The Great BREMF Quiz 2025 – Results and Answers

Nov 24, 2025

We had a bumper entry this year, from people living as near as Brighton and as far away as Norwich.

Thank you to all who bought quizzes (or made a donation and asked us to go away!) as well as to the brave people who actually sent in an entry. You’ve helped raise over £200 for BREMF.

Unlike the last couple of years, where a draw has been necessary, we have a clear winner and a clear runner-up.

The winner of the £30 Waitrose voucher is Hilary Ougham of Brighton, with 59½.
In second place, winning the £10 book token, are Alan and Dena Mynett of Hurstpierpoint, with 57.

Congratulations to all of them – they’ve been entering more or less from the start and have at last won!

Several others gained marks in the 50s:

  • Joan Macgregor and Ian Denyer of Brighton 56
  • Nick Boston & Kevin Edwards of Brighton 54½
  • Alan and Niki Lamont of Rayleigh 54
  • Dawn Evans of Brighton 50

Honourable mentions also to Fiona Johnson of Brighton (49½) and Peter Stokes of Surbiton (46½)

The other entrants scored marks ranging from 30 to 44 – good performances on the first two sections, but floored by the Connections round.

Maya Davis, Quizmaster

BREMF Quiz 2025 answers

Part 1

Mixed Bag: 1 mark per correct answer

  1. Where did a 150-year-old plant leave a significant blank space in Northumberland? (Sycamore Gap, Crag Lough, near Hadrian’s Wall – where the Sycamore Gap/Robin Hood tree was felled illegally in 2023)
  2. Clementine Diane Hitching died in 2025. Under what name was she better known? (Cleo Laine/Mrs John Dankworth)
  3. Which much-loved fictional character is commemorated by an official ‘day’ on the author’s birthday of 18th January? (Winnie-the-Pooh)
  4. What does a melissopalynologist study? (Pollen grains in honey)
  5. Where in the house might you regularly find Polytetrafluoroethylene, often abbreviated to PTFE? (In the kitchen e.g. on the inside of a non-stick saucepan – it’s Teflon)
  6. What is the musical link between a spring carol in Latin, 28th September and 26th December? (Good King Wenceslas. 28th September is St Wenceslas Day. St Stephen’s Day – the ‘Feast of Stephen’- is on 26th December; the tune is believed to be adapted from a medieval spring carol whose Latin text survives)
  7. In the name Chat-GPT, what does the abbreviation GPT stand for? (generative pre-trained transformer)
  8. Where is Jane Austen buried? (Winchester Cathedral)
  9. What nickname was given to Brighton’s two historic elm trees in Preston Park, one of which has been reinstated there as an artwork? (Preston Twins)
  10. Which extinct species of canine did researchers claim to have recreated in 2025? (The Dire Wolf)
  11. Men in Love is the sequel to which 20th century novel? (Irvine Welsh – Trainspotting)
  12. The founders of which UK institution included Harold Wilson, Peter Venables and Jennie Lee? (Open University)
  13. Which Gilbert and Sullivan character’s career was based on that of W.H. Smith? (Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, First Lord of the Admiralty in HMS Pinafore – W.H. Smith who, like Sir Joseph, had had no naval experience when appointed to that role).
  14. The medieval Lewes Priory was a house of which monastic order? (Cluniac)
  15. Why is there a link between a Provok’d Wife, Nicholas Hawksmoor and the Churchill family’s stately home in Oxfordshire? (John Vanbrugh wrote the first, was the architect of Castle Howard -with Nicholas Hawksmoor – and designed Blenheim Palace for John Churchill).
  16. In the UK the term ‘mugger’ is used of violent robbers. What kind of non-human animal is a mugger? (Crocodile)
  17. Which British author’s given names include the body of water in Staffordshire which was one of his parents’ favourite places? (Rudyard Kipling – named after Lake Rudyard; his first name was Joseph).
  18. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, what is Bottom’s first name? (Nick)
  19. In molecular biology, what does the abbreviation mRNA stand for? (messenger Ribonucleic Acid)
  20. Which star of children’s television, mentioned in 2021 by a prominent politician in a serious speech to assembled businessmen, celebrated her 20th anniversary in 2023? (Peppa Pig)

 

Part 2:

Identify the following – all linked to the theme of BREMF 2025 (1 mark per correct answer)

  1. Affection for a small number of citrus fruit. (Love of/for Three Oranges – Prokofiev)
  2. Barwick Green could introduce these sport lovers – or maybe they prefer scarlet aerial performers. (Toxophilists = archers – literally, lovers of archery/arrows; the scarlet aerial performers are the Red Arrows)
  3. The wearer of the Amor Vincit Omnia badge on a journey to Kent. (The Prioress in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales)
  4. Limited visibility – but I can still see Nigella. (The flower Love-in-a-mist)
  5. Toto’s owner + love on the Seine = a screen actress who died in 1996. (Dorothy + l’amour = Dorothy Lamour)
  6. Nothing else required, according to four Scousers. (All you need is Love – the Beatles)
  7. Passion or contagious bacterial disease in Colombia? (Love in the Time of Cholera – Marquez; the Spanish for ‘cholera’ has two meanings)
  8. Nominally a lover of horses – (Philip or Philippa – from the Greek philein = to love and hippos = a horse)
  9. Oliver and Jenny in a film and a novel by Erich Segal. (Love Story)
  10. Lover of two Romans Carries On. (Cleopatra, who had relationships with both mark Antony and Julius Cᴂsar – and children by both, though Cᴂsar always refused to acknowledge Cesarion)

Part 3 -The Connections Round.

There are 3 marks per question – 1 for correctly identifying the connection and 2 for explaining all the elements.

  1. Senior member of an academic faculty; The Hay Wain (etc); Pierrepoint or Calcraft; Mick Dundee? (Punch & Judy shows – Professor – the name given to the person presenting the show and working the puppets plus 3 of the standard characters – the Constable, the hangman and the crocodile. Calcraft and Pierrepoint (or ther family members) were the two main hangmen of the 19th & 20th centuries, and Mick Dundee is ’Crocodile’ Dundee of the films.)
  2. The Cottingley fairies; poems by a 15th century Bristol monk; a Sussex skull; San Seriffe. (All fakes or hoaxes – a set of photographs by two Yorkshire teenage girls which fooled Conan Doyle; the Rowley poems by Thomas Chatterton; Piltdown Man; an April 1st 1977 feature in The Guardian.)
  3. No runs scored in this over; Humboldt’s, Galapagos or Magellanic; one who failed to repair Humpty Dumpty; domestic servant does the foxtrot. (Titles of works starting ‘Death and the….’ Maiden – Schubert’s string quartet;  Penguin – satirical Ukrainian novel by Andrej Kurkov;  King’s Horseman – play by Wole Soyinka; Dancing Footman – crime novel by Ngaio Marsh)
  4. Right; soft; fast; light. (Adjectives with opposites from at least 2 different semantic fields – left or wrong; hard or loud; loose or slow; dark or heavy/serious [if you think of ‘light music’]) NB I credited ‘all followed by -footed’ even though there are very few listed uses of the term ‘fast-footed.’ Ingenious musical knowledge shown by some people – but unfortunately those are all translated by adverbs in English and the words given are adjectives.
  5. ‘…..epicist of the female experience’ 2007; ‘in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle’ 2005; ‘vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland’ 1955; ‘new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’ 2016. (Winner citations for Nobel Prize for Literature –Doris Lessing; Harold Pinter; Haldor Laxness; Bob Dylan).
  6. Birmingham’s Robert Norman Davis; former president of Zimbabwe; one of an odd couple; might have been in the ballroom with a candlestick – or possibly not. (People whose names sound like/are also fruit or vegetables – Jasper Carrott; Canaan Banana; Jack Lemmon; Professor Plum in Cluedo.)
  7. Morris; line; country; tap. (Can all be followed by Dance/Dancing)
  8. Impossible total fractions of a citrus fruit; Big, Eat, Four-Eyed and others; famously Famous; excluding Fenton, in literature. (The number 5 – Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris; musical 5 Guys named Moe; Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series; Arnold Bennett’s Five Towns – actually 6 constituent towns making up what is now Stoke on Trent, but Bennett omitted Fenton.)
  9. Tortoise; species of wild ass; Eagle; Raven, Lion or Runner of the Sun. (The Roman Army – a formation in which a shield wall and roof were created by advancing soldiers in battle; onager – a type of catapult used in sieges; usual way of referring to a legionary standard; grades/ranks in Roman Mithraism – Mithras was primarily worshipped by Roman soldiers.)
  10. Chagall’s possibly seasick or jealous string player; initially rejected by a Dr Seuss character; Ms Shirley in Canada; arm coverings celebrated (allegedly) by Henry VIII. (All linked to the colour green – Fiddler with the Green Face/The Green Violinist; Green Eggs & Ham; Anne of Green Gables; Greensleeves.)
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