You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going,
because you might not get there.
Yogi Berra
Tag Archives: blog
January Quiz Questions
Each month we’re posing six pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month.
As always, they’re designed to be tricky but not impossible, so it’s unlikely everyone will know all the answers – just have a bit of fun.
General Knowledge
- The numbers on the opposite sides of a six-sided die always add up to what number?
- What was the name of the world’s first artificial satellite?
- In what year did cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin reach space?
- Where did backgammon originate?
- What is England’s official national sport?
- Since the 1970s in which country has it been a tradition to eat fried chicken from KFC on Christmas Day?
Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.
January 1926
Our look at some of the significant happenings 100 years ago this month.
13. Birth. Michael Bond, English fiction writer, creator of Paddington Bear (d.2017)
16. A British Broadcasting Company radio play by Ronald Knox about workers’ revolution in London causes a panic among those who have not heard the preliminary announcement that it is a satire on broadcasting.
26. Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrates a mechanical television system at his London laboratory for members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times.
29. Birth. Abdus Salam, Pakistani physicist and Nobel laureate (d.1996)
This Month’s Two Tiny Changes
Each month during 2025 we’re offering two tiny changes which may help improve your life. This month …
- Stop saying yes when your gut says no. Simply doing what you can, that you enjoy, when you can, will fuel your happiness.
- Listen to music on the radio.
Annual Impossible Exam 2025
As is now traditional here (but slightly earlier than in recent years), we once again we bring you this year’s King William’s College General Knowledge Paper 2025-26.
For over 120 years 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. Since 1951 the quiz has been published in the Guardian.
The quiz, which is always 18 sets of 10 questions, is well known to be highly difficult, a common score being just two correct answers. 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 General Knowledge Paper on the King William’s College website at https://kwc.im/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/GKP_2025_26.pdf and in the Guardian.
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 the quiz as a break from festive preparations, or keep it to amuse the family over Christmas!
December Quiz Answers
Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.
British History
- In what year was the Battle of Culloden? 1746
- How many monarchs reigned during the 19th century? 4 – George III, George IV, William IV, Victoria
- Who, in 1835, produced durable silver chloride camera negatives on paper and conceived the two-step negative-positive procedure used in most non-electronic photography up to the present? Henry Fox Talbot
- Charles Dodgson is remembered as an early photographer, but what else is he famous for? The Alice in Wonderland books (as Lewis Carroll)
- In what year was slavery abolished in the British empire? 1838
- What links playing cards in 1588; windows in 1696; candles in 1709; wallpaper in 1712? All were taxed starting in those years
Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2024.
This Month’s Poem
Halsway Carol
Iain Frisk
Lo for the tiding of the long night moon
Let the sunrise call about the morning soon
Short is the biding of the fading light
Sing for the coming of the longest night
North wind tell us what we need to know
When the stars are shining on the midnight snow
All of the branches will be turned to white
Sing for the coming of the longest night
A winter day, the summer grass turned hay
Frost in the field ’til the dawn of May
A summer’s light never shone as clear or as bright
So dance in the shadows of a winter’s night
Lo for the tiding of the long night moon
May the harvest last until the springtime bloom
Home is our comfort at the winter’s height
Sing for the coming of the longest night
All of the colours of the sunrise sky
Shine a light upon us, as the day goes by
Sun-setting shadows fading out of sight
Sing for the coming of the longest night
A winter day, the summer grass turned hay
Frost in the field ’til the dawn of May
A summer’s light never shone as clear or as bright
So dance in the shadows of a winter’s night
Find this poem online at Town Common Songs
Ten Things
This year our Ten Things column each month is alternating between composers and artists a century at a time from pre-1500 to 20th century. As always, there’s no guarantee you will have heard of them all!
Ten Artists Born in 20th Century
- David Hockney
David Hockney; Nude, 17th June 1984
- Ed Burra
- Adrian Daintrey
- Tracey Emin
- Andy Warhol
- Jackson Pollock
- Eric Ravilious
- Alberto Giacometti
- Graham Clarke
- Damian Hirst
This Month’s Quote
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
Bill Nye
Something to Think About this month
As well as everything else, each month I offer you something to think about and get the brain working. This month …
When a spider sits motionless in its web all day, what is it thinking?