Q1

What would you expect RuPaul to do with an aniseed trail, a 1960s expression of disapproval, a high Reynolds number and the International Hot Rod Association?

CLUES

- This question shouldn’t prove too much of a burden.

- Well done if you remember 1960s slang and know who RuPaul is …

Q2

You could turn a broadcasting regulator into a central London cultural centre and then into a glass of beer, and all just by using a little switch in the middle. Can you explain?

CLUES

- The broadcasting regulator is not Ofcom.

- With a further switch it could become a method of saving money without paying too much tax.

A1

He might recruit them for RuPaul’s Drag Race, a TV reality competition for drag queens, which has been broadcast since 2009.

Aniseed (or some other pungent substance) is used as a substitute for the scent of the fox in drag hunting – when it is spread across the landscape in advance of the hunt for the hounds to follow. Drag hunting remained legal in England and Wales following the outlawing of foxhunting by the Hunting Act 2004.

In the argot of 1960s youth, something objectionable, even appalling, such as the Vietnam War, was colloquially referred to as a drag.

A Reynolds number is a quantity used in fluid mechanics to help predict, among other things, the drag on an object moving through a fluid medium

The International Hot Rod Association is one of the major governing bodies overseeing the sport of drag racing.

A2

This is a simple transformation of three sets of initials – IBA, ICA, IPA.

The IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority) was the regulatory body for commercial television, Channel 4 and commercial radio stations in the 1970s and 1980s.

The ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) is a gallery and cultural centre on Carlton House Terrace in London, founded in 1947.

IPA (India Pale Ale) is a style of light traditional beer, which first appeared in England in the 1840s. It was regularly exported to India during the Victorian era, perhaps because one of the earliest breweries to develop the style was located very close to the East India Docks on the River Thames.

(The further switch mentioned in the clue would give you an ISA.)

Q3

Which common flower might be the emblem of Katie of Perth, Joan of Kent and Eleanor of Brittany – and why?

CLUES

- These people all go back some centuries, but they share a common sobriquet.

- Katie of Perth might strike a chord with opera buffs.

Q4

What starts to look familiar about a disease-carrying insect, a violent independence movement, spicy steamed semolina and a variety of antelope, all found in Africa; and what do they share with a famous penitentiary on another continent?

CLUES

- The penitentiary (as the use of that word might suggest) is in the USA.

- At the risk of repeating ourselves, this one really isn’t too tricky.

A3

These historical figures were all nicknamed the ‘Fair Maid of’ somewhere.

Katie of Perth (Katherine Glover) was The Fair Maid of Perth, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel of that title first published in 1828 and adapted for the 1867 opera La jolie fille de Perth by Georges Bizet.

King Richard II’s mother Joan of Kent (1328–85), wife of Edward the Black Prince, was known as the Fair Maid of Kent.

Eleanor (1184–1241), the granddaughter of King Henry II of England, was the Fair Maid of Brittany, also called the Pearl of Brittany and the Beauty of Brittany, suggesting she may have been quite attractive.

The flower that might reasonably be their emblem is the ‘Fair Maid of February’ – otherwise known as the snowdrop.

A4

Their names all consist of a short sequence of letters repeated.

The tsetse fly (of the genus Glossina) transmits nagana among cattle and sleeping sickness in humans. (It’s usually pronounced ‘tetsi’.)

Mau-Mau was the Kikuyu-led guerrilla independence movement in Kenya in the 1950s, from which Jomo Kenyatta emerged as the leading figure in Kenyan politics after independence.

Dik-dik is the name given to several species of dwarf antelope in the savannah lands of Africa, of the genus Madoqua.

Couscous is a north African dish made from steamed semolina, usually served with a hot meat sauce.

And the penitentiary on another continent is Sing Sing prison, at the small town of Sing Sing in Westchester County on the Hudson river, 35 miles upstream from New York City.

Q5

Why does finding the connection between DeMille’s last and biggest epic, a re-telling of The Taming of the Shrew, and the framing of Timothy Evans lie in your own hands?

CLUES

- You might guess that the re-telling of The Taming of the Shrew is Kiss Me Kate; but you’d be wrong.

- Timothy Evans was a real person, known to people reading newspapers in Britain in the 1940s.

Q6

If you were looking to restore an old property, why might you call in Humbert Humbert, the author of Toast and the family at Lower Loxley?

CLUES

- You’re more likely to recognize the name Lower Loxley if you’re a regular BBC Radio 4 listener.

- If it’s any help, the subtitle of Toast is The Story of a Boy’s Hunger.

A5

The link is film titles including the number 10 (and therefore stares you in the face when you look at the fingers of both your hands).

The Ten Commandments (1956), Cecil B. DeMille’s final movie, was a partial remake of his 1923 silent film of the same title. Charlton Heston starred (in his best-known role) as Moses, and Yul Brynner as his foe the Pharaoh Ramses. The vast scale of The Ten Commandments (particularly in the scenes of the Israelites leaving Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea), the Oscar-winning special effects, and the larger-than-life performances have made it the film for which DeMille is best remembered.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999, dir. Gil Junger) is a romantic comedy set in an American high school with a plot loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. It stars Larisa Oleynik, Julia Stiles, Andrew Keegan and Heath Ledger.

10 Rillington Place (1971, dir. Richard Fleischer), about the John Reginald Christie–Timothy Evans murder case in the 1940s and based on a book about the case by Ludovic Kennedy, is named after the house in Notting Hill where the crimes occurred. Richard Attenborough starred as the devious mass murderer, and John Hurt as the simple-minded man framed and hanged.

A6

Because they all have names suggesting trades involved in building and restoration.

The part of the predatory Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was played by James Mason.

Toast is the 2004 memoir by the food writer Nigel Slater, filmed in 2010 with a screenplay by Lee Hall, and adapted for a stage play in 2018.

The family who live at Lower Loxley – in BBC Radio’s The Archers – are the Pargetters. These days they consist of widow Elizabeth (née Archer) and her children Freddie and Lily, struggling to cope with life after dad Nigel fell to his death from a loose bit of roof in the show’s sixtieth anniversary episode in 2011. Pargetting is decorative plasterwork most typically found in the architecture of East Anglia.

Q7

Something offered to John Keats by a much later poet, a Surrealist German rock band and the second name of a notable Globetrotter might prove the truth of the title of a kind of autobiography by a reluctant Evangelical. Can you explain?

CLUES

- The offering to Keats refers to the title of a poem, written in the 1980s.

- The rock band might send you to sleep.

Q8

An inanimate espionage agent in the Second World War who misled the enemy and made a heart-breaking story, can be linked to Lieutenant Kije and the Urban Spaceman. How?

CLUES

- The Second World War incident is a real event …

- … although there is a sense in which all of this is fictional.

A7

Citrus fruits are the link.

‘A kumquat for John Keats’ is a poem by Tony Harrison published in 1981. In it the poet speculates what Keats, supreme poet of sensual expression, would have made of the combination of bitterness and sweetness in a kumquat, had he ever had the opportunity to taste one.

Tangerine Dream was a German electronic band formed in 1967. Their founder Edgar Froese was part of Salvador Dalí’s entourage in Spain for two years in the 1960s, taking part in various Surrealist ‘concerts’ at Dalí’s villa. Froese originally viewed Tangerine Dream as a further expression of his Surrealist ideas.

Meadowlark Lemon, ‘the Clown Prince of Basketball’, was a leading member of the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, concerned less to be taken seriously as sportsmen than to provide entertainment. They were the subjects of a popular 1970s American cartoon series, also shown in the UK. Other notable team members have included Reece ‘Goose’ Tatum and Wilt ‘the Stilt’ Chamberlain.

Together they might go to prove the truth of the title Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the semi-autobiographical novel by Jeanette Winterson published in 1985. In it she draws heavily on her experiences as an orphaned child brought up by strict Pentecostal Evangelists in Accrington, Lancs. After preaching and saving souls at the age of 12, she rebelled in adolescence, had lesbian affairs, and drove an ice-cream van for a couple of years before leaving for a new life in Oxford and London. When she published her novel she received a note from her adoptive mother reading simply: ‘You are the child of the Devil. Love Mother.’

A8

They are linked by fabrication.

The espionage agent is The Man Who Never Was, in the 1955 film of that name (dir. Ronald Neame). It was based on a true incident from the Second World War in which MI6 deposited the corpse of a Marine officer in a submarine off the Spanish coast and planted on him documents giving false information on Allied plans, for the enemy to find. Duff Cooper also included the story in his novel Operation Heartbreak (1950).

Lieutenant Kije, in the story on which Prokofiev based an orchestral suite, is another character whose existence was entirely fabricated. Due to a clerical error, an ink blot was misinterpreted as referring to a non-existent Lieutenant Kije; after which it became impossible for anyone to protest that there was no such person. Prokofiev’s music was written in 1934 for a film which was never completed.

And the Urban Spaceman, creation of Neil Innes and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in their hit song of 1968, provides the common link in its famous punchline: ‘I’m the urban spaceman, baby, here comes the twist … I don’t exist.’

Q9

What name pops up through the centuries to link an Italian humanist in the sixteenth-century English court, an inventor of horrific tales at a nineteenth-century gathering of literary talents in Switzerland and a twentieth-century record label?

CLUES

- The name appears in a slightly different form each time.

- The record label’s logo features a design representing the top half of a vinyl record.

Q10

Though he may not realize it, the Duke of Edinburgh shares common beginnings with the following: an amulet used in Judaism; the arrangement of leaf-growth on a plant; and a character who became a nightingale. Why?

CLUES

- The character who became a nightingale is from classical myth.

- The link is not that they all originated in Greece.

A9

The name, more or less, is Polydor.

Polydore Vergil (1470–1555) was a humanist historian, friend of Thomas More, and writer of a 26-volume History of England which was made compulsory reading in English schools in the Tudor era. Vergil was thus an indelible influence on other historians such as Holinshed, and by extension on Shakespeare since Holinshed was Shakespeare’s principal source for many of his history plays.

Dr John Polidori, a friend of Lord Byron and the Shelleys, was their companion on the shores of Lake Geneva during an extraordinary house party in the summer of 1816. Holed up in the house because of the poor summer weather, they were forced to make their own entertainment by making up horror stories with which to scare one another. This was the creative crucible that produced Frankenstein (the gathering was described by Mary Shelley in the original introduction).

Polydor Records, originally a German-based record label, was the first to release material by Jimi Hendrix (and, unwittingly, the first to record the Beatles, when they were total unknowns in Hamburg in 1961).

A10

Prince Philip shares the first syllable of his name with the other clues, which all begin with phil- or phyl-.

The Phylactery is a charm or amulet worn by orthodox Jews during morning prayer, containing Hebrew texts on folded parchments.

The pattern of leaf-growth on a plant is determined by a process called phyllotaxis.

The character, in Greek legend, who was turned into a nightingale was Philomela (or Philomel). She was raped by Tereus, king of Thrace, and her tongue was cut out so she couldn’t tell anyone. But she revealed the crime by weaving a tapestry robe in which the rape was depicted, and sending it to Tereus’ wife Procne. The gods turned all three of them into birds: Tereus into a hawk, Procne into a swallow and Philomela (literally ‘lover of song’) into a nightingale.