MSO’s annual quiz competition is open to pairs, and always features some very entertaining and thought-provoking questions. The 2017 Quiz will take place on Sunday, August 27.
Meanwhile, here are last year’s questions and answers:
ROUND ONE: NOT QUITE RANDOM
1. Which river is the fifth longest in the UK and forms part of the border between England and Wales?
2. Where on the human body would you find the sclera?
3. One co-author of the original Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister TV series died this week. What was his name?
4. What commonly consumed product is made from the leaves and buds of the Camellia sinensis plant?
5. Karl von Frisch won a Nobel prize for studying the movements of which living creatures?
6… and which plant did Gregor Mendel study to discover the basics of genetics?
7. Which palindromic animal can produce cheese?
8. Which alchemist adviser to Queen Elizabeth I is the subject of an opera by Damon Albarn?
9. The American actor/singer/comedian David Daniel Kaminsky died in 1987. By what name was he better known?
10. What do all these answers have in common?
1. Wye
2. the eye – it’s the white part.
3. Antony Jay
4. tea
5. bees
6. pea
7. ewe
8. John Dee
9. Danny Kaye
10. All letters of the alphabet
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ROUND TWO: HISTORY:
1. What do Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Henry VI, Edward IV, Henry VIII, Queen Victoria and George V have in common?
2. Which was the most recent year in which there were three Popes?
3. What did US Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both do on 4 July 1826?
4. On July 25, 1909, Louis Bleriot made the first cross-channel crossing by plane. What first channel-crossing happened fifty years later on July 25, 1959?
5. Who did Jack Ruby kill on November 24, 1963?
6. From 1513 to 1972, every monarch of this country was named either Christian or Frederick. Which country?
7. What did Van Diemen’s Land change its name to in 1856?
8. Which English King died 800 years ago this year in 1216?
9. What did the Swiss engineer George de Mestral invent in the mid-20th century and name after the French words for hooks and velvet?
10. In which Italian town was Leonardo da Vinci born?
1. All succeeded by Edwards
2. 1978
3. died
4. first channel crossing by hovercraft
5. Lee Harvey Oswald
6. Denmark
7. Tasmania
8. King John
9. Velcro
10. Vinci
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ROUND THREE: PLACES
1. Where did “yu” change to “me” in 2007 and why?
2. Of which country is Mswati III the king?
3. What is the only US state with no letters in common with the word ‘mackerel’?
4. What is the only London tube station with no letters in common with hare (or hear)?
5. How far is it from London to Rio de Janeiro by air? (within 500 miles or 800km)
6. Which of the Wombles was named after a town in Siberia?
7. Where was Jeremy Corbyn going on a Virgin train when he sat in the corridor?
8. Which UN member has the longest name using only one distinct vowel? (name either of them)
9. Which UN member nation has a one-word name that uses all five vowels?
10. Name a S American country with the same number of letters in its name and the name of its capital.
1. In Montenegro – internet domain suffix changed from .yu to .me.
2. Swaziland
3. Ohio
4. Pimlico
5. 5762 miles (9272km)
6. Tomsk
7. Newcastle
8. Madagascar and Seychelles
9. Mozambique
10. Paraguay (Asuncion) or Peru (Lima)
ROUND FOUR: ANIMALS
1. By what name are Choloepus and Bradypus commonly known?
2. Which animal used to be called camelopard?
3. Which animal is said to have directly killed the Greek tragedian Aeschtylus in the 5th century BC?
4. What was the name of the black panther in Kipling’s Jungle Book?
5. Which breed of dog does not bark but makes a noise that has been described as a yodel?
6. Which is the only play by Shakespeare to mention a rhinoceros?
7. What is this? (pointing at picture on T-shirt)
8. What was unusual physically about Ernest Hemingway’s cats?
9. What is the name of the resident chief mouser cat at the Foreign Office?
10. Martha died at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens on September 1, 1914, the last of her species. What species was that?
1. Sloth
2. Giraffe
3. Tortoise
4. Bagheera
5. Basenji
6. Macbeth
7. Pangolin
8. They had six toes
9. Palmerston
10. Carrier pigeon
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ROUND FIVE: BOOKS
1. Who said: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read”.
2. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar is warned to beware the Ideas of March. What date in March is the Ides?
3. In which book did a bottle of Amarone turn into Chianti when it was made into a film?
4. What was the title of the third Harry Potter book?
5. What was the name of the monster or giant slain by Beowulf in the Anglo-Saxon epic?
6. “A novel by a Scottish writer” is an anagram of a novel by a scottish writer. What is it and by whom?
7. Whose autobiography, published in 2007, was entitled My Booky Wook
8. Which book begins with the words “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”?
9. Which book, which became a multi-oscar winning film, ends with the words “After all, tomorrow is another day”
10. What is the title shared by a play by Agatha Christie and a play-within-a-play in Shakespeare’s Hamlet?
1. Groucho Marx
2. 15th
3. Silence of the Lambs
4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
5. Grendel
6. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
7. Russell Brand
8. 1984 (by George Orwell)
9. Gone With The Wind
10. The Mousetrap.
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ROUND SIX: AS RANDOM AS LAST TIME
1. What was the surname of the character played by Clint Eastwood in the film Dirty Harry?
2. Who wrote the line “Oh to be in England now that April’s there?
3. Who was US President at the outbreak of World War 1?
4. Of which restaurant chain was Ray Kroc Chief Executive from 1961-1974?
5. What was the name of the romantic hero destroyed by his passions in Wuthering Heights?
6. What’s the capital of New Zealand?
7. Which British official until 1968 was responsible for censorship of plays?
8. Which date has been celebrated as Star Wars Day since 2011?
9. Which rank in the British army is between Captain and Lieutenant Colonel?
10. What do all these answers have in common?
1. Callahan
2. Robert Browning
3. Woodrow Wilson
4. McDonalds
5. Heathcliff
6. Wellington
7. Lord Chamberlain
8. May 4
9. Major
10. All include names of British PMs (more or less)
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ROUND SEVEN: FILMS
1. In the original book and the 1967 film of Casino Royale, what crucial game does James Bond play against Le Chiffre?
2. What did Snappy, Snoopy, Blabby, Flabby, Hotsy, Hungry and Chesty have in common in 1937?
3. In Disney’s The Lion King, Timon and Pumba sing “Hakuna Matata”. In which language does Hakuna Matata mean “no worries”?
4. Who was the last actor to win back-to-back Best Actor Oscars?
5. What does the L in Samuel L Jackson stand for?
6. Which 2009 oscar-winning film had as its title a misspelt version of a 1978 Italian war movie?
7. The 1993 film Groundhog Day has recently been produced as a hit musical. What is the date of Groundhog Day?
8. What was the name of Dorothy’s dog in The Wizard of Oz?
9. What was the title of the first Jason Bourne film?
10. Who wrote the script for the never-made film Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit
1. Baccarat
2. All rejected as names of the Seven Dwarfs
3. Swahili
4. TomHanks (Philadelphia and Forest Gump)
5. Leroy
6. Inglourious Basterds
7. February 2.
8. Toto
9. The Bourne Identity
10. Quentin Tarantino
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ROUND EIGHT: TOTALLY RANDOM
1. What did Marvin C. Stone of Washington DC in 1888 say should ideally be 8.5in long, and narrow enough to stop lemon pips being sucked up?
2. What do people who suffer from linonophobia fear?
3. Which well-known composer was born on February 29, 1792?
4. He died in November 1868. How many true birthdays had he had by then (not counting the day he was born)?
5. What did Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, define as “A temporary insanity curable by marriage”?
6. What is Donald Trump’s middle name?
7. Which part of every normal human’s body is an anagram of another part? (Ears/Arse is not an acceptable answer)
8. What is 2016 in binary?
9. What is Whitcomb L Judson famous for inventing around 1891?
10. How many times do the words girl or girls appear in the King James Bible?
1. Drinking straws.
2. String
3. Rossini
4. 18
5. Love
6. John
7. elbow bowel
8. 11111100000
9. the zipper (clasp locker or unlocker for shoes)
10. once each
With 2 points per correct answer (1 point for half right) and one Joker round in which the score is doubled, the winning score was 107, made up by 47 correct answers and one half-correct.
