Procol Harum

Beyond
the Pale

Christmas quizzes 2011/12

5 January: questions 1–36, and the final instructions!

Each day we added three statements to the following list. Not all the statements were true! All you needed to do was make a note, from day to day, of the number of any statement that you considered to be true. Some days there were one true statement, some days there were more than one. There were never zero, and there were fifteen correct statements altogether. Detailed 'how to play' instructions were here.

We hope you didn't t make any hasty decisions. There might have been small inaccuracies in an otherwise-faultless statement; and if there were, that whole statement was untrue overall. We might well have taken something that looks true, and mischievously distorted it by changing some tiny detail. And we might have selected something that looks deeply improbable, but was in fact correct in every particular.

As it's the final day, at the foot of the page you'll find simple instructions telling you how to ‘decode’ your findings, to ‘set your foot upon the nearest road’ and ‘find some pirate’s gold’: as always, you will end up sending a very short answer to ‘Beyond the Pale’.

25 December (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	1	Procol guitarist Mick Grabham’s first real professional engagement was with Johnny Duncan and The Blue Grass Boys, who played country and western stuff.
	2	Procol Harum will perform in South Africa once during May 2012 – and once again during the following month.
	3	Procol Harum reduced to a four-piece band in 1970 so that could they pose with four semaphore flags, spelling out ‘H-O-M-E’ to publicise their new LP, as the Beatles had successfully done for their album Help.
26 December (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	4	Fans who saw Procol Harum’s first gig of this millennium – at Stoke Park, Guildford – assumed that the two guitarists, Mssrs Grabham and Whitehorn, were playing identical guitars: in fact, however, they were sharing a single instrument – jointly owned by Robin Trower, Dave Ball and Tim Renwick.
	5	Keith Reid 'played organ on a couple of numbers' when Procol Harum appeared on a bill at The Lyceum with the Rolling Stones in December 1969.
	6	Gary Brooker's purple tailcoat, depicted on the cover of the Live at Edmonton album, was the only item of rock 'n' roll memorabilia to survive last month's firebombing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
27 December (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	7	Gary Brooker's lime-green trench coat, depicted on the cover of the Live at Edmonton album, was knitted for him by Swingle singer Christianne Legrand.
	8	Procol organist Chris Copping – a great reader of novels – asserts that the made-up future English language that characterises the late Russell Hoban’s masterpiece Riddley Walker is ‘…almost identical to that heard in pubs in deepest Suffolk’.
	9	Procol Harum was only the second British band to play live – rather than miming – in the crater of an erupting Icelandic volcano.
28 December (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	10	British author Sebastian Faulks mentions Procol Harum several times in his 1984 novel, A Trick of the Night.
	11	In January 2011 Procol Harum played a total of 129 pieces live with the DR UnderholdningsOrkesteret and DR VokalEnsemble under the baton of David Firman.
	12	When Gary Brooker, Mark Brzezicki and Josh Phillips (among other musicians) recorded the Brooker/Reid song A Little Life for a charity project, Keith Reid supplied some additional words.
29 December (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	13	Keith Reid offered his publishing to Chris Blackwell – who at that time employed Guy Stevens – in exchange for the fare to go to New York.
	14	Chris Copping composed music for Suspended Sentence, pseudonymously penned by a Procol Harum fan, but the mp3 link at ‘Beyond the Pale’ no longer works.
	15	Procol guitarist Dave Ball’s first real professional engagement was with Johnny Duncan and The Green Grass Gang, who played country and western stuff.
30 December (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	16	Procol Harum have now recorded at least seventeen albums of new Brooker / Reid instrumentals, which have been stockpiled for future release to provide an income for the band when the world’s financial markets finally collapse.
	17	Gary Brooker broke his right-hand dorsal ribs 7 and 8 while on tour in Finland with Procol Harum.
	18	Matt Pegg broke Gary Brooker’s right-hand dorsal ribs 7 and 8 while on tour in Finland with The Drifters.
31 December (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	19	Josh Phillips is the composer of many notable television themes including Strictly Come Dancing, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Celebrity Dog School and The Sack Race.
	20	There are only two single-word anagrams in English of Geoff Dunn’s middle name, and one of them is sung in the song Grand Hotel.
	21	Geoff Whitehorn gets composing credits for a couple of bonus-tracks on the Beyond the Beyond album, originally shelved by the record company and released for the first time in the early 90s.
1 January 2012 (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	22	On Wednesday 24 March 1977 Andy Warhol took a photograph of Procol Harum.
	23	On Wednesday 24 March 1976 Andy Warhol took a photograph of Robin Trower.
	24	On Wednesday 25 March 1976 BJ Wilson took a photograph of Andy Warhol.
2 January (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	25	This mp3 clip may sound a bit familiar – yet these words do not go to this tune anywhere on Procol's Ninth.
	26	Referring to the ‘Thames Delta’ music exhibition – to be held in Southend-on-Sea from 17 April to 6 June 2012 – Dame Helen Mirren said ‘It’s truly amazing that so much musical talent has been produced (and is still produced) from the small corner of South West Wessex where I grew up.’
	27	The second verse of Holding On is longer than the first verse.
3 January (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	28	The night Procol Harum played Hong Kong Blues and Sex Machine in concert, Gary Brooker presented a BtP webmaster’s daughter with a silver edition of the chunky little Procol lifebelt badge that was formerly available with a gold finish: this was to commemorate her emigration ‘to go off and become an Aboriginal'.
	29	The 76-page book entitled ‘Procol Harum: Progressive Rock, Symphonic Rock, A Whiter Shade of Pale, Gary Brooker, Matt Pegg, Josh Phillips (Musician), Homburg (Song), Procol Harum (Album)’ – edited by Frederic Miller, Agnes Vandome and John McBrewster – is on sale at Amazon.co.uk and consists primarily of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.
	30	A Procol guitarist claimed, of Mark Brzezicki, that ‘ … he didn't always play with a full drum kit, sometimes only a bass drum, snare, hi-hat, and a ride cymbal, and maybe one top tom, with no floor tom, no right hand tom and no crash cymbal …’
4 January (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	31	Procol Harum’s Still There’ll be Moore was conceived as the theme tune for a 1970 James Bond film: but it could not be used, because Moore did not replace Connery until 1973.
	32	Customers at the Procol Harum online shop – www.btpstore.com – can choose the currency with which they order their tee-shirts, recordings, and books, by selecting GB pounds, Euros, Japanese Yen or US dollars from the little drop-down arrow box at the bottom right of the screen.
	33	The American release – DES-18008 – of Procol Harum's first album featured the song Conquistador on side two (second track), whereas on the British version it is the opening track of side one. The Italian version – ILP 30000 – on the other hand, relegates Conquistador to side two track four.
5 January (make a note of the number(s) of the true statement(s))	34	Not everybody who has played in Procol Harum is married, but those who are married were all married on the same date (that is to say, 13 July – albeit in different years) and in the same church (that is to say, at St Magner’s, Stoke Poges – albeit to different people)
	35	'The funniest three-digit number,' according to arch-Procol Harum fan and renowned author Douglas Adams, is 359.
	36	John 'Polly' Punter and Chris 'The Grouts' Michie were the Dutch designers who equipped Procol Harum with the notorious ‘Mediaeval Spacemen’ stage clothes in which they were often photographed at the height of the psychedelic 60s.

So – you’ve sorted the truth from the twaddle. Now … how to proceed (keep a clear eye and a steady head!).

Once you have written down the numbers of all the fifteen true statements above, add up the odd numbers (we shall call that ‘Total A’) and separately add up all the even numbers (we'll call that ‘Total B’).

Next you have to find the separate ‘digital roots’ of Total A and Total B. The digital root (also ‘repeated digital sum’) of any number is easy to find just by simply adding its constituent digits, then, if necessary, adding again. Wikipedia has a rather wordy explanation: it is the single-digit value ‘obtained by an iterative process of summing digits, on each iteration using the result from the previous iteration to compute a digit sum. The process continues until a single-digit number is reached.’

Put more simply, the digital root of 148 (for example) is 4 – because 1+4+8 = 13, and then 1+3 = 4. For another example, the digital root of 23 is 5 – because 2+3 = 5.

So now you have two single-digit numbers, derived from Total A and Total B. All you need to do is convert them into letters of the alphabet, using the system A=1, B=2, C=3 … etc.

(So, by way of an example, if your numbers were 7, and 8, you'd first count seven steps through the alphabet (a-b-c-d-e-f-G), and then eight steps (a-b-c-d-e-f-g-H), and your letters would be 'G' and 'H'.)

Now find the only Procol Harum song (clue: there are two words in the title!) that has those two letters as its initials (for example, if the letters derived from the two Totals were ‘D’ and ‘A’, the song would be Drunk Again). The list of Procol titles at www.procolharum.com/tn+sq/sq_index.htm includes the song you’re looking for.

Write down the two words of the title separately, and find a number-value for each word, again using the system A=1, B=2, C=3 etc. (for example, D+R+U+N+K would be 4+18+21+14+11 = 68, and A+G+A+I+N would be 1+7+1+9+14 = 32).

Now take these two numbers derived from the title-words (in the example, 68 and 32) and work out their digital roots (in the example, 6+8 = 14, 1+4 =5; and 3+2 = 5).

Put the two numbers side-by-side (put the number derived from the first word of the title first, and the number from the second word of the song-title second) to make a two-digit number, and send it to ‘Beyond the Pale’ (in the example, you’d send ‘55’ as your answer) with your full prize-preferences – all eight items please – in order. Click here to send your answer direct to webmaster@procolharum.com.

Your message will look something like: "The answer is [xy] and my prize preferences are DCGEAHBF".

It's hard to imagine how this could be any more straightforward or entertaining!

If you're in the quickest three correct entrants (on a beat-the-clock basis) you stand a very good chance of getting your prime choice of the prizes. After that, all correct entries received in the following 24 hours will be placed in a Homburg, and the remaining winners will be drawn from that by a suitably Glamorous Assistant (subject to availability).

Useful resources: List of Procol Harum songs (from a previous puzzle) | BtP search engine | Search 'Beyond the Pale' on Google.

Jane Clare in Australia, who tests and verifies the annual puzzles at BtP, commented this year that one or two of the questions looked 'a tad misleading' unless you took care ... so we hope you did! Over the past years we've had one or two non-winners who claimed, 'You guys tricked me …' so here's fair warning … just read the final instruction – indeed, all the wording of all the questions, and all the instructions – carefully.

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.

2011 puzzle prizes

How to play