SETTING Superbrain, The Northern Echo's annual trivia quiz, is one of life's little joys.

You dredge your brain for the most obscure titbit, turn it into a question and then sit back as the quizees scour the Internet and drive every librarian in the region to distraction.

This year the term "brass castle" will have been tapped into innumerable search engines. "Where is Brass Castle Farm?" I asked, having accidentally stumbled upon this unique-sounding house just outside Middleton St George.

But the day after the quiz was published, driving to Guisborough, pulling out of Nunthorpe, I noticed there was a Brass Castle Lane. Followed by Brass Castle Golf Club. Followed by Brass Castle Park on which hundreds of new homes, all with Brass Castle in their address, are being crammed. How unique is unique?

When the answers arrived, there was a Brass Castle Farm between Croft and Stapleton, a Brass Castle Farm at Ryton near Newcastle, a Brass Castle Cottage at Neasham, and a Brass Castle pub in Chester-le-Street.

Leaving aside the fanciful notion that there once were hundreds of gleaming castles made of brass, the most likely derivation of this un-unique name is that these were the homes of members of County Durham's Brass family who, in their day, were moderately well-to-do.

They feature in the ghastly murder of 1683 at Ferryhill. Andrew Mills was a farmworker, simple and mild-mannered but when roused "a dangerous light flashed from his usual dull eyes". He worked for John and Margaret Brass of Brass Farm and, overtaken by the devil, he took an axe to their children: Jane, aged 20, who with her black hair and ruby lips tempted the farmworkers; John, 18, who arrogantly teased the farmworkers, and Elizabeth, 11, who was probably the simpleton's only friend in the world.

The children are buried at Kirk Merrington; Mills was bound and imprisoned in an iron cage in Ferryhill, a penny loaf hung tantalisingly beyond his lips as if he were a contestant on I'm A Celebrity... Then he was hanged on a gibbert beside the A167 so all on the Great North Road could see.

Beyond the Brass family having homes that they regarded as castles, there is a story in Irish folklore about how the special people who can see the faeries tumble through a trapdoor into an elaborate dining room. There's fine china on the table, exquisite hangings on the wall and diamond chandeliers from the ceiling. Fine food and fine wine is being served by the faeries who are, naturally, dressed up in their finery.

But if you partake of the merest morsel of faery food, you will never make it back through the trapdoor, never be able to return to the human world: you will forever be held captive in this brass castle.

So are there faery strongholds dotted all over the North-East?

CARS are designed to be aerodynamic. They are fuel-efficient, safety-conscious and environmentally-sound. They have satellites to tell them where they are, computers to control their speeds and radars to assist their parking. Their headlamps can shine round corners. So how come no automobile boffin has solved the annual winter problem: you open your car door, the snow slides off the roof, flumps onto your seat and by the time you've reached work you're sitting in a pool of meltwater with an embarrassing mark on your trousers?