Extremely difficult quiz questions

First topic message reminder :

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. ?

The motto might be, "Even if you're not looking for trouble it will somehow manage to find you."

But here's a smile for Friday, which somehow reflects the efforts of the Brexit Three:

Fifty years ago in Britain advertising of domestic products and remedies for common ailments was no less active than it is today, though some of the once-familiar names may have since disappeared.

What products are or were associated with these trade-names?

Amami ....
AJS ....
Beechams' ....
Bryant & Mays ....
Carter's ...
Charnos ....
Crimplene ....
Decca ffrr ....
Dolcis ....
Ekco ....
Fry's ....
Gannex ....
Gibbs SR ....
Ilford ....
Jantzen ....
Lenthéric ....
Magnet ....
Maidenform ....
Olivetti ....
Pathé ....
Player's ....
Singer ....
Tootal ....
TWA ....
Vincent HRD ....
Welgar ....
Yardley ....

Off the top of my head - please excuse the omissions for now...

Amami .... hair care
AJS .... motor bikes
Beechams' .... powders
Bryant & Mays ....safety matches
Carter's ...liver pills
Charnos ....
Crimplene ....trousers
Decca ffrr ....records
Dolcis ....shoes
Ekco ....radios
Fry's ....chocolate ( and the Five Boys!)
Gannex ....raincoats ( as worn by H. Wilson, Esq.)
Gibbs SR ....toothpaste
Ilford ...photographic film
Jantzen ....swimming costumes
Lenthéric ....perfume; aftershave
Magnet ....self-build kitchens
Maidenform ....
Olivetti ....typewriters
Pathé ....newsreel films
Player's ....cigarettes ( Number 6 if you were short on cash)
Singer ....sewing machines
Tootal ....men's shirts
TWA ....Trans-World Airlines
Vincent HRD ....
Welgar ....shredded wheat
Yardley ....perfumery

I should by rights put question marks against some of those, but I feel I have a few correct - as I should at my age...!  

Unquestionably enough correct results there for a pass-mark with distinction.  
(Such delicacy about stockings and female undergarments. The Vincent Black Shadow was a formidable motorcycle.)

Remarkable how quickly we stop thinking about brands once they are no longer advertised.

I think I can recall Chandos , now you mention it. (More than a hundred years ago, my grandmother used to live in Chandos Street, Stratford E.15!)

But never heard of Maidenform ( although now it looks guessable).

Now I know Vincent was a 'bike do I recall its name being mentioned when motor-cycle scrambling used to be on TV? Or wasn't it that sort of machine?

Thanks for the memories, ow!

Only four footballers have ever scored a goal in two different FIFA World Cup Final ties. Three are still alive.

Who was the fourth, who is sadly no longer with us...?

Just about the only footballer of that class whose name I actually recognise is Brazil's Pelé.

Pele is indeed one of the three living holders of the record .

The other two still with us are (West) Germany's Paul Breitner and France's Zinedine Zidane.

Any takers on the now deceased goal scorer?

As the geezer is dead, it's likely that his achievement was some years ago. Brazil had a very strong team for many years from the late 1950s onwards, and they scored five goals in the 1958 final, so maybe it was another Brazilian player? Has anyone heard of Edvaldo Jizídio Neto?

Thanks for the pointer, Ivan.  Knowing that reveals (courtesy of Wikipedia) that  Vavá scored for Brazil  in the final of both 1958 (twice) and 1962 (once), thus becoming the first player to score in the final of two different world cups. To this day, only four players achieved this feat, the other three being Pelé, Paul Breitner and Zinedine Zidane.
Vavá, real name Edvaldo Jizídio Neto.  Pelé real name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento.



I thought this was meant to be difficult, Phil. The Under-Butler didn't even perspire.

and now for something completely different:

What links these ten English locations, please?

Dunkirk (Kent); Pevensey; Poling; Rye; Ringstead; St. Lawrence IoW; Southbourne; Swingate; Ventnor IoW; and Worth Matravers.

Being dim, it is only football questions which are on my radar chain, ow.

Congrats , nevertheless, to both you and Ivan for responding correctly.

Sorry to have taken the Under-Butler - however briefly - from his duties...

Another week, another teaser ...

The Guardian Review quoted a short extract from the published diaries of a well-known writer.  Can you name that individual - and the missing word or words?


"The day of the referendum, I spend sitting at the kitchen table correcting the proofs of my diaries, finishing them on Friday morning before going to {clue deleted!} in despair.  I imagine this must have been what Munich was like in 1938 - half the nation rejoicing at a supposed deliverance, the other half stunned by the country's self-serving cowardice.
Well, we shall see."

" Where else would I go, but Yorkshire...?"

I thought they preferred to say "to the foot of our stairs" in that part of the world, Phil.

Certainly an expression of somewhere in the frozen North, ow.

My mother suggested it was a Lancashire saying - along with the likes of  " I'm so annoyed I could write 'bum' on the wall and slap it..."

Shocking! You can see what an upbringing I had...

"Mueller", "Piech", "Porsche" and "Poetsch". each have reason to feel positive about two British Army officers whose names were Colonel .... and Major ....

(Who, and why?)

Col. Radclyffe and Major Hirst, apparently -  who assisted in the revival of VW and turned it into a major motor car manufacturer from more humble beginnings...

Answered with Teutonic efficiency as ever, Phil. Yes, the second World War had perhaps been made inevitable through the savage economic reprisals inflicted upon Germany by the victorious allies after the First World War.  

Blueprints found by the British Army in the smouldering wreckage of the VW factory enabled it to be rebuilt, and "Beetle" production resumed, so that post-war recovery enabled Germany to feed its own people.

Interestingly, other German goodies were directly appropriated by the British Government.  The Leica IIIc was copied in every detail by the London optical specialists Reid & Sigrist, but cost so much to produce here in Britain that nobody could afford to buy one.  Similarly BMW cars were reproduced in Bristol at a former aircraft factory, and a production-line at Birmingham BSA was created to build exact copies of the BMW shaft-driven motorcycle. Here it was called a Sunbeam. (Stop laughing at the back there, it was quite a clever name!)

Who is the odd person out, and why?

Raphael, D H Lawrence, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ingrid Bergman.

Ingrid Bergman was a girl, Ivan.

But you were probably thinking of a different difference, so I'd eliminate DH Lawrence.

Perhaps someone else would like to tell us why his birthday isn't shared with the others.

Perhaps someone else would like to tell us why his birthday isn't shared with the others.

It would seem not. As you've worked out, D H Lawrence is the odd one out. Raphael, Roosevelt and Ingrid Bergman all died on their birthday. Lawrence didn't, but his wife (Frieda von Richthofen) did.

Ingenious. "von Richthofen " is a name I associate with the between-the-wars Flying Circus which toured Europe in biplanes.

I doubt if this is likely to stump the sage, but here's another task....

Can you make a link between a real jazz musician, a fictitious woodwork teacher, and an equally fictitious police dog-handler?

This has the smell of Beiderbecke about it...

Very good. Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931) was an American who, during his very short life, was a jazz cornet player.

The police dog-handler?

Was it Terence Rigby in Softly, Softly...?

It was indeed. Just so that any readers know what we're talking about.....

'The Beiderbecke Affair' was a TV series in which 'Likely Lad' James Bolam played a woodwork teacher and Terence Rigby played a character called 'Big Al'. (The head teacher, Mr Wheeler, reminded me of a pious little jobsworth that I had to suffer for nearly ten years!) In an earlier series called 'Softly, Softly, Taskforce', Rigby played a police dog-handler. That was probably around the time that Michael Heseltine was murdering his mother's dog.

"Yeah, Oi were just gonna say that", he lied.  

I wasn't in the UK for 1970s TV, though I'm not inconsolable for that from what I have learned subsequently about 1970s TV.

But I did know about Bix Beiderbecke and his piano-playing relative Dave.

I have come across many headteachers and their victims.

Sometimes the roles were reversed and the head ( usually an ineffective leader and manager) was haunted by a teacher who was the bete noire.

Such situations are often protracted, very corrosive, and take their toll on the sanity and health of those involved.

That said, seeking resolution of the situations ( including the recommendation of severe action against an individual) provided me with a lucrative living, although I still wonder about how some of the surviving 'participants' remain affected.

But I've finally called time on all that...

Another week, another brain-teaser. Not merely "difficult" but impossible for anyone expecting the answer to pop up on Google.

Schoolboys are notoriously cruel about physical defect, and devise nicknames designed to wound anyone falling short in the physical appearance department. Two of my teachers found themselves labelled (1) Wireless Willie (that's the easy one for you to work out), and (2) Peggie. Why do you think he attracted that soubriquet? (Nothing to do with any "feminine side", just what he looked like).

Who can be sure, but would this be a reference to a 'peg leg' - ie did the fellow have a 'wooden leg'?

Or did he have disproportionately long legs compared to his trunk?

(ebay)

'Wireless Willie' puzzles me so far as physical peculiarity is concerned....

Irrespective - take a detention and a hundred lines of 'I must show proper respect to my masters'...

A Masterly response as always, Phil.  "Peggie" indeed from peg-leg, a description often appended to someone with a wooden leg.  I don't know whether our Maths teacher actually had a prosthetic limb, but since one of his knees visibly did not articulate he was obliged to walk with a distinctive lop-sided gait.  What my normally sympathetic Mum called "dot and carry one" when I described it to her.

"Wireless Willie" was an innocuous Divinity master who must have suffered with a hearing defect.  Nowadays we are used to such folk having a near-invisible miniature device powered by microchips, but that poor fellow wore a complete headset such as you see in use by DJs and sports-commentators. Against evil little monsters such as we were then, he never had a prayer.

What a debt our modern population owes to the NHS.

"...a debt our modern population owes to the NHS."
.

As indeed I again discovered on Sunday when I dislocated a finger while trying to stop a ball booted into touch at a football match I was watching! Took me back to my goalkeeping days when the same finger suffered a like fate ( one of several).

I was in and out of the nearby hospital within 90 minutes - thanks to a speedy radiologist and two highly efficient nurses who successfully pulled in opposite directions until there was welcome 'click'.

My gratitude, as always, to them all....

This week large numbers of us have improved our knowledge of the map of the United States. Those straight lines around land-locked States are particularly noticeable to a European eye, but the left-hand side has always been defined by the great Pacific Ocean.

The odd tourist who chose to explore that indented coastline by driving up Highway 101 may have been intrigued to see a collection of American youths loitering around Gas Stations with a handwritten cardboard sign reading, "Garden work needed". These scruffy young men are more likely to be carrying a guitar than a shovel, and would not fit into any category headed "sons of toil" so obviously "Garden work" is some kind of code.

For what ...?

Maybe they were looking to get close to some 'weed' - ie cannabis?

Not that I have any experience of the subject....

Whenever I see the word 'weed', I think of this specimen:-

Indeed. Indeed. Having led a sheltered life myself, I was astonished to learn from the popular press about marijuana cultivation on the West Coast of America in farms which are referred to there as "Gardens".

I don't know how they refer to the egregious Gove there, but it seems entirely fitting that a place can nevertheless be found for him in the floundering Tory administration.

That little reptile and John Major must both have been prime candidates for a 'duffing-up' behind the bike sheds, or a hefty tackle face-first into the mud on rugby afternoons...    

Additionally , step forward Alan Duncan and John Redwood for some equally painful and thoroughly well-deserved revenge.

And don't get me started on Jacob Rees-Mogg...

Here's a potentaially tricky one for one's Under-Butler :

(Daily Mail  - sorry!)

Who are the competing teams?
Where and when?
Name each of the three players players in the picture.
What was unique about the game?


What was the name of the linesman's cat?

The Under-Butler was less than pleased at being interrupted whilst explaining the offside rule to the pantry maid, but mainly wanted to know whether Madrid are "real" (or presumably imaginary).

Names shouted from behind a closed door included Gil Merrick, England goalkeeper and William Eckersley, neither of which can be found in Debrett.

Evidently Mr Merrick is not available for questioning as he died in 2010 aged 88, damn his impertinence.

I hesitate to enquire further.  You just can't get the staff these days can you, as I'm sure readers will be aware.