The questions
1 What financial nickname first features in a 1797 Gillray cartoon?
2 Which soul singer said, “Ostend is my orphanage”?
3 The Reconstruction followed which conflict?
4 Which seal preys on penguins and other seals?
5 In 2003, what came within 35m miles of Earth?
6 Which writer had six brothers and a sister called Cassandra?
7 Which business is named after a teetotal teacher?
8 What number’s square root equals the sum of its digits?
What links:
9 Hadean; Archean; Proterozoic; Phanerozoic?
10 Pernambuco; silver; Equator; Christopher Columbus; Simon Bolivar?
11 By fall; by technical superiority; by points?
12 Innocence; Anxiety; Reason; Surveillance Capitalism?
13 Santa Pod in Bedfordshire and RuPaul?
14 Kushinagar (Uttar Pradesh); Hebron; Jerusalem; Medina?
15 Cesar Romero; Jack Nicholson; Heath Ledger; Jared Leto; Joaquin Phoenix?
The answers
1 The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (Bank of England).
2 Marvin Gaye.
3 American Civil War.
4 Leopard seal.
5 Mars (on average 140m miles).
6 Jane Austen.
7 JD Wetherspoon pub chain.
8 81 (as well as 0 and 1).
9 Four eons of geologic time.
10 Name origins of South American countries: Brazil(wood); Argentina; Ecuador; Colombia; Bolivia.
11 Results in Freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling.
12 The Age of… works: Edith Wharton novel; WH Auden poem; Sartre novel; Shoshana Zuboff non-fiction book.
13 Drag racing: major venue and host of TV series Drag Race.
14 Death sites of prophets/religious founders: Buddha; Abraham; Jesus; Muhammad.
15 Played the Joker.
