麻豆约拍

1. Why might the author of 'Self-Help', Karla's nemesis, and the architect of the British Museum, all feel like a French mouse?

2. Why might Hamlet ask successively about Hammerstein's prisoner of war camp, galena, a half-hitch or anchor bend, and a drawing implement?

3. (Music) Can you put these pieces in ascending order of size?

4. (Music) What family connection could these voices suggest, and which Elizabethan dramatist might join them?

5. (From Gwyn Seymour) Number 2 is almost on top of the world; number 9 helped out a very long-lived traveller, while number 19 plumbed the depths. What connection do they all have with Tommy Lee Jones?

6. (From David Williams) Why might you have to bow your head at the fastest 4-6-2 in history, a manual labourer with a spade, and a public official from Imperial China?

7. Why could you be forgiven for thinking聽a Labour Prime Minister, a Daphne du Maurier novel, and a Fred Astaire film, had caused a surprising amount of fuss?

8. The creator of The Leopard, Pinocchio's asinine friend, Harry Redknapp's nephew, and a stone-licking fish: how many more did Ruskin have?

We asked: Why could Winston Churchill and F.E.Smith, Nicole Kidman and Mary Boleyn all have been regarded as alternative?

The answer is that they are all in some sense 'others'. In the years before the First World War, Churchill and Smith were excluded from a club that met at the Savoy, known simply as The Club, so they formed one of their own called 'The Other Club'. Nicole Kidman starred in the 2001 film with a supernatural theme, 'The Others'. Anne Boleyn's sister Mary, in the novel by Philippa Gregory, was 'The Other Boleyn Girl'.

The sun; something you'd find around Saturn; and a mode of transport that definitely wouldn't get you anywhere near either of them. How might they be connected?

No need to contact us: it's just for fun! The answer will appear next week.