Round 1
Question 1
How many cards are used in the street confidence trick Find the Lady, in which passers-by are invited to follow and then point to the face-down card which they think is a queen, only to inevitably be incorrect and lose their money?
*The trick is also called three-card monte.
1 point
Question 2
What is the most common human hair colour in the world?
*Black is by far the most common hair colour in both Asia and Africa.
1 point
Question 3
Since taking office in January, the administration of US President Donald Trump has recruited 23 people who have been employees or contributors to which television network?
1 point
Question 4
Per the US’s Center of Disease Control, 2025 has so far seen 14 outbreaks and 1088 confirmed cases of which disease in the country – a significant rise on the 285 cases that occurred across all of 2024?
1 point
Question 5
Scottish snooker player Stephen Maguire, a former UK champion, has a medical exemption that allows him to not wear what item of clothing whilst playing?
*Maguire wore a bow tie in his early career, but developed a neck condition which put him off his game.
1 point
Question 6
In the Japanese horror film Ringu (The Ring), based on a novel by Koji Suzuki, what item must be passed on within seven days of seeing it in order to avoid being hunted by the ghost of Sadako, the girl sealed in a well?
1 point
Question 7
Connected to the Scottish city of Edinburgh, brown ‘chippy sauce’ – also known locally as just ‘sauce’ – is generally considered to a 50/50 mixture of which two other condiments often eat on chips – although chip shops around the city claim their own ‘secret’ recipes?
*Although HP Sauce is the most famous brown sauce, a reported 95 per cent of chip shops in Edinburgh get their brown sauce from manufacturer Walter Black Foods just outside Glasgow.
Vinegar
2 points
Question 8
What are the single-word names by which the four respective year groups in a US high school, catering to students in Years 9-12, are known? The terms are also generally used for students in their first, second, third, and fourth year of college or university.
Sophomore
Junior
Senior
4 points
Question 9
Although now discredited by its own inventor after he concluded swelling is part of the human healing process, for what do the four letters stand in the RICE guideline of treating a soft tissue injury in which swelling is likely?
Ice
Compression
Elevation
4 points
Question 10
Make the longest word possible from the following letters: ACEHILNTU
Up to 9 points
(*length of word equates to points awarded)
Round 1 points
(Maximum: 25)

Round 2
Question 1
‘Die klitzekleine Spinne
Kroch in die Regenrinne
Der Regen kam
und spülte die Spinne aus der Rinne
Dann kam die Sonne
und Vertrieb den Regen
Die klitzekleine Spinne
Kroch wieder in die Rinne’
is the German version of which nursery rhyme?
1 point
Question 2
What is the name of the protruding tubular mouthpiece possessed by many insects, through which they suck fluids such as nectar, sap, or blood?
1 point
Question 3
Per the app’s data for 2024, what is the only country in which Italian is the most studied language on learning app Duolingo?
1 point
Question 4
Which planet in the solar system has the strongest winds, blowing at over 1700km/hour?
*The fastest natural wind recorded on Earth was a cyclone hitting Barrow Island, Australia, at 408km/h in 1996. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is about 430km/h.
1 point
Question 5
In what sport did Kirsty Coventy, voted the President of the International Olympic Committee in 2025, represent Zimbabwe at five Olympic games?
1 point
Question 6
First described in 1995, the Japanese honey bee has developed a defensive behaviour called the ‘hot defensive bee ball’ in which hundreds of bees swarm around what species when it tries to attack the colony, raising the temperature inside the ball to around 46°C for 30 minutes and effectively roasting the intruder to death?
*Five times the size of a honey bee, giant hornets can decimate a bee colony, especially if a scout is allowed to escape and alert its nest of a food source: footage has shown 30 giant hornets killing 30000 bees in just three hours, mostly through decapitation., in order to reach larvae. Sightings of the hornet in the US have raised fears it could threaten domestic bees that have not yet learnt defences, just as the smaller Asian hornet did when it arrived in Europe, although bees have shown some signs of behavioural evolution: Cyprus honey bees has developed a similar defence against a third type of hornet, the Oriental hornet, in which it swarms the invader, asphyxiating it.
1 point
Question 7
On Saturday, Paris Saint-Germain became the second French team to win the Champions League, coincidentally in the same city as the previous French winner. What was the previous French team to win, and in which city did the two win their titles?
Munich
2 points
Question 8
In the 2025 edition of Forbes’s annual ‘World’s Most Valuable Soccer Teams’ list, published on May 30, six of the top ten teams are from England. What are the four non-English teams?
*Manchester United (#2), Liverpool (#4), Manchester City (#5), Arsenal (#8), Tottenham Hotspur (#9), and Chelsea (#10) are all in the top ten. Real Madrid have the highest value, at $6.75bn.
Barcelona (#3)
Bayern Munich (#6)
Paris Saint-Germain (#7)
4 points
Question 9
What six colours are used by Ordnance Survey to indicate different types of roads on its standard road maps?
Green (primary roads)
Red (A roads)
Orange (B roads)
Yellow (road less than 4m wide)
White (track, drive, or other road)
6 points
Question 10
What are the nine countries that are known to possess nuclear weapons?
Russia
China
France
UK
India
Pakistan
Israel
North Korea
9 points
Round 2 points
(Maximum: 27)
Total points
(Maximum: 52)

Round 3
Question 1
For what Roman goddess is the month of June named?
1 point
Question 2
With varieties including finger and pearl, what cereal crop is a staple grain in much of Africa, forming the basis of dishes such as hausa koko and thieboudienne? The continent is estimated to harvest 90 per cent of the world’s total yield of this crop.
1 point
Question 3
Famous for its psychedelic qualities, what type of plant is peyote?
1 point
Question 4
Who was described as ‘the greatest of the silent clowns’ by critic Roger Ebert and ‘the most important stuntman ever’ by critic Mark Kermode, with his film The General described by Orson Welles as ‘the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made’?
1 point
Question 5
Mentioned in the Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody, what is the name of the boastful yet cowardly clown figure in Italian Commedia dell’arte who dresses in black and is prone to scheming, who is also utilised in English Punch and Judy puppet shows?
1 point
Question 6
In 2024 a couple from Saxony in eastern Germany were awarded the equivalent of £278 in compensation after they were unable to get what while on holiday in Rhodes?
*The court found that the hotel at which the couple were staying had not fulfilled its promise to remove towels left on sun loungers if no person was present for 30 minutes, and that the morning rush for sun loungers was against hotel policy.
1 point
Question 7
The 1997 Macy’s Parade in New York is widely recognised as a disaster due to high winds, with one woman put into a month-long coma after a giant Cat in the Hat balloon knocked the top of a lamppost into a crowd, fracturing her skull. However, arguably its most famous incidents were when police had to stab holes into the giant balloons of which two children’s TV characters – one pink, one purple – because handlers were struggling to control them?
*The 72ft Pink Panther balloon (100ft to the end of its tail) was initially flown horizontally due to the winds, but still got out of control and reportedly knocked one handler unconscious. Images of handlers trying to hold the Barney balloon as the crowd screams, before it is torn open by a lamppost and officers rush in to completely deflate him, is known as ‘the day Barney was killed’. Because of the trouble of 1997 parade, balloons over 70ft were banned for future editions. Nine years after the parade the woman knocked into a coma, Kathleen Caronna, had debris from a plane crash land in her bedroom.
Barney
2 points
Question 8
Nicknamed ‘the mother of the oceans’ due to accomplishments such as helping establish the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, maritime lawyer Elisabeth Mann Borgese was the daughter of which Nobel Prize-winning author, and the sister-in-law to which English poet – the latter because the poet married her sister Erika so she could escape Nazi Germany?
W.H. Auden
2 points
Question 9
Also known as a CSC, CID, or CVC by other card issuers, the CVV on a Visa card is the three-digit security number on the back of the card. For what three words do the letters CVV stand?
Verification
Value
3 points
Question 10
According to data from April 2025, of the 107 Italian provincial capitals, what are the six most expensive in which to buy property, based on price per square metre? Five of the six also serve as a capital to one of Italy’s 20 regions.
*Bolzano-Bozen is the only one of the six which is not a regional capital, as Trento (the 7th most expensive provincial capital) is the regional capital. The town with the highest house price in Italy is luxury Tuscan seaside resort Forte dei Marmi, where the average house costs €1.5 million.
Venice (€4,651/m2)
Bolzano-Bozen (€4,612/m2)
Florence (€4,406/m2)
Bologna (€3,468/m2)
Rome (€3,163/m2)
6 points
Round 3 points
(Maximum: 19)
Total points
(Maximum: 71)

Round 4
Question 1
Ignoring the colon between numbers, what is the shortest period of time that exists between two palindromic times on a 12-hour digital display clock (for example, 61 minutes exists between 1.01 and 2.02)?
1 point
Question 2
In May, Lyme Bay Winery became the first English winery to win an International Wine Challenge trophy for both its red and white wines – with one red described as having an aroma of ‘autumn leaves, ripe cherries, dried herbs, and iodine’, and a white having the flavours of ‘wet stones, citrus zest and a long, lingering finish’. In what English county is Lyme Bay Winery?
*Lyme Bay on England’s south coast is the start of the South West Pensinsula, where Dorset’s coast curls southwest and becomes Devon’s coast. Although it has its own vineyard, the winery uses grapes from all over England’s south coast.
1 point
Question 3
A double – or bifid – zygomaticus major muscle, in which the zygomaticus major muscle separates into separate stronger and weaker bundles, is believed to be the cause of what anatomical feature estimated to be present in 20 – 30 per cent of the world’s population?
*The zygomaticus major muscle runs from the corner of the mouth to the cheekbone and helps produce many facial expressions.
1 point
Question 4
In 1958, surf guitar group The Champs had a number one hit in which only one lyric is used, repeated three times in the entire song, making it the non-instrumental number one with the least amount of words. What word was repeated?
1 point
Question 5
What unusual scoring feat has only been achieved by two players in the English Premier League: Obafemi Martins and Bobby Zamora? German Andreas Brehme also achieved the feat in World Cup final tournaments when he scored against Mexico in the 1986 quarter final and against Argentina in the 1990 final.
*Martins also managed to miss a penalty with his right and left foot.
1 point
Question 6
The Jewish festival of Hannukah celebrates the recovery of Jerusalem and ‘cleansing’ of the Second Temple, led by which Jewish priest and leader nicknamed ‘the hammer’?
1 point
Question 7
In celestial navigation, what are the two respective terms – both beginning with the letter a and measured in degrees – for an angle measured vertically from a point (for example the horizon) and an angle measured horizontally from a point (for example north)
Azimuth
2 points
Question 8
What are the respective final lines of the two parts of the film Gone With the Wind – that being the final line before the intermission, and the final line at the end of the film – both of which are well known, but neither being ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’?
*’Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’ is Rhett Butler’s final line, but both parts of Gone With the Wind conclude with Scarlett picking herself off the ground and vowing to fight on.
“After all, tomorrow is another day.”
2 points
Question 9
What are the three ‘golden week’ holidays in China, so called because of the amount of time given off for each? One week is in January or February, another in May, and the final one in October.
Labour Day (May Day)
National Day
3 points
Question 10
Given depending on the amount of tries it takes to get the correct answer, what are the six one-word responses a player could receive for getting a correct answer in the New York Times Wordle game?
Magnificent
Impressive
Splendid
Great
Phew
6 points
Round 4 points
(Maximum: 19)
Total points
(Maximum: 90)

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 country were the following people all born?
Clue 1
Maurice Wilkins
10 points
Clue 2
Roseanne Park
9 points
Clue 3
Keith Urban
8 points
Clue 4
AJ Hackett
7 points
Clue 5
Ernest Rutherford
6 points
Clue 6
Kiri Te Tanawa
5 points
Clue 7
Jacinda Arden
4 points
Clue 8
Jonah Lomu
3 points
Clue 9
Edmund Hillary
2 points
Clue 10
Russell Crowe
1 point
Round 5 points
(Maximum: 10)
Total points
(Maximum: 100)