The John H Watson Society

So, here is the answer to the first Warm Up Quiz in preparation for the Annual Treasure Hunt 2019.

Three members of the family lived in the upper, and one lived in the lower. What place are we talking about?

Tredannick, in Cornwall. Brenda, Owen and George Tregeniss lived in Tredannick Wartha, and Mortimer Tregennis lived in Tredannick Wollas. In Cornish language, Wartha means “Upper” and Wollas means “Lower”.

“The nearest of these was the hamlet of Tredannick Wollas, where the cottages of a couple of hundred inhabitants clustered round an ancient, moss-grown church. …we […] had come to know, also, Mr. Mortimer Tregennis, an independent gentleman, who increased the clergyman’s scanty resources by taking rooms in his large, straggling house.” (DEVI, 956)
“…his two brothers, Owen and George, and of his sister Brenda, at their house of Tredannick Wartha, which is near the old stone cross upon the moor.” (DEVI, 956)

«The “Wollas” in the village name comes from the Cornish word goles, meaning “lower”; similarly, the “Wartha” in Tredannick Wartha means “upper”. The real village of Predannack was split into upper and lower manors owned by different families in medieval times.»
https://bakerstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Tredannick_Wollas

Congratulations to John Gehan, Sheila Holtgrieve “Daisy”, and Ron Lies “Chips”, who all gave the right answer!

I received three correct answers from three participants, so perhaps this question wasn’t so hard after all. Well, we’ll see with the next!
Regards,
Michele aka “Reggie”

“Well, it begins to define itself.” (3GAR)

So, fellow Watsonians, here we are. In about six months we’ll have our seventh Annual Treasure Hunt. I’m proud and happy to announce that I’ll be returning this year as Treasure Hunt Master.

The task, as usual, won’t be easy. Trying to make up a satisfactory set of questions means being caught between “the Scylla and Charybdis” (RESI) of making the quiz difficult enough to challenge the resources and the brains of the participants, but not too complex or convoluted, lest people lose interest and throw the towel in, wishing the quiz maker to the bottom of the Reichenbach.
Some informations: the quiz will consist of 60 questions (a Canonical number!) and part of them will probably be chain questions like those devised by our “Mopsy” for last year’s Hunt. As always, the use of a good Sherlockian Encyclopadia is recommended (Jack Tracy’s Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, Orlando Park’s Sherlock Holmes, Esq. and John H. Watson, M.D.: An Encyclopedia of Their Affairs, Martin Dakin’s A Sherlock Holmes Commentary), as well as a good annotated version of the Canon (Les Klinger’s, Baring-Gould’s, and/ or the Oxford Annotated).

In order to raise your interest, and to test and balance the level of the challenge, here’s the first of the “Appetizers” that will be published before the Hunt. Warning: this is a difficult question. It requires not only knowledge of the Canon, but also a certain amount of Internet research and/or the use of a good encyclopedia. If I am judging correctly, this is about the highest difficulty level that you will find in the questions of the Hunt. (But then again I may be wrong and you’ll all breeze through it…) The subject here is geography.

“Three members of the family lived in the upper, and one lived in the lower. What place are we talking about?”

(N.B. The answer must be the exact name of the place, not a generic one. E.G. if the answer was “Florence”, “Italy” or “Tuscany” would not be acceptable answers.)
Please submit your answers to: treasurehunt@johnhwatsonsociety.com within February 22nd, Friday. Happy Hunting!
Michele Lopez
2019 Treasure Hunt Master
JHWS “Reggie”, BSI “Attenta, Pericolo”