Mastermind Club

Quiz 2026-8

General Knowledge

Set by Mel Kinsey




Answers

1/What is the common name for calcium oxide ?     

Quicklime

2/Which American President was assassinated in 1881 ?      

James Garfield

3/What does Schwarzwald mean in English ?     

Black Forest

4/If nicknamed ‘Bluey’ in Australia, what characteristic would you have ?     

Red Hair

5/Which single stayed second longest in the UK Charts at 67 weeks ?    

Amazing Grace by Judy Collins

6/Who said (in French) “God created water but man made wine” ?     

Victor Hugo

7/Name the four universities in Edinburgh 

Queen Margaret, Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh and Napier

8/Mount Ararat is in which present day country       

Turkey

9/Haarlems Dagblad is the oldest what in the world ?         

Daily newspaper

10/Which important battle in British history was fought near the village of Braxton ?     

 

Flodden

11/What is the Carduelis chloris which is visiting birddfeeders in increasing numbers ?   

 

Greenfinch

12/In which country is the highest waterfall in Europe?    

Austria (The Krimml Falls)

13/In  1848 Victor Hugo abandoned the play he was working on, Twins, due to a fellow author writing his own version of a famous historical story. Which one?         

Alexander Dumas

14/Australian Robert Fahey made history in 2001 by becoming the first man to win back-to-back Grand Slams in which sport?          

Real Tennis

15/Which Scottish composer was Principal of the Royal Academy of Music from 1887 to 1924?  

Alexander McKenzie

16/What is measured on the Saffir-Simpson scale?         

Hurricanes

17/Which author, more famous for another investigator, wrote a series of detective stories featuring George Felse, his wife Bunty and son Dominic?          

Ellis Peters  (EdithPargeter)                               

18/ Of which country is Graham Bell Island a part?  

Russia

19/What was the name of Peter Tinniswood’s BBC comedy series of the 1970s centred on Uncle Mort and the Brandon family?

I Didn’t Know You Cared

20/The ‘captive flying machines’, one of the oldest attractions of Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach, were designed by a man who gave his name to a famous invention of an entirely different kind. Who was he?  

Sir Hiram Maxim

21/What record in the natural world is held by the isotope Tellurium-128?

It has the longest-known half-life of an isotope (2.2 x 1024 years)

22/Which Briton was awarded the Orde of Lenin in 1943?

George Formby

 

23/Central Paris is divided into a number of districts called arrondissements, spiralling out from the city centre. How many are there?  

20

24/In which film did Clifton Webb play John Philip Sousa?

Stars & Stripes Forever

25/ In which city does the Moselle join the Rhine?  

Koblenz