Tuesday 20 March 2007

THE TUESDAY QUIZ

Here are the first 30 questions. Any score above 10 is great going - see how you do:

1. Which preciously ornate and sophisticated prose style that was fashionable in the 1580s is a mannered style of English writing that takes its name from the works of John Lyly?
2. In culinary terms, what is the Scoville Scale used to measure?
3. What name is shared by an island in the Indian Ocean belonging to Australia and an island in the Pacific Ocean belonging to the Republic of Kiribati?
4. The design of New York's Central Park was based on that of the public park in which English town?
5. Who was the Roman goddess of thieves, impostors and frauds?
6. Which Nazi was the German Foreign Minister between 1938 and 1945 and was hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials?
7. Which American rock group, founded in the mid 90s, is named after the term used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over Europe and the Pacific?
8. Which satellite of Jupiter, home to lakes of molten sulphur and calderas several kilometres deep, is the most volcanically active body in our solar system?
9. Which Spanish tennis player won the men's singles title at the French Open in 1993 & 1994?
10. Which English actor and body-builder played Darth Vader in the original 'Star Wars' trilogy and later became the Green Cross Code Man?
11. Which term, often applied to the works of Rembrandt and Caravaggio, means 'light-dark' in Italian and is used to describe the use of strongly contrasting light and shade in a work of art?
12. Which spice used in South East Asian cuisine and common in mediaeval European recipes is sometimes known as blue ginger?
13. Which American statesman, soldier and lawyer appears on the $10 note?
14. Who was the English dressmaker, nurse and housekeeper who was hanged in 1873 for the murder of up to 20 people by arsenic poisoning, including three of her husbands?
15. Who was the legendary hero-king of Sumeria of the 3rd Millennium BC, credited with superhuman strength, who was the subject of an epic poem from Babylonia that is among the world's earliest known literary works?
16. Rashid Karami, who was assassinated in 1987, was the Prime Minister of which Asian country?
17. Who was the virtuoso rock guitarist who toured with Ozzy Osbourne before being killed in a plane crash in 1982?
18. What is the more common name for the dietary habit known as anthropophagy?
19. What is the name of the stick used in certain traditional Gaelic sports such as shinty and hurling?
20. Which of the Marx Brothers left the group to fight in World War I and did not appear in any of the Hollywood films?
21. Which 19th-Century Irish author wrote the early vampire novella 'Carmilla' and other gothic novels such as 'Uncle Silas' and 'The Rose and the Key'?
22. What is the name of the small sponge cake soaked in rum and syrup said to have been invented by King Stanislaus of Poland?
23. Which is the most densely populated state of the USA?
24. Which battle of the Wars of the Roses, fought on Palm Sunday 1461, was the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil, with over 20,000 men killed?
25. Which monster of Puerto Rican legend, with a name deriving from the Spanish for 'goat-sucker', is said to kill its prey, usually livestock, by sucking out all its blood?
26. Who was the Japanese Prime Minister from 1941-1944 who was later executed for war crimes?
27. Which New Wave group did Boy George leave in order to form Culture Club?
28. Which American physicist of Spanish descent, born in 1911, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968 and was the first scientist to propose that dinosaurs became extinct as a result of a giant meteor impact with Earth?
29. What does a copoclephilist collect?
30. Before becoming Prime Minister, of which governmental department was Jim Hacker the minister in 'Yes, Minister'?

Please feel free to give me your opinion on the quiz. Every Tuesday I shall be uploading a 30-question quiz for you guys, packed with some of my favourite questions. If you have a favourite quiz question then please share it with us here.

Anyway, the answers:

1. EUPHUISM
2. 'HOTNESS' OF CHILI PEPPERS
3. CHRISTMAS ISLAND
4. BIRKENHEAD
5. LAVERNA
6. JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP
7. FOO FIGHTERS
8. IO
9. SERGI BRUGERA
10. DAVID PROWSE
11. CHIAROSCURO
12. GALANGAL
13. ALEXANDER HAMILTON
14. MARY ANN COTTON
15. GILGAMESH
16. LEBANON
17. RANDY RHOADS
18. CANNIBALISM
19. CAMAN
20. GUMMO
21. SHERIDAN LE FANU
22. RUM BABA
23. NEW JERSEY
24. BATTLE OF TOWTON
25. CHUPACABRA
26. HIDEKI TOJO
27. BOW WOW WOW
28. LUIS WALTER ALVAREZ
29. KEYRINGS
30. DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great quiz!