Latest news with #Lilliputian
Telegraph
09-04-2025
- Telegraph
A visit by cruise ship will change your mind about the Gulf states
To describe Ali, our ebullient tour guide, as a proud Emirati would be something of an understatement. As he led us through Dubai's glitzy playground – where every scene screamed wealth and excess – he reeled off the city's long list of world-beating attractions with the puffed-up gusto of an excitable teenager. 'When we want to build something, we look at the biggest in the world and build bigger,' he explained. 'We are only content with number one.' He was not wrong. Not only does Dubai lay claim to the world's tallest building, biggest observation wheel (spanning 250 metres), and largest suspended aquarium; it also has its eyes on bettering Las Vegas's ground-breaking Sphere entertainment complex, with plans for a £4 billion futuristic wonder called the Moon: a 274 metre replica of the real thing, with a 4,000-room hotel and 10,000 capacity arena, which will even glow at night. 'It won't be like the Sphere,' he declared triumphantly, leading us towards the big daddy of Dubai's skyline, the Burj Khalifa. 'We will put that in our pocket.' The lifts catapulted us up to the observation gallery in seconds – and at ear-popping speed – where we then walked through the wrap-around viewing platform, marvelling at the Lilliputian proportions of our surroundings. Far below, multi-lane highways wound like tarmac ribbons around skyscrapers that resembled Lego blocks. I'd witnessed this concrete jungle from a different and equally spectacular perspective the previous afternoon, as we steadily approached the city aboard cruise ship Celestyal Journey. Gradually, as we crept across the Arabian Sea, Dubai's shadowy skyline appeared like a mirage on the horizon, the distinctive sailboat silhouette of Dubai's famous Jumeirah Burj al Arab hotel ahead of us, and beside it, the palatial outline of the lavish Atlantis, The Palm resort. But whether viewed from high above, or from across the glimmering water, my reaction had been much the same – and moreover, a far cry from the one I had expected. The Gulf is, after all, a region which seems – to those of us who have not yet made its acquaintance – large, brash and somewhat unapproachable. With its size, its splendour and its starkly contrasting cultures, it can seem an overwhelming place for a traveller to tackle. Visit by ship, however, and an easy, cost-effective and practical solution presents itself. I sailed with Greek line Celestyal – one of the few to offer winter sailings through the Gulf states, with round-trip voyages from Dubai and Qatari capital Doha – and found the region, and its lesser-known corners, all but laid out at my feet. Accessibly, manageable and gently explained by our wealth of excellent guides. Escaping the chill of the British winter, we took in not only the UAE's gleaming hyper-city and its nearby capital, Abu Dhabi, but also Bahrain's capital Manama, with its maze of streets in the souk and grandeur of the Al Fateh Grand Mosque; and the beach and wildlife resort of Sir Bani Yas Island, formerly a barren outpost and now a holiday playground. With only 1,260 passengers, our ship's compact size enabled it to slip into Khasab on Oman's isolated northern Musandam peninsula, close to the network of desert fjords stretching among the stark rough-hewn slopes of the surrounding mountains. We set off to explore these inlets, dubbed the Norway of Arabia, in a traditional-style Arabian dhow, but were not alone. Racing past us was a convoy of speedboats piled high with tarpaulin-covered cargos steered by illicit balaclava-clad crews. 'Iranian smugglers,' said our guide Khalid, as the unorthodox cavalcade whizzed by in full view of two official patrol boats in the harbour. 'There's no problem with the police. They are sleeping,' he laughed. As we motored deeper into the fjords, the constant buzz of the smugglers' boats receded and the remoteness of our tranquil surrounds hit home. We passed Telegraph Island, named after a short-lived British communication post built to aid messages between Britain and India in the 1860s, then turned back towards Khasab, escorted by a lone dolphin who, cresting the dhow's bow wave, effortlessly kept pace as we clicked our cameras. All was quiet and calm – a world away from the superlative cities; yet another face of this captivating region that I might never have known existed. Essentials Sara Macefield was a guest of Celestyal (0808 2803543; which offers a one-week Desert Days round-trip sailing from Doha from £569pp, including soft drinks, WiFi and gratuities (flights extra). Calling at Dubai, Sir Bani Yas Island, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain. Departs January 17, 2026.
Fox News
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Jeopardy!' contestants slammed for 'Wizard of Oz' triple stumper
"Jeopardy!" fans expressed their disbelief after all three contestants were left stumped by a final question about a character in a beloved piece of pop culture. On Thursday's episode of the long-running game show, contestants Mary Walheim, Alfred Wallace and three-day defending champion Bryce Wargin came up short when presented with a clue in the "Fictional Characters" category. The prompt read: "Boq is one of these fictional people, 'Not as big as the grown folk… but neither were they very small.'" Walheim was left with a dollar in total winnings after betting $5,999 of her total $6,000 haul when she incorrectly guessed "What is a Lilliputian?" "I'm afraid it's not the Lilliputians from 'Gulliver's Travels,'" "Jeopardy!" host Ken Jennings told her. Walheim's competitors, Wallace and Wargin, also appeared to believe that the clue referred to the 6-inch-tall men living on the island of Lilliput in Jonathan Swift's classic 1726 novel. Wallace's answer was revealed to be "What are lili?" The contestant, who wagered $10,000 of his $10,600 in winnings, noted that his response was "almost Lilluputian." Jennings agreed, adding that Wallace had likely run out of time to write the characters' full name. Wargin's first guess was "What are Lilliputians?" before he crossed the answer out and wrote, "dwarves." Jennings then informed the contestants that "What is a Munchkin?" was the correct answer. "In the 1939 movie of 'The Wizard of Oz,' the Munchkins are very small, but in the book, the Munchkins are said to be about Dorothy's height," Jennings told them. Wargin, who was in the lead heading into the final round with $16,000, had bet $5,201, which dropped him down to $10,799. However, as a four-day "Jeopardy!" champion, Wargin's total winnings were $70,199. Many fans watching at home had easily guessed the right answer as the character of Boq played a prominent role in the 2024 mega-hit movie musical "Wicked," which was an adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name. Boq was portrayed by Ethan Slater in "Wicked," which starred Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. After the episode ended, fans flocked to social media to share their dumbfounded reactions. "Read the word "Boq" and SCREAMED "MUNCHKIN!!!!!!!!" How did NO ONE GET THIS??? wrote one social media user on X. "How did no one get that BOQ answer on jeopardy right," another X user added. "Everyone who watched Jeopardy and recently watched Wicked was screaming at their TV tonight…," one viewer chimed in. "No one knew boq is a munchkin on final jeopardy, " a "Jeopardy" fan posted on X, adding crying emojis. "My entire household was shouting MUNCHKIN!!! Apparently not one of the 3 saw 'Wicked,'" another fan wrote on X. "Final was so easy. How did they all miss it," a viewer wondered in the show's Reddit discussion thread. Both the movie and the play "Wicked" were based on Gregory Maguire's 1995 book "The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West." Maguire's novel is centered on the imagined backstory of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and presents an alternate version of events that took place before L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Boq is featured in both books, but he was not included in the classic 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz," which starred Judy Garland. After "Wicked" was released last November, the film became a major blockbuster, raking in $747.2 million worldwide against a $150 million budget. The movie is now the highest-grossing musical film adaptation of all time. "Wicked" also received 10 nominations at the 2025 Academy Awards, including nods for Erivo as best actress and Grande as best supporting actress. The movie took home Oscars for best costume design and best production design. Slater is set to return as Boq, along with Erivo as Elphaba and Grande as Galinda, in part two of "Wicked," titled "Wicked: For Good." It is due out this fall.
Washington Post
24-03-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
With few upsets and even fewer close games, this March is lacking madness
The national brain, long since spoiled with the Lilliputian magic of Cleveland State and Richmond and Valparaiso and George Mason and Stephen Curry and Ohio and Florida Gulf Coast and Saint Peter's, and with the goose-bumpy finishes therein and beyond, has spent the 2025 edition of men's March Madness suffering from a deficit of madness. Cup your ear and hear the moaning, the whingeing and the minor-key sounds of entitlement. Scroll past several fresh appearances of the hackneyed word 'meh.' What dopamine derailment. Several factors have conspired for a tournament of tepidity. For the first time, here's a Sweet 16 wherein everybody hails from a major conference and nobody from a mid-major or a far-from-major. This tournament became the sixth since the seeding structure began in 1985, and the first since 2017, in which the teams seeded No. 13 through No. 16 went 0-16. For the 12th time, there's only one double-digit seed in the closing 16 — there were none in 1995 and 2007, just as there were five in 1999 and four in 2011, 2021 and 2022 — and that double digit would be No. 10 Arkansas, a storied program whose six Final Four berths include a national title under the great Nolan Richardson. The last 16 lack any magical little name that makes people wonder as to its location, unless there's somebody left out there who'll say, 'Hey, where's Duke, anyway?' Even a nation lousy at geography would seem able to achieve a reasonable pegging of location of Auburn. Some past tournaments have gone chalk-prone — the Sweet 16 seedings in both 2009 and 2019 added up to a meager 49 — but few have gone both chalk-prone and rout-prone (although 2009 comes to mind). The 2019 event, for one, loaded up with early-round gasps such as Duke-UCF, Maryland-LSU, Tennessee-Iowa and the curious struggle of Kentucky-Wofford. This Madness started off with a buffet of routs, lacking any buzzer-beater until a Mr. Derik Queen from Baltimore supplied one, and the nation responded by arguing over whether he traveled. How quaint. The four No. 16 seeds, given hope by recent-years acronyms such as UMBC (2018) and FDU (2023), lost by a combined 128 points. No. 15 seed Robert Morris stuck admirably with Alabama — every tournament can use a surging Robert Morris — and hinted at the kind of outrageous madness the American brain has come to require, but its 65-64 lead with seven minutes left bled into an 81-71 deficit with two and then a 90-81 loss by closing. McNeese State charmed and educated with its tale of a leaving coach exulting before leaving after an upset of Clemson, but even as basketball minds maintain that the difference in basketball caliber between lower seeds and high seeds has continued to narrow, Purdue and McNeese on the court together made Purdue look like the resident of a higher plane. Tournaments through the years sometimes do lack for moments that lurk in memory banks, but in this one, precious few games have featured any airborne ball that carries the fates of many while the clock carries itself toward 0:00. The University of California at San Diego, where it's a wonder anyone can get anything accomplished given the understandable urge to stand around gazing at La Jolla, had its Tritons in the tournament, their story a fine stunner in a first year of eligibility. They took their 41-27 halftime deficit to Michigan and wrung a 65-63 lead with 2:29 remaining, then had a three-point shot with four seconds left to tie. They lost, 68-65, and the country hardly got to know and envy them. Call it an emblem of March 2025 thus far. A season known as top-heavy, with statistics that showed it as top-heavy, has nodded toward a tournament gone top-heavy. The Big Ten at one point stood 10-0 in games and stands 12-4 with a quarter of the 16 lingerers. The Big 12 went 6-1 in the first round (with Kansas its lone fallen) and 10-3 in the first two and hogs another quarter. The SEC spent the year regarded as predominant, then got a record 14 tournament bids as a belief in its predominance, and now has landed half those teams in the 16 as a validation of that predominance. Calling to mind 2011, when Connecticut finished ninth in the Big East and then won the national championship, the SEC has taken its sharpened iron and has hurled a team in a four-way tie for ninth place at 8-10 into the 16. You know your tournament has gone chalk-prone when the upstart figure is John Calipari, participant in six previous Final Fours at three previous schools with three previous closing-Monday-night appearances and one previous national title. Calipari weathered one hell of a tussle in Providence on Saturday afternoon — opposite Rick Pitino, who once recommended Calipari for the Massachusetts job — a game that might just last in memory even if its closing minutes rang with clangs. The wrestling match had so much effort and so much struggle that it looked not completely unlike Picasso's 'Guernica' even if none dare call it a masterpiece. 'I just saw we went 2 for 19 from three and won?' Calipari said. 'What in the world? Then I saw they were 2 for 22. Was it an ugly game? Or was it a game that was exciting? Like, both? An ugly exciting game. You know, I don't care. It could be an ugly-ugly game and I'm happy we're moving on.' It's not an ugly-ugly tournament, but its first weekend, generally its best weekend, finished on the tamer side of mad, so now it must rely on promising Sweet 16 matches like BYU-Alabama and Florida-Maryland to keep up with its ballyhooed brethren of bygone years. Could it replicate 2008, when all four No. 1 seeds reached a Final Four, also in San Antonio? It could, even as Houston had to grapple with Gonzaga this past Saturday night and Florida breathed through a mighty struggle come Sunday with Connecticut, which is gone after two seasons of bracket dominance about as close to perfect as it gets. There will come a new champion two weeks hence, and that champion will come from an athletic mansion of a program that beat out other athletic mansions.
