That Quiz: those answers...

A quiztastic 21 entries, 50% up on last year, with various descriptions of happy delirium offset by those who spent upwards of 100 hours on it, bemoaning both length and difficulty. Statistically, this quiz was harder than in 1994, with a relatively lower winning score (73.46%) and a lower average: 36 points (or 44.57%). The crunch came with five dreadful questions: 2k, 3b, 5a, 10e and 11d. We felt that anyone who correctly answered two of these would win, and so it turned out. As in previous years, full marks for each question were only normally obtainable by supplying the answer we were looking for. Halfmarks were on offer for right-but-wrong answers, with a few bonuses doled out for particular cleverness. Eight of last year's quizzers returned for more punishment, with the full scoreboard as follows:

59.5 Brenda Lowndes / Dave Tyson (joint entry), 56 Charles Everett, 53 John Fisher, 52.5 Stuart Benn, 50.5 Ann / Rowland Bowker (joint entry) and Graham Benny, 50 Richard Webb, 46 Barbara Jones, 37 Mark Webster, 34.5 Jonathan de Ferranti, 32 Craig Weldon, 30.5 Graham Pearson, 29.5 Andy Archer, 27.5 Graeme / Ian Nicol (joint entry), 26.5 a dreamteam of Andrew Fellows, Paul Gardner, Graham Gow, Peter Jamieson and Gordon Smith at Garrad Hassan and Partners, 26 John Morris, 25.5 Nick Bowyer, 21.5 Ewan MacKenzie, 21 Ian Johnston, 19 Chris Horton, 9.5 Paul Hesp (not bad for a Dutchman living in Vienna).

1 Which two neighbouring hills have, according to the OS Landranger sheets, names which include parentheses?

Helpfully, the quiz started with a question which proved much easier than anticipated. We were looking for the pairing of Abbey Hill (Outer) and Abbey Hill (Inner), near Abbey St Bathans, on OS67. But by not putting "Which non-Marilyns...", we inadvertently left the way open for Healabhal Bheag (Macleod's Table South) and Healabhal Mhor (Macleod's Table North), OS23, NG225422 and NG219445; also Cairn Toul (Cairn an t-Sabhail) and Sgor an Lochain Uaine (The Angel's Peak), OS36/43, NN963972 and NN954976. Quite why these hills in the Gorms - plus Braeriach (Braigh Riabhach) and Ben Macdui (Beinn MacDuibh) - have alternative re-Gaelicised versions of their names when nowhere else seems to ought perhaps be discussed further in these pages.

2 Find:

This question is traditionally 95% easy if you have access to the OS gazetteer which lists all 1:50000 mapnames (most decent libraries have a copy). However, we always throw in a spanner - last year Glittering Skellies, this time Mount Marilyn. You could search long and hard for this on maps of Britain - or indeed anywhere in the world - since it hangs out on the Moon. And before you complain, this isn't quite as wilfully obscure as at first seems, since MM featured heavily in the movie Apollo 13, at a cinema near you during the period of the quiz. Lovell named said lunar top for his wife during Apollo 8 - a fact which sent Alan Blanco into such paroxisms of delight that your Ed was glad to be sitting three seats away at the time.

(a) Tyrebagger Hill OS38 NJ844127
(b) Tire Beggar Hill 45 NO679854
(c) Boy's Hill 45 NO710820 (also Boys Hill 194 / ST673102)
(d) Oldcake 45 NO778771
(e) Cronk ny Arrey Laa 95 SC224747 or 95 NX458999 (also Cronk ny Arrey Lhaa 95 / SC349991)
(f) Big Scare 82 NX259332
(g) Barbadoes 57 NS549968
(h) Several Moor 82 NX089681
(i) The Lyeing Hill 63 NS032705
(j) Mount Joe 78 NT009082
(k) Mount Marilyn Moon (lunar coordinates 2°N 43°E)

3 Practical section:

(a) Dirrington Great Law has a more dilapidated trig than Meikle Says Law and Spartleton. Several quizzers climbed all three, while RW declared his intent of visiting with a lump hammer just to make sure. (Perhaps fortuitously, his car broke down on the way north.) ARB semi-eliminated Meikle Says Law by reading in Yeaman that it's a "primary trig station", whatever that is.

(b) Mount Hill, 221m near Cupar in Fife boasts a sign reading Beware of kicking horse, at least it did on 5/3/95 when your Ed visited between rounds of the Glenrothes Chess Congress. Perhaps due to the locality of 3(a) above, a remarkable number of people scoured the slopes of North Berwick Law. RW again threatened to mix vandalism with creativity in taking with him a pot of paint and a piece of chipboard. Only ARB came close: their guess of Norman's Law being just one hill out.

4 Letterdismay:

(a) Annoyingly, we missed a trick here. The answers, as almost everybody stated, were STUc a' Chroin and STUchd an Lochain. But lax questioneering made us overlook the excellent GlaS TUlaichean, which would have made the whole question that much neater. BJ, JM, GIN and PW found all three and earned bonus halfmarks.

(b) A fair whack of Scottish placenames include three consecutive letters in correct alphabetical order, most commonly the combination RST as given in the example and in such as Barstobrick (OS83/84, 690606). The STU combination also features regularly - eg West Uplaw, OS64, 438542. But in order to solve 4(c) it was necessary cite CuMNOck and New CuMNOck. Two points for these, only one for any other correct-but-wrong combination. We searched long and hard for a four-letter run (eg CaRSTUnton, or HoLM NOck, which don't exist - nearest being Holm Nick, OS72, 057267), but had to admit defeat. However, if anyone has a friend named, say, MalcoLM NOPley, we'd be keen to hear from them.

(c) Basically just collar work once you solved 4(b) - although CE spent many long hours staring at OS71 before enlightenment. The answer is Glenmuirshaw - appearing twice in the OS71 squares 6920, 7020, 6919 and 7019. South Bankend (71 / NS786331) was "found at last" by RW, but sadly it has two Ns. Three other 12:12s were found however, by AA (Southdeanrig OS80 NT649084), JF (Sucklawridge OS74 NT681331), and IJ (Croftmaquien OS36 NJ022211) - remarkable since he entered from a ship. Still no sign of a Scottish 13:13 though...

5 What connects...?

(a) The key was to think laterally: it says The Five Sisters, and not The Five Sisters of Kintail. Setting aside the Nolan sorority, there is a second set of fivefold female "hills" in Scotland, namely The Five Sisters of Westwood, a prominent set of shale bings near West Calder (OS65). And who famously-but-secretly designed the punky zips-and-pins clothes of Messrs Rotten, Vicious and co? Vivian Westwood! Voilá! Easy when you know how (except nobody did). GIN linked the 1715 Glenshiel battle, Bonnie Chairlie reaching Matlock in 1745, and Glen Matlock the one-time (and future?) Pistol, whilst GB dug up an ancient Poucherian translation of Fhuaran as "a perennial spring or well" and linked this with Matlock. RW cleverly tried "I don't want a holiday in the sun", ARB similarly went for Kintail having "vicious, rotten weather", and JF wrote "both spend(t) most of their time under a cloud". CW did mention coal bings, but in answer to the screeslope part of 13. And as for suggestions that a namesake of Malcom McLaren (the Pistols manager) runs the NTS Kintail Estate: we checked...

(b) Palindromes. Ward Hill is 217m and 712ft; the summit of Ben Macdui (Beinn MacDuibh) lies at gridref 989989 (even the grid letters are palindromic: NN). And Glenelg is Glenelg spelt backwards.

(c) 974. Ben Lomond 974m, Walbury Hill 974ft, and the great Don Bradman ("Who is Don Bradman?" asked CE) scored a record 974 runs for Australia in the 1930 series against England. The quiz wouldn't be the quiz without a bit of cricket in it.

6 Which hill is mapped thus?

Weird, but easy. Dun Rig, OS73, NT253316, as portrayed by the current 1:25000 sheet NT23/33 (Pathfinder 460). If you stand on the summit and play a Judas Priest tape through your Walkperson, you can hear that the Devil's pointedly saying "Do it".

7 This caused unexpected mayhem, as we thought it was the most obvious of all the questions. We assumed people would reckon thus: (i) clearly the SMC listings must include an error, since no two gridrefs are currently the same; (ii) it must be on Skye, since nowhere else is that jaggy; (iii) hence it must be the Basteir Tooth and Sgurr a'Fionn Choire, OS32, NG464252. (Also with eastings and northings palindromic, as CE joyfully pointed out.) The SMC have SFC in error, at NG463252. Strangely, several folk took one look at this and gave up, assuming that what we meant were hills with the same numerical gridref but in different Big Squares - which isn't the same thing at all. (The best fit for this, according to ARB, is Aonach Beag NN196715 and Carn nan Criche NH196725 - ie one "kilometre" apart.) Incidentally, although each 6-figure gridref isolates a 100m square, two points can of course lie along a diagonal axis - as in this case. Hence the furthest theoretical horizontal distance between two identisquare points is, by Pythagoras, the root of 1002+1002, ie 141.42m.

8 Odd one out:

Look up the heights in Blanco's Bumper Book of Bags to crack this. For 6 of the 7 hills the last two digits of the metric height double as the first two of the imperial height: 827/2713, 1344/4408, 413/1355, 297/975, 516/1693, 723/2371. Only Leathad an Taobhain doesn't fit, being the other way around: 912/2991. Numerous halfscores here, eg: CH for "Ben Tianavaig: the only one on an island"; GIN and RW for An Dun lying on a regional / county boundary. RW correctly observed An Dun also lies on the other (W-E) watershed. Nevis was, for EM, the only one he'd climbed twice in one day (we should be told more) and the only one he'd shat upon (we should be told less). ARB listed and rejected many of these before, worryingly, "probing deep into the mind of the Editor" - and getting it right!

9 International section:

(a) Chimborazo in Ecuador is the highest mountain from the centre of the earth. Its normal height is 6310m, but lies close enough to the equatorial bulge to have a total "height" of 6384453m, outreaching Everest by 2202m. The only really big hill any nearer the equator than Chimborazo is Cotopaxi, also in Ecuador. Huascarán in Peru is higher, but lies at 9° 12´S which makes it 65m short. The Guinness Book of Records correctly gives Chimborazo, unlike the Nottingham Uni Pineapple Society homepage, which suggests Kilimanjaro (and sparked this question).

The general equation for the earth ellipsoid is:

R = Re[1 - f.sin2(latitude)] where Rc is the equatorial radius and f the flattening ratio. The most accurate figures for the whole globe are the WGS84 (World Geodetic System 1984): Rc = 6378137m, f = 1/298.257 = 0.00335281. The earth's shape also deviates from the ellipsoid through local variation in crustal density: sea level "heaps up" over mass concentrations. Since mountain heights refer to local sea level, a jigger factor, N, must be added to the basic ellipsoid radius.

(b) Mount Paget, South Georgia, 2934m. 54° 23'S, 36° 45'W, is the highest point in Britain including its dependencies. No points for 4191m Mount Jackson on the Dyer Plateau in the British Antarctic Territory, since territorial claims are ruled out by the Antarctic Treaty. CE and CW suggested Queen Mary's Peak, Tristan da Cunha, 2160m.

(c) The three Eurocountries, including dependencies, with the lowest highest points are:

• Monaco, 140m, a point on the French border, on the slopes of Les Hauts de Monte-Carlo, 43° 45´N, 7° 25´E
• Malta, 253m, Ta' Zuta, 35° 51´N, 14° 24´E
• Lithuania, 294m, Juozapines kalnas, 54° 32´N, 25° 37´E

Denmark is disqualified by Gunnbjørn Fjeld, East Greenland, 3700m; the Vatican City State by the Papal Villa at Castel Gandolfo, 426m; and the Channel Islands by being a dependency of the UK. Near misses include Latvia, 311m, Gaizina Kalns, and Estonia, 318m, Suur Munamägi.

(d) The Eurocountry with the highest lowest point is Andorra, 838m where the Valira River crosses the Spanish border at 42° 26´N, 1° 27´E. Most folk got this.

(e) The three world countries with the highest lowest points are:

• Lesotho, approx 1500m at the confluence of the Senqu and Makhaleng Rivers, on the South African border (rivers called the Orange and Kornetspruit in SA), 30° 20´S, 27° 23´E
• Rwanda, 950m where the Ruzizi river crosses the Burundi border, 2° 45´S, 28° 59´E
• Andorra, as above. Burundi comes close, 773m on the Lake Tanganyika shoreline, whilst Tibet, 900m, stays part of China.

(f) The Eurocountry with differing seasonal highpoints is Norway. An odd one this, since Galdhoppigen (61° 37´N, 8° 17´E) is traditionally quoted as 2469m, with the nicely-named Glittertind (61° 39´N, 8° 33´E) second up at 2452m. But Mountain Touring Holidays in Norway adds "with glacier cap 2470m". An impressive nine quizzers got this. Presumably such quirks occur elsewhere, but remain unnoticed since they don't concern absolute highpoints.

(g) 511 miles long (to be precise), the Maldive Islands never rise to over 3m. BLDT worked this out only the day before reading it in the opening para of your Ed's TGO article for Jan '96. You have to have your little jokes...

10 (a) 443 is the total of Corbetts (219) + Grahams (224), ie the number of 2000ft-2999ft Scottish hills with 150m drop. Oddly, there are also 443 Scottish Marilyns between 1000ft-1999ft. Further halfmarks for Murdos climbable without recourse to a ferry now that the Skye Bridge is open (ie 444 minus Ben More on Mull). Surprisingly, no-one got the halfmark available for BB Nimbalkar, who scored this figure for Maharashtra v Kathiawar at Poona in 1948, still the fourth highest first-class innings ever.

(b) 515 does concern Murdos: Murdos (444) + relative SubMurdos (71). Put another way, it's the total of Scottish 3000ft summits with at least 20m drop on all sides. BJ went for the number of Pathfinder sheets completely in Scotland, which took an age to check. This proved 519 however: 534 total (including the out-of-sequence Sheet 1373 St Kilda) minus 15 which include bits of The Plain. Good try though.

(c) 293 is simpler: British OS 1:50000 sheets (204) + their Irish equivalents (89). Two people also earned the full mark for fantastically elaborate answers: EM: {Grahams (224) + SubGrahams (34) + SubDonalds (37)} minus the only two hills appearing in both the latter lists (Well Hill and Blacklorg Hill); CH: "Marilyns which are also Murdos (205), plus New Donalds which aren't Corbetts or Grahams (118 - 30)"!

(d) 26 (but not yet)? "It is now!" Issues of TAC of course! New Scottish local authorities also proved popular, but that's 32.

(e) 785b... herein lies a tale. When your Ed was offered a slot in TGO back in the autumn, he sent his first piece, written on a PC using Word 6.0, in plain text format so as to avoid any software-compatibilty glitches. This was somewhat in vain however, since in a sentence reading "There are 1551 of these [Marilyns] (78% in Scotland)" the percentage was ASCIIed into print as "785b". Hence the answer is the percentage of Marilyns in Scotland. Only PH and BLDT (last and first!) proved sharp-eyed enough here. Several folk had theories about Glasgow buses; RW suggested there are this many factions within the MBA...

11 Sequences:

(a) Pretty easy: Ben Hope, Ben Wyvis, Carn Liath, Creag Pitridh, Beinn a'Chlachair, Geal Charn and Stuchd an Lochain all lie in a one-mile-wide N-S line along the 2470 easting. Odd to think of Wyvis being slightly west of Hope.

(b) Very hard. SB got it absolutely right; no-one else came close. This is neither someone's first seven Munros, nor the finishing-peaks of Hamish Brown's seven rounds, but the top end of a list of Munros horizontally nearest to Corbetts. The missing two are Beinn Ime (1.35k from Beinn Luibhean) and Meall Glas (1.75k from Beinn nan Imirean). Beinn Liath Mhor / Sgorr nan Lochan Uaine come first at 1.3k, Sgurr Thuilm / Streap are equal seventh, while Ben Klibreck / Ben Hee come last, at 16.4k.

(c) Easier: seven Scottish hills are Murdos but neither Munros nor Munro Tops - and should, by any logical criteria, be included in the latter list. These are detailed on p17 of the Murdos booklet, with five of the "parent" peaks detailed again here. The missing two are Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan (again) and Meall nan Tarmachan.

(d) Hardest question in the quiz? Many folk tried letter-counting options, with near-random answers such as Apple (both NB and CH), Brazzaville, Bunch, Cabbage, Eurostar, Grauw (the Dutch word for grey), Johannesburg, Kihee (in Queensland), Leeds, Merge, Oasis, Slippery, Walrus. A halfmark for lateral thinking to SB for Andy Warhol: London/Paris have underground systems, The Velvet Underground had a banana on their first album cover! One quizzer, BJ, came tantalisingly close to two full marks: she got the right idea from a Daily Telegraph cutting re Pacific nuclear testing, but couldn't find the vital missing name. Hence: there are four main settlements on Kiritimati aka Christmas Island (the one in the Pacific that is, not its Indian Ocean namesake). These are London, Paris, Banana... and Poland. Don't ask why; that's just the way it is.

12 This weird topography proved easier: a Glasgow A-Z was the place to look, since these are all streetnames. Ben Alder (strictly speaking Benalder) is the southward continuation of Byres Rd in the West End (where your trendy Ed often hangs out), Cairngorm and Tinto are adjacent in Mansewood, whilst Glen Etive Place is just below Cathkin Braes, up behind Cambuslang.

13 Eh? gave the clue here. All answers are univocalic in the key of A:

Ramprakash and McManaman met at Annan, then went up Ark Law before taking a CalMac ferry across to Arran, where they visited Lamlash. Returning to the mainland for ice-cream in Largs, they met up with Anand and Mark Lamarr(1) at a rave in Ayr (where the former was drinking Assam(2) tea while reading a book about Capablanca and Spassky [or Tal] and the latter watched Lammtarra at the races).

After spending the night under canvas, they towed their caravan(3) via Alva and Clackmannan to eventually climb Mayar before staying nearby, in Rattray. Next day, after popping up Ben Wyvis from Garbat, they decided to visit several more islands - so crossed Mam Ratagan to Kylerhea and Skye. Here they unpeeled bananas(4) on Arnaval and wore balaclavas on Hartaval.

Kayaks then took them to Canna, where they scaled Carn a'Ghaill before paddling to Rum to bag Trallval(5). Tiring of Alba(6), they flew over the Alps, the Atlas, the Sahara and other Badlands en route to Ankara(7). From here they rode llamas up a bahada [or bajada](8) onto Ararat prior to watching Galatasaray play Ajax(9) in the Champions League.

Manana, they'll either fly south (over Nanga Parbat) to view lava(10) flowing from the recently exploded Mount Ruapehu toward Whakapapa; or join Gazza in Casablanca to hear Santana - wearing bandannas - perform a cantata as part of a fundraiser for Sarah Balabagan(11). The support act will include Dana and ABBA playing songs by the much-missed, Zapata-sporting Frank Zappa. Abracadabra!

1. Vic and Bob out of Shooting Stars.
2. Some confusion here: CE argued (from the Guinness BoR) that Bananal in Brazil (20000km2) is the largest (odd that this is also univocalic), but we went with Majuli in the Brahmaputra, in Assam. (Camb Enc)
3. CE tried Lada here!
4. Two disputes: CH claimed, perhaps rightly, that there's no such word as unpeeled (think about it), whilst PH pointed out that bananas aren't exclusively tropical.
5. The folk puzzled by Rum only having a one-word Graham missed the need to put in bag.
6. What about Sugelan? asked PH.
7. Other univocalic capitals: Accra, Alma-Ata (in Kazakhstan), Amman, Baghdad, Caracas, Dakar, Dhaka, Jakarta, Kampala, Praha, Sana
8. Bahada: Spanish, a slope formed by aggradation, consisting of rock debris (Chambers). BLDT also found carsak here, which Trekking in Turkey gives as "a word for couloir or scree". Also successful would have been barchan, a crescentic sand dune.
9. And what about Dutch village team Rooms Katholieke Sport Vereniging Bilthoven? asked PH, persistently.
10. CH and RW tried magma, which isn't really correct: lava is what magma becomes when it emerges via an eruption.
11. Sarah is technically a Filipina. GB tried Flor Contemplacion, who suffered an even worse fate.

The striking thing about all this is the sheer number of a-symmetric words: Panama hat/canal, shaman, Magna Carta, the Sayan mountains (in Mongolia), Santa Anna the Mexican dictator, Wagga Wagga in Australia, Warsaw, Walsall, quiz-entrants Garrad Hassan, Bafana Bafana the South African football team, Nathan Watt the wee boy in Unstrung Heroes, Anwar Sadat, Carl Sagan, Madagascar, vast numbers of Indian things, Yahya Ayyash the assassinated Hamas bombmaker, Sam Panapa the Salford rugby league player, Dr Sandy Macara, chair of the BMA, your Ed's friend Darah Zahran, etc etc. What a stramash!

Thanks for info and ideas to Alan Blanco, Val Hamilton, Grant Hutchison and MJ Smith. Sources: AA Big Road Atlas: Italy (1995), Bartholomew's Glasgow Plan, The Cambridge Encyclopedia (1992), The Chambers Dictionary (1994), Encyclopædia Britannica (1995), Equator: An Epic Journey, by Thurston Clarke (1988), The Guardian, Harveys Munro and Corbett Chart, Mountain Touring Holidays in Norway, The New Guinness Book of Records (1995), University of Nottingham Munro Pineapple Society homepage (http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/cs/misc/pineapple/), OS Gazetteer of Great Britain: Third Edition (1992), Rand McNally World Facts and Maps (1995), The Relative Hills of Britain (1992) and January 1995 update, TACit Tables, TGO (Oct '95, Jan '96), and Wisden Cricketers' Almanack!

TAC 26 Index