Palindrome
The eight answers in this round form a palindrome. That is to say, if the answers are seen collectively as a single string of letters (disregarding spaces, punctuation and capitalisation), it will read the same forwards and backwards.
1 Which two-word term was popularised by a 1948 Robert Heinlein novel of the same name, which inspired a science fiction franchise centring on a character named Tom Corbett? This term came to have the alternative meaning of “someone disconnected with reality”.
2 What name is shared by a Ben Affleck film starring Matt Damon as a marketing executive for Nike, and a French band that released the song Sexy Boy?
3 Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes spent much of their honeymoon in which city, whose beggars were the subject of a poem by Plath containing the lines: “Underwhite wall and Moorish window / Grief’s honest grimace, debased by time, / Caricatures itself and thrives/ On the coins of pity”? An ITV comedy series named after this city ran from 2007 to 2018.
4 Which word fills the blank spaces in these two quotations? Firstly, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet: “One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to _____ Nature” and secondly, from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation’s Edge: “Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can _____ everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.”
5 I is to C.A.E. as VI is to Ysobel as IX is to what?
6 Anthony Gonsalves, Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Amar Akbar Anthony, makes a nonsensical speech including the line: “a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity”. This is a reference to Benjamin Disraeli’s description of William Ewart Gladstone as “A sophistical rhetorician, _____ with the exuberance of his own verbosity”; which word should fill the blank space?
7 What is the name of a canine companion of Batman and Robin dubbed the “Bat-Hound”, which is also found in the title of a 1994 comedy film that, according to a Buzzfeed article, “marked the full-fledged incorporation of transphobia into movie comedies” and the name of a Swedish pop group who had a platinum No 1 single in the UK in 1992.
8 Which word, which appears in the name of a button on a computer keyboard, precedes “for Sale” in the title of a children’s book by Esphyr Slobodkina?
Flipped
Insert the answers to the clues below into the two rows, so that the bottom row appears identical to the top row but flipped 180 degrees (little to no handwriting contortions should be required to do this). For example, the word “dooms”, when flipped, appears as “swoop”.
The clues are given in order, though lengths are not provided. Do not insert a space between answers. Do not use a capital letter in any answer unless there is a reason to do so (for instance, you should still capitalise the first letter of a person’s name or part of a title).
Top row
1 Precedes “down”, “stroke” and “burst” to make words
2 Liqueur
3 Defecate
4 Surname of aptly named man who voices the title character of Waffle the Wonder Dog
5 In one’s own right: “___ jure”
6 Short name shared by footballer known as the “fourth pyramid” and British long-distance athlete born Hussein Abdi Kahin
7 What do you call two rows of cabbages? A dual cabbageway!
Bottom row
1 Reverse the effects of
2 ___ Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood
3 Candy floss is made from ____ sugar
4 Lower-case letter, the most frequently occurring in these 14 answers
5 Surname of admiral after whom Oregon’s highest peak is named
6 Abbreviated units of measurement
7 Countryside, crisps, music and slugs
Wordsearch poem
Find the surnames of 19 Booker prize-winning writers hidden in this poem (including its title). They may be found forwards or backwards, and may be separated by spaces, line breaks or punctuation.
Teaching Brooklyn Children, New York
The butterfly theorem I’d roguishly write.
“You clots!” I raved. “Is a two odd?”
“Barely odd,” spoke a cherub, enshrouded in light,
With a look, right at me, and a nod.
So I dared, like a lawyer accusing, to murmur,
“Doc Holliday: was he a killer?”
Raffishly this boy said, now somewhat firmer,
“That piglet! Rampaging tooth-filler!”
“Is ‘Crush Dieppe’ (used as a dig at Dieppe) biased?
Is Chernobyl ‘evil still dormant’?
Elbrus, Schneeberg, Erebus – which one is highest?
Spy for Honda at Jeep – an informant?”
Take four
In this round, each question has two answers, which are spelt identically except that four of the same letter have been removed from the first answer to make the second answer. For instance, one pair of answers could be “Possess” and “Poe”.
1 A major city on the river Neckar; maltose, for example
2 The state of being shamelessly brazen; a surname shared by a short-lived leader of Ukip and the author of the novel Room at the Top
3 Tittering; object
4 A word for dynamism which is among the shortest valid English words it is impossible to play in Scrabble; a name that precedes “Mia” to make the name of the singer of the 2015 song Do It Again and precedes “mater” to make the innermost layer of the meninges
5 German castles (in an anglicised plural); the first name of a footballer who scored the winning goal in the final of Euro 2022
6 A mobile virtual network operator; a prefix used in units of measurement
7 Carol Kaye and John Entwistle; something used for enticement
8 Very eager; the first département of France in alphabetical order
Spot the links
1 Which country is the first name of a freedman executed in 1822 for planning a slave uprising in Charleston, South Carolina, and is found in the name of a London street nicknamed “Tin Pan Alley”?
2 Which surname is shared by an actor who played Zoe in the TV science-fiction series Firefly, a Grey’s Anatomy character who according to Gay Times “became the longest running LGBTQ character in TV history”, and a striker who in 2007 joined Liverpool for what was then a club record fee?
3 Two different pronunciations of which word mean “low in pitch” or “a type of fish”? The word is also the surname of a noted designer of film title sequences.
4 Which two-letter first name precedes “X” to make the name of an Australian singer-songwriter whose songs include Berlin, and precedes “Cooder” to make the name of a guitarist who produced the album Buena Vista Social Club?
5 “Width”, “wagon”, “stand” and “leader” can all follow which word to make new words?
6 Which word derives from the Latin for “sand” and originally denoted part
of a Roman amphitheatre that was covered with sand to soak up the blood from combat? It is the surname of an Australian pop star whose songs include Chains.
7 Meanings of which word include “rim of a cask”, “be in accordance”, or “one of a set of objects designed to make sounds when the wind blows”?
8 Meanings of which word include “an act of inhaling smoke”, “someone or something tedious” and “pull with force”?
9 Which first name is shared by Biff Tannen’s grandson, who appears in Back to the Future: Part II, and a comedian who played Bambi Gascoigne in an episode of The Young Ones?
10 Meanings of which eight-letter word include “hippy”, “lover of classical music” and “a cat such as the Turkish angora, the Birman and the Persian”?
11 The authors of Jemima J, Party Going, The Fault in Our Stars and An Essay on the Applications of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism share which surname?
12 “Spy”, “eye”, “hour” and “fibre” can all precede which word to make new words?
13 Which word may follow “Linton”, “Lambton” or “Mongolian Death” to make the names of three fearsome legendary creatures?
14 Which first name is shared by a snooker player nicknamed “the Jester from Leicester” and an informant nicknamed “Deep Throat”?
15 Take a word meaning “consisting of two things”. Find within this word a French preposition with its accent removed, and replace this preposition with its opposite. Which word results, meaning a place where sheets of paper are joined?
16 Which botanical term, found within a nickname of the Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram, is the title of the love theme from the 1976 film A Star
is Born as well as a song originally performed by Westlife, which Will Young covered for his debut single?
What links the answers to ...
1, 2 and 3?
3, 4 and 5?
5, 6 and 7?
7, 8 and 9?
9, 10 and 11?
11, 12 and 13?
13, 14 and 15?
15, 16 and 1?
* * *
ANSWERS
Palindrome
1 Space cadet
2 Air
3 Benidorm
4 Interpret
5 Nimrod (Enigma Variations)
6 Inebriated
7 Ace
8 Caps
Flipped
Top: sun; ouzo; poo; Hound [Rufus Hound]; suo; Mo [Salah and Farah]; pun
Bottom: undo; Won; spun; o; Hood [Samuel Hood]; oz; nouns
Or:
s u n o u z o p o o H o u n d s u o M o p u n
S n u o n z o d o o H o n u p s n o W o d n u
Wordsearch poem
1 Brooklyn children (Paul Lynch, Prophet Song)
2 York (Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things)
3 theorem I’d roguishly (Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist)
4 clots!” I raved. (Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other);
5 “Is a two odd?” (Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin and The Testaments)
6 “Barely odd,” (Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha)
7 cherub, enshrouded (Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member)
8 look, right (Ben Okri, The Famished Road)
9 lawyer accusing (Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang)
10 murmur, “Doc Holliday (Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea)
11 killer?” Raffishly (JG Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur and Troubles, winner of the Lost Booker prize)
12 piglet! Rampaging (Yann Martel, Life of Pi)
13 ‘Crush Dieppe’ (Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children)
14 a dig at (Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger)
15 biased? (Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss)
16 Chernobyl ‘evil (Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger);
17 dormant’? Elbrus (Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies)
18 Schneeberg, Erebus (John Berger, G.)
19 Honda at Jeep (Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient)
Take four
1 Stuttgart; sugar
2 Brassiness; Braine [Richard; John]
3 Tee-heeing; thing
4 Pizzazz; Pia [a Scrabble set contains only one z and two blank tiles]
5 Schlosses; Chloe [Kelly]
6 Giffgaff; giga
7 Bassists; bait
8 Gagging; Ain
Spot the links
1 Denmark [Denmark Vesey; Denmark Street]
2 Torres [Gina; Callie; Fernando]
3 Bass [Saul Bass]
4 Ry
5 Band
6 Arena [Tina Arena]
7 Chime
8 Drag
9 Griff [Rhys Jones]
10 Longhair
11 Green [Jane; Henry; John; George]
12 Glass
13 Worm
14 Mark [Selby; Felt]
15 Bindery
16 Evergreen [“Evergreen city of India”]
Links
1, 2 and 3: straits
3, 4 and 5: can follow “contra-”
5, 6 and 7: meanings of the word “ring”
7, 8 and 9: mythical creatures with their last two letters removed [chimera, griffin, dragon]
9, 10 and 11: follow “Professor” in musicians’ stage names
11, 12 and 13: homophones when translated into French [verre; ver; vert]
13, 14 and 15: can follow “book”
15, 16 and 1: end in other answers to this round [Ry; Green; Mark]
