Malik's Melange With a Magical CB Twist Quiz

Answer: Edinburgh

Appropriately, the street connects Edinburgh Castle with Holyrood Palace and is approximately a mile long. The Mile is a popular tourist attraction and bustles during the annual Edinburgh Festival. Other notable sights include the newer Scottish Parliament buildings at Holyrood, St. Giles' Cathedral and the Camera Obscura.

Answer: Love Story

As it happens, both main characters (Oliver and Jenny) speak this line, with the recapitulation being a rather sad ending to a tragic love story. The quote slightly differs from the script, whose version was: "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry." We'll never know how well-received the original would have been, but the spoken quote was rated the top 13th quote in AFI's top 100 movie quotes list compiled in 2005.

Answer: Flower bud

Cynara cardunculus, or the globe artichoke, is a member of the thistle family valued for its edible flower buds. The plant's reputation as an aphrodisiac may be attributable to Greek mythology: Zeus famously turned a young woman into an artichoke when she spurned his advances.

The notion of being hard on the outside and soft on the inside, and peeling back the layers, certainly has a romantic feel to it. Aphrodisiac or no, these buds are bursting with nutrients such as dietary fibre, antioxidants, Vitamin C and folate.

Answer: A pirate

Ching Shih was hugely successful, commanding a crew of 20-40,000 and terrorising coastal towns all across China whilst also repelling numerous Chinese, British and Portuguese forces in the early 19th century. After a bad run in with the Portuguese and a fragmentation of her alliance, she finally accepted an amnesty from Qing Emperor Jiaqing and stopped her piracy in exchange for a royal pardon for her and her crew. This allowed them to keep their riches if they surrendered their weapons, with only a few hundred pirates being punished for their crimes. It was a pretty plum deal: where most pirates of historical renown were executed or killed, she was able to live on, marry her second-in-command Cheung Po Tsai and run gambling and prostitution institutes.

Junks are ancient Chinese sailing vessels whose recorded use dates to at least the second century AD, though they could be older still. Hopefully the nautical connection gave you a shot at guessing that Ching Shih was a pirate.

Answer: Heart

Heart were an American rock band who took a while to settle a working lineup; they went by 'The Army', 'White Heart' and 'Hocus Pocus' before settling on Heart once and for all. Though formed in 1970, their most recognisable lead singers Ann and Nancy Wilson joined in 1973 and 1974 respectively.

Whilst 'Never' (1985) and 'Stranded' (1990) did enjoy moderate success in the singles charts, it was 'Alone' (1987) which was an international hit for them achieving a number one in US and Canada with critical acclaim in Europe and Australia.

Answer: Annette Funicello

Annette Funicello was born in 1942 in Utica, New York and moved to San Francisco in California four years later. Having impressed in a Walt Disney production of 'Swan Lake', she was then personally recommended by Disney and offered the Mousketeer gig aged just thirteen, entertaining children nationwide as a variety performer.

Most of the Frankie Avalon films were teen comedies themed around beach parties with subtle and original titles. 'Beach Party' (1963), 'Muscle Beach Party' (1964), 'Bikini Beach' (1964) ... you get the jist. Although she had agreed to Disney's request not to reveal her navel - to maintain her wholesome image - the navel was bared in all of these titles.

Answer: Arquebus

Deriving from the German for 'hook gun' (Hakenbüchse), the arquebus was a long gun that came to prominence in the early 15th century. The heavy arquebus developed around 1521 became known as the more familiar musket, and the weapon is an ancestor of the more modern rifle. The weapon became popular in comparison to bows as its ammunition was easier to carry and produce, it was better at piercing heavy armour and it was easier to learn to use.

The other weapons all used blunt force. The morning star might have been the most familiar here, which is a medieval club with a spiked ball atop a metal shaft. It was particularly popular in Germany, where it was known as Morgenstern. The rungu was a wooden throwing club used by Eastern African tribes in warfare and hunting. A heavy pointed club made of timber, the waddy was used by Australian Aborigines in hand-to-hand combat, as a thrown weapon or as firewood.

Answer: Brat Pack

The Brat Pack was an unofficial group created by the media to describe actors who had appeared together in many coming-of-age films in the 1980s, particularly 'The Breakfast Club' and 'St Elmo's Fire' in 1985. David Blum wrote of the 'Hollywood Brat Pack' in a 1985 edition of 'New York' magazine after personally spending time with Estevez, Lowe and Nelson at the Hard Rock Café. Contrary to their talented and professional image, Blum wrote that they were a younger, greener 'Rat Pack' who had been rapidly catapulted into showbiz (in his eyes without having really earned it) and who liked to party.

The article had such an impact that the group were encouraged not to work together again, and many of them subsequently experienced hitches in their career in the late 1980s due to drug and alcohol issues. Blum apologised in a 2010 interview and admitted he shouldn't have released the article.

Answer: Wham!

Their first performance was reportedly an awkward one; the audience of 15,000 at the Workers' Stadium in Beijing were so terrified of the large police presence that they sat rigidly in their seats with one engineer making the comment that "It was like the band were playing to prison inmates.

It was really surreal." Simon Napier-Bell took 18 months to successfully negotiate the tour, sneakily undermining rival band Queen by presenting George Michael as more 'wholesome' than flamboyant Freddie Mercury on a leaflet.

Although the act was more restrained than they would have been back in the UK, their loud and vibrant style left a strong impression on the Chinese and helped to open a cultural window between China and the West.

Answer: Club

Most British football (soccer) teams, such as Arsenal F.C., Chelsea F.C. and Everton F.C. go without the 'F.C.' in common parlance. It simply stands for 'Football Club' and is fairly universal in the titles of British teams, though 'A.F.C' - 'Association Football Club' - occasionally pops up as in the example of Swansea A.F.C.

A group of union workers set up Arsenal as Dial Square in 1886, with Scotsman Dan Danskin pitching in three sixpence and fifteen colleagues a sixpence each. The team were then named after the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich - a munitions and research facility - and became the first professional London club in 1891. It may not be too difficult to guess the inspiration for their 'Gunners' nickname and cannon logo.

Answer: Dashiell Hammett

Despite appearing for the first time in Hammett's final novel, Nick and Nora Charles as a bawdy detective couple were popular enough as characters in the movie adaptation to serve as inspiration for five more sequels in the series. In fact, William Pow and Myrna Loy who played them were mistaken as real-life partners due to their on-screen chemistry and youthful irreverence. Oddly, he died over twenty-six years later in 1961, with his wife Lillian Hellman stating that whilst she had her suspicions as to why he stopped writing, she'd never asked and perhaps that was why she stayed with him until the day he died.

Answer: Platforming Game

'Shovel Knight' was a retro-styled platforming game released for PC, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2014. Players would control a two-dimensional knight who used a shovel both to dig up treasure and to attack foes. It won The Game Award for Best Independent Game that year, beating out titles like 'Transistor' or 'Broken Age'.

The game's designer, Nick Wozniak, said the game came about "sort of as a joke conversation over lunch that kind of got too serious." with a wish to reclaim some of the nostalgia of the NES classics they'd grown up with.

Answer: Docked

A docked animal has had its tail removed, and the dock itself is the flesh of the tail where hairs grow. For the most part, it is domestic animals whose tails have been docked for reasons of safety or convenience. Whilst spaying is usually reserved for female animals, a spayed, fixed or neutered animal cannot reproduce. Due in part to consistent overpopulation issues, most countries ask that pets be neutered before adoption.

Answer: 8 Simple Rules

I had to be careful not to give the game away by not saying 'rules' in the question... In any case, the original show's title was '8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter' and the quoted statements were two of them. The other rules were similarly aggressive and protectionist, although Paul Hennessy - the father - showed a lot of love for his children beneath his tough exterior.

The death of John Ritter, who played Hennessy, threw a spanner in the works and so the show's run concluded after a final series without his character.

Answer: Spade

A spade is often used interchangeably with a shovel as a gardening tool. However, in British use a shovel tends to have a more curved blade (often with a pointed tip) and a longer shaft, where the spade tends to be smaller with a flat blade.

"Oh I do like to be beside the seaside" ... In the UK, the bucket and spade are often sold together as garishly coloured tools that really come in handy when trying to build the world's biggest and best sandcastles. They can also be used to scoop up shells, pebbles and any other beach paraphernalia of interest.

Answer: Hindu

The Sanskrit term 'ratnaraj' literally translates as 'king of precious stones'. Like people, these gems were also sorted into castes, and gems of a higher caste were kept separate to keep the lower caste gems from contaminating the higher. Krishna was the god of compassion, tenderness and love and it was believed that the rubies represented the sun with its natural warmth, so made an ideal offering by those seeking life after death.

Answer: Carbon

The most famous fullerene is C60 - or buckminsterfullerene - which somewhat resembles a football (soccer ball). It is the smallest fullerene molecule that has pentagonal and hexagonal shapes where the pentagons don't touch one another, and was named after the architect Buckminster Fuller known for his geodesic domes.

Whilst buckyballs are intriguing, researchers have struggled to find too many practical uses for them.

Answer: Blondes

Lorelei Lee boarded an ocean liner with her friend, Dorothy Shaw, to eventually peform in a Parisian club. She was boyfriend to 'sugar daddy' Gus Esmond, owner of a button company, and made him jealous by flirting with the 'zipper king' Josephus Gage before convincing Esmond of her real feelings.

The 1953 film featuring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe might be the most familiar association with the title. However, it was derived from the musical which in turn was derived from a similarly titled 1925 novel by Anita Loos about the whims and woes of life as a flapper in the Roaring Twenties.

Answer: Gold

The golden jubilee term is usually applied to people, particularly rulers. It can refer either to their length of rule or their birth date. On Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, a plot by Irish Republicans to blow up the Houses of Parliament was rumbled.

'Gold' was a 1983 release by new wave English band Spandau Ballet, with a catchy and cheesy refrain: "Gold
(Gold)
Always believe in your soul
You've got the power to know
You're indestructible, always believe in, ..."

Whilst I personally find gold leaf to be an unnecessary extravagance, it is perhaps that very extravagance that attracts others to put it on their food. It has no nutritional value whatsoever, doesn't taste of anything and has no texture. The trend goes back at least as far as the Middle Ages, where some wanted to display their wealth to guests, and others wanted to imbue the positive qualities of gold by allowing it to diffuse into the food it was applied to. Better than lead leaf, I'd wager!

Answer: Diamond

'Princess' refers to Diana, and stands for 'Di'. The fragment 'initially, before noon' refers to the letters 'am' (ante meridiem). 'Positioned above' is 'on', and in cryptics 'daughter' may stand for a single letter, 'd'. Add the bits and pieces together and you get a diamond, which is synonymous with a rhombus.

As you may have spotted, the twist is that there are four mini common bonds adding up to a thematic whole. Each batch of five questions hinted at a different playing card suit with the fifth directly using one of them as the answer. Below are the common bond links: feel free to skip ahead.

Q1: Another sight to see on the Royal Mile is the Heart of Midlothian, a stone mosaic that people spit on for luck.
Q2: As an emotion, love is closely associated with the heart.
Q3: The most tender, fleshy part of the artichoke is known as its heart.
Q4: Ching Shih was a pirate, and pirates are associated with the phrase 'Arrrr, me hearties!'.
Q5: Heart suit.
Q6: Annette Funicello worked as a Mousketeer in 'The Mickey Mouse Club' variety show.
Q7: The incorrect options here could all be described as types of club.
Q8: The Brat Pack's association with 'The Breakfast Club' was the key connection here.
Q9: One of Wham!'s top hits was 'Club Tropicana'.
Q10: Club suit.
Q11: The detective Sam Spade was one of Hammett's most known creations.
Q12: A shovel is extremely similar, sometimes even synonymous with, a spade.
Q13: 'Spayed' is a homophone of 'spade'.
Q14: David Spade joined '8 Simple Rules' initially as a side character and later as part of the main cast.
Q15: Spade suit.
Q16: A ruby, like a diamond, is one of the four precious stones.
Q17: Diamond is the most well known carbon allotrope.
Q18: 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' is perhaps the best well known song from both film and musical. A diamond tiara also features in the plot.
Q19: The next jubilee in the sequence is the diamond jubilee, celebrated at the 60th year; Queen Elizabeth II celebrated hers in 2012.
Q20: You read all the way through these! You're a diamond!

Since playing cards can be used in magic tricks, you could say the title had a tenuous link as well.