Yes, it's another round of that classic guessing game - Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Abstract [or any combination thereof]. This effort - '03/'04 should address any queries, but then again, may just serve to confuse and baffle which some might say is the point of the game. Patience, integrity and a decent search engine may be useful ....
"Could be" is partly because I'm a vague person, and partly because I don't like leading people up too many dark alleys. Anyway, a clue: it's a kind of puzzle.
[finger-trap] After googling and finding a picture I can now state certainly that I have never seen nor heard of it - is it me, or generational, or geographical?
A poll of 7 friends in The Greyhound, Carshalton revealed only one who had ever heard of Chinese Finger Traps. I think The Object should always be well known, so no characters from cult novels etc, or obscure asteroids. The game is difficult enough.
[Darren et al] Sorry, didn't mean to complain - what is well-known to one person may be obscure to others. It did explain why we found it so difficult though.
[fingertraps] They can be (and are) made of all sorts of things, which is why I had to be so vague about it. I would have thought everyone would have heard of them. The thing is, it's hard for one person to tell what everyone else has heard of without asking explicitly beforehand. Still, someone got it in the end which is what counts.
(The audience's amusement was due to the fact that "a container" is so precisely accurate a description that only a child would spontaneously think of calling it one.)
Let's see.. Metallic... Man made... On earth...Not used in cooking...Not used in industry...Made of multiple parts...Not typically seen when driving... Can be lifted...Not likely to be encountered by most people in everyday life...Not powered by elecctricity... Normally found above ground... Container of a sort (likely to induce chuckles)... Hmm .. sure sounds like a metallic bra by Jean-Paul Gaultier as worn by Madonna, but probably isn't.
Bigger than a thimble. Not the Tardis. And smaller than the outside of the Tardis. [Chalky] Lots of things bigger than a breadbox that you can lift...or does breadbox not mean what I think it means?
[GL] character in film? Arguable, but I'd say No [i] Adult? No [RS] Victorian era? No [i] comic/cartoon? No [I] novel? Yes [INJ] specific individual? Yes
[INJ] name including name? No [i] British Isles? Yes [E] English? Yes [Ra] Harry boy? Nah - 'though going for the obvious may not be a bad move - this is a relatively well-known child character in a novel which, I think, most of us will have, or been forced to have, read at some point in our lives. [Ro] Adrian? No
[E] Dickens? No [D] Pirates? If you're thinking R L Stephenson, then No [R] William? No [I] main protagonist? certainly one of them, Yes [Néa] one novel? Yes
I'm reasoning along the lines that it's 20th Century (although we only know that it's not Victorian) and that Chalky said we may have been forced to read it, which suggests something slightly more serious than HP or the Famous Five.