Christmas Quizzes 2020–2021

Thirteenth Question, and how to become the fortunate victor!

Well done! With any luck you now have (a) 36 correct answers to our simple questions and (b) a numbered/dated list so you can easily relate questions to answers as you review them.

A prize is within your grasp ... and all you have to do is read the following instructive dialogue quite carefully, and act on the hints it offers, in a cool-headed manner.

'Beyond the Pale':
Your goal is to find, and send us, a word from a well-loved Brooker/Reid song.

You:
OK; how do I know which well-loved Brooker/Reid song?

You’ll simply need to collect the letters of its title, and rearrange them.

And where do I find these collectable letters?

Each day you answered three questions; and it's partly the answers, and partly the way the questions are worded, that will lead you to the collectable letters. 

Sounds straightforward ... -ish. So, tell all.

OK. First step is to go back to the 'Beyond the Pale' WhatsNew page and contemplate the little random scrapbook snippets that we published, one daily. It will be no surprise to you to learn that, random or not, each one correlates closely with the three questions set on the same date.

I feared that might be the case ...

Great. In that case you're probably streets ahead of this explanation. You'll have noticed that each scrapbook snippet contains – hidden in plain view – the forename and surname of a music-industry personage associated with Procol Harum. To make things easier, each hidden-in-plain-view personage is also the answer to one of the 36 questions you've already worked out. So all the hidden-in-plain-view names have been in your thoughts during the last twelve days.

But I read those daft clippings, and there aren't any Procol names in them.

Look at the headlines. The forename you seek is sometimes present as part of another word, or maybe it straddles the space(s) between one or more words. The surname is camouflaged likewise.

How about an example?

OK, look at the 'Viagra' clipping nearby. In the headline, can you see 'gra-ham' (last three letters of the first word + first three letters of the next word)? And 'bro-ad' (last three letters of the third word + first two letters of the last word)?

Well ... OK, I guess, but what's 'Graham Broad' supposed to mean? What's that got to do with Procol Harum?

Graham is a great drummer ... he played lots of 1990s' gigs with Procol. You'll find him ... and all the other people you're looking for ... on this useful page of Procol names.

OK then ... but in the example, the forename and a surname are not adjacent. There's nonsense letters, sandwiched in between.

Exactly. And that's where you're going to find some useful information. Count the number of sandwiched letters – between the end of the forename and the start of the associated surname. In the clipping above, the sandwiched letters are p e r s d o ... six letters (count only letters: in some of the clippings there are bits of punctuation or spaces ... ignore those). So the Procol Harum factor of that question ('PH factor' for short) is 6.

OK. And I guess all the clippings have different PH factors?

Not necessarily, but each day's clipping will give you a particular PH factor, and you'll apply that factor, whatever number it is, to that day's questions.

Really? How?

In a very simple way. If the PH factor for the day happens to be 14 (because there were 14 letters sandwiched between the end of the forename and the start of the surname hidden in plain view in the scrapbook snippet headline), find the fourteenth word of each question for that day, and make a note of the initial letter of that word (again, don't count punctuation or brackets or spaces or anything except alphabetical letters).

Example?

Sure. Imagine this line, in blue below, was one of the questions on the same day as the 'Viagra hampers dobro addict' snippet.

1.      Supply the name of Procol's current guitarist.

You'll have written down the correct answer ('Geoff Whitehorn'). But in fact you're not sending that info to 'Beyond the Pale': you're looking for a letter from the title of a well-loved Brooker/Reid song, and you get that by applying the PH factor (6) ... count along to the sixth word of the question ('current') ... so the letter for that question is the initial of 'current' ... namely 'C'.

Really? So it was a waste of time to work out the actual answers to the questions, then. Thanks a bunch, you lousy schmucks.

Not at all, not at all.

And (angrily) … there are three questions on each of twelve days: 36 title-letters in all? You expect me to solve a 36-letter anagram?

No, we’ll make it really easy for you. We'll cut things down to size, and make positive use of your carefully worked-out answers. You can disregard any question that begins with the same letter as the first letter of its answer.

Eh?

Look at this hypothetical blue question.

2.     Mention the name of the band's current bass-guitarist.

Easy. Matt Pegg.

Yes, and you notice that the question, and the answer, both start with 'M': 'Mention', and 'Matt'.

So that means I can discard that question and answer?

It does.

That means that – even though the PH factor of 6 refers to the word 'band's' – I don't collect the letter 'B'?

Exactly. 'Matching questions' (where the question and the answer start with the same letter) don't count. They don't contain any collectable letters that could help you find the title of the well-loved Brooker/Reid song.

Cool. So I don't have to solve a 36-letter anagram at the end of this process.

Exactly. Good thinking.

How many title-letters should I be left with?

Ha ha ha (laughs). If we told you that, you’d just flip through your handy list of Brooker/Reid songs and find the title with the right number of letters!

Where’s the skill in that, hey?

Exactly. But off you go, work out twelve PH factors from the sandwiched letters in the scrapbook snippets, and apply them to the relevant questions (once you've discarded the 'matching' questions') to find a handful of collectable letters. Then unscramble them, and lo! You have the title of a well-loved Brooker/Reid song!

So when I find the song, what do I do? Send in the title?

'Where’s the skill in that, hey?' No, you read the words of the song, and use your skill and judgment to find the longest equiterminate word in it ... and send us that.

What in hell is an 'equiterminate word'?

A word that begins and ends with the same letter. Like 'Kirk', or 'level', or 'minimum'. From Latin: 'equi' means same, 'terminate' refers to ends ... every word has two ends.

You're kidding.

‘Equiterminate’ is itself equiterminate, if you look at it.

Of course, of course. So all I have to do is deduce each day's PH factor from the sandwiched letters, and count along the questions (unless they're 'matching questions') and collect the initial letters of the words indicated; then I bundle all those collectable letters together, quickly work out an anagram that's a well-loved Brooker/Reid song-title, then I flip thru the lyric looking for 'equiterminate' words, and send in the longest specimen I can find?

That's it. Simple.
And you'll know it's the right answer when you find it.
And you'll be elated, with a huge sense of victorious satisfaction.
And you could end up winning a handsome Procol prize.
What more could anybody possibly want?

[The end]

We hope the above little dialogue helps. Remember: you're sending us – at webmaster@procolharum.com – an answer consisting of one equiterminate word, not forgetting your choice of prizes, in the form of a twelve-letter string (like JUTECORDIALS or ICARUSJOLTED) using the reference-letter for each prize as listed here.

Very best of luck to all !

Many thanks as ever to the ever-vigilant Jane Clare in Perth, Western Australia, who has worked all these puzzles through to make sure they cohere, and contributed a lot to their careful wording.

In the unlikely event of there being fewer winners than prizes this year, early claimants will get more than their fair share!
 
Prizes will of course be awarded at the absolute discretion of Roland and Jens, who run 'Beyond the Pale', and whose decision will be final; their families are not eligible to enter.

 Schedule of prizes | How to play | Twelfth puzzle