Christmas Questions

Set by Six Fellows of St. John's College, Cambridge

1. What have the following in common?

(a) Lichfield, Norwich, Chichester, Salis- bury.

(b) Long White Lop-Eared, Lincolnshire Curly Coats, Tamworth, Gloucester Old Spots.

(c) Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico.

(d) }hematite, magnetite, limonite, sider- ite.

(e) Devon, Durham, Hertfordshire, Shrop- shire.

(f) Sir William Bragg, Sir Henry Dale, Sir Robert Robinson, Lord Adrian.

(g) Dundee, Bath, Chelsea, Bakewell.

(h) Xerophthalmia, pellagra, hypopro- thrombintemia, beri-beri.

(i) Baldpate, dowitcher, buffelhead, gad- wall.

(j) F. R. Brown, Professor Jimmy Edwards, Cecil Beaton, V. E. Fuchs, Popski, Stuart Hibberd, C. Aubrey Smith, Chris Brasher.

(k) Beau, Boatswain, Bull's-eye, Flush, Geist, Music.

2. What philosopher : (a) Made a knowledge of geometry a requirement for admission to his school?

(b) Boasted of being 'judicially pronounced unworthy to be Professor of Philosophy at the College of the City of New York'?

(c) Was sent down from Cambridge for assaulting a policeman?

(d)' Wrote a treatise on the virtues of tar- water?

(e) Drafted a constitution for an American colony?

(f) Said of his greatest work that it 'fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots'?

3. A Shakespeare question : (a) Name four Shakespeare plays with two or fewer female parts.

(b) Which Shakespeare plays open in a palace?

(c) Which characters are dead on the stage in the last scene of Titus Andronicus?

(d) Which Shakespeare play ends with the words : 'Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true'?

4. In this list the librettists, shown in brackets, have been jumbled; arrange them in the correct order :

(a) Haydn's The Seasons (Guldener).

(b) Handel's Judas Maccabaus (F. C. Burnand, from Maddison Morton).

(c) Dvorak's Kermis in Hudlici (Dryden).

(d) Gluck's 1phigenia in Aulis (Abbd Da Ponte).

(e) Mozart's Don Giovanni (Bailly 'du Rollet).

(f) Purcell's King Arthur (Rev. Thomas Morell).

(g) Sullivan's Cox and Box (Thomson).

5. What are the works of which the .following are the sub-titles?

(a) A metabiological pentateuch (c) The sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder (d) An Oxford love story (e) The mistakes of a night (f) The silent woman (g) La Destine e (h) What you will (i) The Irish Member (j) The Weaver of Raveloe

(k) The Whale (1) The world well lost (n) 'Tis sixty years since

6. To whom did the following prove fatal?

(a) Waxed wings.

(b) A haircut.

(c) His own long hair.

(d) A singing harp.

(e) A mole. W A black sail.

(g) A visitor in the bath.

(h) A mistletoe bough.

(i) A gift shirt.

(j) A fall off a wall.

7. Who has been called?

(a) Doctor Angelicus (b) Doctor Invincibilis (c) Doctor Irrefragibilis (d) Doctor Mirabilis (e) Doctor Subtilis (f) Doctor Universalis.

8. Who?

(a) 'Believed in the Apostolic succession because there was no other way of accounting for the descent of the Bishop of Exeter from Judas Iscariot.'

(b) Thought, when he was eleven, that 'women were solid from the neck down.'

(c) 'Wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.'

(d) Hated all Boets and Bainters.

(e) 'Compressed his gospel of silence into thirty handsome octavos.'

(f) Was 'a beer teetotaller, not a cham- pagne teetotaller.'

9. Of what works are the following the first lines?

(a) I was walking by the Thames. Half-past morning on an autumn day. Sun in a mist. Like an orange in a fried fish shop.

(b) I was bred at the plough-tail, and in the hop-gardens of Farnham in Surrey. . . .

(c) Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road. . . .

(d) Eve ! Eve! What is it, Adam?

(e) There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.

(f) Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

(g) Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them.

(h) Once upon a day an old butler called Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid.

(i) I'll take the odds against Caravan. (j) An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

10. Where would you go in order to spend a?

(a) Tical. (f) Trangkaz, (h) Colon. (g) Sol.

(c) Lek. (h) Sucre.

(d) Gourde. (i) Quetzal.

(e) Pataca. (j) Pennia.

11. Where are the following pictures to be found?

(a) Uccello's The Rout of San Romano (b) Rubens's The Battle of the Amazons (c) Vermeer's The Artist in his. Studio (d) Hals's The Laughing Cavalier (e) Rembrandt's The Night Watch (f) Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (g) Utrillo's Place du Tertre

12. With what political or military events are the following musical works associated?

(a) 'Lilliburlero' (b 'ca Ira' (c) 'The Star-Spangled Banner' (d) The Beggar's Opera.

(e) 'Yankee Doodle' (f) Marlene' 13. Identify, and where necessary correct, the following quotations : (a) For God's sake hold your peace and let me love.

(b) Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight And burned is Apollo's laurel bough.

(c) Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so moving in its majesty.

(d) And so, 1 missed my chance with one of the lords Of life.

And I have something to expiate A pettiness.

(e) 0 God; 0 Venus, 0 Mercury, patron of thieves,

Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop.

(f) Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But justify the ways of God to man.

14. What is?

(a) paronomasia (g) antinomy (b) paranoia (h) antimony (c) gerontology (i) ochlocracy (d) A palinode (I) topiary .(e) A palindrome (k) autarky (f) symbiosis (I) autarchy

15. What ship:

. (a) Won the last grain race?

(b) Was it on which the son of a US Secretary of War was hung at the yard-

arm for conspiring to mutiny?

(c) Put a crew aboard the Mary Celeste?

(d) Was it whose wreck inspired Kipling's tribute to 'Er Majesty's Jollies'?

(e) First picked up survivors from the Titanic?

(f) Was Vasco da Gama's flagship when

he entered the Indian Ocean?

(g) Was the first tanker launched in Great Britain?

(h) Sank the Jervis Bay?

First steamed all the way across the Atlantic?

(Answers on page 883)