Valley of the Trolls - a Discworld Quiz

Answer: Carborundum

Although, as the Monstrous Regiment was made up of women pretending to be men, she turned out to be Jade. One hopes she meant 'exotic' people, but one never knows. I wonder if she was the Princess Jade that Susan Sto Helit went to College with in "Soul Music"?

Answer: The Silicon Anti-Defamation League

The Breccia are a troll secret society, the Band With Rocks In was Buddy's rock group from the band 'Soul Music' and there is no NAACP in Discworld.

Answer: Sergeant Detritus

Nobby explained that dwarf Constable Brakenshield had just picked up Mica's mug by mistake and everyone had jumped up to stop him drinking troll chemicals, and that was how the table got knocked over... The fact that Mica and Brakenshield were about to hit each other with a club and an axe was not explained. Detritus was not on the scene, but Bluejohn and Schist were trying to break the fight up.

In Roundworld, Blue John is a fluorspar from Derbyshire, UK and Schist is a medium grade metamrphic rock.

Answer: Galena

Galena later renamed himself as 'Rock' at Victor's suggestion - he thought he might get more than three dollars a day named Rock. Morraine (or Morry) mostly played rocks, because of his craggy features. In Roundworld, jasper is a type of quartz, bauxite the most important aluminium ore, galena is a suphide mineral and morraine is a rock deposited by glaciers.

Answer: The Pork Futures Warehouse in Morpork Road

This is a warehouse for pork that only exists in potentia, and it is very cold (according to the wizards at Unseen University) because of the imbalances in the temporal energy flow. The temperature makes Detritus' brain of impure silicon work faster because of superconductivity.

The problem of dwarf Constable Cuddy freezing to death is solved by throwing him through the window to attract help. All the other answers are genuine places in Ankh-Morpork.

Answer: Cockroaches

That's pretty low! "Thud" has a lot of anti-drug messages. Dachshunds (also known as the 'sausage dog') are small dogs with very long bodies and short legs, originally bred to hunt badgers. Troglodytes are cave-dwellers and hamsters are in there because my hamster Hamish likes being in quizzes.

Answer: Flint

Nobby was desperate for the job of Sergeant, but Colon gave it to the troll Flint, hoping that it wouldn't cause 'loss of morals' (I really hope he meant morale!) Colon, one of nature's Sergeants, doesn't take well to his new responsibilities while Vimes and Carrot are away in Uberwald.

Answer: Fossilised dung

I suppose any troll is, by definition, hard, but calling him fossilised dung is a pretty good insult! Chrysoprase is rumoured to be big in the Breccia and is a troll gang leader. A columbine is a type of flowering plant and a concubine is a woman who lives with a man without being married to him.

Answer: Wearing human teeth as jewellery

Trolls' teeth are made of diamond, so Chrysoprase is wearing his enemies' teeth, which I find a little creepy. His henchmen, trying to be tough, are wearing goat and sheep skulls (they'd be arrested for wearing human skulls) but they just look silly.

There's nothing silly about Chrysoprase though. In Roundworld, Chrysoprase is a a translucent green chalcedony that is often mistaken for jade.

Answer: Slide

Scrape, Slab and Slide - there must be some nasty trolls out there. Chrysoprase doesn't sell it - but Vimes suggests that this is because he doesn't want to kill his customers.

Answer: Chondrodite

The troll words for falling in love are literally 'experiencing the pleasant feeling of being hit over the head with a rock by Chondrodite, the troll god of love'. Gigalith is the troll god of wisdom (which he gives trolls by also hitting them over the head with a rock), Silcarous is the troll god of good luck (which he gives them by - you guessed it - hitting them over the head with a rock). Trolls must get very bad headaches! Monolith is the troll equivalent of Prometheus (who stole the secret of fire from the gods) - he stole the secrets of rocks (what else?) from the gods.

In Roundworld, Chondrodite is Magnesium Iron Silicate Fluoride Hydroxide, Gigalith I could only find defined in a slang dictionary, where it seems to mean something massive and immoveable, Silicarous seems to have been invented by Terry Pratchett and my guess is it means simply made of silicon, and a monolith is a single rock (the world's largest being Ayers Rock or Uluru).

Answer: No

Leading to the hysterical criticism 'Dis shale is stale' - puzzling both Dibbler and myself - how can rock be stale? Apparently his granite also has quartz (which clogs the arteries - what arteries?) in it. Back to the rat-on-a-stick for the dwarfs, then!

Answer: Chalkface

Detritus gets promoted to full Constable to look after the new recruits, though I think he was pushing it to suggest that Coalface might have a field-marshal's button in his knapsack (Coalface's reaction was 'Never took nuffin...'), somewhat mangling Napoleon's idea that every corporal carries a field marshal's baton in his knapsack.

There is no troll called Chalkface, but the head of the Fool's Guild at one time was Dr. Whiteface.

Answer: Oograah

This covers everything from 'moss to giant Redwoods', as trolls don't care about stuff they can't eat. In "Moving Pictures", Ruby tells Detritus that the modern way to court a lady troll is to bring her pretty Oograh - he takes her a tree. Groophar is a troll swear word, Drudak'ak is Dwarfish for someone who doesn't get out enough and G'ardrgh is dwarfish for something that everyone has, but only a dwarf can krazak it properly!

Answer: Mr. Shine

'Mr. Shine - him diamond' is the troll graffiti on all the walls in "Thud" - Mr Shine is a real diamond troll. He's genuinely a 'diamond geezer' (English slang for a seriously good man), who tries to keep young trolls out of trouble. I hope you've enjoyed this quiz. Do please let me know!