The questions
1 Which dancer commissioned Ravel’s Boléro?
2 The Sacred Band of Thebes was composed of 150 what?
3 Who came to power via the coup of 18 Brumaire?
4 Whose slogan was “We are the 99%”?
5 What book/film is about a disastrous climb of Siula Grande in Peru?
6 Discovered in 1964 by radio astronomers, what is CMB?
7 Which queen and friend corresponded as Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman?
8 Which two US states’ names end in three consonants?
What links:
9 Brezhoneg; Elsässerditsch; Corsu; Arpitan; Berrichon?
10 Joan Collins; Ginger Rogers; Wife of Bath?
11 Hansa Rostock; CSKA Moscow; Red Star Belgrade; Sparta Prague?
12 Aragog; Shelob; Boris; Charlotte?
13 Want; Disease; Ignorance; Squalor; Idleness?
14 Hugh Kingsmill; Lytton Strachey; Augustus John; Bernard Shaw?
15 Chain; Regalia; Laity; Serial; Pure; Rain; Enemy; Pains; Rabies?
The answers
1 Ida Rubinstein.
2 Pairs of male lovers.
3 Napoleon Bonaparte (as First Consul).
4 Occupy movement.
5 Touching The Void.
6 Cosmic microwave background radiation.
7 Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill.
8 Massachusetts; Kentucky.
9 Languages of France: Breton; Alsatian; Corsican; Franco-Provençal; Berry dialect.
10 Married five times.
11 Last champions of defunct leagues: East Germany; USSR; Yugoslavia; Czechoslovakia.
12 Fictional spiders: Harry Potter; Lord of the Rings; Who song; Charlotte’s Web.
13 Five “giants” in the 1942 Beveridge Report.
14 Subjects of biographies by Michael Holroyd.
15 Country anagrams: China; Algeria; Italy; Israel; Peru; Iran; Yemen; Spain; Serbia.
