This question left me completely baffled on the night. I had little idea what an undercroft even was, let alone what dictated the dimensions (which is surely a better word than "arrangements", in this context) of the one at St. Pancras station.
So I googled "st. pancras undercroft". Top of the list was St. Pancras's own website. I didn't even have to follow the link to know that I was getting somewhere, because the words that Google picked out were " ... barrel became the unit of measure, upon which all the arrangements of this floor were based'. Image: Hydraulic lift for the transfer of beer to the undercroft ... "
This is incomplete though, so I did visit the site, where I discovered that "Barlow famously wrote that ' ... the length of a beer barrel became the unit of measure, upon which all the arrangements of this floor were based'."
So it's famous. Well how did I manage not to know about it?!
Far be it from me to argue with an architect as eminent as William Henry Barlow, but ... I do have a slight bone to pick with him. Does a beer barrel have a length? It surely has a height, a diameter and a circumference; but a length?
Let me put it another way. If I'm asked, in a quiz question, for something that has a length (and bearing in mind that I've never heard the quote before), a beer barrel will not be the first thing I think of. Even in a round whose theme is "alcoholic effects".
Leaving aside the question of what the significance of the word "effects" is: surely there are hundreds – if not thousands – of less obscure questions about alcoholic beverages that could have been asked?
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2019