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history, memes

January Quiz Answers

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Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.

General Knowledge

  1. The numbers on the opposite sides of a six-sided die always add up to what number? Seven
  2. What was the name of the world’s first artificial satellite? Sputnik 1
  3. In what year did cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin reach space? 1961
  4. Where did backgammon originate? Persia
  5. What is England’s official national sport? Cricket
  6. Since the 1970s in which country has it been a tradition to eat fried chicken from KFC on Christmas Day? Japan

Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2025.

memes

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

  1. The numbers on the opposite sides of a six-sided die always add up to what number?
  2. What was the name of the world’s first artificial satellite?
  3. In what year did cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin reach space?
  4. Where did backgammon originate?
  5. What is England’s official national sport?
  6. 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.

history

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.

Early BBC logo

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)

amusements

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!

history, memes

December Quiz Answers

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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

  1. In what year was the Battle of Culloden? 1746
  2. How many monarchs reigned during the 19th century? 4 – George III, George IV, William IV, Victoria
  3. 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
  4. Charles Dodgson is remembered as an early photographer, but what else is he famous for? The Alice in Wonderland books (as Lewis Carroll)
  5. In what year was slavery abolished in the British empire? 1838
  6. 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.

books, memes, quotes

This Month’s Poem

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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