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
On “University Challenge” earlier this week there was a good set of questions whose answers all featured every vowel once and once only. There was something similar on a “Missing Vowels” round in “Only Connect” recently. I have spent an hour coming up with more examples and offer them below. The answers to the 20 questions here are all nouns (although… Continue reading Quiz questions: all the answers contain each vowel once
Here’s another news story that passed me by in 2019: the capital city of African nation Burundi has changed. It is now Gitega, which was the seat of the Kingdom of Burundi until it was abolished in 1966. The former capital, Bujumbura, is still the economic capital and centre of commerce. Like many other facts… Continue reading Word of the week: Gitega
I return to the subject of pronouns, something I wrote about in this post back in 2016. In case you need a reminder of what pronouns are, there are explanations in that earlier piece. You might receive emails these days from people who specify their preferred use of pronouns, typically he/him, she/her or they/their. I… Continue reading UK #1s that contain multiple pronouns in their titles
“Stuck at 2” is a recurring theme on this Blog: there are posts and menu items here which list all the songs that made it to #2 in the UK chart but did not make it to #1. As far as I can tell, this Blog is the only place on the web where you… Continue reading Stuck at 2: reflections on 2020 and 2021 so far
Last week I posted this piece listing the questions and answers from a Soccer Aid special edition of the ITV quiz show “Tenable”. It was the 1,000th post on this site and, appropriately enough for such a round number, it completes a set: every “Tenable” episode that has been broadcast since summer 2017 (including repeats)… Continue reading The “Tenable” lists are complete
The Compartments 