Q. What’s behind that elaborate tea ceremony of Japanese tradition?

A. Buddhist monks started it in the eighth century when they introduced tea - to symbolize a spiritual link between host and guest.

Professional pumpkin carvers - they were at work in recent weeks mostly for florists - say the pumpkins with the darker shells last longer.

Q. What do you call it in golf if you scrape the club head along the ground before it hits the ball?

A. Sclaffing.

People who habitually eat hot peppers - the capsicum that produces that sizzler called capsaicin - reportedly suffer far fewer heart attacks, blood clots, strokes, circulatory problems generally. Medical researchers are studying it.

A 115-pound woman in high heels exerts about the same amount of pressure per square inch on a floor as a loaded 18-wheeler exerts on the road. The truck’s weight is spread over 53 square inches, the woman’s over one square inch.

The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.