I’m amazed that there doesn’t seem to ever be any discussion around here of the King William’s College general knowledge papers. Here is this year’s edition (the 109th), courtesy of the Grauniad.
I could answer two of the 180 questions…
Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est.
I don’t understand the questions and I won’t respond to them.
It seems harder than usual this year. I haven’t spent much time on it, but so far I have answered precisely one question, in section 9 where the theme is obviously horse racing.
A lot of these questions are very vague.
Consider 2.1 : “Who…was a red head?” Surely there are and have been a lot of gingers in the world. Is there supposed to be an obvious context to the question and an implication such as “Who in the past year’s required reading was a red head?” E.g. if the student answers “Ron Howard”, I assume that’s wrong. But why? Isn’t it an answer to the literal question asked?
Or take 3.6: “Where would I build a modest home and live in solitude, growing beans and keeping bees?” Is it fair to say that the students were expected to have read a story about a bean farmer and beekeeper and are expected to regurgitate the name of the town in which the farmer lived, or is the student supposed to be creative and use their knowledge of population trends, the economics of farming, how climate affects agriculture, the latest home construction costs, etc., and pick a place (e.g. West Texas, rural central New South Wales, 50 miles south of Calgary near Bill’s General Store, etc.) and make a cohesive argument as to why that choice represents a good opportunity for farming with relatively low costs and below-average suburban sprawl, maybe even with applicable citations to agricultural journals and population statistics reports?
Or take 3.2, “Who loved his country and loved his lass?” Surely that phrase describes a lot of men, possibly most men. Is the student supposed to look at 3.1 and realize 3.1 refers to “Mannions”, and thus conclude that 3.2 must be about the same historical incident/story/whatever that involves “Mannions” and answer 3.2 by choosing the most patriotic and most amorous one of all of the people involved in that?
E.g. if 3.2 actually was “Whence all Lannisters?”, would that imply that all the questions in Section 3 ought to be interpreted as questions about A Song of Ice and Fire?
And some of them contain their own answers. For instance, “Where… did the rector combine his clerical duties with those of a royal appointment at Greenwich?” Why, at Greenwich, of course.
I think the answer to that one is “Burstow, in Surrey”. John Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal “a royal appointment at Greenwich”, and also a priest. His parish was at Burstow.
I actually got one without googling, the Aubrey/Maturin one.
Each section has a theme. No idea for section 3, but I think section 6 is Spain.
6.4 Where did Jack and Stephen meet during an Italian quartet in Government House?
That’s Minorca (it’s the opening scene of the first book of the Aubrey/Maturin series)
Thinking of a Spanish theme gives an answer to 6.1
6.1 Where did Blair join the militia?
Eric Blair (Orwell) joined the militia in the Spanish Civil War at Barcelona (thank google for the location)
Indeed. The first challenge with these quizzes is working out what the theme of each section is. The questions are almost impossible in isolation. If you know what the theme is, they become merely very hard. We seem to have Spain, Surrey, and horse racing among the themes this year.
No, they just have to be able to recognize a reference to The Lake Isle of Innisfree when they see one.
I think you’re correct. 6.2 appears to be a reference to Peñíscola.
I think most Australians should be able to get 18.7
That’s my only success so far…
Tony Abbot?
This quiz is IMO an annual horror – the poor pupils of King William’s College are, I gather, expected during their Christmas / New Year holiday, to work industriously on it, consulting whatever reference works they can find (must have been a deal harder in pre-Internet times). Way to ruin a kid’s school holiday…
I consider my general knowledge fairly good; but reckon I’m doing well, any year when I can even try to answer “off top of head”, 10% of the KWC questions – the great majority of them are always gibberish to me. I agree with the PP who reckoned this year’s offering even harder than usual.
On this year’s event: using own knowledge such as it is, I restricted myself to questions to which I definitely knew the answer; or ones about which I had an inkling, but no more – re which latter, I resorted to Google, just concerning said inkling – if Google proved that to be wrong first-off, I bailed out. So, out of the 180 questions: I got twelve right “straight off the bat”; on another four, my inkling was confirmed by Google (on several more, my inkling was clearly off-beam).
There’s one question which I suspect the setters may have a little wrong. It’s number 8 of section 5: “Which is arrived at by adding the eight to the 24?” My reading is, that they’re referring to matters Irish. The whole island of Ireland is made up of thirty-two counties (8 + 24). Contentious matters from the past 100-odd years, mean a special situation concerning Ireland’s province of Ulster, the majority of which historical province (not the whole) is now contained in the political entity of Northern Ireland, as distinct from the Irish Republic. The historical province of Ulster consists of nine counties: six nowadays in N.I., three in the Republic. If the quiz-setters had written of “nine and 23”, the answer would have been obvious. With the way they phrase the question – I’m wondering, did they count wrong; or am I on the wrong track, and the question is nothing to do with Ireland? (with this lot, that would not surprise me).
That’d be the one.
Just for the record, the two I knew were 1.10 (Krazy Kat began its run in 1913) and 11.8 (King James II of England).
I recognised 10.6 and 14.8 as Sherlock Holmes references, and 16.4 has to do with Nero Wolfe, but I had to google to identify the specific answers.
Getting up this morning, I’ve noticed another one which I can answer correctly. That brings my total score to 17 right answers out of 180 questions. This quiz is a real four-eyed bastard…
This is pretty much a trivia quiz, so I’m moving it to the Game Room (from MPSIMS).
Sorry, but this is the best answer yet.
You are on the wrong track. If you had the correct theme, you would be on the right TRACK.
(I only know this because I caved in and read some of the answers on the internet. And I must say that I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time on section 5, because I wouldn’t have got it in a million years. The theme is rather obscure, and I still don’t understand all of the answers.)