The Wednesday Quiz. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.

It's:

The weekly game of knowledge, intuition, inductive reasoning, and willingness to risk public embarrassment in a friendly and moderately supportive environment!!

Answers come out Fridayish.

1. It's probably in the top ten most populous cities in the world and in the top ten most densely populated major cities in the world. And, it's the largest city of a country that is among the top ten most populous in the world, and the top ten most densely populated in the world. It lost half a million people to flooding in 1970 and many thousands to "Operation Searchlight" the next year, but things have settled down somewhat in the interim.

2. What's that word that means "the angle between magnetic north and true north," or, "the latitude that the sun is directly over at a given time," or, apparently, "a polite refusal of an invitation"?

3. Who's the writer that started one of his novels like so?

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

4. What German artist engraved this memorable image 596 years ago?

5. What do you call it in a book, play, or movie, when there's a plot device whereby a previously intractable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with a contrived introduction of a new character, ability, or object?

6. What do you make like so:

4.5cl (9 parts) White rum
2cl (4 parts) lime juice
0.5cl (1 part) Gomme syrup


Pour all ingredients into shaker with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain in chilled cocktail glass.

7. This is the one where I show you a map and you try to figure out what country it is.

8. It puts religion in the 200s and language in the 400s.

9. What mathematical concept is being illustrated here?

10. This 1981 film was one of the most expensive to make in the history of German cinema, but it earned back over four times its budget. And it's mostly set underwater.

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Time yourself for two minutes -- How many creatures can you name that begin with this week's letter?

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Put your answers in the comments.  Shake well.