Classics Christmas Quiz 2024
The Twelve Days of Christmas
With two weeks to go until Christmas, here is an early Christmas present! I thought you might enjoy a festive classics quiz.
As ever, this post is available for free, so please do share with friends and family.
This quiz consists of a letter and twelve questions . . .
My dear true love,
I am sorry it has taken me almost a year to write to thank you for all the extremely generous gifts you sent to me last Christmas. The truth is that things suddenly became rather busy and I have spent most of the last twelve months looking after geese, swans and hens, not to mention that darling little partridge in his pear tree, as well as milkmaids and their cows and roomfuls of frisky lords, ladies, drummers and pipers. The house is half hostel, half farmyard, half marching band.
I have been wondering what to send you in revenge return. In the end I have written you this quiz, inspired by the gifts you gave me. You will see there are twelve questions, each of which has a sequence of letters to arrange in order. When you have solved each question, enter the answers vertically, from top to bottom, above the relevant question number in this grid below – and you’ll reveal a heartfelt message from me to you.
(Here’s a printable version of the grid that you can print and fill in:)
12. DRUMMERS DRUMMING
In which bands do these drummers play?
E Gorillaz
W The Electric Mayhem
11. PIPERS PIPING
Who wrote about these pipers?
His queer long coat from heel to head / Was half of yellow and half of red; / And he himself was tall and thin, / With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, / And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, / No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, / But lips where smiles went out and in —
___
She thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so she didn’t know how she knew, she just knew.
___
He saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter.
___
A J. M. Barrie
R Robert Browning
I Kenneth Grahame
10. LORDS A-LEAPING
And who created these fictional lords?
___ Lord Asriel
___ Lord Copper
___ Lord Emsworth
___ Little Lord Fauntleroy
___ Lord Jim
___ Lord Sepulchrave
N Frances Hodgson Burnett
L Joseph Conrad
G Mervyn Peake
I Philip Pullman
C Evelyn Waugh
E P. G. Wodehouse
9. LADIES DANCING
Can you name these ballets?
O Cinderella
I Hansel and Gretel
T The Little Match Girl
L The Nutcracker
O The Red Shoes
M The Sleeping Beauty
A Swan Lake
8. MAIDS A-MILKING
And where would you find these milky extracts?
Take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, / Wherever in your sightless substances / You wait on nature’s mischief!
___
You could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one.
___
COWS THAT GIVE CHOCOLATE MILK, it said on the next door. ‘Ah, my pretty little cows!’ cried Mr Wonka. ‘How I love those cows!’
___
A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk.
___
The dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.
___
What is meditation? What is leaving one’s body? . . . The same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk.
___
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.
___
It was pleasant to drive back to the hotel in the late afternoon, above a sea as mysteriously colored as the agates and cornelians of childhood, green as green milk, blue as laundry water, wine dark.
___
Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, / For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.
___
L A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
L Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
M Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
M Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
F Ulysses by James Joyce
S Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
O Animal Farm by George Orwell
T Macbeth by William Shakespeare
7. SWANS A-SWIMMING
Can you match these swan phrases with their definitions?
___ swan about
___ swan dive
___ swan drop
___ swan egg
___ swan flower
___ swan maiden
___ swan mussel
___ swan skin
___ swan song
K a fine thick flannel
R a forward dive in which the arms are extended sideways
A a freshwater shellfish
O the knob on a swan’s bill
D the last work of a musician, poet or writer
M move in an apparently aimless way
V a shapeshifting figure from Germanic folklore
E a South American orchid
R a variety of pear
6. GEESE A-LAYING
Can you unmuddle these Mother Goose fairy tales?
Blue ___
Cinder ___
Diamonds and ___
Hop ___
Little Red ___
The Master ___
Ridiculous ___
Riquet ___
The Sleeping ___
E Wishes
O Cat
E Beauty
L with the Tuft
Y Beard
A o’ My Thumb
A Riding Hood
U Ella
V Toads
5. GOLD RINGS
Who wrote these golden titles?
___ The Golden Apples
___ The Golden Ass
___ The Golden Bough
___ The Golden Bowl
___ The Golden Gate
___ The Golden Goose
___ The Golden Notebook
___ The Man with the Golden Gun
___ The Crab with the Golden Claws
E Apuleius
E Ian Fleming
M James George Frazer
A The Brothers Grimm
R Hergé
I Henry James
S Doris Lessing
V Vikram Seth
E Eudora Welty
4. CALLING BIRDS
Can you identify these songbirds?
N Blackcap
T Blue Tit
I Goldfinch
D Robin
E Song Thrush
P Wren
3. FRENCH HENS
Can you pair these French writers with their best-known books?
___ Simone de Beauvoir
___ Colette
___ Annie Ernaux
___ Françoise Sagan
N Bonjour Tristesse
D Gigi
R The Second Sex
H The Years
2. TURTLE DOVES
And can you match these pairs of literary lovers?
___ Dorothea Brooke
___ Catherine Earnshaw
___ Jane Eyre
___ Emma Woodhouse
I Heathcliff
G George Knightley
E Will Ladislaw
T Edward Rochester
AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE
Finally, what are these characters’ first names?
H Alan
S Benjamin
This quiz first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in the UK on 18 December 2022. If you would like another challenge, I’ve written a similar quiz that will be in the 22 December 2024 edition of the Sunday Telegraph.
Thank sweet baby Jesus this is multiple choice
What fun, and so beautifully crafted, will have a go later , thank you Henry.