Merry Quizmas

Since it doesn't look like this "Christmas" idea is going anywhere, we might as well embrace it. Have yourselves a Christmas quiz. The highest score when I ran this at the pub on Wednesday was 32. Good luck!


Round 1: Chranagrams

(Five anagrams of things associated with Christmas)

1. Hell wrath, yo!  (Holly wreath)

2. Ethnic girls  (Christingle)

3. Most elite  (Mistletoe)

4. Staunchest sort  (Roast chestnuts)

5. He doddered sheerer unlit porn  (Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer)


Round 2: December

1. In which Russian city did the Decembrist uprising take place in Senate Square in December 1825, which led a century later to the location being renamed Decembrist Square until 2008?  (St Petersburg)

2. "A Long December" was a 1996 single release for which band, whose back catalogue also includes the 1993 hit "Mr Jones", and the song "Accidentally In Love", which was Oscar nominated following its appearance in the film Shrek 2?  (Counting Crows)

3. People born in December have either the starsign Sagittarius or Capricorn, depending on the day. Which two planets are associated with these signs? (1/2 for each) (Jupiter and Saturn)

4. "Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December" is a line from which poem?  "The Raven"

 5. In the evening of which date in December do the Dutch begin the celebration of Sinterklaas?  5th


Round 3: The Ghost of Christmas Past

1. Former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day 1989, under a wide range of charges, in which country?  (Romania)

2. Which British physicist, mathematician, natural philosopher, theologian and occult obsessive was born on Christmas Day 1642 (Julian calender), and shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for developing differential and integral calculus? (Isaac Newton)

3. Which space probe stopped trasmitting on Christmas Day 2003, just before its scheduled landing on Mars?  (Beagle 2)

4. On Christmas Day 1941 the Free French liberated their first piece of former French territory, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, by successfully defeating a different group of French people. Saint Pierre and Miquelon lies just off the coast of which country?  (Canada)

5. Which R&B and soul singer, who passed away on Christmas Day 2006, was known amongst other things as "The hardest working man in showbusiness", having released well over sixty albums over a career spanning six decades?  (James Brown)


Round 4: Cake

1. Which '90s satirical series featured an earnest Bruno Brookes warning us that "Only an idiot would enter the nightmare of Cake."  (Brass Eye)

2. In what decade of the 18th Century was Marie Antoinette executed, after her cake-based prescription for society's ills was found wanting?  (1790s)

3. Yellowcake is a concentrate powder primarly made up of which radioactive element, atomic number 92?  (Uranium)

4. What do the eleven marzipan balls atop a simnel cake represent? (The original disciples of Jesus, minus Judas)

5. Who sang "MacArthur Park" in 1968, in which a cake is left out in the rain, causing great consternation to the singer, who has for some reason misplaced the recipe?  (Richard Harris)

　
Round 5: All I Want For Christmas... Is Another One Of Squid's Increasingly Unoriginal Music Rounds

(Five Xmas songs that have been laterally/cryptically renamed. Half a mark each for the real title, and the artists who recorded it).

1. "A Made-Up Story From South Of Albany"  ("Fairytale of New York", The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl)

2. "3,200 km"  ("2,000 Miles", The Pretenders)

3. "Perambulation Without A Surface" ("Walking in the Air", Aled Jones (though Peter Auty sang the original version in The Snowman))

4. "Poison Plants And Fermented Fruit"  ("Mistletoe and Wine", Cliff Richard)

5. "Arrest Those Men on Horseback" ("Stop the Cavalry", Jona Lewie)


Round 6: Santa-Shaped (AKA "Who ate all the mince pies?")

1. Who played Fat Bastard in the second and third Austin Powers movies?  (Mike Myers)

2. Who was reputed to hold important wartime meetings whilst still in his bath?  (Winston Churchill)

3. Sumo wrestling, a noble sport in which two expansive gentlemen pit themselves against each other in martial combat, requires that the competitors cleanse the dohyo, or ring, with what substance prior to each bout?  (Salt)

4. What was the nickname of prepubsecent obesonaut Billy Bunter?  (The Fat Owl of the Remove)

5. Which foodstuff is created by forcibly turning geese or ducks into horrible fatties and then removing their livers? (Foie gras)


General Knowledge

1. Who won this year's Crucible World Snooker Championship Final? (John Higgins)

2. What is kudzu? (A weed)

3. Which planet has moons named after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope? (Uranus) 

4. Modern-day Romania is made up of three former principalities of autonomous regions: Moldova, Transylvania, and which third region, which is sometimes further diivied into Muntenia and Oltenia?  (Wallachia)

5. Which instrument represents the duck in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf?  (Oboe)

6. Jonquil, Mikado and Naples are all shades of what colout?  (Yellow)

7. According to popular legend, for whom is a "Dead Man's Hand" in poker named? (Wild Bill Hiccock)

8. For what crime was former French President Jacques Chirac convicted last week? (Embezzlement)

9. What shape is the playing field in Australian Rules Footaball? (Oval)

10. What is the square root of 841? (29)