This week’s fiendish Round Blogworld Quiz question (see the previous ones and their solutions here) has been sent in by expert puzzler Adelephant. As usual, find the link between these cryptic clues. A point for each item you get, and an imaginary cream bun if you get them all. If you get the link straight off, please don’t give it away too early!
Here’s the question then:
What connects Lowe’s paradoxical advice with: a ‘tuppence’ mystery and Bradbury’s carnies. A forerunner to Dracula. Where Sylvia’s sea god stays. Life six centuries after Ford. And something that Sting and Anthony Burgess have in common?
Clues will be given as necessary, and the solution will appear later.
Is it to do with paternity? Was Anthony Burgess Sting’s Dad?
Fathoms, fathers – Lear?
So, Nick Lowe – ‘Cruel to be Kind’, foreunner to Dracula – ‘Varney’?
Good start Steve. Not saying more than that at this early stage…
Tommy and Tuppence – Christie?
Cruel to be kind is correct, Steve. The Dracula one is not. Explain your fathoms, you sound like you are on the right track.
Keep going….
What’s that drug in ‘Brave New World’ called? Is there a Huxley link here?
‘Full fathom five’ – I think Plath linked this to her Father. Is there a Tempesty, Leary thing here? I once had a mercifully short relationship with a Plath an when I was a student in Manchester. She used to get me to drive her to Hepptonstall every bloody Sunday to gaze at Sylv’s grave – not what I had in mind as a hot date.
You’re progressing well, Steve – I think maybe you need to ponder it until you’ve got the full answer, but try to resist giving it away too early in the comments!
OK. I’ve got to go and teach the religious influences on the New Model Army for two hours now, anyway. Er, does anyone know anything about this?
Is it a palindrome?
Incidentally the drug is called soma.
I’m wasting far too much time on this nonesense: I should be concentrating on the English Civil War. I need aversion therapy.
Burgess wrote a novel about Shakespeare called Nothing Like the Sun. Sting had an LP with the same title.
Yes!
Sting was very good in that Potter play, wasn’t he? ‘Spread a Little Happiness’ – not something you’d ever accuse Plath of.
Sting and Burgess – it is a tattoo link? Do/did they both have the ‘Fighting Temeraire’ inked across their buttocks?
Not to my knowledge Steve, though anything is possible. Somewhere above there was a right answer though I’ve lost track of where.
The clues all reduce to classic phrases. Warm or cold?
MM: I have another good palindrome Ed?
Ed: I’ve had quite enough of your palindromes for one lifetime, thankyou MM
MM: Sorry Ed – only trying to bring a bit of mirth to this thing…..
You’re above freezing.
Huxley’s Brave New World is the 600 years A.F. Is the paradoxical advice “Don’t tell him, Pike!” uttered by dad’s Army’s Capt. Mannering (played by Arthur Lowe) when Pike is asked to give his name?
Right about the first part. Fantastic answer for the latter part, but sadly not right.
By the Pricking of My Thumbs. Something Wicked this Way Comes.
Correct!
Well, this is probably completely wrong, but the clues reduce to phrases from that Stratford chap (to practise some oneupmanship), with the exception of “a forerunner to Dracula” which stubbornly remains a noclueboyo here. Cruel to be Kind … Taken at the Flood … Something Wicked This Way Comes … ? … Full Fathom Five … O Brave New World … Nothing Like the Sun … Unless the answer is that they’ve all been used as the titles of other works.
Well done Mark! You’ve got most of it!
Goodbye, cruel world – staff meeting ahoy.
Alas, the world calls. I’ll add another guess: If on a Winter’s Night, by Sting, so Burgess has the sun to himself.
Not this time, Mark.
I think between you you’ve got it all except the forerunner to Dracula.
The world called and having called, moved on. “A forerunner to Dracula” might be another phrase straight from the man, The Primrose Path – an early novel of Stoker’s.
Indeed it is! Well done!