Around a year ago I wrote a couple of pieces about UK cities, prompted by quiz questions from the preceding weeks. The first of these pieces, here, listed the cities in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and included mnemonics that help me to remember them: “I gasped” for the 7 cities in Scotland, “Bland” for… Continue reading The 70th UK City, the 52nd in England
Regular readers will know that I post from time to time about music trivia, including songs that were “Stuck at 2”. These are the songs that almost made it to #1 in the UK chart but were kept off by another release. There are full listings, right up to the current year, on the Trivia… Continue reading Stuck at 2: Elvis and the Beatles
In December 2017 I wrote this piece listing 25 answers to quiz questions where it’s usually worth having a guess, offering the following advice: It’s worth having a guess as long as you’re not going to lose money or points or be eliminated from the game for being wrong. If a question begins with the… Continue reading You might as well have a guess, revisited: another 50 answers that are usually right
In this earlier piece, about the UK’s best-selling singles by year, I noted that three of the best-selling songs in the 1980s began with the word “Don’t”. We had “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” (Police, 1980) “Don’t You Want Me” (Human League, 1981) and “Don’t Leave Me This Way” (Communards, 1986). Including these titles,… Continue reading UK #1s containing the word “Don’t”
A few reflections on the UK’s best-selling singles by year. Recently I have been reading up on the best-selling records of each year in the UK, beginning with these two links: a list on Wikipedia and a gallery or slideshow (one year at a time) from the Official Chart Company. The latter goes up to… Continue reading The UK’s best-selling singles by year
In December 2020 I posted this piece about the BBC “Sports Personality of the Year” (or SPOTY for short). Here are 20 questions about the award, 10 of which have multiple choice answers. The answers to all of them appear at the end of this Post. The Questions Before Emma Raducanu won it in 2021,… Continue reading 20 questions about “Sports Personality of the Year”
Pop Master, BBC Radio 2’s mid-morning quiz, is the most listened-to slot on UK radio. I have mentioned that fact before on this Blog, many times, but always qualified it with the phrase “outside of breakfast shows”. The generally-quoted number of daily listeners up till now has been 7.5m but according to Scott Mills, when… Continue reading Pop Master: Let down by Question 10 (20 examples)
Here’s a question from Radio 2’s mid-morning quiz Pop Master from last week: In 1984 the song Feels Like Heaven became the only Top 40 hit for which group? The answer didn’t come to me in time, though I’m sure that there have been times when it would have, not least in 1984 itself. You… Continue reading A Confusion of 80s Bands
The posts on this Blog relating to ITV quiz show “Tenable” have received nearly one million views. Most of these posts contain the correct answers to the lists of 10 items that contestants name to build up, and then win, a jackpot. There have been repeats and the odd Celebrity Special over the last eight… Continue reading Trivia in 10s: “World” #1s and LAND-less countries
Picture, if you will, someone writing hundreds of words which omit one specific letter. The missing letter is one of the five vowels, so the writer must choose his or her words with extreme precision. It is difficult enough to do this for five sentences, but whole books exist which use this device from beginning… Continue reading Word of the week: lipogram
The Compartments 