³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

By this stage in the festive calendar, most Britons - Paper Monitor certainly not excepted - may have observed a dulling in their cognitive faculties.

Too much food, too little work and far too many hours spent in front of the television do little for one's mental agility.

So three cheers to Fleet Street for stimulating their readers' grey matter with a series of end-of-year quizzes.

Fleet Street has clearly acknowledged that, for sheer comprehensive authority, the Magazine's own quiz of 2010 (available in four parts here, here, here and - yes - here) cannot be bested.

So each of the paper's puzzles has its own gimmick, a USP to set it apart from the competition.

Neatly straddling the diverse constituencies that make up its readership, the Daily Mail has no fewer than two quizzes - one on (sample question: "Lawrence once shot his own camel in the back of the head ­during a battle. True or false?") and an even more terrifying double-page interrogation on how to establish

Bidding for a more cultured take on the format is the Times, which offers a to those readers capable of wrestling with such conundrums as "To which London gallery does the star painting of Tate Modern's Gauguin show, Nevermore O Tahiti, belong?" and "The final scene of which Czech opera was played at the funeral and memorial concert of the great conductor Charles Mackerras, who died in July?"

Better pitched at Paper Monitor's current level of cranial function, however, is the Snowbiz Quiz.

Sadly not available online, this puzzle features various celebrities, politicians and newsworthy figures from 2010 rendered as snowmen and women by the paper's cartoonist. The reader is invited to identify them.

If even that sounds too much like hard work, Paper Monitor can only recommend a long, bracing bank holiday walk.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?