Quiz #40

In the hit song by Gladys Knight and The Pips, what time was her man’s train back to Georgia?

Question 2

Of New Zealand’s two largest islands, the North Island and the South Island, which has the bigger population?

Question 3

Julia Gillard, Australia’s only ever female Prime Minister, was born in which country within the UK?

Question 4

In North America, what animal is colloquially referred to as the ‘trash panda’?

Question 5

Climbing cameraman Jimmy Chin, big mountain skier Chris Davenport, snowboarder Travis Rice, mountain bike trialist Danny MacAskill, and BASE jumper Matthias Giraud are all ambassadors for which brand of action camera?

Question 6

Found in a single villa, the Herculaneum papyri are approximately 1800 papyrus scrolls that were carbonized by what event of 79AD?

Question 7

What two animals appear in the title of a fable by Aesop about respecting all members of society regardless of size, sometimes phrased as the moral ‘small friends can be powerful allies’? The fable sees a large animal not kill a small animal, who in return frees the large animal when it is caught in a hunter’s net.

Question 8

The colours of the Italian flag, what are three core ingredients of a Caprese salad?

Question 9

Ignoring degrees of strength such as ‘shower’, ‘light’, and ‘heavy’, what five forms of precipitation have distinct weather symbols on Met Office weather forecasts?

Question 10

Make the longest word possible from the following letters: CEEELNOQU

Round 1 points
(Maximum: 25)

Round 2

Question 1

In the DC comic book universe, The Daily Planet newspaper employs Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Clark Kent a.k.a. Superman. Which multimillionaire, famous from another DC comic strip, part-owns the paper, technically making him Superman’s boss?

Question 2

A potage garden, or potage, is a garden used for growing herbs and vegetables. What type of food is the French word potage?

Question 3

In English geography, which mountain range separates the cities of Leeds and Bradford from Manchester and Liverpool?

Question 4

The hit songs Manic Monday by The Bangles, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ by Sinéad O’Connor, ‘I Feel For You’ by Chaka Khan, and ‘Love…Thy Will Be Done’ by Martika were all written by which musician?

Question 5

In an interview on his wife’s podcast last week, former US President Barack Obama reiterated his opinion that what is a childish condiment that people should not eat past the age of eight?

Question 6

According to the British Medical Association, what title may surgeons use instead of ‘doctor’?

Question 7

What two capital cities sit on the north and south coasts of the Rio de la Plata?

Question 8

Released in 1964, 1965, and 1966, what are the three films in the Dollars spaghetti western trilogy directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as The Man with No Name?

Question 9

In the animation series Family Guy, what are the names of Peter and Lois Griffin’s three children and dog?

Question 10

According to the Royal Mint, what nine coins were in circulation in the UK prior to Decimal Day on February 15, 1971?

Round 2 points
(Maximum: 24)

Total points
(Maximum: 49)

Round 3

Question 1

In July, Sesame Workshop, the makers of children’s TV show Sesame Street, had to issue an apology after an X social media account belonging to which character was hacked, resulting in the character appearing to post several strongly racist and antisemitic messages, as well as accusations against the US President?

Question 2

Standing over 1.2m tall, weighing nearly 15kg, and with a wingspan of 3m, what species native to South America is the world’s largest raptor?

Question 3

Which of the world’s oceans is the shallowest, with an average depth of around 1000m and its deepest point, Molloy Hole, at 5500m, being approximately half the depth of the Mariana Trench?

Question 4

The addition of what metallic element, comprising no less than 10.5 per cent of the total content, stops the alloy known as stainless steel from rusting?

Question 5

The Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco is known for the discovery of fossils belonging to what species – the oldest known example of this species?

Question 6

First released in 1963, the Kellogg’s cereal Froot Loops was devised as a way to use the machinery left over from the shortlived OKs cereal, which had been Kellogg’s attempt to copy what cereal brand released by General Mills in the 1940s?

Question 7

What are the two properties that are specified and/or measured when a magnetic field is considered as a vector field – that being how a magnetic field sits within space. These properties are most easily understood when a field is drawn using lines.

Question 8

During the Covid-19 pandemic, what was the first country to announce a nationwide lockdown, doing so on March 9, 2020? What country had the largest single announcement lockdown, placing over a billion people under lockdown on March 24, 2020? And which South American capital city had the longest continuous lockdown, lasting 234 days from March 20 to November 11, 2020?

Question 9

In Catholicism, what three books of the Bible are named after women – one more than in Protestantism?

Question 10

The longest European road route, the E40, connects Calais in France with Ridder in Kazakhstan via which eight other countries?

Round 3 points
(Maximum: 22)

Total points
(Maximum: 71)

Round 4

Question 1

What play by William Shakespeare concludes with the character Rosalind delivering an epilogue in which she states ‘It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue, but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue’, before saying she would kiss all the men in the audience with good beards and complexions, and the same amount will applaud her.

Question 2

In the build up to the English Civil War, fought between royalists and parliamentarians, Charles I arrived at which city in April 1642 in order to gain control of its large arsenal, only to be told he was not allowed to enter? When he arrived with an army of 4000 men in July and was again told he couldn’t come in, a two week siege began which ended with the king leaving for Nottingham instead.

Question 3

What three-word phrase has been given to the forced relocation in the US of the so-called ‘civilised tribes’ of the Cherokee, Chickasow, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole, to west of the Mississippi by the 1830 Indian Removal Act? The death toll from the relocation is estimated at over 10000, with around a fifth of the Cherokee population dying during the move.

Question 4

On July 5, Marko Perković, who goes by the stage name Thompson and is known for his controversial ultra Christian and nationalist lyrics, set a world record for most tickets sold for a concert when over 450000 people paid to attend his performance in which Eastern European city?

Question 5

What alliterative nickname has been given to the Mid Proterozoic period, a time from 1.8 billion years ago to 0.8 billion years ago, when stable plate tectonics, low oxygen levels, the dominance of Prokaryotes such as bacteria, and slow evolution meant a billion years of relatively little change in the Earth?

Question 6

Taken from the German words for ‘island’ and ‘mountain’, what word is used to describe large rock forms that suddenly rise out of a plain, such as Uluru in Australia, Devil’s Tower in South Dakota, the Spitzkoppe peaks in the Namib desert, and Suilven in Scotland?

Question 7

In 2016, two street food stalls in Singapore became the first such establishments to ever be awarded Michelin Stars. What types of meat do the two stalls respectively specialise in cooking?

Question 8

A key site during the Kumbh Mela, Ardh Kumbh Mela, and Purna Kumbh Mela bathing festivals, when millions of Hindus arrive at the site, what three rivers converge at the Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj?

Question 9

What are the three types of muscle tissue within the human body, which in turn are divided into sub-categories? Only one of the muscle types can be moved voluntarily, and has a name connected to its presence in boned vertebrates, while the other two are respectively named for the organ in which it is found and its texture?

Question 10

According to local authority designations, what are the five cities in the Republic of Ireland – a definition that rankles with Kilkenny which calls itself a city but according to an Irish Government statement in 2000 has not legally been a city for ‘at least 160 years’?

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.

What company manufactured all of the following models of car?

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: 100)