2.11.2011

Quiz time. Got your glasses on.

I love taking quizzes, but only if they're about literature, history, or geography, and only if I can get at least 80% of the answers right. Here's a quiz from the Guardian that combines all three of my favorite quizzable subjects. See how you do:

1. In which of these forests would you find Touchstone?
a. Sherwood Forest
b. The Forest of Dean
c. Birnam Wood
d. The Forest of Arden

2. Who lives in The Chestnuts, located in the middle of the Hundred Acre Wood?
a. Badger in The Wind in the Willows
b. Owl in Winnie-the-Pooh
c. Mr Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
d. Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother, in the fairy tale

3. Adam Fould's novel, The Quickening Maze, explores the years spent by a troubled poet in a private asylum in the heart of Epping Forest. Which poet?
a. John Clare
b. Ivor Gurney
c. Robert Lowell
d. Christopher Smart

4. Who or what came "whiffling through the tulgey wood" in Lewis Carroll's Alice through the Looking Glass?
a. Alice
b. The Red Queen
c. The Jabberwock
d. The Wood-Whiffler

5. Which 2010 novel opens with a discontented child making a shocking discovery in a French forest?
a. Rose Tremain's The Trespass
b. Andrea Levy's The Long Song
c. Emma Donoghue's Room
d. Maggie O'Farrell's The Hand that First Held Mine

6. "The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, sing all a green willow, her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, sing willow, willow, willow." Which innocent woman, soon to perish, sings this plaintive song?
a. Cordelia in King Lear
b. Desdemona in Othello
c. Ophelia in Hamlet
d. Juliet in Romeo and Juliet

7. Which fictional detective is at work in Sad Cypress, a novel that takes its title from a song in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?
a. Margery Allingham's Albert Campion
b. Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot
c. Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn
d. Georges Simenon's Maigret

8. "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep", writes which poet?
a. Robert Frost
b. A E Houseman
c. Ted Hughes
d. John Masefield

9. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, which much-harried nymph prays for help in escaping the attentions of the god Apollo and finds herself transformed into a laurel tree?
a. Callisto
b. Daphne
c. Salmacis
d. Echo

10. Which of these characters is a leading figure in Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd?
a. Gabriel Oak
b. Bathsheba Ash
c. Isaiah Birch
d. Harry Lime

Answers are below the picture of the Tulgey Wood.


Answers:
1. d
2. b
3. a
4. c
5. a
6. b
7. b
8. a
9. b
10. a

6 comments:

Adrien said...

but, but, but...where are the answers?? how am i ever supposed to know how i did? i know i missed a few for sure because i'd never heard of the books...but i just want to know.
:(

Megan said...

lol I like how you like quizzes, with many qualifiers. I guess that would be pretty similar to me, especially getting 80% right.
So I'm pretty sure I'll get more than half of these wrong, but here goes nothing:
1. d...?
2. b
3. wow I have no idea. a?
4. I'm gonna say c.
5. um a.
6. c
7. erm... c
8. a
9. b, I think
10. oh heck I don't know. c.

Yeah so I guess I only got like 3 right. Pathetic, eh? And you got at least 8 right?

Janeite42 said...

Adrien - Sorry about no answers! I thought I'd put in a link to the Guardian's article, but I guess I forgot. The answers, as you will see, are now included below the picture of the Tulgey Wood.

Megan - You got 7 correct. Not bad! You missed 6, 7, and 10. Want to try again?

Adrien said...

ok, here were my answers:
1. d
2. b
3. c
4. c
5. a
6. c
7. b
8. a
9. b
10. c

so i got 7/10 right. yay! that shakespeare one...hmm. also i think it's interesting that for all the ones i missed, i put "c" for my answer. interesting...

Shannon said...

here are mine:
1.d
2.b
3.d?
4.c
5.a?
6.b
7.b?
8.a?
9.b
10.a

Hooray, 9 correct! I'm on a roll. Most of those were guesses though. Beginner's luck.

Megan said...

7 and 10 were guesses, but I'm going to guess 6 was supposed to be Desdemona (b)... and I'm right this time! Hurrah. I think I confused the willow song with an actual tree that I thought Ophelia fell out of.