Mastermind Club
Quiz 2026-5
Classical Connections
Set by Maya Davis
Answers
1/Which beer brand links (nominally, anyway) a Roman star and the owner of a fictional French café?
Stella Artois – René Artois in ’Allo, ‘Allo
2/How did Latin words fit into the UK’s pre-decimal currency?
L.s.d stands for three Latin words – libri, solidi, denarii
3/What links the Greek playwright Sophocles with 20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3?
The story of Oedipus/the Oedipus complex – the house at that address is now the Freud Museum)
4/What object connects the Greek mythical figure of Ixion with St Catherine and Guy Fawkes?
A [flaming] wheel
5/The goddess Athena and the Norfolk landowner Lord Lilford are ornithologically linked. How?
By the Little Owl, which Lilford was said to have introduced into Norfolk – a symbol of Athene on ancient Athenian coinage and therefore given the Latin name Athena Noctua
6/Which Disney animal character has a nominal link to Tartarus?
Pluto – one of the names for the Greek god of the Underworld, of which Tartarus was one section
7/How does an assassinated Roman feature in obstetrics?
Caesarian section – Julius Caesar was said to have been born surgically rather than via a vaginal delivery
8/The title of a work by Samuel Butler has an etymological connection with both Ruth Rendell and Thomas More’s Utopia. Explain.
(Butler’s Erewhon = nowhere, as does ‘Utopia’. Ruth Rendell, as Barbara Vine, uses ‘ecalpemos’ = ‘someplace’ as a fictional holiday destination in A Fatal Inversion. NB – there are two authors named Samuel Butler – hard luck if you picked the author of Hudibras)
9/Which building in London is named after a statue of Athene taken (in mythology) from Troy?
Palladium
10/Link a spring bulb with a mythological example of misplaced love or vanity.
The story of Narcissus
11/How does a shellfish used by the Romans have a colourful connection with an author named Alice?
The shellfish murex provided the purple dye used by Romans – Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple
12/Nominally, how is Jane’s Mr Darcy linked to a building in Cambridge which appears to be dedicated to the Muses?
The Fitzwilliam Museum; Mr Darcy in Pride & Prejudice + term derived from the Greek Mouseion = building honouring the Muses
13/How could someone who knows Latin and Greek connect Sicily with a triangle and a ballet by Falla?
Sicily was also known to the Greeks and Romans as Trinacria – the three-cornered island; links to triangle = ‘three corners’ in Latin + Falla’s ballet The Three-Cornered Hat
14/What type of mammal links Pelorus Jack in New Zealand with the Younger Pliny’s account of events in the coastal city of Hippo
Dolphin
15/ Link a foolish weaver in Greek mythology with an arthropod genus.
Arachne – turned into a spider by Athena – hence spiders = arachnids)
16/Architecturally, what feature links St Pancras and the Erechtheum.
Not St Pancras station but St Pancras Church opposite Euston station – a Caryatid porch
17/The fictional TV detective Kojak has a nominal link with Alexander the Great’s last tutor. What’s the link?
The name Aristotle – or Aristotelis/’Telly’ Savalas, who played Kojak
18/What clothing brand is named after the Greek goddess of victory?
Nike
19/The plot of Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors is based on Menaechmi – but who wrote Menaechmi?
Plautus
20/Link Agamemnon, Menelaus and other members of that mythical family to the planet Arrakis.
Agamemnon and Menelaus’ family are the Atreides= descendants of Atreus – and that family name features in Frank Herbert’s Dune, set on Arrakis
21/Link a well-known Dutch football team with two Greeks who fought in the Trojan War.
Ajax or, in Greek, Aias – name of two different Greek warriors and AFC Ajax
22/A pretentiously-pronounced bucket has a connection with an example of mythological accidental killing – how?
Hyakinthos, accidentally killed by Apollo, & Hyacinth Bucket ‘it’s Bouquet’ in Keeping Up Appearances
23/Which melodious mythical figures give their name to a very unmelodious herald of impending destruction?
The Sirens
24/How did Gilbert & Sullivan include a reference to the origins of Greek theatre in The Pirates of Penzance?
The chorus ‘Climbing over Rocky Mountains’ in Pirates was re-used from the lost first full G & S opera Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old; Thespis is said by Aristotle to have been the originator of acting as a profession
25/ Which ancient battle is mentioned in a limerick by Edward Lear, who rhymes it with ’properly’?
Thermopylae