14 December 2016

So you think you're pretty smart...

Try answering these questions from the Royal Statistical Society's Christmas Quiz for 2015:

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?

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?

7. www.capitals.table (6 points)
If Brussels=4, Santiago=17, Buenos Aires=18, Ottawa=20 and Brasilia=35, what is Canberra?

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.

Solutions (and more questions) at the link.

I'm eagerly awaiting the 2016 King William's College General Knowledge Paper for 2016-17.  It should be published in The Guardian this coming week. (Here's last year's quiz.) (And the answers.)

4 comments:

  1. "So you think you're pretty smart"? If answering any or all of the questions in this quiz correctly is the only way of determining how smart I am, then I must confess that I'm dumb-dumb-dumb. In fact, I couldn't even come up with a single answer, never mind any correct answers.

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  2. You should reply them with some USA-centric ones:

    Out of Place (20 points):

    (a) which one of 'cabinet', frappe', and 'milk shake' is out of place?

    (b) which two of 'cabinet', frappe', and 'milk shake' are the same?

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  3. Thanks Stan, this is a good one. Hard, but work-out-able. Might go down better at Christmas than the KWC quiz (despite my annual efforts to inspire enthusiasm for team Googling)

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    Replies
    1. Unfortunately, I don't think the 2016 RSS quiz will be available "live" to anyone except RSS members - which I'm obviously not. If you (or anyone) knows of an online posting of the questions, please leave a note here.

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