The annual "Christmas quiz" is now available as a pdf. If anyone has suggestions regarding the following questions, I'd appreciate seeing your suggestions in the Comments.
3.10 "what moves off diagonally from his place next to tour?" Is it the bishop ["fool'] in chess? - but its position is not immediately next to the "tour" [rook, castle].
4.6 "who justified going to bed at 9.45pm by claiming that he hadn't been to sleep for over a year?" - SOLVED
8.1 "for what was there a reason?" (must involve a nut)
9.3 "where did Mary sit to watch her love's returning?" (on the Scottish borders) - SOLVED
11.5 "who was the Abbess who accommodated Brigid and her guardian in the Castilian convent?" (presumably an "aunt") - SOLVED
13.1 "could also be porcine?" Maybe Pigalle?- SOLVED
13.10 "has an equivalent in E14?" Perhaps Cité?
14.5 "who denounced the hanging of a felon as murder and was sent away to run the family seat in the Borders?" Their name should be "Archibald", "Archie" etc.- SOLVED
I have an answer for 4.6, courtesy of sjb:
ReplyDeleteIt's Professor Otto Silenus in Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.
The relevant passage full for those interested:
Quote:
Professor Silenus looked at his watch - a platinum disc from Cartier, the gift of Mrs Best-Chetwynde. 'Quarter to ten,' he said. 'I must go to bed.' He threw the end of his cigar clear of the terrace in a glowing parabola. 'What do you take to make you sleep?'
'I sleep quite easily,' said Paul, 'except on trains.'
'You're lucky. Margot takes veronal. I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.'
Also 9.3, and also per sjb:
ReplyDeleteThis is presumably meant to be the tower of Neidpath Castle, which is in the Borders. It comes from a Sir Walter Scott poem:
Quote:
Though now she sits on Neidpath’s tower
To watch her Love’s returning.
The poem itself is supposed to be about Jean Douglas, but it does reference a 'Mary' in an earlier line.
A pawn attacks diagonally. There is one just in front of the rook.
ReplyDeleteThe French word for pawn is "pion", to mimic "tour".
DeleteThe larger problem is that the overall theme for this group of ten questions is "fool" - i.e. 2. Feste (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)
Delete3. Dicky Pearce ("the Earl of Suffolk's fool"; Dean Swift)
4. Dagonet ("Sir Fool"; Tennyson, Idylls of the King)
5. Will Sommers/Somers (jester to Henry VIII)
6. Archibald Armstrong (court jester to Charles I)
7. Rigoletto (in the opera by Giuseppe Verdi)
8. Triboulet (Victor Hugo, Le Roi s'Amuse)
So the answer to this one could be a Fool's Mate (with a queen) or a movement by the bishop (french "fool") but neither is "next" to "tour" (possibly castle). There is a bishop's "tour" like a "knight's tour" but the "next" still isn't satisfied. And the knight does move off diagonally (sort of) but then "fool" isn't brought into play.
11.5 is Aunt Petronilla (Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore)
ReplyDeleteDr. Cullen, who sets the quiz, really likes Patrick O'Brian. There is always at least one Patrick O'Brian question in the quiz that I have recognized.
ReplyDeleteThe consensus (elsewhere) is that the Paris metro station in 13.1 is Duroc (also a standard breed of pig).
ReplyDeleteAnd 14.5 (solved elsewhere) is Archie Weir (Robert Louis Stevenson, Weir of Hermiston).
ReplyDeleteDone with this post. Moving on to other things.