The Great Canadian Literary Quiz gets tough

In our 11th annual effort to stump our readers, TED MUMFORD reckons with the Googleability of virtually all information by adding cryptic twists to most questions

TED MUMFORD

If you've done this every year, you know the rules. All Globe readers are invited to participate; team entries are welcome. The three highest-scoring entries will receive prizes of gift certificates from Indigo Books & Music Inc. Two other prizes will be awarded by random draw.

Entries may be mailed to The Great Canadian Literary Quiz, c/o Ted Mumford, The Globe and Mail, 444 Front St. West, Toronto, Ont. M5V 2S9; faxed to 416-585-5505; or e-mailed (no attachments, please) to litquiz@globeandmail.ca. Please include your address and daytime phone number. The deadline is Dec. 11. The names of winners and the answers will be published in January. (N.B.: In the context of this quiz, "recent" means published in the last year or so.)

1. Who picked The Interpretation of Murder, The Thirteenth Tale and Water for Elephants?

2. Which of the following are by Caryl Phillips and which are by Carly Phillips?
   a) Dancing in the Dark; b) Summer Lovin'; c) Erotic Invitation; d) Strange Fruit; e) A Distant Shore; f) Body Heat.

3. What writer's path? (The last clue is a book published this fall.)
   a) bliss, building, booze b) India, Paris, China c) talk, walk, me.

4. DQ is Dairy Queen. What's D&Q?

5. What reason did Anita have to be proud on Oct. 10?

6. The title of my recent book is a pun on that of a notorious novel. My brother heads a well-known institution. My first book was published in 1975. Who am I?

7. What Frenchwoman has had both fiction and film treatments this fall?

8. What do Classic Cocktails, Secrets from the Vinyl Café and Christmas Days have in common?

9. Unscramble these author names:
   a) MORE AIM WITS
   b) SADDAM HID RAD VICAR
   c) NO TO TAB DENIAL

10. What pal of Joey's got her own book this fall?

11. What venerable house is said by some to have been reduced to a maple-leafed façade on a German branch plant?

12. What recent novel bounces between the Torontos of the 1850s and 1990s?

13. What Canadian father and daughter each got their own book treatment this fall?

14. Who are the real-life counterparts of fictional siblings Ben, Jude, Jemima, Harriet and Gus?

15. Which Francine is aptly named?

16. What novelist is also a greengrocer?

17. Where do Ethan, Kaitlin, Cowboy and Bree all work?

18. Who is Michael R. LeGault talking back to?

19. What mother-daughter duo of Globe journalists published their first books this year?

20. Where did Laurie Gough get the title Kiss the Sunset Pig?

21. Who's in the kitchen, George or Bill?

22. What Toronto book retailer's 30th birthday was recently feted in several ads in The Globe's books section?

23. How is Attawan a lot like Manawaka?

24. What epochal event recently occurred at The New York Review of Books?

25. What author who died in 1942 had a bestseller this year?

26. What have Claire Messud, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ian McEwan and Jay McInerney all been writing about?

27. I was a commando in the Second World War. Ivory landed me in prison in Tanganyika. In publishing, I worked with McLuhan, Frye, Richler, Callaghan and Munro. Who am I?

28. What magazine's moniker, if updated, would be Pen & Paper?

29. What's the one degree of separation between these people?
    a) Steven Spielberg and Barbara Amiel; b) Audrey Tatou and Yann Martel; c) Whitney Houston and W. P. Kinsella.

30. What recent novel has been advertised as "Ripping the facade off peaceable Canadian multiculturalism"?

31. What real-life figure is at the heart of these novels?
    a) The Forest Lover; b) The Communist's Daughter; c) The Master.

32. What book does every Vincent Lam completist need?

33. How did Madison Avenue recently put St. Urbain Street back on the map?

34. What sort of book have both Art and Bernice published? (Be specific.)

35. Who did Leonard read to on Nancy's roof?

36. Give the correct bookstore category for each of these books:
    a) A Short History of Indians in Canada; b) A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian; c) Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

37. What recent Canadian book suffers from toponymania?

38. Where did André, Max, Marcel and Marc all stay?

39. Correct the titles of these recent books:
    a) The Bedside Book of Bats; b) This is Your Brain on Drugs; c) Pacino's Game

40. Who was America's "poet lariat"?