Tough 2 - New Year's Day

[OurCreature]

What links.............

9 Real tennis handicapping system; unglazed pottery; seafood soup?

10 Northern Transjordan; Marilynne Robinson Pulitzer winner; Margaret Atwood dystopia?

11 Adele; Jessie J; Kae Tempest; FKA twigs; Amy Winehouse?

12 Am; Fr and Ga; Ge; Nh; Po?

13 Lonrho founder; Loco-Motion singer; driven by Penelope Pitstop; variola?

14 Bona; omi-palone; naff; nante; vada; zhuzh?

15 László Tábori (’55, year after); Jürg Marmet (’56, three years after); Pete Conrad (’69, same year)?

This is a difficult set of questions for me - I only got one answer that I'm sure is correct, and I'd need to think for quite a long time before producing some guesses.

[DaisyNinjaGirl]

10 Northern Transjordan; Marilynne Robinson Pulitzer winner; Margaret Atwood dystopia?
Something to do with Underground Railroads?

12 Am; Fr and Ga; Ge; Nh; Po?
Are these elements that had to be 'created' because their half life is short? I think Am is Americium, Francium and Gallium?
Po would be Polonium (good old Marie Curie), not sure about the other two.

13 Lonrho founder; Loco-Motion singer; driven by Penelope Pitstop; variola?
Variola is a smallpox adjacent virus, it was used for inoculations before Jenner's experiments made the vaccine more reliable. Don't know the other ones.

14 Bona; omi-palone; naff; nante; vada; zhuzh?
Are these words that have been added to the dictionary in recent years?

Definitely a lot of guesses in this one, but....

FIRST!

[Patience]

13 Lonrho founder; Loco-Motion singer; driven by Penelope Pitstop; variola?
Variola is a smallpox adjacent virus, it was used for inoculations before Jenner's experiments made the vaccine more reliable. Don't know the other ones.

Thanks to Daisy, I think I have the answer. They are all synonymous of small.
Tiny Roland, Little Eva, The Compact Pussycat, Smallpox!

[Patience]

15 László Tábori (’55, year after); Jürg Marmet (’56, three years after); Pete Conrad (’69, same year)?

Laszlo was an athlete and one of the early people to break the 4 min mile. Pete Conrad was an Apollo astronaut.

[eccles]

12. I don't think it's half-life as gallium is a stable element (gallium arsenide is used in semiconductors) but given Am Fr Po are all named after countries, maybe the rest are too? Gallium named after Gaul, germanium after Germany, which just leaves Nh for someone else to work out.

[Patience]

Oh! Good spot. Nh is Nihonium. Nihon is the Japanese name for Japan.

[OurCreature]

#12 is the one answer I knew out of this set of qs.

[DaisyNinjaGirl]

Oh! Good spot. Nh is Nihonium. Nihon is the Japanese name for Japan.

12. I don't think it's half-life as gallium is a stable element (gallium arsenide is used in semiconductors) but given Am Fr Po are all named after countries, maybe the rest are too? Gallium named after Gaul, germanium after Germany, which just leaves Nh for someone else to work out.

Yes, that makes sense - elements named after countries. Many of which are also unstable, because they were discovered late enough for someone to want to name it after their home country.

15 László Tábori (’55, year after); Jürg Marmet (’56, three years after); Pete Conrad (’69, same year)?
Laszlo was an athlete and one of the early people to break the 4 min mile. Pete Conrad was an Apollo astronaut.

It must be people who were second to achieve a record - I'm guessing Laszlo broke the 4 minute mile the year after the first person; and Pete Conrad was the commander of the Apollo 12 expedition. Just looked up Jürg Marmet - that fits, he was in the second team to ascend Mt Everest.

Thanks to Daisy, I think I have the answer. They are all synonymous of small.
Tiny Roland, Little Eva, The Compact Pussycat, Smallpox!

That was super double plus obscure - this is definitely a team work quiz!

[Wildrover]

9. Bisque is a type of pottery and soup so I'm guessing it must be the name of the Real Tennis handicap system
10. Gilead - name of the country in The Handmaid's Tale, title of the novel and I dimly remember seeing it on historical maps of the Middle East.
15. I think Daisy is close but I think it's the third person to do something not the second. Bannister and Auustralian John Landy were vying to run the first sub 4 minute mile and after Bannister ran the first, Landy broke his world record the following month and was the second and I assume Tabori was after that. Conrad was the third man to walk on the moon after Armstrong and Aldrin. Don't know about the Everest ascent.
#14 is clearly words in some language so I'll take a punt at Romany

[DaisyNinjaGirl]

15. I think Daisy is close but I think it's the third person to do something not the second. Bannister and Auustralian John Landy were vying to run the first sub 4 minute mile and after Bannister ran the first, Landy broke his world record the following month and was the second and I assume Tabori was after that. Conrad was the third man to walk on the moon after Armstrong and Aldrin. Don't know about the Everest ascent.

Oh right, you know more about the 4 minute mile than I do. The first successful Everest ascent was by Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay; so if Marmet was the first person in his expedition to get to the top, he would have been third ever.

Teamwork FTW!

[OurCreature]

Landy broke his world record the following month

Shortly after Landy broke Bannister's record of 3:59.4 for the one mile with a time of 3:58.0, Bannister beat Landy for the mile gold medal in the Empire Games in Vancouver in 1954. However, Landy's record stood for just over 3 years when Derek Ibbotson broke it with a time of 3:57.2 in 1957. A year later Herb Elliott broke Ibbotson's record with a time of 3:54.5 and 3 1/2 years later the great Peter Snell of New Zealand edged it down by 0.1 seconds to 3:54.4 in 1962 with a further edging down in November 1964 to 3:54.1 in the year when he did the 800 metres/1,500 metres double in the Tokyo Olympics - the only male athlete to do that since the 1920 games in Antwerp when Albert Hill of GB managed that feat.

I knew about Bannister, Landy and Snell but not the details of the progression of the world mile record, or the Albert Hill fact;
I got all that from Wikipedia.

While I think about it, another New Zealander John Walker was first to break 3:50 in the mile with a time of 3:49.4 in 1975 and he won the gold medal for the 1,500 metres in the Montreal Olympics in 1976.

And shot putter Valerie Adams won gold in 2 Olympics, silver in her third Olympics and bronze in her fourth Olympics.

New Zealand isn't bad at rowing either and are top most of the time in Rugby Union with the All Blacks. They are very good at sport.

[Wildrover]

New Zealand isn't bad at rowing either and are top most of the time in Rugby Union with the All Blacks. They are very good at sport.

Especially considering there are only 5 million of them - for good measure they are also the wold champions of test cricket. There was a really good documentary about the Bannister/Landy battle a few years back which is why I remembered that Landy was second.

[OurCreature]

An edition of the Goon Show managed to make a joke about Bannister.
Neee.......deeeee..........boom-skiddle-boo..................

Voice:- that was Dr Bannister.

Seagoon:- God! How he's changed!

[eccles]

<Crun> "You've been at the metal polish again, Min."

[OurCreature]

[OurCreature]

Another tricky set of qs with the HF Gang scoring 6/7 in a truly collaborative effort with several answers. I had heard of the BRIT School but never looked it up; it's a selective independent school for the performing arts in Croydon and is funded by the Government, the British Record Industry Trust and various charities.

As for Polari slang - it is 'a form of slang or cant used in Britain by some actors, circus and fairground showmen, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals, sex workers and the gay subculture' per Wikipedia. It definitely was extant in the 19th century and is constantly evolving, with many Romani words in it. It was used in particular by Punch and Judy performers.

9 Bisque.
10 Gilead.
11 Attended the Brit School.
12 Chemical elements named after countries: americium; francium and gallium (France); germanium (Germany); nihonium (Japan); polonium (Poland).
13 Diminutive names: Tiny (Rowland); Little (Eva); Compact (Pussycat); smallpox.
14 Terms used in Polari slang.
15 The third person to: run sub four-minute-mile; summit Everest; walk on the moon.