The 'Independent'/Sharp School Team Quiz: Your final chance to win a prize

HERE is your final chance to enter the Independent/Sharp School Team Quiz, offering you and your school the chance to win Sharp electronic equipment.

Each school can enter a team of up to 10 pupils. The top-scoring school will win a photocopier, fax and typewriter, and each member of that team will win a portable CD player. The running-up school will win a word processor and laser printer. The team in third place will win 10 graphic calculators. Every pupil who enters the competition will receive a voucher, donated by Sharp, providing entry to any one of some 70 galleries and museums around the country.

Answering the fiendishly tricky questions will not be easy, but to help you the questions in each section are linked by a common theme. Entry must be by a teacher at the school, with a list of the pupils in the team. The competition is open to all secondary and senior schools in the United Kingdom. Please state on your entry if your school does not wish to receive further information from Sharp or the Independent after the competition has closed.

Standard competition rules apply. Copies are available on request from the Managing Editor's Office, 40 City Road, London, EC1Y 2DB. Entries should be marked School Team Quiz on the envelope, and sent to the same address. Entries must arrive by 31 December. They will be judged by 15 January, and the results announced in the paper.

Section One

1. The Prince is all at sea - but what about his tutor? He might almost be an old elephant.

2. The way to his mines lay between the breasts - although it took a stamp to teach him not to be too proud.

3. Too much pepper made the baby sneeze - but whose was the patty-pan?

4. The real man may have found a footprint - yet it was the small friend (and relation) who got lost.

5. Oswald and his family sought it, and Jim and Ben found it.

6. Digby's companion needed plenty of space - and what about the boy who met Puck?

7. What do a sword and a chair have in common? Ask Ruth and Jill.

8. After the Covenant his island was no island - yet who am I, who escaped into Denmark?

9. It was a god that rescued Portly. What has that got to do with the young darlings?

10. Three lived behind one, but it took not touching them to start thirteen.

Section Two

1. According to Antony, when old it would support serpents. But then, he probably didn't know it was bi-coloured.

2. How fierce a warrior, and yet how female. Strange that it should be so long.

3. If you know Russian, it looks as though it ends in the genitive plural of the whole alphabet. How studious.

4. Who would have thought the old man to have had so many letters in him? Certainly no one who thought one em was narrow.

5. A great father with daughters only - but never mind, the maidens sing sweetly. What a pity he has to change his name before reaching salt water.

6. It's not quite up to the third, but twice the only even. That is of prime importance]

7. Many fast ships pass London, but the papers of yore have gone away.

8. Don't look behind you - remember what happened to one old salt who did. If you've been chosen, it will make much difference.

9. Say it never goes past a hermitage; but never forget that the inhabitants chose to change their name back.

10. I am a giant gorilla, especially in the accusative.

Section Three

1. Who said 'Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth'?

2. Who saw the solutions in dreams, along with the God Narasimha, and wrote them down as soon as he awoke?

3. 'Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, 'let . . . be'; and all was light.'

Fill in the missing name.

4. An old Italian fascinated by the breeding of rabbits.

5. Daughter of a poet, married to an Earl: the first programmer. Who was she?

6. Whose final problem survived until June 23, 1993?

7. The pride and sorrow of his science died in a duel, aged 20. Who was he?

8. Whose elemental masterpiece has lasted longer than any other non-religous work?

9. Who filled the universe with grains of sand?

10. Who thought there was more imagination in the head of 1 and 9 than in that of Homer?

Section Four

1. Thanks to the Catholic, this poor devil was the last 'in the red'.

2. He was the only Englishman - and he chose to be fourth in the time of the first with a red beard.

3. It was great there but not here - perhaps it was something to do with the sea. Without great-grandpapa he'd be quite gormless.

4. He is boneless but just one change makes him terrible. I have become abbreviated, for a start.

5. An eighteenth] It really must be a family affair - especially with the Saint and the one in the sun]

6. He was much troubled by cakes. The first - a sweet cake (usually with marzipan) - wasn't too bad and was just sent to the kitchens; but the second - like a sort of oatmeal gingerbread - took a lot longer to get rid of.

7. Kneeling in the snow (in January) can't have been much fun - but he got his own back at Bressanone.

8. Last by one act and first by another - but what a place for a statue, looking down the hill from that domed nest.

9. Soborg and Roskilde are both in Denmark, but Kalmar is in Sweden and a memory remains of a whole kingdom.

10. From oldest to latest it's the same - and they all look like a clown.

Section Five

1. What do a chicken and a horse have in common? Why, Napoleon, of course]

2. One on the Derwent, one on the Ouse - but forget them, it was the one in the eye that mattered.

3. The Paladin who wielded Durendal died in the defile.

4. Where it happened is well beaten, certainly, but does it not sound as though it might be covered in sphagnum?

5. The island is almost halfway - what a peaceful place to lose a northern town.

6. A passer-by might say it was a hot place to lie in - however obediently.

7. He might have found a warm way of making a horse go faster - but that is no excuse for setting fire to muselidae, is it?

8. O to follow the composer] In his Steppes, perhaps?

9. In the beginning it sounds murderous, but it ends a bit eccentrically. Did the soldier leap?

10. When the man who said how few they were asked the man who knew how many there were he was told there were none left - but they still stopped a sealion]

Section Six

1. The Cheshire Cat, the Beehive and the Honey Farm, the Catherine Wheel and the Cambridge Pulsar are all formations in which mathematical game?

2. Which mathematics teacher invented rules for circular billiards?

3. 'How I wish I could calculate . . .'

Fill in the missing word, and explain the ditty's value.

4. Which professor, with a brilliant mathematical career behind him, fell to his death over the Reichenbach falls?

5. Who offered many cheerful facts about the square on the hypotenuse?

6. If four is a male, what presages a female?

7. What pastime was 'said to be so like mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt'?

8. Which lyricist didn't know much about algebra, was ignorant about the use of a slide rule, but knew the solution to one plus one?

9. Who, if they would praise the beauty of a woman, described it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses and other geometrical figures?

10. 'What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?' Who is speaking?

Section Seven

1. I'd say it was an Irish version of a Turkish palace, off the top of my head - with stripes on]

2. If you had goat's feet (how divine) you might proceed before French linen - unless you curled up first, that is.

3. Anywhere on earth it must be a real pig being first all the time.

4. For a start, those priests will just have to double up if they want to have a reputation for spitting.

5. Carving up a falling Empire must require long arms.

6. If you say yes to a ship's captain in the conventional way, you must have a long third finger.

7. Knock out a whole wing of the Roman army? How cuddly?

8. Scold, chide or reproach if you please - but from first to last, if it looks vaguely like a hedgehog with a nose, the tail doesn't apply.

9. O set me as a seal upon they marmalade - and if you get it right, your Golden Shred might turn into a golden lion]

10. A circle with its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere would (if you turned it inside out) make a noise superficially like a tree (or its branches) or even like a cross thread. Does that give you pause? It sounds like it]