ICC season 5

Question 1

QUESTION ONE
Considered one of the landmark venues in opera, what is the name of the opera house in Venice that opened in 1792? It has twice been destroyed by fire and rebuilt, opening again in 1837 and 2004.

Answer 1

Teatro La Fenice

Question 2

QUESTION TWO
In probability theory, which discrete probability distribution describes a single experiment with two possible outcomes, such as a coin toss? It is named for a Swiss mathematician.

Answer 2

Bernoulli Distribution

Question 3

QUESTION ONE
Fictionalising the life of the title dramatist and his relationship with his wife, Armande Bejart, the 1851 play Molière is by which French author? In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf describes how George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, and this author “sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man.”

Answer 3

George Sand

Question 4

QUESTION TWO
When Botswana became an independent nation in 1966, which politician was elected as the first President? Despite spending much of the 1950s in exile, he founded the Bechuanaland Democratic Party in 1961 and won election as Prime Minister on a pro-independence platform.

Answer 4

Seretse Khama

Question 5

QUESTION THREE
In 968 CE, Dinh B$ Linh ended the Anarchy of Twelve Warlords and established which empire that lasted until 1804, when it was reorganised into Vietnam by Gia Long [yaa lawn], the founding Emperor of the Nguyën [win] dynasty? In 1471, this empire annexed its southern neighbour, Champa.

Answer 5

Dai Viet

Question 6

QUESTION ONE
Also known in English as the Fates, what is the Greek name for the group of three goddesses who personified destiny? This group consists of Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

Answer 6

Moirai

Question 7

QUESTION TWO
A fictionalised version of Pablo Neruda appears as ‘The Poet’ in which 1982 magical realist novel about the Trueba family written by Isabel Allende?

Answer 7

The House of the Spirits

Question 8

QUESTION ONE
What is the repeating functional unit of striated muscle? This basic contractile unit, which is absent in smooth muscle, consists of thick filaments in the centre, overlapping with thin filaments attached to the borders of this unit, which are known as Z lines.

Answer 8

Sarcomere

Question 9

QUESTION ONE
Considered a forerunner of New Age spiritualism, which 18th- and early 19th-century German physician hypothesised the existence of an invisible natural force called Lebensmagnetismus (animal magnetism) possessed by all living things? Some of this man’s concepts informed the development of hypnosis.

Answer 9

Franz Mesmer

Question 10

QUESTION THREE
Which discrete probability distribution describes N individual experiments, or Bernoulli trials, with two possible outcomes? The name of this distribution is also shared with a ‘test’ for statistical significance.

Answer 10

Binomial Distribution

Question 11

QUESTION TWO
In relaxed muscle, the I [eye] band of the sarcomere exists around the Z line and consists solely of which protein that makes up the thin filaments? In fully contracted muscle, the I band disappears because the thin filaments have fully overlapped with the thick filaments, which are made of myosin.

Answer 11

Actin

Question 12

QUESTION ONE
From 1418-27, the former peasant Lê Loi [lay lur] led a rebellion to expel the occupying Ming dynasty from Dai Vi@t. He then sought to conquer which neighbouring kingdom that had allied with the Ming? This “land of a million elephants” lasted from 1353 to 1707 and is the forerunner of modern Laos.

Answer 12

Lan Xang

Question 13

QUESTION TWO
Which figure from Irish mythology, with a name meaning “great queen”, is associated with destiny and war, often foretelling death? She is associated with the Badb, a goddess who often takes the form of a crow, and she is sometimes considered part of a triple goddess alongside the Bad and Macha.

Answer 13

The Morrigan

Question 14

QUESTION THREE
What is the official language in the Indian city of Bengaluru (or Bangalore)? Bengaluru is the capital of a state with a name derived from the name of this language.

Answer 14

Kannada

Question 15

QUESTION ONE
La Fenice also premiered what Giuseppe Verdi opera, set in Genoa and centring around the title character, who eventually becomes the first Doge of the city? The first version of this opera was relatively unsuccessful but, after being revised, received a second premiere at La Scala in Milan that proved much better received.

Answer 15

Simon Boccanegra

Question 16

QUESTION TWO
Another man sometimes seen as a forerunner of New Age spiritualism, which Stockholm-born theologian and mystic is best-known for his 1758 book De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus et de inferno, ex Auditis et Visis (Heaven and Hell), in which he gives a detailed description of the afterlife?

Answer 16

Emanuel Swedenborg

Question 17

QUESTION ONE
For a large number of trials or random events, both the binomial and the Poissonian distribution can be approximated by which continuous probability distribution as a consequence of the central limit theorem?

Answer 17

ANS: Gaussian distribution (accept normal distribution; accept Carl Friedrich Gauss)

Question 18

QUESTION TWO
The order Blattodea connains the termites and which flat, dark insects that have become established worldwide as a household pest?

Answer 18

Cockroaches

Question 19

QUESTION THREE
Similar to the Moirai, the Norse deities Urdr [UR-thur], Verdandi [VARE-thand-ee] and Skuld [skoold] shape the course of human destinies by spinning the threads of fate at the root of Yggdrasil. They are known by what collective name? This name is also used to describe some other goddesses in Norse mythology.

Answer 19

Norns

Question 20

QUESTION ONE
The White Elephant War, fought from 1479-84, saw Lan Xang ally with which Indianised kingdom in northern Thailand in order to repel the Dai Viêt invasion? This “land of a million rice fields” lasted from 1292 until 1775, and fought a series of wars against its southern neighbour, the Ayutthaya Kingdom.

Answer 20

Lan Na

Question 21

QUESTION TWO
March 1824 saw the premiere of II crociato in Egitto (The Crusader in Egypt), a two-act opera by which German Jewish composer? While generally well-received, it took him a little longer to become well-known across the continent, with his 1831 opera Robert le diable (Robert The Devil).

Answer 21

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Question 22

QUESTION THREE
For striated muscle to contract, myosin binding sites on the thin filament must be uncovered. This occurs when calcium ions bind with which regulatory proteins, which are attached to a coiled protein named for this protein complex and myosin? Elevated levels of some proteins belonging to this protein complex in the blood are used to diagnose a heart attack.

Answer 22

Troponin

Question 23

QUESTION ONE
Working alongside Eduardo Mondlane, which politician founded the political party FRELIMO in 1962, as a reaction to Portugal’s refusal to consider the independence of Mozambique? Elected as Mozambique’s first President upon independence in 1975, he was later killed in a plane crash rumoured to have been orchestrated by South Africa due to this man’s hostile relations with the apartheid regime.

Answer 23

Samora Machel

Question 24

QUESTION TWO
In order to protect themselves against the threat of Mongol invasion, Mangrai, the first king of Lan Na and founder of the city of Chiang Mai, made an alliance with Ram Khamhaeng, the ruler of which Thai Kingdom? Ram Khamhaeng developed the Thai alphabet and introduced Theravada Buddhism to this kingdom, sometimes considered the first Thai kingdom, which was absorbed into the Ayutthaya kingdom in 1438.

Answer 24

Sukhothai

Question 25

QUESTION THREE
Peter Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ockham were all associated with which medieval school of Christian philosophy that combined religious dogma with Aristotelean logic?

Answer 25

Scholasticism

Question 26

QUESTION ONE
Another mystic often held to be a forerunner to New Age spiritualism is which Greek-Armenian thinker who founded an influential quasi-religious movement and who wrote the trilogy All and Everything? He became known as “the man who killed Katherine Mansfield” after that author died in his care in 1923.

Answer 26

George Gurdjieff

Question 27

QUESTION ONE
Which lake in Utah, the largest saline lake in the United States, has been shrinking due to climate change and over-use of snow melt, with a recent study suggesting it may dry up within five years? There are fears that as it dries, a nearby city will be threatened with toxic dust storms.

Answer 27

Great Salt Lake

Question 28

QUESTION TWO
The Code of the Nesilim is the cuneiform legal code of which ancient empire based in present-day Turkey? Written on a number of tablets uncovered from this empire’s capital of Hattusa, the code contains the earliest example of sexual consent in law.

Answer 28

Hittites

Question 29

QUESTION THREE
The calcium ions that bind to the troponin complex are released from which specialised membrane-bound structure found within muscle cells? This structure is a specialised form of, and has a similar name to, the smooth subunit of another organelle, which is used in detoxification and lipid synthesis. Please answer with the name of structure found only in muscle cells.

Answer 29

Sarcoplasmic Reticulum

Question 30

QUESTION THREE
Colm Tóibín’s 2004 novel The Master fictionalises the life of which American author and explores that author’s ambiguous sexuality? The novel opens with the failure of this author’s play, Guy Domville, and ends with this author’s brother coming to stay with him in his adopted home of East Sussex, England.

Answer 30

Henry James

Question 31

QUESTION TWO
The only one of the SI Units that is based not on a physical constant but, instead, on a biological quantity, its frequency is in the visible spectrum near green, chosen because that is where the human eye is most sensitive. One unit of which SI unit is equal to the power emitted by a light source which in a given direction emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 1012 Hz and has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian?

Answer 31

Candela

Question 32

QUESTION THREE
Which former premier of Saskatchewan introduced North America’s first single-payer universal healthcare system, and has been described as the “father of Medicare” in Canada? He later became the first leader of the New Democratic Party.

Answer 32

Tommy Douglas

Question 33

QUESTION ONE
The Peloponnesian War was fought between the Peloponnesian league, led by Sparta, and the Delian league, led by which Greek city state? Pericles was described as “the first citizen” of this city.

Answer 33

Athens

Question 34

QUESTION TWO
Guy Scott became the first white African head of state since South Africa’s F.W. de Klerk in 1994 and the first ever white head of state in a democratic African nation. As incumbent Vice-President, Scott became President of which country upon the death of President Michael Sata in October 2014?

Answer 34

Zambia

Question 35

QUESTION THREE
Which American philosopher proposed a thought experiment in which you awake with an unconscious violinist depending on your blood in her essay A Defense of
Abortion?

Answer 35

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Question 36

SPARE ONE
The official symbol of the Sassanid Empire, this mythological bird can be commonly found in the art of Iran, Georgia, Armenia, and Byzantium. Most famously appearing in Ferdowsi’s epic Shahnameh, this is which bird of Persian legend credited with possession of great wisdom?

Answer 36

Simurgh

Question 37

QUESTION TWO
Travelling 6 hours from Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway will bring passengers to which city at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga rivers? The sixth-largest city in Russia according to the 2021 census, it is the birthplace of Maxim Gorky, after whom the city was named from 1932 to 1990.

Answer 37

Nizhny Novgorod

Question 38

QUESTION ONE
Which Russian thinker, a notable figure in the field of anarchy, attacked the capitalist work ethic in his 1892 French-language book La Conquête du Pain (The Conquest of Bread), arguing that capitalism relies upon scarcity and poverty to function?

Answer 38

Pyotr Kropotkin

Question 39

QUESTION THREE
Aerosols and foams are examples of what type of mixture, in which insoluble particles of one substance are suspended in, and dispersed throughout, another substance?

Answer 39

Colloid

Question 40

High waterfalls maybe higher than Angel falls if measured by total drop rather than single drop, comes from drakensberg mountains?

Answer 40

Tugela Falls

Question 41

QUESTION ONE
The colour or hue of a gemstone is generally due to the presence of an elemental impurity. Corundum is an aluminium oxide, but red varieties, such as pink sapphire or ruby, get their colour from higher concentrations of which element?

Answer 41

Chromium

Question 42

QUESTION TWO
In Hinduism, Kalki is the final incarnation of the god Vishnu and is commonly depicted riding a divine white horse named Devadatta. Devadatta is itself commonly regarded as a manifestation of which divine bird of Hindu and Buddhist myth who is the sworn enemy of the nagas and mount of Vishnu?

Answer 42

Garuda

Question 43

Battle fought with Sucre, 9 December 1824 as part of Peruvian war of independence

Answer 43

Battle of Ayacucho

Question 44

Battle of 24 May 1822 as part of Ecuadorian war if independence on slopes of namesake volcano

Answer 44

Battle of Pichincha

Question 45

QUESTION THREE
Another of the world’s highest waterfalls are those at the canyon at Trou de Fer.
Sometimes referred to as the highest waterfalls in France, they are found on which island?

Answer 45

La Reunion

Question 46

QUESTION ONE
Which American abstract expressionist often painted onto unprimed canvas using a technique involving diluting oil paints with turpentine, which she called “soak stain”?
Her first professionally exhibited work, Mountains and Sea (1952), became her best-known painting.

Answer 46

Helen Frankenthaler

Question 47

QUESTION TWO
Some critics trace the end of Italian neorealism to the release of which 1954 Federico Fellini film, which Philip Booth described as a “Transitional film… [linking]… Classical Neorealism to Poetic Realism”? In this film, a young woman played by Giulietta Masina is purchased as a wife by a brutish circus strongman played by Anthony Quinn.

Answer 47

La Strada (The Road)

Question 48

QUESTION THREE
Kierkegaard is commonly held to be the first philosopher in which tradition that emphasizes the individual as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will?

Answer 48

Existentialism

Question 49

QUESTION TWO
Which Chilean author’s Un verdor terrible (When We Cease to Understand the World), which was shortlisted for the 2021 Man Eboker International Prize, was described by John Banville as “…a non-fiction novel”? The novel contains several biographical descriptions of the lives of 2oth century scientists, some true and some fictionalised.

Answer 49

Benjamin Labatut

Question 50

QUESTION THREE
Sometimes compared to “quiet quitting” in the Western world, what cultural movement began in China in April 2021 as a rejection of Chinese society’s pressure to work extreme hours? The movement’s name comes from the title of a post written by worker Luo Huazhong, who described his decision to quit his dead-end factory job, return to his hometown, and spend his time reading philosophy.

Answer 50

Tang Ping or Lying Flat

Question 51

QUESTION ONE
What name is given to a colloid where both parts of the mixture are liquids? Milk is a common example of this colloid, whose name partly derives from the Latin for “to milk”

Answer 51

Emulsion

Question 52

QUESTION TWO
The main impurity of the so-called Type I diamonds is which element? This can sometimes result in a yellow or brown tint.

Answer 52

Nitrogen

Question 53

QUESTION TWO
Italian neorealism is traditionally, although not universally, held to begin with the 1943 release of which Luchino Visconti film based on the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain?

Answer 53

Ossessione (Obsession)

Question 54

QUESTION TWO
By 1960, Frankenthaler was experimenting with which style of abstract painting that takes its name from its characteristic use of large blocks of flat solid hues creating unbroken surfaces upon the canvas? Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still are among the other well-known practitioners of this style.

Answer 54

Colour Field

Question 55

QUESTION THREE
Continuing for 20 hours from Yekaterinburg will haul passengers on the Trans-Siberian Railway to which city on the banks of the Ob river? The third-most populous city in Russia, it was ravaged during the Civil War but was later transformed into a major industrial centre.

Answer 55

Novosibirsk

Question 56

QUESTION ONE
At 900 metres high, the Olo’upena Falls is sometimes cited as the fourth highest waterfall behind Tugela, Angel Falls, and the Tres Hermans in Peru. They are found on which Hawaiian island, known as the site of a leper colony at Kalawao?

Answer 56

Moloka’i

Question 57

QUESTION THREE
Another major colour field painter is which American artist whose paintings are characterised by areas of solid colour separated by thin vertical lines which he called
‘zips”?

Answer 57

Barnett Newman

Question 58

QUESTION ONE
Continuing for 30 hours from Novosibirsk on the Trans-Siberian Railway will bring passengers to which city on the Angara river at the southern end of Lake Baikal?
Nicknamed the “Paris of Siberia”, dissidents were exiled to this city for their part in the Decembrist revolt of 1825.

Answer 58

Irkutsk

Question 59

QUESTION TWO
The lying-flat movement arose particularly as a reaction to the Chinese working culture known colloquially by what numerical term, which refers to the starting and finishing time of the workday and the number of days employees are expected to work?

Answer 59

996 working hour system

Question 60

QUESTION ONE
What name is given to the event of 621 CE during which Muhammad is said to have been transported from Mecca to Jerusalem astride the winged horse known as the Buraq?

Answer 60

Night Journey or Isra’

Question 61

QUESTION THREE
Amethyst is a variety of quartz with a purple hue, thanks to the substitution of the trivalent form of which element?

Answer 61

Iron

Question 62

QUESTION ONE
Colloids in which particles of a liquid are dispersed in a solid medium are known as gels - example of this is what gel, used in microbiology as a growth medium for bacteria and popularised by Walther and Fanny Hesse?

Answer 62

Agar Gel

Question 63

QUESTION THREE
In 2010, Laurent Binet was awarded the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for which novel that recounts the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich and, in doing so, confronts the reader with questions surrounding the distinction between nonfiction and the historical novel?

Answer 63

HHhH

Question 64

QUESTION ONE
Some critics see the 1954 English-language film Journey to Italy as the “key stepping stone” away from neorealism. Starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, the film was directed by which man whose earlier contributions to Italian neorealism include Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City) and Germania anno zero (Germany, Year Zero)?

Answer 64

Roberto Rossellini

Question 65

QUESTION ONE
Some critics see the 1954 English-language film Journey to Italy as the “key stepping stone” away from neorealism. Starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, the film was directed by which man whose earlier contributions to Italian neorealism include Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City) and Germania anno zero (Germany, Year Zero)?

Answer 65

Roberto Rossellini

Question 66

QUESTION THREE
J. M. Coetzee’s Foe is a retelling of which 18th-century English novel told from the perspective of Susan Barton?

Answer 66

Robinson Crusoe

Question 67

QUESTION ONE
Although perhaps most closely associated with surrealism, one of Frankenthaler’s primary inspirations was which European artist whose flat backgrounds with mild gradations of colour are often considered a precursor to colour field painting? Among this artist’s best-known early works is La Masia (The Farm), which was purchased by Ernest Hemingway.

Answer 67

Joan Miro

Question 68

QUESTION TWO
Which country on the South American mainland arose when the Brazilian province of Cisplatina declared itself independent in 1825, an independence that was recognized three years later?

Answer 68

Uruguay

Question 69

QUESTION ONE
Many of India’s highest waterfalls, such as the Unchalli, Jog, and Dudhsagar falls are found in which mountain range that runs North-South from Gujarat to Kerala between the Arabian Sea coast of the Indian Peninsula and the Deccan Plateau? This range’s highest peak, Anamudi, is the tallest mountain in India outside the Himalayas.

Answer 69

Western Ghats

Question 70

QUESTION THREE
Winning Korea’s Manhae Prize for Literature in 2014, Sonyeoni onda (Human Acts) is a novel that opens in the aftermath of the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. The novel traces real and fictionalised repercussions of this event, with one chapter even told from the perspective of the corpse of one of the victims of the uprising’s brutal suppression.
The book is by which South Korean novelist, also known for her 2016 work Chaesikjuuija (The Vegetarian), which won the Man Booker International Prize.

Answer 70

HAN Kang

Question 71

QUESTION ONE
Sapphires, typically a blue variety of the mineral corundum, will be a deeper shade of blue with higher concentrations of impurities of iron and which other transition metal?

Answer 71

Titanium

Question 72

QUESTION TWO
Overwork is not just a Chinese phenomenon. Literally translating as “overwork death”, what Japanese term is used to refer to examples of workers dying at young ages due to the physical and mental stresses of extreme working patterns?

Answer 72

Karoshi

Question 73

QUESTION THREE
Said to have died of a broken heart after the departure of its master, Kanthaka was a favourite white horse of whom?

Answer 73

Prince Siddhartha or Buddha

Question 74

QUESTION THREE
Which migratory sparrow-like bird of the Ploceidae family, native to sub-Saharan Africa, is believed to be the most numerous non-domesticated bird on earth, perhaps due to an ability to exploit food sources that has seen it nicknamed “Africa’s feathered locust”?

Answer 74

(Red Billed) Quelea

Question 75

QUESTION THREE
He spent most of his life as a high-ranking eunuch in the emperors’ courts but is best remembered as a skilled military tactician, who led Byzantine forces to victory against the Goths at Taginae (552 (E) and Mons Lactarius (552-3 CE). After defeating the Franks at the Battle of Volturnus in 554 CE, which general became the last man to receive an official Roman triumph in the city of Rome?

Answer 75

Narses

Question 76

SPARE THREE
The opposite of halal, what Arabic name meaning ‘unlawful’ is used to describe food produced in such a way to make it impermissible according to Islamic law?

Answer 76

Haram

Question 77

QUESTION ONE
Featuring a dog that has begun to fade over time, which painting depicts the titular city guard led by Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch?

Answer 77

The Night Watch

Question 78

QUESTION TWO
In physics, the term ‘scattering’ describes the effects that occur between two moving particles that interact. What type of scattering, named for an Indian physicist, is the inelastic scattering of light by matter? The subsequent change of energy and direction of the interacting light is used in a spectroscopic technique named for the same scientist.

Answer 78

Raman Scattering

Question 79

QUESTION THREE
When this composer met with Samuel Beckett, they realised that neither of them liked opera, so fittingly the composer’s only opera Neither, based on a 16-line Beckett poem, is rather un-opera-like, with only one voice. One of which composer’s last works was the 1987 instrumental piece For Samuel Beckett, written in typically slow-moving and blurry style?

Answer 79

Morton Feldman

Question 80

QUESTION THREE
Which 14th-century Persian poet from Shiraz wrote The Divan, a work that contains almost 500 short poems called ghazals, some of which were inspired by a woman called Shakh-e Nabat? Ghazals from The Divan are sometimes collected along with this poet’s contemporaries in Shiraz such as the princess Jahan Malek Khatun and the bisexual satirist Ubayd Zakani.

Answer 80

Hafez

Question 81

QUESTION ONE
Which classic ethnographic text written in 1909 describes the title events as consisting of three distinguishable, consecutive elements, beginning with separation and ending with reintegration? The Japanese Shichi-Go-San, the Buddhist shinyu, and the various Hindu samskära take different forms and occur at various stages in life, but can all be described as examples of the title events of this text.

Answer 81

The Rites of Passage

Question 82

Primal couple in Māori mythology

Answer 82

Papa and Rangi

Question 83

QUESTION TWO
Expected to be completed by 2030, which city was founded in 2007 as the new planned capital of South Korea? The city is named after one of the country’s greatest leaders, the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty and creator of the Korean alphabet.

Answer 83

Sejong City

Question 84

QUESTION ONE
In 2021, Emmanuel Macron shut down which French grande école and replaced it with the Institut national du service public (National Institute of Public Service)? Despite only producing around 80 to 90 graduates per year, alumni of this graduate school dominated French political life, with presidents such as Macron himself, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Jacques Chirac, and François Hollande all having attended.

Answer 84

ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration)

Question 85

QUESTION TWO
Which Dutch-German-French ethnographer wrote the 1909 work Les Rites de passag (The Rites of Passage), and was also a founder of folklore studies in France?

Answer 85

Arnold van Gennep

Question 86

QUESTION ONE
Premiered in 1968 for the 125th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic, the composition Sinfonia for orchestra and eight amplified voices features excerpts and fragments from multiple texts, including Samuel Beckett’s novel The Unnamable. It was a work by which composer, also known for the Sequenza series of solo pieces?

Answer 86

Luciano Berio

Question 87

QUESTION TWO
What is the most common form of extrusive igneous rock? It is typically formed by the rapid cooling of mantle rock that had melted due to a drop in pressure, and it can form distinctive columnar structures.

Answer 87

Basalt

Question 88

QUESTION ONE
In Les rites de passage (The Rites of Passage), van Gennep recognizes three stages of such rites: beginning with the subject’s separation from their original state, and ending with reintegration as part of a new group. What term, from the Latin for “threshold”, did van Gennep use for the phase in between, a state of transition that can be marked by ambiguity or disorientation?

Answer 88

Liminal

Question 89

QUESTION TWO
While graduates of Beida (Peking University) may have been more prominent in earlier administrations, recent Chinese leadership has been led by a clique of alumni of which other university in Beijing? Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao and Zhu Rongji are among the political leaders who attended this university, which is also known for its university press.

Answer 89

Tsinghua University

Question 90

QUESTION ONE
Hafez is said to have memorised not only the Quran, but also the works of Rumi, including which six-volume masterpiece, often considered the greatest work of Sufism? This work uses parables and anecdotes in an attempt to reveal the way to God through divine love.

Answer 90

Masnavi

Question 91

Frederick V of the Palatinate wife, daughter of James I who avoided 30 years war 1618-48 even though deposed FV.

Answer 91

Elizabeth Stuart Queen of Bohemia

Question 92

Lancashire witch trials took place in which town in reign of James I

Answer 92

Pendle

Question 93

QUESTION THREE
The repetition and the re-combination of words and phrases in Samuel Beckett’s short story Bing (Ping) has been compared to the compositional techniques of which composer, whose music theatre work Originale (Originals) was inspired by absurdist dramas? Péter Eötvös [URT-vursh] used text from Beckett’s Embers in Octet Plus, a work dedicated to this composer of Klavierstücke and Kontra-Punkte.

Answer 93

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Question 94

QUESTION ONE
Which painting features a brown dog among its numerous subjects, who are relaxing on their day off, at a park on the titular island in the Seine River?

Answer 94

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Question 95

1966 novel In Cold Blood telling story of Clutter family in Kansas, takes title from lines of Alcibiades in which play?

Answer 95

Timon of Athens

Question 96

QUESTION THREE
What type of scattering, named for an American physicist, describes elastic scattering of high-energy light, typically an X- or gamma ray, by a charged particle? Along with the photoelectric effect, the discovery of this effect demonstrated that light acts as a particle in certain conditions.

Answer 96

Compton

Question 97

QUESTION THREE
The Moai statues of Easter Island are related to the carved humanoid figures found throughout much of Polynesia that take their name from what first man in Mäori mythology? The name of these figures has been used for a popular culture movement, particularly associated with Hawaiian-themed bars, that developed in America after servicemen returned home after having been deployed in the South Pacific during World War II.

Answer 97

Tiki

Question 98

QUESTION ONE
The planned city of Ramciel, in Lakes state, is expected to become the capital of which country in the not too distant future? Located in a former rhino sanctuary just south of the largest grass swamp in the world, Ramciel’s construction had originally been proposed by former leader, Dr. John Garang, prior to his death in a plane crash.

Answer 98

South Sudan

Question 99

QUESTION TWO
Which Hungarian composer premiered his first opera Fin de Partie, based on Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame, at the age of 92 in 2018? Fin de Partie contrasts with much of his earlier oeuvre, which is often characterized by very short pieces such as the song cycle Kafka-Fragmente (Kafka-Fragments), and the 10-volume collection of piano miniatures Játékok (Games), which he has recorded alongside his wife Márta.

Answer 99

Gyorgy Kurtag

Question 100

QUESTION THREE
Spain saw fewer witch-hunts than northern Europe. One exception, however, was the series of witch trials held in Navarre in 1525-26, which took place after Navarre had been invaded by which Spanish King on the premise that heretical protestant beliefs had become widespread there? This king of Aragon unified Spain with his wife Isabella I of Castile.

Answer 100

Ferdinand II

Question 101

QUESTION ONE
Hafez also memorised the works of which other poet from Shiraz, the author of Bustan and the prose work Gulistan? His poem Bani Adam calls for the removal of barriers that divide humankind, and was quoted by Barack Obama in 2009 in a message intended to improve US-Iranian relations.

Answer 101

Saadi

Question 102

QUESTION THREE
Presidents Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Naftali Bennett all attended which Israeli university? It was founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann, and like Technion and the Weizmann Institute of Science, it is older than the state of Israel itself. You may answer with its full name or a four-letter initialism.

Answer 102

Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI)

Question 103

QUESTION ONE
Basalt is chemically equivalent to which coarse-grained, slow-cooling igneous rock that is named after a village in Tuscany?

Answer 103

Gabbro

Question 104

QUESTION TWO
Another poet whose works were memorised by Hafez, Rumi wrote that which Sufi mystic poet and apothecary had “traversed the seven cities of love”? This poet who, like Omar Khayyam, was born in Nishapur, wrote Maqämät-ut-Tuyür (The Conference of the Birds), in which birds discuss various human failings, as well as Ilähi-Nama (The Book of the Divine) and Tazkirat al-Awliya (Memorial of the Saints).

Answer 104

Attar of Nishapur

Question 105

QUESTION THREE
Liminality became a central subject for which British cultural anthropologist, who explored it in his own works, which include The Forest of Symbols (1967) and Dramas, Fields and Metaphors (1972)?

Answer 105

Victor Turner

Question 106

QUESTION THREE
Eight current heads of state or government - including Sandra Mason, Keith Rowley and Andrew Holness - attended which trans-national university that serves the English speaking countries and territories of the Caribbean? It was founded in 1948 as a college of the University of London, but has been independent since 1962 and now has nearly 50,000 students across five campuses.

Answer 106

University of the West Indies

Question 107

PM of Trinidad and Tobago as of 2023 since 2017

Answer 107

Keith Rowley

Question 108

QUESTION THREE
What is the name of the planned city that is expected to become the new capital of Indonesia next year? Lying on the east coast of Borneo, this city takes its name from the Javanese word for the area that roughly equates to the Malay Archipelago.

Answer 108

Nusantara

Question 109

QUESTION THREE
The most sacred texts of the Zoroastrian faith are which seventeen hymns believed to have been composed by Zoroaster himself?

Answer 109

Gathas

Question 110

Sacred book of Zoroastrianism

Answer 110

Avesta

Question 111

QUESTION TWO
Which isth-cenury Danish scientist was the first person to link electricity and magnetism, when he discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields? His brother served as the prime minister of Denmark.

Answer 111

Hans Christian Orsted

Question 112

QUESTION THREE
Yumi, Yumi, Yumi, the national anthem of Vanuatu, is written in which language? One of the country’s three official languages - along with French and English - it is a creole of English origin.

Answer 112

Bislama

Question 113

QUESTION ONE
First arising in the late 3rd century CE, what Christian doctrine holds that while Jesus is the Son of God, he was created by God the Father rather than having always existed?
This doctrine was declared to be heretical in 325 CE.

Answer 113

Arianism

Question 114

QUESTION TWO
It is rather unusual for authors to win the Nobel Prize in Literature primarily for nonfiction work. Which French author, whose work is mainly autobiographical, wrote works such as Les Années (The Years), and won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”?

Answer 114

Annie Ernaux

Question 115

STION ONE
at was the name of the Nahua woman who acted as an intermediary to Hernán tes during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire? She gives her name to a ogatory term for Mexicans who are seen to be attracted to foreign culture, ticularly that of the United States, at the expense of Mexican culture.

Answer 115

La Malinche

Question 116

QUESTION TWO
What portmanteau term was coined in 1992 by Robert Duncan and Christopher Thompson for a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field? By the late 1990s, astronomers had concluded that soft gamma repeaters are likely examples of these neutron stars and recent research has suggested that energy released from newly formed examples of these stars may be responsible for some of the brightest supernovae.

Answer 116

Magnetar

Question 117

QUESTION ONE
In October 1971, Michel Foucault engaged in a philosophical debate on the concept of human nature against which scholar? Foucault structured his points around human societies, whereas this thinker’s arguments were built on his theory of universal grammar.

Answer 117

Noam Chomsky

Question 118

QUESTION ONE
In phonetics, consonant sounds can be classified according to their manner of articulation. Including nasal occlusives such as [m] and plosives such as [p] and [b], what name is given to consonant sounds articulated by both lips?

Answer 118

Bilabial Consonants

Question 119

QUESTION TWO
Part of the First Council of Nicaea was dedicated to a debate about Arianism. The position against Arianism was argued by Alexander and which other member of the Coptic church? This man was considered the main defender of Christianity against the Arian heresy and is one of the four great Doctors of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Answer 119

Athanasius I

Question 120

An FRB is a transient radio pulse lasting milliseconds that releases as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun puts out in three days, and 2020 data from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope suggests magnetars may be the source of FRBs. For what phrase does FRB stand*?

Answer 120

Fast Radio Burst

Question 121

QUESTION ONE
[Columns designed in the lonic order of architecture are distinguished by scroll-like capitals, which are known by what name?

Answer 121

Volutes

Question 122

QUESTION ONE
Following his theories of paradigm shifts, Thomas Kuhn debated with which philosopher over the methodologies of scientific research? While Kuhn’s model was sociological, this thinker’s rationalist background led him to base a model on his concept of falsifiability.

Answer 122

Karl Popper

Question 123

QUESTION TWO
The Grand Inga Dam is a series of seven proposed hydroelectric power stations at the site of the Inga Falls, approximately 150 kilometres (93 mi), upstream of where which river empties into the Atlantic Ocean?

Answer 123

Congo

Question 124

QUESTION THREE
Which name is sometimes used in Peru to mean a traitor. It is taken from the name given to the indigenous teenager who acted as an interpreter to Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro during their conquest of the Inca, during which time they captured atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca?

Answer 124

Felipillo

Question 125

ESTION TWO
Including plosives such as [t] and [d] and sibilant fricatives such as [s] and [z], what name is given to consonant sounds created when the blade (and sometimes the tip) of the tongue articulates with the namesake ridge that contains the tooth sockets on the jaw bones?

Answer 125

Alveolar consonants

Question 126

QUESTION TWO
Which Belarusian author won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first non-fiction writer to win the award in several decades? Her work chronicles the human face of the history and post history of the Soviet Union.

Answer 126

Svetlana Alexievich

Question 127

QUESTION TWO
Choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska for the Ballets Russes, Les Biches is a ballet with music by which French composer? Satie acted as a mentor to this composer, who collaborated with Jean Cocteau on his one-act operatic work, La Voix Humane.

Answer 127

Francis Poulenc

Question 128

QUESTION THREE
Which Swiss composer used a libretto written by Jean Cocteau for his opera Antigone, which also featured costumes by Coco Chanel and set design by Pablo Picasso? Like Poulenc, he was a member of Les Six, a group first mentored and then disowned by Erik Satie, and his best-known piece is the orchestral work Pacific 231.

Answer 128

Arthur Honegger

Question 129

QUESTION TWO
Similar to malinchismo, Guacanagarix complex refers to someone from the Dominican Republic who is perceived to be more interested in foreign culture than their own.
Guacanagarix was a cacique, or chieftain, who, unlike other caciques did not enter into an effort to expel the Spanish. Guacanagaríx was a leader of what people, the indigenous inhabitants of Hispaniola and the rest of the Greater Antilles at the time of the European contact in 1492? This people spoke a dialect of the Arawakan languages.

Answer 129

Taino

Question 130

QUESTION THREE
Regarded as among the greatest works in Chinese literature, which 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong is set predominantly in the titular period of Chinese history of the 3rd century CE in which China was divided between the states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu?

Answer 130

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Question 131

QUESTION ONE
Although the council resulted in the creation of the Nicene Creed, it failed to resolve many of the outstanding issues and caused later difficulties for which emperor of the Eastern Roman empire? Under his reign, Athanasius was forced into hiding; however, this man’s dependency on his brother Valentinian I, the emperor of Western Rome and a Nicene Christian, tempered him and he was later succeeded by Theodosius I, himself an opponent of Arianism.

Answer 131

Valens

Question 132

QUESTION TWO
Although associated with ancient architecture, caryatids and atlantes are not unique to Greece. Examples in the Baroque style can be found on the Sanssouci palace in Potsdam, built on the orders of which European monarch in the mid-18th century?

Answer 132

Frederick II the Great

Question 133

QUESTION THREE
Including nasal occlusives such as [m] (the ‘m’ sound in ‘comfort’) and non-sibilant fricatives such as [f] and [v], what name is given to consonant sounds created when the lower lip articulates with the upper teeth?

Answer 133

Labiodental Consonants

Question 134

QUESTION THREE
Opened in 1974, the Cahora Bassa Dam in Mozambique is one of two major dams on which river that flows into the Indian Ocean?

Answer 134

Zambezi

Question 135

QUESTION THREE
The other of the Classic Chinese Novels dating from the 14th century is which novel, attributed to Shi Nai’an, set during the Northern Song dynasty? The novel tells of Song Jiang and 108 outlaw spirits released from their imprisonment beneath an ancient stele-bearing tortoise who gather at Mount Liang to rebel against the government.

Answer 135

Water Margin (or Outlaws of the Marsh)

Question 136

QUESTION ONE
Jean Cocteau provided the libretto for Les mariés de la tour Eiffel (The Wedding Party on the Eiffel Tower), a ballet with music written by five members of Les Six. Among them was which composer, the only female member, who is remembered for her opera cycle Du style galant au style méchant, which parodies four earlier composers from different eras?

Answer 136

Germaine Tailleferre

Question 137

QUESTION TWO
This particle remains one of the major unsolved problems in astrophysics; it is an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray detected on 15 October 1991 in Utah and is the highest-energy cosmic ray ever detected with energy equivalent to that of a baseball travelling at about 28 metres a second. If the Higgs boson is known as the ‘God Particle’, what is the related name given to this particle?

Answer 137

Oh-My-God Particle

Question 138

Which philosopher wrote The Sublime Object of Ideology?

Answer 138

Slavoj Zizek

Question 139

QUESTION ONE
In chemistry, what do we call the loss of electrons in a reaction, making it essentially the opposite of reduction (with which it occurs simultaneously in a reaction)? This word is used informally to mean ‘corrosion’ or ‘rusting’.

Answer 139

Oxidation

Question 140

QUESTION THREE
Creating the world’s largest man-made lake by surface area, which Dam in Ghana was opened on which river in 1965?

Answer 140

Akosombo

Question 141

QUESTION ONE
Including nasal occlusives such as [n] (the ‘ng’ sound in ‘sing’) and plosives such as [k] and [g], what name is given to consonant sounds created when the back of the tongue articulates with the soft palate?

Answer 141

Velar consonants

Question 142

QUESTION TWO
Yanakuna was a term that referred to a serving social class in the Inca Empire, many of which later entered Spanish service and helped to overthrow the Inca Empire. In Chile, the term “yanacona” is used by what people to describe someone who is believed not to be acting in the interests of their ethnic group? Lautaro was a leader of these people during the Arauco war against the Spanish.

Answer 142

Mapuche

Question 143

QUESTION THREE
Emperor Valens later came into conflict with which other figure, another of the four Doctors of the Eastern Orthodox Church who was later canonised? Working with Gregory Nazianzus, this man participated in many public debates against Arianism that were overseen by agents of Valens; Valens himself eventually visited Caesarea to confront this man over his refusal to compromise with Arian factions.

Answer 143

St Basil the Great

Question 144

QUESTION ONE
In existence between 1185 and 1868, when Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned the position, which title was held by the military dictator of Japan?

Answer 144

Shogun

Question 145

QUESTION THREE
His opposition to Otto von Bismarck’s financial policy resulted in a “Sausage Duel” between the two. Which German physician (1821-1902) is known as “the father of modern pathology” because his work helped to discredit humourism, pioneering the modern concept of pathological processes by his application of cell theory to explain the effects of disease in the organs and tissues of the body?

Answer 145

Rudolf Virchow

Question 146

QUESTION TWO
One of the best-selling novels of all-time, which 1936 novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky tells the story of Pavel Korchagin, a hero of socialist realism, who is fighting on the Bolshevik side during the Russian Civil War?

Answer 146

How the Steel was Tempered

Question 147

UESTION THREE
At over 3,000 years old, this city in the Fergana Valley is the oldest city in Kyrgyzstan and is commonly referred to as the country’s ‘capital of the south’. Famous in the Middle Ages for its production of silk, this is which city located just 5 km from the Uzbek border?

Answer 147

Osh

Question 148

SPARE ONE
The different chemical forms of an element are known as its isotopes. What name is given to the different chemical forms of compounds, in which the same chemical elements exist in the same proportions but in different arrangements?

Answer 148

Isomers

Question 149

Nukus is the capital of which autonomous republic, located in the northwest of Uzbekistan?

Answer 149

Karakalpakstan

Question 150

QUESTION ONE
Androgyny and the concept of the “New Woman” are recurring themes in the work of which Dada artist best known for her photomontages such as Modenschau (Fashion
Show) and Das schöne Mädchen (The Beautiful Girl?

Answer 150

Hannah Hoch

Question 151

QUESTION TWO
Having previously served as empress consort and empress dowager, in 690 CE who became the only woman to rule as Empress of China in her own right when she had her son, the Emperor Ruizong, yield the throne to her?

Answer 151

Wu (Zetian)

Question 152

QUESTION THREE
The neck and back of a violin is traditionally made from the wood from which deciduous trees known for their palmate leaves?

Answer 152

Maple

Question 153

QUESTION THREE
Friedrich Schleiermacher is considered a founder of the modern school of what discipline of philosophy and theology, the study of interpretation? The name of this discipline is paired with “Kritik” (“Criticism”) in the title of a posthumously published collection of Schleiermacher’s work on the interpretation and textual criticism of the New Testament.

Answer 153

Hermeneutics

Question 154

QUESTION ONE
Benzene is a simple aromatic compound with formula C6H6. Attaching a methyl group to benzene forms which water-insoluble liquid? Also called methylbenzene, this chemical is used as a solvent for thinners, paints and lacquers.

Answer 154

Toluene

Question 155

Aztec god of fire and lightning with dog head sometimes seen no eyes as cried them out

Answer 155

Xolotl

Question 156

QUESTION TWO
Which Surrealist artist is best known for her work Le Déjeuner en fourrure (Breakfast in Fur), a teacup and saucer that have been lined with fur? She appeared as an androgynous figure alongside a printing press in a series of photographs by Man Ray, but viewed physical androgyny as different from the Jungian-influenced “androgyny of spirit” that she championed in her art.

Answer 156

Meret Oppenheim

Question 157

QUESTION TWO
Substituting one of benzene’s hydrogen atoms with an amine group can synthesize which commodity chemical, the simplest aromatic amine, used to manufacture precursor chemicals? This chemical can also be called benzenamine, aminobenzene or phenylamine.

Answer 157

Aniline

Question 158

QUESTION ONE
In the 1870s, the British government organised the transport of a particular species of South American tree to their colonies in the east. Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Singapore were preferred but it was Malaya (Malaysia) that became the largest producer of what product used in the automotive industry, at one point accounting for 50% of the world’s production?

Answer 158

Rubber

Question 159

QUESTION THREE
The top, or soundboard, of a violin is traditionally made from the wood of which coniferous evergreen trees that grow in boreal forests and high altitudes? The wood from these trees was also used in the Wright brothers’ Flyer, and it appears in the nickname of the Hughes H-4 Hercules seaplane.

Answer 159

Spruce

Question 160

QUESTION ONE
The hydrogenation of benzene, typically with a Raney nickel catalyst, produces which colourless flammable liquid, used as a precursor in the mass production of nylon?

Answer 160

Cyclohexane

Question 161

QUESTION TWO
In which operetta by Johann Strauss II does Eisenstein try to seduce a Hungarian countess, who is actually his wife Rosalinde in disguise? The title of this opera comes from the outfit Falke wears to the ball hosted by Prince Orlofsky, who is played by a mezzo-soprano en travesti.

Answer 161

Die Fledermaus

Question 162

QUESTION ONE
What German philosopher explored the process of understanding in his 1960 book Warheit und Methode (Truth and Method) and his debates with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida? He spent much of his early career publishing on Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle.

Answer 162

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Question 163

QUESTION THREE
By the 1950s, Malaysia needed a new crop that had shorter gestation periods between planting and cropping and thus quicker returns. The answer was Elaeis guineensis, which originated in the tropical rainforests of West Africa and is the principal source of what product used primarily in foodstuffs, sometimes as a cheaper substitute for butter? Malaysia is the world’s largest exporter of this product, and plantations of Elaeis guineensis cover 15% of its land area.

Answer 163

Palm Oil

Question 164

Most populous city in Philippines

Answer 164

Quezon City

Question 165

QUESTION TWO
The Emperors Gaozu and Taizong overthrew which preceding dynasty to establish the Tang? This short-lived dynasty’s Emperor Yang is known for large construction projects, such as the Grand Canal, but is commonly regarded as a tyrant.

Answer 165

Sui

Question 166

QUESTION TWO
Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King) tells the story of Marie Stahlbaum, who is taken to a land of dolls after her favourite Christmas toy comes to life and defeats the evil Mouse King. It is among the best-known fairy-tales to appear in which German author’s 1816 collection Kinder-Mährchen (Children’s Stories)?

Answer 166

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann

Question 167

QUESTION ONE
Which aristocratic German-born artist was one of the pioneers of found objects in art with works like Enduring Object and God, and has sometimes been credited with creating Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture Fountain? She was also known for her androgynous costumes made from found objects, such as tin cans, spoons, and even birdcages with live birds.

Answer 167

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Question 168

QUESTION TWO
Malaysia is one of the largest global hubs for assembly, testing and packaging activities in which industry that employs more than 100,000 Malaysians, mostly in the island of Penang? The name of this industry is represented by the letter S in the Taiwanese manufacturing company TSMC, the world’s largest company dedicated to this industry.

Answer 168

Semiconductors

Question 169

QUESTION THREE
Known for its permanent lava lake and having been described by the “gates of hell” by both the indigenous people and the colonial Spanish, the Masaya Volcano is located in which country? The Masaya Volcano is located between Lake Xolotlán and this country’s namesake lake.

Answer 169

Nicaragua

Question 170

QUESTION ONE
Moving hermeneutics firmly beyond textual analysis to what he called hermeneutic phenomenology’, what French philosopher wrote about hermeneutics in De
‘interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud (Freud and Philosophy) and his three-volume Temps et Récit (Time and Narrative)?

Answer 170

Paul Ricoeur

Question 171

QUESTION THREE
In which 1911 opera by Richard Strauss, is the young Octavian a “breeches role” performed by a woman? Octavian dresses as a maid to escape his lover’s husband and to keep her cousin Baron Ochs from marrying Sophie, who has fallen in love with Octavian.

Answer 171

Der Rosenkavalier

Question 172

QUESTION ONE
Wu Zetian’s reign saw a great expansion of China’s territory. One such expansion was in the Korean peninsula following wars against the Goguryeo and which other Korean kingdom, one of the Three Kingdoms alongside Goguryeo and Baekje?

Answer 172

Silla

Question 173

QUESTION TWO
Marxist hermeneutics can address the interpretive frameworks around a text and the artistic mode of production rather thap the text itself. What American literary theorist used this approach in The Political Unconscious and critiqued modernism and postmodernism in Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism?

Answer 173

Frederic Jameson

Question 174

QUESTION ONE
Which author selected the fairy-tale Bella Venezia as the Italian variant of the Snow White myth in his 1956 collection Fiabe italiane (Italian Folktales)? Heavily influenced by Vladimir Propp’s Morfologiya skazki (Morphology of the Folktale), this man included elements of the folktale in novels such as il barone rampante (The Baron in the Trees).

Answer 174

Italo Calvino

Question 175

QUESTION TWO
What simple machine consists of a wtleel, typically with a grooved rim, which supports and changes the direction of a rope or chain that can be used to lift heavy objects? In Plutarch’s Boi Parálleloi (Parallel Lives), Archimedes demonstrates the effectiveness of using the “compound” form of these simple machines by pulling a ship towards him.

Answer 175

Pulley

Question 176

QUESTION THREE
Benzene is reacted with propylene in which industrial process for synthesising phenol and acetone? Also called the Hock process, it is named for the organic compound produced in the intermediate step.

Answer 176

Cumene Process

Question 177

QUESTION TWO
Violin bows are traditionally made from the wood of which tree in the legume family, known for its dense red heartwood?

Answer 177

Brazilwood

Question 178

QUESTION ONE
Named after a narrow break in the cliffs and the site of hot springs with sulphuric water, Hell’s Gate National Park is located in which country? Other national parks in this country include Aberdare, Lake Nakuru and Meru.

Answer 178

Kenya

Question 179

Madrid golden triangle of art museum

Answer 179

Prado
Reina Sofia
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

Question 180

QUESTION THREE
Which French surrealist photographer is best-known for adopting different androgynous personae for a series of self-portraits, some of which were taken in collaboration with her partner Marcel Moore?

Answer 180

Claude Cahun

Question 181

Aorta originates from which part of heart?

Answer 181

Left Ventricle

Question 182

QUESTION TWO
Which American novelist wrote “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” in her poem ‘Sacred Emily’? She lived in Paris from 1903 until her death in 1946.

Answer 182

Gertrude Stein

Question 183

QUESTION THREE
Which language, sometimes referred to as Classical Ethiopic, is used as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church? This language’s namesake script is also used for Amharic and Tigrinya.

Answer 183

Ge’ez

Question 184

QUESTION TWO
Which Odessa-born French bacteriologist developed the first effective vaccines for cholera and the bubonic plague, which he tested on himself?

Answer 184

Waldemar Haffkine

Question 185

QUESTION THREE
Which 17th-century Catholic priest and composer is best remembered for his Miserere, a setting of Psalm 51 for two choirs that was written for exclusive use in the Sistine Chapel? It is alleged that a young Mozart heard the piece and transcribed it from memory.

Answer 185

Gregorio Allegri

Question 186

Poem which is national epic of Argentina

Answer 186

El Gaucho Martin Fierro

Question 187

Which diplomat has served as Russia’s Foreign Minister since 2004?

Answer 187

Sergey Lavrov

Question 188

SPARE TWO
Which English physicist gives his name to the “vector” that describes the direction and magnitude of the flow of energy in an electromagnetic field?

Answer 188

Poynting Vector

Question 189

SPARE THREE
Which river in the Congo basin gives its name to the rainforest home to the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, and a province of the Democratic Republic of Congo that has seen conflict between Lendu and Hema people since 1999?

Answer 189

Ituri

Question 190

QUESTION THREE
Said to have been led by the Wolof couple, Maria Olofa and Gonzalo Mandinga, the earliest recorded slave rebellion in the Americas occurred at Christmas 1521 on a Caribbean sugar plantation owned by a great-grandson of Christopher Columbus named Diego Colón. The rebellion took place in which Spanish colony of which Colón was the governor? This colony is named after a city founded by Columbus’s younger brother, Bartholomew, which is today the capital city of a Caribbean nation.

Answer 190

Santo Domingo

Question 191

QUESTION ONE
The teleological, cosmological, and ontological are famous examples of arguments for what concept? The cosmological argument for this concept is also known as the
“prime mover” argument, broadly stating the universe could not emerge from nothing.

Answer 191

Existence of god

Question 192

QUESTION THREE
Giorgio Vasari claims that which Mannerist artist painted Autoritratto entro uno specchio convesso (Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror) to attract potential customers? The self-portrait, from 1524, shows this artist’s right hand in the foreground much larger than normal; he later went on to depict somebody else with an enlarged physical characteristic in his Madonna dal collo lungo (Madonna with the Long Neck).

Answer 192

Parmigianino (Girolamo Mazzola)

Question 193

QUESTION ONE
Built on top of Jamsu Bridge, forming the upper half of a double-decked bridge, the Banpo Bridge is adorned with the Moonlight Rainbow Fountain created by nearly 10,000 LED nozzles. Which river is spanned by the spectacular Banpo Bridge?

Answer 193

Han River (Seoul)

Question 194

What is the Montenegro mountain which is the insljratjon behind the name of the country?

Answer 194

Mount Lovcen

Question 195

JESTION THREE
Iriting in The Art of Fiction, David Lodge defined magical realism as “when marvellous id impossible events occur in what otherwise purports to be a realistic narrative”, ting which author’s 1979 novel Kniha smichu a zapomneni (The Book of Laughter and orgetting) as a non-Latin American example?

Answer 195

Milan Kundera

Question 196

QUESTION THREE
Instead of painting classical self-portraits, many Renaissance artists included depictions of themselves in their works. Michelangelo included himself in the flayed skin held by which Christian saint, who was said to have been martyred by being skinned alive?

Answer 196

Saint Bartholomew

Question 197

QUESTION TWO
The dramatischer Sopran (dramatic soprano) is the treble equivalent of which tenor voice? This German term describes a very powerful high tenor with a dark timbre and it [is associated with the heroic roles of Wagner, such as Siegfried and Tristan.

Answer 197

Heldentenor

Question 198

QUESTION THREE
Known for its unusual circular shape, the Laguna Garzón Bridge is a bridge crossing the Laguna Garzón in Uruguay. Opened in 2015, it was designed by which Uruguayan architect who died in 2023? His other major works include the Tokyo International Forum, 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, and 20 Fenchurch Street in London.

Answer 198

Rafael Vinoly

Question 199

QUESTION THREE
Although her confession was extracted through torture, a woman named Maria was executed by the Dutch in 1716 for allegedly leading a slave revolt on which Caribbean island? Another slave revolt of 1795 on this island ended with the execution of its leader, Tula, who is today revered as a hero on this island that finally won some autonomy from the Netherlands in 2010.

Answer 199

Curacao

Question 200

QUESTION ONE
According to their regnal numbers, which name occurs most often in the list of monarchs of Spain? The most recent monarch of this name had the regnal number XIII (thirteen) and left the country in 1931 on the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic.

Answer 200

Alfonso

Question 201

QUESTION TWO
The Mesozoic ocean that lay between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia is named after which Titan from Greek myth? She was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia.

Answer 201

Tethys

Question 202

QUESTION ONE
In ancient Chinese mathematics, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, or what we call pi, was approximated by the number 3. In time, several improvements were suggested, leading up to Zu Chongzhi’s fifth-century approximation of pi as 355 divided by 113. In modern maths, such an approximation of a real number by a ratio of two whole numbers is often named after which third-century mathematician from Alexandria?

Answer 202

Diophantus

Question 203

QUESTION TWO
One of many off-beat self-portraits she created, what 1944 work was painted by Frida Kahlo not long after she underwent surgery on her spine? Kahlo is depicted naked from the waist up, with her torso split to show the painting’s title object in place of her spine.

Answer 203

The Broken Column

Question 204

QUESTION TWO
Living root bridges are, as their name suggests, created from living roots of the rubber fig tree by the Khasi and Jaiñtia people of the Shillong Plateau in which Indian state?
This state in northeast India, once known as the ‘Scotland of the East’, has its capital at Shillong.

Answer 204

Meghalaya

Question 205

QUESTION TWO
An enslaved woman from Ghana named Breffu led a 1733 insurrection on the island of St. John against plantation owners under the supervision of the union of Denmark-Norway; Breffu and her followers were defeated after French and Swiss troops were sent in from Martinique. St. John is today a district of which ‘unincorporated territory’ in the Caribbean?

Answer 205

US Virgin Islands

Question 206

QUESTION THREE
|
The Fortaleza del Cerro is a fortress built atop the 134 metre-tall hill that gives which capital city its name?

Answer 206

Montevideo

Question 207

QUESTION THREE
The dramatic sopranos may be contrasted with which other soprano voices that have a warm, bright, full timbre and strength in the higher registers? This range of voices sits between the lighter coloratura sopranos and soubrettes, and the heavier dramatic sopranos. Lighter roles for this voice include Pamina in Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and fuller roles include Mimi in La bohème.

Answer 207

Lyric soprano

Question 208

QUESTION TWO
One of three French newspapers of record, along with Le Monde and Libération, which is the oldest national newspaper in France? This newspaper is named after a character in a play by Beaumarchais that was famously adapted to opera.

Answer 208

Le Figaro

Question 209

QUESTION THREE
In the novel The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, former nun Agnes assumes the identity of the dead Father Damien on a reservation where instead of converting the Indigenous residents, she/he (using different pronouns for different parts of the self) takes on traditional beliefs. What Ojibwe author, who won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Night Watchman, set many of her books on that same reservation?

Answer 209

Louise Erdrich

Question 210

QUESTION TWO
Most works of magical realism in Latin America were written by men; one notable exception is which 1989 novel by Laura Esquivel that centres on a young woman named Tita? The novel’s title comes from a Latin American phrase used to describe a person whose emotions are about to send them over the edge.

Answer 210

Like Water for Chocolate

Question 211

German record producer who founded the 1970s disco-pop group Boney M., the Latin pop band No Mercy and the pop band Milli Vanilli. Played by Matthias Schweighöfer in girl you know it’s true.

Answer 211

Frank Farian

Question 212

German actor played Werner Heisenberg in Oppenheimer, army of the dead, Frank farian in girl you know it’s true, 2023 heart of stone

Answer 212

Matthias Schweighöfer

Question 213

QUESTION ONE
Zu’s approximation of pi can be recreated by the method where a number X is represented as its integer part Ao (a-zero) plus a fraction with one above and another number X1 below the line, whereupon X1 is represented as its integer part A1 plus one-over-X2, and so on. What is the modern term for this kind of possibly infinite expression?

Answer 213

Continued Fraction

Question 214

QUESTION TWO
As noted in the painting’s title, what unusual physical characteristic did Marc Chagall paint himself as having in a 1913 self-portrait, which shows him working on his other work Of Russia, Donkeys and Others?

Answer 214

Seven Fingers on his left hand

Question 215

QUESTION THREE
What Italian term, meaning “pushed”, describes a lyric soprano who has the ease and clarity typical of a lyric soprano, but who can also achieve powerful dramatic climaxes?
Leontyne Price was an example of this type of soprano, and famous roles for this voice include the title roles in Tosca and Aida.

Answer 215

Spinto Soprano

Question 216

QUESTION TWO
Part bridge, part artificial island, the Murinsel links the two banks of the Mur river while containing a seashell-shaped amphitheatre home to a café and a play area. It was built to celebrate which Central European city becoming the 2003 European Capital of Culture?

Answer 216

Graz

Question 217

QUESTION THREE
Originally published in Greece in 1992, and the first recipient of the Premio Peano, an international award for books inspired by mathematics, O theíos Pétros kai i eikasía tou Nkolntmpach (Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture) is a novel by which Greek author whose father was the architect in charge of designing Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad?

Answer 217

Apostolos Doxiadis

Question 218

QUESTION TWO
Which Dutch physicist gives his name to the small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field?

Answer 218

Hendrik Casimir

Question 219

QUESTION THREE
The older of the two was raised by King Gorm the Old in memory of his wife Thyra and the younger, and larger, of the two stones was raised by King Gorm’s son, Harald Bluetooth, in memory of his parents. After the Danish town in which they are to be found, what name is given to these massive 10th century carved runestones that were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994?

Answer 219

Jelling Stones

Question 220

QUESTION ONE
Later used as a casus bell, the 1855 Lambert Charter, named after French adventurer Joseph-François Lambert, supposedly gave the charter’s namesake the exclusive right to exploit all minerals, forests, and unoccupied land on which island in exchange for a royalty paid to the island’s monarchy?

Answer 220

Madagascar

Question 221

QUESTION ONE
The gambler’s fallacy is one example of what cognitive bias, with a Greek name coined by Klaus Conrad in 1958, in which people identify connections between things that are genuinely unrelated? In the gambler’s fallacy, gamblers trick themselves into seeing patterns in numbers or dealt cards; another example of this is pareidolia, which commonly occurs when people see faces in inanimate objects.

Answer 221

Apophenia

Question 222

QUESTION TWO
First proposed by Edward Thorndike, what cognitive bias entails a person’s existing impression of another’s personality affecting how that person feels about unrelated parts of the other’s life? A 1974 study by Michael Efran found that subjects were harsher when asked to pass sentence on unattractive people than attractive people even when both had committed the same crime.

Answer 222

Halo Effect

Question 223

QUESTION ONE
Although probably better remembered today for his namesake transform, used to analyse signals in the frequency domain, which French mathematician is commonly credited with the discovery of what we now call the greenhouse effect?

Answer 223

Joseph Fourier

Question 224

QUESTION ONE
The French interventions in Madagascar that led to the overthrow of the Merina Kingdom are sometimes called the Franco-Malagasy Wars but are more commonly known as the Franco- BLANK] Wars after the free commoners who formed one of the three principal historical castes in the Merina Kingdom along with the Andriana (nobles) and Andevo (slaves). Which word fills in the blank?

Answer 224

Hova

Question 225

QUESTION THREE
Perhaps better remembered today for his namesake effect, in which colloids scatter light, which Irish physicist proved the connection between atmospheric CO, and what we now call the greenhouse effect in 1859?

Answer 225

John Tyndall

Question 226

QUESTION ONE
Which 18th century figure names a cognitive bias wherein people are seen to like a person more after doing a favour for that person? This effect’s namesake wrote in his memoirs about using this effect against an opposing member of the Pennsylvania legislature, and a further experiment was carried out by Landy and Jecker in 1969.

Answer 226

Benjamin Franklin

Question 227

QUESTION TWO
The Lambert Charter was signed secretly during the reign of Queen Ranavalona I without her knowledge. The charter was signed by her son, who would succeed her as monarch upon her death in 1861. What is the name of her son whose short reign was ended after less than two years when he was strangled in a coup led by his Prime Minister? Regnal number not required.

Answer 227

Radama II

Question 228

QUESTION THREE
A type of confirmation bias, in which new evidence can be rejected without being properly considered because it contradicts existing beliefs, is often named after which 19th-century doctor? The new evidence presented by this person was that mortality rates of children fell dramatically when doctors washed their hands between patients.

Answer 228

Ignaz Semmelweiss

Question 229

SPARE TWO
Smallpox was the first disease to be fully eradicated by humans. But, in 2011, which viral disease of ungulates became the second disease to be eradicated?

Answer 229

Rinderpest

Question 230

term meaning sky clad in jainism referring to monastic practice of wearing no clothes

Answer 230

Digambara

Question 231

QUESTION TWO
Lactones, which contribute to the flavour of fruits and dairy products, are examples of what sort of organic compounds that are formed by the union of an acid and an alcohol with the elimination of water?

Answer 231

Esters

Question 232

QUESTION THREE
The title character of which Henrik Ibsen play is the unhappy and manipulative wife of George Tesman who ends the play by shooting herself with her father’s pistols?

Answer 232

Hedda Gabler

Question 233

QUESTION TWO
Which island, which is mentioned second in the name of its country, was sighted by Columbus in 1498, was one of the two 17th-century colonies of the Duchy of Courland, has Scarborough as its main town, and is served by the A.N.R. Robinson International Airport?

Answer 233

Tobago

Question 234

QUESTION ONE
This French publishing house is named after its founder Pierre, who published a Grand dictionnaire universel from 1866. Since then several encyclopedias and dictionaries have been published, including the very popular Petit (BLANK) since 1905, and the iconic (BLANK) Gastronomique. Which surname has been removed?

Answer 234

Larousse

Question 235

QUESTION ONE
Using a German libretto based on the Book of Genesis, Psalms and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is a 1797 oratorio by which composer of the classical period?

Answer 235

Joseph Haydn

Question 236

QUESTION TWO
What name is given to the divine spirits venerated in Shintoism? The Sun goddess Amaterasu is perhaps the best known of these beings.

Answer 236

Kami

Question 237

QUESTION ONE
Also called the ethic of reciprocity, what name is given to the ethical maxim that you should treat others as you would like to be treated yourself? It is a feature in most religions, appearing in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, in the Hadith, Tripitaka and Mahäbhärata.

Answer 237

Golden Rule

Question 238

From Sanskrit for triple basket, traditional term for ancient collections of Buddhist sacred scriptures.

Answer 238

Tripitaka

Question 239

QUESTION ONE
The Sherdor Madrassah and the Tilla-Kari Madrassah are located on what square in Samarkand? With a name meaning “sandy place” it was the heart of culture and learning during the Timurid Renaissance.

Answer 239

Registan

Question 240

QUESTION THREE
The origins of the kami are first chronicled in which text, written in 711 and 712 CE?
According to its preface, this text is said to have been composed by O no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Genmei and is generally considered Japan’s oldest literary work.

Answer 240

Kojiki

Question 241

QUESTION ONE
Which baroque painter’s Ercole e Onfale (Hercules and Omphale) was lost in the 1734 fire in the Royal Alcázar of Madrid? Another of her works on the same subject was discovered after the explosion in Beirut in 2020.

Answer 241

Artemisia Gentileschi

Question 242

QUESTION THREE
Methyl mercaptan is used as an odorant to give natural gas its distinctive smell.
Mercaptans are an alternative name for what group of compounds? These compounds are the sulphur analogue of alcohols and have an -SH functional group.

Answer 242

Thiols

Question 243

QUESTION ONE
Which 1879 play by Henrik Ibsen caused something of a scandal because of its dramatic final scene in which the central character, a mother of three, leaves her husband, Thorvald Helmer, by slamming the door in his face?

Answer 243

A Doll’s House

Question 244

UESTION TWO
Which island, which is mentioned second in the name of its country, has a name deriving from an earlier colonial name meaning “Our Lady of the Snows” in English, is separated from its larger companion island by the 3 kilometre strait called the Narrows, was the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, and has Charlestown as its capital and largest town?

Answer 244

Nevis

Question 245

QUESTION ONE
What epic poem of 1855 was the basis for three cantatas written by the English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor between 1898 and 1900? Sales of the first cantata were so great that Coleridge-Taylor was commissioned to start work on a sequel, The Death of Minnehaha, before a single performance.

Answer 245

The Song of Hiawatha

Question 246

QUESTION TWO
Registan Square is also the site of a madrassah named after what third Sultan of the Timurid Empire? While he was unsuccessful as a ruler - ultimately being murdered by his son - he is remembered for his cultural contributions that include founding the observatory in Samarkand, and compiling the Zi-i-Sultani, regarded as the greatest star catalogue of the age.

Answer 246

Ulugh Beg

Question 247

QUESTION THREE
A dictionary of Chinese characters published in 1716 remained the most authoritative of its kind for two hundred years, although fewer than 25 % of its 47,000 characters are now in common use. It was commissioned by and named after the Qing emperor who reigned from 1661 to 1722, longer than any other Chinese emperor. What is its name?

Answer 247

Kangxi Dictionary

Question 248

QUESTION THREE
Which of Henrik Ibsen’s plays, a fairy tale in verse, describes the journey of the title character from the mountains of Norway to Africa and back?

Answer 248

Peer Gynt

Question 249

QUESTION TWO
Which island, which is mentioned second in the name of its country, was uninhabited when the Portuguese discovered it in 1471, was the site of the 1919 Eddington experiment where the theory of relativity was supported when bending of starlight was observed, and has Santo António as its regional capital and only town?

Answer 249

Principe

Question 250

QUESTION ONE
Which echinoderms derive their name partly from an old English word for hedgehog*?
They are a prized foodstuff in many culinary traditions and they can destroy kelp forests due to overgrazing.

Answer 250

Sea Urchins

Question 251

QUESTION ONE
According to the Kojiki, Amaterasu came into being when which kami washed his left eye while bathing in the Tachibana river? This creator god and his wife also beget the Japanese islands.

Answer 251

Izanagi

Question 252

QUESTION ONE
The aroma compound that gives cinnamon its flavour and smell, and decanal, which is manufactured for use in Chanel No. 5, are examples of what sort of compounds, which have a terminal carbonyl group? Methanal is the simplest of these compounds.

Answer 252

Aldehydes

Question 253

QUESTION TWO
In 1651, the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes published a trilingual dictionary between Latin, Portuguese and which other language? Along with his teacher Francisco de Pina, de Rhodes helped develop the Latin-based alphabet used for this language.

Answer 253

Vietnamese

Question 254

QUESTION THREE
The Golden Rule appears in the Dàodé Jing (Tao Te Ching) a work by which semi-legendary Chinese philosopher, considered the founder of philosophical Daoism?

Answer 254

Laozi / Lao Tzu

Question 255

QUESTION ONE
Which country introduced a two-child policy in 1989, following a long war with a western neighbour? The Rafsanjani government launched a nationwide contraception programme, although more recently access to contraception has been restricted in an effort to increase birth rates.

Answer 255

Iran

Question 256

QUESTION THREE
Timur had made Samarkand his capital following a revolt against the Mongol khanate named after what second son of Ghenghis Khan? This man clashed with his brother Jochi during the Siege of Gurganj, leading to Ghenghis Khan appointing Ögedei as his successor.

Answer 256

Chagatai Khan

Question 257

QUESTION ONE
Which island, which is mentioned second in the name of its country, was temporarily evacuated due to Hurricane Irma in 2017, is located about 40 km north of its larger companion island, and has Codrington as its capital and onlv town?

Answer 257

Barbuda

Question 258

Indonesian practice of trepanging is the act of collection of what foodstuff?

Answer 258

Sea cucumbers

Question 259

QUESTION ONE
Amaterasu came into being when Izanagi washed his left eye and the moon god Tsukuyomi came into being when he washed his right eye. According to the Kojiki, which impetuous younger brother of Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, a god of storms and the sea, came into being when Izanagi washed his nose?

Answer 259

Susanoo

Question 260

QUESTION THREE
Ulugh Beg’s father Shah Rukh, the son of Timur, moved his capital from Samarkand to which other city, now in Afghanistan? This city was known as “the Pearl of the Khorasan” and was famous for its wine since antiquity.

Answer 260

Herat

Question 261

QUESTION TWO
First published in 1880, this dictionary is printed in twelve volumes covering various aspects of the German language; the first volume is titled Die Deutsche Rechtschreibung (The German Orthography), and is the prescriptive source for the spelling of standard
German. What is its name, from the surname of the founder?

Answer 261

Duden

Question 262

QUESTION TWO
[Which Italian composer and cellist wrote the string quintet Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid (Night Music of the Streets of Madrid) while working in the court of the [Spanish Infante Luis, the brother of Charles III?

Answer 262

Luigi Boccherini

Question 263

QUESTION THREE
Which German biologist gives his name to varieties of cattle and horses that were bred at Hellabrunn Zoo in attempts to “breed back” the extinct aurochs and tarpan respectively?

Answer 263

Heinz Heck

Question 264

Equus Ferus Ferus with name deriving from Turkic language name meaning wild horse. First described by Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin. Said to resemble the modern Heck Horse.

Answer 264

Tarpan

Question 265

QUESTION THREE
Which French author, historian and spy coined the term contes de fées (fairy tales) for her works such as ‘L’oiseau bleu’ (‘The Blue Bird’)?

Answer 265

Madame d’Aulnoy

Question 266

SPARE ONE
Chytridiomycosis is an infectious disease caused by fungi that affects what class of animals? As many as 30% of the species in this class are threatened by the disease.

Answer 266

Amphibians

Question 267

SPARE TWO
Which crater lake in the Afar Depression in Djibouti is the lowest point in Africa?

Answer 267

Lake Assal

Question 268

The canon of scriptures used in Theravada Buddhism are written in what language?

Answer 268

Pali

Question 269

QUESTION TWO
What name is given to the lower stream of the Brahmaputra as it leaves Assam and flows through Bangladesh? It has a similar name to a North Indian river with a famously meandering course.

Answer 269

Jamuna (Yamuna)

Question 270

QUESTION THREE
Greek lyric poetry is so named because it was performed to lyre music. What lyric poet of the 7th century BE is remembered for being the first Greek poet to share strong personal emotions, such as when he claims he doesn’t regret losing a shield when doing so saved his life? He is also known for proverbs like his statement that the fox has many tricks while the hedgehog has only one but a big one.

Answer 270

Archilochus

Question 271

QUESTION TWO
Prime factorisation is used in RSA because a classical computer cannot solve it in polynomial time, making it secure against “brute force” encryption attacks. Which algorithm, named for an American computer scientist, is a method of solving prime factorisation in polynomial time using quantum computation?

Answer 271

Shor’s Algorithm

Question 272

QUESTION TWO
The Jamuna joins which other river near Goalundo Ghat? Considered one of the three main rivers of Bangladesh, it is a distributary of the Ganges formed after its bifurcation with the Hooghly.

Answer 272

Padma

Question 273

QUESTION THREE
What lyric poet wrote epic narratives in the 6th century BE including the Geryoneis, detailing Heracles stealing the cattle of Geryon? He is said to have been blinded and then cured by writing insulting and then flattering poetry about Helen of Troy.

Answer 273

Stesichorus

Question 274

QUESTION TWO
What is the name for the upper stream of the Brahmaputra River located in Tibet? It is the highest major river in the world and forms the world’s largest and deepest canyon when leaving the Tibetan Plateau.

Answer 274

Tsangpo

Question 275

QUESTION TWO
Which poet from Sparta is the earliest of the Nine Lyric poets, dating from the 7th century BCE? He wrote poetry for group performances in Sparta, including parthenaia for young women’s choruses.

Answer 275

Alcman

Question 276

QUESTION ONE
The first quantum cryptography protocol to be developed and proven as unconditionally secure based on the no-cloning theorem is which scheme? It is named after the first letter of the surnames of two scientists and the year that it was developed.

Answer 276

BB84 (Bennett and Brassard)

Question 277

QUESTION ONE
The Yarlung Tsangpo originates in the Angsi Glacier, near to Lake Rakshastal and which high altitude freshwater lake that is sacred to four religions? Mount Kailash is located close to this lake, which was once believed to be the source of the Indus, Ganges and Yarlung Tsangpo.

Answer 277

Lake Manasarovar

Question 278

QUESTION TWO
About 40 fragments remain of the poetry by this Boeotian woman, who is often described as a contemporary and competitor of Pindar’s, though unlike Sappho none of her full poems remain. ‘Daughters of Asopus’ and ‘Terpsichore’ are works by which poet, who may have written as many as five volumes of mostly lyric choral works with mythical themes?

Answer 278

Corinna

Question 279

QUESTION THREE
The use of the BB84 protocol for quantum key distribution is unconditionally secure with the use of what encryption technique, which requires the secure communication of a pre-shared private key with at least the same length as the message being shared?
It is often initialised to OTP.

Answer 279

One Time Pad

Question 280

QUESTION ONE
The Indus Valley Civilisation is thought to have collapsed due to a drought lasting for hundreds of years that forced people out of its two major cities: Mohenjo-Daro and which other? Located in modern-day Punjab, this was the first Indus Valley site to be excavated, and as such its name is often applied to the civilisation as a whole.

Answer 280

Harappa

Question 281

QUESTION TO
which dwarf planet was discovered in July 2007 by Megan Schwamb, Mike Brown, and David Rabinowitz at the Pallomar Obsenatony? An online poll of the general public in aing saw this dwarf planet named after a Chinese water god and its only known satelite, Xiangliu, is mamed after a mine headed serpent who serves that deity.

Answer 281

Gonggong

Question 282

French scientist who conames the Boyle’s law about prsssure and volume inverse proportion

Answer 282

Mariotte’s Law

Question 283

QUESTION THREE
At its 75th session in March 2021, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2023 the International Year of which highly-varied grain that has varieties such as ‘finger’ and ‘pearl?? The grasses from which this grain is derived can grow on arid lands with minimal inputs and are resilient to changes in climate, making them ideal for nations that are reliant on imported cereal grains.

Answer 283

Millets

Question 284

Who designed trevi fountain design?

Answer 284

Nicola Salvi (completed by Pannini)

Question 285

QUESTION THREE
After Chimborazo, the mountain whose peak is next furthest from the Earth’s centre is which mountain in Peru, the highest in its country and the highest mountain in the Earth’s Tropics?

Answer 285

Huascaran

Question 286

QUESTION ONE
Which ethnic people speak an Indo-Aryan language called Dhivehi from which we get the word ‘atoll”? This people make up essentially 100% of an archipelagic nation state.
You may also answer with the name of the nation state which these people inhabit.

Answer 286

Maldivians

Question 287

Bikini Atoll is in which country?

Answer 287

Marshall Islands

Question 288

QUESTION THREE
The memoir Iran Awakening: One Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Life and Country was an English-language book by which woman, who served as one of Iran’s first women judges until the Iranian Revolution? In 2003, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
“for her efforts for democracy and human rights”.

Answer 288

Shirin Ebadi

Question 289

QUESTION TWO
When Mike Brown and Terry-Ann Suer discovered the only known natural satellite of this trans-Neptunian dwarf planet in 2006, they left the naming of the moon to California’s indigenous Tongva people, who chose the name Weywot. What is the name, after a Tongva deity, of this dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt?

Answer 289

Quaoar

Question 290

QUESTION TWO
Discovered by Mike Brown and Terry-Ann Suer in 2005, and named after a winged figure who guides the souls of the dead into the underworld in Etruscan mythology, Vanth is the only known moon of which trans-Neptunian dwarf planet? Named after the Etruscan equivalent of Pluto, this body is the second largest known plutino (after
Pluto itself.

Answer 290

Orcus

Question 291

QUESTION TWO
Around 15,000-20,000 Maldivians are also found on this island nation. The Veddas or Wanniyalaeto are indigenous to which Asian country and are likely the earliest inhabitants of this island? They have more-or-less lost their native language and are being assimilated rapidly.

Answer 291

Sri Lanka

Question 292

Who wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books in 2003?

Answer 292

Azar Nafisi

Question 293

QUESTION TWO
Ravi Shanker collaborated on the 1968 album West Meets East with which Jewish-American virtuoso violinist who spent much of his career in Britain, later becoming a British citizen? At the age of 16, this man recorded Elgar’s Violin Concerto with the composer conducting.

Answer 293

Yehudi Menuhin

Question 294

QUESTION THREE
The term Dayak is applied to the various non-Muslim Indigenous ethnic groups native to which island? Traditionally living along the banks of the island’s larger rivers, Dayak people speak various Austronesian languages.

Answer 294

Borneo

Question 295

QUESTION ONE
The 1982 non-fiction book Szachinszach (Shah of Shahs) detailed the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the Iranian Revolution. It was written by which Polish journalist, dubbed ‘The Maestro’ by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, whose other works include Cesarz (The Emperor), about the downfall of Haile Selassie, and Heban (The Shadow of the Sun) detailing his own time in Africa?

Answer 295

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Question 296

Which French scientist developed the Ideal Gas Law written as pV = nRT

Answer 296

Benoit Paul Emile Clapeyron

Question 297

QUESTION TWO
“What a crowd of people are assembled here! Everybody seems to be my thief”. After his cash-box and all his money are stolen, Harpagon breaks the fourth wall by accusing the audience of looking at him and laughing in what play by Molière, in which Harpagon is the title character?

Answer 297

The Miser

Question 298

QUESTION THREE
The Aztec god of life, light, and wisdom, Quetzalcoatl is typically depicted in the form of a serpent covered in what? These things are not found on snakes in the natural world.

Answer 298

Feathers

Question 299

QUESTION TWO
Another widely grown pseudocereal grain is which grain, cultivated for at least 8,000 years, that was a staple food of the Aztecs and an integral part of Aztec religious ceremonies? Aztecs once formed images of their gods from agave, maize, and this grain, and its seeds are today offered as snacks to the spirits on the Day of the Dead.

Answer 299

Amaranth

Question 300

QUESTION ONE
The Australian Aboriginal peoples are one of the two ethnically distinct groups of Indigenous peoples of Australia. The other is which Indigenous Melanesian people named after a body of water that lies between Australia and the island of New Guinea?

Answer 300

Torres Strait Islander Peoples

Question 301

QUESTION THREE
Sirleaf served as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974 in the administration of William Tolbert but she fled to the United States following a 1980 coup d’état that saw which man seize power? In 1990, this man was captured and executed by Prince Johnson during the First Liberian Civil War.

Answer 301

Samuel Doe

Question 302

QUESTION ONE
Located near to the Nevado Tres Cruces National Park, which dormant complex volcano on the Argentina-Chile border is the highest mountain in Chile and the world’s highest volcano?

Answer 302

Ojos Del Salado

Question 303

QUESTION ONE
The three domain system largely superseded the five kingdom system that grouped organisms into five kingdoms: animalia, plantae, fungi, monera (prokaryotes), and which other group of eukaryotic organisms? According to Robert Whittaker, who proposed the five kingdom system, these organisms “are unicellular or unicellular-colonial and… form no tissues”, and, today, this is used as a catch-all term for any eukaryote that is not an animal, plant, or fungus.

Answer 303

Protist

Question 304

QUESTION THREE
Among the largest and best-preserved sites of the Ancestral Puebloans, which archaeological site in Colorado is the location of a famous Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America? It was abandoned in the late 13th century CE following a drought, with the cliff dwellings only having been occupied for around a hundred years.

Answer 304

Mesa Verde

Question 305

QUESTION THREE
Merging with Thyssen in 1999, which prominent steelmaker and arms manufacturer, founded in Essen in 1811 and named after a dynasty that was first recorded in 1587, was by several measures the world’s largest company at the beginning of the 20th century?

Answer 305

Krupp

Question 306

QUESTION TWO
Winner of the 1911 Physics Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation, which physicist gives his name to a displacement theory which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature?

Answer 306

Wilhelm Wien

Question 307

QUESTION THREE
The brothers Herman, Paul, and Johan were 15th century Dutch miniature painters famous for creating the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, perhaps the best known late medieval illuminated manuscript. What was their shared surname?

Answer 307

Limbourg

Question 308

SPARE TWO
What was the name of the reed boat built and sailed by Thor Heyerdahl in 1977 to demonstrate that sea trade between the ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient civilisations of modern-day Pakistan could have been possible?

Answer 308

Tigris

Question 309

QUESTION ONE
In February 2018, the government of Venezuela launched a crypto token intended to supplement the country’s currency; in 2020 it was declared mandatory for certain transactions. What is its name?

Answer 309

Petro

Question 310

QUESTION THREE
Known for his role in the development of ‘modernism’, which architect coined the term ‘less is more’ to describe his approach, which involved stripping a design down to its bare essentials, and casting aside any elements that do not contribute to the pure beauty or function of an object or space? The last director of the Bauhaus, this German-American architect’s best-known works include the Seagram Building in New York.

Answer 310

Ludwig MIES van der Rohe

Question 311

QUESTION ONE
In his controversial 1939 book about the origins of monotheism, Sigmund Freud hypothesized that which person had actually been born into Ancient Egyptian nobility, served as a priest of the pharaoh, fled Egypt after the pharaoh’s death, and perpetuated monotheism through a different religion?

Answer 311

Moses

Question 312

QUESTION TWO
Venezuela was not the only country to announce a cryptocurrency in February 2018.
Which country of less than 100,000 people uses the US dollar as its currency, but passed an act launching a cryptocurrency called the Sovereign, despite warnings from the International Monetary Fund? The issuance has not yet taken place, but profits from this currency were intended to fund healthcare for people affected by the Castle Bravo nuclear test.

Answer 312

Marshall Islands

Question 313

QUESTION ONE
On so-called ‘darknet markets’, where illicit goods and services are traded, Bitcoin is still most popular, but which other cryptocurrency with the code XMR is thought to be number two, due to its increased level of privacy? As opposed to Bitcoin, observers cannot trace addresses, amounts, or histories.

Answer 313

Monero

Question 314

QUESTION THREE
‘A house is a machine to live in’ is the best-known maxim of which Franco-Swiss architect whose works include the Unit d’habitation in Marseille and the Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp?

Answer 314

Le Corbusier

Question 315

Which architect said “form follows function”?

Answer 315

Louis Sullivan

Question 316

QUESTION TWO
Which blockchain platform, named after a mathematician born in 1501, was launched in 2017 using a so-called proof-of-stake blockchain, intended to use far less energy than the proof-of-work protocol of currencies such as bitcoin? It uses the internal cryptocurrency ADA, named after Ada Lovelace.

Answer 316

Cardano

Question 317

QUESTION THREE
Freud hypothesised that Moses served as a priest of which Egyptian pharaoh who introduced an early form of monotheism that stressed the uniqueness of the sun god after which he took part of his name? This pharaoh moved his capital to a new location halfway between Memphis and Thebes as a cult arena entirely for that Sun god.

Answer 317

Akhenaten

Question 318

QUESTION THREE
Now with some 2.5 million followers, which monotheistic syncretic religion was formally established in Vietnam in 1926? It combines elements of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist key concepts like karma with local Vietnamese folk religion, while using the Roman Catholic organizational structure.

Answer 318

Caodaism

Question 319

QUESTION TWO
Which temperate rainforest in Chile covers the Chiloé archipelago and is named after a nearby city? It is around 120 million years old, and is the site of laurel forests that arose on Gondwana, which therefore have flora and fauna related to that in Australia and New Zealand rather than the rest of the Americas.

Answer 319

Valdivian Rainforest

Question 320

QUESTION THREE
Its name referencing the number of atoms in the valence shell, which rule of thumb in chemistry states that most elements with low atomic numbers combine in ways such that their valence electron configurations are similar to those in noble gases?

Answer 320

Octet Rule

Question 321

QUESTION ONE
Which major Moroccan port city lies on the western end of the Strait of Gibraltar? It was part of an international zone from 1923-56, and after Moroccan independence it became a popular site for the Beat generation and, later, hippies.

Answer 321

Tangier

Question 322

QUESTION TWO
Which German Romantic poet and novelist wrote his poetry collection Hymen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night) in memory of his fiancée Sophie von Kühn? He is also the author of the unfinished coming-of-age novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

Answer 322

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)

Question 323

QUESTION ONE
BIV is a philosophical hypothesis, according to which humans do not experience the external world directly but, instead, are connected, via cerebral nerve endings, to a supercomputer that produces electrical impulses that simulate the experience of the external world. Often used as an argument for philosophical scepticism, for what do the letters BIV stand?

Answer 323

Brain in a Vat

Question 324

QUESTION TWO
Modern optoelectronics relies on semiconductor fabrication of on-chip devices such as transistors. One of the first stages in chip development is to obtain n- or p-type semiconductor layers by doping an intrinsic semiconductor. This can be done using which post-growth, low-temperature process that involves firing high-energy dopants at the static intrinsic semiconductor substrate?

Answer 324

Ion Implantation

Question 325

QUESTION THREE
Which politician, the former leader of the left-wing La France Insoumise party, finished third in the first round of the 2022 French presidential election, only 1.2 percentage points behind Marine Le Pen?

Answer 325

Jean-Luc Melenchon

Question 326

QUESTION ONE
Which Irish pirate, the leader of a dynasty based in the west of Ireland, sailed to England to petition Elizabeth I for the release of her sons and half-brother?

Answer 326

Grace O’Malley

Question 327

QUESTION TWO
Hiroshige belonged to which ukiyo-e school founded by Toyoharu? He was considered one of the last great masters of ukiyo-e along with other members of this school such as Kunisada and Yoshitoshi.

Answer 327

Utagawa School

Question 328

QUESTION THREE
A figurine of a seated goddess flanked by two lionesses was unearthed in 1961 by the archaeologist James Mellaart from which site in southern Turkey? This was the site of a proto-city that flourished around 7,000 BCE.

Answer 328

Catalhoyuk

Question 329

QUESTION THREE
Which physical vapour deposition technique is used to deposit thin metallic films onto semiconductor substrates? Its name comes from the physical process in which particles of a solid material are ejected from its surface following bombardment. In contrast to metal evaporation, this method uses much lower substrate temperatures, allowing the deposition of a wider range of metals.

Answer 329

Sputtering

Question 330

QUESTION ONE
The first Governor-General of India, Lord William Bentinck, passed acts to outlaw and eliminate the crimes of dacoity and which other organised criminal practice that involved robbing travellers and takes its name from the Sanskrit word for “concealment”.

Answer 330

Thuggee

Question 331

QUESTION THREE
Hiroshige’s best-known works are landscape series such as Meisho Edo Hyakkei (100
Famous Views of Edo) and a series that depicts the 53 stations of which coastal road that linked Edo to Kyoto?

Answer 331

Tokaido

Question 332

QUESTION TWO
Ingela Gathenhielm was a Swedish privateer who fought in the service of which
Swedish king who led his country during the Great Northern War?

Answer 332

Charles XII

Question 333

QUESTION THREE
Which forest on the border of Poland and Belarus is the largest surviving part of the primeval forest that covered the European plain before human settlement? It is known for its population of European bison.

Answer 333

Bialowieza Primeval Forest

Question 334

QUESTION TWO
In Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the title character dreams of what object that became a central symbol of German romanticism? Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen wrote that it is “an emblem of the deep and nameless longings of a poet’s soul.”

Answer 334

Blue Flower

Question 335

QUESTION THREE
Which composer intended for his Études d’exécution transcendante (Transcendental
Études) to consist of 24 études, one in each of the 24 major and minor keys? This composer of the Rhapsodies hongroises (Hungarian Rhapsodies) managed to complete only half of the project, using the neutral and flat key signatures.

Answer 335

Franz Liszt

Question 336

QUESTION ONE
Jeanne de Clisson was a Breton noblewoman who became a privateer and swore revenge on Philip VI of France after her husband was executed. She also used her ships to supply the English forces in the build up to which battle of the Hundred Years’ War?
This 1346 battle saw English forces led by Edward Ill rout the French army due to the superiority of their longbowmen over the French crossbowmen.

Answer 336

Crecy

Question 337

QUESTION TWO
While Governor-General of India, Bentinck also passed a law outlawing what practice in which a widow sacrificed herself on her husband’s funeral pyre? This followed a long period of campaigning against this practice from Hindu reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

Answer 337

Sati

Question 338

QUESTION THREE
Perhaps the best-known treatment of the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is by which
American philosopher who, in his 1981 work Reason, Truth, and History, argued that a brain-in-a-vat thought experiment created by Gilbert Harman was incoherent by virtue of being self-refuting? This thinker, who died in 2016, also co-names an indispensability argument with Willard Quine.

Answer 338

Hilary Putnam

Question 339

QUESTION ONE
Which politician finished fourth in the first round of the 2022 French presidential election? This former TV personality is a proponent of the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, and his party, Reconquête, primarily campaigns on immigration.

Answer 339

Eric Zemmour

Question 340

QUESTION THREE
What name is given to the property in which a single molecule has more than one possible Lewis structure, that is to say the molecule’s electrons may have multiple arrangements?

Answer 340

Resonance

Question 341

ESTION ONE
set during the social and political turmoil of the Belgian withdrawal from Africa, which barbara Kingsolver novel is narrated by five female members of the missionary Price family who have moved to the Belgian Congo from the USA? The novel’s title refers to family patriarch’s mispronunciation of a Kikongo expression which he intends to nean “Jesus is most precious”.

Answer 341

The Poisonwood Bible

Question 342

QUESTION TWO
Which German poet and literary critic described Novalis’s blue flower as “Die Armesünderblum” (“Suicide’s flower”) in his Lyrisches Intermezzo as he began to distance himself from Romanticism? This author also wrote the poem ‘Die Lorelei’ and many of his lyric poems were used for Lieder by composers such as Schumann and Schubert.

Answer 342

Heinrich Heine

Question 343

QUESTION THREE
Containing the world’s oldest known megaliths, which archaeological site in south eastern Anatolia has been described as the “world’s first temple” by Klaus Schmidt who led its excavation from 1996 onwards? It contains richly decorated stone pillars dating from around 9,500 to 8,000 BCE.

Answer 343

Gobekli Tepe

Question 344

QUESTION ONE
After the deposition of a thin metal film, components with features down to nanometre scale can be defined with which patterning process? A polymer resist is spin-coated on top of the metal film and then exposed using this technique, which may be achieved using deep-UV light and a mask, or a high-power focussed electron beam.

Answer 344

Lithography

Question 345

QUESTION TWO
Another of New Zealand’s unusual species is which olive-green parrot, Nestor notabilis, that displays bright orange under its wings? The world’s only alpine parrot, its numbers fell dramatically as a result of overhunting because of its supposed habit of attacking livestock.

Answer 345

Kea

Question 346

QUESTION THREE
Which rainforest, which lies to the north of a namesake river in northeast Queensland, is often described as the world’s oldest rainforest, at around 180 million years old?

Answer 346

Daintree Rainforest

Question 347

QUESTION ONE
Hiroshige’s Tökaido Gojüsan-tsugi (The Fifty-three Stations of the Tökaidö) was parodied by which other member of the Utagawa school, who replaced the stations with cat puns? This artist was also known for dramatic mythical scenes such as Soma no furu-dairi (Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre).

Answer 347

Kuniyoshi

Question 348

QUESTION THREE
New Zealand’s strange fauna isn’t limited to vertebrates; the world’s heaviest recorded adult insect, weighing as much as a song thrush or a small blue jay, was an individual of which orthopteran insects in the genus Deinacrida?

Answer 348

Giant Weta

Question 349

QUESTION ONE
Which island that lies around 60 kilometres south of Kyushu is the site of an ancient temperate rainforest that inspired Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke) and is home to 7,000-year-old sugi or Japanese cedars? A World Heritage Site, UNESCO described it as
“the last remnant of warm-temperate ancient forest that is unique in this region”.

Answer 349

Yakushima

Question 350

QUESTION TWO
Putnam argued for semantic externalism in Meaning and Reference and The Meaning of
“Meaning” by describing which thought experiment in which he imagines a planet identical to our own except that a substance ostensibly identical to water has the chemical formula XYZ rather than H,O?

Answer 350

Twin Earth

Question 351

QUESTION THREE
The earliest colossal stone building in Egypt and the earliest large cut stone construction in the world is a step pyramid dedicated to which pharaoh, the founder of the third dynasty?

Answer 351

Djoser

Question 352

QUESTION ONE
Known for its 18th century fortified Medina, which city in Morocco, south of Agadir and west of Marrakesh, was formerly known as Mogador?

Answer 352

Essaouira

Question 353

QUESTION TWO
For an atom in a Lewis structure, which value is equal to the number of valence electrons in the neutral atom, minus the number of nonbonding electrons and one-half the bonding electrons? This quantity is similar to an oxidation state, but does not take electronegativity into account.

Answer 353

Formal Charge

Question 354

Odin two ravens names

Answer 354

Huginn and Muninn

Question 355

QUESTION ONE
In 2007, which French politician defeated Dominique Strauss-Kahn to win the Socialist Party nomination for president? She was the first woman ever to reach the second round of a French presidential election, but was defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy.

Answer 355

Segolene Royal

Question 356

QUESTION TWO
Which Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr tells the stories of a blind French girl, Marie-Laure Leblanc, and a young German army recruit, Werner Pfennig, and their lives before, during, and after the 1944 Battle of Saint-Malo? Doer conceived of the title of this novel before it was written, inspired by the only scene he then had in mind:
a girl reading to a boy over the radio.

Answer 356

All the Light We Cannot See

Question 357

QUESTION THREE
In 1873, Jyotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj in Pune to campaign for the rights of women and members of which group of people who belong to the lowest stratum of the caste system? Known by a Marathi term introduced by Phule, this group were excluded from the Varna caste system, and were previously known as
‘untouchables’.

Answer 357

Dalit

Question 358

QUESTION ONE
Which Booker Prize-winning English novelist’s final novel, The Blue Flower, is an account of Novalis’s uncomfortable relationship with Sophie von Kühn, who is depicted as an unremarkable girl who dies shortly after her 15th birthday?

Answer 358

Penelope Fitzgerald

Question 359

QUESTION TWO
Which former French Prime Minister was the favourite for the 2017 French presidential election, but had his reputation damaged by an embezzlement scandal involving his wife, Penelope? He eventually finished third, behind Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

Answer 359

Francois Fillon

Question 360

QUESTION THREE
Which archaeological site in Balochistan, Pakistan was excavated by Jean-François and Catherine Jarrige in 1974? Dating from 7,000 BCE it is the oldest known site on the Indian subcontinent, and may have been influenced by the Neolithic culture of the Near East.

Answer 360

Mehrgarh

Question 361

QUESTION ONE
New Zealand’s unusual fauna is also found in its waters. What is the common name of the gelatinous, wide-mouthed deepwater marine species Psychrolutes microporos?
Also found in the waters around Australia, the holotype of this species is in the Museum of New Zealand. [picture]

Answer 361

Blobfish

Question 362

QUESTION TWO
Once patterned, exposed and developed, components can be vertically defined using which subtractive technique to physically and chemically remove certain material layers? This can be divided into wet techniques that use strong acids and developers, or dry techniques that use high-power ions and plasmas.

Answer 362

Etching

Question 363

QUESTION THREE
Sayyida al Hurra, a Moroccan queen, turned to piracy following the Spanish reconquest of Spain. She allied herself with which Ottoman corsair who, along with his brother Oruç Reis, captured Algiers from the Spanish, and was later appointed Grand Admiral by Suleiman the Magnificent.

Answer 363

Hayreddin Barbarossa

Question 364

QUESTION ONE
Hokusai depicted the Tökaido road several times in his Fugaku Sanjürokkei (Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji), a series famous for prints such as Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura (The Great Wave off Kanagawa) and which print that is also known as Red Fuji?

Answer 364

Fine Wind Clear Morning

Question 365

QUESTION THREE
What name was given to the three mass assemblies - taking place in 1877, 1903 and
1911 - that were organised in Delhi by the British Raj to mark the accession of an Emperor or Empress? This Persian-derived term was used for the court by several Indian empires including the Mughals, Rajputs and Marathas. Queen Victoria applied this name to a room in Osborne House that was decorated in an Indian style.

Answer 365

Delhi Durbar

Question 366

QUESTION ONE
In Irish mythology, Aoife transforms her four stepchildren, the children of Lir, into what birds, who tell their father of what happened at Lough Derravaragh? Another of these birds is the divine mount of the Hindu goddess Saraswati.

Answer 366

Swans

Question 367

QUESTION TWO
The brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is often described as a contemporary version of earlier thought experiments exploring the nature of reality. These include Plato’s ‘allegory of the cave’, Descartes”evil demon’, and the ‘dream argument’ of which Chinese philosopher of the Warring States Period? This thinker described how he dreamt he was a butterfly and couldn’t be sure upon waking that he wasn’t, in fact, a butterfly dreaming that he was a man awakening from a dream.

Answer 367

Zhuangzi

Question 368

QUESTION THREE
The four Imperial Cities of Morocco are Fez, Marrakech, Rabat and which other, located between Rabat and Fez in the centre of the country? Ismail ibn Sharif, the founder of the Alaouite dynasty, built its vast palace complex.

Answer 368

Meknes

Question 369

QUESTION ONE
Said to have been one of the final meals of François Mitterrand, what is the common name of the small songbird illegally captured and force-fed, before being drowned in Armagnac, roasted and eaten whole by French gastronomes?

Answer 369

Ortolan Bunting

Question 370

QUESTION TWO
Which Métis politician was the leader of the Red River Rebellion and was effectively the founder of the province of Manitoba? He was elected three times to the Canadian House of Commons, but did not take his seat as he had fled to the United States to avoid prosecution.

Answer 370

Louis Riel

Question 371

QUESTION THREE
Which prolific American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent is, perhaps, best known for his symphonic works such as Exile, Mysterious Mountain, Mount St. Helens, And God Created Great Whales, and Hymn to Glacier Peak?

Answer 371

Alan Hovhaness

Question 372

QUESTION ONE
Literally meaning “feast of the sacrifice” which holiday celebrated in Islam honours the willingness of Ibraham to sacrifice Ismail?

Answer 372

Eid Al-Adha

Question 373

QUESTION TWO
Named after a German chemist, which piece of laboratory equipment, consisting of a tube running through a cooling water jacket, is used to increase the density of vapours emanating from a distillation apparatus?

Answer 373

Liebig Condenser

Question 374

QUESTION THREE
Which Iranian artist and filmmaker produced the photography series Women of Allah, in which Persian poetry is inscribed on the bodies of women wearing chadors and holding guns? She also directed a film adaptation Shahrush Parsipur’s novel Zanan bedun-e Mardan (Women without Men)?

Answer 374

Shirin Neshat

Question 375

SPARE ONE
L’Aliéné (Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank), La Folle Monomane du jeu (The Woman with a Gambling Mania), and Le Kleptomane (Portrait of a Kleptomaniac), all painted in 1822, are works in which French artist’s series of 10 paintings of the insane, known collectively as Les Monomanes?

Answer 375

Theodore Gericault

Question 376

SPARE TWO
In 2021, the South African city of Port Elizabeth was renamed as what, although this name is rarely used by locals?

Answer 376

Gqeberha

Question 377

SPARE THREE
Which 17th-century Spanish Jesuit wrote the allegorical novel El Criticón and a book of maxims called Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia (The Art of Worldly Wisdom)?

Answer 377

Baltasar Gracian