This is a cross between the Lady Williams and the Golden Delicious. It was originally bred in 1973 by John Cripps at the Western Australia Department of Agriculture, to combine the firm long–storing property of Lady Williams with the sweetness and lack of storage scald of Golden Delicious.
Apples and pears are probably the fruits that have been cultivated in Europe (certainly in Great Britain) for the longest time; consequently there are a bewildering number of varieties, and it would be impossible to list them all on this page (nor would I want to).
The Arlington Pippin is one variety of pear that I have been asked about. I'd never heard of it, so naturally I looked it up on Wikipedia; Wikipedia had never heard of it either. It offered the Allington Pippin, which is a type of apple – developed in Lincolnshire in the late 19th century, and named after a village in Kent.
When I googled "Arlington Pippin pear", top of the list was orangepippin.com – a website about apples. This lists both an Allington Pippin and an Arlington Pippin. The latter, it says, "Shares its name with an old Gloucestershire (UK) pear variety."
A little further down the list (on Google) was the Quiz Zone. Here I found the question: "Worcester Black, Arlington Pippin and Bartlett are all varieties of which type of fruit?" And the answer: "Pears".
Since this was the exact wording that had been used in the question that aroused my interest, I'm guessing that this is where my setter got it from – especially as it was preceded by the same question, both on the website and in the quiz. (For the record, that question was "Common, Arctic and Sooty are all varieties of which type of bird?" Answer: "Tern".)
Anyway ... it seems that the Arlington Pippin is both an apple and a pear – although Wikipedia doesn't seem to know about either. This should immediately set alarm bells ringing in the mind of any quiz question setter.
The first issue is that part of the question is ambiguous. What if you'd never heard of any of these three varieties of pear, but had heard of the Arlington Pippin apple? You'd be a bit miffed if you answered "Apple" and were denied the points. It's also misleading: pippins are usually apples – the Cox's Orange Pippin is one of the best–known of all varieties of apple.
The second issue is, should you be asking about varieties of pear that Wikipedia has never heard of, but which can only be found on a specialist website about apples? Especially if Wikipedia knows about an apple that has a very similar name.
And the third issue – more a piece of advice, really – is: if you must lift quiz questions off the Internet, at least take the trouble to do a bit of research; make sure the question is firstly, correct; secondly, not ambiguous or misleading, and thirdly, not so obscure that you have to go to a specialist website to verify it.
In their defence, the setter(s) would probably say that (a) their question wasn't incorrect, (b) everyone associates Worcestershire with pears, rather than apples, and (c) the Bartlett is in any case one of the best known varieties of pear there is. So most people, even if they'd never heard of the Arlington Pippin, would know that the answer was a pear.
My response to this would be: so why mention the Arlington Pippin at all, and by doing so introduce ambiguity and confusion? If you must mention three varieties, there are hundreds of better–known examples that you could choose. And "Because it's on the Quiz Zone" is not a good enough answer.
The reason I'm making such a fuss about this is that these are things that every question setter should always keep in mind. Just have a think about what you're doing!
You may have noticed that I haven't listed either the Allington Pippin or the Arlington Pippin on my Varieties page, either as apples or pears. I recommend that you don't mention them either, in your next quiz!
© Haydn Thompson 2016