Quiz Questions 491 to 500
| Round
491 - 20 December 2011 With Christmas nearing I think we have had enough pity and terror. I am offering Some rather nice women chosen from a list of 52. 1. ____A was breakfasting in bed. ____B had boiled the eggs and toasted the toast and taken them up to her, still a good deal dazed by the swiftness with which she had been uprooted and transferred from the old home to this new environment. On Friday her employer had told her to pack, on Saturday they had driven off in the car … 2. It was a woman who had joined him, and it did not need a second glance to tell him that she was a large woman. Somebody less deeply engaged in trying to soothe his neck might have observed in addition that she was a cheerful woman, a friendly woman and a woman whom it would be a pleasure to know, but these aspects of her did not dawn on him till later. She was the first to speak. She was one of those women who are always the first to speak. 3. A gregarious young man, ____C liked most people at sight, but he could not remember ever having been so completely attracted to anyone at first meeting as he had been attracted to this ____D. There was something about her – he had noticed it even when she had been very properly ticking him off – which had seemed to speak – perfectly platonically – to the depths of his soul. A kindred spirit, if ever there was one, and the thought that she was madly throwing herself away on a fellow like ____E rather saddened him. Not that it mattered to him, personally, of course, but he felt it was a pity. 4. Mr ____F, seeing her only dimly through the mist of unshed tears caused by ____G’s prompt action, would noy have been able to describe her, but she was what is generally termed a comfortable woman. A tendency to plumpness made it unlikely that she would ever become Miss Great Britain, or Miss London and Adjoining Suburbs, or even Miss ____H, but she was beyond a question comfortable. 5. Lady ____J was considerably better worth looking at than the Lady ____K, her sister. The latter took after her father in appearance, which was an unfortunate thing for any girl to do, for it has already been stressed that ____L, though a worthy soul and no thicker in the head than the average member of the House of Peers, presented to the eye the façade of an Eric Blore rather than that of a Robert Taylor. ____J had had the good sense to resemble her late mother, who had been in her day one of the prettiest debutantes in London. Slim, blue-eyed, fair-haired and bearing Youth like a banner, she was the sort of girl at the sight of whom strong men quiver and straighten their ties. 6. Take the ____M troupe, for instance. To look at them, you’d never have guessed they were united by ties of blood. ____N resembled one of those fellows who play bit parts in gangster pictures: ____O was a beauty so radiant that strong men whistled after her in the street; while ____P, in sharp contradistinction, was just ordinary, no different from a million other nice girls except perhaps for a touch of the Pekingese about the nose and eyes and more freckles than you usually see. I always enjoyed putting on the nosebag with her, for there was a sort of motherliness about her which I found restful. She was one of those soothing, sympathetic girls you can take your troubles to, confident of having your hand held and your head patted. Round 492 - 2 January 2012 For the last instalment of women you have to find Some of my favourite Wodehouse women 1. ‘You see, I’m devoted to ____A – and I like you.’ She smiled for the first time. Her embarrassment was passing. ‘That is the whole point,’ she said. ‘I do like you. And I’m quite sure that if you were really the sort of man I thought you when I first heard about all this, I shouldn’t. The friend who told me about you and ____A made it seem as if the whole fault had been yours. I got the impression that you had been very unkind to ____A. I thought you must be a brute. And when ____B told me who you were, my first impulse was to hate you. I think if you had come along just then I should have been rather horrid to you. But you were late, and that gave me time to think it over …’ 2. … but in sealing ____C with the stamp of his approval he was perfectly justified. ____D, speaking of this woman to ____E, had used the adjective “lovely”. While not quite that, she was undeniably attractive. Brown eyes, brown hair, just the right sort of nose and a wide humorous mouth that smiled readily and was smiling now. Her personality, too, had a distinct appeal of its own. There was about her a kindly briskness which seemed to say “Yes, yes, you have your troubles, I can see you have, but leave everything to me.” Fierce authors who came into the ____F offices like lions went out like lambs after talking with ____C. 3. ____G scrambled out and bent down to where he sat, holding to the bank. “I’m not nearly so beastly now, ____H,” she said in a whisper. “You’ll find that out some day, if you’re very patient. Good-night, ____H, dear. Don’t forget tomorrow.” She flitted away into the darkness, and ____H, releasing his hold on the bank and starting up as if he had had an electric shock, was carried out into midstream. He was tingling from head to foot. It could not have happened, of course, but for a moment he had suddenly received the extraordinary impression that ____G had kissed him. 4. ‘… ____J’s a woman with ideas. When we were co-workers on the ____K lot, there was a traffic cop out on ____L who lurked beside his motor cycle in a dark corner and sprang on it and dashed out to pursue motorists and give them tickets. We used to watch him from our windows, and we all burned to do something to the man, but only ____J had the vision and intelligence to go out and tie a chain to his back wheel while he was in the drug store and fasten the other end to a hydrant, so that the next time he sprang on his machine and started off, he was brought up short and shot over the handlebars and looked about as silly as I ever saw a traffic cop look …’ 5. ‘… Well, you will do it, won’t you?’ ____M reflected. ‘I suppose I’ll have to, if you insist,’ he said at length. ‘If I don’t, you’ll just hand in your notice anyway. I know you. You’re a sportsman, ____N. Your mother was just the same. But are you sure you’ll manage all right? I shan’t be casting the new show till the end of August, but I may be able to fix you up somewhere if I look round.’ ‘I don’t see how you could look any rounder if you tried, you poor darling. Do you realize, Pa, that if you got up early every morning and did half an hour’s Swedish exercises …’ ‘If you don’t want to be murdered, stop!’ 6. It was as she heaved a weary sigh and fell to wondering whether to get up and go to the library for the book which she had been reading after dinner or to stay where she was and give the sandman another chance, that a faint whoofle from the direction of the door and a scratching of delicate paws on the woodwork told her that ____O, her Peke, was up and about and wished to leave the room. ‘Okay,’ said ____P, rather pleased that the problem had been settled for her. ‘Just a minute. Hold the line.’ She turned on the light, and rose and donned a dressing-gown. ‘Grass?’ she said. The Peke nodded briefly. Round 493 - 21 February 2012 Soul Mates (Tenth Annual Valentine’s Day Quiz) “Still, you would not
call her a sparkling conversationalist.” ”To start with, we
are so much alike, we have the same tastes –“ Once again it’s a little late for Valentine’s Day, but we’ll celebrate with a sentimental quiz worthy of Rosie M Banks or Leila J Pinckney. Identify the couples. 1. “I cannot picture any niece of mine not loving someone as rich as he is.” “You don’t think it’s only his money that’s the attraction, do you?” “Certainly not. They’re soul mates. She has about as much brains as a retarded billiards ball, and he approximately the same. It’s the ideal union and I am gratified that I have been able to do my little bit to push it along.” 2. “She was my soul-mate … She had grave brown eyes, a wonderful personality, and this elephant gun.” 3. “She’s just his sort. The first thing she did when she came in was to talk about the lining of her stomach. You see the hideous significance of that, A__? The lining of his stomach is also B__’s favourite topic of conversation. It means that he and she are kindred souls.” 4. If C__ had been aware that the idea of lending to the night’s proceedings the aspect of an outside job had occurred independently to D__ he would have taken it as an additional proof, if such were needed, that she and he were twin souls, for it was what he had thought of himself. [Another example of this occurs in a later chapter:] “When he suddenly appeared from nowhere, shouting ‘Hey!” I wonder if you experienced the same odd sensation that I did, as if the top of the head had parted abruptly from its moorings?” “Yes, that’s just how I felt.” “Twin souls,” said C__. “Twin souls. Two minds with but a single thought.” 5. “This,” said E__, “is becoming more and more gratifying every moment. It seems to me that you and I were made for each other. I am your best friend’s best friend and we both have a taste for stealing other people’s jewellery. I cannot see how we can very well resist the conclusion that we are twin souls.” Round 494 - 5 March 2012 Cavemen Flubby-dub, the Caveman,
lived the ideal life A minute before, John
would have wilted beneath that stare. But now the spirit
of the cave-man was strong in him. This week’s quiz celebrates the chaps who dealt with mastodons in primeval swamps and pterodactyls with secret sorrows. 1. A__, the thinker, had ceased to be: and there stood in his place A__, the descendant of ancestors who had conducted their love affairs with stout clubs and who, on seeing a rival, wasted no time in calm reflection but jumped on him like a ton of bricks and did their best to bite his head off. If you had given him a bearskin and taken away his spectacles, A__ at this moment would have been Prehistoric Man. “Hey!” said A__. … The cave-man adjusted his spectacles, and glared at his erstwhile friend with venomous dislike. His fingers twitched, as if searching for a club. 2. B__ emitted another “Ah-h-h-h-h!” but it was but a half-hearted one. The old pep had gone. She allowed the weapon to be snatched from her grasp. Her eyes met C__’s. And suddenly, as she gazed into those steel-hard orbs, the fire faded out of her, leaving her a mere weak woman face to face with what appeared to be the authentic caveman. 3. “I suppose the cave-woman sometimes felt rather relieved when everything was settled for her with a club, but I’m sure the caveman must have had a hard time ridding himself of the thought that he had behaved like a cad and taken a mean advantage. I don’t want to feel like that …” 4. And then, as the mist cleared, D__ found that he and E__ were not, as he had supposed, alone. Standing beside him was a rugged and slightly unkempt person clad in a bearskin which had obviously not been made to measure, in whom he recognized at once that Stone Age ancestor of his who had given him a few words of advice the other night on the path leading to the boat-house … “Oh, D__, D__, D__!” said E__, and her voice was a wail. Her eyes were bright with dismay, and her hands fluttered in a helpless manner which alone would have been enough to decide a man already swaying towards the methods of the good old days when cave-men were cave-men. 5. Their eyes met. Hers were glittering with the fury of a woman scorned. His were cold and hard. And, suddenly, as she looked at his awful, pale, set face, something seemed to snap in F__. A strange sensation of weakness and humility swept over her. So might the cave woman have felt when, with her back against a cliff and unable to dodge, she watched her suitor take his club in the interlocking grip, and, after a preliminary waggle, start his back swing. Round 495 - 13 March 2012 Mice in the Bedroom (and other dumb chums) "They wouldn't stand
for him in Arizona. They would put hydrophobia skunks in
his bed." In a stirring passage, Wodehouse describes in a letter to his stepdaughter (p. 132 of PG Wodehouse: A Life in Letters) a mouse running across his pillow. His characters encounter even more interesting bedfellows (or run the risk of same, as when Bertie contemplates putting an eel in Tuppy's bed). For full credit, identify (when applicable) both the people who find the dumb chums and those responsible for their presence. 1. My manner was reserved. The memory of that lizard in my bed still lingered. I don't know if you have ever leaped between the sheets, all ready for a spot of sleep, and received an unforeseen lizard up the left pyjama leg? It is an experience that puts its stamp on a man. 2. A__ had Mexican horned toads in his possession, and was prepared to supply them gratis with no cover charge, provided that their destination was B__'s bed ... There could be no question that B__ badly needed a horned toad in her bed. (For a bonus point, name another Wodehouse character who found a Mexican horned toad in his bed.) 3. "I've never been in the Gobi desert." "Well, don't go. It isn't safe ... C__ has no right to keep gumming up the course of true love like this." "No." ... "If I were D__, I'd put a toad in his bed or strychnine in his soup." 4. "He's a great one for practical joking. He was telling me about some of the ones he used to play on people over in America. I wouldn't live with him on a E__, I can tell you. I'd be afraid he'd push me in the water or something, or put a rat in my bed or something." 5. ... I whizzed back to my room and darted into bed. It was not immediately that the tired eyelids closed in sleep, for some hidden hand had placed a hedgehog between the sheets – practically, you might say, a fretful porpentine. Assuming this to be F__'s handiwork, I was strongly inclined to transfer it to his couch. Reflecting, however, that while this would teach him a much needed lesson it would be a bit tough on the porpentine, I took the latter out into the garden and loosed it into the grass. Round 496 - 21 March 2012 Crossword Puzzles She looked at me like
someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle with a
shrewd “Emu” in the top right-hand corner. There came to Freddie the
feeling he had sometimes had when trying to solve a Times
crossword puzzle, that his reason was tottering on its
throne. Crossword puzzles have cropped up in at least five previous quizzes, so it’s time they be promoted from a supporting role. I wanted to set this quiz in the form of a crossword puzzle, but the grey matter wasn’t up to it. Identify the characters solving (or attempting to solve, or thinking about) crossword puzzles. 1. “Do you do the Observer crossword puzzle by any chance?” “I solve it at breakfast on Sunday mornings … I find it ridiculously simple.” “Then what’s all that song and dance about the measured tread of feet around St Paul’s?” “Oh, I guessed that immediately. The answer, of course, is pedometer. You measure tread with a pedometer. Dome, meaning St Paul’s, comes in the middle and Peter, for St Peter, round it. Very simple.” 2. The invalid was lying in bed with a dachshund and two cats … “I hear you’re stuck in your crossword puzzle. Anything I can do to help?” “Don’t bother. I’ve given it up. Those clues are too deep for me. Twelve across – 'School after a break is blooming'. I ask you. And all the others just as bad.” 3. … A__, left alone, lit another cigar and turned his attention to the Times crossword puzzle. He found it, however, difficult to concentrate on it. This was not merely because these crossword puzzles had become so abstruse nowadays and he was basically a Sun-god-Ra and Large-Australian-bird-emu man. Having seen B__ off on his journey, doubts and fears were assailing him. (A’s doubts and fears prove well-founded. A few pages later:) A__ resumed his crossword puzzle, more than ever convinced that the compiler of the clues was suffering from softening of the brain, and in due course heavy breathing woke him from the light doze into which he had fallen while endeavouring to read some sense into “7 Across” … 4. C__ was in the servants’ quarters…, broodingly brushing the spacious seat of D__’s dress trousers. He was not happy. But then D__’s valets never were … E__, Mrs F__’s social secretary, was in the library doing a crossword puzzle, a form of mental exercise to which she was much addicted. 5. He reasoned thus. The wise man, finding himself in a dilemma, consults an expert … If it is a cross-word puzzle and he is stuck for the word in three letters, beginning with E and ending with U and meaning “large Australian bird” he places the matter in the hands of the editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And, similarly, when the question confronting him is how to collect G__s in December, the best plan is obviously to seek out that one of his acquaintances who has the most established reputation for giving expensive parties. 6. … H__ spent a not unhappy life, residing in the village where he had been born and passing his days in the usual country sports and his evenings in doing cross-word puzzles. By the time he was thirty he knew more about Eli, the prophet, Ra, the Sun God, and the bird Emu than anybody else in the county except J__ … who had also taken up the solving of cross-word puzzles and was the first girl in Worcestershire to find out the meanings of “stearine” and “crepuscular”. Bonus point: Who was chosen first reserve for the crossword puzzle team at Sing-Sing? Round 497 - 2 April 2012 A Springtime Celebration "In the Spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove." "So I have been informed, sir." And so we celebrate the arrival of spring in the northern hemisphere with this week's Wodehouse Quiz. 1. __(A)__ was going to buy a new spring frock for __(B)__’s birthday. Looking at that sentence again, I see that it is open to misconstruction. The frock was for herself, but it was to be bought in honour of __(B)__’s birthday and flashed upon his admiring gaze for the first time on that occasion. Altogether, taking it all round, __(B)__’s twenty-fifth birthday promised to be one of the biggest things in history. In the afternoon he was going to strike his employer for a rise of salary; in the evening he and __(A)__ would dine at the McAstor instead of at the red-ink place they usually frequented; and at night they would take in a show, with possibly a bite of supper afterwards at a cabaret place. A formidable programme, and one that made it imperative that __(A)__’s frock should not be out of the picture. She had been saving all the winter to buy a really irreproachable frock, and the money was in the bank, straining at the leash. All that remained was to make a good selection. (NOTE: When published in the US it was a "spring suit" instead of a "spring frock".) 2. It is in the Spring that the ache for the Larger Life comes upon us, and this was a particularly mellow Spring morning. It was the sort of morning when the air gives us a feeling of anticipation, a feeling that, on a day like this, things surely cannot go joggling along in the same dull old groove, a premonition that something romantic and exciting is about to happen to us. On such a morning you will see stout old gentlemen make sudden rollicking swings with their umbrellas; and a note of shrill optimism thrills in the errand-boy's whistle, as he sees life opening before him, large and splendid. But the south-west wind of Spring brings also remorse. We catch the vague spirit of unrest in the air, and we regret our misspent youth. __(C)__ was doing this. (...) he was conscious of a wish that he had worked harder at Oxford, and (...) never before had he been so completely certain that he was sick to death of the rut into which he had fallen. 3. Up on the roof of his apartment, far above the bustle and clamour of the busy city, __(D)__, at eleven o'clock in the morning (...) was greeting the new day, as was his custom, by going through his ante-breakfast exercises. Mankind is divided into two classes – those who do setting-up exercises before breakfast and those who know they ought to but don't. To the former and more praiseworthy class __(D)__ had belonged since boyhood. Life might be vain and the world a void, but still he touched his toes the prescribed number of times and twisted his muscular body about according to the ritual. He did so this morning a little more vigorously than usual, partly because he had sat up too late the night before and thought too much and smoked too much, with the result that he had risen heavy-eyed, at the present disgraceful hour, and partly because he hoped by wearying the flesh to still the restlessness of the spirit. Spring generally made __(D)__ restless, but never previously had it brought him this distracted feverishness. So he lay on his back and waved his legs in the air, and it was only when he had risen and was about to go still further into the matter that he perceived __(E)__ standing beside him. 4. "I'll send him to you," I said, "and you can have a talk and rough out the arrangements. (...) By Jove, __(E)__, you'll be thankful for this later on, when you realize what a bit of goose you're handing two young hearts in springtime." "Tiddly-om-pom-pom," said the relative waving a cordial toe and once more applying his lips to the bot. I did not let the g. grow under the feet. 5. "I wonder, old girl, if you remember me standing you dinner one evening years ago – or, rather, you standing me, as it turned out, because I was compelled to stick you with the bill – at a little place in Soho where they dished up a perfectly astounding Hungarian goulash?" "I remember. It was in the spring." "Yes. A lovely spring evening with a gentle breeze blowing from the west, the twilight falling, and a new moon glimmering in the sky. And we went to this restaurant and there was the goulash." Round 498 - 9 April 2012 Spring Fever Admittedly your Quizmaster is scraping the bottom of the barrel to some extent to come up with a Spring theme this week, but he is confident that when you figure out the spring connection everything will fall into place and all will be gas and gaiters. 1. She was a girl of chic and elan. One may go still further – a girl of espiéglerie and je ne sais quoi. She was dressed, as __(A)__'s experienced eye noted in one swift glance, in a delightful two-piece suit composed of a smart coat in fine quality repp, lined throughout with crepe-de-chine, over a dainty long-sleeved frock of figured Marocaine prettily pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with a small collar and kilted frill: a dress which, as every schoolboy knows, can be had in beige, grey, mid-grey, opal, snuff, powder, burnt wood, almond, navy, black and dark Saxe. Her colour was dark Saxe. (There followed two
paragraphs about the girl's hat, hair, shoes, stockings
and All these things the trained eye of __(A)__ noted, swivelling rapidly sideways, and swivelling rapidly back again. But it was her face that he noted most particularly. It was just the sort of face which, if he had not had his policy of Sane Love all carefully mapped out, would have exercised the most disturbing effect on his emotions. 2. As he was passing through the garden (...) he suddenly heard a girl's voice proceeding from the interior of a summer-house. And so musical was it that he edged a bit closer and shot a glance through the window. And, as he did so, he reeled and came within a toucher of falling. From where he was he could see the girl plainly, and she was, he tells me, the absolute ultimate word, the last bubbling cry. She could not have looked better to him if he had drawn up the specifications personally. He was stunned. He had had no idea that there was anything like this on the premises. There and then he abandoned the scheme of spending the next two weeks fishing: for day by day in every way, he realised he must haunt __(name of house)__ from now on like a resident spectre. He had now recovered sufficiently for his senses to function once more, and he gathered that what the girl was doing was reading some species of poetry aloud to a small, grave female kid with green eyes and a turned-up nose who sat at her side. 3. It was with a start that __(B)__ realised that the girl at the other end of the bench was crying. For the last few minutes, as far as his preoccupation allowed him to notice them at all, he had been attributing the subdued sniffs to a summer cold. "I say, you know," he said. (...) "Pardon me," he went on, "but you appear to be in trouble. Is there anything I can do for you?" She looked at him again – a keen look which seemed to get into __(B)__'s soul and walk about it with a search-light. Then, as if satisfied by the inspection, she spoke. "No, I don’t think there is," she said, "unless you happen to be the proprietor of a weekly paper with a Woman's Page, and need an editress for it." 4. The thing about her that hit the spectator like a bullet first crack out of the box was her sort of sweet, tender, wistful gentleness. Some species of negroid train-attendant had accompanied her through the door, carrying a cushion which he put down in the opposite chair, and she thanked him in a kind of cooing, crooning way that made my toes curl up inside my shoes. And when I tell you that with this wistful gentleness went a pair of large blue eyes, a perfectly modelled chassis, and a soft smile which brought out a dimple on the right cheek, you will readily understand why it was that two seconds after she had slid into the picture I was clutching my pipe till my knuckles stood out white under the strain and breathing through my nose in short, quick pants. 5. What he proposed to do, I need scarcely explain, was to keep after this tomato and bump up their ripening friendship to a point where she would be able to refuse him nothing. (...) To this end, accordingly, he devoted all his energies. He took __(C)__ to the Zoo, the Tower of London, Madame Tussaud's, five matinées, seven lunches, and four dinners. He also gave her a bunch of white heather, several packets of cigarettes, eleven lots of roses, and a signed photograph. And came a day when she said she must really buy back. She was sailing for America on the following Wednesday, she said, and on Tuesday she was going to give a lovely luncheon-party at her hotel suite and he must be the guest of honour. 6. "Its foundation is any good, dry champagne, to which is added liqueur brandy, armagnac, kummel, yellow chartreuse, and old stout, to taste." Round 499 - 18 April 2012 The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, Tra-La Well, to be frank, while most of the flowers brought to your attention in this week's Quiz are spring-bloomers, in one or two examples the season isn't specified. Or, as Ko-Ko went on to point out in the Act II quintet from The Mikado alluded to in this week's Quiz title, "The flowers that bloom in the Spring, tra-la, have nothing to do with the case." 1. For the little birds each Spring sing Aren't you coming back to __(name of place)___ Now it's April and the __(type of flower)___ are a-bloom? 2. A warm breeze blew languidly from the west and the sun shone royally on a grateful world; so that even Wimbledon Common (...) achieved quite a cheerful aspect and the garden of __(name of house)__, across the road from the Common, was practically a Paradise. So, at least, it seemed to __(A)__, strolling on the lawn. The trees that fringed the wall were a green mist of young leaves: a snow of appleblossom covered the turf of the little orchard: daffodils nodded their golden heads on every side. There was a heartening smell of new-turned earth, and the air was filled with mingled noises, ranging from the silver bubbling of a thrush in the shrubbery to the distant contralto of __(B)__ taking a conscientious singing lesson in the drawing-room. And such was the magic of the day that not even this last manifestation of Spring fever could quell __(A)__'s mood of ecstasy. 3. "Well, you've got the right sort of a job, haven't you! If I was a man, there's nothing I'd like better than to put in my eight hours in a rose-garden." She looked about her. "And this," she said with approval, "is just what a rose-garden ought to be." "Are you fond of roses – missy?" "You bet I am! You must have every kind here that was ever invented. All the fifty-seven varieties." "There are nearly three thousand varieties," said the man in corduroys tolerantly. "I was speaking colloquially, dada. You can't teach me anything about roses. I'm the guy that invented them." 4. __(C)__, as has been shown, was a young man a good deal given to dreaming of the girl who would one day come into his life and make it a thing of moonshine and roses (...) but he had never expected her to pop up out of a trap like this. (...) "You have such an amazingly attractive speaking voice. It reminds me of springtime and daffodils and young birds chirping on dewy lawns." "Oh?" It was beginning to be borne in upon __(D)__ that she was in the presence of an eccentric. "Well, that's fine, isn't it?" "It suits me," said __(C)__. 5. "Ruin stares us in the eyeball." (...) "He'll be thrown out." "On his ear. 'Chuck this man as far as he'll go, and I want to see him bounce twice,' ___(E)___ will say to the hired help. Unless I have an inspiration." "Oh, do try." "I am trying, and I think I'm getting the glimmering of an idea. But I shall need a few minutes' solitude if I am to develop it. I can't possibly plot and plan with you having conniption fits at my elbow. Leave me, child, I would be alone. Trot off and pick flowers." "How long?" "Short stalks." 6. For a Bonus Point, who won the prize for tulips at the Shrewsbury Flower Show the same year Lord Emsworth copped the first prize for roses? Round 500 - 26 April 2012 Half a Millennium Five hundred Wodehouse Quizzes! Why, that's very nearly half a millennium. 1. In this hall the youth of __(name of place)__ had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots. 2. If actors and actresses are like children in that they are readily depressed by disaster, they have the child's compensating gift of being easily uplifted by good fortune. It amazed __(A)__ that any one mortal should have been able to spread such universal happiness as she had done by the simple act of lending her brother (...) twenty thousand dollars. If the Millennium had arrived, the members of the (...) Company could not have been on better terms with themselves. The lethargy and dispiritedness, caused by their week of inaction, fell from them like a cloak. The sudden elevation of that creature of the abyss, the assistant stage manager, to the dizzy height of proprietor of the show appealed to their sense of drama. 3. "If I had my way, golf-clubs would make a rigid rule that no wife be allowed to play with her husband." __(B)__ nodded gravely. "Until this is done," he agreed, "the millennium cannot but be set back indefinitely, Although we are told nothing about it, there can be little doubt that one of Job's chief trials was that his wife insisted on playing golf with him." 4. "I couldn't get away before!" Then she stopped short and darted to the door listening. "Was that somebody coming? I had to cut a dance with Mr __(C)__ to get here, and I'm so afraid he may ..." He had. A moment later it was only too evident that this was precisely what Mr __(C)__ had done. There was a footstep on the stairs, a heavy footstep this time, and from outside the voice of the pursuer made itself heard. "Oh, there you are, __(D)__! I was looking for you. This is our dance." __(E)__ did not know who Mr __(C)__ was. He did not want to know. His only thought regarding Mr __(C)__ was a passionate realisation of the superfluity of his existence. It is the presence on the globe of these __(C)__s that delays the coming of the Millennium. 5. What momentous event caused Wodehouse to recall, "I was plugging along like this, the wolf still outside the door but sticking around and licking its lips in a meaning manner, when suddenly everything changed. The sun shone out, the United States Marines arrived, and the millennium set in."? (NOTE: The above extract is from the American version of the book. The British version was considerably shorter – "I was plugging along like this, when suddenly everything changed and the millennium set in.") 6. Not exactly a Bonus Point, but a change of topic question. Following the April 22nd unveiling by The (American) Wodehouse Society of a commemorative plaque at Wodehouse's gravesite on Long Island, we're looking for the subject of a painting and accompanying plaque in a portrait gallery: "You will be the laughing-stock of the county." "I don't know why you say that. There will be a plaque, don't you call them, at the side of the picture (...) People will be too impressed to laugh. (...) __(F)__ says she will lend the gallery a tone. He says at present it is like the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's." |