ROUND: What do they have in common?

1) Which medical condition, which occurs in about 1% of the current population, did writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Roman emperor Julius Caesar, the singer Prince, and Prince John (son of George V) have in common?

2) What ability do spider, howler, and wooly monkeys, possums, snakes, seahorses, and chameleons have which apes, most monkeys including baboons, gibbons, macaques, most reptiles including lizards, crocodiles, and turtles, and essentially all birds, fish, and insects don’t have?

3) Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Russia, and Niger collectively control 90% of the world’s supply of what resource (each controlling at least 5%)?

4) What do Australia, Austria, Beijing, and West Virginia have in common?

5) What did the philosopher Confucius, the inventor Leonardo Da Vinci, physicist Albert Einstein, writer Henry David Thoreau and the comic book character Superman have in common with approximately 5% of the current world population? 

6) What do the names Gray, Henry, Sievert, and Weber have in common with only 19 other names?

ROUND: They might be giants

1) Which river, although only the 10th longest in the world, is home to nearly all of the largest freshwater fish species in the world, including the giant barb (300 kg), giant pangasius (300 kg), giant catfish (300 kg), and giant freshwater stingray (600 kg). All of these species are now endangered due to over-fishing, and expected to go extinct if planned dams are eventually constructed. The river is considered the second-most biodiverse region of the planet after the Amazon, and passes through 6 different countries.

2) Giant stars are stars which have at least 10 times the mass of the Sun. Stars between the Sun and Giants are considered mainline stars. What is the astronomical term for stars which are the size of the Sun or smaller?

3) Jan 4, 2010, marked the opening of the new tallest building in the world, which at 808 m tall shattered the previous record of 509 m held by the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. In which city does the world’s tallest buiding (and tallest man-made structure) now stand? The tower is already widely considered a white elephant, with rents 40% lower than planned and over 95% of the tower’s apartments empty after 1 year.

4) In 2005 the BBC conducted a poll to name the top 10 natural wonders of the UK. Giant’s causeway, a sequence of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns in Northern Ireland, finished in 4th place. Name any of the 3 natural sites in the UK considered more wonderful than Giant’s causeway.

5) Coast Redwood trees are the tallest trees on earth, but the largest trees by volume and mass are actually from which related ‘giant’ species?

6) The Potsdam Giants were a special infantry regiment created in 1675, whose patron stated that ‘The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers--they are my weakness.’ He forced all soldiers of over 6'2" (1.88m) to transfer, forced many tall non-soldiers to join, and eventually started to be given tall soldiers from many foreign leaders as gifts. What army were the Potsdam Giants a part of?

ROUND: Breakups

1) Adolf “Adi” Dassler and Rudolf Dassler founded Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory) in Herzogenaurach, Germany in 1924. In 1948, the brothers had a public falling out, leading Adi to rename the company “Adidas” and Rudolf to found which competing athletic apparel company in the same town? Rudolf’s company now boasts €2.5 billion in annual revenue (1/4 that of Adidas), and outfitted 7 football teams at the 2010 World Cup, the third most after Adidas (11) and Nike (8).

2) The United Arab Republic was a short-lived country formed in 1958 as the merger of Egypt, led by Gamel Abdel Nasser, and which other Arab country then led by Shukri al-Quwatli? The joint country was recognized by the UN, but in 1961 the country broke up. Egypt officially known as the UAR until 1971, and the other country still uses the UAR flag today, consisting of red, white and black stripes with two green stars for the two members. 

3) Almost 400 years before Henry VIII’s famous divorces, King Louis VII of France and his Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine were threatening a public divorce after she bore two female children. Pope Eugenius II bowed to heavy political pressure and agreed to anul their marriage under what technicality, clearing the way for Eleanor to marry Henry II and become Queen of England?

4) Of the six major continents (considering Europe and Asia to be part of Eurasia), which was the last pair of continents to break up from being one land mass. All other continental breakups are at least twice as old, and the two are now separated by only 800 km of water, which is less than any other continents not directly touching.

5) The Socialist Federalist Republic of Yugoslavia was a political union lasting from 1943 to 1992. Not counting Kosovo, which has yet to gain full UN recognition, how many modern day countries were part of the SFRY?

6) The “most expensive divorce in history” occurred in June 1999 between an Australian and British partner, with the transfer of assets involved in the settlement valued at over  £1 billion. Name either partner involved.

ROUND: Is that still going on?

1) Though it was once a common practice at other luxury hotels, the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco is the only remaining hotel in the world which cleans what for their guests? The cleaning process takes about 3 hours and involves a special purpose machine using water, cleaning solvents, and buckshot.

2) What is the only country geographically in Europe which still carries out capital punishment, with at least 2 prisoners executed in 2010? It’s use of capital punishment makes it the only country in Europe not to be a member of the Council of Europe.

3) Which popular product, first sold by Sony in 1982 and peaking in popularity in 2000 with hundreds of millions sold globally, will see its last production in 2011, with sales having slumped to 8 million of in 2010 (hint: the product weighs about 25 g).

4) Przewalski’s horse, the only truly wild horse species (as opposed to feral horses like mustangs and brumbies), is critically endangered, with only one herd of 250 horses left in the wild in which country?

5) Which city of about 15 million people (metro area) is the last major industrialized city in the world with a substantial usage of human-pulled rickshaws? Although technically illegal since 1945, more than 30,000 are still in operation daily. The city was traditionally said to be founded by Englishman Job Charnock in 1690, although in 2003 the local High Court officially abolished this version of history and said the city had existed long before European arrival.

6) Which product, of which over a hundred billion have been manufactured since their introduction in the 1870’s, is now only mass produced in China, after the last major plants in the USA and Japan closed in 2010? Sales of the product have declined by about 40% since 2005, and are expected to be nearly zero by 2014.


ROUND: Female names

1) Veronica is a common technique in which controversial sport? The sport is now illegal in many countries.

2) Which prominent brand of automobiles was originally named after a prominent customer’s daughter in 1900? The customer was a very successful race driver who painted his daughter’s name on the side of his cars, but gained so much publicity for the manufacturer that he eventually was named to the board of directors. The company decided to brand all of its automobiles with the daughter’s name to this day, although the name of the corporation making them is different. 

3) Which name, originally invented by William Shakespeare for a character in the play Twelfth Night, has risen to become the number 4 most popular baby girl’s name for the UK in 2010? It’s thought that Shakespeare either sought to create a female version of a traditional (and still-popular) male name which previously had no female equivalent, or created it from the Latin name for a type of fruit-bearing tree.

4) Katyusha, a Russian nickname for Ekaterina, is best known in the West as the name of what type of weapon considered very advanced when first used by the Soviets in World War II, and since used in dozens of major conflicts including the Korean War, multiple Israeli/Arab wars, the Rwandan civil war and the current Afghanistan and Iraq wars? The weapon was named by Soviet soldiers for a popular wartime song because of its distinct sound.

5) Mosi-oa Tunya, or “the smoke that thunders” is the traditional name for one of the “seven natural wonders of world,” which is best known internationally by what woman’s name? 

6) Together, micropsia and macropsia, which are neurological disorders causing objects to appear much larger or smaller than they actually are, are commonly called what syndrome, name after a famous fictional female?

ROUND: 2010

1) March 2010 saw a series of unusual protests in which country, which involved the collection of approximately 300 litres of blood from protest members which were then splashed on the prime minister’s house? The protests in support of the country’s billionaire former prime minister, who has been in exile in Montenegro since a military coup in 2006, went on for over two months until they were violently suppressed by the army dozens of protestors killed?

2) The November 2010 engagement of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton led to a surge of sales for which gemstone, technically a variety of corundum which is a 9/10 on the Mohs hardness scale, which was the primary piece of Kate Middleton’s engagement ring instead of the more traditional diamond?

3) In November 2010, official academy members for which language voted to drop 2 letters from their alphabet, reducing it from 29 to 27 letters in an effort to better conform to European standards? The decision was met with widespread public dissatisfaction over the ‘plutoing’ of these letters.

4) In December 2010, a publication in Science reported the discovery of the bacteria species GFAJ-1 in Mono Lake, California, USA. While widely reported as the first “arsenic-based” life form, the authors actually only claimed the species is capable of substituting arsenic for which element essential to all other known life forms for making DNA, RNA, ATP, and cell membranes?

5) On May 13, 2010 which country elected a still-active professional boxing world champion to its House of Representatives, making it almost certainly the first country with a boxing champion serving as a national politician? The country is well known for electing celebrity politicians, with the 2010 elections seeing at least 20 celebrity candidates including actors, television hosts, singers, comedians, and basketball players?

6) The Merriam-Webster 2010 word of the year is which 9-letter noun, which can be defined as “the state of being severe or stern in disposition or appearance; somber and grave, having no adornment or ornamentation”

ROUND: Miscellaneous

1) Excluding coats of arms and other graphical elements, which country’s flag has the most colors of any national flag in the world with 6? In vexillological terminology, the flag is ‘"per pall fesswise gules, sable and azure, a fesswise pall vert fimbriated argent, Or and argent.’

2) What well known phenomena was named in 1981 for German doctor Ernst Gräfenberg? Ever since it's naming, nearly every year peer-reviewed scientific articles have been published arguing both for and against its existence.

3) Which of the following cat species is not found anywhere in Asia: cheetahs, jaguars, leopards, lions, or lynx?

4) According to the CIA world factbook, with a sustained growth rate of 20%, which country was the fastest growing economy of the 2000's? The country has become a statistical outlier in a number of dimensions including the highest carbon emissions per capita in the world and the largest consumers of water per capita in the world.

5) Which of these things did not exist in the 19th century: adhesive postage stamps, ballpoint pens, chewing gum, denim jeans, or the ferris wheel? 

6) In 2003, sociologists performed an exhaustive field study to determine which way European couples prefer to kiss. After observing CCTV footage of hundreds of couples in public kissing, what result was found: Two-thirds of couples tilt their heads to the left, equal numbers tilt to the right and the left, or two-thirds of couples tilt their heads to the right?

ROUND: Three letter sequences

1) Which 3 letter prefix is found at the beginning of 5 country's names, two more than any other 3 letter sequence?

2) There are only two non-onomatopoeic three-letter words in the English language with no vowels or y's. One of them is the mathematical word "nth." The other contains, in alphabetical order, the letters c, m, and w. In what order do these three letters form a word?

3) In classical cryptography, frequency analysis was used to break most pre-20th century codes by studying language statistics in encrypted text. Which trigraph, or three-letter sequence that can be within a larger word or across two word boundaries, is the most common in English text?

4) What 10-letter compound word is the only word in English which contains the three letter sequence 'MPG'?

5) The city flag and coat of arms of Amsterdam appear to contain what three-letter sequence, which is often photographed by amused tourists confused about the meaning of the symbols?

6) There are 10 parts of the human body whose common, singular-form (non-vulgar) English name is three letters long. Name 8 of them. 

ROUND: Same Initials

Instructions for all: provide two letters which can stand for all three of the things described. For example, the answer to "A US president, a state of Mexico, and a time period" would be BC-Bill Clinton, Baja California, and Before Christ.

1) A lung disease, the leader of a G20 nation during the 1990's, and a unit of data storage.

3) A French impressionist painter (called 'the father of us all' by both Picasso and Matisse), a unit of distance, and a parliamentary seat-holding UK political party.

2) An Asian capital, a Shakespearean tragedy, and a unit of liquid measure.

4) The TLD for an EU country, a composer of the Romantic era, and an element in the 6th row of the periodic table?

5) An automobile manufacturer, a Canadian province, and a character on "The Simpsons."

6) A 1925 novel, an astronomer, and a brand of vodka?


TIEBREAKER: What is the ratio of the average weight of an ostrich egg (the largest bird egg in nature) to that of a bee hummingbird egg (the smallest bird egg in nature)?