Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey Quiz

Answer: Vermillion

The book starts with young Eddie Russett and his Swatchman father on their way to a new home in East Carmine. Vermillion is the regional hub of Red Sector West, and home to the Oz memorial, the Badly-Drawn map and the Last Rabbit.

The Jasper Fforde website has identified it as real world Hereford, in England's Western Midlands.

Answer: He wasn't an Ultraviolet

The whole book is about colour and perception. People can only see a limited section of the spectrum - the more they see, the higher their social standing - and swatchmen like Mr. Russet cure illness by flashing coloured light into the afflicted person's eyes.

The man collapsed in National Colour was 'wrongspotting' - pretending to a rank he did not hold. He was in fact, one of the despised 'greys' unable to see colour at all.

Answer: To conduct a chair census

You wouldn't want to harvest Yateveos - they are carnivorous and have lightning reactions! Equally, it would be sort of mean to hunt the relatively harmless Bouncing Goats.

The synthetic colour supply, delivering the only colour that all members of Eddie's society can see, is strictly the province of the National Colour elite, and not for the likes of an eighteen year old oik like Eddie!

Answer: Caravaggio

The painting is known to the Collective as 'Frowny Girl Removing Beardy's Head' and to we pre-catastrophe folk as 'Judith Beheading Holofernes'. For an unknown reason, the great works of art have been dispersed all over the Collective and every community has at least one.

Rusty Hill had been wiped out years before by an outbreak of the dreaded Mildew, but its masterpiece had not been collected.

By the way, East Carmine is revealed on Jasper Fforde's website as being present day Rhayder and Rusty Hill as Builth Wells, both small towns in Wales.

Answer: Copper

The roads are made of an odd material called Perpetualite that dates to well before the catastrophe, known only to the Collective as the 'Something That Happened'. It is utterly resilient but can be cut and stopped from growing by 'spalling' it with copper spikes.

Answer: Until they have learned everything

Although 'until they have learned everything' sounds like it might take a lot longer than until the age of sixteen, the Collective has gradually scaled back acquirable knowledge until a citizen should know everything they need to by that age.

They look quite pleasant from the outside, but the Collective is a totalitarian society, with the problems that entails.

Answer: Giant Swans

Call it 'Whispering Death' or 'Cygnus Carnivorum Giganticus', no animal is more feared in the Collective than the Giant Swan. Although they do not directly appear in 'Shades of Grey', they are mentioned in hushed tones a few times, and the suggestion seems to be that they may be machines rather than animals. Certainly they never land and do not flap their wings. No one has survived to make a closer study.

Answer: Baxter

He is also 454 years old and a historian. The periodic 'leapbacks' that have reversed technology in the Collective have also rendered his work obsolete, and as he does not exist in the eyes of the greater community it is taken as polite behaviour to behave as if he did not exist. This has made him more than a little mentally unusual.

Useful historical information can be coaxed out of Baxter with a bribe of jam - especially loganberry.

Answer: Riffraff

The Riffraff are a despised, little-encountered minority of people who have chosen to live outside of the cosy conformity of the Collective, and are seen as little better than animals.

To themselves, they are the Digenous, and do their best to lead normal lives away from the hostile presence of the Collective.

Answer: The spork

Spoon production is banned in the Collective for no well-defined reason, making spoons valuable commodities. Eddie's rescue of a lone spork may be a way around the spoon ban and a huge source of revenue for East Carmine.