麻豆约拍

Tom asked for the significance of the sequence: Washington - Washington - Buffalo - Dallas.

Sorry if you got side-tracked into American football or baseball tournaments - this is in fact听a much less light-hearted sequence than that, being the locations of the four assassinations of US Presidents.

Abraham Lincoln was shot听in Ford's Theater in Washington in 1865. James Garfield was killed at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington in 1881. William McKinley was killed while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, in 1901. The last is, of course, the shooting of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

Well done if you spotted the solution. There'll be another teaser question at the end of today's programme.

All of the teams have now played twice. The league table at the half way stage in the series, before today's contest (ranked in order of number of wins)听is as follows.

听

1听 WALES听 Played 2听 Won 2听 Drawn 0听 Lost 0听 Total points 40

2听 SOUTH OF ENGLAND听 P2听 W1听 D1听 L0听 Pts 41

3听 MIDLANDS听 P2听 W1听 D0听 L1听 Pts 38

4听 NORTH OF ENGLAND听 P2听 W1听 D0听 L1听 Pts 36

5听 SCOTLAND听 P2听 W0听 D1听 L1听 Pts 38

6听 NORTHERN IRELAND听 P2听 W0听 D0听 L2听 Pts 31

Q1听 Why might Private Atkins, the Marble Man and Clive Dunn find themselves working with Agent J?

Q2 (from Natasha Griffiths)听 Can you detect a titular link between The Lady of Shalott, Macbeth's second witch, and the King in his counting-house?

Q3听 Music - For whom would these three play cricket?

Q4听 A bantam and other birds of a feather fly, by the light of day, to the middle of the ocean to land on a cruiser in heavy weather. On which day of the year would this be appropriate?

Q5听 How are Don Fabrizio Corbera, Balram Halwai and King Henry II related to a pink diamond?

Q6听 Music - In what sense might the first of these thwart the efforts of the other two?

Q7听 Why could there once have been fellow feeling between James Herriot, the composer of the Carmina Burana, and a newspaperman in Indo-China?

Q8听 What might you get if you paired the following: a Kentucky Colonel with a Chicago bluesman; the near-neighbours of the lover of madeleine with the former Mrs Rod Stewart; and The Snow Goose with a beknighted union leader?

Where, historically, might one have been subject to an intergalactic smuggler, the Emperor of Mongo, a Sapiential book and a component of a sword?

Don't write to us as there are no prizes - but Tom will provide the solution at the beginning of next week's edition.