Pub Quiz: 50 Quiz Questions with Answers

Which instrument does a timpanist play?

Answer Kettle drums

Kettle drums, and they are among the few percussion instruments that play actual pitches — each drum is tuned, usually by a pedal the player works with a foot while the hands keep playing.

How many strings would you find on a standard violin?

Answer Four

Four, tuned in fifths. A viola looks nearly identical from a distance but is tuned a fifth lower, which is why the two get confused across a concert hall.

Which Beatles album has a zebra crossing on its cover?

Answer Abbey Road

Abbey Road, photographed in about ten minutes on a single morning while a policeman held up traffic. The crossing has since been given listed status, which is unusual for a piece of road marking.

How many quavers make up a semibreve?

Answer Eight

Eight. The British names describe the note by shape and the American names describe it by arithmetic — a semibreve is a whole note, a quaver an eighth note — which is why the American system is easier to do sums with.

Who composed The Four Seasons?

Answer Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi, who published sonnets alongside the music describing what each movement depicts. That makes it one of the earliest widely known pieces written to illustrate something specific.

Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of which band?

Answer Queen

Queen. He was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, and he also wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, which the record company wanted cut for being too long to play on radio.

What does the marking "forte" tell a musician to do?

Answer Play loudly

Play loudly, but the instruction is relative rather than absolute. It means loud compared with the rest of this piece, which is why the same marking sounds entirely different in a lullaby and in a march.

Which brass instrument uses a slide instead of valves?

Answer Trombone

The trombone, which is the only common brass instrument that changes pitch by altering the length of the tube continuously. That is also why it can slide between notes in a way valved instruments cannot.

Which group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo"?

Answer ABBA

ABBA, and it is the example everyone reaches for when arguing that the contest occasionally matters. They had entered the year before and failed to be selected.

How many keys are there on a standard full-size piano?

Answer 88

Eighty-eight: fifty-two white and thirty-six black. The range stops there because beyond it the ear begins to hear rattle and rumble rather than pitch.

Who directed the 1975 film Jaws?

Answer Steven Spielberg

Spielberg, and the mechanical shark broke down so persistently that he shot around it, suggesting the animal with music and a floating barrel. The film is frightening because of the failure, as he has said himself.

In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, what colour are Dorothy's slippers?

Answer Ruby red

Ruby red. They are silver in the book and were changed for the film so that the new colour process had something to show off, which is the same reason Kansas is in sepia.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear in which Shakespeare play?

Answer Hamlet

Hamlet, where they are minor courtiers disposed of in a line of dialogue. Three and a half centuries later Tom Stoppard put them at the centre of their own play, waiting offstage while the tragedy happens elsewhere.

What is the name of the coffee house in the sitcom Friends?

Answer Central Perk

Central Perk. The set was built with the sofa in an impossible position — always facing the camera, never where anyone would actually sit — which is true of most sitcom interiors once you notice it.

Which actor appeared as James Bond in the most official EON films?

Answer Roger Moore

Roger Moore, with seven. He was also the oldest actor to play the part, finishing at fifty-eight, which the films worked increasingly hard to disguise.

What is the name of Han Solo's ship in Star Wars?

Answer Millennium Falcon

The Millennium Falcon. Its design was changed late in production because the original resembled a ship in another series then being made, and the rejected shape became the vessel the princess arrives in at the start.

Which soap opera is set in Albert Square?

Answer EastEnders

EastEnders. The square is named after Queen Victoria's husband, and the exterior set is a permanent structure built at roughly two-thirds scale to make the buildings look taller on camera.

Who wrote the play An Inspector Calls?

Answer J. B. Priestley

J. B. Priestley, who wrote it in a week in 1945. It could not be staged in Britain at first and had its premiere in the Soviet Union, which is an unusual route for a play now fixed in the English school syllabus.

Which film won the very first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?

Answer Shrek

Shrek, in 2002, when the category was created. The award exists partly because animated features had become numerous enough that they were crowding the main category.

In the theatre, where is "upstage"?

Answer Furthest from the audience

Furthest from the audience. The terms date from when stages were raked — physically sloping upward away from the audience — so walking upstage meant walking uphill, and the words outlived the slope.

In which year did the Berlin Wall come down?

Answer 1989

1989, and the opening was partly an accident: a spokesman misread a note at a press conference and said the new travel rules applied immediately. Crowds went to the checkpoints that night and the guards had no instructions.

Who was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize?

Answer Marie Curie

Marie Curie, who then became the only person to win in two different sciences. Her notebooks are still radioactive and are kept in lead-lined boxes.

The Great Fire of London began in a bakery on which street?

Answer Pudding Lane

Pudding Lane. The fire burned for four days and destroyed most of the medieval city, and the recorded death toll is famously tiny — which historians take as a sign of who was not being counted.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World stood at Alexandria?

Answer The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse, which stood for over a thousand years and was brought down by earthquakes. It is one of only two wonders on the list whose ruins have actually been located.

How many wives did Henry VIII have?

Answer Six

Six. The rhyme about their fates is memorable enough that most people can recall the order without recalling any of the names, which says something about how history is taught.

The Titanic went down in which year?

Answer 1912

1912, on the maiden voyage. The ship carried lifeboats for about half those aboard, which was more than the regulations of the time required — the rules were based on tonnage rather than on the number of passengers.

Which astronaut was first to set foot on the Moon?

Answer Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong. His famous line was misheard for decades: he said he intended an article that would have changed the meaning entirely, and audio analysis has gone back and forth on whether it is there.

In which year was Magna Carta sealed?

Answer 1215

1215, and most of its clauses were about feudal grievances rather than liberty. Only a few remain law today, but those few are the ones the document is remembered for.

Which of these countries joined the European Economic Community in 1973?

Answer The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom, along with Ireland and Denmark. Britain had applied twice before and been vetoed both times by France.

Who was British Prime Minister when the Second World War broke out in 1939?

Answer Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain, who had returned from Munich the previous year saying he had secured peace. He remained in office for eight more months after war was declared.

Which city serves as Australia's capital?

Answer Canberra

Canberra, which exists because Sydney and Melbourne could not agree which of them should be the capital. It was built as a compromise, roughly between the two.

Which river flows through Cairo?

Answer The Nile

The Nile. Cairo sits at the point where the river begins to fan out into its delta, which is why the city has grown along a strip rather than a circle.

Mount Kilimanjaro stands in which country?

Answer Tanzania

Tanzania. It is not part of a range — it stands alone, which is why it looks so improbable from a distance, and it is a dormant volcano rather than a fold mountain.

The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic Ocean to which sea?

Answer The Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean. The strait is about fourteen kilometres across at its narrowest, and the Mediterranean is thought to have dried out almost completely before Atlantic water broke back through it.

How many time zones does Russia span?

Answer Eleven

Eleven, which is more than any other country. A single train journey across the country crosses several of them, and the railway historically ran on Moscow time throughout to avoid the confusion.

Which country has more natural lakes than any other?

Answer Canada

Canada, with more lakes than the rest of the world combined by most counts. That is a consequence of glaciation: retreating ice scoured out the basins and then filled them.

By land area, which is the world's smallest country?

Answer Vatican City

Vatican City, at about half a square kilometre. It is small enough that its border is mostly a wall, and it is the only country that can be walked around in under an hour.

The River Danube empties into which sea?

Answer The Black Sea

The Black Sea. It passes through or borders ten countries, more than any other river in the world, which is why agreements about its use have been negotiated since the nineteenth century.

Which US state lies furthest south?

Answer Hawaii

Hawaii, which surprises people who answer Florida. Hawaii is also the only US state entirely outside North America and the only one that was previously an independent kingdom.

What is the currency of Switzerland?

Answer The Swiss franc

The Swiss franc. Switzerland is not in the European Union, and several EU members do not use the euro either — the two memberships are separate questions.

What is the chemical symbol for gold?

Answer Au

Au, from the Latin aurum. Several symbols that look unrelated to the English name come from Latin in the same way: iron, lead, tin and sodium all do.

How many sides does a hexagon have?

Answer Six

Six. Hexagons matter beyond geometry: they are the only regular shape besides triangles and squares that tiles a plane with no gaps, which is why bees and basalt columns both arrive at them.

Which part of the body counts as its largest organ?

Answer The skin

The skin, which most people do not think of as an organ at all. It weighs several kilograms in an adult and regulates temperature, which is arguably a bigger job than any single internal organ has.

Which planet orbits closest to the Sun?

Answer Mercury

Mercury, and it is also the planet closest to Earth on average — not Venus, as most people assume. Because Mercury stays near the Sun, it spends more time on our side of it than Venus does.

How many chambers does the human heart have?

Answer Four

Four. Fish have two, and most reptiles three, so the four-chambered arrangement is what allows warm-blooded animals to keep oxygenated and deoxygenated blood entirely separate.

Which letter comes last in the Greek alphabet?

Answer Omega

Omega, and that is why the phrase alpha and omega means first and last. The Greek alphabet has twenty-four letters, and its order gave us the word alphabet itself.

What is the hardest naturally occurring material?

Answer Diamond

Diamond, though hardest means resistant to scratching rather than difficult to break. A diamond will scratch anything and can still be split with a well-aimed blow.

How many players from one team are on the pitch at kick-off in football?

Answer Eleven

Eleven, which is why the two teams together make twenty-two. The number was fixed in the 1860s and has stayed put while nearly every other rule of the game has changed.

Which gas makes up roughly 78% of the Earth's atmosphere?

Answer Nitrogen

Nitrogen, which surprises people who expect oxygen. Oxygen is about twenty-one per cent, and the reason nitrogen is so abundant is that it is unreactive enough to have simply accumulated.

What number does the Roman numeral D stand for?

Answer 500

Five hundred. The system has no zero and no place value, which is why arithmetic was done on a counting board rather than on paper — the numerals were for recording results, not for calculating with.