King William's College General Knowledge Paper 2018-19

Vagabond

Vagabond

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Reprinted in more legible format here

From The Guardian's headline:

To whom did the ravens bring bread and meat? Who tragically missed the night train from Lisbon to Porto? Which entomologist was lost in the Grimpen Mire? Just three of the 180 baffling questions in the most tortuous quiz of them all
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I have no general knowledge! :wuzrobbed

“Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est”
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"To know where you can find what makes a great part of learning"

:COP:
 
Neither do I! I'm glad British undergrads are as savagely superior as ever. I wouldn't want to live in a world where a quiz like that didn't exist. :)

(I'm assuming this was written by higher level students since I can't imagine adults taking the time to dream up these ridiculous questions. Maybe I underestimate the adults at Kings College -- oops, I mean King William's College.)
 
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Those questions seem beyond 'general' knowledge to me - more like the specific/esoteric knowledge that kids/people study for TV 'knowledge' game shows. Though I can't say specifically for the UK.
 
And the phrasing of the questions is often intentionally tricky.

I went through the 2017-18 exam, attempted answers to 10 of the 180 questions, and got 3 of them right. Two of those were about Americans, and the other was a well-known biblical figure.
 
Are you supposed to know them off the top of your head or is it a research exercise?

I know a few of the ones that are plots to novels but that's about it.
 
Michalle said:
Are you supposed to know them off the top of your head or is it a research exercise?

I know a few of the ones that are plots to novels but that's about it.
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I recognized three by the same author in section 4, and now I'm wondering if they're all by her

ETA :Hmmm make that 4 now. I'm not sure outside of her more famous and well read works these would all be so recognizable
 
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escaflowne9282 said:
I recognized three by the same author in section 4, and now I'm wondering if they're all by her

ETA :Hmmm make that 4 now. I'm not sure outside of her more famous and well read works these would all be so recognizable
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I was wondering the same thing and the answer is
yes

Basically everything I knew on this quiz without "research" (a quick google search will get you pretty far for a lot of this) was literature-related, but for the other ones, I knew the text but not the specific detail they were looking for. I got bored last night and did all of section 4, bits of 5 and 7, and most of section 1.
 
It's more fun to come up with questions than to try to answer theirs:

Which two great American authors died within a day of each other in December 1940? *

Name the only two American women to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.**

Who was the last person to walk on the moon?***

What was the inspiration for the song, "This Land Is Your Land" ?****

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?*****

*I know that one, although I was sad to learn it was a legend that their bodies were carried on the same train back east.

** I knew one but Wikipedia had to tell me that there was another one. I also know who the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature was because I know a lot of useless stuff like that.

*** I have no idea, but it's a darn fine question.

**** I considered asking what was the inspiration for the song "Tom Joad" but I couldn't find absolute confirmation for the answer, which is a shame because it was the movie, not the novel, and you would have guessed wrong.

***** I put that one in to show I haven't taken any Zolpidem because if I had I never would have been able to type it.
 
Zemgirl said:
The last person to walk on the moon was Gene Cernan of Apollo 17. Harrison Schmitt stepped on the moon after Cernan, but also went back to the lunar module before him.
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That is a darn fine answer!
 
missing said:
That is a darn fine answer!
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I knew it from watching "From the Earth to the Moon" years ago. The final episode is about Apollo 17 :)

That was a really good miniseries, BTW - definitely recommended for anyone interested in the history of space exploration.
 
missing said:
It's more fun to come up with questions than to try to answer theirs:

Which two great American authors died within a day of each other in December 1940? *

Name the only two American women to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.**

Who was the last person to walk on the moon?***

What was the inspiration for the song, "This Land Is Your Land" ?****
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F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West for the authors who died (I know this mostly because West died on my birthday).

Pearl Buck and Toni Morrison for the Nobel. Easiest question on this thread for me.

"This Land"--are you referring to the fact that Guthrie "borrowed" the tune or that the lyrics were a snarky response to "God Bless America"?
 
Prancer said:
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West for the authors who died (I know this mostly because West died on my birthday).

Pearl Buck and Toni Morrison for the Nobel. Easiest question on this thread for me.

"This Land"--are you referring to the fact that Guthrie "borrowed" the tune or that the lyrics were a snarky response to "God Bless America"?
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My guess is Woody Guthrie was unfamiliar with the word snarky (at least in that context), but yes, I was referring to his disdain for "God Bless America".
 
Zemgirl said:
I knew it from watching "From the Earth to the Moon" years ago. The final episode is about Apollo 17 :)

That was a really good miniseries, BTW - definitely recommended for anyone interested in the history of space exploration.
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I loved that mini-series! I use parts of it to show my class during our unit on Space. They can't get enough of it! I was about to type the same answer until I saw you got to it first :)
 
Seems more like trivia IMO rather than knowledge but wait..............is trivia knowledge or is knowledge a greater sense of human thought.............or?
 
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