Q1
What’s the common action when you … upset a lateral support to get a pulse? … jumble up your bedclothes to get a dictator? … take a turn downstairs to get a visitor?
CLUES
- The phrase ‘jumble up’ should give any crossword fan a clue to how this one works.
- By ‘a dictator’ we mean a proper name – the surname of a real historical figure.
Q2
A soft flower that signals spring, stilettos for beginners and Penaeus monodon: which would be hardest to handle?
CLUES
- Penaeus monodon is a crustacean.
- A feline cunning might be needed to solve this.
A1
These all involve swapping vowels around – that’s the common action applied to all the pairs.
… upset a lateral support to get a pulse = lintel becomes lentil;
… jumble bedclothes to get a dictator = linen becomes Lenin;
… take a turn downstairs to get a visitor = cellar becomes caller.
A2
Probably the last of the three, because these are:
Pussy willow, the name given to the tiny furry catkins of smaller species of willow, whose appearance is an early sign of the arrival of spring;
Kitten heels, the name for low stilettos typically worn by teenagers to ‘train’ them to walk in heels;
Tiger prawns, Penaeus monodon being the species of large prawn found commonly in the Indian and Pacific oceans, and caught in great numbers for food. Fully grown specimens are often up to a foot long.
Q3
Take an American popular song of the 1940s, a John Irving novel, a time-travelling mechanic, a Bee Gees hit and a chicken. Where might you take them, and what’s missing?
CLUES
- Work this out phrase by phrase and don’t get yourself into a state.
- The Bee Gees hit we’re thinking of was their first no. 1.
Q4
Why would a Club sandwich be appropriate for a collaborative seventeenth-century playwright, a reggae star who was the first to scale a British summit and a controversially tripped athlete?
CLUES
- The controversial tripping incident dates from the 1984 Olympics.
- If you could forgive a pun, we could have included a famous record label in this question.
A3
The clues point to the states of New England.
The popular song is ‘Moonlight in Vermont’, written in 1943 by Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn and recorded by performers ranging from Jo Stafford and Les Brown & His Band of Renown to Frank Sinatra and Willie Nelson.
John Irving wrote The Hotel New Hampshire (1981) about the exotic and dysfunctional Berry family and their attempts to run hotels, first in America and then in Vienna.
The time-traveller is the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court of Mark Twain’s 1889 novel; a mechanic who finds himself transported back to Camelot in the year ad 528 following a blow to the head.
The Bee Gees hit of 1967, their first no. 1, is ‘Massachusetts’. The full title is ‘(The Night the Lights Went Out in) Massachusetts’.
The chicken is the Rhode Island Red, one of the most recognizable of all breeds, developed in the US in the early 1900s.
So the sole missing New England state is Maine.
A4
These are all people named Decker or Dekker; so they form a
‘triple decker’, just as a classic Club sandwich does.
The best-known play of Thomas Dekker (1570–1632) is The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600). He was a prolific playwright in Shakespearean London, though the texts of many of his plays are lost. He often wrote in collaboration with contemporaries: John Ford and William Rowley on The Witch of Edmonton, Philip Massinger on The Virgin Martyr and Thomas Middleton on The Honest Whore and The Roaring Girl.
Although reggae music was popular in the UK throughout the mid-1960s, thanks to records brought to Britain by the increasing numbers of people arriving from the Caribbean which were then widely played in clubs and on radio, the first reggae disc to reach no. 1 in the British charts was ‘Israelites’ by Desmond Dekker (1941–2006) in April 1969.
Mary Decker (Slaney) (b.1958) was involved in the controversial ‘tripping’ incident with Zola Budd – who was running for the UK having had her application for British citizenship ‘fast-tracked’ ahead of the Games, following a zealous campaign by the Daily Mail – in the 3000-metre women’s final at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. They became tangled and Decker was thrown onto the infield, injuring her hip and forcing her to pull out of the race. Budd was initially disqualified for obstruction, but reinstated an hour later after officials had viewed film footage.
Q5
A borough of a cosmopolitan city, a sporting club and foundations in two venerable seats of learning are distinguished by only an apostrophe. What are they?
CLUES
- The word ‘distinguished’ could have more than one meaning here.
- The two seats of learning are Oxford and Cambridge
Q6
Can you point out the fundamental similarity between the Geneva Bible, a satire by Washington Irving, and a classic socialist novel about painters and decorators?
CLUES
- The Geneva Bible had a popular nickname because of the way it translated a particular verse.
- There’s a very popular dessert that will probably be more familiar than the Washington Irving book, and which contains the same name.
A5
Queens. The apostrophes here are even more of a minefield than usual!
Queens, New York, with no apostrophe; one of the city’s five boroughs, bordering the East River at the western end of Long Island.
The sporting club is the Queen’s Club, London W14, established in 1886 and named in honour of Queen Victoria; the relatively minor annual tennis tournament held there earns a great deal of attention because it is the last event on the circuit before the start of Wimbledon.
The two foundations are the Queen’s College, Oxford, and Queens’ College, Cambridge. The Oxford college was founded by Robert de Eglesfield in 1340 in honour of Queen Philippa, consort of Edward III. The Cambridge college was founded by two old Queens, namely Margaret of Anjou (wife of Henry VI) and Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s consort.
A6
These are all about gentlemen’s nether garments.
The Geneva Bible (1560) is often referred to as the Breeches Bible, because of its translation of Genesis 3: 7, ‘they sowed figge-tree leaves together and made themselves breeches’ – as opposed to ‘aprons’ in the King James version.
The Washington Irving satire is Knickerbocker’s History of New York (1809). Irving frequently published burlesques and satires under pseudonyms. The full title is A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by ‘Diedrich Knickerbocker’ – a name which became synonymous with the descendants of Dutch settlers in America.
The classic socialist novel is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, by Robert Noonan alias Robert Tressell (1914, first complete edition 1955). Set in the town of Mugsborough, it’s one of the earliest and most affecting portraits of twentieth-century industrial working-class life, and a powerful tract against social injustice.
Q7
What’s particularly even-handed about the architect of the National Monument, a house built for two Hollywood superstars and the most expensive property on the board?
CLUES
- The National Monument we’re referring to is the one in Edinburgh.
- If you land on the last one, you’re often in trouble.
Q8
Can you identify the similar connection between the following pairs?
Hiawatha and Kubla Khan
Matilda and Misery
Zero-zero-seven and One-zero
CLUES
- Misery is a title, but Matilda is not.
- The third pairing is the trickiest. One-zero has a sporting connection.
A7
These all contain the word ‘fair’.
The co-architect of Edinburgh’s National Monument, the Parthenon replica that overlooks the city from Calton Hill, was William Henry Playfair (1789–1857). He also built the National Gallery of Scotland, Surgeon’s Hall and the Royal Scottish Academy, and thus had a considerable influence on the appearance of Scotland’s capital.
The Hollywood house is Pickfair, built for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks by Wallace Neff around a hunting lodge they purchased in 1919. It was said to have the first private swimming pool in southern California. It was the focus of high-profile parties in the 1920s and every imaginable star of the jazz age was entertained there. It was demolished in the 1990s and replaced with a larger house on the same site, retaining only the original entrance gates.
The most expensive property on the (Monopoly) board is Mayfair – the ‘dark blue’ property which, if it has an opponent’s houses or hotels on it, can be a feared obstacle on the final straight towards ‘Go’.
A8
These are pairs of people with their names reversed.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) composed the choral trilogy The Song of Hiawatha, based on Longfellow’s poetry, in 1898–1900; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) wrote the poem ‘Kubla Khan’. Confusingly, perhaps, another of Coleridge-Taylor’s compositions was Kubla Khan (1906) but it’s far less famous.
King Stephen of England (reigned 1135–54) had a long-running feud with his cousin Matilda, who imprisoned him for part of his reign. Stephen King wrote the novel Misery about the writer imprisoned by an obsessed fan (successfully filmed with James Caan and Kathy Bates).
John Barry performed the James Bond theme (hence 007), composed by Monty Norman, while Barry John was the majestic Welsh fly-half (no. 10) of the 1960s and 1970s.
Q9
If a former Olympic field athlete threw a party, why might he invite the following guests: a furious Scotsman; an optimistic South African; a Chilean musician; a supporter of the green party resident in west Africa; and a Greenlander who had to leave early?
CLUES
- The field athlete has a well-known enthusiasm for budgerigars.
- You’ll need to navigate your way carefully through this question.
Q10
The author of Anabasis, a warrior princess, the inspiration of America’s joggers and Malik El Shabazz – how might these characters help you on 14 February?
CLUES
- Anabasis dates back to the fourth century bc.
- All of the others are much more recent.
A9
The former Olympic field athlete Geoff Capes (b.1949) throws the party. The nationalities and personalities of the guests are clues to famous Capes on the coasts of their respective countries.
A furious Scotsman gives us Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point of mainland Scotland.
An optimistic South African would suggest the Cape of Good Hope, Western Cape Province, first sighted by the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias in 1488.
A Chilean musician would give us Cape Horn, the steep rocky headland on Hornos Island, Tierra del Fuego, southern Chile. It was named Hoorn for the birthplace of the Dutch navigator Willem Corneliszoon Schouten, who rounded it in 1616.
A supporter of the green party resident in West Africa might suggest Cape Verde, Senegal, the westernmost point of mainland Africa.
A Greenlander who was unable to stay for very long would lead you to Cape Farewell, the southernmost point of Greenland, on Egger Island. Egger Island and the surrounding islands are called the Cape Farewell Archipelago.
A10
The fourteenth of February is St Valentine’s Day, when people traditionally send their loved ones cards signed with x’s to represent kisses. The clues give us names which all feature the character x and thus provide us with a neat line of x’s.
Xenophon, the Greek soldier and philosopher (c.430–354 bc), was a disciple of Socrates. His Anabasis [pron. ‘an-ABBA-sis’] describes how he led ten thousand Greek mercenaries on a thousand-mile march across enemy territory.
At the other cultural extreme, Lucy Lawless plays the title role in the cult TV series Xena: Warrior Princess.
Jim Fixx penned several bestselling manuals for joggers, which fuelled the running boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including The Complete Book of Running in 1977. His influence waned somewhat after he died of a heart attack while out jogging in 1984, aged only 52.
Malik El Shabazz was the last of the names taken by the human rights activist originally named Malcolm Little (1925-65), better known to posterity as Malcolm X.