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Quiz 2017

December 31, 2017 Hans

Looking back on 2017

Question 1 - Charlotte Church, Celine Dion, Elton John... What did they all have in common in January?

Question 2 - On assuming the presidency, Donald Trump was put in charge of “the biscuit” and “the football”. What are they?

Question 3 - Which veteran actor provoked hilarity by admitting that he’d spent his entire life thinking himself circumsised – until his third wife put him straight?

Question 4 - George Osborne started a new job in March, which pays £650,000 a year, for working four days a month. What was the name of his new employer?

Question 5 - A picture of which British politician sneezing was used as a stock photo on a US news network, to illustrate a story about flu season?

Question 6 - What unfortunate incident catapulted the previously obscure Dr David Dao onto the front pages in April?

Question 7 - Playwright Jez Butterworth followed up his hit play Jerusalem with a new work – which also wowed the critics. Name it.

Question 8 - Emma Morano (pictured), the oldest woman in the world, died this year aged 117 in Italy. What was her peculiar distinction?

Question 9 - Guests needed a password to get in; 20,000 canapés were reportedly served by models; dinner was served in a glass marquee. What was it?

Question 10 - Which film star became, aged 100, the oldest woman ever to be made a Dame in the Queen’s birthday honours?

Question 11 - “Is there any one of the Royal Family who wants to be King or Queen? I don’t think so.” Who said it?

Question 12 - “Bong-o Gone-o that’s so wrong-o,” intoned a mournful Stephen Pound, MP. To what was he referring?

Question 13 - La Belle Sauvage, published in October, is the first part in an eagerly awaited trilogy by which author?

Question 14 - Ken Carson had a major makeover in June. Which blonde has he been dating on and off for more than 50 years?

Question 15 - What was the name of the Labour MP suspended from his party in October for referring – in old online posts – to gay people as “poofters” and teenagers at a rock concert as “sexy little slags”?

Science and medicine 2017

Question 1 - Name all the palindromic numbers, between 1,000 and 1,000,000, whose digits add up to five.

Question 2 - Carbon dioxide in a solid form is known as what?

Question 3 - For what achievement is the virologist Jonas Salk chiefly known?

Question 4 - If H20 is drinking water, what is D20?

Question 5 - What is a Platonic solid?

Question 6 - “She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper,” sang The Rolling Stones in 1966. To what drug were they referring?

Question 7 - With what three letters are otolaryngologists commonly associated?

Question 8 - The word “atom” is from the Greek atomos. What does it mean?

Question 9 - What is the word for the boundary between two air masses?

Question 10 - Daisy, Debbie, Dianna and Denise were all what to Dolly?

Question 11 - Which Greco-Roman astronomer, geographer, poet and mathematician was responsible for the Almagest?

Question 12 - What was the name of the Earth’s first artificial satellite?

Question 13 - What dangles 67 metres from the top of the Panthéon building in Paris?

History and politics 2017

Question 1 - What were Laurasia, Pangaea and Gondwana?

Question 2 - Who became, in the Labour government of 1929-31, the first female cabinet minister?

Question 3 - Which American homeopath lived at Hilldrop Crescent in London, until 1910?

Question 4 - Some 70,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed in the Third Battle of Ypres, between 31 July and 6 November 1917. How is the battle better known?

Question 5 - Of which country was Simón Bolívar (pictured) president?

Question 6 - Who was born in 1511, the first living son of Henry VIII?

Question 7 - What three words, associated with Jim Callaghan (though he didn’t say them), helped bring down the Labour government in 1979?

Question 8 - Which French leader established the Fifth Republic?

Question 9 - Who, in 1901, wrote a political pamphlet entitled “What is to be Done?”

Question 10 - Which country (then a British crown colony) was awarded the George Cross for gallantry in 1942? The Cross has only been awarded on a collective basis twice. To what body was it given the second time, in 1999?

Question 11 - The Magi who visited Christ after his birth aren’t named in the Bible. What are they commonly called in the Western Christian tradition

Literature and the arts 2017

Question 1 - Fugitive Pieces is the first collection of poems published by which poet?

Question 2 - Lionel Bart, creator of musical mega-hit Oliver! also authored mega-flop Twang!! Who was it about?

Question 3 - Which poems contain these lines:
a) She had A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
b) Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
c) Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert.

Question 4 - Only two of Shakespeare’s plays have subtitles. What are they?

Question 5 - The Parish Boy’s Progress and A Novel Without a Hero are the subtitles of which 19th-century novels?

Question 6 - Stieg Larsson said that his heroine Lisbeth Salander was modelled on another fictional character, grown up. Who was it?

Question 7 - Chilli beef, split pea, chicken gumbo and cheddar cheese all appear in which work of 20th century art?

Question 8 - For what is Vincent Van Gogh’s painting The Red Vineyard at Arles chiefly famous?

Question 9 - When Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in the US, they changed one word of the title. To what did they change it?

Question 10 - Which character connects Hamlet with Homer’s The Odyssey?

Question 11 - In what year did Charles Dickens die, aged 58?

At the movies 2017

Question 1 - “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Which film character utters that line – and which poet was he paraphrasing?

Question 2 - The Sound of Music (1965) was the biggest grossing musical of all time until 1978. What film knocked if off the top spot?

Question 3 - Phoenix Buchanan is the villain in which film, released this year?

Question 4 - Who was the first Disney Princess, in a film released in 1937?

Question 5 - Which fictional characters hail from a) Smallville, Kansas b) Hill Valley, California c) Toontown

Question 6 - Bring on the Empty Horses was a memoir by which quintessentially British star? For a bonus point, which director said it?

Question 7 - In which 1939 film is one character killed by a house and another with a bucket of water? In which 1964 film is a hat used as a murder weapon? What was the murder weapon in Basic Instinct? In which film does one character try to kill another with a typewriter?

Question 8 - La La Land (pictured) was mistakenly named Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. Which two stars presented the botched award? And what film had actually won?

Question 9 - Rick Deckard returned to the big screen this year – in what film?

Question 10 - Which classic film features a preacher with the words “love” and “hate” tattooed on his knuckles.

Question 11 - In John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, the chief enemy spy is identified by his hooded eyes. What physical characteristic distinguishes him in Hitchcock’s 1935 film version?

Places 2017

Question 1 - What river runs through Baghdad?

Question 2 - Which European capital city translates as “White City”?

Question 3 - What famous modern building sits on a small island called Bennelong Point?

Question 4 - When it was built, as a holiday chalet, it was called Haus Wachenfeld – but after being bought in 1933, what was it renamed?

Question 5 - By what name is the Gravelly Hill Interchange better known?

Question 6 - Which is the only US state named after an English county? Which is the most westerly US state?

Question 7 - Which country was, until 2011, unique in having a flag that was entirely one colour, with no insignia or other details.

Question 8 - The Danube flows through four European capitals. Name them.

Question 9 - On what continent would you find the Great Dividing Range?

Question 10 - The 12th-century Angkor Wat temple (pictured) is the largest religious monument in the world. In which country is it?

Question 11 - With how many countries does Argentina share a border?

The not-so-famous faces of famous writers

Name the famous writers pictured