Blandishments

Days of Daze

What ho! I mean what is up with Kerry Katona advertising CHICKEN TIKKA LASAGNE (seriously) on the Iceland ads? Have we already descended into the Great Depression II? And what about Johnny Rotten shilling British butter? Crazy. Then Clint Eastwood wearing white socks with dress shoes and a suit on the Daily Show. Completely mental.

As for other matters, like the QLL, well, smell. All I can say is that we sure were sloppy and rusty. Kinda like ... no, that's just sick. I think I was spouting wrong answers on purpose so I could hear the moans of despair emerge so painfully from my fellow teammates. Oh what sweet bliss and hilarity it was to hear such chilly banshee screams of frustration. Still, we still won. Despite error after error.

Otherwise, I've been in one of those question-setting periods, where day is swapped for night and I start getting up at five in the afternoon whilst I get thoroughly shabby and start watching all the Nouvelle Vague and Italian film DVDs I have bought but so far failed to watch despite two years in the owning (The Leopard is in my critical view: FRAKKIN' AWESOME. That Claudia Cardinale is SMOKIN' HOT! YEAHHHH!). Now I have resorted to watching Truffaut on YouTube, such has the hunger grown. So very nice that copyright peeps can't be bothered to pull down the poncey foreign film fare. So very very nice.

Anyway, the message from me remains: buy my double-quiz if you haven't. Pretty please. There's a song from Abbey Road I could invoke, which I haven't heard for so long ...

YES I HAVE A NEW EMAIL QUIZ...

... PLEASE DO DO DO

(Apologies for the CAPS)

For those who who might not know, my two-part 1002-question big enormous email quiz is ready (and has been ready for quite some time) to go.

Lest you fear! I will be emailing previous participants of The Blockbuster, Behemoth, Colossus and Monster and kindly asking them if they would like to take part (and not because I want to emotionally blackmail and extort money from them in as pleasant and as reasonable a manner as can be expected). By the way, non-paying electronic duplicators will surely burn in the red red fires of hell, or expect to be scolded if they mention having seen or done it (I got me a quick mind, you know, yesirree) in textual and other communicative means. I have noticed this before, but have so far held my tongue.

And by the way, everyone who has returned their part ones has bloody loved it! In a manner of speaking. I will fetch the accolades in due time.

Might I also add that the questions in the email quizzes are in no way indicative of those found on this blog. They are fair and (mostly) gettable and not aimed at brutalising you into depression. The blog quizzes are intended to be for training purposes and if you get more than 1 in 5 of them right, you deserve my hearty congratulations.

Oh yeah, these will probably be be my last big email efforts for a very long time. And I'm not talking a single year either. If you get my drift.

THE BIG PITCH
It is time once again (or has been for about three weeks) for another Big, Big Quiz. Coming hot on the heels of The Blockbuster (#4), comes "The Giant". However, this time there is a difference. Due to problems with time and admin, I have decided to make it a two-parter, with each part being 501 questions long and therefore making a total of 1002 questions.

The first part (The Giant: Part I) is ready now, and the second (cunningly titled The Giant: Part II). However, you cannot complete the second part until you have sent back the first to myself. I will then e-mail Part II to you, although you can get both at the same time if you have declared your wish not to be part of the final results, though you will not receive your combined Giant until the vast majority of actual competitors have returned their answers for both parts (i.e. October 28).

The time limit is 195 minutes or 3 hours and 15 minutes, unless your first language is something other than English. Then you can have another half hour to use dictionaries to translate ancillary words.

So what is it like? Here is some 'Feedback from Illustrious Quiz Deities ...'

Kevin Ashman, Egghead, three-time World Quizzing Champion and beloved of actress Michelle Collins: "The Giant, like its predecessors, is a labour of love which covers an astonishing range of information culled from the highways and byways [is that the same thing as roadkill?] of the world's rich cultural mix. Challenging, stimulating, and thoroughly enjoyable, it's bound to leave you wanting to found out more about some of the things you never knew you didn't know."

Pat Gibson, 2007 World Quizzing Champion, WWTBAM winner: "Lots of great stuff ... there were many cracking questions. A fascinating set (as always), I enjoyed it very much."

Of course, it is great practice for coming written quizzes: the British and European Quiz Championships for example. Some of the questions always come up (so reckons me).

How to enter

You enter by e-mailing thegiantquiz@gmail.com. I will acknowledge receipt of your e-mail as soon as possible.

I will then give you details on how to pay along with a snail mail address for cheques (and eventually, postal entries) - Paypal, cheque, even cash if you dare - and put you down on the participant list. You can also pay me at the European Quiz Championships in Oslo, if you can't pay by any of the aforementioned methods. You can enter any time as long as it is before the deadline date for the return of your completed answer sheets.

The price is £15 for both parts. Therefore it is £7.50 for either. You can buy The Behemoth and The Blockbuster, with answers, for £7.50 each. You can also purchase TQG's first and second huge quizzes - The Monster and The Colossus for £3. And if you're wondering TQG is nowhere near exhausting the pool of potential names!

Once your payment (though I will go on trust for everyone, such as previous participants, he knows personally and e-mail them the quiz ASAP) has been received, the quiz will then be e-mailed to you and you can return your answers any time before the ultimate deadline - Tuesday, October 28 (11.59pm to be exact) - by e-mail or snail mail.

You can, in effect, ask for The Giant: Part I at any time before that date, but if you want to do Part II, this is not advised. Obviously. The final results will be published in a Part I and Part II league tables, as well as one for Aggregates. The Aggregate results will decide who wins free entry next time.

Within the week of the deadline - November 4 - the answers and errors in the questions or helpful additional information competitors have pointed out and would like to share with everyone, will then be sent to every competitor by old fashioned snail mail (the postage cost will be taken out of £15 fee, though foreign competitors will receive such sheets grouped together where possible since they will pay less to take part). They will NOT be e-mailed out.

Every payee receive the answers

Again, everyone will receive the answers even if they do not submit a completed sheet - you have paid an entrance fee; therefore you get the full package. Yet again the bonus for taking part and doing all of the above in the recommended fashion, participants will also receive two of four originally-set 100-question quizzes, designated by the imaginative names A, B, C and D in the post with the answer set. You can purchase the other three bonus quizzes you have not have received after the deadline date for £1.50 each if you so wish.

Participants, whose completed entries arrive after the deadline, will get the answers and bonus quiz too, but will not be entered into the final scorers table. Having said that, they probably will be.

And please, if there are people out there who have still not got the answers for The Blockbuster and a copy of an ABC quiz then please tell me ASAP and he'll email them straight away. Many apologies if he's have forgotten you.

Prizes

The prizes remain the same. Apart from the chance of competing against and comparing yourself with the likes of many a world class quiz god in a massive quiz from the comfort of your own home and winning the wondrous respect of your peers, the premier primo prize - since cash awards are not viable when I have to rely on the honesty of competitors doing it at home where they can access the internet, reference books and their loved ones for the stuff that is teetering on the top of their tongue - is that the overall winner will receive a refund of their entrance fee and free entry into the next quiz.

There will also be a refund and free entry again for those who finish number one in each country where there is more than three "Giant" competitors.

And to encourage those wary of possible humiliation (though you can enter under a pseudonym if you prefer) and just want to give it a shot, the overall bottom five finishers will also get their money back and free entry next time, as long as their answer sheet has been returned and convincingly attempted, i.e. filled with top-to-the-bottom with proof they have done their best to tackle it (those with barely any answers and blank sheets will be ignored).

And what are the questions going to be like?

Take this sample of 20 questions from The Blockbuster...

Q1 Which comedian (1906-98), who had a cameo playing himself in Goodfellas, was famed for such one-liners as "I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back" and "Take my wife - please!"?

Q2 From the Greek meaning "done by hand", which healthcare profession for treating mechanical disorders of the spine and musculoskeletal system was founded in 1895 by the Canadian, Daniel David Palmer?

Q3 By what English name do we know the TV show broadcast as Ruku na to in Slovakia, Da sau nu in Romania, Trato Hecho in Argentina and Affari Tuoi in Italy?

Q4 The French artist Joseph Duplessis's portrait of Benjamin Franklin is most commonly seen where?

Q5 Which Swedish musician, producer and ex-dentist had a major hit in 1992 with It's My Life?

Q6 Nicknamed "JJ" and "Jeca", which 23-year-old Serbian tennis player and Wimbledon mixed doubles champion entered the WTA top three for the first time on reaching the French Open semi-finals in 2007?

Q7 Utilising the colours blue, green, red and yellow, the official version of which game is played on a felt mat 1.8m by 0.9m with a pot in the middle and base lines at each corner?

Q8 Complete the lyric with a Eddie Cochran song title from 1958: "There ain't no cure for the __________ _____"

Q9 Based in the Californian city of Mountain View, which US public corporation's mission statement is to "organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"?

Q10 Which soprano married the mining engineer Desmond Park six months after they had a blind date in Auckland in August 1967?

Q11 Made into a French live-action TV series in 1965, which Cecile Aubry novel takes its name (familiar to fans of Scottish indie music) from an orphaned six-year-old boy and his dog who live in a small mountain village on the French side of the France-Italy border?

Q12 Which Australian batsman, who scored 165 before retiring hurt, faced the first ball ever bowled in Test cricket (by England's Alfred Shaw)?

Q13 What links Vermeer's The Artist in his Studio, Ingres's The Bather, Friedrich's The Wanderer Above the Clouds, Caillebotte's Man at his Bath, Hammershoi's Interior, Magritte's La Reproduction interdite and Gerhard Richter's Betty?

Q14 Called "a bonzer place" by novelist Nevil Shute, which Australian town is reportedly the stabbing capital of the world and also claims the highest murder and highest consumption of alcohol rate in the country?

Q15 In a 1963 film, what eponymous jewel is owned by Princess Dala (played by Claudia Cardinale)?

Q16 Which Russian vodka brand numbers its Blue Label variety "57" and its Classic Red Label "21", though in Norway "21" may also refer to it being cut with Norwegian berries?

Q17 What is also known as Archimedes's constant and as Ludolph's number?

Q18 Which Australian Prime Minister is presumed to have drowned while swimming at Portsea, near Melbourne, on December 17, 1967?

Q19 Recently, the Kapa O Panga version has sometimes been performed instead of the traditional Ka Mate. They are variations of what?

Q20 The official residence of the President of South Korea - the Cheong Wa Dae - is translated into English under what name, suggesting it is merely a different colour to that of the US President's?

Remember the E-mail Entry Address & the Deadline!

Just one more time for an increasingly annoying effect, e-mail: thegiantquiz@gmail.com and get ALL your answers in by 11.59pm, Tuesday, October 28.

But to be honest, the deadline might well be extended beyond that. Simply because, it always is.


Blockbuster sampler answers

1 Henny Youngman 2 Chiropracty 3 Deal or No Deal 4 US$100 banknote 5 Dr Alban 6 Jelena Jankovic 7 Tiddlywinks 8 Summertime Blues 9 Google 10 Kiri Te Kanawa 11 Belle et Sebastien 12 Charles Bannerman 13 The subject has their back to the viewer of the painting 14 Alice Springs 15 The Pink Panther 16 Smirnoff 17 Pi 18 Harold Holt 19 Haka 20 Blue House

Error on The Giant: Part 2

Of course, the subject of Q168 was born in 1844 not 1820, so it should read (1844-1900). Ta ta.

BH153: Pink, Green & Blue Clearout

A bit of an Autumn clean

I'm just clearing out a load of distorted and illegible scribblings in my notebook and sprucing them up for public consumption. There are a lot more to clean up and actually write properly, but then I got me a bit of a malaise with regards to the transcribing during these early morning hours, so it only goes up to 20.

BH153
1 Which Italian artist produced a series of 16 prints, including II 'The Man on the Rock', V 'The Lion-Bas Reliefs, VI 'The Smoking Fire' and XII 'The Sawhorse', known as the Prisons (Carceri d'invenzione/Imaginary Prisons): etchings portraying enormous subterranean vaults with stairs and mighty machines that he started in 1745 and first published in 1750?
2 Conceived by Stan Weston in 1963, Rocky (Marine/soldier), Skip (sailor) and Ace (pilot) were the first prototypes for which line of toys?
3 The first jockey to win the Melbourne Cup in 1861 (and again in 1861) was an Aboriginal. Riding Archer, what was his name?
4 Which Spanish city gave its name to the 'Statement on Violence' adopted by UNESCO in 1989, a document that refuted the notion that humans are biologically predisposed to organised violence?
5 Usually translated as 'governorate' (and occasionally into 'province'), what Arabic word describes the politico-geographical divisions of such countries as Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen?
6 Which hugely successful novelist is the Baltimore Orioles' Vice Chairman of Community Activities and Public Affair?
7 Which constant (symbol R) occurs in the formulae for atomic spectra and is related to the binding energy between an electron and a nucleon and is named afrer the Swedish physicist (1854-1919) who devised a formula for the spectrum of hydrogen?
8 The oldest known man-made objects are Oldowan tools, which were made in small batches more than two million years ago in which modern day country?
9 Dr. Stanley Deutsch formulated the contents of what chemical concoction in 1977?
10 Constructed in 62BC, what was the first bridge across the Tiber in Rome called?
11 The family of Thomas and Jane Rose of Dorset became the first free settlers of which country on January 15, 1793?
12 Excavated from a tomb dating from the time of the Western Han dynasty (206BC-9AD), what artwork - currently in the Hunan Museum - is the earliest known example of Chinese painting?
13 Which Bury alternative rock band named themselves after what Dennis Potter called "the loveliest word in the English language" in The Singing Detective?
14 An English doctor and lecturer of Huguenot descent, which 26-year-old man began compiling what he called "a classed catalogue of words" to help him express himself better in 1805?
15 Established in 1668, what is the world's oldest central bank?
16 First performed during the 1868 battle it adapted its name from, what song - written and composed by one of its participants Perucho Figueredo - was adopted as the Cuban national anthem in 1902?
17 Discovered in a library in Worms by Conrad Celtes, who was unable to publish his find before his death, and bequeathed this parchment scroll in 1508 to the German 15th-16th century humanist and antiquarian who gave it its common name, which itinerarium is is the only known surviving map of the Roman cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire, having been made by a monk in Colmar in the 13th century?
18 Derived from the Hebrew for 'chariot', what is the name of the main battle tank of Israel Defence Forces?
19 Which crater lake is the most saline body of water on earth, with 34.8 per cent salt concentration (up to 40 per cent at 20m depth), compared to an average of 3.5 per cent in the world's oceans?
20 Which peak on Guam lays claim to being the tallest mountain as measured from its base, although it is only 406m above sea level it measures 11,530m down to the base at the bottom of the Marianas Trench?

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Answers to BH153
1 Giovanni Battista Piranesi 2 G.I. Joe 3 J. Cutts 4 Seville 5 Muhafazah , plural muhafazat 6 Tom Clancy 7 Rydberg constant (as in Johannes Robert Rydberg) 8 Ethiopia 9 Lethal injection 10 Pons Fabricus 11 Australia 12 Mawangdui Banner 13 Elbow 14 Peter Mark Roget 15 Sveriges Riksbank 16 La Bayamesa or El Himno de Bayamo or The Bayamo Song 17 Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger table) 18 Merkava 19 Lake Assal in Djibouti 20 Mount Lamlam

Radio Plays Black Hole Sun at Half Past Eight

Apocalypse Not Quite Yet

(You know when technology fails you and destroys something that will be forever lost? That's what happened with my final draft of this post. Blogger I hate you. Here's an earlier, comparatively mediocre draft. Now I'm just smoking mad.)

So the world didn't end. An peculiar sense of disappointment never fails to set in when the promise of endtimes is broken once again, no matter how superfluous the reason that has been tacked on this time around(though obviously it is going to be either the knock-on effect of the Bee Holocaust or the 2012 Revenge of the Mayas ... if it's The Rapture it will tick me off something rotten, what with you and me and everyone we know roasting in the fires of hell, while the likes of Sarah Palin and her righteous brethren go aerial wolf-gunning with God). But if our whole world ceased for evermore, it wouldn't matter because there would be nobody left to care, mourn or give any number of insignificant hoots about it. So why fret? That's the problem with consciousness. The mind deludes us into thinking it will go on and induces worrisome thoughts about how the lack of an afterlife basically means living alone in the dark, as if trapped in the worst bedsit we can imagine in a total blackout for all eternity, thus inducing soothing solutions like religions, religious wars, reincarnation, aethism, Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Dawkins documentaries and the catastrophic belief pile-up and confusion and ultimate solace in materialism and distraction via various forms of home and away entertainment. Then I go back to Dostoevsky's contention that if God does not exist, then EVERYTHING is permitted, which I think is the most terrifying notion around, especially if a significant proportion of the world's population believe it and act on all those animalistic instincts they've kept in check for the sake of society. In that case, let's be glad that pondering mankind's erasure from existence has been put off for another day (and preceding months of meaningless waffle and speculation) by the fact that the hyped-up media story surrounding it was a load of old balderdash nobody of sane mind actually believed in anyway, while the Fourth Estate played it for laughs, despite all those hushed asides about the vague possibility of doomsday, like they were each doing their own low rent comic remakes of Armageddon possibly calling Carry on Armageddon Out of Here. What you can say is that it sure got some top notch publicity for the beam-steering around the LHC accelerator ring at CERN, which the less-informed of us might have thought was some sort of turbo-charged carpentry related-racing event.

Not that I would have noticed, however, being fast asleep at the potential point whence almighty doom might have descended upon the Earth and Swiss-cheesed everyone in a series of black holes that were not located in Lancashire. Really, I don't know. I try to keep up with the whole science thang - and it's a big thing isn't it? Huge. Massive. That's why it's called science. It thought itself so important that it took the Latin derivation for 'knowing/knowledge' all for itself, bedamned history! I AM SCIENCE! You are crap! - as I do with everything, it is my accidental trade in life after all, but my mind is just too detached from the actual mechanics of life to want to fully comprehend it. And I like it that way. To be an artsy fartsy dreamer is no bad thing. Therefore - hurtling into astonishingly trivial territory as is the usual trajectory of this blog's raison d'etre - when writing science questions it's more a process of taking a pertinent passage and chopping it into something that looks like it makes complete sense and putting it into the usual 'what is' form. Problem is I still don't have the kind of understanding that gives me anywhere near a confident handle on subjects like the Large Hadron Collider, effects, constants, theories, and countless subatomic particles that are apparently piled higgedly piggedly upon and under and side by side in some strange network that is meant to help me understand the basic fabric of life and existence in this giant scary universe. The only way I answer quiz questions on such subjects is by getting a handle on the eponymous scientist who discovered it or theorised something. Without the people ("Named for the Indian scientist that...") or word derivations (the more eccentric and whimsical the better), the sciences would be a bleak and forlorn desert where none of my interest could ever hope to bloom. Thankfully, semantics, semiotics, toponymy, etymology and the whole onomastic alliance - for you must never forget that quiz is a game of names bounded by the trusty twine of chronology - has leant me the helping hand I need to squeeze out several outrageous correct answers. And that's the problem with scanning science questions: you have to pay closer attention to the details. Attention that is always flitting in my shifty brain. The only scientific theories that reel in the ADD involve multiple worlds, string theory, and made-up ones Philip K. Dick explored when he was plainly hepped up so high he couldn't even seen the ground.

However, there was one lady who had a far firmer grasp on the matter (dark matter?) at hand. Dear Keeley with the you know whats and that grainy cameraphone video where she does that thing, declared from the third page of our nation's finest news publication, The Sun:

"It's so exciting. The machine's main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the current theoretical picture for particle physics".

Now I was thinking, just for a split second there, that the junior Sun reporter usually tasked with putting intelligent comment ('intelligent comment' equating to 'absurd topical banalities that should be collected in a special volume and studied intently by anthropologists one day for the purpose of ascertaining the dangerously high percentage of bollocks contained in each text') into the mouths of whichever barely clad babe was gracing the most famous numbered newspaper in history had done their stuff, weeing themselves with laughter and crying sheets of happy tears at considering the inexplicable madness of the concept that is NEWS IN BRIEFS. But who knows? Perhaps, just for one day, it wasn't another Dadaist antic on the part of Rebecca Wade. Perhaps, Keeley was filled with the spirit of Marie Curie and .... that's about where I lost it. Damn.

(Missing content includes references to "high-minded Swedes with dynamite-funded dough", "right wing git of the people" John Gaunt's column being about as "funny as a drinking a razorblade-laced blood and ale smoothie", opining it that we were better off when we "lived in caves and were really into big hair and brandishing big clubs all day" since "we could just about knock a mammoth out rather than reduce cities to smoking cinders and dust with the downward action of an index finger". I absolutely hate it when blog posts go all Magnificent Ambersons)

WOW

A Broken Heart Rules

Didn't me old BH mucker Sean completely blow everyone away at the Brits? 'Twas a lovely surprise. On hearing his quite gargantuan (97) score at half time, I was genuinely astonished, and in a very pleasant way might I add. Then slightly later, on realising he had taken the national title when he told me his meat beast whopper (I did have one of those from BK t'other night: never never again. 'Tis the saucy veg spillage that irks me so and gets me all icky) of a best-five-round total, I felt extremely pleased for him, especially since he's been working so bloody hard at the art of quiz, and being so 'trivia-attentive' and far better at consuming relevant newsprint than me these past few years. I mean, I didn't even read a newspaper yesterday. I only looked at the BBC news and sport websites. The BBCNEWSANDSPORTWEBSITES!

And did you not see the creeping proof in his scores in my Big Quizzes? They're good for a few things (as well as driving me nicely hectic-nuts). OK, I am losing the power to place words, parantheses and severed syllables in their orthodox positions. It ain't the first time either. I have also noticed how writing in absurd phonetic hip hop speak in my current notebook is enormous fun. I have also realised that I must ensure no one, not one soul, shall see such demented scribblings in my lifetime.

As for my own showing, perhaps there will be some hilariously scathing introspection about a few of silly sloppy slip-ups ('Nid' for 'Ned', '3rd for 1st', crossing out 'fly fishing' and putting 'long cast' WHY OH WHY AND WTF!!!) and my continuing inability to read, not merely all, but at least 60 per cent of each blummin' question in a few more liberty-laden days. Yet, if truth be told, even my 'ideal score' (160 - and remember that's getting all the ones I would get in a Utopian realm where my brain runs smooth and sleek and is so utterly utterly brilliant it will be stolen by a fascinated acolyte sometime during my autopsy; the other 80 wrong guesses or clueless answer boxes being entirely understandable and never to be regretted) wouldn't have beaten the champ. And I'll be a darned Ozark-infesting hillbilly eating roadkill critters for Xmas dinner before I deign to explore the world of rugby league in enough depth to make any points difference. Some things were never meant to be. I shall hold my tongue in case offence is meted out, though admittedly, I really enjoyed watching it when I was aged about 8 or 9. There was nowt else on telly if TBT, and being a real bandwagon boy I leapt on the Wigan glory trail. Sad, je sais. But to be honest, I think I was too scared to turn on TVS in case I happened upon terrifying puppet show Terrahawks. Even years after it was ushered from our screens (and I really did like Saint and Greavsie. Even if I can only remember them chuckling at each other for what seemed like bloody hours.) Plus, it's the British rivers that get me. I mean, they're so bloody tiny compared to the ones they have on the continents. And, trust my luck, when one about my hometown river, the one I watched my brother jump into and scrap his leg off one fine summer's day near 13 years gone, it was pulled from the Battle of the Brains question pile.

In other news: I'm way too busy to be setting questions for free today (for shame, you say, and I say, I know), so you can have one randomly picked from my latest notebook.

Q1 Which 9th century AD Arab scientist and mathematician is reputed to have written the first treatise on code-breaking, On Deciphering Cryptographic Messages?

(Obviously that's not its Arabic title, but the source didn't have it, and I'm not too bothered. Though usually I would be to a irritating extent. Being a stickler for having original and translated titles in italics in the Q.)

(Remember I said I'm too preoccupied to set "questions". You can have one and that's your lot for today, and possibly tomorrow. Wait.)

Come to think of it...

I'll tell you where that Second Giant Part Is...
... when I said I would be releasing it like a fantastic bird of paradise, you know, like on that Papua New Guinea flag, into the cruel wilds of outer cyberspace, to those who had already returned part 1 by April 9. Apologies. It's still on my computer being proofed to death. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, I just happen to start looking at the whole Gestalt character of it and get the urge to take out 60 perfectly good questions and try and replace them with about 100 I think that are way more cool. But. I make this promise. Er, you'll be getting it in your inbox one day. (That way I can never truly disappoint you)

A. Al Kindi

(He probably has a really long Arabic name, but like I said blah-dee-blah, proof proof proof. Good film that. What with blind Hugo Weaving and young Russell Crowe.)

Brrrrrrrr, Tap, Read

My Early Morning Soundtrack

BQC is almost here again, so I'll be signing off from the blog and trying to recalibrate my completely messed-up sleeping patterns and fail to reorganise other shenanigans before I once again journey to deepest Derbyshire - 'Quiz Country'. Should you ask if I am ready for this particular tournament, well, I am as ready as I always am, which means not really and am already counting together the inevitable mini-disappointments that come with finishing and marking any question paper. Ho-hum.

Note: Er, the following questions are so gargantuan that you probably won't be bothered to read them. Unless, you are an continental European quizzer. Of course. And that is no bad thing.

FE:XXXIX
1 Created in 1957 by Nemours Jean-Baptiste and Wébert Sicot, what is the most well-known music style of Haiti, a vibrant music and dance genre similar to that of their Cuban neighbours but also related to American jazz, which often employs African drumming, modern guitars/synthesized sounds, saxophones, and Haitian Creole lyrics?
2 Succeeding Isabella Rossellini as Lancôme's spokesmodel for its perfume Trésor, which Spanish actress, model and UNICEF ambassador made her first movie appearance in 1987 in Carlos Saura's El dorado, and before playing the role of Francesca Babini in Italian director Pupi Avati's Il testimone dello sposo, she became the Beauté Naturelle in 1997 for having won the Prix de la mode in Paris' Fashion Awards? Other roles have included Aurora in The Lost City (2005) playing opposite Andy Garcia as in-laws and lovers struggling with life during the Cuban Revolution.
3 Founded in 1222 when a large group of students and professors left the University of Bologna in search of more academic freedom ('Libertas scholastica'), what is the second oldest university in Italy, and was where - on June 25, 1678 - Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman graduate in history when she was awarded a degree in philosophy?
4 Jean Prouvost created the first issue of which woman's magazine in 1937, distributing it each Wednesday, with French readers flocking to newsstands to buy the early weekly edition and making it a huge success? However, in 1942, due to German occupation authorities stopping its distribution along with most magazines, it was not redistributed until 1954 when it became a monthly publication.
5 Involving rituals like the possession of participants by Orishas, animal sacrifices, healing, dancing and drumming and drawing inspiration from various peoples of the African diaspora (though mainly featuring aspects of Yoruba orisha veneration), which religion, practiced chiefly in Brazil, originated in the city of Salvador, the original temple, terreiro, being established in early 19th century Bahia, where three freed African women, Iya Deta, Iya Kala and Iya Nasso (many call it a true matrilineal society) first established its headquarters called Engenho Velho, although dispute after dispute resulted it splintering into hundreds of different factions?

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Answers to FE:XXXIX
1 Compas (also known as konpa or kompa) 2 Inés Sastre 3 University of Padua aka Università degli Studi di Padova aka UNIPD 4 Marie Claire 5 Candomblé (it may be called Macumba in regions like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, although Macumba has a distinct set of practices more akin to European witchcraft)