Tintin Forums

Well spotted, yamilah!

Lisbon is indeed written on the side of Oliveira's crate in Cigars. And it's mentioned in speech (in the UK version at least) when Oliveira is introduced to Tintin a page or so earlier.

Belgrade is also entirely correct, even though it's not actually one I'd remembered myself when compiling the question. Like Reykjavik, Belgrade is absolutely allowable of course, though this means that the total list of findable capitals has now grown to eleven, and that there's still one more to find if anyone wants to do so!

To sum up the current found list of capitals (with a few extra occurrences I've noticed for some of them that haven't yet been mentioned):

1) Paris - Paris Flash; Francis Haddock's Meridian; Paul Cantonneau's university (in the UK version at least); athletics event in cinema news in Blue Lotus.

2) Prague - Ottokar; and Black Island (Forger's contacts notebook).

3) London - Chang's telegram in Castafoire Emerald; and on side of train in Black Island.

4) Brussels - On side of train in Black Island.

5) Amsterdam - Black Island (Forger's contacts notebook); and on a hotel bill in Alcazar's wallet, Red Sea Sharks.

6) Vienna - Newspaper in Tintin in Tibet; and Black Island (Forger's contacts notebook).

7) Reykjavik - Shooting Star.

8) Rome - Tempo di Roma magazine.

9) Lisbon - Red Sea Sharks (Oliveira's intro and crate); and possibly a reporter in Congo. (Certainly there in the French, but I don't yet have the new English edition of that book).

10) Belgrade - notebook in King Ottokar's Sceptre.

The eleventh findable capital (one of my original nine) may not feature in the French edition. The place it occurs in seems to be one of those places where the English translators made some changes, going by one of the disallowable French-edition answers that chevet put forward. (That's a clue as to where to look, of course.)

If somebody cares to find this last one, then we can start working out how to award the point!
Maybe labrador road 26 should get the point for finding the most capitals and the most speedily...?
But you could also argue that no one should get a point because no one found nine...
Or that labrador, chevet and yamilah should all get something for each getting part of the total answer?
All suggestions welcome!
Kudos and honour to all in any case! :-)

I don't have the book, but I'll try 'Stockholm', from The Shooting Star's list of ship's names starting with City of... ??

A reasonable guess yamilah, but an incorrect one, I'm afraid. Many cities are named in that frame from the Shooting Star that you mention (different ones in the French and English editions) but none of them is a capital city (in either edition).

I think the hint in my above post to look near one of the two places that chevet spotted an occurance of a capital in the French-language edition that was disallowed (due to it having been changed in the UK edition) should get people to the right bit of the right book.

How about Moscow?
Last page of The Black Island right next to the report of the more simian Ranko being sent to the Glasgow zoo in The Daily Reporter :-)

Well done, Ranko! That's the last one on my list, completing what is now a list of eleven. The word Moscow appears three times in that report (slightly clipped in two instances, but in full in the third).

As I said, this one may not appear in the French version, where the newspaper pages are often quite different. (In this instance, I don't know.) But anyway, it counts in this UK-edition-based quiz and question.

For people who like really complete lists, the full Tintin canon including Soviets (not included in this quiz or question) would add another mention of Moscow, and a twelfth European capital - Berlin.

Anyway, time to award the point. Whilst I suppose yamilah could within the rules have simply pinched and listed all the ones labrador road 26 and chevet had already spotted before adding the two she spotted to give a point-winning list of ten, she sportingly did no such thing, I'm pleased to say!

Rather than giving the point to no one, I'm inclined to give it to labrador road 26 for getting the most capitals of any one contestant, and to award chevet, yamilah and Ranko a "well done". Is everyone happy with that? If not, the scorekeeper had better either give no one a point, or give all four players of this round a point for the combined team answer!

I'm happy with that. labrador road 26 did all the initial hard work.

Ranko
I'm happy with that. labrador road 26 did all the initial hard work.

Good; thanks Ranko.

As yamilah and chevet have raised no objections either, the point goes to you, labrador road 26, and the honour of setting the next question.

Sorry that my edit has made your response look like a bit of a non-sequetor. (Is that how you spell it, or is it spelt non-sequeteur. Or is that what Calculus uses to prune non-roses?)

There is a famous story about the only time Peter Cook was outwitted: he walked into a hardware shop and asked for secateurs; and another customer replied "Non sequitur".

labrador road 26, are you there?

Ed

chevet had already spotted before adding the two she spotted to give a point-winning list of ten, she sportingly did no such thing
As yamilah and chevet have raised no objections either
I want to raise an objection : I am a man, not a woman !!!

chevet
I am a man, not a woman !!!

Sorry for any misunderstanding caused, chevet, but if you read my whole sentence from the beginning, you'll see that "she" means yamilah, not you or labrador road:

Whilst I suppose yamilah could within the rules have simply pinched and listed all the ones labrador road 26 and chevet had already spotted before adding the two she spotted to give a point-winning list of ten, she sportingly did no such thing, I'm pleased to say!

I admit that I wrote an overlong and probably not very well constructed sentence though, so sorry it wasn't clear! (I meant that she - yamilah - could have pinched labrador's answers and your answers too, before then topping up the list with her two new ones.)

I've always assumed that yamilah is a woman
a) because yamilah is a female name, and a female Tintin character,
and
b) because that's the author-gender I picked up from yamilah's prose.

Don't ask me how you can pick up an author's gender from their prose, but I reckon you nearly always can. By the same subconscious divination, I'd certainly assumed from your and labrador's postings that you were both male, even though I wouldn't have known for sure whether chevet was a man's name and even though labrador road 26 is a gender-neutral name. (Let's hope labrador doesn't now turn out to be a woman, which would blow my theory apart!)

Anyway, I expect somebody somewhere has done a thesis on the subject!

Ed
labrador road 26, are you there?

I don't know where labrador road is, Ed, but on quiz-admin related business, are you sure you remembered to add on points for the answers to Q104, (which Ranko and I both answered back on Nov 29)? Yamilah awarded a point to both Ranko and myself if it were possible. I added a note implying that if the scorekeeper didn't want to award two people points for the one question, I'd be happy for Ranko to have it. But either way, I don't think you added on a point to either Ranko's or my score tally, although you have since updated the scoreboard for Q105. Apologies if I'm wrong!