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The All New Groundspeak Uk Pub Quiz!


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Ta for the clue Seasider :anicute:

 

I don't have a "proper" question ready, so I'll ask a quickie from last nights real pub quiz...

 

What was the name of the dog owned by Claude Jeremiah Greengrass?

 

(our quiz team didn't get this right last night :P )

 

Lassie?

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Ta for the clue Seasider :D

 

I don't have a "proper" question ready, so I'll ask a quickie from last nights real pub quiz...

 

 

What was the name of the dog owned by Claude Jeremiah Greengrass?

 

 

 

(our quiz team didn't get this right last night :lol: )

Alfred

 

Ding!!! :D

 

Your go ;)

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Katie Derham?

Natasha Kaplinsky?

Micheal Buerk?

 

:lol:

 

Ooh ooh - is it that actress that was in, oooh, you know, the girly flick, erm, about a woman who....did something or nothing, i didn't concentrate. It was a book as well, a well selling book. Might had had to do with diaries.

 

I don't know - it was her I'm sure, a famous actress.

 

Or is it Wayne Rooney's girlfriend. Could be her?

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What is a cripple hole and what is it's purpose?

 

I think it's a narrow channel at the bottom of a defensive ditch around a medievel castle. The idea is that if an invader manages to get in to the ditch and tries to run across it they will trip over in the bottom and break their ankles!

 

Phil

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At last!

 

Why are items traditionally priced at eg. 99p/£99.99 rather than £1/£100?

 

To make them appear cheaper!

 

To con the gulible into thinking it's cheaper than it actually is?

 

Nope, not the original and still prevailant reason.

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I think it's a narrow channel at the bottom of a defensive ditch around a medievel castle. The idea is that if an invader manages to get in to the ditch and tries to run across it they will trip over in the bottom and break their ankles!

 

Interesting. In many of the tall and very old multistorey tenement buildings of the old part of Edinburgh the staircases have one step whose riser is at a completely different height from the rest. The idea is an intruder being chased up or down the staircase in the dark won't know which one is the trick step and will trip over it.

 

I suppose nowadays the blighter would sue the household :lol:

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At last!

 

Why are items traditionally priced at eg. 99p/£99.99 rather than £1/£100?

 

i know it's already been answered, but it's one of my favorites from "The meaning of Liff" by Douglas Adams:

 

KIBBLESWORTH (n.)

 

The footling amount of money by which the price of a given article in a

shop is less than a sensible number, in a vain hope that at least one idiot

will think it cheap. For instance, the kibblesworth on a pair of shoes

priced at £19.99 is 1p.

 

but now I know the real reason.

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Now I'm sure there is some trick here such as 1751 which only lasted from Lady's day to 31 December, but none the less I'll go for 1724.

 

Jango & Boba Fett the floor is all yours - no trick. And for anyone that was wondering the dog is called "Pig".

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Well, I reckon about 1730 - I've just been reading Sarum and there is a section on the witch trials, one of the subjects of the book was up for trial.

 

Where and who - thats a question.

 

I can say that (unless I'm muddling my facts) only 288 witches were tried and convicted - far fewer than I expected.

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No need to ask whether Glonass is the right answer. I know!

 

My turn:

 

Never mind Salem, when and where was the last Witchcraft trial in England?

 

Bonus point(s) for additional detail about the circumstances of the trial.

 

During the Second World War - 1943 ?

 

Medium holding seances in a Naval port - knew more than she should about an RN ship sinking ?

 

Details vague - sorry.

 

civilised

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Civilised scores an only slightly dull but very solid DING. He's got the answer.

 

It was in 1944, at The Old Bailey, that Helen Duncan was tried and convicted under the Witchcraft Act.

 

She was a spiritualist "medium" who made living out of seances in which she purported to bring out the spirit of dead people, for money of course.

 

In Portsmouth in 1944 at one of her performances she produced the ghost of a dead sailor who had recently been killed when HMS Barham was torpedoed off Malta. The problem for Admiralty Intelligence (yeah yeah, let's leave out the oxymoron stuff!) was that the government had decided to keep the sinking of Barham a secret to avoid demoralising the civil populace on the home front. Nominally, Duncan did not have access to the Most Secret fact that Barham had been sunk at all.

 

The Admiralty was simultaneously completing the vital secret war plans for the D-Day invasion and was scared that Ms Duncan might bring out other Naval secrets in her seances. They therefore decided to prosecute her and put her away 'for the duration'. She was Scottish (from Edinburgh), so the initial holding charge they used against her was one of vagrancy. They then upped the ante to make heavier and heavier charges against her. The Witchcraft Act still carried the ultimate penalty in those days. She was found guilty of witchcraft and was sent to Holloway for 9 months and was released only after the invasion had taken place.

 

Winston Churchill, who was a bit of a closet occultist, was outraged and tried to intervene, but knew that the secret of the actual target of the landings had to be protected at all costs. Some years later, in the 1950s, when he had a bit of a political resurgence, he pushed through parliament the repeal of the Witchcraft Act and it no longer exists, as a result of his efforts.

 

A good win for Civilised; over to you...

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I seem to recall a man killed by a pitchfork and left in a way that suggested Witchcraft was involved. I think it was 1948. Edit: But while I think there was a formal murder investigation, I don't think it ever went to trial - he says, having read the latest post!

Edited by Simply Paul
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Thanks for that The Forester.

 

I promise that I shall sit by my PC until this question is answered - to avoid being pre-empted by googlers as I was the other day :D:):)

 

In The Lord of the Rings, what is the name, (given to him by Feanor, the Elven High King), of the first Dark Lord, Sauron's mentor ?

 

civilised

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