Mr Al-Khapoun's Christmas Quiz, 1989

1. These old P.M.s are gruesome, but I often find them --  .  .  .  helpful.

   Clue
   Answer

2.   .  .  .  we found Mr Medlar and Dr Wagtail, disputing upon the word Custard, which the physician affirmed should be spelled with a G, because it was derived from the Latin verb gustare, `to taste'.--But Medlar pleaded custom in behalf of C, observing, that by the doctor's rule, we ought to change pudding into budding, because it is derived from the French word boudin; and in that case, why not retain the original orthography and pronunciation of all the foreign words we have adopted; by which means our language would become a dissonant jargon without standard or propriety.

   Clue
   Answer

3.                       He hit his Daddy such a whack
                                               Stone dead his Daddy fell
                         His cry went straight to God above
                                               His ghost it went to Hell
   

                                                                     Mamma Mamma

   Clue
   Answer

4. Le photographies que j'avais vues en Chine ne montraient point ce mouvement de foule particulier à l'Occident, que je concevais comme un pays dévoré par la géométrie. Les cornes des maisons tombaient. Les rues étaient droits, les vêtements rigides, les meubles rectangulaires. Les jardins des palais démontraient - non sans beauté - des théorèmes.

   [The photographs that I had seen in China showed nothing of this bustle of crowds peculiar to the West, a land which I had thought of as eaten up by geometry. The eaves of houses dropped. The roads were straight, the clothes stiff, the furniture square. The gardens of the palaces were proofs - not without beauty - of theorems.]

   Clue
   Answer

5. At Oxford they walked about to see the curiosities of architecture, painted windows, and undisturbed libraries. The Reverend Doctor F------- laid a wager with Mr C------- ``that in all their perlustrations they would not find a man reading,'' and won it. ``Ay, sir,'' said the reverend gentleman, ``this is still a seat of learning, on the principle of - once a captain, always a captain.''

   Clue
   Answer

6. Couple of days later I drives out to Elmer's place, gettin' there about dinner time. I knocks a couple of times on the door and I see they got a lot of folks to dinner, so not wishing to disturb 'em, I just sneaks round to the side door and yells, ``Hey, Elmer, here I am.''

   Clue
   Answer

7. Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour.

   Clue
   Answer

8.                       I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling,
                         I see the worshippers within, nor form nor sermon, argument nor word,
                         But silent, strange, devout, rais'd, glowing heads, ecstatic faces.

   Clue
   Answer

9.                       Weilten die Sternen im lieblichen Tanz?
                         So licht und klar im Lockenhaar,
                         vor alle Frauen hehr zu schauen,
                         lag ihr mit zartem Glanz ein Sternenkranz.

   [Did the stars move in the delightful dance? In the curls of your hair, noble to behold before all women, lay shining sweetly a halo of stars.]

   Clue
   Answer

10. It is surely not without reproach, that a nation, of which the commerce is hourly extending, and the wealth increasing, denies any participation of its prosperity to its literary societies; and while its merchants or its nobles are raising palaces, suffers its universities to moulder into dust.

    Clue
    Answer