Extremely difficult quiz questions

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This extremely difficult quiz question is possible to answer using the internet, lets see who gets the correct answer first.

What is the name of the cottage next door to The Crown & Anchor pub, near Kilnsea, East Yorkshire. ?

I can still recall sitting watching it in the living room at home on a small black-and-white rented TV , while Mum busied herself making the tea, and Dad - just home from his office - probably grumbling about the Labour Party and the Unions as he invariably did...

Ah, the rented TV! We had a 17-inch set and the five of us were sat shoulder-to-shoulder watching the debut of some new pop group from Liverpuddle in 1963. But alternative entertainment came from a steamy drama in Parliament involving a Mr. Profumo.

Ah, yes -that! I seem to recall Dad feeling the entire blame lay with Christine Keeler - and doubtless Mandy Rice-Pudding. But then, a Tory Minister could do no wrong in his eyes - unlike the Beatles, who were apparently responsible for everything from the loss of Empire to winter flu epidemics...

However, we await the next difficult question . Some of us with trepidation...

Which is the only Beatles' hit single with a title that starts and ends with the same letter?

Depends how you define 'hit'.

'Strawberry Fields' was a big single in Britain. although it was a competing 'A-side' with another song which escapes me just now - was it 'Penny Lane'? Some people may remember it as having the suffix 'Forever' in the title, but I don't think it was on the label. Although I should know - I bought it way back.

'Yesterday' was probably a hit single somewhere in the world at some point although I think it was an album song here ( 'Hard Day's Night'?) .

'Twist and Shout' and 'Nowhere Man' I remember as album tracks, but they could have been singles in other countries, too...

I think 'Nowhere Man' was John Major's nickname?  

I found the question in a free monthly magazine that gets stuffed through my letterbox. The answer I came up with was 'Twist And Shout', so having thought of that I didn't look any further - and I didn't check the answer in the magazine. I've now done so, and it says 'Yesterday'. I can only assume that the question-setter meant to say one-word title, and I will send a gentle rebuke by e-mail to the magazine later!  

'Penny Lane' was indeed on the same single as 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. I've never seen it called just 'Strawberry Fields', but who knows?

Let's try another question from the same source and hope that the answer is beyond all reasonable doubt:-

Which is the only capital city in the world that begins with the letter 'i'?

I've checked it and it was indeed 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. The memory fades as the years pass...

Ivan wrote:Which is the only capital city in the world that begins with the letter 'i'?

Ask Osama Bin Laden.  Oh, we can't can we?  He doesn't live there anymore.

A national capital or a state capital, I wonder?

And a lower case 'i' ? Sounds tricky to me.

An obvious answer would be Islamabad but I suspect that is far too simple a response, given the mysterious lower case clue - which plants in my mind somewhere in the Middle East , although , beyond that, I am as without hope as a refugee charity box in Pease Pottage Conservative Club...

Islamabad is the correct answer. The lower case was not significant, just the way the question was written in that wretched magazine! (Maybe another rebuke is needed?)

What 63-letter German word officially ceased to exist in 2013, and what did it mean?

Nicht sprechen deutsch - so I looked it up:

I am not a German speaker either, but I am not going to beef about it.

Some may think it could be the German translation for the phrase  'Compassionate Conservatism' since that would clearly now be wholly redundant...

"Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz", which means (as I'm sure everyone was already aware) "the law for the delegation of monitoring beef labelling". As the EU has lifted a recommendation to carry out BSE tests on healthy cattle, the word is now defunct.

Certainly manages to beat our ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM for length, but who's boasting?

Don't forget Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch on Anglesey (sorry, Ynys Môn).

The name translates as "St Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St Tysilio of the red cave".

Why am I reminded of the old schoolboy joke : " This is my girlfriend Virginia. I call her Virgin for short - but not for long..."

Some more football questions....  

1. Who was the first goalkeeper in the history of the F.A.Cup to score a goal?

2. Who had the shortest 'reign' as manager of a football league club?

3. Which team was knocked out of the F.A.Cup twice in the same season by different teams?

Short of an internet trawl I can do no better than a first stab to assist others with better knowledge :

1. I seem to recall it was a non-league 'keeper - possibly in a preliminary round of the cup -who has the distinction. Not sure I ever knew his name.

2 Unless somebody has been even more unfortunate wasn't this Leroy Rosenior at ?Torquay a few years back?

3. Don't know the team but it sounds like it would have been in 1999/2000 season when Manchester United withdrew form the FA Cup at the behest of the FA in order to take part in the World Club Cup Championship as a ruse to get and win a 2006 World Cup bid for England by the ever-greedy Football Association.  Ergo, it must have been a team from the bottom two divisions ( or lower)  - Doncaster?

Respect!

I am sure no respect is due.

If I have anything right, it still wouldn't warrant a cigar...!

Plenty of respect due for those answers.....

1. The goalkeeper was Tony Roberts, who scored for Dagenham & Redbridge against Basingstoke in one of the qualifying rounds in 2001.

2. Leroy Rosenior was manager of Torquay for 10 minutes in 2007 before a new board took over and sacked him.

3. Darlington was knocked out of the F.A.Cup in the second round in the 1999-2000 season, only to be drawn as 'the lucky loser' and get a game in the third round, which they also lost.

I've wasted more of my life on trivia than I thought...

The yokels in the local are currently embracing an alternatively-shaped ball game. Normal service will no doubt resume before long.

The Tories currently sharing a joke in Manchester are no strangers to the good things in life - champagne and caviar, it goes without saying. But what is your own choice of a toothsome little treat at the dining-table? My personal weakness is for a European-grown edible that can cost as much as £450 a kilo when it has been aged for at least five years, £70 for the younger 3-year variety, or £12 for 100 grams (3½ ounces) at Waitrose next time you're in there.

What am I talking about?

truffles?

Not an essential for my taste, and do truffles improve with age?

Could it be prosciutto crudo, all the way from Parma, which is often served with melon?

(As we're on the subject of posh nosh, I had an oyster for the first time in my life when in Germany recently. I can't say that it was a memorable experience.)

It positively could be prosciutto crudo, though there is an awful lot of mediocre ham about carrying that description.  What I find irresistible is the Spanish version called jamón iberico de bellota.  Pigs roam as they please in the dehesa oak forests, feasting on acorns.  Air drying concentrates the flavour, but reduces the weight so the resulting top quality leg of ham is half bone, hence the fancy price of slices from it.

In Germany last month, I had an altercation with two passengers who were occupying our reserved seats on a train from Stuttgart to Koblenz and refused to give them up. It was in one of those claustrophobic, six-seater compartments ("die Abteile", as they say in Germany), which unfortunately they still use on some long-distance trains. The standoff continued until the ticket inspector called, and he made them move.

This incident reminded me of an essay written by a left-inclined, Yorkshire-born novelist and playwright many years ago. Here are some extracts:-

“I have sat, more than once, in a railway carriage with black murder in my heart. At the mere sight of some probably inoffensive fellow-passenger my whole being will be invaded by a million devils of wrath.

There is one type of traveller that never fails to rouse my quick hatred. She is a large, middle-aged woman, with a rasping voice and a face of brass. Above all things, she loves to invade smoking compartments that are already comfortably filled with a quiet company of smokers; she will come bustling in, shouting over her shoulder at her last victim, a prostrate porter, and, laden with packages of all maddening shapes and sizes, she will glare defiantly about her until some unfortunate has given up his seat.

Then there are the simple folks who are for ever eating and drinking in railway carriages. No sooner are they settled in their seats when they are passing each other tattered sandwiches and mournful scraps of pastry, and talking with their mouths full, and scattering crumbs over the trousers of fastidious old gentlemen.

Beware of the elderly man who sits in the corner of the carriage and says that the train is two minutes behind time, for he is the Ancient Mariner of railway travellers, and will hold you with his glittering eye.”

Who wrote the essay?

Just a guess, as I haven't actually come across this particular gem from the Bradford bard previously:



Otherwise I'd choose the obvious alternative, Allan Bennett.

Grrh....

And I thought the question was so difficult that I needed to post a clue in the form of a veiled reference to possibly Priestley's most famous work - an extended allegory which many GCSE students study, the film of which provided a role for Alastair Sim.

Okay, so what was the name of the character which Sim played in that film?

Ah, yes indeed, Alastair Sim who lent his name to the memory-card required for mobile telephones.  Frequent star of Ealing Comedies, though he didn't live in that West London suburb, he is best remembered for his trans-gender role in "The Belles of St. Trinian's" film.  With that enduring mental image it's not easy to recall much else from a successful screen career.


©

What was the name of the character which Sim played in that film?

Released in 1954, the film, based on a Priestley play, is about the investigation into the apparent suicide of a working class woman. I would have expected that a sage living on the south coast might know the name of the character which Sim played....

Perhaps an Inspector should call and ask questions about a harbour town in Dorset...?

O.K.  I can take a hint.

What is it?

Who was this?

- Born in Austria in 1909, fled to Britain in 1939.
- Worked for the BBC World Service monitoring German radio broadcasts.
- Guessed correctly in 1945 that Hitler was dead, because an upcoming announcement on German radio was prefaced by a Bruckner symphony written for Wagner’s death.

Was this a woman who wished to save her bacon...?

Or, more likely, one Ernst Gombrich...?

1939, or 1936, but troubled times anyway. Britain (and the less cautious USA) profited mightily from the flight of intellectuals out of Hitler's Germany.

The odd thing is that that class of person does not seem to be as valued if they are coming from the Middle East in 2015.

It was indeed Ernst Gombrich, who is probably best remembered for his comprehensive but easy to read volume entitled 'The Story Of Art'.

Whilst on the subject of art, which sixteenth century painter added a superfluous foot in one of his works?

This appears to be Pieter Bruegel in The Peasant Wedding - a little matter I would never have known from simple memory, of course.