BH quiz #42 with added things called Reflections
I'm So Tired
I have been working myself into a flaccid, destroyed heap trying to get ahead of myself with regards to the self-enforced lay-off that I am taking after my next operation. Yep, it's *fingers crossed, twisted, impossibly entwined* third time lucky in the surgery theatre Friday a week tomorrow. Certain acquaintances will know of the amazingly strung-out travails with regards to a frustrating state of physical affairs that is really, really becoming a saga now, and, the black comic possibilities have meant my taking much glee in relating exactly what happens when the surgical team gets to work. Suffice to say, it sounds bad, nay, appalling, but I don't really feel anything. In truth, it's merely an annoyance I would like to put far behind me; I think I made an unintentional pun. Friends have replied in kind with a multitude of foul but, it has to be said, entirely appropriate Deuce Bigelow name-calling. They have the measure of the situation, unlike the sodding NHS (don't let me start).
Getting ahead of myself and setting for expectant parties means I have a hefty surplus question-wise, from ideas that have gone off from one tangent and bounced off another, or ones that need a little tweaking and public exposure before they are suitable for mainstream quizzing. The first 51 of them are down below. The next lot will arrive tomorrow, along with some quite strange reflections I've been collecting in my little black notebooks with regards to my habits as a teenage quizzer.
Here's the hardest part. The work has taken a lot out of me. More than I have taken out of it.
At this exact moment in time I am feeling as if I have been turned inside out and dragged at high speed over a rock garden pitted with many jagged and cruel specimens; my edges blurred and aura chipped. Then again, you should have seen me four or five hours ago. I was running headfirst into a mental brick wall, and realised I was working far, far slower than I normally would, and this was when I was meant to be concentrating the most, when the day held out no other distractions to me. Yep, Countdown and Deal or No Deal were far in the afternoon's future. I had been setting for what must have been nine straight hours (seriously, I have much to write and edit and on and on and Ariston), and slowly became shocked by how much information there was out there to absorb and then maintain and keep in my increasingly ragged noggin, and how far I had to go before I could be content with the knowledge I had truly embraced every opportunity to be the best quizzer I could be. The price of such a mammoth effort became crystal clear. Then it became a crushing and unbearable weight. Heretical thoughts entered my head. I wrote some of them down, just because I wanted to scare you with them right now: "The facts are crowding me, grinding me into tiny dust particles. I feel dispirited at losing sight of something I am certain will return to me in a competition question paper, with a vengeance. The culprits will stare me in the face and elicit flickers of recognition, but ones insufficient to provoke any correct answers; I imagine it saying to me 'why didn't you take me in when you could? You're paying for it now, aincha?', and some kind of crippling frustration will overcome me."
(Sorry: I have to write this short paragraph to apologise for the unashamed seriousness of this discourse, and would like you to reasssure you that I will get out more, much more, once life's dirty business transactions and work requirements have been completed. I will then frolic with the spring lambs, adorn myself with daffodils and breath in spring's no-doubt still frigid air. Remember that my powers of sarcasm and flippancy are strong. They are mighty - is that my nickname now? Funny how people apply it to me and yet they do not seem to have actually met each other. It could be a communal psychic cloud into which we are all able to tap, or it could be that the name of a made-up beer the NME mentioned a few years ago: and yes, it was called Mighty O... I will now conjure up a self-deprecating pop culture reference. Very soon.)
Then, of course, you stop acting like that manic depressive painter played by Charlie Higson on The Fast Show and once again see the light that encourages and inspires you, and you feel the irresistible and pleasing driving force kick in again, casting off all the lethargy-induced doubt that your body and mind had been riddled with. I realise there is only so much I can do, that you can only go so far, and given the time allotted to my fellow quizzers with 9-5 office existences, I should be truly grateful for the opportunities available to me right now. Cold, hard logic suggests there is a salutary lesson in there somewhere about rationing the work and the learning and the setting, if you are to maximise its effectiveness. You have to let the mind settle and regroup before another big push. For the last ten years or so I have always taken regular breaks of three months or far longer from quiz; completely cutting myself off from the books and files and even tourneys, except for the odd quiz league night (sort of like a top-up or the bridge I still maintain to a world I am never sure I am willing to completely exile myself from ... after all I did consider retirement aged 26, as I've mentioned before and will do so time and time again, as I get older and further away from that cut-off point). It was as if I was subconciously giving myself a fallow period, like a good farmer would, to renew the enthusiasm and therefore my sheer will.
My work routine has changed irrevocably during the last six months for obvious reasons, and quizzing matters do not seem to have been taken off the boil at any time. I have been "on" every day (not helped at all by this blog, but I thought it would be a good way of formalising my research as well as provide a format for huge, gigantic ruminations that might just make me a better and more aware writer. I'm starting to believe it is slowly fulfilling these dual aims) and am therefore embracing my week-long hiatus with a kind of breathless and excited relief. Now I realise I have been all too willing to kill any desire I possess by bowling myself into the ground, so much I am might as well be drilling for oil. I haven't actually finished a real book in a month, and this distresses me, for I am used to knocking off two of the blighters, nonfiction or novels, every week for the last two-and-a-half years. One of my greatest pleasures in life, I enjoy the way I feel a truly good novel engage a part of my brain that is not concerned with the retaining of facts about bones in the human body or 20th century furniture designers. I also see that this endows me with a sense of perspective that is sorely needed. I had been considering devoting myself to reading material designed purely for quiz competition purposes for one whole year, but now realise I am probably incapable of doing so. It would be a form of agonising mental abstinence. Also, the piles and piles of books I have succeeded in accumulating, like some bibliophilic Manhattan I lovingly build in whichever bedroom I pitch up in, wherever it be in LA or London, would make me feel guilty through their substantial presence and the reminder that they are going unread purely because I have issued myself with a fiat that could be couched in any number of queasy terms, among them hardcore, weird and just plain scary.
Conversely, yes, amidst the current flurry of work I am getting lots of things done and am stretching myself far more than before. I have lain dormant longer than I would care to admit. It is teaching me more about myself, and I don't have to smash myself in the face Tyler Durden-style to do so (paragraph non-sequitur: I had an image of a karate Mahatma Gandhi snap in my mind, taken from a scene in the terrible but somehow still amusing and watchable Weird Al Yankovic film UHF, one of those childish and batty movies you seem to watch repeatedly when you are young ... of course I'm wondering if Tyler would have liked to gone to Fight Club with Mohandas. He preached non-violence, but then so did every martial art movie hero, until they had been pushed OVER THE EDGE). It may be merely a matter of acclimatising to this new world.
In matters of work completed, I have now filed the Abbots Langley indie questions and NQSL sets, so they are out of the way and ready to be tackled by the Grand Prix attendees, with what brand of gusto once they see them I am entirely unsure.
I have endeavoured to write questions that are challenging, getable and, if not, forever worth knowing, if forever be the career-span of any decent devoted quizzer. They instill a feeling of Zen contentedness in me. Also, I have written my next batch of mini-quizzes for my employers, and have even found that I am taking more time over them too. Purely, because some senseless perfectionism is becoming even more paramount whenever I set them. I remember when I used to crack them out willy-nilly, and wrote them with the vague belief that they were balanced and far from run-of-the-mill and factually perfect. Now I get far more paranoid, and fearful of errors caused by laziness. My laconic attitude has been razed, perhaps forever. The insistent correctional emails and phone calls that are the result of my mistakes make me feel worse than you could possibly know, even if they could never be properly considered worthy of the angst that they plant in my fragile psyche. However, I am certain that this incipient need for complete professionalism is good for you and me and everyone we know. Good question-setting is the foundation on which so much of what makes the trivia world exciting and interesting and life-enhancing, yet we often lose sight of its importance. Without it, we would all lose interest and go off and play Scrabble and chess and do even more Su Doku puzzles, or any game where the unpredictable human factor of the setter is removed, and whose implacable and age-worn format will never let us down.
Right, let's get on with those questions, I only meant to write two paragraphs wittering on about my hospital trip and the setting work, but it turns out to be another essay discussing the nature of quiz. I must alight to bed and bid you adieu before I start writing a voluminous tracts questioning the existence of God and the insatiable hunger for resources that will surely destroy world civlisation as we know it.
1 Which song did the England team say inspired them at the lunchtime interval before they bowled India out to win the Third Test in Mumbai?
2 Ron Dennis is the chairman of which Formula 1 team?
3 Kakuro, as seen in The Guardian, is which very common type of logic puzzle that is often called a mathematical transliteration of the crossword?
4 The author and critic Deyan Sudjic has been appointed the new director of which London museum?
5 Which town is home to the historic North Pier Theatre, whose closure has been scheduled for this summer?
6 The most famous of the five Gustav Klimt works recently restored to the 90-year-old Maria Altmann, what painting that showcases his gilded style was commissioned by the sitter's husband and Altmann's uncle?
7 What male name has been given to the cyclone that is the worst tropical storm to hit Australia in decades?
8 The man who bought a failing Fiorentina football team in 2002, the Italian tycoon Diego Delle Valle is the man behind which luxury leather goods empire?
9 Richard Harvey is the head of which insurance group, the biggest in the UK, and which is seeking to take over Prudential and merge it with Norwich Union?
10 The California-born 27-year-old Wafah Dufour has hit the headlines due to which of her family relatives?
11 Which knight, property millionaire and former director of Minerva has been revealed to have loaned the Labour party the biggest sum, £2.3 million?
12 BAE Systems is Britain's biggest contractor in which area?
13 Which poet invented the word "intensify", introducing it with a detailed apology because he believed it sounded uncouth?
14 What does the GER stand for in the disease GERD?
15 Newly revived, which 1977 Alan Bennett play concerns a Foreign Office defector called Hilary who had gone east just before his exposure as a Soviet agent?
16 Apparently derisively called The First by the fashion cognoscenti, which once very fashionable £700 bag was originally sent out by Balenciaga as a gift to members of the fashion corps?
17 How many consumer items are used by the Office of National Statistics to measure inflation?
18 Where in Warwickshire is there a traditional violent free-for-all ball game that takes place every Shrove Tuesday and which dates back to 1198?
19 Which president has claimed that his book, the Rukhnama, holds will ensure entry into paradise if it is read aloud three times a day?
20 Born in Wesselburen, which German fashion designer opened her first boutique in a Hamburg suburb in 1967 and founded her eponymous fashion house the next year aged only 24? Disdaining unnecessary details, her trademark look was of a perfectly cut pantsuit, a form-fitting simple but elegant coat of slim blouse made of luxury materials in plain grey, black, blue or white, and helped many a wannabe woman executive look the part during the 80s.
21 What military aircraft gives its name to a layered shot that contains one-part Kahlua, one-part Bailey's Irish Cream, and one-part either Grand Marnier, triple sec or rum?
22 And which man created Grand Marnier in 1880? And what was the name of the original Grand Marnier liquer he created that year?
23 What toy company, whose tin plate toys are highly collectible from their founding in 1950, have the main toy licenses in Japan to popular properties like Godzilla, Ultraman and Gundam?
24 Along with Paul Heaton, which Housemartins drummer and which of the band's roadies became members of The Beautiful South?
25 And who were the three bands they said were better than them in their home city since they were the "4th best band in Hull"?
26 Lindy Layton was a founding member of and vocalist for which chart-topping group that included such other members as MC Wildski and keyboardist Andy Boucher?
27 Born in Bradford in 1882, which Australian Antarctic explorer joined the Shackleton's 1907 expedition as a geologist and turned down a chance to join Scott's Terra Nove expedition, instead leading his own "Australian Antarctic Expedition" to King George V Land and Adelie Land for which he was knighted and which he recounted in the book Home of the Blizzard?
28 Which English explorer gives his name to South Australia's largest mountain range and a national park?
29 Named after a Roman god, what are bodies of magma that solidify underground before they reach the surface of the earth called?
30 Resulting in such named types as prismatic, basal, cubic and octahedral, what in mineralogy is the tendency of crystalline materials to split along definite planes, creating smooth surfaces?
31 Having their family seat at Balhomie near Perth, in 1859, the 13th Earl of Eglinton, Archibald Montgomerie was also created what Earl in the UK peerage, both earldoms being united ever since?
32 Ninu's Cave and Xerri's Grotto (pron. 'sherry') are underground caves on which Mediterranean island?
33 In Chinese opera what collective name is given to Bangziqiang, Huangpiqiang, Kunqiang and Gaoqiang?
34 What is the northernmost mountain chain in Germany and has a name derived from a Middle High German word meaning 'forest'?
35 What world record does the American Sandra 'Sandy' Elaine Allen hold?
36 The National Maritime Museum has a branch in a harbourside building where in Cornwall?
37 His only surviving former home, which American historical figure has a museum in a terraced house in London's Craven Street dedicated to him?
38 A museum dedicated to which two commodities was opened by Edward Bramah in 1992 and is now located in Southwark Street?
39 In which Catalan hometown did Salvador Dali himself create the Teatro Museo?
40 Joan Miro helped Max Ernst pioneer which surrealist art technique involving the trowelling of usually dry pigment on his canvases?
41 Invented by the Surrealists in 1925, what two-word name was given to a method by whuch a collection of words or images are collectively assembled and which was based on the parlour game Consequences?
42 Which Puerto Rico-born Latin pop singer and former member of Los Chicos was born Elmer Figueroa de Arse in 1968?
43 What has been called God's Wonderful Railway, the Great Round Way, Goes When Ready and Holiday Railway?
44 Opened in 1841, what 2939m-railway tunnel between Bath and Chippenham is named after the hill it was dug through?
45 Which musical, first produced in the West End in 1965, features a football pools win and the character Lady Hadwell, an aristocratic widow who is struggling to make ends meet by opening her home to the public, and whose troublesome tomboy youngest daughter gives the work its name?
46 Derek Nimmo made his name playing which Reverend in the sitcom All Gas and Gaiters?
47 Which US golfer won a record 82 PGA Tour events and seven majors (three Masters, three PGAs and one British Open), although his reputation has been somewhat sullied by his failure to win the US Open?
48 What is the capital city of the French region of Bretagne?
49 Melankomas or Melancomas of Caria famously won which event at the 207th Olympiad in 49AD?
50 Which Roman ascended the throne at the end of the Year of the Four Emperors in 69?
51 Led by a man named Civilis, which revolt in the Roman province of Germania Inferior between 69 and 70AD succeeded in destroying four legions?
Answers to BH quiz #41
1 First new cardinal to be elevated by Pope Benedict XVI 2 Longines 3 Darfur in the Sudan 4 Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, explosives 5 Fredrik Idestam 6 Espoo 7 Silvio Berlusconi 8 Thaksin Shinawatra 9 Holy Blood, Holy Grail 10 Estonia 11 Oleg Cassini 12 Blaise Pascal 13 Princeton 14 Ukraine 15 Pozarevac 16 Prudhoe Bay 17 Zheng He 18 Hongzhi 19 Donald McKay 20 Canon 21 Traje de luces 22 Las Ventas 23 Mehdi Savalli 24 Encierro 25 Novillero 26 Shakespeare's First Folio (edited by Henry Condell and John Heminges) 27 "To be or not to be" 28 Kronborg Castle 29 Neuss 30 As You Like It 31 Chandos portrait 32 Maruyama 33 Thomas Middleton 34 Daniel Malan 35 Accra 36 Jackie DiNorscio 37 Toyota 38 Subaru
I have been working myself into a flaccid, destroyed heap trying to get ahead of myself with regards to the self-enforced lay-off that I am taking after my next operation. Yep, it's *fingers crossed, twisted, impossibly entwined* third time lucky in the surgery theatre Friday a week tomorrow. Certain acquaintances will know of the amazingly strung-out travails with regards to a frustrating state of physical affairs that is really, really becoming a saga now, and, the black comic possibilities have meant my taking much glee in relating exactly what happens when the surgical team gets to work. Suffice to say, it sounds bad, nay, appalling, but I don't really feel anything. In truth, it's merely an annoyance I would like to put far behind me; I think I made an unintentional pun. Friends have replied in kind with a multitude of foul but, it has to be said, entirely appropriate Deuce Bigelow name-calling. They have the measure of the situation, unlike the sodding NHS (don't let me start).
Getting ahead of myself and setting for expectant parties means I have a hefty surplus question-wise, from ideas that have gone off from one tangent and bounced off another, or ones that need a little tweaking and public exposure before they are suitable for mainstream quizzing. The first 51 of them are down below. The next lot will arrive tomorrow, along with some quite strange reflections I've been collecting in my little black notebooks with regards to my habits as a teenage quizzer.
Here's the hardest part. The work has taken a lot out of me. More than I have taken out of it.
At this exact moment in time I am feeling as if I have been turned inside out and dragged at high speed over a rock garden pitted with many jagged and cruel specimens; my edges blurred and aura chipped. Then again, you should have seen me four or five hours ago. I was running headfirst into a mental brick wall, and realised I was working far, far slower than I normally would, and this was when I was meant to be concentrating the most, when the day held out no other distractions to me. Yep, Countdown and Deal or No Deal were far in the afternoon's future. I had been setting for what must have been nine straight hours (seriously, I have much to write and edit and on and on and Ariston), and slowly became shocked by how much information there was out there to absorb and then maintain and keep in my increasingly ragged noggin, and how far I had to go before I could be content with the knowledge I had truly embraced every opportunity to be the best quizzer I could be. The price of such a mammoth effort became crystal clear. Then it became a crushing and unbearable weight. Heretical thoughts entered my head. I wrote some of them down, just because I wanted to scare you with them right now: "The facts are crowding me, grinding me into tiny dust particles. I feel dispirited at losing sight of something I am certain will return to me in a competition question paper, with a vengeance. The culprits will stare me in the face and elicit flickers of recognition, but ones insufficient to provoke any correct answers; I imagine it saying to me 'why didn't you take me in when you could? You're paying for it now, aincha?', and some kind of crippling frustration will overcome me."
(Sorry: I have to write this short paragraph to apologise for the unashamed seriousness of this discourse, and would like you to reasssure you that I will get out more, much more, once life's dirty business transactions and work requirements have been completed. I will then frolic with the spring lambs, adorn myself with daffodils and breath in spring's no-doubt still frigid air. Remember that my powers of sarcasm and flippancy are strong. They are mighty - is that my nickname now? Funny how people apply it to me and yet they do not seem to have actually met each other. It could be a communal psychic cloud into which we are all able to tap, or it could be that the name of a made-up beer the NME mentioned a few years ago: and yes, it was called Mighty O... I will now conjure up a self-deprecating pop culture reference. Very soon.)
Then, of course, you stop acting like that manic depressive painter played by Charlie Higson on The Fast Show and once again see the light that encourages and inspires you, and you feel the irresistible and pleasing driving force kick in again, casting off all the lethargy-induced doubt that your body and mind had been riddled with. I realise there is only so much I can do, that you can only go so far, and given the time allotted to my fellow quizzers with 9-5 office existences, I should be truly grateful for the opportunities available to me right now. Cold, hard logic suggests there is a salutary lesson in there somewhere about rationing the work and the learning and the setting, if you are to maximise its effectiveness. You have to let the mind settle and regroup before another big push. For the last ten years or so I have always taken regular breaks of three months or far longer from quiz; completely cutting myself off from the books and files and even tourneys, except for the odd quiz league night (sort of like a top-up or the bridge I still maintain to a world I am never sure I am willing to completely exile myself from ... after all I did consider retirement aged 26, as I've mentioned before and will do so time and time again, as I get older and further away from that cut-off point). It was as if I was subconciously giving myself a fallow period, like a good farmer would, to renew the enthusiasm and therefore my sheer will.
My work routine has changed irrevocably during the last six months for obvious reasons, and quizzing matters do not seem to have been taken off the boil at any time. I have been "on" every day (not helped at all by this blog, but I thought it would be a good way of formalising my research as well as provide a format for huge, gigantic ruminations that might just make me a better and more aware writer. I'm starting to believe it is slowly fulfilling these dual aims) and am therefore embracing my week-long hiatus with a kind of breathless and excited relief. Now I realise I have been all too willing to kill any desire I possess by bowling myself into the ground, so much I am might as well be drilling for oil. I haven't actually finished a real book in a month, and this distresses me, for I am used to knocking off two of the blighters, nonfiction or novels, every week for the last two-and-a-half years. One of my greatest pleasures in life, I enjoy the way I feel a truly good novel engage a part of my brain that is not concerned with the retaining of facts about bones in the human body or 20th century furniture designers. I also see that this endows me with a sense of perspective that is sorely needed. I had been considering devoting myself to reading material designed purely for quiz competition purposes for one whole year, but now realise I am probably incapable of doing so. It would be a form of agonising mental abstinence. Also, the piles and piles of books I have succeeded in accumulating, like some bibliophilic Manhattan I lovingly build in whichever bedroom I pitch up in, wherever it be in LA or London, would make me feel guilty through their substantial presence and the reminder that they are going unread purely because I have issued myself with a fiat that could be couched in any number of queasy terms, among them hardcore, weird and just plain scary.
Conversely, yes, amidst the current flurry of work I am getting lots of things done and am stretching myself far more than before. I have lain dormant longer than I would care to admit. It is teaching me more about myself, and I don't have to smash myself in the face Tyler Durden-style to do so (paragraph non-sequitur: I had an image of a karate Mahatma Gandhi snap in my mind, taken from a scene in the terrible but somehow still amusing and watchable Weird Al Yankovic film UHF, one of those childish and batty movies you seem to watch repeatedly when you are young ... of course I'm wondering if Tyler would have liked to gone to Fight Club with Mohandas. He preached non-violence, but then so did every martial art movie hero, until they had been pushed OVER THE EDGE). It may be merely a matter of acclimatising to this new world.
In matters of work completed, I have now filed the Abbots Langley indie questions and NQSL sets, so they are out of the way and ready to be tackled by the Grand Prix attendees, with what brand of gusto once they see them I am entirely unsure.
I have endeavoured to write questions that are challenging, getable and, if not, forever worth knowing, if forever be the career-span of any decent devoted quizzer. They instill a feeling of Zen contentedness in me. Also, I have written my next batch of mini-quizzes for my employers, and have even found that I am taking more time over them too. Purely, because some senseless perfectionism is becoming even more paramount whenever I set them. I remember when I used to crack them out willy-nilly, and wrote them with the vague belief that they were balanced and far from run-of-the-mill and factually perfect. Now I get far more paranoid, and fearful of errors caused by laziness. My laconic attitude has been razed, perhaps forever. The insistent correctional emails and phone calls that are the result of my mistakes make me feel worse than you could possibly know, even if they could never be properly considered worthy of the angst that they plant in my fragile psyche. However, I am certain that this incipient need for complete professionalism is good for you and me and everyone we know. Good question-setting is the foundation on which so much of what makes the trivia world exciting and interesting and life-enhancing, yet we often lose sight of its importance. Without it, we would all lose interest and go off and play Scrabble and chess and do even more Su Doku puzzles, or any game where the unpredictable human factor of the setter is removed, and whose implacable and age-worn format will never let us down.
Right, let's get on with those questions, I only meant to write two paragraphs wittering on about my hospital trip and the setting work, but it turns out to be another essay discussing the nature of quiz. I must alight to bed and bid you adieu before I start writing a voluminous tracts questioning the existence of God and the insatiable hunger for resources that will surely destroy world civlisation as we know it.
1 Which song did the England team say inspired them at the lunchtime interval before they bowled India out to win the Third Test in Mumbai?
2 Ron Dennis is the chairman of which Formula 1 team?
3 Kakuro, as seen in The Guardian, is which very common type of logic puzzle that is often called a mathematical transliteration of the crossword?
4 The author and critic Deyan Sudjic has been appointed the new director of which London museum?
5 Which town is home to the historic North Pier Theatre, whose closure has been scheduled for this summer?
6 The most famous of the five Gustav Klimt works recently restored to the 90-year-old Maria Altmann, what painting that showcases his gilded style was commissioned by the sitter's husband and Altmann's uncle?
7 What male name has been given to the cyclone that is the worst tropical storm to hit Australia in decades?
8 The man who bought a failing Fiorentina football team in 2002, the Italian tycoon Diego Delle Valle is the man behind which luxury leather goods empire?
9 Richard Harvey is the head of which insurance group, the biggest in the UK, and which is seeking to take over Prudential and merge it with Norwich Union?
10 The California-born 27-year-old Wafah Dufour has hit the headlines due to which of her family relatives?
11 Which knight, property millionaire and former director of Minerva has been revealed to have loaned the Labour party the biggest sum, £2.3 million?
12 BAE Systems is Britain's biggest contractor in which area?
13 Which poet invented the word "intensify", introducing it with a detailed apology because he believed it sounded uncouth?
14 What does the GER stand for in the disease GERD?
15 Newly revived, which 1977 Alan Bennett play concerns a Foreign Office defector called Hilary who had gone east just before his exposure as a Soviet agent?
16 Apparently derisively called The First by the fashion cognoscenti, which once very fashionable £700 bag was originally sent out by Balenciaga as a gift to members of the fashion corps?
17 How many consumer items are used by the Office of National Statistics to measure inflation?
18 Where in Warwickshire is there a traditional violent free-for-all ball game that takes place every Shrove Tuesday and which dates back to 1198?
19 Which president has claimed that his book, the Rukhnama, holds will ensure entry into paradise if it is read aloud three times a day?
20 Born in Wesselburen, which German fashion designer opened her first boutique in a Hamburg suburb in 1967 and founded her eponymous fashion house the next year aged only 24? Disdaining unnecessary details, her trademark look was of a perfectly cut pantsuit, a form-fitting simple but elegant coat of slim blouse made of luxury materials in plain grey, black, blue or white, and helped many a wannabe woman executive look the part during the 80s.
21 What military aircraft gives its name to a layered shot that contains one-part Kahlua, one-part Bailey's Irish Cream, and one-part either Grand Marnier, triple sec or rum?
22 And which man created Grand Marnier in 1880? And what was the name of the original Grand Marnier liquer he created that year?
23 What toy company, whose tin plate toys are highly collectible from their founding in 1950, have the main toy licenses in Japan to popular properties like Godzilla, Ultraman and Gundam?
24 Along with Paul Heaton, which Housemartins drummer and which of the band's roadies became members of The Beautiful South?
25 And who were the three bands they said were better than them in their home city since they were the "4th best band in Hull"?
26 Lindy Layton was a founding member of and vocalist for which chart-topping group that included such other members as MC Wildski and keyboardist Andy Boucher?
27 Born in Bradford in 1882, which Australian Antarctic explorer joined the Shackleton's 1907 expedition as a geologist and turned down a chance to join Scott's Terra Nove expedition, instead leading his own "Australian Antarctic Expedition" to King George V Land and Adelie Land for which he was knighted and which he recounted in the book Home of the Blizzard?
28 Which English explorer gives his name to South Australia's largest mountain range and a national park?
29 Named after a Roman god, what are bodies of magma that solidify underground before they reach the surface of the earth called?
30 Resulting in such named types as prismatic, basal, cubic and octahedral, what in mineralogy is the tendency of crystalline materials to split along definite planes, creating smooth surfaces?
31 Having their family seat at Balhomie near Perth, in 1859, the 13th Earl of Eglinton, Archibald Montgomerie was also created what Earl in the UK peerage, both earldoms being united ever since?
32 Ninu's Cave and Xerri's Grotto (pron. 'sherry') are underground caves on which Mediterranean island?
33 In Chinese opera what collective name is given to Bangziqiang, Huangpiqiang, Kunqiang and Gaoqiang?
34 What is the northernmost mountain chain in Germany and has a name derived from a Middle High German word meaning 'forest'?
35 What world record does the American Sandra 'Sandy' Elaine Allen hold?
36 The National Maritime Museum has a branch in a harbourside building where in Cornwall?
37 His only surviving former home, which American historical figure has a museum in a terraced house in London's Craven Street dedicated to him?
38 A museum dedicated to which two commodities was opened by Edward Bramah in 1992 and is now located in Southwark Street?
39 In which Catalan hometown did Salvador Dali himself create the Teatro Museo?
40 Joan Miro helped Max Ernst pioneer which surrealist art technique involving the trowelling of usually dry pigment on his canvases?
41 Invented by the Surrealists in 1925, what two-word name was given to a method by whuch a collection of words or images are collectively assembled and which was based on the parlour game Consequences?
42 Which Puerto Rico-born Latin pop singer and former member of Los Chicos was born Elmer Figueroa de Arse in 1968?
43 What has been called God's Wonderful Railway, the Great Round Way, Goes When Ready and Holiday Railway?
44 Opened in 1841, what 2939m-railway tunnel between Bath and Chippenham is named after the hill it was dug through?
45 Which musical, first produced in the West End in 1965, features a football pools win and the character Lady Hadwell, an aristocratic widow who is struggling to make ends meet by opening her home to the public, and whose troublesome tomboy youngest daughter gives the work its name?
46 Derek Nimmo made his name playing which Reverend in the sitcom All Gas and Gaiters?
47 Which US golfer won a record 82 PGA Tour events and seven majors (three Masters, three PGAs and one British Open), although his reputation has been somewhat sullied by his failure to win the US Open?
48 What is the capital city of the French region of Bretagne?
49 Melankomas or Melancomas of Caria famously won which event at the 207th Olympiad in 49AD?
50 Which Roman ascended the throne at the end of the Year of the Four Emperors in 69?
51 Led by a man named Civilis, which revolt in the Roman province of Germania Inferior between 69 and 70AD succeeded in destroying four legions?
Answers to BH quiz #41
1 First new cardinal to be elevated by Pope Benedict XVI 2 Longines 3 Darfur in the Sudan 4 Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, explosives 5 Fredrik Idestam 6 Espoo 7 Silvio Berlusconi 8 Thaksin Shinawatra 9 Holy Blood, Holy Grail 10 Estonia 11 Oleg Cassini 12 Blaise Pascal 13 Princeton 14 Ukraine 15 Pozarevac 16 Prudhoe Bay 17 Zheng He 18 Hongzhi 19 Donald McKay 20 Canon 21 Traje de luces 22 Las Ventas 23 Mehdi Savalli 24 Encierro 25 Novillero 26 Shakespeare's First Folio (edited by Henry Condell and John Heminges) 27 "To be or not to be" 28 Kronborg Castle 29 Neuss 30 As You Like It 31 Chandos portrait 32 Maruyama 33 Thomas Middleton 34 Daniel Malan 35 Accra 36 Jackie DiNorscio 37 Toyota 38 Subaru
posted by That Quiz Guy at 2:53 PM
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