Judith Keppel’s Quiz

1. In 2011, South Sudan became an independent country. What is the name of its capital?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Juba

2. Name the online social networking service founded by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and others?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Twitter

3. What was the name of the Downing Street cat officially employed as Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office – serving under Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair – who got his moniker from a character in the BBC sitcom Yes Minister?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Humphrey (named after the civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Nigel Hawthorne)

4. If the cardinals taking part in a papal conclave look up to the ceiling, they may be inspired in their deliberations by the work of which artist?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Michelangelo, whose paintings adorn the Sistine Chapel where the papal conclave takes place

5. A war memorial commemorating 72,246 British Empire servicemen with no known graves, who died at the Battle of the Somme, takes its name from which nearby village?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Thiepval

6. In the Hitchcock film Psycho, who plays the woman who is stabbed to death in the shower?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Janet Leigh

7. The 1974 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, which was known as the Rumble in the Jungle, took place in which city?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo)

8. In Greek mythology, while in the Underworld, Odysseus encounters the ghost of which blind seer of Thebes?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Tiresias

9. What was the name of David Bowie’s last album, released two days before his death in January 2016?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Blackstar

10. Which celebrated chef started Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons hotel-restaurant in 1984?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Raymond Blanc

11. What name was given to the hypothetical substance that alchemists believed would turn base metals into gold?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

The philosopher’s stone

12. Who wrote the fantasy novels on which the Game of Thrones TV series is based?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

George RR Martin

13. Name the British rider who won an individual gold medal for show jumping at 2016's Olympic Games in Rio?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Nick Skelton

14. Who in the Bible used the jawbone of an ass to slay a thousand Philistines?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Samson

15. What was the name adopted by the character born Richard ‘Dick’ Whitman in an American TV drama series?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Don Draper from advertising industry drama Mad Men. Whitman stole the name from his dead Korean War commanding officer

16. Which of Shakespeare’s plays begins with the line: ‘If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia…’?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

The Winter’s Tale

17. What might a doctor detect with an Ishihara test?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Colour blindness

18. Who became a presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in 2015, replacing James Naughtie?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Nick Robinson

19. Which politician said of Boris Johnson ‘[He] is the life and soul of the party, but he isn’t the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening’?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary

20. The Pigeon Tunnel is a memoir by which British author?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

John Le Carré

21. Which mediaeval English king had 12 crosses erected in memory of his wife, Queen Eleanor, at the stopping points where her funeral cortege rested on the way from Nottinghamshire to London?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

King Edward I

22. Which three rivers make Manhattan an island?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

The East, Hudson and Harlem rivers

23. Which space probe, launched in 2011, is currently orbiting Jupiter?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Juno

24. What is the name of the cup awarded to the winner of the annual Christmas Day swimming race in the Serpentine?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Peter Pan Cup

25. What sticks up out of the pastry in a Stargazy Pie?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Fish heads and tails

26. Name the Foreign Secretary who resigned in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Lord Carrington

27. Who played DSI Stella Gibson in the TV series The Fall?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Gillian Anderson

28. Which surname was shared by Joe, John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean and Edward?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Kennedy

29. Which French footballer once remarked rather mysteriously ‘When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea’?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Eric Cantona

30. In which opera is Violetta Valéry loved by Alfredo Germont?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

La Traviata

31. What do the names Cochin, Wyandotte, Silkie and Scots Dumpy have in common?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

They are all breeds of chicken

32. What is the name of the Hindu god of wisdom who is usually portrayed as an elephant?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Ganesha

33. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which creatures were used as mallets in the game of croquet?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Flamingoes

34. Who plays the part of The Girl On the Train in the film of that name?

Answer: (highlight the text below to see the answer clearly)

Emily Blunt

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