For the past 22 years, the Royal Statistical Society has published a formidable Christmas quiz for its members.
To tackle it, you will need a mixture of general knowledge, logic and lateral thinking. No specialist mathematical knowledge is required.
If you think you’re up to it, the 2015 version of this annual challenge is below.
Answers should be sent by email to rssquiz@rss.org.uk by 6pm (GMT) on Wednesday 6 January 2016.
A year’s subscription to Significance magazine is on offer to the reader submitting the highest scoring entry.
An explanation of your answer is required for some questions to receive full marks. The quiz editor’s decision is final and in the case of a tie an additional tie-breaker question may be used.
Best of luck to all those brave enough to try it – we will publish the answers on the Datablog in January.
More information about the Royal Statistical Society can be found here.
1. Begin (5 points)
What might, in turn, be represented by a Buckeye, a Boxer, a Berkshire, a Brown, a Brahman, a Bengal, a Beveren, a Bearded, a Boa, a Brumby, a Boreray and (in 2016) a Barbary?
2. Averages (9 points)
In 2015:
- (a) What averaged 1.6m miles per day?
- (b) Who successfully averaged 10.21 metres per second, and 10.23 metres per second four days later?
- (c) Which recorded a mean of 2,238 and a median of 0, resulting in 8.6% of the total?
3. Descriptions (10 points)
What adjectives might describe each of the following?
- (a) Alexander, Alfred, Catherine, Frederick, and Peter
- (b) Venom, conductor Malcolm, Thomas and George’s bully, and characters played by Buster and Rik
- (c) Joe Bagstock, the creator of Rocky, a singer with a rocky family, one who came in with Richard Conqueror, and one who accompanies Shakespeare musically
4. Very few people are completely normal (5 points)
In what sense are the following (listed in order of appearance) connected?
Maria Corda (beautifully), Charles Laughton (regally), Douglas Fairbanks (hedonistically), Bette Davis & Errol Flynn (supposedly), Robert Stephens (investigatively), Robin Wright Penn (multiply)
5. Out of place (4 points)
- (a) Explain why, compared with ‘sweet milk’, ‘little cut off’, ‘recooked’, ‘beautiful country’ and ‘tired’, ‘slice’ is out of place
- (b) Similarly, which one of ‘iron’, ‘little blackbird’, ‘black pine’, ‘musky’, ‘tears of Christ’ and ‘white savage’ is out of place?
6. (6 points)
Explain the following:
American state (T, U, V) ― American city (C, D, E, F, G) – Chemical element (H, I, J, K) – Roman goddess (L, M, N) - Weapon (O, P, Q, R)
7. www.capitals.table (6 points)
If Brussels = 4, Santiago = 17, Buenos Aires = 18, Ottawa = 20 and Brasilia = 35, what is Canberra?
8. Valuable (6 points)
In 2015, in what context …
- (a) … was a valuable Swiss man worth $38m less than a group of North African women, while a woman considering marriage was worth $121m more still?
- (b) … was a valuable object recorded as ‘1111’ the second largest ever found?
9. In the sky, on the lea (8 points)
What might have inspired whom to write the following, and where has a line been omitted?
“Nature, in tooth and claw,
In lands of palm, of blossom
That sparkled on the field
And on a simple village,
And drowned in yonder living
By hooded doctors”
10. Diagram (6 points)
Explain the diagram, and give appropriate row and column labels.
11. A Compound of hydrogen, sulphur and molybdenum (6 points)
Explain the sequence:
H+O+Mg+Si, H+O+S+Ca, C+O+Ca,…, O+Al, C
12. Wielders of catgut (6 points)
Place the following in order, starting at the beginning:
- Jack Sock (USA)
- Janko Tipsarević (Serbia)
- René Lacoste (France)
- Max Mirnyi (Belarus)
- Alejandro Falla (Columbia)
- William Renshaw (Great Britain)
- Alexandr Dolgopolov (Ukraine)
13. Matching pairs (12 points)
In each question, match up the members of Group 1 to the members of Group 2.
- (a)
Group 1: Death on the Nile, Frankenstein, North and South, Middlemarch, Wolf Hall
Group 2: Treasure Island, The Horse Whisperer, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Tropic of Capricorn, The Survivors
- (b)
Group 1: Bleak House, David Copperfield, Mansfield Park, Finnegans Wake, Of Human Bondage
Group 2: James M Cain, Anne Brontë, Tobias Smollett, John Cleland, George Moore
- (c)
Group 1: Romola, Persuasion, Gigi, Trainspotting, Engleby
Group 2: Police at the Funeral, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Room with a View, The Ambassadors, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
14. One, two (8 points)
Explain the following:
15. The last word (3 points)
What is the last number in this sequence?
4, 2, 3, 4, 6, 2, 4, ?
