Quiz #20

Wilbur, Napoleon, and Babe are all fictional examples of what type of farmyard animal?

Question 2

In which sport are the phrases ‘from downtown’ and ‘from way downtown’ commonly used in commentary?

Question 3

What is the English translation of the German phrase ‘donner und blitz’?

Question 4

By what name is the politician born James Donald Bowman currently known?

Question 5

In 1982, at the height of arcade games’ popularity, the arcade games industry in America took approximately $8 billion in what denomination of US coin?

Question 6

What company has sponsored Scottish football referees since 2002, playing on the fact that fans frequently call referees blind?

Question 7

What two chemical elements are present in the compound commonly known as laughing gas?

Question 8

In 1979, a product developer in Marks and Spencer’s poultry department named Cathy Chapman fulfilled a brief to create restaurant quality meals that could be eaten at home. What two meals did she produce for the company, effectively introducing chilled ready meals to the country?

Question 9

Which three signs of the zodiac have names that contain more vowels than consonants?

Question 10

Make the longest word possible from the following letters: EILNOPSST

Round 1 points
(Maximum: 22)

Round 2

Question 1

In the comedy sketch ‘Four Candles’ by The Two Ronnies, a shopkeeper at a hardware store struggles to understand a customer’s accent. Instead of ‘four candles’, what did the customer actually want to purchase?

Question 2

MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, and COSCO are the world’s four largest companies in what industry?

Question 3

The death of Moctezuma II in 1520, after his capture by the forces of Hernán Cortés, is seen by many as a key moment in the end of which empire?

Question 4

What Scottish city is associated with comics due to it being the headquarters of DC Thomson, publisher of The Beano and The Dandy?

Question 5

Which budding science fiction writer had a letter published in the February 1945 edition of Wireless World magazine in which he describes the potential for rockets to carry payloads into space and the possibility of geostationary satellites ‘perhaps half a century ahead’?

Question 6

Used as a method to bypass the need for a formal international treaty, what four-word phrase has been utilised by US Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in calls for nations to volunteer to participate in a combined military action?

Question 7

Weighing up to 9kg, what animal has the largest brain by size? And making up 12-15% of its entire body, what animal is currently believed to have the highest brain-body mass ratio?

Question 8

What were the names of the siblings who wrote the Great American Songbook songs ‘I’ve Got a Crush on You’, ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’, and ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’?

Question 9

What were the names of the three European club football trophies that ran from 1971 to 1992, at which point the Champions League replaced one and started a series of format and branding changes?

Question 10

Every year from 1972 to 2020 the best selling model of car in the UK was made by Ford. Which four Ford models held the top position during these 48 years?

Round 2 points
(Maximum: 17)

Total points
(Maximum: 39)

Round 3

Question 1

What members of the music industry are the subject of the 2013 documentary ‘20 Feet from Stardom’?

Question 2

In text messaging parlance, for what three-word phrase does the number 143 stand, the digits representing the number of letters in each word?

Question 3

Subtitled ‘The Saga of an American Family’, what 1976 novel features the characters Kunta Kinte, Kizzy Waller, Tom Lea, and Chicken George?

Question 4

Whose anti-war painting entitled ‘Guernica’ depicts a bull, a screaming woman, a dead baby, the head of a stricken horse whose nostrils resemble a skull, and a light bulb inside an all-seeing eye, amongst other images?

Question 5

In British slang, what type of animal is used to mean £500? 

Question 6

On March 9, 2025, Patrizia Van der Weken won bronze in the European Indoor Athletics 60m and became the first woman from which country to claim a medal at a European or World athletics competition?

Question 7

Which two heroes of Greek mythology were the contenders to be given Achilles’s divine armour after his death – with the one who was not given it subsequently killing a flock of sheep in a blind rage before committing suicide?

Question 8

The Suez Crisis of 1956 started when which three countries invaded Egyptian territory in an effort to acquire control of the Suez canal?

Question 9

During the band’s most successful period, during which it released the album Nevermind, who were the three members of the group Nirvana?

Question 10

Including games in the upcoming 2025/2026 season, what seven countries have been named as hosts for American football games in the NFL’s international series?

Round 3 points
(Maximum: 21)

Total points
(Maximum: 60)

Round 4

Question 1

Appearing on the flags of Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador, the symbol of a sun with a human face is named for which month, that being the month of an 1810 revolution against the Spanish empire?

Question 2

In the worst massacre of The Thirty Years War, which protestant German city was sacked by Imperialist forces in 1630 and 1631, leaving only 5000 of the city’s 25000 inhabitants alive – most of whom took sanctuary in its famous cathedral – and causing such destruction it took nearly a century to rebuild?

Question 3

‘Lie to you’, ‘forget the way you feel right now’, ‘stop dreaming of you every night of my life’, and ‘be screwing around’ are all examples of what in the lyrics of a famous song by Meat Loaf?

Question 4

Centralia in the US has had one for 63 years, Rujigou in China has had one for over a century, and Burning Mountain in Australia has had its for nearly six millennia. What environmentally damaging occurrence, which can be caused by human industry or nature, is associated with these locations?

Question 5

In 2012, which often derided rapper held a fan vote on where his next concert should be held, only for voters to ‘exile’ him to Kodiak, Alaska?

Question 6

What is the name of the devil that appears in the Faust legend and with whom the title character signs a pact?

Question 7

In her diary entry for June 20, 1837, 18-year old Princess Alexandrina Victoria describes being woken at 6am in Kensington Palace by ‘Mamma’ because men holding what two formal positions wished to see her – these being the men who had come to inform her that her uncle had died and she was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland?

Question 8

Which two actresses jointly hold the record for consecutive years with an Academy Award best actor or actress nomination, each having been shortlisted five times in a row during the years of World War II?

Question 9

Defined by the transducers that make them operate, what are the three main types of microphone?

Question 10

According to the Tax Foundation, what nine European countries have a top personal income tax rate of 50% or above?

Round 4 points
(Maximum: 22)

Total points
(Maximum: 82)

Round 5

In Round 5, there is only one answer. The less clues you need to get it, the more points you receive. If you need only one clue, you receive 10 points; if you require two clues, you will receive 9 points, and so on.

However, you may only answer once. If you answer incorrectly, you receive zero points for the round.

In which play by William Shakespeare do the following characters all appear?

Clue 1

Clue 2

Clue 3

Clue 4

Clue 5

Clue 6

Clue 7

Clue 8

Clue 9

Clue 10

Round 5 points
(Maximum: 10)

Total points
(Maximum: 92)