tablequiz.net

Here are the answers to the questions posted yesterday in Kids these days… All of them.

It became the post with the most comments ever on this site so it obviously piqued some interest.  Yes, I know five comments doesn’t exactly put boards.ie under threat but it’s a big deal here.  You’re a quiet bunch.

The questions are pretty impressive.  I got into quizzing when I was in primary school but unfortunately I remained the big fish in a small pond as our school quiz team never actually took part in any competitions! I have one vague but pleasant memory of my mother returning home from a parent-teacher meeting and telling me that, whilst academically I was “doing well”, my teacher had been much more impressed that I’d known the name of  Cardinal Ó Fiaich* in a quiz he’d called out from a newspaper.  It had been about three weeks beforehand but he still remembered it when the P/T meeting came along.  Well, I was about 8 at the time!

Anyway, this is just to illustrate my belief that the quizzing kids of today no doubt got most of these questions right.

Sample round answers:

1. Complete the title of the animated cartoon TV series: Spongebob Square…. what? A> Pants
2. The male is called a stag, the female a hind or doe, the young is called a fawn.  What animal is it? A> Deer
3. A sultana or a raisin is a dried what? A> Grape
4. Buongiorno means “good day” in which language? A> Italian
5. Which insect transmits the disease malaria? A> Mosquito
6. Which capital city is built on the river Spree? A> Berlin

Now, on to the serious business…

Difficult questions:

1. What three letter word, ending in ‘i’, is used for the sash or belt worn in Japanese martial arts? A> Obi
2. How many wings has a wasp? A> Four
3. How many hoops are used in a game of Association or Golf Croquet? A> Six
4. Which animal group, found in every continent except Antartica, has members called Goliath, Paradoxical and Edible? A> Frog
5. Complete the title of the second book in R.L. Stine’s original Goosebumps series, featuring Dr Brewer and his children Margaret and Casey: ‘Stay out of the ….‘ A> Basement
6. In which country did the sport of Taekwondo originate? A> Korea
7. Known in Libya by the Arabic word ‘Ghibli’, by what Italian name is this hot, dry, Mediterranean wind known? A> Sirocco
8. The largest city square in the world is in China.  What is it called? A> Tiananmen Square
9. Starting with the letter ‘r’, what name is given to birds of prey that hunt for food mainly on the wing, using their keen senses, especially vision? A> Raptor
10. What country was crossed from south to north for the first time by Burke and Wills in 1860-61? A> Australia
11. Which country won the most gold medals at the 2008 Olympics? A> China
12. A Rhode Island Red is a breed of what? A> Hen (They better have accepted “chicken” too! **)
13. Name the Scottish poet who wrote the words for Auld Lang Syne. A> Robert Burns
14. Kara Tointon, who played Dawn Swann in Eastenders, was the 2010 winner of which BBC television series? A> Strictly Come Dancing
15. The world’s largest tree, by volume, is a Giant Sequioa in California.  In 1879 it was named after which American Civil War general? A> William Sherman
16. What is the name given to the four large veins that return blood to the heart from the head and neck? A> Jugular
17. Who did Nicolas Sarkozy succeed as President of France? A> Jacques Chirac
18. The ‘Tsar Kolokol’ is on display in the grounds of the Kremlin in Moscow.  What is it? A> A bell
19. What country provides 97% of the world’s Opal production? A> Australia
20. The largest moon in the Solar System orbits Jupiter.  What is its name? A> Ganymede

There were a couple of doozies in there!  Well done if you knew all 20.

And good luck in secondary school next September.

* Strangely, I have a much clearer memory of the fact that I spelled it wrongly: “Ó Fee”, as his name was pronounced.

** What is this Irish obsession with calling the species chicken by the word which describes an adult female of that species. I should have made this an election issue last month. 🙂