out-of-the-closet Impressionist. He was obsessed with capturing the fleeting effects of light and color on nature. To get the moment down on paper, he realized he had to use quick brushstrokes filled with individualized color (no time for drawings—Monet needed immediate brush-on-canvas action!). While Monet’s first Impressionist works were met with plenty of criticism and contempt, he continued to paint in the style throughout his long life. Monet and Manet were great friends and admirers of each other’s work. Manet used to help out the thin-walleted Monet with cash in his younger years, while Monet spurred a public effort to buy Manet’s Olympia for the French nation, believing (correctly, as it turned out) it would become one of the most important works of the time.

Name-Dropping
Paintings to know (and mention) by each artist:

Monet: Impression: Sunrise, The Water Lily Pond, and Houses of Parliament

Manet: Olympia, The Absinthe Drinker, and Luncheon on the Grass

The Dilemma: You know they sing jazz. You know they’re important. But that’s where your knowledge stops.

People You Can Impress: anybody smart enough to know great jazz when they hear it

The Quick Trick: If there’s a white gardenia in her hair, that’s Billie Holiday. If you hear some scat singing, it’s probably Ella.

The Explanation:
These immortal jazz divas are often considered two sides of the same coin. On one hand, you’ve got Ella: the revered grand dame of her art, with a long list of recordings and accomplishments. On the other, there’s Billie, the quintessential troubled artist. Billie wasn’t just taken away too soon—she also squandered her gifts in a heartbreaking spiral of self-destruction.

But back to Ella. Born in 1917, Fitzgerald was known as much for her incredible musicianship as she was for her unbelievable voice. Journalist David Brinkley, once commenting on her impressive three-octave vocal range, said you’d need an elevator to get from bottom to top. But while range is one thing, what you do with it is quite another. And the “First Lady of Song” did like no other. Using her voice like a trumpet, Ella produced a sound that was full, strong, rich, and flexible. Further, she was famous for her scat singing (you know, the “be-do-nde-be-doo-BAP!” stuff jazz some singers do), through which she could use her voice just like any other improvisational instrument in the band.

It’s no wonder that Ella earned the awe and admiration of the biggest musical stars of the jazz era and beyond, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, George and Ira Gershwin, and Charlie Parker. Her reputation and respect were such that other musicians simply called her Lady Ella. And over her astonishing career, she recorded almost 70 albums and won 13 Grammys. Unfortunately, Ella lost her sight and eventually her legs to diabetes. And the world lost her in 1996.

Billie Holiday, on the other hand, led a life that was much shorter, but no less important in the history of jazz. Born Eleanora Fagan, Billie was child to a 13-year-old mother in Philadelphia. A dropout and a teenage prostitute, Billie’s life started to change when she was discovered in a Harlem nightclub at age 17. And though she didn’t have nearly the range of Fitzgerald, Holiday made up for it in spades with her gut-wrenching emotion and nuance. Her voice, though thinner than Ella’s, carries a looser and more elastic approach to the words and phrasing that makes her instantly recognizable. If you want to get chills up your spine, catch an earful of “Strange Fruit,” a hauntingly sad yet eerily beautiful lament by Lewis Allen about widespread lynching in the South: “Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” As for titles, however, Billie too was a “lady.” Her stage persona was Lady Day, and you can always recognize her by the white gardenia in her hair.

The Dilemma: So are the musicians where you’ve been dragged part of an orchestra, a symphony, or a philharmonic? And more important, is it intermission yet?

People You Can Impress: guys named Ludwig, Wolfgang, or Dmitri

The Quick Trick: All symphonies are orchestras, but only the big orchestras are symphonies.

The Explanation:
Start with the most basic: an orchestra. While the meaning of that word has drifted somewhat over the centuries, today orchestra is used to describe a musical group that includes a wind, percussion, and string section—specifically violins, violas, cellos, and basses. If there are no strings, it’s a band (or a band with a fancy name, like wind symphony or concert band or Coldplay). If the orchestra is small—say, fewer than 40 members or even as small as four or five—it’s a chamber orchestra (because it was once small enough to fit in a chamber, or room, instead of needing a huge concert hall).

There’s a point at which an orchestra becomes a symphony orchestra, or just symphony, for short. This distinction has less to do with numbers and more to do with instrumentation. Symphony orchestras have four sections of instruments: strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. Basically, an orchestra is a symphony if it is capable of playing symphonies. These are long pieces, usually of three or more movements, written for orchestras with full percussion sections, piano, harp, bassoons, oboes, an organ, a special guy to play the triangle, etc. For instance, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (known as the “Choral Symphony” and containing the famous “Ode to Joy”) calls for the following instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, timpani, violin I and violin II, viola, cello, bass viol, full chorus, and solo soprano, alto, tenor, and bass vocalists. In the modern era, composers have gone farther and farther afield to bring unique sounds to their symphonies, including everything from trash cans and kazoos to typewriters and washing machines. So when does a symphony become a philharmonic? Basically, if there’s another symphony already in town. These days, the term “philharmonic” is mostly used to distinguish a symphony orchestra from another symphony orchestra in the same city. Vienna, for instance, has the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The word philharmonic means nothing more than “harmony-loving.”

Now with Authentic Intestines
A recent trend in symphonies has been to try to recreate what musical pieces sounded like when they were first performed on authentic period instruments, including violins strung with catgut (don’t worry, it’s not really cat—it’s actually sheep intestine).

The Dilemma: You asked your dad to “turn that crap down,” and he asked you to be more specific.

People You Can Impress: NPR listeners. Perhaps also Dad.

The Quick Trick: Listen for a piano. If you hear it as a prominent instrument in the piece, it’s probably by Beethoven.

The Explanation:
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), generally classified as a Classical composer, wasn’t even born until 20 years after Bach had died. Little Ludwig started young on the piano, and the talented tyke was paraded around town by his overbearing father. Beethoven’s love for the piano heavily influenced his composition in later years, when he experimented with a number of new pianistic effects, such as the pedal and the use of register extremes. Very popular among the aristocracy in Vienna, Beethoven’s works were well appreciated during his lifetime. And although he began to go deaf in 1801, he continued performing and composing until 1817, when his hearing was completely gone.

Bach (1685–1750), usually categorized as a Baroque composer, didn’t enjoy nearly the kind of success that Beethoven did during his lifetime. Bach was known more as an organist than as a composer, and although he landed a prestigious gig in 1723 (music director of Leipzig’s St. Th omas Church), almost none of his compositions were published during his lifetime. But he composed tons of organ music, as well as the occasional violin sonata. While Beethoven’s work was largely secular, the majority of Bach’s compositions were to be played in church (makes sense, since he worked in one). Bach’s use of counterpoint, the sounding of separate lines simultaneously, gave his compositions a layered, robust quality, and by using the full range of keys possible, he revolutionized the organ as a musical instrument. Despite his indisputable brilliance, Bach was largely forgotten for almost 100 years after his death, but in the 19th century his genius began to be recognized by Romantic composers like Felix Mendelssohn, who helped revive Bach’s reputation.

Moonlight Sonatas
Beethoven may have had more worldly success, but Bach had a lot more mojo than Beethoven. Bach had a total of 20 children: seven from his marriage with his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, and the other 13 with his second wife, Anna Magdalena Walken.
Beethoven, on the other hand, never married. How could a wealthy musician not manage to find a mate? Well, for starters, he wasn’t wealthy—he always had trouble keeping track of his finances. Also, he was really, really dirty. He was often seen walking the streets of Vienna wearing fi lthy rags, muttering to himself. The strange behavior might be attributable, believe it or not, to lead poisoning. Samples from Beethoven’s hair tested in 2004 proved that he probably died of lead poisoning, which can cause brain damage.

The Dilemma: You want to expand your musical knowledge, but your eyes glaze over at the mere mention of broken-down trucks and errant wives.

People You Can Impress: fans of both country and western

The Quick Trick: Check and see what the musician is packing. Country music generally involves a heavy guitar sound (acoustic and/or electric). If you’re going to play bluegrass, though, you’ll need a fiddle, a mandolin, or a banjo—and preferably all three.

The Explanation:
Bluegrass and country (to a lesser extent) are both descendants of Appalachian folk music, which remained largely unchanged from the 18th century until the 1920s, when mountain musicians began flocking to cities and were influenced by other popular styles. The recording industry referred to the resulting mix of folk ballads, blues, and gospel as “hillbilly music”—a name it tactfully dropped in favor of “country” in 1949.

By that point, though, a lot of people felt country music had drifted too far from its roots. In the late 1940s, a band called The Blue Grass Boys, fronted by Bill Monroe, led a return to folk standards and traditional instruments such as the fiddle, mandolin, and banjo. Monroe, who is universally regarded as having invented bluegrass music and is talked about in hushed, reverent tones by bluegrass musicians everywhere, was infl uenced both by the traditional music played by his uncles and by African American folk music of the South.

Since the emergence of Bill Monroe, country and bluegrass have had wildly different trajectories. Country music adopted influences from the tunes of the Western United States and became a multibillion-dollar industry based on guitar melodies, fusion with other popular styles, and slick production values. Meanwhile, bluegrass became the underground music of traditionalists, the 1960s folk scene, and rockers in search of their roots.

But there has certainly been some crossover between bluegrass and the wider world of pop country music. Monroe is in the Country Music Hall of Fame, after all—and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And before the Dixie Chicks became the richest women in country, they were a banjo-pickin’, foot-thumpin’ bluegrass trio.

There’s No Tear in My Beer
Although known today as the semiofficial musical medium of sentimentality, country once had a different reputation. In fact, the style became all the rage in the 1920s in part because it was less maudlin than other popular music.

The Dilemma: As far as you know, the only difference between the two is that AM has more preachers.

People You Can Impress: Those preachers, for starters

The Quick Trick: Static is key. If there’s static, it’s AM. Of course, that whole thing about the preachers isn’t a bad rule of thumb either.

The Explanation:
FM stands for “frequency modulation” and AM stands for “amplitude modulation,” so it’s not hard to figure out that the distinction is based on the way a radio wave modulates, or fluctuates. FM waves differ from one another based on frequency, or how many times per second the wave’s current changes direction. AM waves, however, fluctuate based on amplitude, which refers to the specific strength of the signal. All radio waves experience changes in amplitude as they travel, but obviously, if the amplitude isn’t strong enough when it reaches a receiver, you’ll hear static. And because AM waves depend on specific amplitudes to get a signal, they’re less reliable. This also makes them less valuable, which is why it’s easier for all those farm news enthusiasts and mariachi bands to get one of their own.

If you’re wondering about their order, there’s no chicken and egg here: The AM definitely came first. Inventor Reginald Fessenden made the first AM radio broadcast in 1906—presaging those radio preachers by making his first broadcast a reading from the Bible and a live performance of himself playing “O Holy Night” on the violin. And while the medium was most popular from 1920 to the advent of FM in the ’50s, AM certainly has its limitations. For one thing, AM travels by sound waves close to the Earth during the day and higher in the sky in the evening, meaning it’s hard to have a large broadcast radius during daylight hours. For another thing, AM signals, unlike FM, are often disrupted by tall buildings—a bigger problem today than in 1920.

As for FM, it was invented in 1933 by Edwin Armstrong—but sadly enough, Armstrong never lived to see his invention succeed. Convinced FM had failed, Armstrong committed suicide by jumping out of his window in 1954. Just a few years later, the superior sound quality and general betterness of FM were recognized by the American public, and FM took off, making Armstrong’s widow rich.

Popularity Contest
FM has supplanted AM as the most popular world-wide format—if you trust the CIA’s fact-gathering abilities. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, there are about 28,693 FM radio stations in the world and only 16,265 AM stations.