Odd-One-Out Answers (2005)

January 2005

• January 2005 - ONE
  • Whisky
  • Broth
  • Mist
  • Corner
  • Pine

• January 2005 - TWO
  • Thomas Jefferson
  • James Garfield
  • Abraham Lincoln
  • William McKinley
  • John F Kennedy

• January 2005 - THREE
  • star wars
  • a certain fern
  • the first stir
  • an unworthy worm
  • fur curtains

• January 2005 - FOUR
  • Skaro
  • Erebor
  • Magrathea
  • Vulcan
  • Tatooine

• January 2005 - FIVE
  • April is the cruellest month
  • Earth has not anything to show more fair
  • They also serve who only stand and wait
  • Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet
  • The curfew tolls the knell of parting day

February 2005

• February 2005 - ONE
  • a dramatic performance
  • a surgical operation
  • a 200 metre race
  • a lecture
  • armed conflict

• February 2005 - TWO
  • Oscar
  • Tony
  • Charlie
  • Victor
  • Romeo

• February 2005 - THREE
  • weird science
  • Keith's seizure
  • received belief
  • eight weirs
  • Who fancies Reigate?

• February 2005 - FOUR
  • Martin Luther King
  • George Bush
  • Douglas Fairbanks
  • Harry Houdini
  • Johann Strauss

• February 2005 - FIVE
  • Which pioneer of scientific agriculture invented the seed drill around the year 1701?
  • Who were the two main characters in Pierce Egan's Life of London (1821) whose names became synonymous with riotous living?
  • Which enemy of David Copperfield often proclaimed himself to be ever so umble?
  • Who was the Archduke whose assassination sparked off the First World War?
  • Who were the English detectives Tintin often crossed paths with in his various adventures?

Please note that extremely erudite people may miss the point of this one by being too pedantic. Just go with the obvious.

March 2005

Did you know that this year Good Friday (the day Jesus died) falls on the same day as the Annunciation (the day Jesus was conceived)? I've often wondered if the fact that 25th March (the day the One Ring was destroyed) became the start of the new year in Gondor had any connection with the fact that Tolkien was a Catholic and the date was a significant one in the Christian calendar.

Such musings are intended to divert you from the fact that I never got around to creating an odd-one-out page this month. Sorry.

April 2005

• April 2005 - ONE
  • Stork
  • Hound
  • Badger
  • Dog
  • Harry

• April 2005 - TWO
  • Tiger
  • Dragon
  • Rabbit
  • Monkey
  • Spider

• April 2005 - THREE
  • a two-pound coin
  • a road sign warning of a roundabout ahead
  • the whispering gallery in St. Paul's Cathedral
  • a hockey puck
  • Bilbo Baggins' front door

• April 2005 - FOUR
  • Scarlet
  • Brown
  • Bunter
  • Tracy
  • Wonka

• April 2005 - FIVE
  • Genesis chapter 37 and chapters 39 to 46
  • Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (T S Eliot)
  • Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)
  • Maria Eva Duarte (1919-1952)
  • a boy playing with his train set

May 2005

Too busy for five this month, but here's a fairly topical one.

• May 2005 - ONE
  • Jake Lloyd
  • Hayden Christensen
  • Ian McDiarmid
  • James Earl Jones
  • David Prowse
  • Sebastian Shaw

June 2005

• June 2005 - ONE
  • Neil
  • Mike
  • Rick
  • Cliff
  • Vyvyan

• June 2005 - TWO
  • hydrogen
  • helium
  • argon
  • neon
  • krypton

• June 2005 - THREE
  • an umbrella
  • a crossword clue
  • the FTSE 100 index
  • ten thousand Yorkists
  • what something is to me if I am responsible for it

• June 2005 - FOUR
  • canter
  • rasp
  • ban
  • shrews

• June 2005 - FIVE
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer)
  • Yuri Gagarin (astronaut)
  • Harper Lee (author of “To Kill a Mockingbird”)
  • Jesus of Nazareth (the Word made flesh)
  • Alexander the Great (military commander)
  • Franz Schubert (composer)
  • Emile Brontë (author of “Wuthering Heights”)
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley (poet)
  • Isabella Beeton (author of “The Book of Household Management”)

Summer 2005

I never got around to creating my odd-one-out puzzles for July or August, but here is a slightly different puzzle to divert you for a brief while.

There are many words beginning SW - as in "Switch from sweeping out your swine to swinging your sword at a swarthy swindler." There are many words beginning TW - as in "Twice twenty stars twinkled in the twilight as two twits twisted twigs together." And there are many words beginning AW - as in "An awful awakening awaited her, when her awesome awning went awkwardly awry." Other than this, there are only ten reasonably common words whose second letter is W. Can you find them - without recourse to a dictionary!

To help you out, here are some clues to the ten words. None of these begin with S, T or A. All of them have W as their second letter. How many can you identify?

• a bird
• a beast
• a country
• a container
• a geological feature formed by glaciation
• a creature found in Middle-Earth
• a verb connected with possessions
• a verb connected with residence
• a verb connected with debt
• a verb connected with change of size

September 2005

• September 2005 - ONE
  • Samurai
  • Seasons
  • Sisters
  • Deadly Sins
  • Wonders of the Ancient World

• September 2005 - TWO
  • a cup of coffee
  • a piano key
  • a bishop
  • all the squares on which a particular bishop stands during the course of a chess game
  • Jess, Postman Pat's cat

• September 2005 - THREE
  • hew
  • re-hew
  • hewn
  • how
  • thaw

• September 2005 - FOUR
  • Cambria (an old name for Wales)
  • Ordovices (the Latin name for an ancient British tribe residing in North Wales)
  • Silures (another tribe, this time in South Wales)
  • Chartreuse (an Alpine valley)
  • Devon (an English county)

• September 2005 - FIVE
  • Victoria
  • Elizabeth
  • Charles
  • Edward
  • George

October 2005

• October 2005 - ONE
  • Caesar
  • Caliph
  • Tsar
  • Kaiser

• October 2005 - TWO
  • Bobby
  • Bill
  • Tom
  • Fuzz
  • Copper

• October 2005 - THREE
  • fox
  • Arkansas
  • Manchester
  • pineapple
  • backgammon
  • Artaxerxes

• October 2005 - FOUR
  • thick fat
  • new young
  • heavy dark
  • ebb friend
  • left wrong
  • with within
  • found won

• October 2005 - FIVE
  • the Libyan Desert and the Nubian Desert
  • zen-inspired tranquil gardens of the far east
  • an industrial city in northern Italy, home of two football teams
  • the peninsula forming the south-east coast of the Gulf of Mexico
  • the inhospitable terrain on the island politically divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei
  • vineyards on the west coast of France
  • a member of the Inuit community
  • a native American tribe which used to live along the Platte and Arkansas rivers
  • an Irish market town, 25 miles south-east of Limerick (not actually a huge distance)
  • the dock area of Cardiff where Shirley Bassey used to live
  • a 1926 film starring Lon Chaney as Singapore Joe (and with no sign of Bob Hope or Bing Crosby)
  • the most populous city in India, now known as Mumbai
  • the state capital of New Mexico

November 2005

• November 2005 - ONE
  • head
  • shoulders
  • hips
  • knees
  • toes

• November 2005 - TWO
  • L
  • 30
  • BUS
  • KEEP
  • SLOW

• November 2005 - THREE
  • Curie
  • Einstein
  • Newton
  • Henry
  • Watt

• November 2005 - FOUR
  • Peter
  • Paul
  • Percival
  • Philip
  • Patrick

• November 2005 - FIVE
  • The image of a faun carrying parcels under a lampost in a snowy forest
  • “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
  • “For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”
  • “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree” etc etc
  • “That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball”

December 2005

This first puzzle is a ludicrously simple one (or perhaps a simply ludicrous one) based on a very silly children's riddle...

• December 2005 - ONE
  • Noggin the Nog
  • Winnie the Pooh
  • Attila the Hun
  • Pitt the Younger
  • Puss in Boots

• December 2005 - TWO
  • nose
  • pipe
  • hand
  • sand
  • bean

• December 2005 - THREE
  • The Thompson Twins
  • The Everly Brothers
  • Eurythmics
  • Soft Cell
  • Wham

• December 2005 - FOUR
  • a man playing a shot in snooker
  • a couple acting in a bedroom scene for the 1930s film industry
  • an athlete 'race walking'
  • a horse galloping
  • the female contestants dancing the waltz in the opening round of the 2005 TV series, "Strictly Come Dancing"

• December 2005 - FIVE
  • Dana
  • Paderewski
  • Ronald Reagan
  • David Sheppard
  • Arnold Schwarzeneggar