Questions and Answers, 31-60

'I've scrabbled up and down embankments of varying sizes on a number of occasions - what might be termed "_____ _______".'

See ../sdc2005/q32/sdc_ab5.gif
What is this map designed to show? (Bonus Q: Which colour is best?)

What was the last date on which the British prime minister shared his first given name with that of a subsequent (different!) British prime minister?

A trapeze artist is in a sketch artist. What's a passenger in?

Alcatraz : Parker pen :: gulyas : ?

Hair is to dove as lip is to thread as tooth is to?

Consider the many terms coined in AUE to express commonalities across the Great Pond: "transpondian", "transpondental", "transpondal", etc. The "cross-the-pond" notion is also expressed in the name of a rock magazine founded in 1974 and a rock album popular thirty years later. But there's another common feature shared by the name of the magazine and the name of the band that released the album -- a feature also possessed by a Rightpondian catchphrase of the late '90s. Name the magazine, the band, the catchphrase, and the common feature.

On a cool October day, a colonel sat down and talked to an orphan. The orphan said he had 75. The colonel said he had 75 too. Then along came a sad-looking spider. How many did the spider have?

A certain four-letter word for "copulate" which starts with 'f' (you know the one: this is not a trick question, at least not in that respect) was changed in the American version of a book to the name of a country. Which country?

Some will be tempted to pronounce my name with the "foreign a" vowel. In one job I commissioned a famous series of anatomically correct wax figures, NTTAWT. I held an oxymoronic position in society and was the first to observe an oxymoronically named substance, though Northern Europeans got the credit (because of bias?). I got in trouble by sympathizing with the wrong side in the Post-Bastille period, but lived to an age similar to Ron's present age. I died of a fall in the street (or of a stroke [according to other sources]). Who am I?

See ../sdc2005/q41/sdc_ab3.jpg
What are the two words that have been blanked out on the sign by the door?

What information has been removed from this poem? Bonus sheep for telling us in rhyme.

William Henry's face is red,
He's in a dreadful rage.
Two quite naughty words he said
All about Matilda Page.

William Henry's nearly six
And has ceased to care for toys.
With the girls he does not mix
He's a boy and plays with boys.

But Matilda Page to-day
With her doll he chanced to meet,
Smiling in a pretty way
Very pink and very sweet.

Bob and Harry, Dick and Ned
Saw and laughed, and called him "Kid".
William Henry's face grew red.
Can you wonder that it did?

Florence Hoare

See ../sdc2005/q43/sdc_skip.jpg
What three words have been removed from the photo?

A band with a name evoking bygone technology reworked a seasonally appropriate song. They made a minor change, replacing an empty flight with a signal to make a pit stop (or words to that extent). What was the song and what was the change?

There is a root of English words that, possibly with affixes, can have any of the following meanings. What root?

acquire
area
hooking up
insanity
insoluble
sign
stretching
pull
volume

See q46/sdc_b.html

List the biscuits according to a system of your choosing.

In which country might you expect not to find any stairs?

Create a non-complex, non-compound English** sentence that maximises the number of diaereses and umlauts. Proper names are not allowed.

**i.e., the sentence is idiomatic and only contains words that are accepted in mainstream English, i.e. they can be found in a standard desk dictionary.

How did Jim diagnose Elizabeth's condition?

The following sentence follows a strict rule; write another sentence, substantially different from it, that follows the same rule.

Go put needles in his pus.

Ireland: Guinness and fighting
Wales: Sheep and dirt
Scotland: Haggis and scotch eggs
England: ? and ? and ?

You can get from Java to Santiago de Tolú by way of Madeira including the wine. Please explain how this statement is true.

Using Google Maps, find two points with as many steps as possible in the directions from one to the other.

http://maps.google.com/ or any page within the maps.google.com site

In this picture -- ../sdc2005/q54/sdc.mysterybling.jpg -- what is going on, and where, and who are the people in the picture?

What memorable musing did a student from California supposedly make in Heidelberg?

[See attached page.]

A hooker, a maiden, 3 liters of champagne, Mrs. Pitt, plus Chuck Foster's obsession. Name the bachelor!

There's a building (C) in Holmfirth, Macclesfield, Chippenham, Bognor Regis and Northampton (and elsewhere, probably, though I haven't found any outside England) that connects two words (A and B) that I learned this year. A is a psychological condition which used to afflict Frenchmen; B occurs in the Gerlish-sounding expression "to go B".

Name A, B and C.

Let's talk about four women authors...

a) This one is alleged to have had a child resulting from a brief affair with the then Prince of Wales. Her major literary effort languished for 40 years before it was "rediscovered" and achieved a much greater degree of popularity. During her life she was associated with two very different modes of transportation and achieved great fame for achieving a "first" with one of them.

b) This one is also known primarily for one book, the writing of which was driven in part by the loss of her child to an accident with his hobby. The book got turned into a movie which gave it a wider audience than the original oeuvre.

c) This one was part of a literary family. Amongst others she wrote a book whose title referenced a variegated reptile and another book whose title referenced incendiary trees.

d) This one married into aristocracy but soon split from her husband. She went on to have a romance with another man that featured prominently in the movie made from one of her books. Despite being nearly two decades older, the speculation is that she shared another lover with (a) above, but this individual may just have been a good friend to both of them.

The main thing that associates these 4 women authors is that they all lived (and wrote about) a location where you would never expect to find such a concentration of literary talent.

Can you name this country and the authors?

Find a seven-letter word to add to this set:
comic crazy rabid rabbit hussar