“Supposedly, a 1288 law by Queen Margaret of Scotland (then age five and living in Norway), required that fines be levied if a marriage proposal was refused by the man; compensation was deemed to be a pair of leather gloves, a single rose, £1 and a kiss.”

By that logic, a woman could just wander around all day, proposing to men wildly out of her league, and if she didn’t have a husband by day’s end, she’d have a decent chunk of pocket money and a nice bouquet of flowers.

The Guardian has another fine literary quiz in honor of the day, this time to do with literary proposals. I scored a woeful 4 out of 9. I hang my head in shame. See how you do.

For example earlier this week we asked our little group to name the American author who’s drinking led him to working as a garbage man towards the end of his life? If you want to know the answer you can head over to our Facebook page and check it out. Some days the staff come up with the question and some days it’s a question that was submitted by one of you. Come join us if you feel like playing along.

Today’s literary quiz question comes in the form of a video charade. Can you guess the three books our staff members are depicting?

Answer #1
Answer #2
Answer #3

Everyone loves to play charades, right? Well, this is literary charades with a little help from Youtube – you have the guess the books that Beth, Christi and myself are describing without the use of speech. Enjoy.

I’m asking the quiz questions and frankly I’m becoming slightly obsessive about trying to ask questions that no-one can answer. I’ve only beaten our Facebook fans once and that was with a cryptic question about Jeffrey Archer that took me an hour to write. I keep posting questions that I think are pretty tough but people are getting them in seconds. Basically, it’s me against several thousand people, and I’m going to beat them if it’s the last thing I do (evil laugh).

Mark Twain sure was an interesting guy. We recently did a feature about him, featuring a lot of Mark Twain quotes from his books. The more I read and learn about him, the more I’m annoyed that he’s dead, so I can never spend an evening drinking and chatting with him. He seemed like a fascinating man, politically ahead of his times, and very no-bull in his attitude to life, while maintaining a sense of humour. Also, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was one of my favourite books growing up. I wanted to be Becky Thatcher in the worst way – I must have read that book ten times.

Want to know even more? Check out our list of Mark Twain facts for some interesting and little known tidbits of Twain.