Valentine’s Quiz – Femmes Fatales
Results
Joint winners this time so congratulations to
Mick Mike
It was very tight at the
top, with just two marks covering the top six entries. In a dead heat for first place were Mick and
Mike, both with 19, followed by Merry (with help from Panikos) and Sue, both
with 18, then by Terry and Keith, both with 17 and Bill with 15.
Good entries too from
Eccles, Sylvie and BrownFurby – thanks for your interest: hope you all found it fun.
Nearly
everybody got the maximum on the History and Cinema sections, but Literature
turned out to be tricky – best scores on this were 3 from Mick and Merry. On Opera, Sue and Keith both got 4 and Merry
had 4 on Song. Two questions stumped
everyone: no. 10 where Adrian Mole was
the teenager – 13¾ to be exact – and his idol was Pandora Braithwaite, and no.
15 where the singer Lulu was the extra clue to Lulu in the controversial opera
by Alban Berg.
And here
are all the answers:
Historical
- Helen (sculpture by Canova
above), of Troy. The face that
launched a thousand ships, according to Doctor Faustus in the play by
Christopher Marlowe
- Elizabeth, Tudor, Queen of England.
- Mary Queen of Scots: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland
- Nell Gwyn (above). Mistress of Charles II. After the latter’s death, his brother,
James II, granted her an annual pension of £1500
- Diana, Princess of Wales
Literature
- Maud from ‘Come into the
garden, Maud’, poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Tess of the
d’Urbervilles. In the novel by
Thomas Hardy, Tess dies with Angel Clare at Stonehenge
(above)
- Jane Eyre. In the novel by Charlotte Bronte
(above), Jane is reunited with Rochester
after his house burned down and he badly injured
- Lorna Doone, from the novel by
R D Blackmore about an outlaw’s daughter, beloved of John Ridd
- Pandora Braithwaite, from The
Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
Opera
- Carmen. In the opera by Georges Bizet, Carmen is
murdered by Don Jose at the bull fight (typical poster above)
- Aida. In the opera by Giuseppe Verdi, Aida
shares the fate of her lover, Radamès, who is buried alive as a traitor
- Madame Butterfly, from the
opera by Giacomo Puccini.
Cio-Cio-San, who works as a geisha (above), is abandoned by an
American husband, Lt Pinkerton
- Norma. [anagram of ‘Roman’] In the opera by Vincenzo Bellini, the
high priestess, Norma, is executed on a pyre with her unfaithful Roman
lover, Pollione
- Lulu. [namesake of the singer] In the opera by Alban Berg, after
murdering her admirer, Lulu escapes to London where she is herself killed
by Jack the Ripper
Cinema
- Elizabeth Taylor. After early appearances in Lassie films,
Elizabeth Taylor made her name in the 1944 film National Velvet,
before going on to a wide variety of Hollywood roles, eventually winning
two Oscars (for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?)
- Mary Pickford (above). American actress specialising in ‘little
girl’ roles and co-founder of United Art
- Betty Grable. After the title of her best known
film. She became the US forces’
favourite pin-up in World War II, which she helped to win, according to
Eisenhower
- Grace Kelly. Leading lady for Alfred Hitchcock, her
last film being To Catch a Thief, before marrying Prince Rainier of
Monaco
- Marilyn Monroe (above). After the title of the Billy Wilder
classic Some Like It Hot, in which she starred with Tony Curtis and
Jack Lemmon
Song
- Molly Malone. In the popular song by James Yorkston,
Molly, a Dublin
fishmonger, wheeled a wheelbarrow
- Peggy Sue. In the 1957 golden hit song by Buddy
Holly (above)
- Greensleeves. Song said to be composed by Henry VIII
- Michelle. In the 1966 song by The Beatles – ‘ma
belle, these are words which go together well … très bien ensemble’
- Mrs Robinson. From the Simon and Garfunkel sound-track
to the 1967 film The Graduate (publicity still above)
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