• In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’, the bird only ever intones ‘Nevermore’.
• In Flower Pot Men, Little Weed spoke to Bill and Ben with one word ‘Weeeeed’.
• In Finding Nemo, the 2003 Pixar film, the greedy birds just screech ‘Mine!’
• Hodor only says ‘Hodor’ in Game of Thrones. He first spoke in the episode ‘Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things’.

2 points for the Scientists in their match against the Builders.

• PRESCRIPTION minus SCRIPT.
• DETECTIVE minus TEC.
• INFLUENZA minus FLU.
• ELIZABETH minus LIZ.

2 crucial points for eventual series champions the Verbivores in their semi-final against the Surrealists.

• Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis is a vicious satire in which the Emperor Claudius is turned into a pumpkin on his death (Apocolocyntosis means Pumpkinification).
• The US Supreme Court declared that, for customs purposes, the tomato was a vegetable, not a fruit.
• The Sun headline ‘That’s Your Allotment’ was accompanied by an image of Taylor as a turnip after he resigned as England manager.
• Cinderella’s carriage turns back into a pumpkin at midnight.

In series 12, the Wrestlers didn’t spot this, but their opponents the Genealogists picked up the bonus.

This is a favourite question of one of the question editors, who was pleased to have a connection between 1990s football and first-century satire.

• ‘Uccello’ means ‘Bird’. Paolo Uccello was born Paolo di Dono.
• ‘Tintoretto’ means ‘Little Dyer’. Tintoretto’s real name was Jacopo Comin (aka Jacopo Robusti).
• ‘Fra Angelico’ means ‘Angelic Brother’. He was born Guido di Pietro.
• ‘Botticelli’ means ‘Little Barrel’. Sandro Botticelli was born Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi.

In a series 11 semi-final, neither eventual champions the String Section nor their opponents the Cluesmiths worked this out.

• Superstitious fishermen might kiss a fish for good luck, or as a mark of respect for the fish.
• Many people will kiss the dice before rolling them, hoping for good luck.
• Fabien Barthez was the French goalkeeper whose bald head was kissed by defenders such as Laurent Blanc before matches.
• Legend has it that kissing the Blarney Stone gives the kisser the gift of the gab..

The Fantasy Footballers clocked this after seeing the Fabien Barthez clue to pick up 2 points in a very high-scoring defeat (24–27) against the Antiquarians in series 5.

• Google Health: Google kept your medical records for you – shut down 2011.
• Google Reader: aggregated feeds of content – closed 2013.
• Google+: social network – discontinued 2019.
• Google Wave: Twitter/email/chat combo – development ceased 2010, though some ‘Waves’ lived on.

This question has been slightly updated for the book. When it was on the show, neither the Nordiphiles nor the Bibliophiles worked it out.

The answer shown is a satellite image of Panama.

The palindrome was devised by the British recreational mathematician Leigh Mercer.

A complete blank for the Scunthorpe Scholars and the Beekeepers.

• 2015 and 20 …
• … 16 and 2017
• 2018 and 20 …
• … 19 and 2020

The Beekeepers did not spot this, but their opponents the Korfballers picked up a bonus point.

One of those fiendishly simple questions that are much harder to spot than they ought to be.

ACCEPT: anyone with three daughters

• Lord Redesdale, father of the 6 Mitford sisters (Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah).
• Mr Bennet, patriarch in Pride and Prejudice, father of Jane, Elizabeth (Lizzy), Mary, Kitty and Lydia.
• Tsar Nicholas II, father of Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.
• King Lear’s daughters were Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.

2 points for the Fire-Eaters against the Clareites, in series 12.

Each series of the US drama series The Wire was based on a different aspect of life in Baltimore, as listed here

No points for the Technologists or the Analysts here. ’S all in the game …

A mine near the village of Ytterby yielded a mineral that eventually revealed four new elements. Ytterby is on the Swedish island Resarö. The tiny quarry in the tiny place is very significant to scientists, as it contained so many rare earth metals (and glaciers had swept away the land above, making it easier to mine them)

• Y: Yttrium (atomic number 39).
• Tb: Terbium (atomic number 65).
• Er: Erbium (atomic number 68).
• Yb: Ytterbium (atomic number 70).

No points for the Korfballers or the Beekeepers here.

Hard to know what to say about this question except, yes, sometimes Only Connect is really difficult. Well done if you got it at home.

• China and Mongolia: 4,677 km.
• Argentina and Chile: 5,308 km.
• Kazakhstan and Russia: 6,846 km.
• USA and Canada: 8,893 km.

The borders don’t need to be continuous. The USA/Canada figure includes the Alaska–Canada border.

The Bakers gambled on this in the series 8 final and scored a remarkable 5-pointer. It was still not enough to beat their rivals the Board Gamers though.

COMIC RELIEF SPECIAL 2016

Philippa Gregory

‘It was our first question and I had the familiar sense of excitement and dread at doing a TV quiz where if you are an idiot millions of people will know about it (as opposed to usual idiocy which is hopefully private). David Baddiel was team captain, I was on his left, the great Dr John Cooper Clarke on his right. Hang on a minute I said to David Baddiel – these are talking horses. He was as amazed as I was that the answer had fallen into my head. It was so unlikely that the question editor asked me later how I had known that Balaam’s Ass had spoken. At last my childhood in the library had paid off. I had read of Balaam in George Eliot, somewhere, God knows why, nor why it stuck in my head. But there it was – the unexpected rewards of scholarship.’