Here are the answers to last year's quiz.

1. in 1925:

1. Which author of anti-clerical romance took up a more senior role? [Benito Mussolini, became Dictator of Italy]
2. Where were dogs instrumental in the treatment of disease? [Great Serum Run to Nome, Alaska, to carry antitoxin against a diphtheria epidemic]
3. In what uniquely named endeavour did a 7-year-old act on its own for the first time? [Pink's War, first time the RAF had acted on its own rather than in concert with Army or Navy]
4. What design movement, over ten years old, finally got a name? [Art Deco, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.]
5. What historic mistake by Churchill revitalised an historic mistake by Isaac Newton? [Return to the gold bullion standard, thus fixing the dollar exchange rate.]
6. Who did on land what aircraft had been doing unofficially since 1918? [Malcolm Campbell exeeded 150mph at Pendine Sands.]
7. What territory did the French leave, having built up great sympathy for the other side while they occupied it? [The Ruhr, occupied since 1923 to try to get reparations out of Germany.]
8. What naval ship was lost in Ohio, over a hundred miles from the water? [The airship USS Shenandoah, broke up in a storm.]
9. What was introduced to fight secularism and atheism? [Feast of Christ the King]
10. Which former child soldier took up his throne? [Reza Pahlavi of Iran]

2. [Blue]

1. What, inspired by the rhythm of train wheels, is one of the few American classical pieces one has heard, but is almost never performed in its original arrangement? [Rhapsody in Blue]
2. Would this worry a dog with a Scottish name? [The Blue Cat]
3. What was replaced by Barbarossa in 1958? [Blue Danube, first British nuclear bomb, replaced by Red Beard]
4. What can happen once a month, or once a season, or after a volcanic eruption? [Blue moon, by various definitions]
5. What was a political consideration in the appointment of the Metropolitan of Ethiopia? [The Blue Nile, and whether Ethiopia would divert it before it reached Egypt]
6. What does trace boron make, though it's only valuable if it happens by accident? [Blue diamond]
7. What 1970s invention was named by Scots after a place it doesn't come from? [Shropshire Blue]
8. What might refer to UFOs, diplomatic correspondence, compact discs, several programming languages, or the shocking backwardness of the Welsh? [Blue Book]
9. What was first demonstrated in 1993, and had made it from expensive rack-mounted servers into mass-market Christmas decorations by 2000? [Blue LED]
10. What cheap item of clothing became associated with intellectual women although it was never worn by them? [Blue stocking]

3. [Allingham]

1. Who turned to blackmail and even busking in a quest for non-existent jewels? [Jack Havoc, in Tiger in the Smoke]
2. Where did the burglar mutter darkly about the resale value of wedding presents? [The Manor in Mystery Mile]
3. What happened to criminals who went up Apron Street? [Smuggled away in coffins, as long as the drugs worked and they didn't suffocate. More Work for the Undertaker]
4. Why did the artist's former fiancée refuse a ménage a trois? [Because she felt the artist's recent work was commercial dross, in Death of a Ghost.]
5. Where might the youths have been planning anything from burglary to skiffle? [A small eating-house near Garden Green and Goff's Place, Hide My Eyes]
6. Who was using what nobody knew at the time was an actual Nazi plot in order to set himself up as dictator? [Lee Aubrey, in Traitor's Purse]
7. What was the business case for reconditioning the watermill? [Charging wireless batteries, in Sweet Danger]
8. How was war-surplus Perspex given a creative new use? [Tonker's glübalübalum, in The Beckoning Lady]
9. Where did Dr Abbershaw and Meggie get supplanted by an incidental character? [Black Dudley, in The Crime At]
10. How was the pig killed five months after his own funeral? [Head caved in by a geranium urn, The Case of the Late Pig]

4. in 1875:

1. Where was Second abolished, to leave only First and Third? [Midland Railway, followed by other British railways.]
2. How did inter-university rivalry escalate to armed conflict? [Rutgers sophomores stole a cannon from the College of New Jersey.]
3. Where did drink kill 13 people? [Dublin Whiskey Fire, not by burning or drowning but when they drank the flood fo cask-strength whiskey.]
4. What shrank by 2'3½" in order to remove a break? [The Cheddar Valley branch of the (previously broad-gauge) Bristol and Exeter Railway.]
5. Who took nearly forty miles to get from Dover to Calais? [Matthew Webb in the first successful swim of the English Channel.]
6. What new synthesis of science, religion and philosophy was founded to Change the World? [Theosophy]
7. What did Disraeli cause Britain to buy, without Parliamentary approval? [A 44% share in the Suez Canal, from Isma'il Pasha of Egypt.]
8. What was done for the first time in St Petersburg? [Electrification of a railway, on a short section of tram line.]
9. Who crossed his last bridge? [Charles Wheatstone.]
10. What was attempted for the fourth time, though it would only last four years? [The London Magazine was founded.]

5. [Fictional animals]

1. What will you come to resemble if you haven't enough to do? [A camel with a cameelious hump]
2. Who don't care in what part of you they fix their fretwork sets? [Tigers out in Indiah]
3. Whose hide would flatten what? [The hippopotamus, leaden bullets]
4. Who amply justifies his end how? [The rhinoceros in Flanders and Swann; because his means are right]
5. Who eventually found something he understood very well? [The bear at the end of The Last Battle, after a book of not understanding things]
6. From whom would a small stute fish hide, and where? [The whale, under the door-sills of the equator]
7. Who wanted news of the iceberg? [The polar bear]
8. What is not alarming if it is mistaken for a hat? [Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's picture of an elephant being digested by a boa constrictor]
9. Into what had a detective been transformed by looking over a wall? [Mr Parker, in Eric Linklater's The Wind on the Moon, became a giraffe]
10. Which creature got a free lunch and a large toothpick, though blame could not be assigned? [Wallace, in Albert and the Lion]

6. in 2025:

1. Where did the army take over by election, for a change? [Lebanon: Joseph Aoun, commander of the armed forces, was elected president by parliament, after two years with no president at all.]
2. Which regicide reached 114mph? [Storm Éowyn.]
3. Where did it take 67 deaths to get a problem noticed that had been warned about since 2011, and which still hasn't been fixed? [Over the Potomac; collision of CRJ700 and UH-60 in overlapping airspace.]
4. Where was the last of the 18th found, over a hundred years after the one before? [Tomb of Thutmose II, last undiscovered tomb of the 18th dynasty and the first found since Tutanakhamun's in 1922.]
5. What was constructed as part of the road towards the mammoth? [Woolly mouse, genetically modified to have mammoth-like traits.]
6. Where was a woman brought in to clear up the mess after the man had been involved in one cover-up too many? [Archbishopric of Canterbury, Justin Welby succeeded by Sarah Mullally.]
7. How did the last cock end its final flight? [The final Antonov An-22 transport still in operational service crashed into a reservoir in Ivanovo Oblast, Russia, during a test flight]
8. Where have two revolutionaries been ejected for the second time? [Tabacalera, Mexico City; statues of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara]
9. What reached its trillionth? [The Internet Archive, web pages]
10. What oligarch's toy was bought and immediately shut down? [London Live, TV channel owned by Evgeny Lebedev]