wiki-illiam #108: q11

[dubdobdee]

11:

1: Who shot Geoff Hammond?
2: Who, on his death bed, quoted from Goldsmith's Elegy?
3: To which firm of accountants was the club-footed orphan articled?
4: Whose seaside suicide was greeted by six slim splashing struggling sharks?
5: Who succumbed to uncontrollable diaphragmatic spasms in the Arabian Sea?
6: Which Russian libertine was lost in the Borneo jungle in pursuit of the Assistant Curator?
7: For what, in Mrs Hodges' own private opinion, was hoak preferable to helm?
8: Who, having left one painter for another, ended her life with Oxalic Acid?
9: Which diamond merchant spent £260 on a sable cape and muff?
10: Whose final ante-mortem word was "England"?

I am inclined to say that overall this year's IS a lot harder -- or else my brane is withering.

Comments

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

#7 is in an eye-dialect of the sort that Dickens uses a wery great deal, but I can't place the character or situation.

#8 immediately made me think of Elizabeth Siddal, especially in light of the Elizabeth-themed round earlier, but the wiki tells me she ended her life with laudanum rather than oxalic acid.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

I am inclined to say that overall this year's IS a lot harder -- or else my brane is withering.

Me too! Even with recourse to GooglePedia for earlier rounds, I'm finding some of these totally baffling.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Q7 is the only one so far that felt gnawable at without aids.

As for this question, I have solved #2 thanks to google, and from that cracked the theme. (<== yawnsome, unless you're into this thing/person, cf. Q12 from KWCQ 2010)

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Aha - so novels I haven't read, or films I haven't seen?

Le sigh.

I've researched a few more answers from earlier rounds, though. There are a lot of peoms, one of them quite terrible.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

As the next question is now up...

1. is Leslie Crosbie in 'The Letter' by W. Somerset Maugham
2. (the one I found first w/Google) is Walter Fane in 'The Painted Veil' by W. Somerset Maugham

Guess the theme!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Since nobody else (rightly?) cares about this one, I've assumed the chore of finishing it off. Some of the incidents and characters concerned are hardly central to the stories, even assuming you knew of them. Also quite hard to Google. However, I managed to confirm all the answers from the source text (eventually).

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

3. Messrs. Herbert Carter & Co. (in 'Of Hum4n Bond4ge') - the orphan is Philip Carey
4. Mackintosh in the short story of the same name (collected in 'The Trembling of a Leaf; Little Stories of the South Sea Islands')
5. Mr Gallagher in the short story "P. & O." (collected in 'The Causarina Tree') - the spasms are hiccups
6. Darya Munro in the short story "Neil Macadam" (collected in 'Far Eastern Tales')
7. For a coffin (in 'Liza of Lambeth')
8. Blanche Stroeve (in 'The Moon and Sixpence')
9. Jack Kuyper (in 'Cakes and Ale') - Kuyper is a diamond merchant from Amsterdam who comes to London on business, develops an interest in Rosie Driffield who agrees to let him take her out on the town a number of times. He leaves her with a parting gift of a very expensive fur coat and matching muff. The story leaves it up for speculation whether she slept with him or not.
10. Miss King in the short story of the same name (collected in 'Ashenden; or The British Agent')