Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Wodehouse character or baseball player?


Last weekend I was reading Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse and taking in a baseball game on the radio and I had a small revelation. I was thinking particularly about former New York Mets farmhand Esix Snead, who has a name straight out of a Wodehouse novel...You can imagine the high jinks that ensue when Snead visits the country house of his nemesis Sir Kyle Farnsworth (master of the late-inning meltdown) in an attempt to break off his romantic involvement with the daughter of Lord Preston Wilson. You get the idea.

At any rate, here is a little quiz to test your knowledge of Wodehouse and The Summer Game. A link to the answers can be found below. Play ball...

Wodehouse character or baseball player?

1. Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy
2. Augustus Fink-Nottle
3. Roderick Spode
4. Daniel Quisenberry
5. Bertram Wilberforce Wooster
6. Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog
7. Watkyn Bassett
8. Mordecai Brown
9. Stiffy Byng
10. Floyd Bannister
11. Algy Wyndmondham-Wyndmondham
12. Lastings Milledge
13. Percy Craye
14. Snuffy Stirnwiess
15. Heathcliff Slocumb
16. Augustine Mulliner
17. Clay Dalrymple
18. Tuppy Glossop
19. John Wesley Powell
20. Oliver Randolph Sipperley
21. Mike Jackson

Click here for the answers.

P.G. Wodehouse, it should be mentioned, was a Mets fan. Good man!
--John Mark

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

21 out of 21..I need another hobby, apart from the life and times of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

Anonymous said...

Haven't read Wodehouse, so I won't even attempt this...but on a similar note, "Chone Figgins" sounds a lot like a Dickens character, and "Elmer Dessens" a Sinclair Lewis character.

The Overlook Press said...

CHONE! I love Chone Figgins. I don't think I'll ever be able to pronounce his first name "Shawn," though. Good call... I didn't realize that about Dessens, very cool.

Anonymous said...

i was in the stands when esix snead got his first major league hit, a run scoring single! and his first home run--the same game, a 3 run homer in the 11th to win the game! nice day for a rookie, and one hell of a strong cup of coffee. i hear he's with the braves now, not that it's his fault.... and speaking of Mets and names of a Wodehousian persuasion, the one and only Marvelous Marvin Throneberry not only has the name, but the ineptitude of a Bertie Wooster to boot.

Janelle Martin said...

Boy, I need to read more Wodehouse - or else actually follow baseball - I only got 16 out of 21!

Anonymous said...

Very good! But you should have added a couple of trick questions to the list:

Looney Biddle and Clarence van Puyster were both Wodehouse characters AND baseball players.

Clarence pitched for the New York giants under the pseudonym "Brown" in the early (1910) short story "The Pitcher and the Plutocrat", while Looney was the ace of the Giants' pitching rotation in Chapter 14 of "Indiscretions of Archie" (1921).

The Mixer

Anonymous said...

19 1/2, not too bad.
Thanks for the quiz!
And thanks for publishing the Wodehouse reprints!

-- Patrick

Anonymous said...

20 out of 21 -- I know little about baseball, but a bit more about Wodehouse.

How could you have left out Stanley Featherstonehaugh ("Fanshaw") Ukridge? Or Gally Threepwood?

The Overlook Press said...

Thanks for the comments everyone... I'm getting schooled over here.

Lyford said...

Good heavens, man, it's not Mark Jackson, it's Mike Jackson. Star of Mike (which was split into Mike At Wrykyn and Mike and Psmith.) Key character in Psmith In The City and Psmith, Journalist. (There was also a Mike Jackson who pitched in the Major leagues, but he pales in historical importance in comparison to his fictional namesake...)

However many names were on the list, that's how many I got right. I'm a baseball fan AND a Wodehouse fan, and there weren't any close calls...