wiki-illiam #106: q5

[dubdobdee]

Which independent school:
i: started in the Depot?
ii: favours Malvolian hosiery?
iii: is approached by the Hundred?
iv: sold the site to Merchant Taylors'?
v: possesses a relic of an epic crossing of the Scotia Sea?
vi: had in its statutes a cryptic acknowledgement of the final chapter of St John's Gospel?
vii: owes its foundation to Salmonella typhi?
viii: has a boomer in the chapel tower?
ix: was pictured by a little canal?
x: replaced a lofty hermitage?

!!!

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Malvolian hosiery is "cross-gartered", I guess, since Malvolio is encourged to dress this way when he believes someone fancies him in Twelfth Night</>.

Are these real or fictional schools, even?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Merchant Taylors' is definitely real - main site is located in Northwood (NW London) though they have a few other sites scattered around the place. Their swimming pool changing rooms are very small, however I will forgive this matter as I won my first ever TROPHY at a competition there, aged 11.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Yes, MT is one of "The Nine Riders" -- which i found out abt when researching if.... : but this is presumably a question about a school on the same site before MT

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it there is also a slightly-less-posh-but-still-independent Merchant Taylors' in Crosby (which I know because azureskies went there!)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

I'd guess a mix of both...

Might iii be a reference to the Chiltern Hundreds? That's an actual place isn't it?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes but there's lots of Hundreds, they're a geographical administrative unit: all English counties are/were divided up into them

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

checking further i see that malvolio was required to wear yellow stockings, as are the poor put-upon fellows at christs hospital = the bluecoats school

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I am starting to remember how much I hate this quiz. How bad is it when you CAN'T EVEN MANAGE TO GOOGLE THE ANSWERS :(

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Even pre-internet they always had a least one question which totally defied looking up (as in: where do you even start?) -- as well as some that experts in a particular topic could answer all in one go, like you with tennis last year. The paper is set sight unseen at the end of december, then everyone goes home for xmas. It is set again at start of Jan: those sitting it are encouraged to look stuff up over the holidays -- i guess research skills is what it's trying to foster -- but google has obviously complicated things (which is why i call it what i call it).

Not sure whether they're trying to make it less googleable, or this is one of the traditional un-look-up-able questions.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I am finding this one surprisingly googleable; possibly because I v quickly realised that I can't do anything here without google and so am not squelching my face up trying to guess things.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

V. Is entirely find out able with a minimal amount of poking on Wikipedia, if you start with the epic crossing etc.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I poked around on Wikipedia - assuming that the crossing they were getting at was the Shackleton 1916 one - but couldn't find any mention of any relic or relic-like object.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ooh that i actually CAN look up in my own massive mentalist shrine to matters ant/arctic copy of huntford's shackleton biog! i assume it's his boots or goggles or skis or something

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

did Shackleton go to wellington college? this vaguely rings a bell b4 i reach down the volume in question

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

*looks it up*: haha no but SAME DIFF (he opined snobbishly)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ah got it -- bigger than a boot (unless yr german)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

To complete this: Shackleton went to DULWICH college, and the school now houses the boat he crossed from the Antarctic continent -- Elephant Island to be precise -- to South Georgia whaling station, to ensure that he lost not a single man of his expedition, despite losing his ship the Endurance, in ice-bound seas. The boat is the James Caird.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

vii is plain old typhoid fever; schools that were disbanded/resurrected because of an epidemic? Founded in memory of someone who died from it?

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Ok, I know this too, because of Google. Foundation is not *founding*, which was throwing me off.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

vi: 'Hi guys, am rized, have some fish and soppy talk.'

x: a TREEHOUSE?

Also, the origin of this quiz must be one of the answers here, surely.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the last seems highly likely

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Don't know any of these, and AFAIK none of them is Win. Coll. but wikipediaing it now means I know more about William Of Wykeham than ever. He was a Black Death survivor and the son of a peasant!