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Port School Quiz questions

Port School Quiz, Wednesday 21 August 1996, Leopold Hotel

Seventy-two questions in nine groups, plus three tie-breakers. There were originally nine rounds of nine questions each but the last one in each was a piece of music, so I've left those out.

The quiz was not popular with the audience. One man told me before he left that it was too hard, pointing out that top table had a score of only 55/99.

The answers are all in one file, so you'll probably have to attempt them all before looking.

Round 1

1.      What was the first address of Port School?

2.      A hit single went in part like this: 'Someone left the cake out in the rain, and I don't think that I can take it, cos it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have the recipe again.  Oh, no!'  For one mark: name either the actor who sang it, or the song itself?

3.      What is the name of the Russian Jew born in Vitebsk in 1887, whose painting inspired the musical Fiddler on the Roof?

4.      What novel had this quotation from Milton's Paradise Lost as its epigraph in its first edition of 1818?

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man?  Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?—

5.      Who wrote the novel?

6.      Who was the first Western Australian politician to be knighted after Federation?

7.      Where did Bazza McKenzie first appear in public?

8.      In The Flintstones TV series, what powered the Flintstones' family car?

Round 2

1.      Who is the actor most recently to play Doctor Who?

2.      What is the capital of the state of Texas?

3.      What is the name of the Austrian psychologist who developed the theory of the 'Inferiority Complex'?

4.      What is a person doing who is involved in deglutition?

5.      What is the name of the Australian weightlifter who went back to fishing when he had to give up the sport, having failed a drug test?

6.      Penfolds is 'the largest wine company in Australia.'  James Halliday describes Penfolds' best-known winemaker as 'quite simply, a winemaking genius,' to whom 'a large measure of Penfolds' pre-eminence in the public's mind can be traced.'  He made Grange Hermitage, 'Australia's greatest red.'  What is the winemaker's name?

7.      'Jesus wept' is the shortest verse in the Bible.  Over whose dead body was he weeping at the time?

8.      Which Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was born 19 June 1945. [The original question asked for the correct spelling of her name.]

Round 3

1.      Who founded Summerhill School, in England?

2.      What was Elvis Costello's original name?

3.      Cubism may be said to date from the completion of Les demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907.  Who painted them?

4.      Who wrote the poem in which the following lines appear: 'Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife …'?

5.      For a while, my favourite white wine was Peel Estate Chenin Blanc, which was one of the first Western Australian chenins blancs to be wood-matured.  Whose family crest is on the label?

6.      When the rock classic 'Layla' was released in October 1970, what was the name of the band that performed it—the band, not the artist(s).  If you want to show off to your table you can tell them who were the two guitarists on the track, one of whom co-wrote the song.

7.      For what planet was Battlestar Galactica searching?

8.      In which island in the Republic of Vanuatu do people throw themselves off the top of high towers?

Round 4

1.      Three types of ball dominated the history of this sport: the feather ball or 'feathery,' which reigned supreme for about 400 years; the gutta-percha ball or 'gutty,' first made in 1845; and the ball invented by Cockburn Haskell.  What is the sport?

2.      What Italian sweet do you get when you whisk together egg yolks, Marsala wine and castor sugar over hot water?

3.      What was the apostle Matthew's occupation before he went to follow Jesus?

4.      If a Rolls-Royce has a red radiator badge rather than a black one, before what date was it made?

5.      What is the name of the current Mayor of Fremantle?

6.      The first music drama, forerunner of what we now call 'opera' was l'Orfeo—or Orpheus—first performed on 22 February 1607 in Mantua by its composer, the court musical director of the noble house of Gonzaga.  What was this composer's name?

7.      What is the name of the famous theatre in Dublin associated with the nates of W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge and Sean O'Casey?

8.      Who wrote the screenplay of The Misfits in 1961 for his famous second wife?

Round 5

1.      Who wrote: 'The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victim to a great lie than to a small one'?

2.      The great French playwright Molière was performing in one of his own plays in 1673 when he fell ill and later died.  What was the name of the play?

3.      What was the name of the man who laid out the plan of Adelaide in 1836-7?

4.      Which actor (not which character), in the 1962 film, was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?

5.      In Seinfeld: What is Kramer's first name?

6.      What was the name given by the secessionist Igbo regime in East Nigeria to the state proclaimed on 30 May 1967?

7.      Triskaidekaphobia is a fear of what?

8.      What is the smallest whole number that, if you multiply it by 7, will give you an answer consisting entirely of 9s?

Round 6

1.      What game often starts between 10 and 13 and finishes between 1 and 5?

2.      One character in Dylan Thomas's play Under Milk Wood mentions lava bread: What is it made of?

3.      Who says, in 2 Samuel 19:33: 'O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would to God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!'?

4.      Who wrote the words for the hymn known as 'Jerusalem'?

5.      Jean Baudrillard, Franz Kafka and Paul Simon each wrote something with the same title.  What is the title?

6.      Who said, when about to have his head cut off: 'This is sharp medicine, but it is a sure cure for all diseases.'?

7.      From which 1968 science fiction film did Duran Duran take its name?

8.      What color was Starsky & Hutch's car?

Round 7

1.      What is the better-known name of the Western wall of the Temple of Solomon?

2.      For what is LASER an acronym?

3.      What is the better-known name, in English, of Rapanui (Or Rapa-Nui)?

4.      What is the name of the jackal-headed Egyptian god who announced the coming of death and presided over embalmings?

5.      Which character from Dickens' Oliver Twist says: '…the law is a ass—a idiot'?

6.      Who were the founders of a state in Cappadocia, in Asia Minor, from which all men were excluded?

7.      What is the name of the famous recording studio in Memphis where Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins laid down early rock tracks?

8.      How many Angels did Charlie have altogether, over the life of the series?

Round 8

1.      Charles Babbage called it  a 'difference engine.'  What do we call it?

2.      What is the name of the Western Australian pole-vaulter who competed at the Atlanta Olympics?

3.      What is the name of the ninth month of the Muslim year during all daylight hours of which rigid fasting is observed?

4.      Who wrote the music for Oliver!?

5.      What novel 'ends' with this: 'A way a lone a last a loved a long the'?

6.      Who was the Cuban leader overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1958?

7.      What film has Madonna recently finished shooting?

8.      Who was the star of the Betty Blokk Buster Follies?

Round 9

1.      What is the name of the Adelaide-born astronaut who was recently in space?

2.      Who wrote Coming of Age in Samoa, first published in 1928?

3.      Which number when divided by 5 gives the same result as when 5 is subtracted from it?

4.      Nauru has the world's highest rate of which disease?

5.      Who was the only world heavyweight boxing champion who went through his career without a single setback?

6.      Who was Dean of Dromore and Derry, and, later, Bishop of Cloyne, and who said that things exist only in being perceived?

7.      What is the name of the mate on Capt Hook's ship in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan?

8.      One point for: who was the son of Malcolm II who ruled Scotland from 1040 to 1057, and whom did he kill to take the crown?

Tiebreak questions

1.      Cinemascope was introduced by 20th Century Fox in 1952 to combat the threat of television.  What was the first film, starring Richard Burton, in Cinemascope?

2.      When people swim 'freestyle' they usually swim overarm, or the 'Australian Crawl.'  But although the stroke first came to prominence in Australia, it was a swimmer from another Pacific country who attracted attention with the crawl stroke in a swimming race at Brontë Baths in 1898.  The swimmer's name was Alick Wickham.  From what country did he come?

3.      Brave New World is the title of a book by Aldous Huxley first published in 1932.  Which Shakespearean character speaks the words from which he got the title?

answers


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