Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder.

Ah yes, where was I with this, before I was so rudely interrupted having to write a load of games and stuff?

"My only topic of inquiry is: which young female is your jogging partner?"

And, for a bonus:

"Thank you for your offer of a match ticket at Stamford Bridge; but I find the prospect undiverting."

An ophidian alliance thrives. It will speed, fracture and approach a national boundary.

And for a bonus:

We may encounter one another en promenade. Should I appear consistently lachrymose, please pass me without acknowledgement.

How would you assess my inferior musical performance -- would you boycott it?

And for a bonus:

A wealthy metropolitan appreciated his fortune but found his life generally hollow and unhealthy.

OK, this one's still pretty easy but not quite so (I think): somewhat older.

I put in a 24-hour shift to meet my unavoidable expenses (it's rather grim),
Which leaves me with a zero discretionary income (what a pity).

My deliberately blank expression is inscrutable, inscrutable; inscrutable to him.

An easy one to start off with...

(I think it was venta who came up with this idea.)

I'm interested to learn what people think a vowel is. For reasons that will be explained further down the post, once you've done the poll!

[Poll #1575745]

( Why are you even asking this? )

Also I'm interested to know, people who are knowledgable about other languages, whether they handle these things more sensibly?

We had our biannual Neighbourhood Watch quiz on Monday, and this time got pipped by our nemeses the teachers based at #81-- bah! We've so far alternated winning with them, across the five quizzes that there've been.

There was one good round that I thought I'd share with you, if anyone's interested. It was just one question:

There are 10 current countries whose English names are exactly four letters long. Name them.

Not counting dependencies such as Guam, dead entities such as USSR, provinces such as Gozo, names in their own languages that are not their usual English names such as Eire. Just proper countries, none are trick.

We got 9 on the night, and annoyingly it was one of the better-known ones that we missed. Gah!

See how many you can think of (no Googling etc) -- it took four of us to come up with 9, so I reckon if you can get more than 6 by yourself you're doing pretty well. Post yours in a comment here, and whoever does best will get a wonderful prize¹.

---

1 Legal notice: whoever does best will not get a wonderful prize.

Our quiz streak has come to an end, or (as I prefer to see it) been interrupted -- after winning the Copdock pre-school one, the last one at the Nelson (they concentrate on food instead during the summer), and the Neighbourhood Watch one, we only ran-up at the Dove beer festival quiz.

I'd like to say (although it isn't true) that this was because we were musing over a curiosity of usage that popped up in one of the earlier questions. See what you make of it!

The question was "What is unique about the Edradour whisky distillery?"

And the answer was "It's the smallest distillery in Scotland."

Now this made me feel quite uneasy, but I'm not sure why. Clearly being the smallest does in a sense make it unique, in that there can be only one that is the smallest, and this is that one. But it seems to me that "unique" should require more than that.

Thinking about it, I think that for "unique" to be satisfying, it must be a quality that only one thing possesses, but that others could do -- they just happen not to. Eg. Edradour might be the only distillery with red roof tiles, or the only one owned by a cat, or the only one that begins with "e".

So things like "the smallest" which is just one extreme of a continuum along which they all lie, don't count. Nor does any other quality of which there must always be exactly one example -- this seems to me like a "trivial uniqueness", for which there ought to be a different word.

[Poll #1195623]

The other day I posted a summery music quiz, and ( here are the results )
Classics all! -- although not necessarily in a good way, in all cases.

A good spread of scores: dr_bob 6, wimble 8, thecesspit 9, brixtonbrood 10, fractalgeek 12, and bibliogirl a mighty 14 to take the (imaginary) trophy. Thanks all for taking part!