Geography
Canada is one of the three Commonwealth countries to have and English name beginning with the letter C. Name either of the other two.
Cyprus/Cameroon
In which Swiss alpine ski town does the World Economic Forum hold its annual meeting?
Davos
What name for a house of worship and religious instruction is derived, via Old French and Latin, from the Greek words for ‘meeting’ and ‘bring together’?
Synagogue
A multicellular, eukaryotic, photosynthetic organism adapted primarily to life on land is a definition of what simple term?
Plant
Paul Cezanne once said ‘Only an eye, but my god what an eye’ in reference to which of his contemporaries
Monet
The cities of the Ruse in Bulgaria, Novi Sad in Serbia, Vukovar in Croatia, Esztergom in Hungary, Linz in Austria, and Ulm in Germany are linked by which major river?
Danube
The jewelers Tiffany & Co, the kingdom of Prussia, the French artist Yves Klein and the cornflower all give their names to shades of which color?
Blue
First noted by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1756 but often said to have been coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer from the Greek words for 'return to native land' and 'pain', what word means a wistful longing for things of the past?
Nostalgia
What is the lowest whole number that is the square and cube of two different whole numbers?
64 (8 squared and 4 cubed)
The Paradiso, the Finding of the Body of St Mark, and the Origin of the Milky Way are all paintings by which Venetian artist, born in 1518?
Tintaretto
Which U.S. state takes its name from choctaw words meaning ‘red people’? It is nicknamed the ‘sooner’ state after those settlers who pre-empted the terms of the indian appropriation act of 1889. It attained statehood in 1907 and is the original home of the Joad family in Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’
Oklahoma
James Tobin, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Paul Samuelson and John Forbes Nash are all past winners of the Nobel Prize in which discipline?
Economics
The prefixes 'ben', ‘mac', 'ap', 'ibn' and 'fitz' all imply what relationship of the bearer to the holder of the subsequent name?
Son (of)
Translate the unsigned binary 01001111 to a decimal number
79
Said to have been introduced to the English colonists at the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth by the Native Americans, which foodstuff was believed to contain the spirits of the dead who escaped when it burst on exposure to heat?
Popcorn
Noted for its dry white wine, which Italian wine region takes its name form that of a town near ancient Tusculum, south-east of Rome?
Frascati
What item of jewelry links the short stories ‘La Parure' by Guy De Maupassant and 'Paste' by Henry James, and also Anthony Trollope's novel 'The Eustace Diamonds’?
Necklace
From the Latin for ‘ship’, a name probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting, what term describes the main part of a church, flanked by the aisles and extending from the entrance to the chancel?
Nave
What sort of chemical bond is formed due to the sharing of pairs of electrons between atoms?
Covalent
Known as ‘the disease of Naples’ by the French and ‘the disease of the French’ by Italians, which disease broke out after the French siege of Naples in the 15th century and spread throughout Europe?
Syphilis.
Popes Leo X, Clement XVII, and Pius IV were all members of which Florentine family?
the Medici
In March 2009, financier Bernard Madoff was convicted of running what type of illegal pyramid scheme named after a man who duped thousands of New England residents into investing in a postal reply coupon in 1919?
Ponzi
Of uncertain etymology, what word denotes both a period of low spirits or unhappy listlessness, and a region of the ocean near the equator characterized by calms, sudden storms and unpredictable winds?
Doldrum
What three-word name, abbreviated to CCD< was given by apiarists to the mysterious epidemic that resulted in the disappearance and presumed death in recent years of large numbers of honeybees from affected hives?
Colony Collapse Disorder
In architecture, what term is used to describe the shallow concave grooves running vertically on the shaft of a column, pillar, or other surface?
Fluting