What links doorbell, Bath bun and nice-looking? The Saturday quiz

1 Which star-crossed lovers had a son called Astrolabe?2 What was stolen from Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, on 20 March 1966?3 Which Disney princess is named after a vegetable?4 What is claimed to be buried in Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales?5 Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé make up which group?6 In the night sky, what is scintillation?7 Which gem is made from a type of coal?8 Which Booker prize winner comes from a samurai family?What links:
9 Harald Hardrada; James IV; Mary, Queen of Scots; Napoleon III?10 Cumberland; Glamorgan; Gloucester; Lincolnshire; Manchester?11 Ball, clubs, hoop, ribbon and rope?12 Death's cloak; Hades' helmet; Sauron's ring?13 All sad, TX; device porn, RI; dottier, MI; organ ache, AK; salvages, NV?14 3 or 11 (1/18); 4 or 10 (1/12); 5 (1/9); 7 (1/6)?15 Bath bun; doorbell; irrepressible; nice-looking; outsider; sympathizer (in the OED)?
1 Peter Abelard and Héloïse.2 Fifa World Cup trophy.3 Rapunzel (German name for lamb's lettuce).4 Hard drive with 8,000 bitcoin.5 Blackpink.6 Twinkling of stars.7 Jet.8 Kazuo Ishiguro.9 Foreign monarchs who died in England: Norway; Scotland; Scotland; France.10 Types of UK sausage.11 Apparatus used in rhythmic gymnastics.12 Make the wearer invisible: Harry Potter; Greek myth; Lord of the Rings.13 Anagrams of US cities and state abbreviation: Dallas, Texas; Providence, Rhode Island; Detroit, Michigan; Anchorage, Alaska; Las Vegas, Nevada.14 Probabilities of rolling totals with two six-sided dice.15 Words with first recorded usages in the writings of Jane Austen.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Sun

44 minutes ago

• The Sun

Love Island fans call out Ben over bizarre claim as he's DUMPED by Shakira

LOVE Island fans poked fun at Ben after an intense conversation he had with Sabrina in the Spanish villa during Friday's episode. The model from Gloucester was paired with Mancunian beauty, but their relationship was rocky from the outset as Sabrina constantly questioned their chemistry. 3 Earlier this week, she was accused of leading Ben on in the ITV reality series, but during the latest installment, dumped him outright. Sabrina gave a range of reasons for her decision, including telling Ben that he "dulled my sparkle." "We don't speak of anything of note," she told him as the pair argued. Fans watching at home noticed that Ben looked devastated during the chat, but then thought it was bizarre that he outwardly agreed with Sabrina's reasoning. "Nah Ben looked like he was abt to cry when Shakira said he dulled her sparkle," one Love Island fan wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Another added with a meme of a someone wearing multiple masks: "Ben telling Shakira he's on the same page as her." And a third wrote alongside a skull emoji: "Ben pretending he felt the same way as Shakira." A fourth person commented: "Talk about different pages… not sure Shakira and Ben are even in the same book." Even though she's now flying solo in the Love Island casa, Shakira may be rekindling her fling with Harry after the pair had a conversation about their future. "I wanted to see how you were feeling, I think initially you were number one and I f****d it," Harry told her. They also discussed his romantic indecision as he is paired up with Helena, but also seems interested in Yasmin as well. Sabrina told Harry: "It was you, and still is you. But it's your behaviour for me that I can't tolerate." And Harry pressed her for the potential for a second chance: "If that could possibly be arranged?" He also told Sabrina: "You're the one," despite his moves on Yasmin and Helena. Love Island 2025 full lineup Harry Cooksley: A 30-year-old footballer with charm to spare. Shakira Khan: A 22-year-old Manchester-based model, ready to turn heads. Megan Moore: A payroll specialist from Southampton, looking for someone tall and stylish. Alima Gagigo: International business graduate with brains and ambition. Tommy Bradley: A gym enthusiast with a big heart. Helena Ford: A Londoner with celebrity connections, aiming to find someone funny or Northern. Ben Holbrough: A model ready to make waves. Megan Clarke: An Irish actress already drawing comparisons to Maura Higgins. Dejon Noel-Williams: A personal trainer and semi-pro footballer, following in his footballer father's footsteps. Aaron Buckett: A towering 6'5' personal trainer. Conor Phillips: A 25-year-old Irish rugby pro. Antonia Laites: Love Island's first bombshell revealed as sexy Las Vegas pool party waitress. Yasmin Pettet: The 24-year-old bombshell hails from London and works as a commercial banking executive. Malisha Jordan: A teaching assistant from Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, who entered Love Island 2025 as a bombshell. Emily Moran: Bombshell Welsh brunette from the same town as Love Island 2024 alumni Nicole Samuel. Shea Mannings: Works as a scaffolder day-to-day and plays semi-pro football on the side. Remell Mullins: Boasts over 18million likes and 500k followers on TikTok thanks to his sizzling body transformation videos. Harrison Solomon: Pro footballer and model entering Love Island 2025 as a bombshell. Departures: Kyle Ashman: Axed after an arrest over a machete attack emerged. He was released with no further action taken and denies any wrongdoing. Sophie Lee: A model and motivational speaker who has overcome adversity after suffering life-changing burns in an accident. Blu Chegini: A boxer with striking model looks, seeking love in the villa. But the pair seem like they're definitely going to get close again as a teaser clip for Sunday's episode shows them snogging. The preview showed the Islanders playing a messy game of 'spin the bottle' on Sunday. In the teaser clip's edit, it seemed as though the Islanders were asked to snog who they'd most like to be coupled up with. It then cut to Shakira smooching Harry as Helena and Ben looked at their current love interests with disgust.

Telegraph

3 hours ago

• Telegraph

Disney legend Alan Menken: The dwarves are the whole point of Snow White

'Are we going to talk about Disney and woke?' Alan Menken makes a horrified face and draws a finger across his neck in a throat-cutting mime. 'I'm going to pull the plug on this interview if there is any mention of Disney and politics!' He's joking. Having composed some of the most memorable scores in the history of animation, including nine for Disney – from The Little Mermaid to Beauty and the Beast – Menken is not about to let a ­culture-war kerfuffle throw him off balance. 'It's fine,' he says. 'Ask me anything.' We are meeting a few months ahead of the West End opening of Hercules, a new stage-musical ­version of Disney's 1997 animated riff on Greek mythology, set to ­Menken's original gospel-driven score (with lyrics by David Zippel). 'It's a very sophisticated score ­stylistically,' he says. 'It has a lightness to it and a rhythmic propulsion.' A native New Yorker, Menken doesn't do false modesty – and why should he? After all, he's one of only 27 people ever to have achieved the EGOT, winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. His last Academy Award came in 1996, for Pocahontas, though he's been nominated multiple times since. 'The Oscars have dried up because I've won eight of them now.' Yet it's another Disney production, the live-action remake of Snow White – not a film that Menken had anything to do with – which is dominating the headlines when we meet and that will, in the weeks that follow its woeful box-office performance, come to be seen as a nadir in the studio's muddled, frequently controversial project to update its much-loved back catalogue. At the time, Rachel Zegler, Snow White's leading lady, was drawing criticism from some quarters for comments she had made about Palestine, while the decision to have computer-­generated dwarfs in an otherwise human cast had gone down badly with just about everyone. 'How you deal with all this stuff, it's as tricky as hell,' says Menken, who is in two minds about the whole idea of updating the classics, although he is sympathetic towards Zegler. 'She's just a kid. Yes, she said 'Free Palestine'. It's the kind of thing any of us might have said. We all want people to be free. Although, of course, there are also the nuances of history. 'But when it comes to the dwarfs…' He pauses, takes a breath. 'I'm sorry, but the dwarfs are what Snow White is all about!' There's been a bit of 'that stuff' with Hercules, he admits. The story, in which Hercules, a demigod raised among mortals, learns to embrace his destiny, has been updated for the stage show and, says Menken, now allows for its hero – depicted in the cartoon as a buff, blue-eyed redhead and played on stage by the dark-haired, Surrey-born actor Luke Brady – to be ­portrayed as 'a racial outsider'. Menken applauds the 'richness' this brings to the character, but laments the toning down of the ­cartoon's randy satyr, Philoctetes, who, he says with a hint of regret, will not be seen on stage 'running around lusting over nymphs'. 'At the time, you play with certain clichés because it's fun,' he says. 'But each new adaptation has to be sensitive to the passing of time and the way people will look at ­certain issues.' Menken is a hyperactive speaker; he talks in stops and starts, and is as physically expressive as any one of the animated characters to whom he has given such glorious musical voice over the years. He and his writing partner Howard Ashman are widely credited with reviving Disney's fortunes during the late 1980s after a prolonged period of creative and commercial decline for the studio in the decades that had followed the death of Walt Disney in 1966. The duo, who had already had a theatrical hit in 1982 with Little Shop of Horrors, struck gold three times in quick succession with The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992), the lyrics for the last completed by Tim Rice following Ashman's death from Aids in 1991. Menken, who proudly calls himself 'the keeper of the flame', would go on to score Newsies, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Enchanted and Tangled. For him, the essence of Disney can be traced back to those classics of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that have enriched the childhoods of multiple generations, and to the spirit of which his own scores nod. 'Fantasia, Dumbo, the later Winnie the Pooh: they all had a depth and a beauty, a proper form, a moral,' he says. 'When the Aids crisis hit, or when 9/11 happened, I couldn't watch the news, I couldn't watch my favourite action adventure movies, it was just too fraught a time. But I would watch Disney. For me, those films were the only safe space in the world. I grew up on those films, but, by the 1980s, it had all gone. So Howard and I came along and rebooted it.' Now, the company to which he has dedicated his career once again finds itself at a turning point, caught between trying to appease the more progressive yet censorious Left and the diehard traditionalist Right. Although Menken is in favour of a live-action remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (initially announced in 2019), he accepts that, given the story's more ­'problematic' aspects, it is unlikely to go ahead. 'People will go, 'Let's leave out the fact that Frollo [Quasi­modo's clergyman nemesis] is obsessed with the gipsy Esmeralda.' They'll say, 'We can't have Quasimodo as a hunchback.' Well, f--- that. I'd love to make a Hunchback movie [that ­follows] what ­Victor Hugo wrote. But it can't be done.' However, he says, swerving onto a more diplomatic course, 'I don't think Disney is having an identity crisis. Obviously, Disney has been very open for gay people and diversity and woke. And then woke became a dirty word. Sometimes, when you press against limits, things push back. But I know Bob,' he says, referring to the Disney CEO, Bob Iger. 'I think he's pretty savvy about the business model.' Menken grew up in a Jewish household in New York City during the dawn of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s and, throughout his early years, set his heart on becoming a pop star. 'I didn't want to go to school, ever,' he says. 'I was very ADHD. My parents were appalled.' When he told them he wanted to be a songwriter, in the mould of his hero Bob Dylan, they insisted that he practise the piano every single day. 'They imprinted on me the need to dig in and work. They would say, 'You want to be a shoe salesman instead?' I find it very depressing to buy shoes now.' After graduating from college in 1972, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop – a well-respected incubator for future Broadway talent – partly to placate his parents, who were ­musical-theatre fanatics. That same year, he met and fell in love with Janis Roswick, a ballet dancer; half a century later, they remain married and have two daughters. ­Suddenly, the itinerant lifestyle of a touring pop star no longer looked quite so appealing, so Menken dedi­cated himself instead to composition. It's often said of his Disney music that it lacks an identifying style of his own, unlike, say, the higher-brow Stephen Sondheim, whose musical imprimatur is instantly recognisable. 'You can only pull on the stuff that's in your gut,' Menken says. 'And when it comes to audiences, the great thing about Disney is that it's a leveller.' All the same, he is keen to point out that his scores do have musical and emotional specificity, be it the 'apocalyptic' Phil Spector girl-group sound behind Little Shop of Horrors or the ragtime influence on Newsies. 'I'm not trying to be egotistical, but that was very much my and Howard's approach: we established throughout our scores a specificity of place,' he says. By comparison, 'a lot of the new Disney scores are generic…'. He stops, as if reconsidering what he is about to say. 'I think they have moved into a different place, where a Lin-Manuel score is very much Lin-Manuel,' he con­tinues, referring to Lin-Manuel ­Mir­anda, the creator of Hamilton, who wrote the Oscar-nominated score for Disney's 2021 film Encanto. 'That's not what Howard and I did, but, hey, things evolve.' At 75, Menken still has multiple projects on the go – including both a live-action remake and a stage adaptation of Tangled, the 2010 ­Disney animation loosely based on the story of Rapunzel – and can't imagine himself retiring any time soon. 'Well, I can if I think what I'm producing isn't good enough,' he says, 'but I haven't reached that point yet.'

Daily Mirror

4 hours ago

• Daily Mirror

Pop icon crying as crazed fan grabs her and tries to pull off stage

EXCLUSIVE: Suzi Quatro has just turned 75, but she's got the energy and enthusiasm of a twenty-something and tells us about the secret to her three-decade long marriage — and a terrifying encounter with an overzealous fan She's the original queen of rock and roll — a legend who many female stars credit for opening doors to women in music. Suzi Quatro has just turned 75, but she's got the energy and enthusiasm of a twenty-something — and she can still rock a tight leather jumpsuit while wielding her trusty bass guitar. Deliciously straight-talking, the star is as passionate about performing as when she first stepped onto the stage, aged just 14, playing the bongos with her sisters in the trio The Pleasure Seekers. ‌ Here, the Detroit native, who has been married to German concert promoter Rainer Haas since 1993, tells us about her 2026 UK tour, the secret to her three-decade long marriage — and a terrifying encounter with an overzealous fan. ‌ You turned 75 recently — you look amazing! Ha ha, thank you. I'm still convinced they got the date wrong on my birth certificate. I'm proud to be 75, but I'm young at heart. I had a party but I don't drink much any more. Eventually you get to a point where you say, I've been there, had the monster hangover, and the thrill's gone. Do you ever feel bored not drinking at parties? No, because I'm a people person. I find my way into the conversation. I'm a Gemini. Geminis are ruled by Mercury, the planet of communication, which says it all. And there's no middle ground with me — I'm either crazy up and excited, or I'm down. I never have an even keel. We keep people on their toes. Don't ever second-guess a Gemini, because you won't win. You've been married to husband Rainer for 32 years. What's your secret? ‌ We live in separate countries! That is definitely a factor. I was 24/7 with my first husband, who was also my guitar player. Nice as that was, sometimes it wasn't. The main ingredient is trust and respect. We're soulmates, basically. I'm an optimist and he's a pessimist. We balance each other out. You and Rainer work together, too. How do you find that? Yes, he's my manager but I refuse to use the 'M' word in front of him! We enjoy missing each other, then getting together. Some people ask how we make that work, but it works for us. But the main ingredient to any successful relationship is not to expect the other person to 'complete' you. You have to be whole yourself. ‌ Tell us about your tour next year. What can fans expect? I'm celebrating 62 years in the business next year. It's a big tour across the UK — an entertaining two-hour rock and roll show with all the hits and a few surprises. I play the piano, drums and a seven-minute bass solo... I take you on a journey through my life. I talk a little, but I don't do Adele. She talks more than she sings, and she's very good at it. ‌ You must need to be in peak fitness for a big tour… I'm the rehearsal queen. I rehearse as if it was a live show, running around. If I'm not working, then I make sure I'm going to the gym. It means on stage, I still have that energy. Is life on the road a bit more sedate these days? ‌ I've partied, had the odd room wreck — but I was never a sex, drugs and rock and roll girl. I was brought up in a musical family. My dad told me aged 15, 'Suzi, you've found what you want to do in life. This is a profession. If there's 10 people or 10,000 in the audience, everyone's paid to see you, and you owe them.' That's always been embedded in me. You're also working on a new album… I am. Alice Cooper agreed to do a track on it. We recorded it in Detroit last year. I've known him since I was a teenager and he's so different from his stage persona that I can't watch him live. That's not the guy I know! We're close friends, he's a lovely guy. ‌ Is there anyone else you'd love to collaborate with? Rod Stewart. He's headed to Glastonbury this summer. They've asked me a couple of times, but the offer was silly. I'm better than that. It's not even about the money — after 61 years, I want the respect that I deserve, but I'd be happy to do it. What are your most memorable concerts? ‌ The first gig I did in Germany in 1973 — the first big show where thousands of people had paid to see me and were screaming, going nuts. My 50th birthday at a gig in Berlin was cool — when you hear Happy Birthday sung by 22,000 people, you hear it! That feeling never gets old. It's a legal high. ‌ What's a wild fan memory? In Germany recently I had taken my bass off towards the end of a show. Walking along the front, people were high-fiving me — but one girl grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go and tried to pull me off the stage. And she was strong. I was really scared — I was crying. What did you do? ‌ I backed up and sat down on the flight case I use, so nobody saw anything. I sang my final song and, as soon as I finished, a sound engineer came on, wrapped a towel around me and walked me offstage. But I was thinking, what kind of person thinks that's OK? I could have broken my neck. Has being a woman in a male-dominated industry changed over the years? I'll take to my grave that I was the first female rock musician to have worldwide success. There are many more female musicians today, but they tend to be too influenced by male opinion. Sometimes, women go out there in outfits close to soft porn. I wore a jumpsuit, but I showed no flesh. You don't have to strip off to be sexy. Work for it, buddy! ‌ Your seventh book, Grave Undertakings, came out in April. Can you tell us more about it? It did, and people are going crazy! It's caused so much discussion. I was a graveyard dweller as a kid through to adulthood. It's fascinating, reading tombstones. In my twenties I came up with the title and started collecting tombstone inscriptions, and did it for 35 years to assemble a book. Then I realised this would work as a novel. Can you fill us in on the book's plot? ‌ I've had a love of psychology my entire life. If you're mad at me, I want to know why. So I came up with a plot about six psychology students. It takes you through their lives, you get 20 lessons in psychology, and the pay-off is the tombstone inscriptions. That's all I can say. So, what would your own tombstone inscription say, Suzi? One side would say, 'Now I get it!' and the other, 'Too many dreams, too little time'. I've certainly thought about my life more over the last few years. I'm not going anywhere yet, though. Do you have any burning ambitions left? I would love my latest book to be made into a movie or a musical. Strictly would be fun — and I can dance! They've asked me before but the time was never right. I wouldn't do the jungle — it feels degrading. I'll watch it, though. I've realised so many dreams and I've still got so much to say. I'm happy as long as there's fire in my belly — and there's still plenty.