View my previous blog here: http://bazzablog-uk.blogspot.com

I reply to all comments except spam, no matter how old!

Please ignore any email address displayed here! My email is shamp123 AT sky.com


Monday 6 January 2020

New Year Quiz Answers

In the spirit of peace in the world I declare the quiz a four-way tie 
Sorry if it was a bit too hard!
  1. Linguistically, what do Blackpool in England and Dublin in Ireland have in common?        DUBLIN means 'Black Pool' in early Gaelic.
  2. What is the antonym of oriental?         OCCIDENTAL
  3. Which are the only two countries to have an X in their names? MEXICO and LUXEMBOURG
  4. What do these words have in common: Tungsten, Gauntlet, Moped and Ombudsman? They were all borrowed into English from SWEDISH.
  5. Which Oscar-winning film was based on Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness? APOCOLYPSE NOW (Marlon Brando's rebel character had the name Kurtz - taken directly form Heart of Darkness)
  6. The name of which city is derived from an indigenous word for "stinky onion" (probably garlic). CHICAGO is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language.
  7. Philadelphia means "brotherly love". Which capitol city in the east was also once known as Philadelphia in Biblical times? AMMAN in Jordan was once known as Philadelphia in the ancient world. 
  8. Which word, not in use before the 1980s, can be defined thus: “A style of design and fashion that combines historical elements with anachronistic technological features inspired by science fiction”? STEAMPUNK.
I'm listening to The Beatles singing If I Fell. Apart from fabulous multi-voice harmony, it is musically interesting for an early key-change; very unusual and very inventive after about 18 seconds of a song! Listen here.

9 comments:

Hels said...

I got two totally right and one (Amman) was a guess lacking any confidence.

Parnassus said...

Hello Bazza, I forgot to come back! I would have additionally gotten the X countries, but probably not the others. (If your map were labeled in Chinese Pinyin Roman characters, there would be lots of 'X' countries, 'x' being a Romanization of one of the common "sh" sounds.) I have never seen Apocalypse Now, so I have no idea what it is about.
--Jim

bazza said...

Hels: I have been writing quizzes for charities for years. The problem is always knowing how hard to pitch it. Now I write them for my own amusement - I enjoy the research!

bazza said...

Jim: Apocalypse Now is set in Vietnam during the war. Marlon Brando plays Kurtz and officer who has 'gone native' and has to be found and arrested by an officer played by Martin Sheen. It is the same story as Heart of Darkness but transposed in time and location.

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Bazza - I should have got quite a few of those ... but the brain is whizzing around at the moment - so didn't do too well - great questions though ... because they stimulate, especially the ones I didn't know the answers to - eg stinky onion - and it's windy round there?!. Cheers and have great year ... Hilary

bazza said...

Hilary: All the answers are easy -when you know them! I like literary and word quizzes.

Susan Flett Swiderski said...

Darn. I'm sorry I missed this little quiz... not that I would've done very well with it. I only knew four answers for sure. I would've had to guess at the others. (Or shrug and throw up my hands.) I bet you'd make a great pub trivia partner. :)

bazza said...

Susan: I have been writing quizzes for charities for thirty years! It's a lovely hobby. I usually post one or two here.

laixinjie said...

Hilary: All the answers are easy -when you know them! I like literary and word quizzes.custom throw pillows