Trivia Masterclass: Week 1

Geography, Disney, Firsts

Welcome one and all! Huge thanks for joining me on this journey of quiz revision - I really hope you enjoy it. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend having a quick read of my introductory post ( https://substack.com/home/post/p-161751014?source=queue) where I say something about the philosophy of these weekly quizzes and why I’ve structured them in the way I have.

You’ll find all the answers at the bottom, after all five rounds are complete, so if you’re marking one round at a time be careful not to scroll down too far. If a question begins “[PICTURE]”, then it relates in some way to the picture included at the beginning of the round: there will be one such question in every round.

Feel free to post your scores in the comments, and especially to share answers you’re proud of, frustrating misses, facts you found interesting, or extra information - I’m keen for this to be an active community so conversation is encouraged, provided you all keep it friendly and respectful.

Round 1 — Warm-Up

1. [PICTURE] Released in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the first film to feature which enduring action hero played by Harrison Ford?

2. The official London residence of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer is at what number Downing Street?

3. The Premier League football team popularly known as Wolves are based in what UK city?

4. Large cities in which country include Calgary, Vancouver, and Halifax?

5. Mole, Ratty, Badger, and Mr Toad are the four main characters in which children’s book?

6. What Italian cheese, often used on pizza, is described as “fior di latte” when made from cow’s milk or “di bufala” when made from buffalo milk?

7. Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts were among the original line-up of what classic British rock band?

8. Bornean and Sumatran are the two major species of what group of large apes, distinguishable by their orange fur and very long arms?

9. The artists Donatello and Barbara Hepworth are most associated with what branch of the visual arts?

10. Heineken and Grolsch are popular lager brands originating in which country?

11. The BBC programmes Fake or Fortune?, Question Time, and Antiques Roadshow are all currently hosted by which journalist?

12. The title of what famous opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart includes the name of a woodwind instrument?

13. The Klippan sofa and the Billy bookcase are iconic products sold by what global retailer?

14. What military conflict (1936-39) ended with the defeat of the Republicans by the Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco?

15. What name is shared by the dark-blue line on the London Underground and the principal railway station in Manchester?

16. Which British singer broke through in 2012 as a guest vocalist on I Love It by Icona Pop, and took pop culture by storm in 2024 with her sixth studio album Brat?

17. At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Team USA’s Simone Biles won three gold medals in what sport?

18. What two-word term, suggesting a cured fish, is used idiomatically to refer to a piece of information which is intentionally misleading or distracting?

19. Which major literary prize was first awarded in 1969 to P. H. Newby, and was won in 2024 by Samantha Harvey for her sci-fi novel Orbital?

20. Which element on the periodic table has the chemical symbol P?

Round 2 — The Fundamentals: Geography

Take heart if you struggle with some of these – I’ve never been an atlas-hound, and knowing where places are in relation to each other remains one of my biggest quiz weaknesses. In a recent quiz I confused Rwanda and Malawi for quite literally the umpteenth time!

21. Portree is the largest town on which Scottish island?

22. Considered among the most beautiful cemeteries in the world, La Recoleta is located in which southern-hemisphere capital city?

23. Named after a genus of seaweed, which region of the Atlantic Ocean is bounded by four currents, making it the world’s only “sea” without any land boundaries?

24. The famous statue of Christ the Redeemer stands at the top of which mountain in Rio de Janeiro, whose name means “hunchback” in Portuguese?

25. Serving the city of Bergamo in Lombardy, the third busiest airport in Italy is officially named after which painter?

26. Which nineteenth-century Scottish explorer gives his name to both the US research station which constitutes the most populous community in Antarctica and the inlet (or “sound”) of the Ross Sea on which it is located?

27. Which two countries are separated by the Palk Strait?

28. Built on the site of a royal hunting reserve, and accordingly named in part for a species of antelope, what is the capital city of Uganda?

29. After the Ancient Greek name for a river in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), what word refers to one of a series of winding bends in the channel of a river?

30. Associated with the fine porcelain which was once produced on its estate, the Palace of Capodimonte is a major tourist attraction in which Italian city?

31. [PICTURE, SHADED BLUE] Also part of the name of a Canadian province, what is the name of the minor tectonic plate sandwiched between the South American and Antarctic plates?

32. The source of the English word “yo-yo”, Ilocano is the third most widely spoken language of which country?

33. “Yoopers” are inhabitants of the Upper Peninsula of which US state, separated from the far more populous Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac?

34. Containing no cities, which English county’s larger towns include Leighton Buzzard, Dunstable, and Flitwick?

35. Fukuoka is the most populous city on which Japanese island, the southernmost of the country’s four main islands?

36. Disrupting the country’s preparations for hosting the 1962 FIFA World Cup, what name, after the worst-affected city, is given to the massive earthquake that struck southern Chile in 1960? It remains the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.

37. Formerly an important trading post on the Silk Road and a centre of Islamic scholarship, the city of Samarkand lies in which Central Asian country?

38. Sharing a prefix with many Scottish place names, what is the English name of the southernmost city in New Zealand, one of the most southerly cities in the world?

39. Also known as the Jolof, hence the name of the popular dish of jollof rice, the Wolof people are the largest ethnic group in which African country?

40. Which country was known until 1973 as British Honduras?

Round 3 — A Deeper Dive: Disney Animated Films

Fair warning, there are going to be some very unpopular round 3 topics coming up in future quizzes – I thought I’d start off with something that I think most people quite like! That said, I think a lot of people’s Disney expertise is pretty era-specific, so the fact that I’ve gone deliberately era-eclectic in this round may provide an enjoyable and edifying challenge. I’d also be delighted if this round inspires you to have a little binge of Disney songs on YouTube – some of the films asked about here are, in my opinion, among the greatest movie musicals ever made, and the VHS box-set of ‘Disney Sing-Along Songs’ I watched religiously as a child still holds a special place in my heart.

41. Which character in The Jungle Book, who does not appear in any Rudyard Kipling story, describes himself as the “king of the swingers, the jungle VIP”?

42. “How high does the sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you’ll never know.” These philosophical lyrics appear in which Oscar-winning song from 1995’s Pocahontas?

43. Following the mice Bernard and Bianca on a mission to the Australian Outback, what was the full title of Disney’s 1990 sequel to the 1977 adventure film The Rescuers?

44. In Bambi, what is the name of the skunk who, alongside Thumper the rabbit, is one of the protagonist’s two close friends?

45. Which famous Broadway songwriter composed the hit soundtracks for the recent Disney films Moana and Encanto?

46. Which actor, beloved for his role as Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order, provided the voice of the candelabra-butler Lumière in Beauty and the Beast?

47. Named Carabosse in the Tchaikovsky ballet of the same name, Disney gave the name Maleficent to the antagonist of which film?

48. The most famous scene from which Disney film is soundtracked by the Italian-style accordion ballad Bella Notte?

49. A chameleon called Pascal and a horse called Maximus are the charming animal sidekicks of the female and male leads in which 21^st-century Disney film?

50. The minstrel Alan-a-Dale in 1973’s Robin Hood is depicted as what kind of animal? Voiced by King of the Road singer Roger Miller, he performs most of the film’s songs.

51. Which 2022 Disney film, a sci-fi adventure with a style inspired by pulp magazines from the 1950s, was notably their first animated film to feature an openly gay lead character?

52. [PICTURE] In The Lion King, what is the name of the elderly mandrill who performs the baby Simba’s presentation ceremony in the iconic opening scene?

53. Later becoming a jazz standard, interpreted by Bill Evans and Miles Davis among many others, which Disney film first featured the love song Someday My Prince Will Come?

54. The protagonist of which 2003 Disney film is a young hunter in prehistoric Alaska who is transformed into an animal by the Great Spirits as a punishment for slaying one of those animals?

55. Unmistakably voiced by Brian Blessed, William Cecil Clayton is the main villain of which Disney film?

56. Originating as a Marvel Comics superhero, what is the name of the cuddly inflatable robot who is the lead character of the 2014 film Big Hero 6?

57. Which composer’s music accompanies the famous sequence from 1940’s Fantasia depicting the formation of planet Earth and the rise and fall of the dinosaurs?

58. The friendly mouse in The Aristocats is named after what type of cheese?

59. Which Disney film of the 1980s is very loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle?

60. The visual appearance of which tentacled sea witch in The Little Mermaid was largely inspired by legendary drag queen Divine?

Round 4 — Themes and Trends: Firsts

Pretty route-one choice for the first week, although it’s worth remembering, especially if you don’t fancy memorising a tonne of lists, that the first entry on any list will always have a special status of notability in quiz. You’ll be asked about ‘Wings’ (the first Best Picture Oscar-winner) a lot more often than ‘The Broadway Melody’ (the second on the list).

61. Britain’s first Prime Minister Robert Walpole rose to that position in the wake of what famous financial crisis of 1720, whose political and economic fallout he was instrumental in containing?

62. Which album by Scottish rock band Primal Scream, produced by acid house DJ Andy Weatherall, won the first edition of the Mercury Music Prize in 1992?

63. Because it was the first to ratify the US Constitution, which small east-coast US state has the official nickname The First State?

64. Which Classic Hollywood actress was the first of the eight wives of Mickey Rooney? Her second and third husbands were Artie Shaw (who also married eight different women) and Frank Sinatra (who contented himself with a mere four).

65. The first symphony of which German composer is often nicknamed “Beethoven’s 10th”?

66. Which surrealistic 1977 film, the first directed by the late David Lynch, features a mutant baby modelled on one of Francis Bacon’s Studies for a Crucifixion, and a haunting torch song performed by a character called the Lady in the Radiator?

67. What name is given to the first of the three main stages of the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) process? This stage uses high temperatures to break the double-stranded structure of the target DNA, yielding two single-stranded molecules.

68. Which businessman won the first UK series of The Apprentice and returned to the show in 2020 as one of Alan Sugar’s two regular aides, alongside Karren Brady?

69. Unbeaten for thirty-two years until his defeat by Emanuel Lasker in 1894, which Bohemian-born chess player is regarded as the first World Chess Champion?

70. Which Berkshire restaurant, currently owned by chef-patron Alain Roux, was the first in the UK to receive three Michelin stars and has retained all three since 1985?

71. The famous first line of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca mentions the name of which fictional country house where most of the book’s action takes place?

72. Subtitled Combat Evolved, the first instalment of which hugely popular first-person shooter franchise was released in 2001 as a launch title for Microsoft’s Xbox console?

73. In 1975, which Japanese mountaineer became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest?

74. Which golfer was the first to complete the modern version of a Career Grand Slam (winning the Open, US Open, Masters, and PGA Championship)? His victory at the 1935 Masters included a double-eagle on the par-5 15th hole, where his second shot was dubbed “the shot heard ’round the world”.

75. [PICTURE] The first English painter to receive a peerage was which Victorian artist of the Academic style, whose most famous work is Flaming June?

76. Taken to number 1 by Marty Robbins in the US and Michael Holliday in the UK, 1957’s The Story of My Life was the first major hit for which songwriting partnership?

77. Releasing light and neutrinos that were detected on Earth in 1987, the first supernova to be studied in detail by modern astronomers was located in which satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, often known by a three-letter initialism?

78. The first ever Winter Olympics was held in the French resort of Chamonix in 1924, but which other Alpine venue was the first to host the Winter Olympics twice (in 1928 and 1948)?

79. Set in her adopted home of Southern Rhodesia, and with a title taken from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which 1950 work was the debut novel by Doris Lessing?

80. Which actor played Neil Armstrong in the 2018 biopic First Man?

Round 5 — No Pain, No Gain

81. Co-founded by ex-Beatle George Harrison, which British film production company was set up specifically to finance the completion of Monty Python’s Life of Brian after the film’s original backers pulled out? They subsequently produced such all-time classics as The Long Good Friday and Withnail and I.

82. The best known of several female professors at the pioneering medieval school of medicine in Salerno, which 11th-century female physician is often called the world’s first gynaecologist?

83. The campily gory music video for which 2024 Sabrina Carpenter song was inspired by the film Death Becomes Her, and featured Carpenter and Jenna Ortega as two love-rivals making extravagant attempts to murder each other?

84. A leading figure of the Vienna Circle, which analytic philosopher is remembered for his simile of human knowledge as like a boat floating at sea, whose sailors can replace individual planks but cannot ever dismantle it entirely?

85. Which football team in Portugal’s Primeira Liga is based in the city of Barcelos and is named after an early modern Portuguese playwright?

86. Led by Ana da Silva and Gina Birch, which British post-punk band are best-remembered for their self-titled 1979 debut album featuring the hauntingly beautiful In Love and a cover of Lola by The Kinks?

87. The only player ever to beat Björn Borg at Roland-Garros, which tennis player’s victory at the 1976 French Open made him the most recent Italian to win a Grand Slam men’s singles title before Jannik Sinner’s Australian Open victory in 2024?

88. The son of two eminent historians, which English author of alternative-history fiction won the Costa Book Award for his 2016 debut novel Golden Hill? His latest work, Cahokia Jazz, was published in 2023.

89. Which second-largest city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo is the location of the busiest international airport in South America?

90. Which French chemist gives his name to a qualitative principle of catalysis which states that, for a reaction to occur, the interaction between the catalyst and the reactants should neither be too strong nor too weak but “just right”?

91. Which 1996 erotic thriller directed by the Wachowski sisters starred Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon as Violet and Corky, two lesbian lovers who steal $2 million from Violet’s Mafioso boyfriend?

92. [PICTURE] Formerly known as Marienburg, which town in Poland is the location of a huge red-brick castle complex built as a headquarters for the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century?

93. Founded in 1987 by Melbourne hairdresser Denis Paphitis and acquired by L’Oréal in 2023, what luxury cosmetics brand has a name inspired by classical literature, supposedly mocking the “fairy-tale” claims made by rival brands?

94. In nuclear physics, what Russian-derived name is given to a device which uses strong magnetic fields to confine plasma within a toroidal (donut-shaped) container? These devices are leading contenders in the on-going search for a mechanism to generate electricity from nuclear fusion.

95. Which Danish fashion model, who made her runway debut at the 2019 Prada fashion show, has made numerous appearances on the cover of British Vogue, most recently alongside rapper Central Cee in 2024?

96. In 1876, which Secretary of War in the famously corrupt administration of President Ulysses S. Grant became the first (and, until 2024, the only) US Cabinet member ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives?

97. Originally introduced in Half-Life II (2004) as an ally of series protagonist Gordon Freeman, which lead female character in the Half-Life video game franchise was the central playable role in a self-titled virtual-reality instalment released in 2020?

98. Which French painter and model is likely best known as the regular muse and common-law wife of fellow artist Amadeo Modigliani, and tragically committed suicide two days after Modigliani’s own early death in 1920?

99. Which American reality TV personality is the mother of Dream Renée Kardashian, the only child of Rob Kardashian? In 2023, as part of her public conversion to born-again Christianity, she reversed some of her plastic surgery and removed a tattoo of pagan goat-deity Baphomet.

100. Which famous soprano aria from Puccini’s opera Tosca is sung by the imprisoned title character at the end of Act 2, as she questions why God has forsaken her after having dedicated her life to beauty and love?

ANSWERS

Round 1

1. Indiana Jones

2. Number 11

3. Wolverhampton (in full, Wolverhampton Wanderers)

4. Canada

5. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

6. Mozzarella

7. The Rolling Stones

8. Orangutan

9. Sculpture

10. Netherlands

11. Fiona Bruce

12. The Magic Flute

13. IKEA

14. Spanish Civil War

15. Piccadilly

16. Charli XCX

17. Gymnastics

18. Red herring

19. Booker Prize

20. Phosphorus

Round 2

21. Skye

22. Buenos Aires

23. Sargasso Sea

24. Corcovado

25. Caravaggio

26. Archibald McMurdo (McMurdo Station and McMurdo Sound)

27. India and Sri Lanka

28. Kampala (an abbreviation of words meaning “hill of the impala”)

29. Meander

30. Naples

31. Scotia plate

32. Philippines

33. Michigan

34. Bedfordshire

35. Kyushu

36. Valdivia earthquake

37. Uzbekistan

38. Invercargill

39. Senegal

40. Belize

Round 3

41. King Louie

42. Colours of the Wind

43. The Rescuers Down Under

44. Flower

45. Lin-Manuel Miranda

46. Jerry Orbach

47. Sleeping Beauty

48. Lady and the Tramp

49. Tangled

50. Rooster

51. Strange World

52. Rafiki

53. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

54. Brother Bear

55. Tarzan

56. Beymax

57. Igor Stravinsky (The Rite of Spring)

58. Roquefort

59. The Great Mouse Detective (or Basil the Great Mouse Detective)

60. Ursula

Round 4

61. South Sea Bubble

62. Screamadelica

63. Delaware

64. Ava Gardner

65. Johannes Brahms

66. Eraserhead

67. Denaturing or denaturation (the following two steps are annealing and elongation)

68. Tim Campbell

69. Wilhelm Steinitz

70. The Waterside Inn

71. Manderley (as in “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again”)

72. Halo

73. Junko Tabei

74. Gene Sarazen (before the Masters Tournament began, Bobby Jones won the original version of a Grand Slam: namely the Open, US Open, British Amateur, and US Amateur)

75. Frederic Leighton

76. Burt Bacharach and Hal David

77. Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)

78. St. Moritz

79. The Grass Is Singing

80. Ryan Gosling

Round 5

81. HandMade Films

82. Trota (aka Trocta or Trotula)

83. Taste

84. Otto Neurath

85. Gil Vicente F.C.

86. The Raincoats

87. Adriano Panatta

88. Francis Spufford

89. Guarulhos

90. Paul Sabatier

91. Bound

92. Malbork

93. Aēsop

94. Tokamak

95. Mona Tougaard

96. William Belknap (in 2024, Belknap lost his unique place in history when the Republican House of Representatives impeached Joe Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas)

97. Alyx Vance (as in 2020’s Half-Life: Alyx)

98. Jeanne Hébuterne

99. Blac Chyna (real name Angela Renée White)

100. Vissi d’arte (or I lived for art)

And that’s your lot. Hope you had fun. Feel free to share your best gets and most annoying misses in the comments. I’ll see you next week, but for now I’ll let Ursula play us out.