Programme 7, 2017-18

Tom asked for the significance of the sequence: Washington - Washington - Buffalo - Dallas.

Sorry if you got side-tracked into American football or baseball tournaments - this is in fact a much less light-hearted sequence than that, being the locations of the four assassinations of US Presidents.

Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theater in Washington in 1865. James Garfield was killed at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington in 1881. William McKinley was killed while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, in 1901. The last is, of course, the shooting of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

Well done if you spotted the solution. There'll be another teaser question at the end of today's programme.

All of the teams have now played twice. The league table at the half way stage in the series, before today's contest (ranked in order of number of wins) is as follows.

1 WALES Played 2 Won 2 Drawn 0 Lost 0 Total points 40

2 SOUTH OF ENGLAND P2 W1 D1 L0 Pts 41

3 MIDLANDS P2 W1 D0 L1 Pts 38

4 NORTH OF ENGLAND P2 W1 D0 L1 Pts 36

5 SCOTLAND P2 W0 D1 L1 Pts 38

6 NORTHERN IRELAND P2 W0 D0 L2 Pts 31

Q1 Why might Private Atkins, the Marble Man and Clive Dunn find themselves working with Agent J?

Q2 (from Natasha Griffiths) Can you detect a titular link between The Lady of Shalott, Macbeth's second witch, and the King in his counting-house?

Q3 Music - For whom would these three play cricket?

Q4 A bantam and other birds of a feather fly, by the light of day, to the middle of the ocean to land on a cruiser in heavy weather. On which day of the year would this be appropriate?

Q5 How are Don Fabrizio Corbera, Balram Halwai and King Henry II related to a pink diamond?

Q6 Music - In what sense might the first of these thwart the efforts of the other two?

Q7 Why could there once have been fellow feeling between James Herriot, the composer of the Carmina Burana, and a newspaperman in Indo-China?

Q8 What might you get if you paired the following: a Kentucky Colonel with a Chicago bluesman; the near-neighbours of the lover of madeleine with the former Mrs Rod Stewart; and The Snow Goose with a beknighted union leader?

Where, historically, might one have been subject to an intergalactic smuggler, the Emperor of Mongo, a Sapiential book and a component of a sword?

Don't write to us as there are no prizes - but Tom will provide the solution at the beginning of next week's edition.