More on the Rodent Theme

From the beaver-like individuals of last week, we turn our attention to the real thing this week. Not beavers, as such, but their relatives in the rodent family.

1. I cannot too strongly recommend those of my readers who are thinking of getting shut up in stables to abandon the idea, for there is no percentage in it. It’s stuffy, it’s dark and there’s nowhere to sit except the floor. Odd squeaking noises and sinister scratching noises make themselves heard from time to time, suggesting that rats are getting up an appetite before starting to chew you to the bone. After my escort had left me I shuffled about a good deal, with a view to finding some way of removing myself from as morale-testing a position as I had been in since I was so high, but the only method which occurred to me was to catch a rat and train it to gnaw through the door; however, that would take time, and I was anxious to get home and go to bed.

2. ‘Even if the little enterprise meets with disaster, the reflection that I did my best for the young couple will be a great consolation to me when I am serving my bit of time in Wormwood Scrubs. It will cheer me up. The jailers will cluster outside the door to listen to me singing in my cell. My pet rat, as he creeps out to share the crumbs of my breakfast, will wonder why I whistle as I pick the morning’s oakum. I shall join in the hymns on Sundays in a way that will electrify the chaplain. That is to say, if anything goes wrong and I am what I believe is technically termed “copped”. I say “if”,’ said __(A)__, gazing solemnly at his companion. ‘But I do not intend to be copped. I have never gone in largely for crime hitherto, but something tells me I shall be rather good at it.’

3. “Do you know,” he said, “you’re the most wonderful girl I ever met. (…) because you come up smiling after having a whacking great car run into you.” (…)

“It wasn’t your fault. I popped out of the bushes right under your wheels.”

“You did pop, didn’t you?”

“I ought to have been more careful.”

“So ought I. Tell me, do you spend much of the summer in bushes?”

“There was a squirrel in there. I wanted to take a peek at him. Don’t you love squirrels?”

“I don’t think I’ve met many socially.”

“I’ve seen them often enough in Central Park, but never really close to.”

4. “You say this gardener saw him jump into the water?”

“Yes, sir.”

“With his clothes on?”

“That’s right. Accoutred as he was, he plunged in,” said __(C)__, who in the preceding term at his school had had to write out a familiar passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar fifty times for bringing a white mouse into the classroom.

5. For a bonus point, up which South American river would you expect to meet a fictional rodent? If that question is a touch too mystical for you, your Quizmaster will be happy to provide by email an additional clue specifying the species of rodent found up a South American river.

6. And for another bonus point, can you identify the individual who was, we are reliably informed, bitten by a guinea-pig last summer? (“guinea pig” without a hyphen in the US editions of the book or books)

Round 412 - 9 October 2009

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

As I sit on my balcony basking in the sun while typing this Quiz, I am compelled to admit that I am wearing a sweater for here in the northern hemisphere the days are growing shorter, the nights longer, and the temperatures cooler while the hockey season is already in full swing and skiers are looking forward with eager anticipation to another season of slipping and breaking their legs while walking from the ski resort’s parking lot to the chair-lift. And so, this week we present an autumnal-themed Wodehouse Quiz.

1. With the coming of dusk the blizzard which had been blowing all the afternoon had gained in force, and the trees outside the club-house swayed beneath it. The falling snow rendered the visibility poor, but __(A)__, standing at the smoking-room window, was able to recognize the familiar gleam of __(B)__’s heather-mixture plus-fours as he crossed the icebound terrace from the direction of the caddy shed, and he gave a little nod of approval. No fair weather golfer himself when still a player, he liked to see the younger generation doing its round in the teeth of November gales.

2. The morning (…) dawned bright and juicy. A casual observer would have said that God was in His Heaven and all right with the world. It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.

Personally, however, I wasn’t any too keen on the bracing tang. It made me feel so exceptionally fit that almost immediately after breakfast I found myself beginning to wonder what there would be for lunch.

3. __(C)__’s was not a deep nature. She had never pretended to herself that she loved __(D)__ in the sense in which the word is used in books. She liked him, and she liked the idea of being connected with the Peerage, and her father liked the idea, and she liked her father, and the combination of these likings had caused her to reply ‘Yes’ when, last Autumn, __(D)__, swelling himself out like an embarrassed frog and gulping, had uttered that memorable speech, beginning, “I say, you know, it’s like this, don’t you know,” and ending, “What I mean is, will you marry me, what?” She had looked forward to being placidly happy as Mrs __(D)__. And then __(E)__ had reappeared in her life, a disturbing element.

4. (…) at shoplifting one definitely pursed the lips. Here, one felt, she had gone too far. Not her fault, of course. It was, he supposed, a sort of mental illness. Paradoxically, she helped herself because she could not help herself. Their mutual aunt __(F)__, now deceased, had suffered in the same way and had come to grief during the Autumn sales at Gimbel’s. It had been until today the great scandal in the family.

5. There presented to him as a judicious move the idea of hiring a car and taking __(G)__ out to dinner at one of the road-houses he had heard about up the Boston Post Road. He examined the scheme. The more he looked at it, the better it seemed.

He was helped to this decision by the extraordinary perfection of the weather. The weather of late had been a revelation to __(H)__. It was his first experience of America’s Indian Summer, and it had quite overcome him. As he stood on the roof (…) on the Saturday morning, thrilled by the velvet wonder of the sunshine, it seemed to him that the only possible way of passing such a day was to take __(G)__ for a ride in an open car.

6. For a bonus point, can you identify the author (or authoress) of Autumn Leaves?

Round 413 - 19 October 2009

Sunset at Blandings (and Elsewhere)

Unless sunsets make you sick, as they did to Gussie Fink-Nottle in his vegetarian period, you may want to have a stab at this round. Purged by this noble exercise, you may find yourself wandering out into the sunset, a finer, broader Wodehousian.

1. "What the dickens shall I say?"

I restrained my impatience with an effort. The man had been at school with me.

"Dash it, there are hundreds of things you can say. Talk about the sunset."

"The sunset?"

"Certainly. Half the married men you meet began by talking about the sunset."

"But what can I say about the sunset?"

"Well, A___ got off a good one the other day. I met him airing the dog in the park one evening, and he said, 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, sir, and all the air a solemn stillness holds.' You might use that."

2. "'You can't drink tea. Have a drop of brandy.' He shook his head. 'No more alcohol for me,' he said. 'It makes your liver look like a Turner sunset.'"

3. "And if you have no respect for the name of B___," said C___, explosively, "at least have some for a horse." [...]

D___ seemed petrified.

"I can't do it," he pleaded. "And if you was to see my bruises you wouldn't have the heart to make me. Why, my right thigh looks more like the painting of a sunset than a yuman leg."

4. "You must not lose courage. Who knows? Consolation may be waiting for you somewhere. Some day you will meet someone who will make you forget you ever loved me. No, not quite that. I think I shall always be a fragrant memory, always something deep in your heart that will be with you like a gentle, tender ghost as you watch the sunset on summer evenings while the little birds sing their off-to-bed songs in the shrubbery."

For a bonus point: name at least three Wodehouse characters who have compared the sunset to a slice of (underdone) beef. Your quizmaster knows four, but there may be more.

Round 414 - 27 October 2009

Bachelors Anonymous

If we are to believe Major Plank, "All marriages are disastrous. They lead to bonny babies, and bonny babies lead to bonny baby competitions." Can you identify the following representatives of the same school of thought?

1. Here he was, drawing daily closer and closer to a charming girl with big blue eyes, and surely rather to be envied than pitied.

But we must remember that A___ was one of Nature's bachelors. [...]

A___ had a congenital horror of matrimony. Though a young man, he had allowed himself to develop a great many habits which were as the breath of life to him; and these habits, he knew instinctively, a wife would shoot to pieces within a week of the end of the honeymoon. [...]

These and a thousand other thoughts of the same kind flashed through the unfortunate young man's mind as the days went by, and every day that passed seemed to draw him nearer to the brink of the chasm.

2. "How surprised old B___ will be to hear that I'm engaged. He's such a confirmed bachelor himself. He told me once that he considered the wisest thing ever said by human tongue was the Swahili proverb – 'Whoso taketh a woman into his kraal depositeth himself straightway in the wongo'. Wongo, he tells me, is a sort of broth composed of herbs and meat-bones, corresponding to our soup. You must get B___ to give it you in the original Swahili. It sounds even better."

3. C___ gave a horrified gasp. Both in physique and in his mental outlook he was one of London's stoutest bachelors, and never ceased to think gratefully of the guardian angel who had arranged a breaking-off of relations when years ago he had contemplated marrying D___.

"Are you engaged?" he asked anxiously. He was not particularly fond of E___, but one has one's human instincts, and he would have experienced concern for anyone on the brink of matrimony.

4. The butler's telephone message found F___ enjoying a restful cigarette in his bedroom. He had completed his toilet some little time before; but, being an experienced diner-out and knowing how sticky that anteprandial vigil in somebody else's drawing-room can be, he had not intended to set out for G___ [name of a stately home of England] for another twenty minutes or so. Like so many elderly, self-indulgent bachelors, he was inclined to shirk life's grimmer side.

5. "Mind you, I am quite aware, of course, that there are eccentrics who enjoy getting married. The recent H___, for instance, was obviously feeling no qualms as they sprang the trap on him. He gloried in his predicament. But, as I was telling you the other day, I have always regarded the holy state with the gravest concern. As a young man, I would sometimes dream that I was being married, and would wake sweating. But each year that passes lessens the peril, and my mind is now tolerably easy. I look at myself in the mirror and I say 'Courage! With a face like that you are surely safe, J___'. It is a most consoling thought. Are you still awake?"

Round 415 - 5 November 2009

Young (and Not So Young) Men in Spats

1. For the last day or so there had been a certain amount of coolness in the home over a pair of jazz spats which I had dug up while exploring in the Burlington Arcade. Some dashed brainy cove, probably the chap who invented those coloured cigarette-cases, had recently had the rather topping idea of putting out a line of spats on the same system. I mean to say, instead of the ordinary grey and white, you can now get them in your regimental or school colours. And, believe me, it would have taken a chappie of stronger fibre than I am to resist the pair of old Etonian spats which had smiled up at me from inside the window. I was inside the shop, opening negotiations, before it had even occurred to me that A___ might not approve.

2. "She says I've got to wear my cutaway coat and a stiff collar."

"You'll be the belle of the ball."

"And a gardenia, she says. And spats. I shall feel like a sissy."

He took another turn about the patio.

"Spats!" he said, looking at me piteously.

3. B___, delighted to see him, was a gay and effervescent host, but during the meal the presence of a hovering butler made conversation of a really intimate nature impossible, and the talk confined itself to matters of general interest. [...]

They also touched on such topics as the weather, dogs, two-seater cars (their treatment in sickness and in health), the foreign policy of the Government, the chances of C___ in the Goodwood Cup, and what you would do – this subject arising from D___'s recent literary studies – if you found a dead body in your bath one morning with nothing on but pince-nez and a pair of spats.

4. [...] it was often said of E___ that, had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers. He sauntered through life with a cheerful insouciance, and up to the age of twenty-five had only once been moved by anything in the nature of a really strong emotion – on the occasion when, in the heart of Bond Street and at the height of the London season, he discovered that this man, F___, had carelessly sent him out with odd spats on.

For a bonus point: which Wodehouse character was rumoured to be writing a book on spats?

Round 416 - 15 November 2009

Strawberries

Although we are not in the middle of winter, you are kindly invited to a knightly quest of strawberries this week.

1. For some moments after they had left, A___ stood where he was, regarding the African curios with the glazed look of a man whose brain is taking a complete rest. Then gradually there came upon him a sense of something omitted, the feeling which he had so often had in the wilds of Brazil that somewhere there was man's work to be done and that it was for him to do it. Then he remembered. The strawberries. He went back to the drawing-room to finish them.

2. He ordered a small draught ale for himself, and for his companion, whom he saw to be in need of something more authoritative, a double brandy and split-soda. This done, he delivered his report.

"In a word," he concluded. "Fortune did not smile. But you will be glad to learn that I propose to make another attempt to-morrow. News may have reached you of a garden party that will break out at the Hall in the afternoon. That will be my hour, B___. Not a soul around. Everybody out on the lawn, swilling tea and sucking down strawberries. I shall be able to saunter in and help myself at my leisure."

3. "Yes, but how was I to guess that anything like this would happen?" cried C___, rising and scraping strawberries off his person. "Who would ever have supposed D___ would leap off the dock with a fellow who doesn't play golf?"

4. "Mrs? D___," he said severely, "are you breaking up a home?"

"No, no, no, no, no."

"Are you a modern Casanova?"

"Certainly not. Mrs E___ is a widow. Her late husband fell overboard on a day excursion to Boulogne."

There was a momentary silence while their thoughts dwelled on Mr E___, deceased.

"She bakes the most wonderful scones," said D___.

"Oh?" said F___.

"And her strawberry jam has to be tasted to be believed."

Round 417 - 25 November 2009

Mine Quiz

Mines, real and otherwise, show up with some frequency in the canon. The poet Rodney Spelvin considered himself above such crass materialistic concerns and complained, "Only last week, a man, a coarse editor, asked me what my sonnet, 'Wine of Desire', meant ... I gave him my answer, 'twas a sonnet, not a mining prospectus." Others do show impressive artistry when dealing with mines and their prospects. Please identify the characters below who got involved with mines one way and another.

1. Who said "This mine is mine. A mine of my own. My mine. It belongs to me. I own it."?

2. _A_ had not always been a man at the top of his profession, selling stock in non-existent copper mines to the highest in the land and putting through deals that ran into five figures. He had started at the bottom of the ladder as the genial young fellow who had found a ruby ring in the street and was anxious to sell it, the darned thing being of no use to him, and a touch of sentiment led him to carry on his person always this symbol of his beginnings. He regarded it as a sort of charm or luck piece.

3. "A word with you," he said, and led him out onto the terrace.

_B_, as he followed him into the cool night air, seemed surprised and a little uneasy. He had noticed _C_ scrutinizing him closely across the dinner table, and if there is one thing a financier who has just put out a prospectus of a gold mine dislikes, it is to be scrutinised closely.

4. "... He'll give me anything I ask for a real winner like this. I've got a gold-mine. Where's my hat? I've got an income for life! Where's that confounded hat? Lend me a fiver, _D_. I want to take a taxi down to ___."

Two opportunities for bonus points this week

A. Name a character who was socked on the side of the head with a crocodile bag apparently filled with ore samples from a copper mine

B. Who was offered a one-thirtieth interest in a California gold mine lease for five hundred pounds just because his name had appeared in a magazine list of authors and artists?

Round 418 - 7 December 2009

There's no police like Holmes

Wodehouse wrote in the introduction to the Ballantine edition of The Sign of the Four "... I am never happier than when curled up with Sherlock Holmes, and I hope Messrs Ballantine will sell several million of him. As the fellow said, there's no police like Holmes." References to Holmes and Watson, and to policemen, are all over the canon. They've been the quiz theme before. This week instead of identifying excerpts you are invited to fill in characters' names below:

1. Who observed that Sherlock Holmes used to keep his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper? The comment arose from the discovery of a letter in the library coal scuttle.

2. Who reflected that the home life of his host presented what Sherlock Holmes would have called certain features of interest? The thought was prompted by a story told by said host featuring a tobacco jar.

3. Who followed the comment of the reader in #1 above with an observation that he didn't believe he'd ever seen a Persian slipper?

4. To whom is the suggestion made that he imagine Sherlock Holmes being asked to deduce someone's birthday? (The person advancing the suggestion earlier in the story reflects that he would have done well to place himself under police protection rather than attend a particular dinner.)

5. Someone compared himself, on arrival at a stately home of England, to an unfortunate master criminal coming down to do a murder at the old Grange, discovering that not only was Sherlock Holmes putting in the week end there, but Hercule Poirot, as well. Supply the name of the police constable who later in the book patrols beneath the window of this narrator to prevent his escape.

6. Who scoffs at the idea of reading Hound of the Baskervilles, holding that one doesn't read a hound? The person is puzzled when the story is mentioned by a much better read juvenile friend.

7. Of a Chancellor of the Exchequer we learn that if Sherlock Holmes had seen him one day "staring before him with what are usually called unseeing eyes and and snorting every now and then sounding like somebody bursting a series of small paper bags" Holmes would have deduced instantly that he was not in a good temper.

"Elementary, my dear Watson," he would have said. Those snorts tell the story.

This Chancellor of the E has a bodyguard. What is his name?

8. Who seated himself on two chairs and five cushions to read Sherlock Holmes while Pillingshot toasted muffins?

Bonus point (not Holmesian)

Take the initial letter of the last name of each answer above, in order, and fill in the eight-letter phrase in the blank below. Except in the case of peers, use title instead of name and in the case of Scotland Yard detectives, the first initial.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ of the Woosters and Mulliners are well known.

Now name another clan that has one.

Round 419 - 15 December 2009

Violins, imitation Strauss waltzes and village concerts

To celebrate Beethoven's birthday on 16 December, a few musical references for you to identify.

1. This was the first time I had seen _A__ today, she having gone off around noon to lunch with some friends in _[place name omitted]_, and I would willingly not have seen her now, for something in her manner seemed to suggest that she spelled trouble. She was looking more like Sherlock Holmes than ever. Slap a dressing gown on her and give her a violin, and she could have walked straight into Baker Street and no questions asked.

Fixing me with a penetrating eye, she said, "Oh, there you are, _B__. I was looking for you."

2. It did not require a deal of keeping. Battersea may have its tough citizens, but they do not live in Battersea Park Road. Battersea Park Road's speciality is Brain, not Crime. Authors, musicians, newspaper men, actors, and artists are the inhabitants of these mansions. A child could control them. They assault and batter nothing but pianos; they steal nothing but ideas; they murder nobody except Chopin and Beethoven. Not through these shall an ambitious young constable achieve promotion.

At this conclusion __C___ arrived within forty-eight hours of his installation. He recognised the flats for what they were – just so many layers of big-brained blamelessness. And there was not even the chance of a burglary. No burglar wastes his time burgling authors. __C___ reconciled his mind to the fact that his term in Battersea must be looked on as something in the nature of a vacation.

3. After a morning spent with __D__ and __E__, it was imperative that he select some place where he could sit and think quietly. Any food of which he partook must be consumed in calm, even cloistral surroundings, unpolluted by the presence of a first violin who tied himself into knots and an orchestra in whose lexicon there was no such word as piano. One of his clubs seemed indicated.

In the days of his prosperity, __F__'s father, an enthusiastic clubman, had enrolled his son's name on the list of several institutions ...

4. "Now mark this closely: The other day she wrote to _G_, telling him to come down and sing at her village concert. It was equivalent to a royal command, if you see what I mean, so _G__ couldn't refuse in so many words. But he had sung at her village concert once before and had got the bird in no uncertain manner, so he wasn't playing any return dates. You follow so far, __H__?"

__H_ nodded.

"So what did he do, _H__? He did what seemed to him at the moment a rather brainy thing ..."

5. Who was the musical fellow who ...

Performed on the 'cello each night
At a restaurant where
All the brave and the fair
Would look in for a chat and a bite.
He played tunes that you know
From Wagner and Gounod
To give the gay building a tone,
But the place started swaying
When he began playing
A sweet little thing of his own.

6. Who had made a good thing out of composing imitation Strauss waltzes, but lamented that the imitation Strauss waltz racket has gone blue on us in these rock 'n roll days, so asked his son what was it to be? "The Army? The Bar? The Church? Forgery? Blackmail? Arson? Or do you see yourself making Viennese pastry?"

The son went in for schnirkel-schnecke gathering.

7. And to end on an easy note: who's a melody from a symphony by Strauss anyway?

You're the Colosseum
You're the top
You're the Louvre Museum
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss,
You're an Ascot bonnet,
A Shakespeare sonnet,
you're Mickey Mouse.
you're the Nile
You're the Tower of Pisa
You're the smile
On the Mona Lisa.

Round 420 - 27 December 2009

Numbers for Christmas

Nothing brightens up a Christmas season so much as the chance to do a little computation. Just one simple question this week, so all can get right on with any celebrations planned:

A poet mentions that he visited his moneyed aunt in Illinois over the previous Christmas and found her bursting with health. How many days a year does this poet spend writing? Take that number and subtract the estimated age of a fellow who has been engaged to his second cousin since Christmas in another story. Call that result A. Somebody gets soaked for X quid and nearly more and narrowly escapes having to play Santa Claus at a children’s party and in addition to that gets sat on by a Fairy Queen. Call the Fairy Queen’s estimated weight in pounds C.

A woman golfer ran into bad train service and had to walk miles on Christmas Eve and fainted in the snow. Call the number of miles she walked D and her golf handicap (which she shares with her spouse) E.

Take C and subtract from it E, and subtract A, subtract D and then subtract the product (X times A).

Your result from that equals either:

1. The number of quid extracted from a wealthy Drone on the strength of a strategy borne of the plot of ‘Tiny Fingers,’ originally written for the Christmas number of Woman’s Wonder.

or is it

2. The number of times Gussie Fink-Nottle recalls being sick in the cab coming home from Christmas festivities dressed as a rabbit?

or is it

3. The level to which Bingo was down in his uncle’s estimation before Ocean Breeze ran?

That’s it: 1., 2., or 3.? Of course, supporting evidence will also impress the QM.

Two bonus point opportunities are on offer. According to PGW:

A. For what purpose are yaks’ tails imported into the United States from Tibet?

B. What is the first rule that applies to the purchase of Christmas presents?