Idle Moments

Idle moments – Feb/Mar 2023

January 21, 2023
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Well hello again and may I (be probably the last to) wish you a Happy New Year. After the momentous events of 2022, here’s hoping that, in 2023, life will become a bit less frenetic – apart from a coronation of course. I was a bit too young to have any real memories of the last one, though I do remember receiving my commemorative mug and bowl from the fines raised by the mums in our street for the celebrations. I’ve seen the photo of me at the street party but I don’t really remember it (no, not p**ed, just three years old). Hopefully, I shall retain sufficient marbles to remember this one for a while. Yes, I am that old, although I wasn’t when I started inflicting this rubbish on you!

Anyway, enough of the wittering (no, not the place near Chichester); let’s have some

Number Puzzles:

  1. 40 FO in a Q
  2. 3 C of W have B with E
  3. 4 CL of TT
  4. 3950 M is the PR of the E
  5. 3 F on QM
  6. 20 Y to a PWA
  7. 1 L of LJS
  8. 1659 R of RC (TD) as LP
  9. 2 MSP of the M (to D)
  10. 1558 D of QM

Well, I hope you enjoyed solving those. Did you notice the two ‘QMs’? Pure coincidence.

Now it’s 5BY4 time. This month I have chosen the UK’s ten longest rivers. Can you sort them into the order of the lengths in the second list? 

1.River Ure/River Ouse (Yorkshire)  A. 220 miles
2.River Trent                       B. 215 miles
3.River Spey                        C. 185 miles
4.River Thames                      D. 155 miles
5.River Clyde                       E. 143 miles
6.River Nene                        F. 129 miles
7.River Severn                      G. 117 miles
8.River Tay                         H. 109 miles
9.River Great Ouse                  I. 107 miles
10.River Wye                        J. 100 miles –

*I would note that the Rivers Ure and Ouse are counted as a single system. This is because the Ure flows straight into the Ouse without another tributary where they join.

And so we come, with awful inevitability, to Trivial Knowledge. I started off with the idea of popular (?) astronomy but quite quickly ran out of steam with that and so I ended up with the old standby of dates. All of the questions from 6 to 10 refer to events occurring in the first three months of years ending in three:

  1. Together, what do the three stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka form?
  2. What is the significance of the two stars Merak and Dubhe?
  3. By what name is Ursa Minor Alpha commonly known?
  4. What is the best known publication to come from Ursa Minor Beta (and who published it)?
  5. Who owned the (first) guitar that bore the legend, ‘This machine kills fascists’?
  6. The wearing of seat belts in cars became compulsory on 31 January, but in what year?
  7. On 3 February 1913, the sixteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. This gave the power to impose and collect what form of taxation?
  8. Red Rum won the first of his three Grand Nationals on 31 March but in what year?
  9. On 6 March 1983, Australian Christopher Massey attained a world speed record of 143.18 mph. What activity was he pursuing?
  10. Alcatraz maximum security prison in San Francisco Bay was closed on 21 March, but in what year?

So there we are then. There’s another Idle Moments ready for your amusement (other descriptions are valid). If you manage to find anything else more entertaining to fill the next couple of months, I shall do my best not to be offended.

By the way, in case you are interested, I have been going back through the back copies of LD (all available on london.camra.org.uk or in my loft). The Idle Moments column first appeared in March 1988 but, until August, the column comprised just non rhyming limericks. The first number puzzles appeared in September of that year.

Andy Pirson

As usual, here are the solutions to the puzzles set in the December/January Idle Moments column:

Number puzzles:

  1. 2 Feet is the Length of a Middle C Organ Pipe
  2. 20 Threads Per Inch on a Quarter Inch Whitworth Screw
  3. 200 Balls in a Hundred Cricket Match
  4. 297 Millimetres is the Length of A Four Paper
  5. 1928 Ten Shilling Notes First Issued in Great Britain
  6. 36 Feet is the Width of a Tennis Court
  7. 4 Bails on a Cricket Pitch
  8. 210 is the sum of the Numbers from One to Twenty
  9. 1847 Quarter To Seven [Oh what a silly billy; that should have been 1845]
  10. 345 Steps to the Top of The Monument


5BY4: ducal family homes:

  1. Duke of Westminster – Eaton Hall, Cheshire
  2. Duke of Rutland – Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire
  3. Duke of Marlborough – Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire
  4. Duke of Devonshire – Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
  5. Duke of Bedford – Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire
  6. Duke of Beaufort – Badminton House, Gloucestershire
  7. Duke of Richmond – Goodwood House, Sussex
  8. Duke of Wellington – Stratfield Saye House, Hampshire
  9. Duke of Northumberland – Syon House, London
  10. Duke of Norfolk – Arundel Castle, Sussex


General knowledge:

  1. Collectively, Athol Guy, Bruce Woodley and Keith Potger were the Seekers and, of course, the missing person is the lovely Judith Durham (who sadly passed away in August 2022).
  2. Thought by some to be a totally loopy motorbike, the 2.5 litre Rocket 3 is the top of the Triumph range but the first company to sell a Rocket 3 model (of a mere 750cc engine capacity) was BSA. Triumph (a partner company) called their 750 three the Trident.
  3. And thinking about motorbikes, the company famous for its Chief and Scout models was Indian.
  4. They claim that ‘What made Milwaukee famous’ is a beer but the motorcycle manufacturer that really made Milwaukee famous is Harley-Davidson.
  5. The first recording of the song ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ which topped the American Billboard chart in 1949, was the ‘singing cowboy’, Gene Autry.
  6. And who first had a hit with in the UK? This was a trick question; there is no record of ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ in the UK charts.
  7. Before the song came the book. ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ was written by Robert L May and was published in 1939.
  8. The first display of Christmas lights in Oxford Street was in 1959, preceded by Regent Street in 1954.
  9. According to the National Christmas Tree Association (of America), the first written record of a decorated Christmas tree comes from 1510, in Riga, the capital city of Latvia.
  10. Of course, it is widely reported that the Christmas tree was introduced into Great Britain by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (mainly the former). They were married in 1840 (on 10 February).