Just over a year ago, in this piece, I wrote about Pop Master, the mid-morning quiz on the Ken Bruce Show on BBC Radio 2. That earlier piece explains the format of the quiz, and notes that this is the most listened-to slot on UK radio, outside of Breakfast Shows. Every Monday to Friday, at… Continue reading 600 Rounds of Pop Master
Which Beatles album covers can you visualize right now? A few of them can be classed as Universal Knowledge for people over a certain age, and they are an occasional source of quiz questions. Here’s an example from a recent edition of “The 100k Drop”: “Which member of the Beatles wears a blue military coat… Continue reading Beatles Album Covers, seeing and observing
Today is Day 4 of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships here in London. The following 1200 words reflect on the tournament’s popularity, and offer a few Trivia Challenges regarding the sport. These Challenges are marked with bold headings in case you want to scroll through to them directly, skipping past the other reflections and explanations. The… Continue reading Wimbledon 2018, and Tennis Trivia
Real names, or birth names, are a regular feature of quizzes. A question on Pop Master earlier today asked the following: “What is the original shared surname of both Cliff Richard and Gary Numan?” I have been meaning to write something about this topic for a while, and that question has prompted me to draft… Continue reading Real Names: 21 questions and a list for reference
Umbro is a company that manufactures sportswear. I occasionally wear their products: short-sleeved shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies. As noted in this piece, I am not committed to any single sportswear brand, though I am rather partial to a bit of Adidas. All of the Umbro clothing in what we can laughingly call my wardrobe was… Continue reading Word of the week: Umbro
One of last month’s “Word of the Week” pieces, Cadillac, was prompted by a question on a Channel 4 quiz show that has been revived after an absence of many years. Originally broadcast in primetime as “The Million Pound Drop”, it now has a 4pm slot and is called “The 100k Drop”. Contestants play the… Continue reading Word of the week: quotidian
As I noted in this piece on the Projects Menu (“A UK #1 for every year”) I can sing and play at least one UK chart-topping song from every year between 1954 and 2013. This repertoire developed from over 20 years’ worth of learning the odd song here and there and finding that many of… Continue reading More than Once at One (39 songs)
At the end of April, as the English football season was coming to an end, I wrote this piece (“Blue is the colour, five years in a row”) about trophy-winning teams and the colours that they wear. At the time we already knew that Manchester City were Premier League Champions. They had also won the… Continue reading More about teams in blue and teams in red
Earlier this year, London’s free evening newspaper The Standard revamped its Puzzles and Games section. It now takes up two pages rather than one and has new challenges. There is a Battleships puzzle every day. (I haven’t got to grips with that one yet.) The Mini Codeword has returned after an absence of a year… Continue reading Planning journeys, and attention to detail on the London Underground
Here’s another list-based trivia challenge. There are 20 elements in the Periodic Table whose names, in English, contain 10 or more letters. How many can you name? All 20 names appear at the end of this piece, grouped in various ways. First, as usual, a few paragraphs of text so that you don’t read them… Continue reading Another Trivia Challenge: Chemical elements with 10 or more letters
The Compartments 