Q1
From Ivan Whetton
Why could a Northern Irish tenor, the first conductor of The Planets and the lawyer who wrote the words of the American national anthem make you feel more secure?
CLUES
- The tenor was the subject of a film.
- Find the link and it will all open up.
Q2
From Bruford Low
Cut the following in half, put them in the correct order and identify what is missing: a fairy-tale opening, a stripper trying to earn Rent, a dead bird, an island race, somewhere you can find a piano-playing Gosling, and something neither good nor bad.
CLUES
- In the scale of difficulty, this one is relatively straightforward.
- The piano-playing Gosling could play you the solution.
A1
Because their names give us a Lock(e), a Bo(u)lt and a Key.
Tenor Josef Locke was born Joseph McLaughlin in 1917 in Derry, the son of a butcher and cattle dealer, and one of nine children. He became a well-loved performer of sentimental and traditional Irish songs in British music halls, on radio and in films in the 1940s and 1950s, and his story was told in the 1991 film Hear My Song.
The eminent English conductor, Sir Adrian Cedrik Boult (1889–1983) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest British conductors and a noted champion of British music. He was the first, and probably still best-known, conductor of Holst’s The Planets. He was appointed Director of Music by the BBC in 1930 and founded the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He was associated with the Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, most famously, the London Symphony Orchestra.
Francis Scott Key (1779–1843) was an American lawyer and poet. After witnessing events of the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814, Key wrote a poem he called ‘The Defence of Fort M’Henry’, whose words were set to a popular melody by John Stafford Smith and became famous as ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.
A2
Halved and put in order, these give you Do – Mi – Fa – So – La – Te, the notes of the tonic Sol-fa. So missing is Re (the second note).
Far far (away) – a popular opening for fairy tales; Mimi – a character in the musical Rent (and the opera La Bohème which inspired it); dodo – a dead (as in extinct) bird; TT – a motorcycle race held on the Isle of Man; La La Land – a film in which Ryan Gosling plays a jazz pianist; so-so – neither good nor bad.
Q3
From James Tween
One was a president honoured for seeking ‘peaceful solutions to international conflicts’; another silenced a King who had received the same honour; and the third gave voice to a different king … though he’s better known as a Lord. In conclusion, they vary, but who are they?
CLUES
- The one who silenced a King did so violently.
- The president we’re looking for is the thirty-ninth.
Q4
From James Rutherford
How might a legendary firefighter, an Islamic festival and a case of the winter blues engender articles in Der Spiegel?
CLUES
- This is very carefully and cleverly worded: ‘engender articles’ has a double meaning.
- The German language is also important.
A3
People called James Earl … respectively Carter, Ray and Jones. ‘In conclusion’ their names are different but they all begin the same way.
President James Earl ‘Jimmy’ Carter, thirty-ninth president of the USA, in office from 1977 to 1980, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 ‘for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development’.
James Earl Ray (1928–98) pleaded guilty to murdering Martin Luther King in Memphis in 1968, though he later retracted his confession. King had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King (1994 and 2019) but is better known for voicing the Sith Lord Darth Vader in the Star Wars films.
A4
Der Spiegel translates as ‘the mirror’, and the three answers are the three definite articles in German associated with gender, but spelt backwards as in a mirror.
The fireman is Red Adair – Der; the Islamic festival is Eid – Die; and the winter blues are known as SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) – Das.
Der Spiegel is a weekly news magazine, preeminent in Germany and one of the most widely circulated in Europe, published in Hamburg since 1947.
Red Adair (Paul Neal Adair, 1915–2004) was an American firefighter whose international reputation was established in 1962 when his team extinguished the ‘Devil’s Cigarette Lighter’, a gas fire that had been raging in the desert of Algeria for six months. His teams were credited with fighting more than 2,000 fires in his career, including the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea. In 1991 Adair was asked to help cap the oil fires set by Iraqi troops fleeing Kuwait. Although it was thought that controlling these fires would take years to accomplish, Adair’s team capped 117 wells and aided other teams in completing the job in eight months. Adair retired from firefighting in 1994.
ʿĪd al-Fiṭr, also spelled Eid al-Fitr (Arabic: festival of breaking fast) marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, and is celebrated during the first three days of Shawwal, the tenth month of the Islamic calendar (though the Muslim use of a lunar calendar means that it may fall in any season of the year).
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a mood disorder characterized by recurring depression in autumn and winter, was first described in 1984 by the American psychiatrist Norman Rosenthal.
Q5
From Barbara Jennings
Which Welsh baritone, pompous fictional surgeon and Wilkie Collins villain could be considered appropriate members of a charitable social club?
CLUES
- It would be an honour to answer this excellent question.
- You may remember the surgeon as portrayed by James Robertson Justice.
Q6
From Roger Gill
Joyce’s particular unintended progeny include: two that are vertical directions, two that are likeable and unusual, and two you might find written on a packing case. What are they – and why would you find them crossing the Swiss-French border very quickly?
CLUES
- It won’t take you long to get the flavour of this question.
- You might work out the answers but you will almost certainly never see them.
A5
The charitable social club is the Round Table – named after that of Arthurian legend – and the three people in the clue are all knights, real or fictional, with appropriate Arthurian names.
Sir Geraint Evans (1922–92), much-loved Welsh operatic baritone/bass-baritone, was considered one of the greatest-ever Falstaffs (helped by his memorably whiskered, larger-than-life, Shakespearean appearance).
Sir Lancelot Spratt (memorably played by James Robertson Justice) was the domineering senior surgeon in the films of Richard Gordon’s ‘Doctor’ books, starting with Doctor in the House (1954). Dirk Bogarde played Simon Sparrow.
Sir Percival Glyde is the villainous husband of Laura and associate of the vile Count Fosco in The Woman in White (1860). He and Fosco plot to have the blameless Laura locked up in an asylum, in place of the deranged but conveniently similar-looking woman of the title – so as to make people believe she has died and thus inherit her wealth. Needless to say, the plot unravels.
A6
They are quarks – the fundamental particles whose existence was proposed by the late American physicist Murray Gell-Mann, and named in 1964 after a phrase in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, ‘three quarks for Muster Mark’. Quarks make up hadrons, the particles being fired across (or rather, under) the Swiss-French border by the Large Hadron Collider, at speeds approaching that of light.
The question refers to six of the types or ‘flavours’ of quark. The two vertical directions are Up and Down; the likeable unusual ones are Charm and Strange; the packing case instructions are Top and Bottom.
Q7
From Bob Salmon
What do a nebulous approach to computing, Ray Bolger’s stuffing, Boston’s airport and 37.5 gallons of herring have to do with a culinary heroine who often used to be seen near Hollywood?
CLUES
- With luck your mental effort could prove fruitful here.
- Bob Salmon’s own name could be another ingredient in this question.
Q8
From Roland Howell
One of Byron’s daughters, with a change to the last vowel, becomes a Miltonic poetical character; and, with a further change to the same vowel, becomes one whose composition for the Sistine Chapel was written down by a visiting musician. Can you explain?
CLUES
- A lively mind is required for this.
- Less poetically, the second of these was an unloved model of motor car in the 1970s.
A7
The clues all lead to words that can be followed by Berry.
Cloud computing is a method of storing data in central computer systems and providing users access to them through the internet. Cloudberries are golden-yellow fruit, similar in shape to blackberries and ripening at a similar time of year, especially prevalent in northern climates and a common feature of Scandinavian desserts.
The best known screen role of American entertainer Ray Bolger (1904–87) is the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (1939) who, being stuffed with straw, has no brain. A strawberry needs no explanation.
General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport is the main airport serving metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts. It was named in 1943 after an officer in the Spanish-American War who came from Boston. The loganberry is a cross between raspberry and blackberry varieties originally produced by accident by the horticulturalist James Harvey Logan in California in 1883.
A cran is a unit of capacity used for measuring fresh herring, equal to 37.5 gallons. Cranberries are widely cultivated in boggy areas of the northern hemisphere, prized as a ‘superfood’ for their high antioxidant and vitamin C content.
Mary Berry (b.1935) has been a prominent cook and food writer since the 1960s, and found a whole new level of fame (and the status of national treasure) in her late seventies, as a judge alongside Paul Hollywood in the TV series The Great British Bake Off (BBC 2010–16).
A8
The sequence is Allegra – Allegro – Allegri.
Allegra, born 12 January 1817, was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister.
‘L’Allegro’, a poem published in 1645 by John Milton along with its companion piece ‘Il Penseroso’ – they mean, in opposition, ‘the cheerful/lively one’ and ‘the pensive one’.
Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652), priest, tenor, and composer, is best known for the famous Miserere (the setting of Psalm 50 in the Roman Catholic enumeration), for nine voices, written for the Sistine Chapel where he worked for the later part of his life. The work was the exclusive property of the Sistine Chapel, and papal pronouncement strictly prohibited the reproduction of the score; but according to popular legend the 14-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome with his father, committed it to memory on the spot, and wrote it down subsequently, thus ensuring its immortality.
Q9
From Peter Stockdale
Three men were prepared to make a run for it, but only one did. Repeatedly, they have been used in messaging, seen in the African bush and heard in a mantra. Can you explain who, or what, they are?
CLUES
- The three men have names that form a familiar trio.
- There’s a Second World War connection.
Q10
From Richard Humm
Which League, with 118 members so far, is this?
Germany 1, England 0
America 1, France 2
University of California 2, Russia 1
Stockholm 1, Suburb of Stockholm 4
Sunday Night! 1, Friday 1
Planets 4, Dwarf Planets 2
CLUES
- It’s tempting to provide no clues to this splendid question: it’s likely it will either baffle you completely or seem elementary.
- That’s all you get.
A9
Tom, Dick and Harry were the nicknames of the three tunnels, ‘prepared’ as an escape route from Stalag Luft III, as portrayed in the film The Great Escape (1963), adapted by James Clavell and W. R. Burnett from the book by Paul Brickhill. In the event only Harry was used in the break-out.
‘Repeatedly’, they give us: a tom-tom – a type of African drum traditionally used to convey messages; a dik-dik – a dwarf antelope, of the genus Madoqua, found in eastern Africa; Hare-Hare – recited as a part of the mantra or chant of the Hare Krishna movement, in full the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), founded in the United States in 1965 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta.
As an aside, there was also a fourth tunnel – George – believed to have been begun in September 1944, before the arrival of freezing conditions in winter that would have made digging impossible.
A10
This is all to do with the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements and the places after which elements are named.
Germany 1, England 0 – Germany has Germanium (Ge, atomic no. 32), while England has no element named for the country.
America 1, France 2 – Americium (Am, 95); France has Francium (Fr, 87) and Gallium (Ga, 31).
University of California 2, Russia 1 – Californium (Cf, 98) and Berkelium (Bk, 97), while Russia is Ruthenia in Latin, hence Ruthenium (Ru, 44).
Stockholm 1, Suburb of Stockholm 4 – Stockholm has Holmium (Ho, 67), while, believe it or not, Ytterby, a small mine nearby, has Yttrium (Y, 39), Ytterbium (Yb, 70), Terbium (Tb, 65) and Erbium (Er, 68).
Sunday Night! 1, Friday 1 – Sunday night gave us Palladium (Pd, 46) and Friday comes from the Norse Goddess Freya, also known as Vanadis, whence Vanadium (V, 23).
Planets 4, Dwarf Planets 2 – Mercury (Hg, 80), Earth – Tellerium (Te, 52), Uranus – Uranium (U, 92), Neptune – Neptunium (Np, 93). The dwarf planets give us Pluto – Plutonium (Pu, 94), and Ceres – Cerium (Ce, 58).