QuizList

During a slow week for quizzes, and a good week for snow, the only information I have to impart is that if you go to a quiz onthe events of 2009, brush up on your MPs’ expense claims.  It pays to know who claimed for horse manure and toilet seats.

So you couldn’t guess the place name?  Shame on you.  One correct guess given to me verbally, so that person is the winner, and many incorrect ones by e-mail.  Here we go:

It has at least 15 namesakes in the USA,  and contains a prison, cathedral and castle.  Well, no more explanation is needed on these clues.

Nineteenth century literary connection:  there are actually several, but Dickens was closely associated with this place.  And this ties in with ‘think of a metal roster, then turn it round:  ‘a metal roster’ might be  ‘a chrome list’, which is an anagram of Cloisterham, the setting for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and believed to be based on our place.

Walk up a prominent street there, and you might find yourself in Pennsylvania:  Fort Pitt.

A defensive afterthought nearby has given us a word which entered the English language:  well,  here’s how Wikipedia defines this – ‘Fort Borstal was built as an afterthought from the 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, by convict labour between 1875 and 1885.’  So now you know….

Famous near-carthorse:  ‘Carthorse’ is nearly an anagram of the place name.

Sometimes grouped with other neighbouring places around a geographical feature:  the Medway Towns.

An old Roman Road runs through it:  Watling Street.

Nearby football team has blue as a prominent colour:  Gillingham.

In 1998, something happened this place which makes it (to my knowledge) unique among English places for what it hasn’t rather than for what it has:  it lost its status as a city, making it possibly the only ex-city in England today…

And if you still don’t know where it is, well, reader, I married him.

Haven’t decided whether I’ll run another one of these in the immediate future, so to keep you going, think about what the following might have in common:  Fireworks, skip lorries, the pips on Radio 4, the bleeps on ‘Mastermind’, text message signals?  (Answer:  the dog is scared of all of them…)