Christmas Quiz XX: Answers and Results
Results, answers and question analysis
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Christmas Quiz XX answers and results are now out!
And let me say, this year was a stinker,1 with only three teams scoring in the 90s, and only eleven teams scoring above 70 (this year’s threshold for the Honour Roll). So congratulations to everyone who made it on to that esteemed list - and to all the rest of you quizzers who puzzled away on it: a score in the 50s or 60s, is more like getting in the 70s or 80s in a normal year.2
Given this, I’m delighted that the Honour Roll includes not only familiar entrants returning (including our victors reuniting after a year entering separately), long distant friends and former colleagues3 - but also a goodly number of newcomers, entering for the first time - and doing very well indeed.
Before we move on to the answers, a reminder to subscribe so as not to miss next year’s Christmas Quiz
The Answers and Question Analysis
What you’re all waiting for!
I allowed all variant spellings and a few other alternative answers I accepted are shown on the answer sheet. Half marks were awarded when someone had most, but not all, of an answer.
As said, it was a hard year this year. One question was got by no-one:4 Q45, which was admittedly fiendish. Jane Winter played Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden - in Noel Streatfield’s The Painted Garden.5
In terms of other tricky questions:
Only one team got Q50, Charlotte Rice-Foley, who played Jacqueline Webb (daughter of the woman played by Keira Knightley) in the first season of Black Doves.
Two teams got Q99, Lahela ‘Doogie’ Kamealoha.
Three teams got each of Q7 (Durin the Deathless), Q10 (Angela Orosz) and Q48 (Jodie Foster).
Four teams got each of Q16 (Admiral George James Perceval), Q19 (Kimball O’Hara) and Q30 (King Kelson).
Five teams got each of Q40 (the children from Cressida Cowell’s Which Way to Anywhere series) and Q97 (Lester Keith Piggott).
I was delighted to see how many people managed to identify 8-year old boy genius and defender of Earth, Commander Keen6 - as well as the fact that most people managed to correctly define Thetis as a minor sea nymph.7
And that's it for another year! Once again, thank you to everyone who takes part, whether they're aiming for the Honour Roll or just to have fun - it's always a pleasure to see so many happy Quizzers.
Now you’re done with the Christmas Quiz, don’t forget to enter the Forecasting Contest. I can’t promise it’s easier - but it’s certainly a lot quicker to complete! Enter it here.
The technical term.
One reason for this year being harder was because I worried it would be too easy, both because I thought it might be easy, for example, to look up lists of child prodigies or child actors, and also because of the increasing capabilities of LLMs - hence I tried to insert a number of trickier questions, alongside those which were readily ‘gettable’.
The perceptive may spot that one of the major Non-Ministerial Departments still - just! - has the measure of its cognate Ministerial Department.
Always a sign of failure on the part of the question setter!
A couple of people guessed Mary Lennox, for which I gave half a point, but no-one got the full thing.
In writing this quiz I learned that he is canonically the grandson of the main character in Wolfenstein, hence why his full name is William Joseph Blazkowicz II (aka Billy Blaze).
Those who referred to her as a magic or, most shockingly, a major sea nymph were dinged half a point. You could argue this is unfair as I primarily inserted this as an in-joke with a friend of mine and her sister, who used the phrase repeatedly in their teenage composition, Troy: The Musical. However, Natalie Haynes also refers at least once to Thetis as a minor sea nymph in A Thousand Ships, so I’m standing by it (and it didn’t impact any rankings!).