Quiz #71

According to The Gentleman’s Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness, published in 1860, a gentleman should take two pairs of what to a ball in case you ‘soil’ one?

Question 2

How many hours time difference is there between Dakar in Senegal on the west coast of Africa and Mogadishu in Somalia on the east coast of Africa?

Question 3

Between 1994 and 2022, the tourist attraction Puzzling World in Wanaka, New Zealand, offered a reward for psychics who could read the founder’s mind in order to locate a NZ$50000 promissory note hidden on the property. Noting that the search radius was reduced from 5km to 100m in 2006, when the number of notes was also doubled from one to two, how many of the seven people who attempted the challenge – all of whom claimed to be psychics, diviners, spiritualists, or led by divine forces – found the money?

Question 4

Around which continent is the world’s largest ocean current, which moves approximately 137m Sverdrups – or 137 cubic metres – of water per second?

Question 5

What number is the new Scream sequel which was released on February 25, 30 years after the original film?

Question 6

What world news event that occurred on Saturday February 28 has prompted suspicions of insider trading via the prediction market platform Polymarket after six accounts – five of which were newly created – won a collective $1.5m by speculating the event would happen on that very weekend?

Question 7

Although they are more commonly referred to as bucks and does, what two names that appear in the title of a well-known nursery rhyme can be used to describe a male and female hare?

Question 8

Which two South American countries have competing claims to being the birthplace of the dance and music genre known as tango?

Question 9

Which three nations brought the most athletes to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina?  

Question 10

Make the longest word possible from the following letters: DEEGINRSS

Round 1 points
(Maximum: 22)

Round 2

Question 1

Released on February 27, Requiem is the latest installment in which long-running survival horror computer game series developed by Capcom?

Question 2

Known as an ice cream bar in the US, what is the British English name for a bar of vanilla ice cream coated in chocolate which can either be eaten as a bar or from a stick?

Question 3

Commonly used in tackling cardiac ailments, what is the name of the medication that interferes with hormones’ ability to bind to β-adrenergic receptors situated in cell membranes, thus reducing the effects of stress hormones such as adrenaline?

Question 4

What exclamation beginning with the letter z goes before ‘went the strings of my heart’ to complete the title of a song recorded by Judy Garland in the 1930s and given a soul disco restyling by US group The Trammps in 1972?

Question 5

Which UK political party leader was surprised by finance campaigner Martin Lewis during a morning television interview on February 23 when he appeared unannounced to argue about her party’s policy on student loan repayments?

Question 6

In what sport has Iranian-French player Mansour Bahrami earnt the nickname ‘The Trick Shot King’ due to his flamboyant and often comic display of unusual skills, particularly since moving into the ‘Champions Tour’ for retired professionals?

Question 7

What two animals appear on the national flag of Mexico?

Question 8

After what nation is the type of table service in which courses are served one after the other named? And, conversely, after what nation is the table service in which all the courses are placed around the table at the same time named?

Question 9

On February 28, a ‘planetary parade’ of six planets was visible from Earth – albeit two required binoculars or telescopes to be seen. To mark the occasion, NASA has released a ‘sonification’ of which three planets created by converting x-rays emitted by the planets into notes played by instruments?

Question 10

Across 2024 and 2025, art website My Art Broker conducted a survey in which 7642 people named the artwork they would most like to own. What four works by Vincent van Gogh appeared in the top 50 most popular answers, one of which was named number one?

Round 2 points
(Maximum: 17)

Total points
(Maximum: 39)

Round 3

Question 1

What type of monkey is Punch, a resident of Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan which has garnered internet attention in 2026 after it was abandoned by its mother and has subsequently been seen clinging to a surrogate soft toy after being bullied by other monkeys?

Question 2

(C₈H₈)_n is the chemical formula of what common polymer which can exist as either a solid or foam, the second of which has been banned in an increasing number of nations in the 21^st century due to its prevalence in single-use plastics, its non-biodegradable nature, and the reluctance of recycling firms to process it?

Question 3

The most common phrase in the Hebrew Bible is ‘al-tirah’. Into what reassuring phrase does this translate in English?

Question 4

In the context of Amish and Mennonite communities, what is the ordnung?

Question 5

His name a variant spelling of the title character in an Isaac Asimov short story, what was the name of the robot that appeared in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, made guest appearances in numerous television shows including The Twilight Zone, The Addams Family, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Lost in Space, and in 2017 was sold at a New York auction for $5.375m, overtaking the Maltese Falcon statue to become the most expensive film prop ever sold?

Question 6

In meteorology, what is a ‘parcel’, as described in ‘parcel theory’?

Question 7

Which two plays by US playwright Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Question 8

In which three present day East African countries was the territory known as Africa Orientale Italiana, or Italian East Africa, which existed from 1936 to 1941?

Question 9

On February 17, King’s College London professor Kenneth Payne published a research paper outlining what happened when he ran wargame simulations featuring artificial intelligence models by what three companies – the results of which included the models issuing nuclear threats in 95 per cent of the simulations, ‘accidental escalation’ occurring in 86 per cent of games, and the only de-escalation being a reduced aggression rather than use of any of the eight de-escalation techniques offered?

Question 10

Both Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson were arrested by UK police on a charge of Misconduct in Public Office. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, what four criteria must all be proven for a person to be convicted on this charge, making it a ‘high bar’ offence which is harder to convict?

Round 3 points
(Maximum: 18)

Total points
(Maximum: 57)

Round 4

Question 1

In April 2024, the Minimum Income Requirement for a person to sponsor a family visa in the UK moved from £18600 to £29000, meaning any UK national earning less than this amount – unless they have cash savings of over £88500 – cannot bring their non-UK national spouse into the country on this visa, irrespective of the spouse’s income. Equivalent to £24400 after tax, and based on the Institute for Fiscal Studies data, what percentage of single-person UK households do not currently earn enough money to bring a foreign spouse into the country? The percentage is a multiple of 10. 

Question 2

Launching in March, what is the one-letter name of the new social media platform that is being developed in Europe with the emphasis on it meeting European privacy and speech laws?

Question 3

What name is given to a style of floorboard in which a slot is cut along one long edge of the board, and a protrusion left along the other, thus allowing adjacent boards to slot together without glue or any cracks between the boards?

Question 4

In June 2020 the largest dust plume event in two decades blew large amounts of desert dust from the Sahara to the Caribbean. After what fictional movie monster was the event named due to its size?

Question 5

The SNC-Lavalin Affair was a scandal that broke in Canada in 2019 after the country’s government was alleged to be trying to influence an on-going criminal case against leading construction company SNC-Lavalin. Whilst not related to the government’s desire to interfere with the case, to which nation’s dictatorship was SNC-Lavelin being accused of having paid bribes between 2002 and 2011?

Question 6

In 2025, London Borough Market date seller Syed Usman Shah was selected as one of the new faces for Heathrow airport’s ‘Welcome’ posters which are displayed around its arrivals terminal. Although only one of 38 posters, and the campaign having run since 2011, an abundance of subsequent online racial and anti-Muslim abuse led Shah to offer free dates to the abusers if they did what?

Question 7

What are the two primary types of dental veneer, named for the materials used to make them?

Question 8

Described by Home Secretary David Blunkett as his ‘biggest regret’, and criticised by future Prime Minister David Cameron and the UN, the controversial IPP prison sentence was implemented in England and Wales between 2005 and 2012 and allowed the government to keep prisoners for an indefinite amount of time if they were deemed a risk to safety public, ultimately leading to over 1000 of the 8711 prisoners still being in prison today – two-thirds of whom have served over ten years longer than their initial sentence – and 94 suicides. For what does IPP stand in relation to this type of sentence?

Question 9

Which four men served as UK Prime Minister on two or more separate occasions during the 20^th century?

Question 10

Since its unification in 1871, and including both West Germany and East Germany during its later time of partition, what five different single-word English titles have been used to describe the head of state of Germany? In some cases the original German term is as widely known as the English translation and is therefore an acceptable answer.

Round 4 points
(Maximum: 20)

Total points
(Maximum: 77)

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 people all share what surname?

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: 87)