Some Tannic Tangents Trivia Quiz

Answer: Patrick Jane ('The Mentalist')

Patrick Jane is a reformed psychic and con-artist, employed as a consultant to the California Bureau of Investigation. In almost every episode he is shown as brewing or drinking a cup of his favourite beverage, on which he is quite an expert. One of his favourites is Lapsang Souchong. He often uses a cup of tea as a means to set the mood for his questioning of suspects and witnesses.

Answer: Cat Stevens

This album, which included tracks such as 'Wild World' and 'Where do the Children Play', was the one which established Cat Stevens' reputation in the United States, getting into the Top Ten in 1971.

Answer: Warren G. Harding

Teapot Dome was a rich oil field in Wyoming, which was transferred in 1922 from control by the US Navy to private oil companies. When it was later shown that the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, had received substantial bribes from the oil companies to facilitate that transfer, he was convicted of accepting bribes and sentenced to a year in jail.

In 1929 the oil lands were transferred back to the Navy. This was the most serious scandal in US political history before Watergate.

Answer: The Beverly Hillbillies

'And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude/Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.' The actual title of the theme song to the 'Beverly Hillbillies' is 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett', a 1962 hit song Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

Answer: The Dormouse

Chapter Seven of 'Alice in Wonderland' is entitled 'A Mad Tea-Party' (not, interestingly enough, the 'Mad Hatter's Tea-Party' as it is usually known). Those attending are Alice, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse, and after a sequence of aimless conversations and an unsolvable riddle, Alice walks away while the Mad Hatter and the March Hare try to stuff the Dormouse into the teapot.

Answer: Laura Childs

Laura Childs has set more than a dozen detective stories in Charleston, South Carolina, where her detective Theodosia Browning runs the Indigo Tea Shop and solves mysteries on the side. Titles include: 'Death by Darjeeling' and 'Shades of Earl Grey'.

Answer: Deep Impact

In this movie, which featured the impact of a comet on Earth, Téa Leoni played Jenny Lerner, the reporter for MSNBC who broke the story of the comet approaching Earth. At the end she joined her father on the US east coast as the huge tsunami wave from the impact approached the shore.

Answer: Tempest

While any of these might be an acceptable answer, the usual English idiom is 'a tempest in a teapot'. The Romans actually had a similar Latin saying, 'fluctus in simpulo' ('a storm in a ladle'), but the first use of the idiom 'tempest in a teapot' seems to originate in the UK in the early 19th century.

Answer: Poodle

Poodles are formally divided into three groups: Standard, Miniature, and Toy. The Teacup Poodle is an unofficial sub-group of the Toy Poodle. They are the smallest of the poodles, usually less than nine inches in height and weighing less than six pounds. They are quite intelligent and susceptible to training.

Answer: Earl Grey

While Captain Janeway ('Star Trek: Voyager') loved her coffee, Captain Archer ('Star Trek: Enterprise') his iced tea and Deanna Troi ('Star Trek: the Next Generation') her hot chocolate, Captain Picard's preferred drink was 'Tea ... Earl Grey ... Hot.'