I Spy Something Beginning with I Quiz

Answer: The luminous appearance of the sky caused by light reflected from sea ice

The ice blink is a sailor's expression, and it refers to the luminous appearance of the sky caused by the reflection of light bouncing off the ice. If the sky appears dark blue, blackish or even dark brown, the sailor knows that there is open water ahead, so it's known as a water sky.

However, if the sky is white, rosy pink or orange-coloured (an ice sky), it means that there's ice ahead. The Ice Blink is also the Danish name for the great ice cliffs of Greenland.

Answer: A type of mongoose

The ichneumon (Greek for 'the tracker') is a member of the mongoose family found in Egypt, and references to ichneumons (also called Pharaoh's rat) can be found in ancient Egyptian texts. Like other types of mongoose, the ichneumon eats snakes, and won't turn up its nose at crocodile eggs or vermin of various kinds.

Theologians are much more likely to discuss hermeneutics, derived from the Greek hermeneuo, meaning to interpret, and generally understood to mean interpretation of scripture these days. Maybe ancient Egyptian theologians discussed ichneumons, since the ichneumon was venerated in the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

Answer: Lay person

In ancient Greece, an idiot was an uneducated person. Because the holders of public office (administrative, judicial, religious, etc.) required the person to be educated, the uneducated were unable to hold office of any kind, and were, therefore, lay people. Nowadays, it seems, any idiot can hold public office. And anyone who thinks too much of him or herself also classifies as an idiot, in my not so humble opinion.

Answer: Queen Elisabeth of Belgium

Elisabeth was the wife of King Albert 1 of Belgium. She was the daughter of a German duke and the namesake of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, but after her marriage to Albert she became wholly Belgian in thought, word and deed. During the first world war, she and Albert flatly refused to leave Belgium which had been overrun by the Germans and for the duration of the war they lived in Panne near the Dutch/Belgian border.

Here, Elisabeth occupied herself nursing wounded soldiers. She coined the phrase 'iron curtain' in 1914, when she referred to "a bloody iron curtain" having fallen between her and the Germans.

The phrase was later used by Winston Churchill in his famous Fulton, Mo. speech of May, 1946 in reference to the division of Europe following the second world war. Count von Kosigk, who was appointed Chancellor of Germany by acting President Karl Donitz following the suicides of Hitler and Goebbels, used the phrase in 1945 in much the same context as Churchill. Ethel Snowden, a British socialist and feminist, used the phrase 'iron curtain' in her 1920 book 'Through Bolshevik Russia', in which she was highly critical of political developments in Russia following the revolution.

Answer: Prince Rupert of the Rhine

Following the battle of Marston Moor, one of the English Civil war's pivotal engagements in 1644, Prince Rupert, impressed by the resolution shown by the opposition, referred to Cromwell as Old Ironsides, and the name stuck. It later came to be used to describe the Parliamentary forces, too. Prince Rupert was the son of Charles I's sister Elizabeth, who had married Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate (in Bohemia). Frederick and Elizabeth and their children spent some time in exile at the court of the Prince of Orange, and that's pretty well where Rupert grew up.

His older brother Charles-Louis succeeded his father as Elector, and Rupert and his younger brother Maurice set their sights on military careers. They both joined their uncle Charles I at the outbreak of the English civil war, and by the time he was 25 Rupert was commander-in-chief of the King's armies (which created quite a bit of ill-feeling among the King's older, English generals). Rupert was full of spirit, something of a hothead (not an unusual Stuart trait!) but a brilliant military strategist. If the other generals hadn't interfered and turned the King against his nephew by intimating that Rupert was plotting against him, Charles may well have trounced Cromwell and the Parliamentary forces, and kept his head.

After the Parliamentary forces triumphed, Rupert couldn't find any wars to fight, so he and Maurice took up piracy. Maurice was lost at sea, which definitely dampened Rupert's enthusiasm for life on the bounding main. Eventually, Rupert returned to England and resumed his close friendship with his cousin, now Charles II, and ended his days there, serving as the first Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. (He's the reason that a vast tract of land stretching from the eastern shores of the Hudson's Bay to the Rockies in Canada was known as Rupert's Land from the 1600s to the middle of the 19th century). The story of Rupert's life would make a great novel, and I can just see Johnny Depp playing him in the movie!

Answer: Who knows?

Tradition has it that the Isle of Dogs got its name because that's where King Edward III kept his hounds because it was close to Waltham Forest, one of his favourite hunting grounds. On the other hand, it was also a great place for duck hunting in medieval times, when it was one huge marsh, and there are those who claim that Isle of Dogs is actually a corruption of Isle of Ducks. Eventually, the Isle of Dogs became part of London's dockland, and by the 1860s it was one of London's teeming slums, home to some 15,000 dockworkers and shipbuilders. Nowadays, it's become very up market and is home to the tallest building in London - Canary Wharf (built on the site of the Canary Wharf, which is where ships bearing spices and other exotic imports docked after the voyage from the Canary Islands). You'll find more celebrities than dockworkers on the Isle of Dogs these days, including American celebrities like Cher and Robert de Niro, both of whom maintain pied a terres on the Isle of Dogs.

Answer: John Masefield

Cargoes

Quinquereme of Nineveh, from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory.
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

John Masefield (1878-1967; British Poet Laureate 1930-67)

One of my favourite poems, 'Cargoes' first appeared in Masefield's 'Saltwater Ballads', a 1902 collection of poems about the sea. I love the rhythms of 'Cargoes' (which was set to music by Henry Balfour Gardiner in 1912), and in my mind's eye I can see the three different craft and their cargoes. As a lover of words, I appreciate the way in which Masefield uses the cargo descriptions to imply the movement of the ships. Look at the brisk staccato of the third verse and picture that tramp steamer forging through the choppy waters of the Channel. Another of my Masefield favourites is 'Sea Fever' with the immortal line: "All I want is a tall ship and a star to steer her by..." and I can remember laughing out loud when Spock and McCoy got into an argument in the movie 'Star Trek V' about that poem. McCoy insisted it was written by Herman Melville. Spock, of course, knew that it was Masefield. You have to love literary references in movies! Melville was in the clues as homage to McCoy, mistaken though he was, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson is there because he wrote a beautiful poem called 'Crossing the Bar' which has nautical reference. I don't know if Browning ever wrote any sea poems - can't recall any, anyway - but, by George, he certainly understood the importance of rhythm in poetry!

Answer: Ivy

Bacchus was the Roman god of wine (the equivalent of the Greek Dionysius), and ivy was thought to bring good luck and joy. I can understand the 'joy' part, but I'm not sure that overindulgence in spirituous liquors of any kind can necessarily be construed as 'good luck'.

Some depictions of Bacchus show him wearing a wreath of ivy leaves, which was Bacchus in winter, while others show him wearing a wreath of grape leaves (Bacchus in summer). Ivy is also a symbol of eternal life, and life must seem awfully long to someone suffering from a hangover! Ivy is also associated with owls - evidently, owls like to hang out in ivy bushes. An old description of someone befuddled by drink is "like an owl in an ivy bush" - probably based on the wide-eyed look of the owl which is reflected in the determined glazed look on the face of someone who's had one over the eight! The ilex is more commonly known as a holly tree.

Answer: Invisibility

Alberich is a hideous gnome who appears in Das Rheingold, the first opera in Wagner's Ring Cycle. After undergoing torment and teasing at the hands of the Rhine Maidens, Alberich retaliates by stealing the hoard of gold that they have been assigned to protect.

He knows, because the gossipy Rhine Maidens told him so, that a ring forged from that gold would make its wearer the ruler of the world. However, there's a catch (isn't there always?): the wearer of such a ring would have to give up all hope of love and live in emotional desolation for the rest of his life. Alberich, having had quite enough of beautiful women after the humiliation heaped on him by those playful Rhine maidens, obviously thinks that's not too high a price to pay, and takes the gold back to his home beneath the mountains where his brother Mime, a smith, makes the ring for him. Mime also makes the Tarnhelm for Alberich which allows Alberich to become invisible and thus plague the life out of the poor dwarves whom he has enslaved, and whose lives he has already made a living hell by forcing them to mine, mine, mine for gold to make him richer still.

It's a very long story, and you might want to learn about it by attending the Wagner operas (right up your alley if you like ladies in brass brassieres and horned helmets shrieking at you!) You'll meet Wotan and Fricka, Siegried and Sieglinde and Brunnhilde and a whole bunch of very noisy people. Or you could just read the Norse myths on which Wagner based his Ring cycle operas (quieter and absolutely enthralling!)

Answer: A school of philosophy

The Ionic School was founded in the 6th Century B.C. on the island of Ionia in Greece. It is often cited as the founding school of Greek philosophy. The philosophers included Thales, Anaxigoras, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Anaximander and Archelaus. Their discussions centred on defining the primal substance from which all natural phenomena have issued. Thales maintained it was water, while Anaximenes thought it was air, Heraclitus held the opinion it was fire, and Anaxagoras came up with a theory of particles that aggregated and/or segregated to become the source of all things (imagine - as far back as the 6th Century B.C.!) Anaximander and Archelaus must have gone ashore for a break when the others published the notes of their musings, because they don't seem to have advanced any theories of their own. If you chose the school of architecture answer, you were probably thinking of those beautiful Ionic columns.