General Knowledge Quiz

[Calthrop]

Next question:

Which 20th century novel has chapters including

• Three's Company, Four's a Bore
• Some Monsters
• Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers
• It's My Party and I'll Snub Who I Want To
• Be It Ever So Horrid

Not, I suppose, Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding?

 

[krus_aragon]

Not, I suppose, Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding?

It's not one I've read, but neither is it the book I have in mind either.

(I wonder what type of monsters Bridget Jones would have encountered in that chaper...)

 

[Calthrop]

Seems that almost everything imaginable happens to Bridget...

 

[krus_aragon]

Let's add another chapter title to the list:

Which 20th century novel has chapters including

• Three's Company, Four's a Bore
• Some Monsters
• Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers
• It's My Party and I'll Snub Who I Want To
• Be It Ever So Horrid
• Indigestion at the Sign of the Goode Eats

 

[DaleCooper]

I was going to say William Burroughs' Naked Lunch but the spelling of "Goode" makes me think of Terry Pratchett.

 

[Calthrop]

Not something by Jasper Fforde, I suppose? -- the extra-letters thing -- "Goode" as per @DaleCooper -- made me think of him (I personally find him as an author, surpassingly awful).

 

[krus_aragon]

I was going to say William Burroughs' Naked Lunch but the spelling of "Goode" makes me think of Terry Pratchett.

Not something by Jasper Fforde, I suppose? -- the extra-letters thing -- "Goode" as per @DaleCooper -- made me think of him (I personally find him as an author, surpassingly awful).

No joy yet, though with the mention of Pratchett we're drifting toward the right genre.

Let's add another chapter...

Which 20th century novel has chapters including

• Three's Company, Four's a Bore
• Some Monsters
• Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers
• It's My Party and I'll Snub Who I Want To
• Be It Ever So Horrid
• Indigestion at the Sign of the Goode Eats
• Serutan spelled backwards is mud

 

[DaleCooper]

Is it one of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently stories?

 

[krus_aragon]

Is it one of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently stories?

Nope, sorry. Another chapter:

Which 20th century novel has chapters including

• Three's Company, Four's a Bore
• Some Monsters
• Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers
• It's My Party and I'll Snub Who I Want To
• Be It Ever So Horrid
• Indigestion at the Sign of the Goode Eats
• Serutan spelled backwards is mud
• Schlob's Lair and Other Mountain Resorts

(Note that I haven't listed them in order.)

 

[Calthrop]

Not Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl stuff, by any chance? (Something else which I find ghastly; but I'm a miserable hard-to-please so-and-so.)

 

[krus_aragon]

Not Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl stuff, by any chance? (Something else which I find ghastly; but I'm a miserable hard-to-please so-and-so.)

No, it predates his work.

Another one added to the ingredients:
Which 20th century novel has chapters including

• Three's Company, Four's a Bore
• Some Monsters
• Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers
• It's My Party and I'll Snub Who I Want To
• Be It Ever So Horrid
• Indigestion at the Sign of the Goode Eats
• Serutan spelled backwards is mud
• Schlob's Lair and Other Mountain Resorts
• Minas Troney in the Soup

 

[DaleCooper]

Something by Michael Moorcock?

 

[krus_aragon]

Something by Michael Moorcock?

No, it's far more silly than his work.

Another one added to the ingredients:
Which 20th century novel has chapters including

• Three's Company, Four's a Bore
• Some Monsters
• Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers
• It's My Party and I'll Snub Who I Want To
• Be It Ever So Horrid
• Indigestion at the Sign of the Goode Eats
• Serutan spelled backwards is mud
• Schlob's Lair and Other Mountain Resorts
• Minas Troney in the Soup
• The Riders of Roi-Tan

 

[Calthrop]

Would it be the Harvard Lampoon's send-up of Tolkien -- Bored Of The Rings ?

 

[krus_aragon]

Would it be the Harvard Lampoon's send-up of Tolkien -- Bored Of The Rings ?

That it is!

Some of the references to US 60s pop culture have aged a bit, but it's still worth a giggle:

"I can't make out the words," said Frito.
"No, you cannot," said Goodgulf. "They are Elvish, in the tongue of Fordor. A rough translation is:

" This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade
If found, send to Sorhed (the postage is prepaid)."

The next good read is yours...

 

[krus_aragon]

(I'm still tickled by the first guess' suggestion that Bridget Jones might be involved in this parody of Middle Earth. )

 

[Calthrop]

(I'm still tickled by the first guess' suggestion that Bridget Jones might be involved in this parody of Middle Earth. )

I know of BOTR, but haven't read it: took me a heck of a long time to catch on, and at first I was guessing with utter blindness !

Fresh question, but sticking with Tolkien -- what is the modern device which is anachronistically mentioned in the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings ? Said device is dear to our hearts, but -- oddly -- hated by JRRT; the mention, though, is among nice scenes and happenings in the Shire. (One suspects that this one "slipped through the net" of the author's intensive editing of his work.)

 

[Cowley]

I know of BOTR, but haven't read it: took me a heck of a long time to catch on, and at first I was guessing with utter blindness !

Fresh question, but sticking with Tolkien -- what is the modern device which is anachronistically mentioned in the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings ? Said device is dear to our hearts, but -- oddly -- hated by JRRT; the mention, though, is among nice scenes and happenings in the Shire. (One suspects that this one "slipped through the net" of the author's intensive editing of his work.)

Dear to our hearts?
I’m going to have to say - pacemaker, although I’m sure it can’t possibly be?

 

[Calthrop]

Not a pacemaker (Tolkien was a bit odd about some things, but I don't think he had a quarrel with modern medicine). I meant "dear to our hearts", in the narrowest, most cliche-ish way -- nothing "cryptic".

 

[DaleCooper]

Telephone?

 

[Calthrop]

Afraid not. It's something which would, perhaps, be "modern" vis-a-vis hobbit technology (forge-bellows / water-mills / hand-looms etc.), rather than as modern as all that, in terms of the 20th / 21st Centuries -- and it's stuff which many of us on this forum, greatly like. ("Device" meant, in the broadest possible way.)

 

[krus_aragon]

Afraid not. It's something which would, perhaps, be "modern" vis-a-vis hobbit technology (forge-bellows / water-mills / hand-looms etc.), rather than as modern as all that, in terms of the 20th / 21st Centuries -- and it's stuff which many of us on this forum, greatly like. ("Device" meant, in the broadest possible way.)

The Fireworks that Gandalf is so famed for?

 

[DaleCooper]

Steam engine?

 

[Calthrop]

The Fireworks that Gandalf is so famed for?

A particular effect of Gandalf's fireworks (which themselves may well -- the reader suspects -- have magical properties, making pyro-technology if there is such a word, irrelevant): in reference to which the author mentions something which is very definitely from our civilisation and fruit of the Industrial Revolution.

 

[Calthrop]

Steam engine?

Didn't see this post till I had answered @krus_aragon's. Yes -- most particularly, in role involving the rapid and long-distance conveyance of passengers -- could things be thus expanded a little?

 

[DaleCooper]

Steam catapult?

 

[Calthrop]

Steam catapult?

Too inventive a flight of imagination -- answer is, the most obvious means and mode of carrying passengers fast by steam, as developed in the 19th century: something they simply didn't have in Middle-Earth (which is why I think T. would have cut it out in revising-and-editing, only he just failed to spot it).

 

[DaleCooper]

Steam velocipede?

 

[Cowley]

It’s got to be a steam boat hasn’t it?

 

[Calthrop]

Hoping not to hurt anyone's feelings; but I'd been thinking that with my hints, the answer would be ridiculously easy... you're all trying too hard and reaching too far. @DaleCooper, you've been closest with #11963: I wanted something just a little bit more exact, to what the guy wrote.

Anybody who has the book, do by all means look the matter up -- very first chapter, Bilbo's 111st birthday.