This document contains a series of short passages providing descriptions, clues, and connections related to literature, history, and word origins. It includes summaries of paintings by an unnamed writer and poet, details about the fictional kingdom of Syldavia from Tintin comics, an interpretation of Dante's Inferno, connections between words invented by Shakespeare and their modern meanings, and origins of English words derived from Arabic including ream, ghoul, admiral, and hazard.

1. Wordplay
Lit Quiz Compilation

2. Absolut Talent
This is a series of paintings by writer and poet X. Description of each pic follows...

6. Vikram Seth

7. Which kingdom am I talking about?
• The name was derived from Transylvania
and Moldavia
• Ran a successful space program in the
area of Sbrodj in the 1950s
• Their national dance is called the Blushtika
(goat dance twisting)
• Their biggest water body is Lake Pollishoff

8. The clichéd Tintin question
• Kingdom of Syldavia

9. • A 19th century interpretation of X‘s most
famous work Y.
• The level of suffering and wickedness
increases on the downward journey
through the Y‘s nine layers.
• No original copies of X‘s manuscript survive

10. X – Dante Alighieri, Y - Inferno

11. How do we know him better?
• X was a practicing ophthalmologist, but not a very good one. In his
autobiography he wrote that he didn‘t see a single patient. Who?

12. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

13. • An English word for a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force
occupying their country. Named after Major Vidkun X (1887-1945), the
Norwegian army officer and diplomat who rules Norway on behalf of
the German forces.

14. Quisling

15. • Kerry Wendell Thornley is known as the founder of Discordianism. He
is also known for his 1962 manuscript The Idle Warriors, which was
based on the activities of his acquaintance X.
• X, however will always be remembered for another event that
happened 21 months later.

16. Lee Harvey Oswald
• Assassination of John F. Kennedy

17. Non-exhaustive connect
• Addiction • Hot-blooded
• Arch-villain • Inaudible
• Assassination • Ladybird
• Bedazzled • Manager
• Belongings • Multitudinous
• Cold-blooded • New-fangled
• Dishearten • Pageantry
• Eventful • Scuffle
• Eyeball • Swagger
• Fashionable • Uncomfortable

18. Words invented by Shakespeare

19. Connect
• Risico
• The Hildebrand Rarity
• The Property of a Lady
• ____ in New York

20. The remaining original titles in the Bond
Series
• Sony has reported that they will be using an original title for Bond 24 and 25.
• The stories are outdated anyway
• Risico – Drug smuggling operations by Russians
• The Hildebrand Rarity – Bond finds a fish for a millionaire who is subsequently
murdered
• The Property of a Lady – Bond visits Sotheby‘s to identify a KGB agent
• 007 in New York – A female MI6 employee is with a KGB agent
• Highly unlikely that any of it will be used again.

21. Silly funda behind what?
• The common slang is to say "Holy X" instead of "Holy Mary"
• The reason why X was chosen from a host of eligible candidates is
because of its Dutch interpretation as a pimp. The word 'makelaar'
means broken or peddler which has now been adopted as a slang for
pimp.

22. Holy Mackerel

23. • This phrase originated during the Vietnam War, a time when American
troops spent extended periods of time in hot, humid jungles. Wearing
tight-fitting undergarments reduced ventilation and increased the risk
of fungal infections in the groin area.
• What did they do? (It‘s probably the reason for the homosexuality in
the US army)

24. Going commando

25. How is his legacy maintained even today?
• X Hoag was a pimp and a thief in New York City in the 1840s. He would rob his wife Melinda's ―customers‖ while she
distracted them.
• At first, the scheme worked like this: Melinda led a victim into a dark alley, where she picked his pockets. Then she
embraced the victim and held her hand out behind him, where Hoag was hiding to grab the stolen goods. Inevitably, some
of these men would go to the police to report the thefts. To protect himself and his wife from arrest, Hoag enlisted a
couple of police officers by promising to split the stolen goods with them. But Hoag's downfall came when he ran into
some financial difficulties and couldn't give the officers their fair share.
• Initially, he got away with this by operating a ―panel game‖ con. Melinda would bring the men back to her apartment—and
then, according to George Wilkes, editor of the Subterranean (who met Hoag in prison while Wilkes was falsely
imprisoned), ―Melinda would make her victim lay his clothes, as he took them off, upon a chair at the head of the bed near
the secret panel, and then take him to her arms and closely draw the curtains of the bed. As soon as everything was right
and the dupe not likely to heed outside noises, Melinda would give a cough, and the faithful Alec would slyly enter, rifle
the pockets of every farthing or valuable thing, and finally disappear as mysteriously as he entered.‖ Sometime after that,
Alec would bang on the door, and Melinda would make out that he was her husband who had returned early from some
trip. The victims then would hastily grab their clothes and escape through the window.
• The police soon discovered Hoag was cheating them out of their share by this new tactic and arrested Hoag and Melinda.
Hoag promptly escaped from prison, with the help of his brother, but was eventually recaptured.

26. He was the original ‗Smart Alec‘
• Alec Hoag was then given the nickname ―Smart Alec‖ by the police for
being too smart for his own good. The thought is that the police then
used this term when dealing with other criminals who seemed a little
too smart for their own good, often thinking of ways around giving
police their payoffs: ―Don‘t be a Smart Alec.‖
• This term, as an expression, then took about 20 years to germinate
and eventually found its way into print in 1865, and popular culture
shortly thereafter.

27. Long Visual Connect
Non-exhaustive. There are plenty of books in this category.

28. De Profundis – Oscar Wilde

29. The Historie of the World
Walter Raleigh

30. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ludwig Wittgenstein

31. The Travels of Marco Polo
Rustichello de Pisa

32. Le Morte d‘Arthur
Thomas Malory

33. The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius

35. Answer…

36. Books written from prison
• http://listverse.com/2012/06/10/top-10-works-written-in-prison/

37. English words derived from Arabic

38. • X refers to a bundle of paper consisting of 480, 500, or 516 sheets.
The original Arabic means package or bundle.

39. Ream

40. • The X came into western culture via the famous ―One Thousand and
One Arabian Nights.‖ The X is a macabre demon who haunts burial
areas and feasts on the dead. There is some debate as to whether this
word is related to an ancient Mediterranean in demon ―Gallu.‖ The
word ―X-ish‖ in English is used to describe an unsettling fascination
with, or attitude toward, death. The word was rendered in the
diminutive and used as title of the 1980s‘ ―Gremlins‖ rip-off ―X-ies.‖

41. Ghoul

42. • Probably coming to Europe with returning soldiers of the
crusades, means, literally, ―prince of the sea.‖ Today X is the highest
rank in the world‘s navies.

43. Admiral

44. • The Arabs ruled Spain from 711 AD until 1492 AD. Arabic culture has
left an indelible mark on Spanish architecture, dance, and, of course,
language. The word means ―dice,‖ which gave the Spanish word for
risk ―azar,‖ ultimately coming to English as ―X.‖

45. Hazard

46. • The route of this word is enough to make one feel as if they had
consumed a large quantity of the substance to which it lends its name.
The word X refers to the dark eye-shadow used as a beauty accessory
by women across the Near-East. Although Persian scientists were the
first to identify Y in a scientific sense, westerners actually coined the
term Y. Due to the similarities in the processes of sublimation for
creating X and distillation for creating Y the later was adopted.

47. Kohl and Alcohol

48. Long Visual Connect
A nearly exhaustive list

49. Reason

56. Answer…

57. Novels by Amitava Ghosh
• Circle of reason
• Shadow lines
• Calcutta chromosome
• Glass palace
• Hungry tide
• Sea of poppies
• River of smoke