MM Links July 2012 Week 3 in The AnswerBank: Quizzes & Puzzles

MM Links July 2012 Week 3

At one time archery was crucial to the defence and protection of England. It was the great long bow that won, among others, the battle of Agincourt .English longbowmen could loose between 6 and 8 flights of arrows per minute with a range of 200 to 300 yards against the French cross bowmen who could fire between 2 and 3 bolts a minute over a much shorter distance.

The arrows from a longbow, taking into account the weight/velocity ratio, could penetrate a suit of armour (whereas a musket ball could not). I sometimes take visiting school children on historical tours of our village church and church yard. One question I always ask is 'what tree in this church yard saved England?' Just a small three letter word - I get oak, ash, elm etc but rarely the great yew tree. The branches of the yew had the flexibility and strength to make the long bow, some with 200 to 300 lb pulling weight. But the yew berries were poisonous to some animals and so they were regularly grown in church yards to save the farm animals and to give us a supply of yew wood for the bows. Even today you see many many yew trees in churchyards. Bowmen must have been unusually strong pulling back a 200 lb bow with three fingers on the string just below the notched arrow. Those three fingers were vital - the French cut them off when they could - the uncaptured English waved their fingers in the air - the famous or infamous two fingered salute !

Archery practice for all Englishmen was compulsory on the village greens on Sunday afternoon back in the middle ages and later.

08:47 Sat 21st Jul 2012

rockfordill

Question Author

In my youth we had a ground floor flat backing on to one of those long London garden squares - and it was in this square that we took out our target butts and practised archery. I started at about 10 yrs old and loved it. You could tell just as soon as your arrow was loosed that it would hit the gold or not. There were no bulls eyes in archery only gold red blue black yellow and white each colour going out from the gold with a descending scoring value. I shot mostly at 30 yards with a small 30 or 40 lb flat bow - we did have a yew long bow but it was virtually a museum piece. Maximum target range was about 100 yards and as we progressed we moved up to tubular steel bows and aluminium arrows. The compound bows used today are a far cry from those of my youth. It was a sport of huge mental discipline - everything had to be just right - heels in line with the target fingers (with a leather protector) just right on the bow - a steady hand and the sight on the gold. (My sight was a pin stuck into a strip of sticking plaster!!) When all felt right you loosed the arrow and hopefully scored - the big question today is who will score the best with the following links covering both archery and my next weeks subject of ornithology!

rockfordill

Question Author

According to normal practice, for the everyday running of MM, I shall follow this rule on word length, in that each of my pre-selected link words contains at least four letters and at most eight letters. Stray outside this range and you will be wasting one of your attempts!

Each of the selected link words may go in front of, or behind my challenge word to make a new longer word or to make a well-known phrase or saying. The combination will never be a person's name.

The competition will officially close on Sunday Evening at 7.00pm, when gen2 will declare my pre-selected words and then apply the same rules for awarding points that have been applied during all MM Link Games in the past. My set of four words to have their links predicted should appear below at 9.00am.