25 February 2024 , 19:30
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You'll need to be a genius to solve these puzzles.
Of all the quiz shows that grace our TV screens every afternoon, one of the most notoriously tricky ones is BBC Two's Only Connect - where contestants must summon all of their brain power to work out what links various clues. The hints can often be incredibly obscure, and finding the tenuous link between them isn't always easy.
These questions are presented to the teams by host Victoria Coren Mitchell, but they come from the brain of the show's question editor, Jack Waley-Cohen. And if you like challenging yourself to the fiendishly difficult questions on the show, then check this out - as Jack has put together some extra mind-bending puzzles for you to try.
Jack shared his challenge with the i newspaper, and the questions all take inspiration from one specific round in Only Connect. Not only do you have to find the link that connects each of the items in each question, but you also need to work out what would come next in the sequence.
Ready to test your brain power in the ultimate challenge? Here are the 10 questions that form Jack's challenge:
Nearly half of Brits think it's okay to eat food in bed, like toast and biscuits
- st, nd, rd
- 13-19, One of the X-Men, Trained Japanese assassin
- Elephants, Diplodocus and Triceratops, Diplodocus
- 7 in Ireland, 6 in Russia, 5 in France
- January 10th-25th, February 6th-25th, March 13th-8th
- That place, This place, Before
- Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale
- Close window, Cut, Redo
- Parietal, Clavicles, Patellae
- Why Berillium? Why Carbon? Why Gold?
At first glance, some of these look completely impossible to work out, but others aren't as complicated as they first seem. For example, the first one might look like random letters when you first look at it, but try putting numbers in front of the letters and see if they start looking a bit more familiar. Once you've figured that out, working out what comes next should be fairly easy.
Give yourself a few minutes to think carefully about each one, and see how many you can answer. We're going to give you the solutions below so if you're still trying to work some of them out, don't scroll any further!
Answers
- th - the link is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.
- Marine tortoises - the link is ways to describe each word of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'
- Blue whale - the link is the sequence of specimens in the Natural History Museum's Hintze Hall
- 4 in the USA - the link is years of presidential terms (any country with a 4-year term is correct)
April 1st-12th - the numbers are the positions of the first and last letters in the alphabet for each month (A is 1, L is 12)
About - the clues indicate 'There, Here, Ere...', taking away the first letter each time
Ben Affleck - the link is the order in which they played Batman
Undo - they are all typical keyboard shortcuts for Ctrl + W, X, and Y, so Z is undo
Phalanges - they are scientific names for bones found in Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
Why Selenium? - the chemical symbols for the elements spell because - Be, C, Au, and then Se for Selenium
How many did you get right? Let us know in the comments!