The record for fastest Morse code copying is 75.2 words per minute

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 10: Well done, you beat us!
6+ out of 10: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer

The ones that got away
1) Bullfighting is legal in Spain, Portugal and which other EU country?
2) How many hearts does an octopus have?
3) Which president created the post "Chief Technology Officer of the United States?
4) What four word Bible quote was the first message sent by Morse code?
5) Martha Masters, Lawrence Kutner, Chris Taub and Remy Hadley were all employed by which fictional character created by David Shore?
6) In 2004 a Fender Stratocaster nicknamed Blackie sold for $959,500 at Christie's setting the then record for the world's most expensive guitar. Who did it belong to?
7) In which movie did Tom Cruise shoot to stardom with the help of tight white underpants, prostitutes, and Joe Pantoliano?
8) In which movie did Cameron Diaz make her feature film debut?
9) Name two of the four sisters in Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women. (You need both for the point.)
10) What is the longest common English word that can be formed using only letters that rhyme with "E"? (When asked, the American quizmaster added that as he pronounces the letter Z as "zee" we should consider that in our deliberations.)

The answers

1) France
2) 3
3) Barack Obama
4) What hath God wrought
5) Dr. Gregory House, M.D. ('House' suffices)
6) Eric Clapton
7) Risky Business
8) The Mask
9) Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (surname March, in case you were wondering)
10) DETECTED (given the word 'common' in the question, and the general complications of "which dictionary?" alternatives, however plausible, are not accepted)

Our excuses

1) We made a fairly basic mistake here and put Andorra which, predictably, isn't even in the EU. Even without that slip-up I'm still not sure we would have picked France of the remaining options, although given its proximity to Spain it does seem the 'obvious' answer.
2) The doctor thought octopuses had a heart for each chamber that a normal human heart has, giving a total of four. Apparently they have one heart pumping blood through each gill and then a third for the rest of the body. Needless to say I'm adding this to the doctor's list of 'medical' questions he's inexplicably got wrong.
3) Theorizing this was one of those "oh, it'll be more recent than you think" questions we were debating between Clinton and (W) Bush before going for the latter. The position was actually first created in 2009, so at least we'd got the spirit of the question correct...
4) The doctor had a vague memory of this, and suggested 'let there be light' which I thought worked rather well, though admittedly not as well as the actual answer.
5) A rather successful show that we've almost never seen. After watching one episode a few years ago the doctor decided "watching this as a doctor is like being a chef and watching a drama about cooking where everyone could fly and they spend all their time trying to fly and flying and none of their time cooking". Pithy.
6) There only really seemed to be two options for this: Hendrix and Clapton. Except I was the only one thinking of Clapton and didn't mention it because I only vaguely know who he is.
7) Not one any of us were familiar with, our early Tom Cruise repertoire being limited to Top Gun (1986) and Cocktail (1988) both coming rather later than Risky Business in 1983. Able to rule out Top Gun, at least, we were left with Cocktail as our 'better than nothing' guess. Risky Business was Cruise's sixth feature film appearance, his debut coming in 1981's Endless Love.
8) Another toss-up that went the wrong way. We spent a long time considering The Mask before going with There's Something About Mary which, coming out in 1998, was a whole four years later.
9) An obscenely famous book the details of which we were all entirely ignorant of. A case of "pick some random oldish names and hope for the best" for us.
10) Given our enjoyment of word puzzles I was a bit disappointed we missed this. The letters available are BCDEGPTVZ and we got as close as "if only we could use F, then DEFECTED would work" without the penny dropping. Our seven letter TEEPEED (thinking of the act of throwing toilet roll over someone's house) is, alas, not yet in my dictionary.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (6 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions
1) Excluding Vatican City (which is not a member of the UN), Andorra is the fifth-smallest country in Europe, name all four European countries which are smaller.
2) What character, almost certainly on your keyboard, is known by several names including 'octothorp'?
3) Barack Obama's name only has two different vowels (a and o), but which US President is unique in having a name (first and last) that contains only one unique vowel (of a, e, i, o or u)?
4) Classic trivia: what was eventually revealed to be the first name of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse? He was named after the ship James Cook took on his first 'voyage of discovery' to Australia and New Zealand.
5) In an apparent analogy to Sherlock Holmes' opium use, Dr Gregory House is depicted as being dependent on Vicodin, a painkiller consisting of the opiate hydrocodone and which much more common analgesic also known as acetaminophen?
6) Eric Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once as a solo artist and separately as a member of which two bands?

Question 7

7) In Risky Business Tom Cruise's character does some naughty things, including driving his dad's car recklessly without permission. What make is that car? A segment of its logo is pictured here in case you can't quite remember the movie.
8) In the movie, the titular mask supposedly belongs to which Norse god?
9) In a 1997 episode of which TV series does one of the male lead characters put a copy of The Shining, and later Little Women, in a freezer because they made him too scared and too sad, respectively?
10) A hit for Perry Como in 1949, "'A' You're Adorable" takes the form of an alphabetic acrostic, with the first 11 lines matching up with a letter of the alphabet (before they presumably got bored/stuck). Fill in two of the four missing words below!

A, you're adorable

B, you're so _________

C, you're a _____ full of charms

D, you're a _______

And E, you're ________

And F, you're a feather in my arms

The answers

1) (In decreasing size) Malta, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco
2) # (hash, pound, or number sign - it has eight 'points', hence 'octo')
3) Lyndon (B.) Johnson
4) Endeavour
5) Paracetamol
6) The Yardbirds and Cream (no half marks, I'm afraid)
7) Porsche (here's the full logo)
8) Loki (often described as the god of mischief)
9) (Joey in) Friends [VIDEO]
10) B: beautiful; C: cutie; D: darling; E: exciting (and if you haven't seen Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise performing this particular number, stop whatever you're doing and watch this video)

How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!

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