Quiz #39

What word connects the English county known as ‘The Garden of England’ and the 18^th century architect and garden designer who developed the ‘English landscape garden’ style, and whose most famous gardens are Rousham House and Stowe Gardens?

Question 2

吃 (chi), 碰 (peng), and 槓 (gang) – or chow, pung, and kong – are moves in which table game?

Question 3

Andy Byron, the married CEO of tech company Astronomer, has become involved in a media controversy after he was caught with his arms around Kristin Cabot, the company’s head of HR, during a ‘kiss cam’ segment of a concert in Boston by which British band?

Question 4

Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California on July 17, 1955, with a chaotic live broadcast during which one presenter wandered around on live TV trying to find a microphone and another was caught kissing a dancer when the camera cut to him. Which future US President was part of the presenting team for the broadcast?

Question 5

Used by 3.6 million people every day, Shinjuku Station is in which city?

Question 6

What connects the London underground stations Mill Hill Park, Gillespie Road, Euston Road, Gower Street, and Dover Street?

Question 7

What are the two names given to the offspring of a horse and a donkey – one for when the horse is male and the donkey female, and the other for vice versa?

Question 8

The three most common colours used on national flags are red, white, and blue. What are the next three most common colours?

Question 9

What four countries in South America have more vowels than consonants in their name?

Question 10

Make the longest word possible from the following letters: ADEERSTYY

Round 1 points
(Maximum: 24)

Round 2

Question 1

What breed of dog was Chaser, an American dog that knew the names of over 1000 toys, could follow sequential instructions, and could learn through inferential reasoning by exclusion – that being the ability to associate a new word with a unfamiliar object by reasoning that the word could not refer to any of the objects it already knew? In January, a six-year old of this breed named Harvey was named Britain’s most intelligent dog for being able to recognise the names of over 200 toys.

Question 2

Which edition on Microsoft Windows will be retired on October 14, meaning it will no longer receive user support?

Question 3

What is the profession of Sam McKnight, a job which has seen him work with Kate Moss, Bella and Gigi Hadid, Naomi Campbell, and Princess Diana, as well as contribute to over 200 covers of Vogue magazine?

Question 4

Using a light and a plate of glass to upscale an illusion created by engineer Henry Dircks, what did English scientist John Henry Pepper create on stage during a production of a Charles Dickens Christmas story on Christmas Eve 1862, making him a London theatre sensation?

Question 5

About which aspiring comedian was the following review written in 1978: “Looking like a garden gnome made out of rubber, he pops up in almost every sketch in Beyond a Joke… he has the born comic’s gift of getting laughs out of even such mundane activities as shaving, taking off a woman’s coat in a restaurant or reading out a roll-call.”

Question 6

Which woman, who passed away last week, became the first female solo singer to have a US Number 1 single when she  topped the charts with ‘Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool’ in June 1960? She had already twice topped the UK charts with ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ and ‘Stupid Cupid’.

Question 7

Which two nations played out a historic penalty shootout at football’s European Women’s Championship on Thursday, during which one goalkeeper became the first player in the competition’s history to save four penalties – yet her team still lost? Her opponents, meanwhile, became the first country in the competition to miss three consecutive penalties in a winning effort.

Question 8

What two cities in the UK have a V&A, or Victoria and Albert, museum?

Question 9

Not including ‘seasoning to taste’, what are the four official ingredients in the filling of a Cornish pasty, as specified by its Protected Geographical Indications listing?

Question 10

Which four key figures from the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which monarchy was ultimately replaced by Communism and the country became the USSR, are symbolised by the characters Farmer Jones, Old Major, Snowball, and Napoleon in the book Animal Farm by George Orwell?

Round 2 points
(Maximum: 18)

Total points
(Maximum: 42)

Round 3

Question 1

The town of Lalibela in Ethiopia is famous for eleven examples of what type of rock-hewn building, created in the ground in the 12^th and 13^th century by extracting the earth from around the structure?

Question 2

Which country has won every women’s team archery Olympic gold medal since the competition was introduced in 1988, as well as winning 10 of the last 11 women’s individual golds?

Question 3

In Northern Ireland, ‘the surrender principle’ is a rule governing licences to do what?

Question 4

Famous for his pastoral pictures of cottages and country gardens bathed in light, what American painter was described by critics as an ‘exceptionally talented artist with excruciatingly bad taste’ who made ‘kitsch’ art in which everything ‘looks as if it’s made of cotton candy’, yet oversaw a company that brought in over $100m a year from reproductions before his death in 2012?

Question 5

With what may be seen as a high degree of irony, which Chinese city’s men’s football team went on a remarkable run of success during the Covid-19 pandemic, winning the Chinese League 2 title in 2020, the Chinese League 1 title in 2021, and Chinese Super League title in 2022 – with all three seasons affected by the virus?

Question 6

The French phrase ‘gueule de bois’, translated as ‘mouth of wood’, describes what physical state? 

Question 7

What type of bird has the longest beak relative to its body size? And what type of bird has the largest beak relative to its body size if measured by total surface area?

Question 8

Greek musician Vangelis produced the soundtracks for what films released in 1981 and 1982 respectively, both of which were on the shortlist for the American Film Institute’s Greatest Film Scores list – although neither was chosen.

Question 9

Who were the five founding inductees to the shortlived UK Music Hall of Fame when it opened in 2004, one selected to represent each of the decades from the 1950s to 1990s, and only one of which was from the UK?

Question 10

Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, became famous for its rousing conclusion in which he said Britain and France would fight Nazi Germany in which eight locations and never surrender?

Round 3 points
(Maximum: 23)

Total points
(Maximum: 65)

Round 4

Question 1

Which French writer of the 17th-century was censored by the Catholic Church for his works such as ‘Tartuffe’, in which a house guest uses religious piety to wow his hosts whilst trying to seduce the lady of the house, and ‘Don Juan or The Feast of Stone’, in which a womaniser feigns repentance?

Question 2

The porticoes, or covered walkways, of which Italian city are a UNESCO World Heritage Site? They are believed to be the longest examples of such architecture in the world.

Question 3

Lwa, of which there are over 1000, are divine spirits in which religion?

Question 4

In what time signature is a polka?

Question 5

In the film Casablanca, World War II resistance leader Victor Laszlo and his wife Isla go to Rick’s Café Américain in order to buy black market transit papers to which neutral European country – thus bringing Isla into contact with old flame Rick?

Question 6

In 2024, an aerial survey conducted in South Sudan confirmed a new record for the largest land mammal migration in the  world, with the six million participating animals roughly 2.5 times as many as the famous wildebeest and zebra Great Migration in Tanzania and Kenya. Approximately 5 million of the 6 million migrating animals belonged to what species?

Question 7

Both the Dozenal Society of America and the Dozenal Society of Great Britain advocate for the switch from a decimal system of counting to a duodecimal – or base 12 – system, which would involve creating two new digits. Called dek and el, the two new numbers favoured by both societies are denoted by symbols created by rotating which existing digits through 180°?

Question 8

According to lego.com, three of the top ten Lego sets in terms of number of bricks come from its Star Wars line. With 7541, 6785, and 6187 pieces respectively, what three Star Wars vehicles make up these sets?

Question 9

Four of which have names relating to their size and/or strength, what are respectively the world’s longest beetle when including antennae; world’s longest beetle without including antennae; longest beetle by body size; heaviest beetle as a larva; and heaviest beetle as an adult?

Question 10

In The Odyssey, as retold by Homer, what are seven monsters or magical figures – not including vengeful gods – that endanger Odysseus and his crew before he meets the Phaeacians, who return him to Ithaca?

Round 4 points
(Maximum: 23)

Total points
(Maximum: 88)

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.

What type of food is used in all of the following dishes?

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: 98)