BREMF Summer Quiz 2021: Results and Answers

Aug 12, 2021

Congratulations to Alan and Dena Mynett, who, after several years of loyal participation, have won the BREMF Quiz this time with 58½. Commiserations to Hilary Ougham and Katy Stoddard, who were both just pipped at the post on 58.

Thanks to all who were brave enough to send in their entries, and congratulations to the following high scorers:

57½  The Whitehouse family
55   Susan Chadwick, Chris and Kate Darwin, Joan MacGregor and Ian Denyer
52½  Susan Clough and Mark Richey
51 Maria Gardiner

There will be another quiz in the Autumn, with the more usual prize of a £30 Waitrose voucher. As this year, it will be available on line as well as at the live events.

BREMF 2021 Summer Quiz – Answers

Part 1: Mixed bag – 1 mark per question.

  1. Why did the Geldingadalur valley begin to fill up in March 2021? (Lava flowing into it as a result of a volcanic eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland)
  2. What name did Milton give in Paradise Lost to the dwelling of the fallen angels? (Pandᴂmonium – see Bk 2)
  3. When might you use a Drake equation? (When you want to calculate the possibility of intelligent life existing on other planets)
  4. Which relative of the harebell is sometimes called the Pride of Sussex? (Round-headed Rampion – scientific name phyteuma orbiculare)
  5. Which novelist once lived in a house (now a hotel) which shares its name with a species of ‘ox-headed’ duck? (Ian Fleming – the house and duck are both called Goldeneye, of the genus Bucephala = ox-head, which also includes the duck species Bufflehead and Barrow’s Goldeneye)
  6. Where might Questions to the Heavens be answered in part by Perseverance and Hope? (Mars – the three missions to Mars in February 2021 – Tianwen-1 from China, Hope from Saudi Arabia and Perseverance from the USA)
  7. Which pasta shape has a name derived from the Italian for ‘reed’? (Cannelloni – from ‘canna’)
  8. In which television programme does an Eames Soft Pad Lounge Chair regularly appear? (Mastermind)
  9. In 1985, Wally Conron at the Royal Guide Dogs Association of Australia bred the first example of which popular crossbreed? (Labradoodle)
  10. In which serialised novel do we find two verses of Ode to an Expiring Frog by Mrs Leo Hunter? (Dickens – Pickwick Papers; Mr Pickwick declines an invitation to attend her poetry recital)
  11. As what is the drug Sildenafil better-known? (Viagra)
  12. What name do archaeologists give to the large area of land formerly joining Britain to the continent of Europe which is believed to have been inundated during the Neolithic period? (Doggerland)
  13. In 2020 the author of a manuscript translation of Tacitus’ Annals in Lambeth Palace Library was identified on the basis of the handwriting and the watermarked paper. Who is now believed to be the translator? (Queen Elizabeth I)
  14. Why did the antonym of ‘deciduous’ make headlines in March 2021? (Evergreen – the name of the shipping company which owned the Evergiven, which blocked the Suez Canal for a week)
  15. Which fictional character ‘was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner. . . ‘. (Robinson Crusoe)
  16. Author Nick Harkaway is the son of which other author who died in 2020? (John le Carré/David Cornwell)
  17. The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, founded in 1844, is now known as what? (The Co-operative Society/Co-op)
  18. When was the most recent visit of Odobenus Rosmarus to the UK? (March -or June – 2021 – scientific name of the Atlantic Walrus. A young individual spotted in Wales in March was later spotted in the Scillies in June 2021 – answers referring to apearances after the date of setting the quiz were accepted.)
  19. Whose arrival in a field in Russia on 12th April 1961 came as a considerable surprise to the locals? (Yuri Gagarin’s – that’s where he landed)
  20. What is particularly unusual about the Sauteur d’Alfort breed of domestic rabbit? (It can’t hop – it walks in a sort of ‘handstand’ on its front legs instead)

Part 2: Identify the following ‘escapes’ – 1 mark per question

  1. Commemorated in the renaming of the ship originally called Surprise. (Escape of Charles II to France – the ship, based in Shoreham, was later renamed Royal Escape)
  2. A transport-obsessed batrachian disguises himself as a washerwoman. (Toad’s escape from jail in Grahame The Wind in the Willows/Milne Toad of Toad Hall – either answer was accepted)
  3. Williams’ Wooden Horse. (Reference to the true story of an escape from Stalag Luft III in which Eric Williams and others used a vaulting horse to cover the digging of an escape tunnel – later made into a film)
  4. Artemisia of Halicarnassus sinks a Persian ship to escape from being attacked by Greek ships. (Battle of Salamis, 479 BC – full description in Herodotus)
  5. The Tod helps Rowf and Snitter survive in the wild after their escape from a research facility. (Plague Dogs, by Richard Adams)
  6. From the National Archive of Scotland: ‘She believes he went to Raasay but cannot tell what is become of him since’. Whose sworn testimony about what event? (Flora MacDonald on the escape of Charles Edward Stuart/Bonnie Prince Charlie to Skye)
  7. Mr Behar escapes from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 and dies in the Soviet Union in 2020. (The convicted spy George Blake – Behar was his original surname)
  8. No-one organises an escape from a cave by hiding underneath a flock of sheep. (Odysseus and his men escape from the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus in Homer’s Odyssey; Odysseus had previously told Polyphemus that his name was ‘No-man’ or ‘No-one’ – Metis in Greek, which is a pun as this word means both ‘no-one’ and ‘cunning’. Rather stupidly, however, he gave his real name as he and his men sailed away, resulting in Polyphemus asking his father – Poseidon – to avenge him. )
  9. Belmonte’s attempt to help Konstanze escape is foiled by Osmin. (Mozart – last act of Die Entführung aus dem Serail)
  10. Bunty, Babs, Ginger and others escape with help from Rocky. (The Aardman animation film Chicken Run)

Part 3: Connections. There are 3 marks per question – 1 for correctly identifying the connection and 2 for explaining all the elements.

  1. A misspelled Cumaean prophetess – alternatively, Two Nations; an early condemnation of smoking; Judo: History, Theory, Practice; musically, having lots of fun with your friends in Tudor England. (Works by national leaders or rulers – Sybil, or The Two Nations by Disraeli – the Cumaean prophetess is the Sibyl; A Counterblaste to Tobacco by James VI/I; written by Vladimir Putin; the song Pastime with Good Company, composed by Henry VIII)
  2. Tipulidae; Grus antigone; Geranium maculatum; Haterius’s polyspaston. (Crane – crane fly species; Sarus crane; cranesbill; an early crane featuring a large slave-operated treadwheel, seen on the tomb of Quintus Haterius in Rome and mentioned in Unit 3 of the Cambridge Latin Course)
  3. Cambridge or Oxford – not academic; a baby animal – but not Billy; California, Ballarat or the Yukon; theatrical illumination. (Chaplin films – The Circus; The Kid; The Gold Rush; Limelight)
  4. Reading, invalid, lead, desert. (All words with at least two pronunciations whose meaning affects pronunciation – or whose meaning cannot be deduced in isolation if not spoken)
  5. Aphoristically, possibly requiring a hallmark; graciously, characteristic of a Shakespearean villainess; fictionally, broken by Pat Barker; musically, may be heard? (Silence – ….is golden; Virgilia in Coriolanus ‘my gracious silence’ [silent and  therefore the epitome of the Roman matrona but a villainess in the minds of some critics]; Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker; The Sound of Silence – Simon & Garfunkel)
  6. Xe + a non-possessive bookshop; Warhol paintings; pioneering live photography of black woodpeckers; belonging to a thespian Stanley (Soup brands – Cross[e] & Blackwell; Campbell’s, Heinz [Sielmann, who photographed black woodpeckers at the nest in the 1950s]; Baxter’s.)
  7. An inhospitable member of the hospitality industry; despite the name, no use for cleaning anything; famous finds in Suffolk; the final resting-place of part of Isabella’s lover Lorenzo. (Basil – the owner of Fawlty Towers; Basil Brush, the ‘gentleman fox’ puppet; Basil Brown involved in the excavation of Sutton Hoo; Isabella, or The Pot of Basil by Keats retells a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron in which Isabella’s brothers murder her lover, Lorenzo. She finds his head and buries it in a pot containing basil, which her brothers then steal from her.)
  8. A young attendant at a wedding or royal occasion; a fish or heraldic star; a panic-stricken morepork; necessary equipment for an apiarist. (Hairstyles – pageboy; mullet; frightened owl – Morepork is one name [others are Boobook or Ruru] a species of owl found in Australasia – ‘Frightened Owl’ was a Regency hairstyle; beehive).
  9. Rib; Dor; Col; Win. (Can all have ‘chester’ added to make names of modern towns or parts of towns which have developed from forts founded by the Romans)
  10. Bilingual Beatles song; the last Passenger Pigeon; famously accompanied a sibling up and (catastrophically) down a hill; subject of a Dickensian murder. (First names of wives of US presidents/FLOTUS – Michelle Obama; Martha Washington; Jill Biden; Nancy Reagan)
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