Tintin Forums

I found it in the end, but I only had a 3-in-1 here and that question should have come with a health warning. You'll be hearing from my opticians :-P

I've got a hunch Tuhatkauno will find it soon so I'll leave the door open.

Tjänare Balthazar,

that was "a miserable question". First, as usual, I didn't read the question carefully enough and I tried to recall banana-cow-combinations into my mind. Then I realized you were talking about a picture of a bull so I threw away the right candidate - there was no name of an author either. Yesterday I took a look at the page again and there WAS a picture of a bull. It was also too dark to see anything so tiny as the name of Victor Hugo. That's the author, not the Mongolian poet Ca.


Balthazar has sharp eyes (is he a Schottish Indian?) I must pay a visit to my opticians as well. Thanks for the hint, Richard and Jock. And Balthazar, that was a tuff nut to bite, good question. The first thing I got to do today is to buy a magnifying class (de luxe) and a spotlight (300 W minimum). ;-)

Yep, you finally got it, Tuhatkauno. For anyone else trying to follow this thread, the side street on the right of the market square has a typically French blue street-name sign, bearing the typically French street name, Rue de Victor Hugo.

I do have quite good eyesight (and good lighting!), but I'm wondering whether this street name is easier to read in my old matt-printed edition of the book than in the new glossier editions, where the blue of the sign might be more saturated and darker behind the black lettering. (I don't have the new editions, so I'm just guessing.)

And, yes, sorry to Richard and anyone else using the smaller 3-in-1 editions! Though it sounds like it was just legible in that edition.

This surely highlights one of the main advantages of having the full size editions: being able to see all the details of Hergé's drawings properly. He drew the artwork a bit bigger still, of course, but the A4 books are at the reproduction size that Hergé had in mind when he and his team were drawing, so presumeably he made sure that everything was legible at that size. I'm not sure whether he'd have liked the shrunk versions that are so widespread today. Anyway, there's another thread on that, so I won't ramble any more.

Back to you, Tuhatkauno, for the next question.

D’oh! Just got that - even when I knew who the author was! I’d thought Captain Nemo, and only saw the word play just now! Hats off to you!

I agree that black writing on a blue background isn’t very easy to see - I’d to go and stand by the window to check, but I was helped by memories of this thread, in which our erstwhile seer and prophet yamilah drew attention to the possible visual pun of the flowerpot falling from the windowsill (onto a couple who look like a prototype for Geriatrix and his beautiful young wife from Asterix) in the Rue Victor Hugo, being an allusion to Hugo’s poem Le pot cassé (“The broken pot/ vase”).

I think you might be onto something there about the over-saturated printing of modern edtions, Balthazar: the fairly recent copy I have (pre the re-lettering, but within the last couple of years) not only makes the street signs a chore to read (and I normally have no problems reading in low light, having once confused a stranger by sitting reading my paper during the showing of adverts at the cinema, because to me there was more than enough light, and to him we were in near darkness…), but has pretty much rendered the white on black registration numbers on the cars impossible to read too, due to “creep” in the black ink. Detail is definitely being lost.

Well done Balthazar, and you moderators and correspondents are most wellcome to join the quiz.

Now for something different: What doesn't belong to the group?

a cow, a bread, an umbrella, a fish, glasses, a crocodile, a bone, a pair of shoes, a rocket, a parrot, a pucket, a bottle of whisky

Take one thing out and give an explanation why did you pick it away.

Hmmm… a “pocket” perhaps, or a “bucket” - but I’m not sure that there is a “pucket”… Unless this is the odd one out?

Thank you Jock, it should be a bucket,

Here're the words:

a cow, a bread, an umbrella, a fish, glasses, a crocodile, a bone, a pair of shoes, a rocket, a parrot, a bucket, a bottle of whisky

What doesn't belong to the group? Take one thing out and give an explanation why did you pick it away.

Just a guess, but is it the whisky?
Reason being that all the others are things Tintin purchased from O. da Figuera in Cigars of the Pharaoh.
I may be wrong...

Aycaramba

I'm afraid you are bit wrong this time. Tintin didn't buy a bottle of whisky, that's correct, but "things purchased from Oliveira" is not the criterion or the explanation I am looking for, because Tintin didn't buy a cow or a crocodile. A parrot and a bucket suit but the other stuff doesn't. The criterion I am looking for is very specific. Your explanation was also very specific, nice try Aycaramba. :-)

OK, I give some more words which belong to the group

Here're the updated words:

a cow, a bread, an umbrella, a fish, glasses, a crocodile, a bone, a pair of shoes, a rocket, a parrot, a bucket, a bottle of whisky, a tree, a rifle, a sign, a fruit

What doesn't belong to the group? Take one thing out and give an explanation why did you pick it away.


Balthazar

It took this long to understand your ring-the-bell-hint, to be honest I didn't know that "the bellman" is Hugo's character.