wiki-illiam #108 (scire ubi aliquid invenire possis ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est)*

[dubdobdee]

MORE OR LESS UNCHANGING RUBRIC: welcome for the somethingth year running to the LJ wing of a quiz** sat by by some lucky schoolkids*** somewhere and etc blah blah: viz 18 themed sets of 10 questions each -- a new one every day (probably)!!

*= latin for: "real actual knowledge is knowin how to google**** stuff" <-- haha i always say this
**as published every year in the guardian just before xmas (answers some time in the new year)
***all the boys of king williams school on the isle of man sit it sight unseen then take the paper home during holidays and look stuff up to increase their score and retake it (or this used to happen in the Olden Days, for all I know Ofsted has now shut the school)
****the setters used to claim they've checked nothing is INSTANTLY googleable...

1:

1: What are diamonded with panes of quaint device?
2: What tale began with serious problems for a scorpion?
3: What made Diamond's eyes lustrous with desire in the Lodi Gardens?
4: What stolen Crown diamond was retrieved during a rendering of the Hoffman Barcarolle?
5: Who, in a way emulated Gibbon, but substituted a Third Chimpanzee for the Roman Empire?
6: What title embraced studies, amongst others, of a walking talking killing machine, a hell fighter, the time-warp tough guy and an honourable man?
7: What was queried as an alternative to suffocation with cassia or a fatal shooting with pearls?
8: What diamond was kept by the knight to the disadvantage of the rogue?
9: What blink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalolopolis?
10: What was the eye in Aurangzeb's peacock throne?


the rules:
a: nice full answers (and anecdotes!) if/where poss
b: plz to say whether googled or no, and always leave reasonable time for non-googlers to get their guesses in (ie at least till next question goes up)
c: obviously you can look ahead at future questions if you want (ie elsewhere on internet) since how can we stop you?
d: plz to not bring in confirming and/or dissenting answers from other fora until next question is up and running

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

6. TERMINATOR surely

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

I desperately want #5 to be Bob Diamond.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Just a quick note to say that I will keenly join the fray on 2 January - the day after I attempt to get my guests to try and solve some of these at home. I shall, of course, not use the collective knowledge gathered there until rule d permits.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

5 would be Jared Diamond, of The Third Chimpanzee / Guns Germs & Steel fame. I know nothing funny about him.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

2: is the Bond-novel Diamonds are Forever, which begins with someone waiting in the desert for a smuggling hook-up casually smashing a scorpion with their shoe

Suggesting that the theme is DIAMOND-RELATED -- hence 6 is maybe not The Terminator :(

[tom (from livejournal.com)]

4 is The Mazarin Stone, in the Sherlock Holmes adventure of the same name. Holmes plays the barcarolle from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann at the end while the diamond is being recovered. A frivolous tangential aside: my favourite barcarolle is Igumnov's performance of Tchaikovsky's 'June' here - http://youtu.be/eyixdAi2zf0. languid summer death. (gutenberg'd to check).

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Blatantly Googled (and spoilerised) answers:

#1: The window of Madeline, one of the lovers in Keats' The Eve of St Agnes

#3: Probably something in Diamond Dust by Anita Desai, but the amazon search won't reveal more

#7: Having her throat cut by diamonds, as queried by the Duchess of Malfi, in John Webster's play of the same name

#9: Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington, according to Norman Mailer in "The Siege of Chicago"

#10: is the Koh I Noor!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

haha of course the Koh I Noor!