General knowledge quiz
ART & LITERATURE
1 Which novelist created the character of Chief Inspector Wexford? 2 Who wrote The Hobbit? 3 Which famous painting is also known as La Gioconda? 4 Which William Golding novel is about a group of schoolboys marooned on a tropical island? 5 Which Tolstoy novel chronicles the lives of three families during the Napoleonic Wars? 6 Who wrote the Just So Stories?
GEOGRAPHY
7 Which is the largest of the Great Lakes of N. America? 8 Which river, often called the Rio Bravo, forms the long border between Texas and Mexico? 9 Which channel, crossed by the Arctic Circle, used to be of great strategic importance during the Cold War? 10 One of Cleopatra’s Needles stands on the Victoria Embankment, London. In which city can the other be found? 11 What is the most southerly province of mainland Portugal? 12 What is the state capital of Tennessee, founded on the Cumberland River in 1779?
NATURE
13 What sort of creature is a funnel weaver? 14 Which animals are also called hogs or swine? 15 What sort of creature is a plover? 16 Of which vegetable is kohlrabi a variety? 17 Of what sort of creatures are Aberdeen Angus a breed? 18 Elvers are the young of which fish?
SPORT & LEISURE
Which boxer held the Commonwealth heavyweight title between 1959 and 1971? At which English rugby ground do the Rugby Football Union have their headquarters? Who won nine Wimbledon championships between 1978 and 1990? 22 Which sports complex is the home of the Yorkshire County Cricket club and Leeds Rhinos Rugby League club? 23 What is the annual end-of-season American football match to determine the championship of the National Football League? 24 Which golfer’s nickname is ‘the Great White
Shark’? 19 20 21
POT LUCK
25 In Roman mythology, who is the god of love? 26 Castilian is the basis of which European language? 27 Single and double entry refer to which financial system? 28 Of which material is a sovereign coin made? 29 Which indigenous people inhabit the Northern regions of Alaska, Canada, Siberia and Greenland? 30 The faces of how many American presidents are carved into Mount Rushmore? Solutions at the end