Simon's Christmas Quizzes

Lockdown Quiz, June 2020

1. What would a Vietnamese man do with his dong?

Spend it [or similar] [It’s the Vietnamese currency.]

2. What are the cathode rays in a cathode ray tube?

Streams of electrons

3. Which Latin phrase is used of a diplomat no longer welcome in the host country?

Persona non grata

4. Which familiar and internationally recognizable word is Swahili for 'journey'?

Safari

5. In which 1960s TV series did the main character say "I am not a number! I am a free man!"?

The Prisoner

6. Who wrote the poem 'Night Mail' for a short 1936 GPO documentary, thereby transforming the latter into a work of art?

W H Auden

7. Oryx and Crake is a dystopian futuristic novel by which highly acclaimed contemporary author?

Margaret Atwood

8. What do we call an animal with four legs specialized for walking?

Quadruped [accept tetrapod]

9. Which pasta has a name that means 'little worms' in Italian?

Vermicelli

10. What is the plural of opus?

Opera

11. What do you get if you divide the sine of an angle by its cosine?

Tangent

12. Which Northumbrian island is also called Holy Island?

Lindisfarne

13. What was removed from Westminster Abbey by four Scottish students on Christmas day 1950?

Stone of Scone [The Coronation Stone; Stone of Destiny]

14. Which kind of hat is named after a city in Morocco?

Fez

15. What is the significance of the question "May I have a large container of coffee?"?

Mnemonic for the decimal digits of Pi.

16. Which city lies on the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile?

Khartoum

17. Who in a 60s song darns his socks in the night when there's nobody there?

Father McKenzie (in Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles)

18. In which city are the famous Spanish Steps, a monumental stairway of 138 steps?

Rome

19. Who or what is Kylo Ren?

Fictional character in Star Wars. Chosen name of Ben Solo, only child of Hans Solo and Princess Leia.

20. In which game might you see whites on a green?

Cricket

21. Which musical instrument takes its name from the Greek for wood?

Xylophone

22. Which EU country elected a female Head of State in 1997 to replace the female Head of State elected in 1990?

Ireland [1990 Mary Robinson; 1997 Mary McAleese]

23. In which English county can you find a signpost to Ham and Sandwich?

Kent

24. Who played a Fender Stratocaster left-handed strung upside down?

Jimi Hendrix

25. What is the name for the salad of apple, celery and walnuts dressed with thin mayonnaise?

Waldorf Salad

26. What do we call an object's resistance to its kinetic state?

Inertia [Inertial mass; (relucantly) accept mass]

27. How many novels did Emily Bronte write?

One (Wuthering Heights)

28. Who was Plato's famous teacher?

Socrates

29. In which city are the Tivoli Gardens?

Copenhagen

30. In which country are the Southern Alps?

New Zealand

31. Which Stravinsky ballet was first performed in Paris in May 1913 causing a sensation and near-riot?

The Rite of Spring

32. Which classic TV series had five brothers named after Project Mercury astronauts?

Thunderbirds

33. What was Germaine Greer's 1970 international bestseller which became a key text of the feminist movement?

The Female Eunuch

34. The Mathematical Bridge spans which English river?

Cam [Queens’ College Cambridge; officially called the Wooden Bridge]

35. In general terms, how many high tides are there per day?

Two

36. On which date precisely was the Storming of the Bastille?

14 July 1789

37. Who remarked to a group of students in Peking in 1986, "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed"?

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

38. Which meat is braised with vegetables in the Milanese speciality ossobuco?

Veal

39. Which American film actor of the 1950s attained legendary status after his untimely death, despite only starring in three films?

James Dean

40. Which phrase is used in the Anglican tradition to represent the three persons of the Holy Trinity?

The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost [or Holy Spirit]

41. What did Samual Johnson supposedly describe as "a worm at one end and a fool at the other"?

Angling. [“Angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other”. Not found in his works; attributed by Hawker.]

42. Who say "Exterminate!"

The Daleks

43. Who famously spoke at the Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963?

Martin Luther King Jr (“I Have a Dream”)

44. Who was the famous cartographer who created a new world map in 1569, representing constant sailing courses as straight lines?

[Gerardus] Mercator

45. What is a dried plum called?

Prune

46. Which familiar substance is a major raw material in glass manufacture?

Sand

47. What is the only county in England with two separate coastlines?

Devon

48. What is the name of the 1942 report that laid the framework for the development of the Welfare State?

Beveridge Report (officially called Social Insurance and Allied Services)

49. The crest of whose coat of arms was an azure kiwi grasping an ice axe.

Edmund Hillary

50. What word describes rocks profoundly altered by heat and pressure?

Metamorphic