1. Who are served, so to speak, by an Ulster Unionist, Carthage’s greatest foe and a Warwickshire cricketer? These are butlers. Lord Grantham in, forgive me, Downton Abbey is served by Carson (Edward Carson being the Ulster Unionist), Inspector Clouseau is served by Cato (descendent, we like to think, of the Carthago delenda est Cato) and Percy Jeeves was the Warwickshire cricketer who gave his name to Bertram Wooster’s gentleman’s gentleman. Sadly the real Jeeves perished int he First World War.)
2. What links a royal motto with Odysseus and Jules Verne? Nemo. Nemo me impune lacessit is the ancient motto of the Stuarts. Nemo was the name Odysseues (or Ulysses really) gave himself when he poked out poor Polyphemus’s single eye and Captain Nemo, of course, features in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
3. What, collectively, are a Dulwich College alumnus, Jacob’s wife, Apollo’s grandmother, a Scottish county, a White House intern and a juvenile marsupial? Friends. In order, (Raymond) Chandler, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Monica (Lewinsky), Joey.
4. Virginia boasts eight and Ohio seven but California, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Connecticut only one apiece. What and can you identify the singletons? Birthplaces of US Presidents. The singletons are Nixon, Lincoln, Buchanan and George HW Bush.
5. With which letter would you associate the School of Science, a Scottish river and an author unhappy with Kansas? W. Especially if you are a cricket fan. Or a West Indian. Everton are (notionally) the School of Science, the Clyde is the Scottish river and Thomas Frank the author of ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas’. Everton, Clyde and Frank are the Christian names of the Three Ws – Weekes, Walcott and Worrell who served the West Indies with such distinction.
6. Stockholm is 67, Paris is 71 and Copenhagen is 72. How so? Atomic elements. Holmium is number 7, Lutetium 71 and Hafnium 72. These are derived from the Latin names for Stockholm, Paris and Copenhagen respectively.
7. Where, far from home, would you find a first sight of England, a chivalrous Elizabethan, a former Tory leader’s constituency and a Lincolnshire town? American state capitals: Dover, (Francis) Raleigh, Richmond (William Hague), Boston.
8. In what sense was a Downing Street transition thunderously replicated on Fleet Street 20 years later? Harold Wilson succeeded Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister. 20 years later Charlie ‘Gorbals’ Wilson succeeded Charles Douglas-Home as editor of The Times (‘The Thunderer).
9. In what font should you find an Eco hero and one whose boots were stolen from a London hotel? Baskerville. William of Baskerville is the protagonist in The Name of The Rose. Henry Baskerville has his boots – black and brown alike – stolen from a London hotel in a famous detective story. Baskerville is also a font.
10. EHM, QPQ, IOH, UNU, KPD and KTW are reversed. Numbers would be inappropriate. Who and why? This caused trouble. But once you recognise it’s a code and then work out the code it is pretty simple. The code is a reverse alphabet. In other words A=Z, B=Y, C=X, D=W and so on. So EHM is actually VSN. Which is VS Naipaul. QPQ=JKJ or Jerome K Jerome. IOH=RLS, Robert Louis Stevenson, KPD=PGW who is PG Wodehouse and KTW=PKD or Philip K Dick. Numbers are inappropriate for this code because all of them are writers.
11. Why might you reckon a dashing American admiral, one of the first crusaders, a Princetonian president, an infantryman’s spear and a Pulitzer-winning African-American novelist all comically hopeless? Dad’s Army: John Pauk Jones, Godfrey, Woodrow Wilson, a Pike and Alice Walker – Jones, Godfrey, Wilson, Pike and Walker all being amongst the defenders of poor Walmington-on-Sea.
12. The first died at 12, the second at just 4, the third at 70 and the fourth at 12. The fifth is still going at 56. What? French Republics.
13. If a mischievous English schoolboy, a New Zealand city and an Australian tennis champion are three of four, who is the fourth and how are they up to no good? The fourth is Kris Kristofferson and these are The Highwaymen. You are looking for Jennings (of & Derbyshire fame) and Nelson (a small Kiwi city) and Cash (Pat of that ilk) to make up this country quartet.
14. Where will you find The Peace, Saint James, Good Winds and Mountain View? South America. These are English translations of La Paz, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
15. If the Spartans take on the Trojans at the Coliseum, what’s going on? A game of American football. The University of Southern California Trojans would be hosting (and doubtless beating) the Michigan State Spartans at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
16. In order: Poisoned, stabbed, drowned, executed (2), poisoned, stabbed and poisoned (3). Who? Deaths in Hamlet, starting with the old King and ending with Hamlet, Laertes etc. The rest is silence.
17. What was yellow in Paris but is still pink in Milan? Newspapers. Specifically the Gazetta dello Sport in Milan is still printed on pink paper, Velo in Paris is no longer produced in yellow. The leader’s jerseys in the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France are pink and yellow because these were the papers that sponsored, or created, the races.
18. What links a Staten Island Scot, a Young Bosnian and an American essayist’s “embattled farmers”? Shots heard around the world: Bobby Thomson (born in Scotland, raised on Staten Island, starred for the New York Giants and hit a still-famous pennant winning Home Run), Gavrilo Princip, assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and, in Emerson’s, ‘Concord Hymn’ the farmers fired the first shots of the American revolution.
19. Clarke was the first and Plunkett the seventh and last. Who were the other five and what happened to them? Signatories of the proclamation of the Irish Republic, Easter 1916. The others, also executed by the stupid British, were: Sean MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt and James Connolly.
20. What are Edinburgh, Dover, Portsmouth, Avonmouth, Holyhead and Carlisle? Roads. Specifically the destinations of the A1, A2, A3 etc from London.
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