Title: The Unseen University Challenge
Author(s): Terry Pratchett, David Langford
Release year: 1996
Publisher: Victor Gollancz
Why in Database: A book to test your knowledge about the Discworld.
Below we present all the fragments in which we found some turtle elements. For clarity, we present them as: “name of the category of questions”, question/riddle (sometimes resulting from the description of a given category of questions, e.g. “indicate the earthly equivalent of a given character”, we do not quote these descriptions), answer.
In addition to the text layer, the English edition also includes three graphics with a turtle, one at the very beginning, on the title page and two inside.
Faculty of Adhesive ultimates
7 High velocity tortoise impact.
7 Exquisitor Vorbis in Small Gods.
Faculty of Ley Lines
1 Galileo?
1 ‘Nevertheless it does move,’ Galileo supposedly said after being forced by the Inquisition to recant his belief that the Earth orbited the Sun… but he cautiously said it under his breath and in Italian (Eppur si muove). Elsewhere, the Quisition of the Church of the Great God Om takes a hard line with those asserting the heresy that Discworld is flat and propped up by four elephants standing on a space-traversing turtle (which it is). And freethinkers like the philosopher Didactylos say, ‘The Turtle moves.’ (Small Gods)”
Here, unusually, we quote the description of the category and the answer, which is somewhat additional, there is no “question” related to it.
Faculty of Numerology
It is completely unknown that Discworld has its own version of the celebrated counting song ‘Green Grow the Rushes-o’. Naturally, the most extended verse begins ‘I’ll sing you twelve-o, Brown flows the Ankh-o… What are your twelve-o? Twelve for the something-or-other’ – and goes rapidly downhill to ‘One is one is Great A’Tuin and evermore shall be so’. From the list below you should be able to reconstruct the lines (which don’t all scan very well, or at all*) and put them in order.
One is one is Great A’Tuin and evermore shall be so – but you don’t get a mark for that one, cully.
Faculty of Parazoology
3 A Witch’s familiar that was interestingly named Lightfoot
3 A tortoise, or tortoyse – incredibly old and knowing many secrets, or so the salesman told its purchaser Magrat. (Wyrd Sisters)
Faculty of Ley Lines II
4 Aeschylus
4 According to legend, Aeschylus – of Greek tragedy fame – died when an eagle inconsiderately dropped a tortoise on his head. Now see the finale of Small Gods…
Faculty of Continuum Ontology II
8 Three legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise, the teeth of an fowel, and ______.
8 The winges of a snake – Broomfog’s definition of a chimera. (Sourcery)
Faculty of Morphic Resonance II
10 Moules (as defined in the Dictionary of Eye-Watering Words) and Zeno of Elea.
10 Yes, of course it was on the tip of your tongue. Zeno of Elea (495-435 BC) boggled Greek philosophers with mischievous paradoxes ‘proving’ that, for example, an arrow in flight cannot move and that the notorious sprinter Achilles would never be able to overtake a tortoise. Discworld’s Xeno of Ephebe, being more practical, set up his Axiom Testing Station (CAUTION – UNRESOLVED POSTULATES) to demonstrate that it is impossible for an arrow in flight to overtake a tortoise. Result: a lot of tortoises on sticks. Clearly the whole experimental procedure is a game of skill and dexterity involving tortoises – which is the Dictionary of Eye-Watering Words’s definition of ‘moules’. (Pyramids, Guards! Guards!)
Faculty of Spellaeology
10 The proper hatching of turtle eggs.
10 All eight nameless spells from the primal grimoire the Octavo. (The Light Fantastic)
Faculty of Probabiity analysis
5 It was a million-to-onr chance, with any luck.
5 Om, in his tortoise incarnation, getting to the Citadel in time via eagle-lift. (Small gods)
Faculty of Fregology
8 Turtles
8 Eight new turtes are hatched when Great A’Tuin approaches the red star. (The Light Fantastic)
Faculty of Clairaudience IV
9 I old oo, ugger ogg!
9 The great god Om in tortoise form, instructing a scalbie bird to bugger off while busy biting its foot. (Small Gods)
This excerpt and “Faculty” contains hints for all questions, it include the name of the department, the page it is on, the question number and the hint.
Faculty of Musicology
Ley Lines II (pg 85) 4. Tortoise.
Morphic Resonance II (pg 116) 10 tortoises
This fragment comes from the final part, after the quiz part:
Nor indeed has a golden turtle been buried somewhere in the Sto Plains for followers of the hidden clues to trace and dig up.
Author: XYuriTT
