wiki-illiam #104: q8

[dubdobdee]

Q8: What:
i: is also a game using 28 marbles?
ii: formed part of a linear horticultural decoration?
iii: are typically preserved in seasoned butter in Lancashire?
iv: when released in America, suggested involvement with Christine Keeler?
v: are geographically confusing names of what is neither one thing nor the other?
vi: pelecypod was perhaps familiar to the pupils (and their successors) of Rev Thomas Langhorne?
vii: did the man from the Borough regard as the invariable accompaniment of poverty?
viii: legs are found in unbaled water together with tangled lines?
ix: nominally, has blue representatives in another kingdom?
x: when baked too brown, must sugar his hair?

the rules as they have evolved:
a: nice full answers and anecdotes if poss
b: say if googled or no; leave time for non-googlers to play
c: obviously look ahead at future questions if you want
d: don't bring in confirming or dissenting answers from other fora until next set is up and running

spoilers x is the lobster in the alice in wonderland song "the lobster quadrille" (as sung by the walrus and the carpenter); kingdom in ix i bet is eg animal or vegetable or mineral kingdoms

Comments

[cis.livejournal.com]

ii. cockleshells? as in 'silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row'.

v made me think of the dublin bay prawn but perhaps perhaps not?

[cis.livejournal.com]

and i just checked with me da and the potted shrimp is indeed a lancs speciality, as in 'morecambe bay shrimp', so that could be well iii.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok i think we got the theme then = shellfish

[cis.livejournal.com]

fun fact: 'dublin bay prawn' is also known as 'norway lobster', when as any fule kno it is actually SCAMPI the langoustine.

SCAMPI!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

joffe lifts a finger, etcetc

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok i am offnet most of the day in BECKENHAM -- voa googlin of obvious things to google in this list i have determined the theme (i think), and the answer to x is a good start!

is iii shrimps? it's a long time since i was in lancashire, and shrimps seems a bit more universal than purely lancastrian -- so something like shrimps but more typically local?

[cis.livejournal.com]

vii = i suspect a dickens ref, as dickens wrote those novels that were set in the borough didn't he, and were probably grim on the subject of poverty, although which ones they were I have no idea.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Oysters! It's from the Pickwick Papers.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

Peking duck is duck though??

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

are you getting confused with mock turtle soup?

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

ah, i was thinking i. was solitaire with the marbles in a cross shape, or possibly ker-plunk, but neither of these are shellfish...

also re: ix, are sea cucumbers blue? they are animals...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i make it 32 (6 in each arm of the cross, surrounding 8 in a 3x3 square, with the middle empty), but either way, not 28...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

isn't it 9 in the cross? Or is that some kind of prog version like the 4x4 rubik's cube.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

ha, i have just drawn it on a piece of paper as obviously attempting to google "solitaire" is a fools errand, stupid microsoft, the card game is called PATIENCE...

that said the smaller one looked more correct to my eyes...

[cis.livejournal.com]

wikipedia insists that marble solitaire is actually played with pegs. whattttt

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

oh, the one i played with round my granny's had pegs, marbles are the posh version, obv ;)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peg_solitaire

"Peg solitaire" INDEED.

But anyway you are right. Also sadly there is no 28-marble variant called "Mussel" or anything like that.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Sea cucumbers come in all sorts of colours. Also, sea cucumbers have ANAL TEETH, to stop fishies swimming up their bottoms. But they're not shellfish.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

hmmm, i'm guessing goose barnacles don't count as a switch from one kingdom to another either...

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Kingdom suggests that it is from animal to plant or fungus or bacteria or ALIENG. Is that Kingdom? Classification of THINGS has about three million layers.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

yes or MINERAL. So we want a (a|p|f|b|a|m) called "Blue [crustacean]"

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

BLUE OYSTER CULT!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

how about periwinkle?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm not even sure I could name ten shellfish!

Surely there's a whelk in here somewhere.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

viii.

Fishermen grumble to their nets. Nogood Boyo goes out in
the dinghy _Zanzibar_, ships the oars, drifts slowly in the
dab-filled bay, and, lying on his back in the unbaled water,
among crabs' legs and tangled lines, looks up at the
spring sky.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Which is from Under Milk Wood.

[cis.livejournal.com]

i just googled vi and it is AWFUL

ix

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Smurfs.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

g00gled 28 marbles (with -king -quiz to avoid other fora), and I have actually heard of this game! It is not chinese checkers, but it is hexagonal, if that helps anyone.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

wiki says!: can be quaintly summarized as "sumo wrestling with marbles"