22 December 2023

The 2023 King William's College quiz

Posted today at The Guardian.  I'm going to take a break from blogging to join a group of friends across the pond to tackle the quiz.  Readers here are welcome to post thoughts and possible answers in the Comments section of this post.

7 comments:

  1. In question 5.2 "Listen Monkey" anagrams to "Milton Keynes," which has a nearby safari park. But I can't decipher any of the others (if they are cryptic clues).

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    1. In question 5.10 "mop her table" = Mablethorpe.

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    2. Thank you, smittypap. Late last night I came up with "Llandudno" for "and no dull" for 5.6. Then overnight in my UK group, the phrase "red torches" was revealed to be "Dorchester" for 5.4 and "west rosy" as "Oswestry" for 5.5. The others are still undeciphered.

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  2. 6.6 might be Fingal's Cave, although that's in Scotland and the causeway is in northern Ireland.
    6.8 is from A Passage to India, so presumably India is the answer.
    7.2 is Marylebone from Monopoly.
    7.7 could be Euston, it had that sort of arch until after WWII.
    8.3 is from Shakespeare, I don't know which character.
    12.1 is Uganda if that's a film reference.
    12.7 must be Hannibal and one of the Punic Wars so the answer is surely Italy.
    12.9 Precious Ramotswe, so the answer is Botswana.
    15.5 Maybe Rome. Possibly Florence.
    18.4 refers to Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest, English football teams

    Many other answers are available via Google, which I realise is not in the spirit of this question. Although I don't know how you're supposed to know some of these without research e.g. 14.5

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  3. This year's RSS quiz is very good too: https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2023/general-news/rss-christmas-quiz-2023-30th-anniversary-edition-%E2%80%93/ - Last year's was a total dud for us but the sudoku and cryptic are sparkling; we have bare toeholds on some of the others.

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    1. You misspelled "fiendishly difficult" as "very good." Thank you for the link. :-)

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  4. Tunisia not Italy I think. The battle of Zama in modern Tunisia ended the seventeen year second Punic war. Fought between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, it had elephants vs cavalry and the Romans won. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zama

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