The questions
1 Which monarch owned 640 dogs comprising 32 breeds?
2 Which clothing brand began in the Market Place in South Shields?
3 Buckyballs are a form of which element?
4 What has topped the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch for the past 20 years?
5 Which food safety measure was pioneered by microbiologist Alice Evans?
6 Old Faithful, or 11 to 15, is an opening move in which game?
7 Philippe Halsman famously photographed his subjects doing what?
8 Which country’s flag promises “order and progress”?
What links:
9 Lieutenant Kijé; Comrade Ogilvy; Bunbury; Captain Tuttle; Susie?
10 Balzac; Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini; siege of Calais?
11 Ba’; Bottle-kicking; Scoring the Hales; Uppies and Downies?
12 Lost in a Good Book; Havisham; Jack Maggs; Mister Pip?
13 Iphigenia in Greek myth and Isaac in the Bible?
14 Gas giant; Neptunian; super-Earth; terrestrial?
15 England (1485); France (923); Germany (1298); Scotland (1513)?
The answers
1 Queen Victoria.
2 Barbour.
3 Carbon.
4 (House) sparrow.
5 Milk pasteurisation.
6 Draughts (checkers).
7 Jumping.
8 Brazil.
9 Characters who don’t exist: Russian novella; the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four; The Importance of Being Earnest; M*A*S*H; Seinfeld.
10 Inspired sculptures by Rodin: Monument to Balzac; The Kiss; Burghers of Calais.
11 Medieval football games still played in the UK.
12 Novels inspired by Great Expectations: Jasper Fforde; Ronald Frame; Peter Carey; Lloyd Jones.
13 Saved from sacrifice by their fathers (in some versions Iphigenia didn’t survive).
14 Categories of exoplanet.
15 Last monarch to die in battle: Richard III at Bosworth; Robert I at Soissons; Adolf at Göllheim; James IV at Flodden.
