Pit your wits against Quentin Letts and Boris Johnson in the most erudite quiz of the year

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They're both brilliant writers and both joined the Mail this year, but columnist Boris Johnson and sketchwriter Quentin Letts have something else in common - over the past six months they've helped expand our vocabularies. So have you been keeping up? And how many of their more abstruse* words do you know? Test your word knowledge with our dastardly dictionary quiz.

LETTS'S LEXICON 

COPROLALIA

As in: Mr Keith reheated some of those sweary messages sent by Mr Dominic Cummings, the coprolalic former No 10 adviser.

a) Prone to fibs and exaggeration

b) Short-sighted

c) Obsessive use of scatological language

ORLOP

As in: But let us park the cynicism and express wonder that 10 Downing Street had for once taken cognisance of protests from the orlop deck, and had done so less than a week after a backbench mutiny.

a) Slippery, slimy

b) Type of wood used in shipbuilding

c) Platform covering the hold of a ship

They're both brilliant writers and both joined the Mail this year, but Boris Johnson and Quentin Letts have something else in common - over the past six months they've helped expand our vocabularies

CAPTIOUS

As in: The sole linguistic sensation was when Mr Hancock said 'there's so many questions' and Judge Hallett butted in to correct his grammar with 'there were'. Hancock paused just enough of a nanosecond to indicate that he considered her captious.

a) Irritating and dim

b) Disposed to find fault

c) Lacking any sense of humour

OXTERS

As in: Time and again Mr Keith 'put it to you, Mr Johnson'. When barristers say 'I put it to you', they mean: 'You were in all this up to your oxters from the start, weren't you, Dr Crippen?'

a) Armpits

b) Top hat (plural)

c) Nostrils

MOMME

As in: When Messrs Hancock and Keith arrived in the inquiry room at ten o'clock it became apparent we had a fashion clash. Both were wearing pink ties. Mr Hancock's was one we saw often when he was a cabinet minister. Alongside handsome Hugo's, it looked a little Tie Rack, or at best Marks & Sparks.

Pukka Mr Keith KC is one of life's charcoal double-breasted New & Lingwood men and his neckwear was altogether more gorgeous, a richer coral, a heavier momme.

a) Japanese unit of weight

b) Unit of measurement used to grade silk

c) Clothes worn by a dandy

MILQUETOAST

As in: It was International Men's Day - when the world's sniffling milquetoasts have their moment.

a) Timid, submissive, or ineffectual person

b) Cry-baby

c) Low status French aristocrat

CLERESTORY

As in: In the Crossbenches sat various inertia merchants from the mandarinate and nut-brown know-alls from the upper clerestories of HM diplomatic service.

a) Epic tales told by men of the cloth

b) Upper part of the nave, choir, and transepts of a cathedral

c) Social climbers

POOHBAH

As in: An honour to sit among the careerists and the crocked and yesterday's poohbahs?

a) A person who holds many offices at the same time

b) A person or body with much influence or many functions

c) A pompous or self-important person

PETTIFOGGING

As in: For good or ill, right or wrong, lockdown or liberty, he [Boris Johnson] had the stamp of democratic validity. That must never be made subservient to the pettifogging of hindsight.

a) Petty, quibbling

b) Slight confusion

c) Accident, mishap

SEPPUKU

As in: He [Lord Cameron] can probably make even the decapitation of his breakfast boiled egg resemble an act of ritual seppuku.

a) Ancient form of sudoku

b) Ceremonial suicide

c) Sucking up

SAL VOLATILE

As in: Lady Hallett, presiding, kept calling short adjournments, quite possibly to clutch hold of the sal volatile bottle and give it a good sniff.

a) Ammonium carbonate solution used as a restorative after fainting

b) White spirit

c) French slang for fiery cheap brandy

OTIOSE

As in: Mind you, if oblivion is imminent, sartorial standards may be otiose.

a) Depressing, lacklustre

b) Redundant, superfluous

c) A significant improvement

ACCIDIE

As in: The chamber, in a state of advanced accidie, groaned.

a) Apathy, lethargy, torpor

b) Irritation, annoyance

c) Bad hangover

GRALLOCH

As in: Forward to victory. Let the gralloch of Rishi Sunak begin! That was the mood as Labour's conference closed.

a) Form of torture devised in Scotland

b) To trample or squash (properly, a small bug)

c) To disembowel (properly, a deer)

CENOBITE

As in: Money may be tight but it doesn't mean we all have to become self-denying cenobites.

a) Miser who gets pleasure from going without

b) Hermit

c) Member of a religious order living in a community

CAUDILLO

As in: Tim Farron, once their caudillo, tore into the Young Liberals for wanting housing targets. He called them Thatcherites.

a) Great hope for the future

b) Head of state of a Spanish-speaking country, especially a military dictator

c) Swaggering, charismatic leader, macho

BORIS'S BIG WORDS

Boris Johnson and Quentin Letts are both brilliant writers 

SEA-GIRT

As in: This lucky sea-girt country is distantly fringed with less fortunate and less prosperous places, where people have only a fraction of this country's per capita GDP.

a) Surrounded by the water of the sea or ocean

b) Made wealthy by the bounty of the sea

c) Populated by beach lovers

COPROLITE

As in: It is, they protested, a glorified phosphate coprolite in an otherwise vast and inhospi-table ocean.

a) Type of semi-precious stone found in water

b) Fossilised animal faeces

c) Underwater sand mountain

AUTARKY

As in: It is autarky that leads to aggression, and free trade that leads to peace and prosperity; and what's good for Walmart is probably good for America and the world. Remember the 1930s.

a) Early form of road rage, comes from 'auto anarchy'

b) A state or society which is economically independent

c) Greed, avarice

SCOFFLAW

As in: Yes, folks, if this plan is to make any sense at all, it must logically mean that we are willing to send repeated and incorrigible scofflaws to prison - for smoking!

a) A defendant who is able to make a judge laugh

b) A person who lives their life to great excess, e.g. through drinking and eating

c) A person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a rule that is difficult to enforce effectively

AUGUR

As in: If I see a single magpie, I think it's bad luck, and I start scanning the skies like an augur for that crucial second magpie.

a) A religious official who observed natural signs, especially in birds' behaviour, interpreting these as divine approval or disapproval

b) Bird of prey that enjoys the flesh of other birds, from Anglo-Saxon for 'feathered cannibal'

c) Bird-spotter who specialises in searching out black species

HOPLITE

As in: These hoplite helmet-hairstyled women are part of a sporting sensation - the global arrival of women's football.

a) Particularly agile one-legged Visigoth warrior

b) A heavily armed footsoldier of Ancient Greece

c) Roman infantry division that used giant rabbits to carry supplies

PANKRATION

As in: By the way, if the Musk-Zuckerberg bout does go ahead, I challenge the winner to a Cumberland wrestling pankration.

a) Ancient Greek sports event combining boxing and wrestling, introduced in 648 BC

b) Jousting contests between monks from different religious orders, term first used in 1362

c) Sausage-eating contest originating in the Lake District

BUND

As in: If we have to create whole newt-friendly bunds to stop them falling in, we will.

a) Luxury hotel

b) Embankment or causeway

c) Bridge or stairway

PLASHY

As in: We have plashy meadows and delightful bogs and everywhere there are pleasant little bodies of water.

a) Abundant and fertile

b) Large or expansive

c) Wet or marshy

LEAL

As in: Look at Putin's position. It was only three weeks ago that Yevgeny Prigozhin — founder of the Wagner Group and hitherto seen as his leal and faithful mastiff — suddenly turned on his master and sent his troops to march on Moscow.

a) Loyal and true, as in being loyal to your King

b) Humble and low ranking

c) Hanger-on who sticks so tightly to a master or group he is like a leech

MULCT

As in: Everyone can see what is really going on here. Khan has so badly mismanaged the finances of Transport for London that he needs to balance the books - and that is why he has suddenly decided to mulct the motorist again.

a) Extract money from someone by fine or taxation

b) Hold a group of innocent people hostage

c) Throw garden waste on top of someone's head

HOMUNCULUS (PLURAL HOMUNCULI)

As in: What do you want if you make little pink plastic homunculi and their associated merchandise?

a) Doll-like person

b) Perfect person

c) Miniature person

EPICENE

As in: In Barbie world, epicene men with peroxide hair prance around in fake fur coats and admire the Barbie girls, but have no idea what to do next.

a) Muscular, chiselled, having heroic qualities

b) With characteristics of both sexes; of neither sex; sexless

c) Flamboyant, theatrical, over-the-top

PHILOPROGENITIVE

As in: And what do you want, if you are a Hollywood studio? You want bums on seats. You want young kids going to see it and loving it — and passively absorbing its philoprogenitive message.

a) Proudly pro-feminist

b) Over-spending on plastic tat

c) Producing many offspring (or fond of children)

* Abstruse: difficult to understand, obscure, recondite.

Answers 

Letts's Lexicon: Coprolalia C, Orlop C, Captious B, Oxters A, Momme A is the dictionary definition - a unit of weight equal to 3.75g - but B is also correct, Milquetoast A, Clerestory B, Poohbah A, B and C are all correct, Pettifogging A, Seppuku B, Sal Volatile A, Otiose B. Accidie A, Gralloch C, Cenobite C, Caudillo B.

Boris'S Big Words: Sea-girt A, Coprolite B, Autarky B, Scofflaw C, Augur A, Hoplite B, Pankration A, Bund B, Plashy C, Leal A, Mulct A, Homunculus C, Epicene B, Philoprogenitive C.