Mastermind Club

Quiz 2026-1

General Knowledge

Set by Maya Davis




Answers

1/Where did a 150-year-old plant leave a significant blank space in Northumberland? 

The Sycamore Gap near Crag Lough on Hadrian’s Wall

2/Clementine Diane Hitching died in 2025. Under what name was she better known?

Cleo Laine

3/Which much-loved fictional character is commemorated by an official ‘day’ on the author’s birthday of 18th January?

Winnie the Pooh

4/ What does a melissopalynologist study? 

Pollen grains in honey

5/Where in the house might you regularly find Polytetrafluoroethylene, often abbreviated to PTFE?

 Anywhere where you’d find something with Teflon in it – probably the kitchen

6/What is the musical link between a spring carol in Latin, 28th September and 26th December?

Good King Wenceslas – originally a Latin spring carol – Tempus adest floridum – with the same tune; St Wenceslas’ Day is 28th Sept and the Feast of Stephen is 26th December

7/In the name Chat-GPT, what does the abbreviation GPT stand for?

Generative Pre-trained Transformer

8/Where is Jane Austen buried?

Winchester Cathedral

9/What nickname was given to Brighton’s two historic elm trees in Preston Park, one of which has been reinstated there as an artwork?

 Preston Twins – they featured in a TV programme on Trees..

10/Which extinct species of canine did researchers claim to have recreated in 2025? 

 Dire Wolf – and they hadn’t!

11/Men in Love is the sequel to which 20th century novel? 

Trainspotting

12/The discovery of what was originally based on a fossil finger bone discovered in a cave in Siberia?   

Denisovans

13/Pastime with Good Company is a song written by which monarch?   

Henry VIII

14/The founders of which UK institution included Harold Wilson, Peter Venables and Jennie Lee? 

Open University

15/Which Gilbert and Sullivan character’s career was based on that of W.H. Smith? 

Sir Joseph Porter in HMS Pinafore

16/The medieval Lewes Priory was a house of which monastic order? 

Cluniac

17/Why is there a link between a Provok’d Wife, Nicholas Hawksmoor and the Churchill family’s stately home in Oxfordshire? .

Vanbrugh wrote The Provok’d Wife and collaborated with Hawksmoor in designing Blenheim Palace

18/In the UK the term ‘mugger’ is used of violent robbers. What kind of non-human animal is a mugger?

 Crocodile

19/Which British author’s given names include the body of water in Staffordshire which was one of his parents’ favourite places? 

Rudyard Kipling

20/In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, what is Bottom’s first name?

Nick

21/In molecular biology, what does the abbreviation mRNA stand for? 

messenger riboneucleicacid

22/Which star of children’s television, mentioned in 2021 by a prominent politician in a serious speech to assembled businessmen, celebrated her 20th anniversary in 2024? 

Peppa Pig

23/In Norse mythology, which plant was used to make the weapon which killed Baldur?

Mistletoe -the only living thing which had not been asked to swear an oath never to harm Baldur.

24Under what name is the originally Birmingham-based Robert Norman Davis better known?

Jasper Carrott

25/Which female name comes originally from two Greek words meaning ‘horse lover’?    

 

Philippa