Simon's Christmas Quizzes

Christmas Quiz 2018

1. What is the name for the top part of a fraction?

Numerator [accept dividend]

2. Which building is known colloquially as Paddy's Wigwam?

Liverpool RC Cathedral [Accept Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral]

3. Many of the spacecraft in the Alien film francise are named from the works and life of which major novelist?

Joseph Conrad

4. Which word for a minor transgression comes from the Spanish for 'little sin'?

Peccadillo [from pecado, sin]

5. What is the name of Cambridge University's art and antiquities museum?

Fitzwilliam Museum

6. George Balabushka and John Parris are famous names in the manufacture of which items of sports equipment?

Cue sticks [accept pool cue, snooker cue]

7. What is the traditional Neapolitan song made famous by Enrico Caruso and Elvis Presley, which takes its name from a waterfront district in the Bay of Naples?

Santa Lucia

8. The word 'ounce' is derived from the Latin for what fraction?

A twelfth

9. Which C20th author's work contains the recurrent alter ego Stephen Dedalus?

James Joyce

10. What is the main gas in the Ozone Layer?

Nitrogen [It’s a region of Earth’s stratosphere with a higher than normal (but extremely small) concentration of ozone]

11. In which English port is there a dock tower based on the bell tower of Siena's Palazzo Pubblico?

Grimsby

12. What do we call the remnant of the supernova first observed in July 1054?

Crab Nebula (M1; NGC1952)

13. What does the K stand for in AK-47?

Kalashnikova (accept Kalashnikov)

14. What event took place while President George W Bush was reading a children's story entitled The Pet Goat?

The 9/11 attacks.

15. Who is the protagonist in Truman Capote's 1958 novella 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'?

Holly Golightly

16. Filippo Brunelleschi famously engineered the dome of which cathedral?

Florence Cathedral [Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore]

17. Which author penned the line "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."?

Douglas Adams [The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy]

18. Which English town suffered a major fire in 1854, and a consequent explosion so large that it destroyed the commercial district of the neighbouring town with heavy debris and fire.

Gateshead

19. In which game is 'God Bless You' a useful mnemonic?

Snooker [The order of the colours on the ‘D’.]

20. What is the generic term for organisms that drift in the surface layer of open water?

Plankton

21. Which African country lost its entire 800 mile coastline in 1993?

Ethiopia (as a result of Eritrean independence)

22. What is the name of the rough-surfaced scraping and cutting structure unique to molluscs, which is broadly equivalent to a tongue?

Radula

23. Janet Planet was the first wife of which prominent singer-songwriter?

Van Morrison

24. Which king was killed at the Battle of Flodden?

James IV of Scotland

25. Which country elected a lesbian Head of Government in 2009?

Iceland [Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir]

26. What platform number was added to London King's Cross railway station in May 2010?

Platform 0

27. What lies at the bottom of the hypothalamus at the base of the brain?

The pituitary gland

28. Which grumpy old man lived at No 1 Coronation Street for the first 10 years of the soap?

Albert Tatlock

29. For what was Albert Einstein awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics?

The photoelectric effect. [“for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”]

30. In Beaumarchais' famous play who is the Barber of Seville?

Figaro

31. Which English football club has a fanzine called 'Gary Mabbutt's Knee', even though Mabbutt never played for them?

Coventry City [They won the 1987 FA Cup final after Mabbutt scored an own goal in extra time.]

32. Although often said to be untranslatable, how is the Greek word 'logos' usually translated in the New Testament?

Word [“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, …”]

33. Stelvin is the most well known brand of what?

Wine bottle screw caps

34. Who wrote the 1949 classic of feminist literature, 'The Second Sex'?

Simone de Beauvoir

35. The civilian vessel Kobayashi Maru and the training exercise named after it form a recurring theme in which media franchise?

Star Trek

36. Glera is the main grape used to produce which Italian wine?

Prosecco

37. Which piece of DNA does a woman always inherit from her mother, making it important in anthropological research?

Mitochondrial DNA

38. In Armenia 6th January is a public holiday celebrating what?

Christmas Day

39. Which familiar Italian cheese is made from whey rather than curds?

Ricotta

40. Who sits on the Chrysanthemum Throne?

The Emperor of Japan

41. In sport, what is a 'panenka'?

A soccer penalty kick consisting of a deft kick down the centre of the goal. [Named after Antonín Panenka, who used it to win the penalty shootout for Czechoslovakia in the 1976 European Championship final against West Germany.]

42. Which chemical element derives its name from the Greek word for the element lead?

Molybdenum

43. Spanish Town is one of the larger towns and a former capital of which island?

Jamaica

44. On which university campus did Sir Denys Lasdun design the famous ziggurats for student accommodation?

University of East Anglia

45. What do the three lions represent on the Duke of Edinburgh's coat of arms?

Denmark [Born Prince of Greece and Denmark]

46. Which traditional song refers to "his horn in the morning"?

D’ye ken John Peel

47. What kind of shop is named after the certificate permitting it to trade?

Off-licence

48. Which river forms much of the border between the USA and Mexico?

Rio Grande [del Norte]; aka Río Bravo [del Norte]

49. In which EU city is there a municipal food market called the English Market?

Cork, Ireland

50. Who famously had the words "This machine kills fascists" written on his guitar?

Woodie Guthrie