Quiz #24

How many squares are on a standard chess board?

Question 2

Who was born first: Ludwig van Beethoven or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

Question 3

Yet to be used, what number is the highest level of the United States defense readiness condition, or DEFCON, scale, reserved for imminent nuclear war?

Question 4

In which ocean is the Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean trench in the world?

Question 5

The opening scene of which 1961 film sees a woman in a black Givenchy dress exit a taxi in downtown New York City in order to have her morning coffee and pastry whilst looking through the window of a jewellery store – a scene which the actress is reported to have wished to change, requesting to eat an ice cream instead as she didn’t like pastries?

Question 6

The song ‘Ol’ Man River’, from the musical Show Boat, refers to the continuous flow of which river as a backdrop to American racial inequality and prejudice?

Question 7

Between 2008 and 2020, Mark Carney was governor of which two nation’s central banks?

Question 8

In the Icelandic language, surnames are usually created by taking a parent’s first name and adding one of which two suffixes – one meaning a person is ‘son of’, and the other ‘daughter of’?

Question 9

What are the four property colour sets that appear on the first half of a Monopoly board, that being before the Free Parking space?

Question 10

Make the longest word possible from the following letters: BCGHILNTU

Round 1 points
(Maximum: 23)

Round 2

Question 1

What poem by Robert Burns gives its name to a type of Scottish hat?

Question 2

Which Renaissance painter – after whom one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is named – was possibly born on April 6, 1483 in Urbino, and definitely died on April 6, 1520, after which he was buried in the Pantheon in Rome having had a funeral attended by the Pope?

Question 3

What theme connects the films Kramer vs. Kramer, War of the Roses, Marriage Story, and Our Son?

Question 4

In March 2025, the conclusion of a police investigation named Operation Atacama saw two Italians given suspended jail sentences and fines for their roles in uprooting and illegally trafficking over a thousand specimens of what family of plant from Chile and Mexico to Europe – with the judgement also including a rare example of the defendants being ordered to pay reparations for damage done to a conservation programme?

Question 5

Drawn by E.H. Shepard in 1926, a map of which location includes sites marked ‘Rabbits Friends and Raletions’, ‘Big Stones and Rox’, ‘Nice for Piknicks’, ‘Sandy Place Where Roo Plays’, and ‘Eeyores Gloomy Place Rather Boggy and Sad’?

Question 6

Which British director is to direct four films on The Beatles – one dedicated to each member of the band – which are scheduled for release in 2027?

Question 7

How many dots appear on the two ends of the domino tile that features on the Domino’s pizza company logo?

Question 8

Fenty Beauty is a cosmetics company co-owned by which luxury fashion house and which pop star, whose surname gives the company its name?

Question 9

In 2020, which four nations jointly and successfully submitted ‘knowledge, know-how and practices pertaining to the production and consumption of couscous’ to be recorded on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list?

Question 10

Which six teams of Europe’s ‘Big Five Leagues’ – namely those in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain – have won over ten league titles since the UEFA Champions League was introduced in the 1992-1993 season?

Round 2 points
(Maximum: 20)

Total points
(Maximum: 43)

Round 3

Question 1

What is the only number that when spelt has its letters in alphabetical order?

Question 2

Which novel by Australian Joan Lindsay sees three girls and a teacher from the Appleyard College girls boarding school vanish during a school trip?

Question 3

Since the 1970s, what scientific test used in law enforcement has most commonly involved searching for the presence of lead, antimony, and barium using an energy-dispersive x-ray conducted with a scanning electron microscope?

Question 4

Which East Asian country was the birthplace of Broadway stars Lea Salonga and Rachelle Ann Go, as well as the entire cast of a 2023 production of the musical Here Lies Love about this nation’s most famous first lady?

Question 5

What popular British sweet was launched in the US on March 30, 2025, only for the CEO of the UK retailer behind the brand to say ‘we might have to change our minds’ after the US President announced global tariffs?

Question 6

Which small garden bird holds the record for the most birds ever found together in a single nest box by the RSPB, with 61 of them found roosting in a box in Norfolk during the winter of 1969?

Question 7

From 1981 to 2005, the company Hoverspeed ran a hovercraft service between which two nations?

Question 8

As well as his solo work, musician Paul Weller had number one albums in the UK as a member of which two bands?

Question 9

Depending on how one interprets their identities, there are between six and nine different people named Mary in the Bible’s New Testament. What four Marys appear in at least five verses of the New Testament?

Question 10

What are the seven non-European countries, including countries situated within both Europe and Asia, that have had a winner of one of cycling’s three Grand Tours – those being Le Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a España?

Round 3 points
(Maximum: 21)

Total points
(Maximum: 64)

Round 4

Question 1

Buzz Aldrin, famous for his role on the Apollo 11 mission and being the second man to walk on the moon, legally changed his name to Buzz in 1988, it having previously been a nickname he had had since childhood. What was Buzz Aldrin’s original first name?

Question 2

In organic chemistry, what name is given to the simple sugars with the chemical formula C_xH_2xO_x from which all other carbohydrates are built, with examples including glucose, fructose, and galactose?

Question 3

In 2009, which woman had to move back into a psychiatric hospital after The Sun published a double page spread showing her shopping with her daughter, The Daily Mail released the name of the village in which she was living, and a British paparazzo broke into her kitchen and started taking photos of her, moves which led Austrian newspaper Österreich to label the British tabloid press ‘Satan reporters’?

Question 4

Although Mark Twain is often misquoted as having said ‘reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’ when his cousin was ill, which American writer did get to read his obituary in 1871 when several newspapers reported he had been run over by a train – an erroneous report based on the death of a man with a similar name that led the New York World newspaper to say it would not publish any more obituaries of people who were not ‘reliably dead’?

Question 5

Which American poet wrote the fourteen-word poem ‘In a Station of the Metro’, which was published in 1913 and reads: ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd: / Petals on a wet, black bough.’?

Question 6

What banknote was one of the seven denominations included in the first series of euros issued in 2002, but was not included in the second series of euros which was introduced from 2013, and has not been printed since 2019?

Question 7

What are the only NFL teams to have played each other in three Super Bowls?

Question 8

An early example of a travel guide, Freda White’s 1952 book ‘Three Rivers of France’ highlighted points of interest near which three rivers of southwest France, all of which give their names to départements and connect to the Garonne on its way to Bordeaux?

Question 9

Although added to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill in 2021, recognising that they can feel pain, decapod crustaceans have not been added to the UK’s Animal Welfare Act, meaning guidelines on the treatment of crabs, lobsters, and shrimp remain voluntary. In the absence of legal obligation, what four broad commitments are pressure group Crustacean Compassion asking supermarkets to implement in the sale of crustaceans?

Question 10

What are the eight field disciplines that appear in the Olympics athletics programme?

Round 4 points
(Maximum: 21)

Total points
(Maximum: 85)

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.

The following dishes are all based on what foodstuff?

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: 95)