But quiz answers first. Round 5: women writers.
Question 1: whose first novel had an epigraph by John Milton, and was sub-titled The Modern Prometheus? This should have been easy. And it was. Although the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in 1818, almost all of you knew the answer to this question was, of course ...
Mary Shelley. 'The Gordon Ramsay Story' was not an answer we were expecting, but the host of Hell's Kitchen undoubtedly has form when it comes to bringing fire to humanity, so yes, Atom, we can see the underlying logic there. If we squint hard enough.
Question 2 focussed on a wizard with a mobile home. You all knew the Studio Ghibli film, based on the brilliant Diana Wynne Jones's original novel - but did you know who the moving castle really belongs to? Howl? Howell? or Hwyl? No, you didn't.
The answer was 'Howell'. Howl's from Wales, and that's his real name (not Hwyl: he's not that Welsh). 'Howl' is just a homophone. Bit of a trick question perhaps - but what did you expect? It is about a wizard. Huge kudos to Mr Carter who was the only person in the entire school to get this one right.
Question 2 gave you three Howls: Question 3 gave you three Georges - but which of them launched a scathing attack on silly novels by lady novelists and compared women writers to a donkey playing the flute?
Most quizzers thought it was George Bernard Shaw's characteristically cutting wit: but it wasn't. Others opted for George Orwell (there's a memorable donkey in Animal Farm, after all). But it wasn't him either. No, the author of this scathingly sexist comment is actually George Eliot, lampooning the Victorian women writers whose popular romantic fantasies made them so successful, and to whose standards she was determined not to stoop.
Romances and children's books were some of the first genres in which women were able to make a living as professional authors. And books for children bring us to Question 4: the women writers who have held the post of Children’s Laureate. Could you name any of them? You certainly could, with Julia Donaldson, Cressida Cowell and Lauren Child proving the best known: we were very impressed.
Question 5 was more challenging. Which writer has been played on screen by Catherine Keener and Sandra Bullock?
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| Keener (left) in 'Capote'; Bullock (right) in 'Infamous' |
The answer was not the acerbic and witty Dorothy Parker - one of the legendary writers and wits who gathered at the Round Table in New York's Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s, and played by Jennifer Jason Leigh in Alan Rudolph's Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle.
Nor was it Patricia Highsmith, whose novels have often been filmed - The Talented Mr Ripley, Strangers on a Train, Carol - but who has so far only been the subject of a documentary, Loving Highsmith.
No - the correct answer here was Harper Lee, in two films about the novelist Truman Capote's non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood. Lee, who knew Capote from childhood (he's Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird) accompanied the novelist to Holcomb, Kansas, where he followed the investigation of a brutal family murder, and the eventual arrest and execution of the crime's perpetrators. We were impressed by how many of you got this right, until one of you revealed why: 'she was the only one I'd heard of'. Ah well: at least you've heard of them all now.
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| Truman Capote signs copies of 'In Cold Blood': Harper Lee reminds him what his signature looks like ... |
You had a multitude of ideas for the author whose characters included a medium, a giant, and a blacksmith’s son. J K Rowling was a popular choice ('only because it isn't Jane Austen', reasoned Mrs Cummings). And it really wouldn't surprise us at all if the Potterverse contained all three of these somewhere.*
Other suggestions included Cressida Cowell, Ursula Le Guin, Daphne du Maurier, and - plausibly - Agatha Christie. But the answer we were looking for here was the late, great Hilary Mantel. Medium? Alison Hart, the central figure of Beyond Black.
Giant? The eponymous hero of The Giant O'Brien, Mantel's re-imagining of how O'Brien's bones ended up in the Hunterian Museum.
And blacksmith's son? This is, of course, Putney's finest: Thomas Cromwell, whose rise and fall Mantel traced so vividly in the Wolf Hall trilogy.
The writer whose TED talk We Should All Be Feminists was sampled by Beyoncé in 'Flawless' was, of course, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, and we were delighted that almost all of you knew this.
You were less certain which writers were the first to share the Booker Prize: Margaret Atwood, obviously, but with whom? Not Hilary Mantel - she and Atwood are both among the four writers to have won the prize twice, but not both at the same time. Not Rachel Kushner either, although she's twice been shortlisted, for The Mars Room in 2018, and Creation Lake in 2024.
No - the correct answer was Bernardine Evaristo, whose Girl, Woman, Other shared the prize with Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, in 2019.
‘Being an American is not just a pride we inherit, it’s a past we step into and how we repair it’: we were super-impressed that so many of you recognised this couplet from Amanda Gorman's magnificent The Hill We Climb.
And when and where, at the age of only 22 did she deliver it to 33.8 million people? That was at the inauguration of President Joe Biden in 2021. Different times.
Our first question was about a first novel - and so was our final one. Whose first novel was published under the pen-name Victoria Lucas? A few of you opted for Philip Larkin, who did indeed write under a female pen-name ('Brunette Coleman'). Jane Austen - who published as 'A Lady' - had no takers (not even Mrs Cummings).
The correct answer was, as almost all of you knew, Sylvia Plath, who chose to publish The Bell Jar under this pseudonym in the US, to protect the many individuals, including her mother, doctor and fellow patients, who were the basis for characters in her autobiographical novel. And at the end of this round, we had Theo and Freddie joint in third place, Mrs Cummings leaping up to second, and Max S once again in the lead.
And so to our final round, Mr Gardner's Literary Cryptic Crossword. Seven clues for seven plays, and one more for their author. We were incredibly impressed by how many of you got all of these right. For those of you who didn't, here's how you could have worked them out.
ACROSS: 6, 4d: Part for ruler at Angelo’s court? (7, 3, 7)
The definer - the bit of the clue that actually tells you what you're looking for - usually comes at the start or the end of a cryptic clue. Here's it's at the end - 'Angelo's court' - and nudges you in the right direction: a play where a character called Angelo is in charge of a court. That ought to ring a few bells - especially after Mr Anthony's production a couple of years ago.
But if it didn't, you could still deduce it from the rest of the clue. A 'part' is a unit of measurement by ratio: for instance, bread dough is usually five parts flour to three parts water. A ruler is another tool for measuring. Two 'measure's, with 'for' in between them gives you …
Measure for Measure, in which the errant Duke of Vienna skips town leaving puritanical deputy Angelo in charge (big mistake - huge).
ACROSS: 7, 3d When Christmas ends in farce? (7, 5)
'Farce' is the definer - so you know you're looking for a comedy. And when does Christmas end?
Twelfth Night, of course.
ACROSS: 8 Errant king who gets back what he lost for every one hundred and fifty points (8)
This time, the definer's at the beginning: so you're looking for a play with an 'errant king'. To find his name you first need to think of something you can lose - such as your reputation (or 'rep' if you're particularly down with da kidz). 'Gets back' tells you to flip the letters around: 'rep' reversed is 'per'. You've got your first syllable. 'One' plus a 'hundred and fifty', in Roman numerals (ICL) - gives you your second and the start of your third. Cap that with a couple of 'points' of the compass - here, East and South - and you get
Per-icl-es - prince, and later 'errant king', of Tyre, who wanders around the Mediterranean in search of his lost daughter, Marina.
ACROSS: 12 Roman general is unsocial or agitated (10)
The definer's at the start: you're looking for a play featuring a 'Roman general'. His name is 'unsocial or agitated'. 'Agitated' tells you this is an anagram (an anagram shakes up or 'agitates' letters to turn them into new words). The words you need to re-arrange here are 'unsocial' and 'or': give them a quick shake(speare) and they turn into
Coriolanus, the proud Roman hero who defects to the enemy when he feels under-appreciated and unloved.
DOWN: 1, 10a Poet the morning after command; one hearing what a sea-storm does at Brighton, Eastbourne or Southend? (7, 11)
The definer is 'poet'. Given that the intro to the crossword tells you all the other answers are works by the same writer, by now, you ought to have figured out who he is. Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, Pericles, Coriolanus - this can only be ...
Just kidding. But if you don't know the name of the bard, how do you get there? This one is particularly ingenious, so take a deep breath and here we go.
'the morning' is 'am' (as in am/pm). It's 'after command, one' - which means: put the letters 'am' after a word meaning 'command' ('will' - you can 'will' someone to do something) and the letter 'I' (which is the Roman numeral for one). That gives you Will-i-am.
What does a storm do? It shakes things: and if it's a 'sea-storm', and you're in Brighton, Eastbourne or Southend, one of the things it's likely to be shaking is a pier. 'Hearing' tells you this is a pun - so it will sound like 'pier' but it'll be spelled differently. Hmm: what could that be??? There's only one answer:
Will-i-am Shakes-peare.
DOWN: 5 Drama when police returned nuisance after article (3, 7)
The definer's a bit vague here ('drama') - that's the late plays for you - but the rest of the clue helps to narrow it down. Another word for the police, in London at least, is the 'Met' (from 'Metropolitan Police': or the 'feds', in modern parlance). 'Returned' means you reverse the letters - so you get 'tem'. Another word for a 'nuisance' is a 'pest'. And 'article' means 'a' or 'an' or 'the'. And that gives you The Tem-pest.
DOWN: 9 Disinclined to welcome valiant Venetian (7)
The definer's at the end here: you're looking for a play that features a 'valiant Venetian'. Interestingly, many of Shakespeare's plays are set in or around Venice (prompting theories that the playwright might once have travelled in Northern Italy). But few of the characters in them are valiant. So that should help filter the field. 'To disinclined' means you need to reverse (disincline) the word 'to': so it becomes 'ot'. Follow that with a word meaning 'welcome' - 'hello' - and you get Othello.
Intermittently valiant ('I am not valiant, neither/But every puny whipster gets my sword'), and, unfortunately for Desdemona, all too easily misled.
DOWN: 11, 2 Bespoke comedy (2, 3, 4, 2)
This one's neat and simple: again, the definer's at the end. You're looking for a 'comedy'. The clue is only one word - 'bespoke' - which is a word used when something is made according to your preferences - or 'as you like it'. And that's your answer!
And so now, with all the cryptic clues solved, there's only one mystery left. Who is our mighty winner, our champion of champions, defeating all comers over an epic seven rounds? Could it be? - is it possible?? - is this the year of the three-peat????
Yes!!!! In a promising omen for Gilks House, a three-peat it is. For the third year in succession, our World Book Day Quiz prize goes to the absolutely unchallengeable Max SWINNERton. Congratulations!!!!!
Theo, Freddie, Mr Carter and Mrs Cummings - you came close - but you just can't beat nominative determinism. Or Max's extraordinary breadth of knowledge and erudition. Huge thanks to everyone who participated in this year's quiz, and to all of those teachers who submitted questions: we hope you had fun, and congratulations to all of you on your inventive and entertaining answers. Next year - it's all up for grabs!
*There's Zacharias Smith. And Hagrid, obviously. But is there a medium??? Answers on a postcard please ...
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