"Enigma" - Robert Harris' Second Novel Quiz | Literature

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Who is the hero of this book (the male one, I mean)?

Answer: Tom Jericho

I always pictured Tom looking like Elijah Wood (Frodo from "The Lord of the Rings" movies) but they cast Doughray Scott for the 2002 movie. Very different! (I still think Elijah Wood...I mean WOULD have been better)

2. What university did the hero originally come from, before going to work for the government?

Answer: Cambridge

Since this novel is about code-breaking you can probably guess he was one of their top mathematics students.

In real life Winston Churchill ordered that "no stone be left unturned when recruiting for Bletchley Park". In 1941 he actually visited the place, took one look at the teams of cryptanalysts and muttered to the director on his way out "I didn't expect you to take me literally."

3. Who was the female hero in this story?

Answer: Hester Wallace

In the movie Hester was played by Kate Winslet. And I thought that was much better casting!

4. What was the name of the facility where the British codebreakers worked?

Answer: Bletchley Park

Today Bletchley Park is a muesuem. If I ever go to England I'll visit it. (N.B. The name is actually in the quiz's introduction so I hope you got it!)

5. Who was the real-life British decoder who introduced the male hero to the world of decoding before war broke out?

Answer: Alan Turing

Alan Turing is mentioned fairly frequently but we only ever get to see him in Tom's flashbacks. Turing is pretty much the only character in this book who really existed. The story is said to be real (as are all the quoted German signals) but all characters are invented.

6. Which of the hero's eccentric code-breaking colleagues came from Poland?

Answer: Puck

Adam "Puck" Pukowski had fled his homeland when war broke out and ended up working for the English government. He always wondered what had become of the rest of his family, but as we saw later in on, he found out thanks to Bletchley Park.

7. Why was the hero suddenly recalled to duty whilst on sick leave?

Answer: "Shark" had suddenly been blacked out

Tom was laughing when they said they needed him back because he had been so convinced they were actually about to sack him.

"Shark" was the nickname for the code the German Submarines (U-Boats) used. It was the most difficult one to break, yet Tom had managed it before. Now they needed him to do it again, in less than four days time, because convoys were sailing from New York at that very moment.

Not that they wanted to put any pressure on him or anything.

8. How did Hester Wallace become an employee of Bletchley Park?

Answer: She won a newspaper crossword competition

After winning "The Daily Telegraph" competition Hester and some of the finalists were taken to Bletchley and put to work there. She was never sure if the newspaper had held the competition at the behest of The War Office or if someone from there had just seen the results of the competition and thought the finalists could be useful.

Hester was pretty much a glorified file clerk which irritated her because she was the actual competition winner and the runner-ups had been allowed to become analysts because they were male.

9. What was Hester's biggest problem throughout the story?

Answer: Patronizing males

Poor Hester. She was typical of brilliant women before and after the war who were never given a chance to prove themselves because of sexist times. It's true that in World War Two women did a lot of jobs previously only done by men, but Bletchley Park did not allow female codebreakers.

10. Who was the man who claimed to be from the British Foreign Office who really worked for the Secret Service?

Answer: Douglas Wigram

When the code Shark is suddenly changed at a crucial moment, there is a lot of suspicion that someone at Bletchley has betrayed them, so Wigram is sent to investigate.

11. Whereabouts do the two heroes visit in a car borrowed from an American naval officer?

Answer: An intercept station

They'd teamed up because both wanted to know what happened to Claire who had disappeared. Tom found undecoded cryptograms hidden in her bedroom but burnt them before Wigram found them. Hester agreed the best solution was to go to the place where the coded messages were first intercepted.

12. And what do they "find" at their destination that they take with them?

Answer: Coded Intercepts

While Hester distracts their guide Tom pretends to have forgotten his scarf and hurries back to get it. When no one's looking he ducks into the filing-cabinet room and quickly searches for copies of the ones he'd burnt. Then the door opens and he thinks the game is up. But it's just one of the radio operators who hands him his scarf.

13. On their way back to Bletchley, the heroes are pursued by the police and engage in a high-speed chase. True or false?

Answer: True

NOTE: They're professionals, don't try that yourself!

14. The British Secret Service suspected that Tom's ex-girlfriend Claire was the one supplying the Germans top-secret information.

Answer: False

Wigram acted as though he did, but later on Tom cleverly figured out Claire had actually been one of Wigram's agents all along.

15. Which member of Tom's decryptanalysts team actually turned out to be the traitor?

Answer: Pukowski

He had (with the help of Claire) found out his father or brother had been murdered and buried by the Russians in the Katyn Forest Massacre. So, he'd decided to help the Germans win the war. Even though he did not like them, he hated the Russians more.

This was a very good book and I hope you buy your own copy.

Source: Author Doug_from_NZ

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

"Enigma" - Robert Harris' Second Novel Quiz

After the success of his international best-seller "Fatherland", Robert Harris wrote another WWII book. This time about the German's coding machine: The Enigma, and the British code-breaking centre Bletchley Park which was set up to break Enigma.

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