SPECTATOR CHRISTMAS QUIZ Set by Christopher Howse

Immemorial year

In 1987: 1 Who died under Big Daddy?

2 Who left his body to Battersea Dogs' Home?

3 What was an undersea boulder, scraped by a mechanical digger, at first thought to be?

4 What 1,000-year-old parcel was found in an Irish bog?

5 Whose cartoon was blasted?

6 Which road-sweeper invented a new kind of contraceptive after his Virgin attempt flopped in the Irish sea?

7 Which inhabitant of Cactus Gulch celebrated his 50th birthday?

8 Which Russian dissident sent his son to Eton?

9 Which tapster shuffled off at 88? 10 About which appointments did President Reagan comment: `Sometimes I think you could have their names on a wall and throw a dart'?

Goodbye . . . hello

In 1987: 1 Who said hello to Oxford but good- bye to Glasgow? 2 Who said goodbye to Oxford but hello to Watford?

3 What was born on 26 April and died on 22 November?

4 Who reached the end of Tobacco Road?

5 What became standard instead of second class?

6 Who said goodbye to Down South? 7 Who said goodbye to Chelmsford but hello to Fawsley? 8 To what did Sir George Jefferson say goodbye? 9 Which clairvoyant said hello from the other side?

10 Who said goodbye to War on Want but hello to Glasgow?

Reported speech

Who, in 1987, said: 1 'I wish I had stayed in bed.' 2 'You don't have to do that to me, my dear — I'm only in politics.' 3 'I'm not particularly interested in being Prime Minister. It's a lousy job.'

4 'A woman rang me up to say that she's heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well, don't worry. There isn't.'

5 'I think I will go to sleep now.' 6 'I have not made a study of the question, but believe that it is a minor point in the history of war.'

7 'Young men who would otherwise have made decent citizens were turned into monsters. That made them Hitler's victims.'

8 'I always command attention in a crowded room.'

9 (Of Bob Marley's song, 'Get Up, Stand Up') 'A call to people to believe in their own dignity and effort.'

10 Archer case special: (a) 'Did you have any difficulty seeing the man's face?'

(b) 'I had no difficulty. I was there on top of him the whole time.'

(c) 'Jeffrey has an excellent skin, sir. He has no spots or blemishes anywhere.'

(d) 'They are blessed, no doubt they would say, with two sons, who are possibly at their most attractive ages and interesting periods of 13 and 15.'

Any other name

1 Who was the Mr Howard that the dirty little coward shot?

2 Who lived under the name of Saunders?

3 Who died this year as the Marquis of Solobrefia?

4 Who were John Rokesmith and Julius Handford?

5 Which title did Mr Nick Down achieve under the name Ms Leigh Strange this year?

Jug, jug

Which of the following are now in jail: 1 Harvey Proctor 2 Lester Piggott 3 Mathias Rust 4 Keith Best 5 Rudolf Hess 6 Simon Hayward 7 Ernest Saunders 8 Alex Herbage 9 Dominic McGlinchy 10 Ronnie Kray

Trivial pursuit

1 Who wrote:

I could be content that we might procre- ate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the World without this trivial and vulgar way of coition: it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life; nor is there anything that will more deject his cool'd imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.

2 Which of the following did not form part of the mediaeval trivium: Gram- mar, Latin, Rhetoric, Logic?

3 Which subject in the mediaeval quadrivium is missing: Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy? 4 Who formulated this law:

It might be termed the Law of Triviality. Briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item in the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

5 Who was the author of 'Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London', and cautioned thus against muggers: Where Lincoln's Inne's wide space is rail'd around, Cross not with vent'rous step, there oft is found The lurking thief, who while the day-light shone Made the walls echo with his begging tone.

Message in a bottle

1 Who 'strengthened' her claret with whisky?

2 Which novelist gave brandy to a victim in a railway crash and found him shortly afterwards to have died?

3 Who wrote: The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer; May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,

SPECTATOR CHRISTMAS QUIZ

And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

4 Who was laid out upon the bed, With a bottle of whiskey at his feet And a barrel of porter at his head.

5 What have these Soho pubs in com- mon: the York Minster, the Swiss tavern, the Sun and Fourteen Can- tons, the Helvetia, the Coach and Horses in Old Compton Street?

6 Which novelist, on the morning of saying farewell to Oxford, 'drank beer with Hugh and port with Preters and gin with Gyles'?

7 What is the connection between George Grossmith, Edith Sitwell and Jane Ellison?

8 Who wrote: I went to Frankfort, and got drunk

With that most leam'd professor, Brunck.

I went to Wortz, and got more drunken, With that more learn'd professor, Ruhnken.

9 Who wrote:

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good inn or tavern.

10 Who inveighed against the supplant- ing of beer by 'the slavery of tea and coffee and other slop-kettle'?

Replay

1 Which did Reference Point not pull off: the St Leger, the Arc de Triom- phe, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes, the Der- by?

2 Which lady made a winning match of it in SW19 for the eighth time?

3 Which antipodean chance jumped to it at Aintree?

4 Of which sport is Jiang Jialiang the 1987 world champion?

5 What was the name of that umpire Gatting had a row with?

6 Why did the club Alianza Lima disappear from the Peruvian league?

7 How did Bobby Frankham disting- uish himself after the fight was stop- ped?

8 What was the winner of the Jeffrey Bernard Handicap at Lingfield?

9 Why is Terry Marsh not hopeful of a boxing title in 1988?

10 Who won the only gold for Britain in the World Athletics Championship?

Dictation

1 Which Communist dictator was able to recite the whole of 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat' in English? 2 Which fascist dictator derived his idea of formal dress from the films of Laurel and Hardy? 3 Which Communist dictator was ac- cused this year by his former secret- ary of being a homosexual murderer?

4 Which English peer, upon being told that the Buchmanites intended to convert Hitler, exclaimed, 'Damn it, I like the fellow as he is'?

5 Which insular dictator this month accepted the post of interior minister from the prime minister appointed by the president appointed by himself?

Noted achievements

1 Which rock band with a one-armed drummer this year released an album which topped the charts?

2 Whose famous blue raincoat did Jen- nifer Warnes show off?

3 Who announced this year that,

You are the book that I'm reading, babe, You are the song that I sing.

4 And who found themselves in this dilemma;

With or without you, I can't live with or without you.

5 Who used to ask:

Can you ignore my faith in everything? 'Cos I know what faith is and what it's worth.

6 Which quintet once trilled: For your love, for your love

I would give the stars above. For your love, for your love, I would give you all I could.

7 Who, 20 years ago this year, remem- bered that, 'it was twenty years ago today'?

Fishy business

1 Who wrote:

And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God.

2 In whose books does the Babel fish act as simultaneous translator?

3 Which creature in Alice in Wonder- land sang:

Will you walk a little faster?' said a whiting to a snail, `There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.'

4 Who wrote:

When Karl Marx Invented the term Financial Sharks He sang a Te Deum In the British Museum.

5 Who wrote: 'I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing'?

6 Who was Oswald Fish?'s author?

7 What did the early Christian graffito of the fish, ichthys, stand for?

8 Who wrote:

And now the salmon-fishers moist Their leathern boats begin to hoist; And like Antipodes in shoes, Have shod their heads in their canoes.

9 To whom did Hamlet say, 'You are a fishmonger'?

10 Upon which Irish coin is the salmon?

Acrostic

Enter the four-letter words which complete the quotations below in the grid to spell out the seasonal message in columns A and C.

1 Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; ----s stain you; And drugs cause cramp.

(Dorothy Parker, 'Résumé')

2 The world is everything that is the ----. (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico

Philosophicus, 1)

3 ----s are they to hand ambrosia, mix The nectar.

(Tennyson, The Princess, iii, 113)

4 The Rt Hon gentleman has sat so long on the fence that the ---- has entered his soul. (Attributed to Lloyd George) 5 When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' 'E'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea

(Kipling, Barrack-Room Ballads)

6 I am more an antique Roman than a ----.

(Hamlet, V, ii) A 2 3 4 5 6 Answers — page 100

Christmas Quiz answers

Immemorial year: 1 'King Kong' Kirk; 2 Lord Avebury; 3 A hand from the Col- ossus of Rhodes; 4 A cheese (or lump of butter); 5 Leonardo's in the National Gallery; 6 Richard Branson; 7 Desperate Dan; 8 Alexander Solzhenitsyn; 9 Fred Astaire; 10 Supreme Court judges.

Goodbye . . . hello. 1 Roy Jenkins as Chancellor and MP for Hillhead; 2 Robert Maxwell; 3 News on Sunday; 4 Erskine Caldwell; 5 Railway tickets; 6 Enoch Powell as MP; 7 Norman St John-Stevas as MP and a new peer; 8 British Telecom as chairman; 9 Doris Stokes; 10 George Galloway as secretary and MP for Hill- head.

Reported speech. 1 Michael Ryan; 2 Mrs Thatcher (to a shop-girl who curtseyed); 3 Norman Tebbit; 4 Michael Fish; 5 Lord Stockton (his last words); 6 Jean-Marie Le Pen (on the holocaust); 7 Sir Alfred Sherman (on SS members): 8 Peter Bruin- vels; 9 Mrs Thatcher (in Jamaica); 10(a) Michael Hill QC; (b) Monica Coughlan; (c) Mrs Archer; (d) Mr Justice Caulfield.

Any other name. 1 Jessie James; 2 Owl; 3 Andres Segovia; 4 John Harmon (Our Mutual Friend); 5 British Ladies Corres- pondence Chess Champion. Jug, jug. 1 No, fined this year; 2 Yes, sentenced to three years; 3 Yes, sentenced to four years; 4 No, fined this year; 5 No, died this year; 6 Yes, sentenced to five years; 7 No, bailed pending trial; 8 Yes, sentenced to 15 years; 9 No, shot dead this year; 10 No, confined to Broadmoor.

Trivial pursuit. 1 Thomas Browne (Religio Medici); 2 Latin; 3 Music; 4 C. Northcote Parkinson; 5 John Gay.

Message in a bottle. 1 Queen Victoria (Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks); 2 Dickens (Letters) 3 James Stephens (Collected Poems); 4 Tim Finnegan (Tinnegan's Wake'); 5 They have recently changed their names or closed; 6 Evelyn Waugh; 7 George Grossmith wrote the song 'Another Little Drink' (for The Bing Boys), quoted by Edith Sitwell in Façade and used this year as the title of a novel by Jane Ellison; 8 Richard Porson; 9 Johnson (Boswell, 29 March 1776); 10 William Cobbett (Advice to Young Men).

Replay. 1 Arc de Triomphe; 2 Martina Navratilova; 3 Maori Venture; 4 Table tennis; 5 Shakoor Rana; 6 Its team was killed in an air crash; 7 By punching the referee; 8 Gunner Mac; 9 He retired this year; 10 Fatima Whitbread.

Dictation. 1 Tito; 2 Mussolini; 3 Enver Hoxha; 4 Lord Redesdale; 5 Brigadier Rabuka.

Noted achievements: 1 Def Leppard; 2 Leonard Cohen; 3 UB 40 ('Maybe Tomor- row'); 4 U2; 5 Steve Harley (`Make me Smile'); 6 The Yardbirds; 7 The Beatles (Sergeant Pepper).

Fishy business. 1 John Collins Bossidy; 2 Douglas Adams; 3 The Mock Turtle; 4 Edmund Clerihew Bentley; 5 Izaak Walton (Compleat Angler); 6 A. N. Wilson; 7 The Greek for Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Saviour; 8 Andrew Marvell ('Upon Apple- ton House'); 9 Polonius (II, ii); 10 The florin or 10p.

Acrostic A C 1 ACID 2 CASE 3 H E B E 4 IRON 5 LYRE 6 DANE..