Arguably the most challenging test of arcane knowledge is the "Christmas Quiz" offered to students at King William's College.
Questions are grouped into 18 "themes," each consisting of 10 questions. Here, for example, is the 15th theme:
Who or What...
1 is perifoveal?
2 is bridged by a memorial to Pepi?
3 was a notoriously cruel Wallachian prince?
4 overlooks the burial ground of Anne, Catherine and Jane?
5 was thought, through its bite, to cause an extreme impulse to dance?
6 was a probable tuberculous infection, so named after a breeding sow?
7 is an abnormal passage connecting two epithelial surfaces?
8 broken bone is associated with an unspoken wish?
9 was Linné's name for the sea parrot?
10 is the Hill of the Fords?
The entire quiz has been published at The Guardian. Previous quizzes (with answers) are available via the King William's College website. Answers to this year's quiz will be available after the holidays.
Have a go.
Update: The answers to these 10 questions are in the comments. Remember there are 170 more (and harder) questions at the link.
Up until 1999, pupils at King William's College would sit the paper unseen on the last day of term before the Christmas holidays. The questions are very hard and often cryptic, and pupils got hardly any questions right first time: five percent was considered a good score! During the Christmas holidays, pupils tried to find the answers to the harder questions by consulting reference books or asking clever relatives. When they returned to school in the New Year, they took the test again, under exam conditions and without the aid of notes.
Questions are grouped into 18 "themes," each consisting of 10 questions. Here, for example, is the 15th theme:
Who or What...
1 is perifoveal?
2 is bridged by a memorial to Pepi?
3 was a notoriously cruel Wallachian prince?
4 overlooks the burial ground of Anne, Catherine and Jane?
5 was thought, through its bite, to cause an extreme impulse to dance?
6 was a probable tuberculous infection, so named after a breeding sow?
7 is an abnormal passage connecting two epithelial surfaces?
8 broken bone is associated with an unspoken wish?
9 was Linné's name for the sea parrot?
10 is the Hill of the Fords?
The entire quiz has been published at The Guardian. Previous quizzes (with answers) are available via the King William's College website. Answers to this year's quiz will be available after the holidays.
Have a go.
Update: The answers to these 10 questions are in the comments. Remember there are 170 more (and harder) questions at the link.
Pepi, IIRC was an Egyptian prince - might be something around the pyramids or the Nile.
Yup, the prince was Vlad, sometimes known as Dracul. Did things like nail turbans onto heads of people who wouldn't remove them in his presence.
Anne, Catherine and Jane sound like wives of Henry VIII, but I didn't think they were buried near each other. Two were - probably in Windsor so it'll be the chapel in the castle I guess.
The tarantula spider gave its name to the tarantella dance.
The abnormal passage sounds like a fistula.
Broken bone is presumably the wish-bone.
The Linnean name for the puffin is sea-parrot? but that's a guess.
No idea where or what the Hill of Fords is.
Keep going...
That's make the wishbone a furcula - which only came to mind after I'd posted the first lot. Wish the latin name for a puffin would come to mind - but as you say, it probably ends in "a".
I could cheat and FWSE for it.
But now I'm done. Someone else can hit the books or the 'net for the other answers.
Benbecula, one of the islands of the Outer Hebrides, is sometimes called the Hill of the Fords.
6:6 is Breadfruit (on the Bounty)
6:7 is "Breadbasket of Europe"
6:10 is Naan
http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=17494&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=510
and
http://network.laxpower.com/laxforum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=38303&p=671588#p671588