Quiz #23
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Q 1 Which well-known New Zealand classical composer was born on 29 Feb?
A Gareth Farr
Farr was born in 1968, but is only able to celebrate his actual birthday every 4 years, due being born on a leap day.
Q 2 Can you name the countries that border The Black Sea?
A Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and Georgia.
The Black Sea is part of complex water system involving tributary rives such as the Danube and Dnipro, and has layers of salt and fresh water that do not mix. The deepest waters of the lake are anoxic - they contain little or no dissolved oxygen.
Q 3 How many legs does a hermit crab have?
A 10
Six of these are outside, 4 are inside the shell.
Here is a harder question: which came first, the shell of the hermit crab?
In some cases hermit crabs line up for upgrades.
Q 4 What was the name of the ship on which Charles Darwin sailed?
A The Beagle
Darwin sailed on The Beagle's second voyage from 1831 to 1836. He was offered a place on the voyage because the captain wanted a gentleman companion to share his scientific interests.
Q 5 How many inches in one yard?
A 36 inches (3 feet)
Readers of a certain age would have known this immediately. One of the few countries still using feet and inches is the United States of America. The US did have an office charged with overseeing conversion to the Metric system, but for years it had only one employee.
Q 6 How many people have stood on the moon?
A 12
Between July 1969 and December 1972 the USA landed six manned craft on the moon. Each had two crew members making 12 in total. Eight of the 12 are still alive.
The first option was provided for those who believe that the moon landings were a conspiracy.
Q 7 When was the first website launched?
A 1991
The first website ever was for CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research in 1991. You can visit an archived version of the site from November 1992.
Q 8 How many balls are used in Snooker?
A 22
As well as the white, or cue ball, there 15 red balls and six colours. For scoring, red balls earn 1 point. The colours are: yellow (2), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6) and black (7). These must be sunk in order, first a red then a colour. The maximum score that generally can be attained is 147, though a foul stroke by one player can allow a score of 155. The fastest ever 147 in competition history was achieved by Ronnie O'Sullivan.
Q 9 Which animal produces the largest eggs?
A The whale shark
The whale shark is ovoviviparous, which means the eggs remain in the female after fertilisation and remain there until the baby whaleshark is born. The eggs are about 30 cm in diameter. An ostrich egg is about half this size, and is the largest for a land animal.
The largest egg as a percentage of body size is the Kiwi. The egg is about 20% of the mother's body size.
Q 10 How many unique Sudoku puzzles are there?
A 5,472,730,538
While there are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 possible solutions, when you remove rotations, reflections and other variations the number drops to 5,472,730,538.
In 2012 the mathematicians Gary McGuire, Bastian Tugemann, and Gilles Civario proved that 17 is the minimum number of clues required to give a unique sudoku solution.
