Normally I can wrangle a few free hints or answers out of the Chemic quizmasters and quizmistresses because people who set quizzes enjoy the Stasi-like power of having secret information to tease or torment you with.

Lynne, though, went positively North Korean on me and ordered a total information blackout with the threat of exile next time I crept past her computer screen with my binoculars.

This meant that Lynne's quiz questions came as a complete surprise to me, as they did to everybody else. Here are a few of the questions which you possibly don't know the answer to but can speculate about, which I think is largely the point of pub quizzes:

1, How many elephants form a team in elephant polo?

2, What is the name of the thong worn by sumo wrestlers?

3, In the game of conkers (official rules) what must a player call out first in order to get a free go when the strings become tangled?

4, Where is the headquarters of the Scouting Association?

5, How many of the 12 men who have walked on the moon were Scouts?

6, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes's daughter is called Suri. In Japanese, what does Suri mean?

Our team, which embarrassingly came out top (Fix! Fix! Fix!) got only one of those questions right, although I wrongly thought, trying to out-clever Lynne, that a Suri might be a sumo wrestler's thong.

Lynne also asked some interesting local questions of the type you don't get on a standard Google quiz.

7, The Meanwood Valley Trail connects Woodhouse Moor with which two destinations?

What is the 2006/7 annual charge for a full-size Leeds City Council allotment with water supply?

And I can't wait to tell you that the answer to the last question is £36 – what a bargain.

The rest of the answers I've written upside-down and stuck at the bottom of the page and please don't complain to me if you don't like them – they're Lynne's.


Boxing clever

THIS week I listened on Radio 4 to a programme, I should be Proud, about changing black-American attitudes to the Vietnam war in the 1970s and had a revelation.

The programme-makers replayed contemporary speeches by Muhammad Ali, the superboxer, about why he would not fight in Vietnam.

He said he would take on the toughest, meanest fighters in the world under sporting rules which ensured there would be no fatalities. But he would not shoot to kill Viet Cong fighters who he didn't know and who, whatever their other faults, had played no part in the American history of slavery, segregation and prejudice.

I switched on the programme halfway through and initially mistook Ali for Martin Luther King – the same preacher's mastery of timing and cadence, the same passion, the same fluidity and power. And this from a man who could speak equally eloquently with his fists. Knockout.

Another revelation came from the programme's charming narrator, Martha Reeves. She's calmed down an awful lot since being leader of the Motown girl group Martha and the Vandellas and now I'm nominating her as the new Sue Lawley.


Water waste

Walking to work, Lynne and I daily pass a big puddle caused by a minor leaking water pipe.

Obviously it doesn't matter so much in times of water plenty, although it would be extremely annoying in times of drought; but the notice they put on the barriers round their repair works is puzzling and inappropriate.

It says 'Yorkshire Water – Improving Yorkshire's Water'

The slogan misses the point by a mile – I mean, other than by adding Scotch, how could you improve Yorkshire's water?

The quality isn't the problem, it's the distribution. My mission statement would be 'Yorkshire Water – We try not to throw too much of it down the drain'.


Keeping it arboreal

ON Sunday I got up to some interesting things in the woods, which doesn't happen often enough.

As part of a Celebrate-Headingley-and-let's-pretend-we're-Covent Garden weekend there was a gala performance of Shakespeare's (as opposed to Davis Essex's) The Winter's Tale in Dagmar Wood, which is an enchanted – in the sense of whenever you try to find it, you get lost – glade near Hyde Park Corner, Leeds.

The play was put on by Theatre of the Dales, which takes drama to interesting places all over Yorkshire, although I don't see how they could find a more interesting place than Dagmar Wood, where the actors can hide in the bushes and jump out at you in an alarming manner and where, there being no toilet facilities, the audience goes for half-time relief to the nearby house of the very energetic and talented director of Theatre in the Dales, David Robertson.

Which obviously creates a queue, so that the return of the audience after the break was delayed and the company did juggling, tumbling and standing-on-the-head tricks to fill the gap. This doesn't regularly happen at open-air arts venues, particularly the grounds of Glyndebourne Opera House.

The Winter's Tale is a strange play which I've never understood. It starts with a forensic, starkly focused examination of the destructive effects of jealousy then gets – although strike me dead because I'm blaspheming the Bard – very silly.

This version made sense of it all, possibly because things which don't make sense in libraries or formal theatres can work in enchanted woods, particularly when enacted with great inventiveness and talent