The questions for the King William's College general knowledge paper (the "Christmas Quiz") have now been posted online at The Guardian. Groups have been established to solve the questions, as for example is done each year at Metafilter. There is one set of questions that puzzles me, and three other questions for which I don't know the answers.
To shield this post from the prying eyes of Google and thus the searches of other puzzle solvers, I have inserted the letter "x" into the crucial words and phrases.
5.2 Who [with a name ending in -by] "wrote of guinxea pigs and mxoles?
10.2 Where [presumably in New England] "did the hirxsute hunxter board the txrain?"
10.10 Where [presumably in New England] "did two Sxtarks idxle down?"
This next group presumably - but not with certainty - refers to alcohxol or perxfumes, since the word "House" is capitalized: "Which spiritxed conxcoction of which House..."
17.4 "recalls a Piedmonxtese founxdation?"
17.5 "might have been named Jollxy Rogxer?"
17.6 "shares its name with a Bretxon muxsic fesxtival?"
17.8 "might be derived from Taxro rooxt?"
17.9 "suggests a rapxtor's grasxp?"
I believe any answers that you might offer in the Comments will not be accessible to a Google search, and would not need to be disguised or encoded. And I will delete the post altogether in a couple days.
Thanks in advance for any help.
17.8 Poison?
ReplyDeleteThat idea had come up several days ago, but I dismissed it as too inexact. But as I think about it today, the clue says "derived from" and "Poison" can be reconfigured as "poi's son."
DeleteI think you're correct. Thank you so much!!!
17.5 - This morning this suggestion was offered: "Iris Noir (Yves Rocher) could be translated as black flag, hence Jolly Roger." I think that's correct.
ReplyDeleteAnd for 17.4 he/she suggested "The Republic of Alba was created in 1796 as a French client republic in Piedmont before the area was annexed by France in 1801" and notes there is an Alba (Profumum Roma) perfume.
I would like to find a perfume named "Claude" for 17.9, but so far no success. There is a Vana Tallinn (Estonian for Old Tallinn), but it's a liqueur, not a pefume.
17.6 - Someone has found a perfume called L'Orient from Luminescents, which would match the famous Breton Festival Interceltique de Lorient.
ReplyDelete5.2 - this morning someone found this:
ReplyDelete"Scottish ecologist Professor Kenneth Mellanby (1908-1993) who wrote various books including The Mole, Talpa the Story of a Mole (which gives us the plural of the question), and Human Guinea Pigs."
It may or may not be the one the puzzle setter intended.
10.10 Perhaps a reference to Game of Thrones? Ned Stark, his wife, and children are main characters. I also found this: http://memegenerator.net/instance/24812909 , though, I suppose it could have been made recently to throw people off track. I have read the first book and cannot recall Ned saying the word "idle," but he does often say "winter is coming."
ReplyDelete-LB
Someone found this answer to 10.10 -
ReplyDelete10.10 I think the town is Bow, New Hampshire. Robert Frosts' poem
The Generations of Men tells of the reunion at Bow of the Stark family, one of whom meets another:
This was some Stark she didn’t know. He nodded.
“No fête to-day,” he said.
“It looks that way.”
She swept the heavens, turning on her heel.
“I only idled down.”
“I idled down.”