AstraZeneca logo

Macclesfield Quiz League
Sponsored by AstraZeneca

You are here:

Questions
2017–18 Season
Cup Round 1

Printable version

For a PDF version of this file, please click here.

2017–18 Season: Cup Round 1 – 24 October 2017

These questions have been jointly set, vetted, and balanced by the Park Timers and the Ox–fford C.

1 In which European capital city is Oscar Wilde buried?
Click to show or hide the answer
2 Apart from Cyprus, which is the only other Commonwealth country in the Mediterranean Sea?
Click to show or hide the answer
3 What was the surname of the first father and son to be presidents of the USA?
Click to show or hide the answer
4 What does CAMRA stand for?
Click to show or hide the answer
5 If you are a quinquagenarian, how old are you?
Click to show or hide the answer
6 What is the capital of Saudi Arabia?
Click to show or hide the answer
7 In which Shakespeare play does the eponymous character smother his wife?
Click to show or hide the answer
8 Which of Henry VIII's wives did he complain was a Flanders mare?
Click to show or hide the answer
9 Flushing Meadows, Roland Garros and Melbourne Park are all Grand Slam venues in which sport?
Click to show or hide the answer
10 Apart from Charles, the Prince of Wales has another three Christian names. Name one of them.
Click to show or hide the answer
11 In which European city is the UN's International Court of Justice based?
Click to show or hide the answer
12 In Scottish cuisine, what is a bannock?
Click to show or hide the answer
13 The Angel of the North is erected next to which major road?
Click to show or hide the answer
14 Obstetrics is the study of what?
Click to show or hide the answer
15 Which term for heavy summer rain in Asia is also the name of a high street clothing chain?
Click to show or hide the answer
16 On 31st October 1517, who nailed a piece of paper on a church door in Germany that, according to his followers, kick–started the Reformation?
Click to show or hide the answer
17 Which Simon and Garfunkel song features the lyrics "Jesus loves you more than you will know"?
Click to show or hide the answer
18 Which Latin phrase means 'in good faith'?
Click to show or hide the answer
19 In maths, what is meant by two dots on the baseline and one dot above in a triangular formation?
Click to show or hide the answer
20 Who was leader of the Conservative Party for the 2005 General Election?
Click to show or hide the answer

21 Alphabetically, which is the last county in England?
Click to show or hide the answer
22 The Lutine Bell is in which London institution?
Click to show or hide the answer
23 Whose backing singers were called 'the Pips'?
Click to show or hide the answer
24 Where was the treaty signed that established the EEC?
Click to show or hide the answer
25 Which 1965 novel written by Frank Herbert was adapted into a 1984 movie directed by David Lynch?
Click to show or hide the answer
26 In which US city would you find the Woolworth Building?
Click to show or hide the answer
27 Which novelist won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature?
Click to show or hide the answer
28 What is the name of the military force responsible for the security of Vatican City?
Click to show or hide the answer
29 Which Northern Irish adventurer became the youngest ever Chief Scout in 2009 at the age of 35?
Click to show or hide the answer
30 Whose Weird Weekends led him to meet survivalists, porn stars and wrestlers (among many others)?
Click to show or hide the answer
31 Who was assassinated in 1990 when an explosive was placed beneath his Austin Montego by the IRA, which exploded as he reversed out of his driveway?
Click to show or hide the answer
32 In which English county would you find the Lakeside – home of the BDO Darts World Championship?
Click to show or hide the answer
33 Which country is home to the car manufacturer Dacia (pronounced dacha)?
Click to show or hide the answer
34 Which town is home to the football team known as the Spireites?
Click to show or hide the answer
35 The Worcestershire Way runs 31 miles from Bewdley to where?
Click to show or hide the answer
36 In the waters of which country would you find the wreck of the Rainbow Warrior?
Click to show or hide the answer
37 Which German composer lived in Bayreuth, Bavaria and built a theatre there at which festivals of his music have been heard ever since?
Click to show or hide the answer
38 Which British novelist also wrote under the name of Barbara Vine?
Click to show or hide the answer
39 1,2,3, etc are cardinal numbers. What sort of numbers are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc?
Click to show or hide the answer
40 Brian Faulkner was the last holder of which office in Northern Ireland?
Click to show or hide the answer

41 In Greek mythology, which dying monster gave birth to Pegasus?
Click to show or hide the answer
42 Zoomorphism is the representation of deities in the form of what?
Click to show or hide the answer
43 Which country has the largest muslim population in the world?
Click to show or hide the answer
44 What is the name of the family whose story is central to the Godfather films?
Click to show or hide the answer
45 Which former Portuguese overseas territory was returned to China in December 1999?
Click to show or hide the answer
46 Who was the last British Prime Minister to die in office?
Click to show or hide the answer
47 Who created the TV series Cracker?
Click to show or hide the answer
48 The reality TV show Big Brother was first televised in 1999 in which country?
Click to show or hide the answer
49 Who is the youngest driver to have won the Formula One drivers championship?
Click to show or hide the answer
50 Which Dutch city is known for its blue and white pottery?
Click to show or hide the answer
51 Which subatomic particle comes in six different flavors?
Click to show or hide the answer More about the answer
52 Which brand of cookie is the mobile phone operating system Android 8 named after?
Click to show or hide the answer
53 Jerry Springer was elected mayor of which important Ohio city in 1977?
Click to show or hide the answer
54 How many hours long is the famous motorcycle endurance race held at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan each year? Click for more information
Click to show or hide the answer
55 What is the name of the aura of plasma that surrounds the Sun which is visible during a solar eclipse?
Click to show or hide the answer
56 What was the name of the hurricane that caused major flooding in Houston, Texas in 2017?
Click to show or hide the answer
57 Which country's land borders, 909 kilometres (565 mi) long, are shared only with South Africa?
Click to show or hide the answer
58 Which is the largest brass instrument in an orchestra?
Click to show or hide the answer
59 Who is the current Shadow Home Secretary?
Click to show or hide the answer
60 Helles or Hell is a traditional German style of what?
Click to show or hide the answer

61 Which ruined Cistercian monastery is two miles from Ripon, North Yorkshire?
Click to show or hide the answer
62 Broadcasting Tower, winner of the (world's) Best Tall Building Overall Award in 2010, is in which British city? Click for more information
Click to show or hide the answer
63 In an Indian restaurant, what is murgh?
Click to show or hide the answer
64 Which traditional British pudding is made from custard thickened with breadcrumbs, topped with jam and meringue?
Click to show or hide the answer
65 Which retailer claimed in its advertising to be "good with food"?
Click to show or hide the answer
66 Which car manufacturer used the advertising slogan "Motion and emotion"?
Click to show or hide the answer
67 Which German battleship, a sister ship to the Bismarck, was named after the founder of the German Navy?
Click to show or hide the answer
68 To which legendary Greek poet are the Iliad and the Odyssey attributed?
Click to show or hide the answer
69 Today is Wayne Rooney's birthday. How old is he now?
Click to show or hide the answer
70 Today is also the birthday of former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman. How old is he? (some leeway on this one)
Click to show or hide the answer More about the answer
71 At 430 metres below sea level (and falling), what is the world's lowest lake?
Click to show or hide the answer
72 England's largest reservoir, by capacity, is Kielder Water. Which is the largest in terms of surface area?
Click to show or hide the answer
73 Which "costa" is the Atlantic coast of south–western Spain?
Click to show or hide the answer
74 Granville Island, False Creek, English Bay and Coal Harbour are coastal features of which Commonwealth city?
Click to show or hide the answer
75 Which range of hills, previously under Syrian control, has been occupied by Israel since 1967?
Click to show or hide the answer
76 Famous nowadays for the festival that takes place there in July each year, which city was historically the capital of the kingdom of Navarre?
Click to show or hide the answer
77 Which football club, based in Pamplona and relegated (again) from La Liga in 2017, has a name that's Basque for 'health', 'strength' or 'vigour'?
Click to show or hide the answer
78 Penshaw Monument features in the badge or crest of which Football League club? Click for more information
Click to show or hide the answer
79 Which French engineer built the Suez Canal, but failed to build the Panama Canal?
Click to show or hide the answer
80 If something is described as infundibular, what does this mean?
Click to show or hide the answer

81 What word, originally used of Greek city–states and derived from the Greek word for a leader, is used to describe political dominance by one member of a supposedly equal group?
Click to show or hide the answer
82 Once the fastest 'Star in a Reasonably Priced Car' on Top Gear, which former model is the great–granddaughter of the first Lord Beaverbrook?
Click to show or hide the answer
83 Which Russian former tennis player has been "romantically linked" with the Spanish singer, songwriter, actor and record producer Enrique Iglesias since 2001?
Click to show or hide the answer
84 What do the letters F, H, V, W and Y have uniquely in common?
Click to show or hide the answer
85 How many tiles are there in a mahjong set (standard westernised version)? Comments on the question
Click to show or hide the answer
86 Which mythical creature could kill with its breath, or with a glance, and gets its name from the Latin word for a royal child?
Click to show or hide the answer
87 In Greek mythology, who was the mother of Castor and Pollux, Helen of Troy, and Clytemnestra?
Click to show or hide the answer
88 In which US city did Bob Marley die, and John Stonehouse fake his death?
Click to show or hide the answer
89 What's the most abundant metal in the human body, and the fifth most abundant element?
Click to show or hide the answer
90 What type of creature are the chuckwalla, the galliwasp and the horny toad?
Click to show or hide the answer
91 The bee hummingbird, the world's smallest bird, is native to which Caribbean island nation?
Click to show or hide the answer
92 Which former Irish Taoiseach (TEE–shock) or Prime Minister – in office from 1973 to 1977 – died earlier this month? Click for more information
Click to show or hide the answer
93 Jalal Talabani died earlier this month. Of which country was he the first non–Arab president, from 2005 to 2014?
Click to show or hide the answer
94 Jalal Talabani died of a brain haemorrhage. Please spell 'haemorrhage', as listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (i.e. the UK spelling as opposed to the US).
Click to show or hide the answer
95 You've probably guessed what's coming next: Liam Cosgrave was Irish Taoiseach (TEE–shock) for four years in the 1970s. Please spell Taoiseach.
Click to show or hide the answer
96 What is a Dorset Knob?
Click to show or hide the answer
97 Which common plant has the Latin name Urtica dioica (die–O–ica)?
Click to show or hide the answer
98 Who is Sylvia, What is She? is a song by Schubert, set to a serenade from which Shakespeare play (where Silvia is the daughter of the Duke of Milan)?
Click to show or hide the answer
99 Which canal, just under 4 miles long, links the Aegean and Ionian seas, and separates the Peloponnesian peninsula from the rest of mainland Greece?
Click to show or hide the answer
100 Give one of David Beckham's two middle names.
Click to show or hide the answer

101 Give either of the real forenames of the former boxer Barry McGuigan.
Click to show or hide the answer
102 Which 1984 film has portrayals of Napoleon Bonaparte, Billy the Kid, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln and Ludwig van Beethoven?
Click to show or hide the answer
103 Which 2016 bio–pic starred Tom Hanks and was based on the 2012 memoir Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters?
Click to show or hide the answer
104 Which 'ism' is missing from the following quotation, which has been attributed to (or used by) Morgan Phillips, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Denis Healey: "The Labour Party owes more to [blank] than to Marxism"?
Click to show or hide the answer
105 Of which Hollywood star did Howard Hughes say, "That man's ears make him look like a taxi–cab with both doors open"?
Click to show or hide the answer
106 Appointed following Manuel Valls's resignation in December 2016, but voted out with Francois Hollande five months later, who was the shortest serving Prime Minister (to date) in France's Fifth Republic?
Click to show or hide the answer
107 Which French President appointed Edith Cresson as the country's first female Prime Minister (in May 1991)?
Click to show or hide the answer
108 Why was comedian Simon Brodkin in the news recently?
Click to show or hide the answer
109 No relation (as far as we know) to the captain of the late, lamented Chester Road Tavern 'A' quiz team, why did Sam Quilliam require urgent paramedic attention recently?
Click to show or hide the answer
110 In what was arguably her breakthrough role, who played Chrissie's wife Angie in Boys from the Blackstuff?
Click to show or hide the answer
111 At the Rio Olympics in 2016, Inbee Park of South Korea became the first women's champion since 1900, in which sport or event?
Click to show or hide the answer
112 Which US player partnered Martina Navratilova to 20 of her 29 Women's (or Ladies') Doubles titles, including a Grand Slam in 1984?
Click to show or hide the answer
113 Who was on the throne when Britain changed from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian?
Click to show or hide the answer
114 In The Archers, to which saint is Ambridge's parish church dedicated?
Click to show or hide the answer
115 Who chose Japanese Jailbird, written from personal experience by her famous father and given only to his children, as her book on Desert Island Discs on 25 June 2017?
Click to show or hide the answer
116 Writing in 1503, who first referred to Rome's "Five Good Emperors"?
Click to show or hide the answer
117 Also known as the Lion of the North, which King led Sweden to military supremacy during the Thirty Years' War, but was killed in 1632 during the Battle of Lützen?
Click to show or hide the answer
118 Since November 2014, what role has Professor Steven Stern played in world cricket?
Click to show or hide the answer
119 17–year–old Cassandra Mortmain is the protagonist and narrator of which novel, first published in 1949?
Click to show or hide the answer
120 CIA agent Alden Pyle is the title character of which novel, first published in 1955?
Click to show or hide the answer

Supplementaries

1 Which part of speech modifies or describes a verb?
Click to show or hide the answer
2 What name is commonly given to the red transparent variety of the mineral corundum?
Click to show or hide the answer
3 Which 19th century Dublin–born philanthropist gave up the idea of missionary work in China in order to raise money to provide homeless children with a place to sleep in London's East End?
Click to show or hide the answer
4 Who played Doña Jimena Díaz, the wife of the title character, in the 1961 film El Cid?
Click to show or hide the answer
5 If a skyscraper is over 100 metres tall, and a "supertall" skyscraper is over 300 metres tall, what adjective is officially used by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat to describe a skyscraper of over 600 metres?
Click to show or hide the answer
6 What do corkscrews, snails, butterflies and guitars have in common?
Click to show or hide the answer

Tie–breakers

Note from the Webmaster: I set the second of these two tie–breakers – but not the first!

1 According to Haydn's impressive new website, what was his final total score, from the best 12 of his 14 games, in the 1990–91 season?
Click to show or hide the answer
2 According to Microsoft Word, how many words are there in the document that contains tonight's questions?
Click to show or hide the answer

© Macclesfield Quiz League 2017