[SM] I followed your links and now I feel dirty.

It does read a lot better if you feed it through Google translate.

Well, in most language options at least one recognizable word appears. I have noted sleep, even and Hugo after a few tries.

Translating into Welsh provides only one phrase I recognised, viz Ysgol gynradd Gymraeg = Welsh primary school, and there is commendable gender agreement. That's what it's all about, then.

None of that makes any sense to me . . . I'm just sad that no more people seem to be playing my Literary Rhyme Time quiz (or rating or nominating it . . . hint, hint). I took my time thinking of clever clues for that quiz! See? http://www.sporcle.com/games/kagomeshuko/literaryrhymetime Er, does HTML work . . . Quiz is here

I did look, and got about a third, (and saved a cached copy of the quiz) but I'm not really interested in registering. So I'm an invisible quiz-taker, and I suspect I'm not alone in this. The other thing is, as you said earlier, all the quizzes are mostly US-centric and yes, while it would be nice to make it more international, I feel rather too outnumbered by all the US guys to make any perceptible difference. Sorry.

Haven't got 'John's Stinky White Vegetables', because I can't think of a suitable literary surname, but I suspect you should be ashamed of yourself for that one.

Somewhere on my hard disk I've got a punny work-in-progress quiz a bit like this one of yours. Mine contains entries such as 'many-sized virtue' - 'paragon'. 'King's son publishes' - 'prints'. Some need more work, like that 'paragon' one. The clue doesn't fit the answer very closely.

[SM]

Hidden text

Bunyan

[K] I enjoyed the quiz, and got 15, which I thought was not too bad for the time limit

Hidden text

would have been 16 if I had been able to spell 'Malory' correctly; *hangs head in shame*

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1EEjv2 hi all ?heey ? messus mangle

I think Simons Mith is the one to answer you there, sHEvKENZEyy. I believe he studied that very subject at university.

[pen] Excellent! I don't have any good pics of myself to hand to try, but here's something appropriate.

What's going on there?

[KS] I believe that is penelope herself in the picture (and a rather good picture it is too).

Here's another.

Another picture, that is, not another picture of penelope.

[aak] Thangyew. A friend of mine took it, insiting that it was homework for a portrait photography course she was doing. I was leaning inside her old garden shed holding two foil reflectors in outstretched arms. The wonders of photography, eh? But it'll do for my next book jacket, heheh!

Interesting in that Raak's is actually Raak.

[ISP] Well spotted! I am in fact a 28-year-old woman with a shaved head except for a tightly woven topknot and massively muscled shoulders and arms. Beware my biceps, for they can crack walnuts.

[Raak] I'd always thought you were in your 30s. Strange how things get confused :)

[Phil] It's a hard life as a Balkan mercenary.

catching up with a schoolfriend who is making the trip from Galway. I still find it staggering that I have had some friends for more than 30 years. Tomorrow, I have earmarked picking sloes and making sloe gin as one of our principal activities, and I notice that it's going to piss it down with rain. *rse. On Sunday (when it will also piss it down with rain), we will make an early start to the Vogelmaarkt in Antwerp so we can breakfast on pieces of fried fish known as kibbeling (yum) and waffles as big as our heads covered in chocolate and whipped cream, before watching the live kitchen gadget demonstrations, marvelling at the Moroccan spice stalls and buying trinkets and savouries according to our whim. (Is 'whim' like 'sheep' in that the plural is the same as the singular?)

(pen) Shurely if you can say "piss" you can say "arse"? I know I can, and in style. I think the plural of "whim" is boring old "whims" and of "sheep", "sheeps". Just ask a Frenchman.

(pen) I have a friend (whom I have seen recently) of 57 years' acquaintance. Is this a greater proportion of my life than 30 years is of yours? Come on, have to hurry you.

Like Rosie I have a friend that I first met at primary school, so that is also 57 years, and I am younger than Rosie.

I am 44 and married the person I sat next to in Infant School.

I seem to have missed the boat a bit, but I've stil created an advert

[FGZ] Hmm. well done on the typography etc, but really, swearing? Do you really need to?

That went over my head I'm afraid.

are sheep for sheep and fish or fishes for fish. Sheeps is only a form of a verb. Sheeps means grazes. Yes, the plural of "whim" is boring old "whims." However,there is "cacti" and "cactuses." Even more fun is that there is "octopi," "octopuses," and "octopodes." More plurals fun: rhinoceroses, rhinoceri, rhinocerotes.

Yes, I'm afraid I also fond FGZstar's poster both meaningless and mildly offensive.
[Plural] I still occasionally come across people who insist "data" can only be a plural. Funny that they don't make the same fuss about "agenda".

[INJ/SM] I presume it was intended as the opposite of the magnificent "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters of the Second World War.

(ISP) I think "data" can be both but I agree that to insist that it is always plural is pretentious and a bit annoying, a bit like government propagandums.
(Phil) Don't quite remember 'em, but if you say so. :-)

[Phil] Thanks. I'm not overly conversant with WWII UK memes unfortunately. In fact, Mr. Chad (known elsewhere as Kilroy) is the sum total of my knowledge of the matter. Or was, since I now know something else thanks to you and FGZStar.

I recognised the reference to 'Keep Calm and Carry On' - available on mugs near you - but still don't see what FGZstar means. I'm happy to accept that it's just a generational thing.