Unclaimed Trivia Quiz

Answer: Flibbertigibbet

First of all, the "IQ Kwis" was a quiz show on the Flemish public television between 1980 and 1994. Each episode had two parts: in a first round, the teams could answer questions or solve puzzles to gain seconds. In the second round, teams had to use these seconds to form one or two long words.
The "snake" has not yet been used on FunTrivia before. So follow the instructions closely to find the solution.
The correct solution starts with the F and continues with the L and the I. Then you have the choice: up to the G, down to the T or straight on to the B. You should have chosen the B, and once again you need to choose either up (the second I) or down (the second B). After having chosen down for the second B, you theoretically have another choice: down to the E or left to the T. But a word starting with FLIBBT makes no sense.
After the E, you could take the T to the tail, but that way you would not have used all letters. So you have to take the R to the right. Then you go up - up - up (you have not yet used the G) - right - down - down - down to hit the E once more. And as you have now used all letters at least once, you can turn to the T in the snake's tail.
So which letters did you encounter on the correct path? F-L-I-B-B-E-R-T-I-G-I-B-B-E-T. In normal spelling that makes FLIBBERTIGIBBET. A flibbertigibbet is a frivolous, flighty or excessively talkative person (according to Oxford English Dictionary).
I really love the sound of this typical English word. Oddly enough there are no exact equivalents in Dutch, French, German or Italian, but I'm quite convinced there are flibbertigibbets who speak one of those languages.

Answer: redaction

The first round of the "IQ Kwis" had alternately a normal question and a puzzle, and the puzzles were designed to be solved within seconds. When the question was read, a timer of 30 seconds started to count up from 1 to 30. Whoever pressed the buzzer first, could give an answer. If the answer was correct, the team gained the number of seconds on the timer. If not, the other team could try also, but now the timer counted down to zero.

Cryptic clues have been used on FunTrivia before. There is at least one quiz around with only these types of cryptograms (combining words and colours). So this puzzle needs less words to explain.
To solve a cryptic clue, it is important to use ALL information available in the clue. So if you would have written down "ACTION", I'm afraid you're wrong. You should heed attention to the colour used in the word, "the colour of ripe tomatoes" as I added for people with colour blindness. Also the hint specifies that the correct solution should count NINE letters. "ACTION" is only six letters long.
So the correct answer is RED-ACTION or in one word REDACTION.
The word REDACTION is derived from the Latin verb REDIGERE - to put in place.

Answer: ABBREVIATION

Don't be fooled by my very primitive drawing of a bee: I'm quite hopeless at drawing animals or persons.
Starting with the letter A at the top, you have three choices for the next letter: the B to your right, the I down, or the N to your left. Suppose you take the B, then you can continue with either the second B to your right, the R down or the I to your left.
The correct path is down right - down right - down left - straight down - up left - straight up - down right - straight down - up left - straight up - up right. Now you have used all twelve letters, and they spell out in order A-B-B-R-E-V-I-A-T-I-O-N.
The word ABBREVIATION comes from the Latin. The stem is BREVIS - Latin for short. The suffix ATION means "the act of making something", and the prefix AB here means "into". So ABBREVIATION is literally "the act of making something into something short" - in one word, "shortening".

Answer: The mice will play

In the TV show there were no multiple choice questions. But the guidelines for FunTrivia exclude fill-in-the-blank answers that contain punctuation (the apostrophe) or that are too long. So I've designed this one as multiple choice.
Now the first part of the idiom "WHNTHCTSWY" is completed with the appropriate vowels and an apostrophe as "When the cat's away". Which four words can complete this expression? You needed of course "the mice will play". The full expression means something as "when there is no supervision, people tend to do whatever they like" - for instance playing this quiz instead of working for your boss who's in a meeting.
"Every cloud has a silver lining" without vowels would be "VRYCLDHSSLVRLNNG" and means "there is something positive in a negative event".
"NPPLDYKPSTHDCTRWY" is the vowel-less expression "An apple a day keeps the doctor away". This idiom advises you to mind what you eat.
"THGRSSSLWYSGRNRNTHTHRSD" is a quite confusing clue for "The grass is always greener on the other side", referring to the envy of people in other circumstances.

Answer: Aquarium

Knight moves are very popular puzzles. It helps of course if you play chess frequently.
The chess knight always moves either two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or one square vertically and two squares horizontally - indeed the shape of an L, with a long and a short end.
Starting with the A in the upper left corner, you can hop either to the Q on the right side or to the M at the bottom. Suppose you pick the M, then the only available move is to the right upper corner (the U).
If you start with A M, you end up with A-M-U-I-R-A-Q, which doesn't qualify as an English word. On the contrary, hopping at first to the Q gives A-Q-U-A-R-I-U-M, and this is of course a valid English word.
The word AQUARIUM once again is derived from Latin: AQUA is Latin for water, and the RIUM suffix in this case indicates "a container filled with". Likewise you could have a TERRARIUM (filled with earth) or a HERBARIUM (filled with herbs or plants).
For those who know my love for pet cats: I have no intention to rename my house a FELIRIUM, which would be a curious neologism. Maybe I could rename my house the "château des chatons", which is French for "Kittens' castle". The French expression has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Answer: R

There are basically three different types of letter sequences. The first has been used before on FunTrivia: each letter stands for a word in a logical sequence, for instance days of the week or months of the year. So if you see a sequence such as "J A S O ? D", you have to replace the question mark by a letter N to obtain the abbreviations for the last six months of the year.
A second type of letter sequences is based on the numerical order in the alphabet. So A=1, B=2, C=3... and the letter sequence is really a numerical sequence. For instance, "C F I ? O R U X" are the third, sixth, ninth and so on letters. The question mark should be replaced by a letter L.
This specific letter sequence is the third type, one I haven't encountered yet on FunTrivia - an unclaimed technique thus. It is based on the graphic appearance of the letters. In this specific sequence I listed all capital letters containing some diagonal trait, and the question mark replaces the letter R. Similarly I could have made a sequence containing all letters with a horizontal trait, with a vertical trait or with a curved shape.
Mind you: if you have entered a non-capital letter r, FunTrivia will mark it also correct: capitalization has no influence whatever on Fill-In-The-Blank answers on FunTrivia.
 

Answer: band

Bandstand, bandwagon and bandage are all valid English words. So the correct solution is band.
Don't be fooled by the word "age" as the single word is pronounced differently from the composite word. That's a trick quite commonly used by the people designing this kind of brain puzzles.
A BANDSTAND is a platform on which a musical group (or a theatre group) can perform their act outdoors. Most bandstands are made from wood and have some kind of covering.
A BANDWAGON used to be a BANDSTAND on wheels, so it was mobile. Gradually the meaning shifted to whatever was popular, and the expression "jumping on the bandwagon" gained the meaning of "joining the most popular activity/political group/whatever".
Both these words are derived from the English word BAND for a (usually small) group of people executing together a certain (especially musical) act.
A BANDAGE is a piece of fabric used to protect a wound from exterior influence. This word is not derived from the English word for (musical) band, but from the French word for bande (something used to bind things).

Answer: TRAIN

As the piece to move about is situated between the T, the I, the E and the N, your first letter should be one of these four. Starting with the N will get you nowhere: you hop down left and that's a dead end.
Starting with the I you have to continue with the S or the A (the B leads to a dead end). Choosing the A will lead you to IARTE or IARTN, no valid English words. Likewise opting for the S will get you only nonsense such as ISOET or ISOEN.
The easiest way to solve the puzzle is starting with the T. Next letters are the R and the A, and then you have the choice between the S (leading to TRASO, an invalid word) or the I (giving the first correct solution: TRAIN).
I recently discovered another word too, but I suppose most of you will not have picked this one. Starting with the E, you can continue via the O and the S. Choosing A-R as the last letters will give the invalid EOSAR, but the ending with I-N renders the valid word EOSIN - a red dye.

Two correct solutions were rare on the "IQ Kwis", but it did happen occasionally. The question authors tried to exclude double solutions, just as I tried to give only the possible solution "TRAIN". Later on I discovered the alternative "EOSIN" solution.

Answer: Home

The example gives the word BEST, composed of the first letter of the first word (B), the second or third letter of the first word (one of the letters E), the first letter of the second word (the S) and finally the second letter of the second word (the T).
Likewise you take in the bottom line the H as first letter, the M as third letter and the E as final letter. For the second letter, you have the choice between the O and the U, resulting in either HOME or HUME. HUME is the proper name of a Scottish philosopher and is thus not allowed (see the text in the hint).

Answer: QUIZMASTER SYMPATHIZE

In the TV show, the competitors had roughly half an hour to solve this puzzle. But the overwhelming majority of these TV competitors had found or compiled a list of valid words and spent a lot of time memorising the list. You on the other hand do not have a list of valid English words of ten different letters, but you have the opportunity to spend hours puzzling. And unlike the TV competitors, you don't have to solve the puzzle by heart: you can use what I suggested in the last phrase.
While designing the puzzle, I wanted to colour the blank tiles in mahogany hue. Alas, my set of felt tip pens does not contain mahogany, orange being the closest to what I wanted. So let's paraphrase that orange is the new blank.
How do you solve such a complex puzzle? Well, I've stated that both words contain ten DIFFERENT letters. So the first stage is arranging the letters that are used twice (A - E - I - M - S - T - Z): these should be used in both words. The single letters left are the H, P, Q, R, U and Y.
Every English word of ten letters with a Q that I found, had also a U. So one of the words should contain AEIMQSUTZ plus either of the four remaining letters H, P, R or Y. Anagramming the nine letters you're sure of and adding the R, will give you the first word: QUIZMASTER.
The second word thus contains the letters A - E - H - I - M - P - S- T - Y- Z, and anagramming these letters will get you the word SYMPATHIZE.