Firstly, I must apologise to certain pubs in the areas of Hampton Hill and Richmond which did not receive their usual deliveries of London Drinkers. I wasn’t very well; in fact, when I phoned my GP for an appointment and described my symptoms, I was told to dial 999 instead of going to the surgery. This I duly did and the upshot was that I was incarcerated in Kingston Hospital for a month (5 December to 4 January) with two rather serious bacterial infections in my pleural cavity (between the ribs and lungs) which took two chest drains, some pretty powerful antibiotics (drip fed for three hours a day) and several CT and ultra sound scans which seem to have driven them off but left me well short of my (already low) usual levels of athleticism. I’m not after sympathy (except perhaps for having to spend both Christmas and New Year in one of those funny frocks which open at the back).
I’m now home but still far from being back to normal, so I’m making no apologies for rummaging through the archives and recycling the following puzzles. If you want to go through the full back listing of LD on the web, feel free, but don’t expect any hints from me about how far back to search.
Right, let’s have some number puzzles:
- 5 FOWC of JF
- 21 RSTTH
- 2 S in a Q
- 8 HB on NA
- 10 FO in a HP
- 4 F on the GWC (or BB)
- 12 T of I
- 9 I per T in a G of B
- 3 LM from S (from the M by G and S)
- 6 H on a CP
This time for 5BY4 I have tautologically reverted to the Guinness Book of Hit Singles again and come up with another list of hits. All you have to do is match them to the performers in the second list:
- Another Part of Me A. Sam Cooke
- Another Suitcase in Another Hall B. Phil Collins
- Another Brick in the Wall C. Walker Brothers
- Another Saturday Night D. Queen
- Another Day in Paradise E. Mike and the Mechanics
- Another Cup of Coffee F. Michael Jackson
- Another Day G. Paul McCartney
- Another Tear Falls H. Barbara Dickson
- Another Night I. Aretha Franklin
- Another One Bites the Dust J. Pink Floyd
And so we come to the next bit; call it general knowledge, call it trivia, call it what you like. All you have to do (or not if you don’t want to) is answer these questions, maybe even correctly:
- As we all know, Elaine Paige’s real name is either Elaine Bookbinder or Elaine Bickerstaff but which? And by what name is the other one better known?
- Currently riding high in the Formula 1 championship (well maybe not currently, now) the Brawn team was bought by Ross Brawn (formerly of Ferrari) from which company?
- The first series of American manned space flights was named Mercury; what was the name of the following series of two man flights?
- After Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing, when did the third man to conquer Mount Everest do so? And, if you are really clever, who was he?
- And talking of mountains, which mountain was first conquered by German geographer Hans Meyer in 1889?
- What do Michael Faraday, Karl Marx, Jacob Bronowski and Michael Redgrave all have in common?
- And similarly, what is the link between Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Makepeace Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Harold Pinter and Anthony Trollope?
- Amid much publicity, a brand new A1 Peppercorn class steam locomotive was recently completed. What is its name?
- And still on locomotives, apart from Mallard, how many A4 Pacifics have been preserved?
- What is the name of the area of west Lancashire between the rivers Ribble and Wyre?
If there is anything in the above that has become out of date since it was first published, I apologise. I’ve been ill, you know (a lot more ill, they tell me, than I realised at the time). Back to normal next time (with luck).
Andy Pirson
As usual, here are the solutions to the puzzles set in the December/January Idle Moments column:
Number puzzles:
- 13 Metres to the First Hurdle in the Women’s One Hundred Metres Hurdles
- 12 Sides on a Pound Coin
- 8 Blue Triangles on the Union Flag
- 241 Tudor Brick Chimneys on Hampton Court Palace (All Different)
- 4 Underground Lines at Waterloo Station
- 1246 Points Scored by Jonny Wilkinson in International Rugby Matches
- 21 Strings on a Kora
- 3 Atoms in a Molecule of Carbon Dioxide
- 24 Tiles in the Countdown Numbers Game
- 36524 Days in the Nineteenth Century
5BY4:
- KL: Walking on Sunshine [Katrina Leskanich]
- LM: “Wanderin’ Star” [Lee Marvin]
- MN: Monkee [Michael Nesmith]
- NO: Portuguese footballer [Nelson Oliveira]
- OP: Maharajah of the Keyboard [Oscar Peterson]
- PQ: Bird of a Feather [Pauline Quirk]
- QR: WW1 pilot (son of Teddy) [Quentin Roosevelt]
- RS: Mrs. ‘Wall of Sound’ [Ronnie Spector]
- ST: ‘Little Master’ [Sachin Tendulkar]
- TU: Actress – one of Three of a Kind [Tracy Ullman]
General knowledge:
- The claim to fame of Pangong Tso Lake in the Himalayas, about 160km long, one third in Ladakh (India) and two thirds in China, at an elevation of 4,225 metres (13,862 feet), is that it is the highest salt water lake in the world.
- When the original Globe Theatre burned down in 1613, the play (attributed jointly to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher) being performed was Henry VIII.
- In the December 2021 Idle Moments column, we learned that the total number of gifts ‘my true love gave to me’ was 364. 184 0f them were birds.
- And of the gifts, 40 in total were inanimate; just the gold rings.
- The real name of English singer Eden Kane, who reached No. 1 in the charts in 1961 with ‘Well I Ask You’, is Richard Sarstedt.
- When you were at school (over 50 years ago for some of us), that funny glass thing in the fume cupboard in the chemistry lab that produced hydrogen on tap, was Kipp’s Apparatus.
- And over in the physics lab, the device with two spinning wheels that created big sparks was a Wimshurst machine.
- After the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, when he said to his wife Nancy, ‘Honey, I forgot to duck’, he borrowed the line from American boxer, Jack Dempsey.
- The three Gloster Gladiator biplanes that, for several weeks, formed the aerial defence of Malta in 1940 (until supplemented by Hawker Hurricanes) were called Faith, Hope and Charity.
- Isla Mann, Sue Narmey, Ephraim Spitchurs, Gus de Wind, Haley Scommit and C View all share the distinction of having (among others) submitted correct entries for the London Drinker Crossword.