A scene from ‘Lord of the Rings’ shows Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in an undated publicity photograph from the film. The film adaptation of the JRR Tolkien fantasy opened on December 19, 2001. Picture: HO-New Line Cinema via Reuters
Put your general knowledge skills to the test with our weekly online trivia game! Join us every week for a series of questions covering a variety of topics from history, sports, geography, art, pop culture, and more. So grab your friends, grab a coffee, and let's see how smart you really are.
Brain-Busting Challenge
Tuesday February 28 2023
Questions:
1 What was the name of the literary club JRR Tolkien founded when he was an Oxford professor?
2 What African country was the first to qualify for a Soccer World Cup?
3 Name three collective nouns for a group of bats.
4 What is the name of the only sea that doesn’t have a coastline?
5 Where in the world can the “Tree of Life” be found?
6 Which French artist is most famous for his obsession with ballerinas?
7 To what is the process of vulcanisation applied?
8 Who discovered the above process in 1839?
9 What do Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills and Nash all have in common?
10 What is an extreme fear of beards called?
11 Who was pictured on the first postage stamp?
12 In the Gospel According to John, which of the apostles doubts Jesus’s resurrection until he sees Jesus with his own eyes?
13 How many time zones does Australia have?
14 “Uisce beatha” is the Gaelic name for whiskey in Irish. The Scottish equivalent is “uisge beatha”. What is the literal translation?
15 In medicine, a sialogogue is a drug or substance that promotes the secretion of what? Common examples include ginger, sugar-free hard candies, chewing gum, and cayenne pepper.
16 Which planet has the largest ocean?
17 Which 1971 social experiment traumatised three participants so much they were withdrawn within the first four days?
18 Which 1983 coming-of-age film (based on the book of the same name by SE Hinton) about rival gangs, set in Oklahoma in the 1960s, featured young stars including Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, and Emilio Estevez?
19 The chemical theobromine is the main reason dogs shouldn’t ingest what tasty treat?
20 According to NASA Earth Observatory, where is the largest meteor crater in the world found?
Answers:
1 The Inklings
2 Egypt (1934)
3 Camp, cloud or colony
4 The Sargasso Sea is a region of the Atlantic Ocean defined by four ocean currents
5 The Tree of Life (Shajarat-al-Hayat) is in Bahrain. It is a Prosopis cineraria tree - over 400 years old and stands 9.75m high
6 Edgar Degas
7 Rubber
8 US inventor Charles Goodyear
9 They all performed at Woodstock
10 Pogonophobia
11 Queen Victoria – the Penny Black was the world’s first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in the UK on May 1 1840.
12 The Apostle Thomas (a doubting Thomas)
13 Three time zones
14 It means “water of life”
15 Saliva
16 Jupiter
17 Stanford Prison Experiment, a study in which college students became prisoners or guards in a simulated prison environment
18 “The Outsiders”
19 Chocolate is toxic to dogs
20 In South Africa, the Vredefort Crater – also known as the Vredefort Dome– is the world’s largest known impact crater.
Source: Wikipedia