As is traditional, once again we bring you this year’s King William’s College General Knowledge Paper 2023-24.

For over a century the College has set an annual general knowledge test, known as the General Knowledge Paper. The pupils sit the test twice: once unseen on the day before the Christmas holidays, and again when they return to school in the New Year – after spending the holiday researching the answers. The test used to be mandatory but these days participation is voluntary.

The quiz is well known to be highly difficult, a common score being just two correct answers from the list of several hundred. The best scores are around 12% for the unseen test and about 70% for the second attempt – and of course the average scores are going to be very much lower than this.

The quiz is always introduced with the Latin motto Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est, “To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition” – something my father always impressed on me as “Education is not knowing, it is knowing where to find out”.

You can find this year’s GKP on the King William’s College website at https://kwc.im/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/General-Knowledge-Paper-2023-2024-Questions.pdf.

I’ve not yet tried this year’s test myself, but unseen I don’t normally have many more clues that the KWC pupils!

Enjoy your Christmas!