Quiz

CPRE CHRISTMAS QUIZ 2025- Answer Sheet

Musical Instruments

Set by Philip Riley

1      A flower for Shakespeare’s heroine (5)          VIOLA

2      Coleridge’s damsel had one (8)          DULCIMER

3      Rent boom all over the place (8)        TROMBONE

4      Judge (8)         RECORDER

5      The president meets the alien (7)      TRUMPET

6      Make a noise playing tennis with this?  (6)    RACKET

7      Love or Bermuda, for example (8)      TRIANGLE

8      Snake found in state? Quite the opposite (7)             MARIMBA

9      Breech almost twisted out of shape (5)         REBEC

10   Wife taken in by fraud (5)       SHAWM

11   Car crash before revolution in Thule (8)         ARCHLUTE

12   Marx, missing nothing (4)       HARP

13   Notes follow indication of position (8)           THEREMIN

14   Cricketing body absorbed by another sport (7)         PICCOLO

15   Quiet passage one has rehearsed? (8,5)        PREPARED PIANO

16   Crop to hide strange sign of aspiration (8)     CRUMHORN

17   A kingdom in the north, they say (4)              FIFE

18   Direction to trawler heading south (9)           CASTANETS

19   Four-legged Fred’s protuberance (6,4)           BASSET HORN

20   Second-rate poet found in off-kilter satellite (9)        BOMBARDON

21   Soup has one recipe (10)        SOUSAPHONE

22   Bereaved child seen around port, briefly (9)              ORPHARION

23   Group working a long time (9)           BANDONEON

24   Orange pig is woozy after swallowing drug (10)        ARPEGGIONE

25   Minced peel to clog sink that’s out of order (12)       GLOCKENSPIEL

26   Pry slate loose (8)       PSALTERY

27   Heavenly body incorporates square root of -1 (5)     SITAR

28   Welsh lake and space dog (9) BALALAIKA

29   Accompaniment to the Owl’s serenade (6)    GUITAR

30   Paul Robeson, cloned? (6,4)   DOUBLE BASS

31   Heavenly, but I and fifty more have abandoned it (7)            CELESTA

32   Dancer Anton on the island (8)          MANDOLIN

33   I do dodgier version (10)        DIDGERIDOO

34   A sack or a bag holds this . . . (4)        KORA

35    . . .and no modern state could produce this (5,8)     ONDES MARTENOT

36   Country suitable for all with a pair of foreign articles (7)      UKULELE

37   Shoot churchwardens? (8)      BAGPIPES

38   Local battle returns to some extent (5)          TABLA

39   Sign is heard followed by order (8)     CIMBALOM

40   Set up, encumbered by heavy weight (6)       TRIGON

41   I note rumba being played (10)          TAMBOURINE

42   Took improperly (4)    KOTO

43   Animal in favour (7)    BASSOON

44   Objection to fire? (7)  SACKBUT

45   Medical graduate, George’s brother (5)         MBIRA

46   Container for a summer treat (6)       CORNET

47   Oriana transfigured, wearing crown initially (7)         OCARINA

48   Bellows-mender (5)    FLUTE

49   Return of double act (3)         OUD

50   ’Now the ____ was more subtil than any beast of the field’ (Genesis, AV) (7)  SERPENT

Note

The ingenious alternative  answer mentioned in the notes to the quiz was CORNEMUSE for no 20. I quote the explanation given me by my obliging colleague Malcolm Touchin, who kindly tested the quiz for me. As I suspected, no one else came up with this!

Reverend Nemu is the author of Nemu’s End: History, Psychology, and Poetry of the Apocalypse, published in 2009 and 2010. His style has been described as a mix of poetry and prose, so he is scarcely a first-rate poet. SCORE is the name of the first purpose-built communications satellite.