Over the last two weekends we have watched, as a family, the most recent pair of James Bond movies, “Skyfall” (2012) and “Spectre” (2015). They were broadcast on ITV2 (lots of ad-breaks), we recorded them on our multi-channel box and watched each of them within 24 hours of recording. The children, aged 11 and 13,… Continue reading James Bond and me
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
Earlier this week, on the BBC1 Quiz Show “Pointless”, Richard Osman compared UK pop band the Sugababes to Trigger’s Broom, because all of the original members were replaced but the band name remained the same. He didn’t go into detail about the derivation of the phrase Trigger’s Broom. Does it mean anything to you? The… Continue reading Trigger’s Broom
Mean, median, mode: does an understanding of these statistical terms count as Universal Knowledge? Can most adults be expected to know the difference, and why you would use one statistical measurement rather than another? In my experience, probably not. We can conclude that plenty of people are unfamiliar with basic statistics because the word “average”… Continue reading Mean, Median, Mode
Kosher foods are those that conform to Jewish law (kashrut, Jewish dietary law). For any adults reading these lines the word kosher could probably be counted as Universal Knowledge. Twenty years ago I used the word to mean safe (legit, on-the-level), in the way that Arthur Daley in “Minder” might describe a business transaction. Before… Continue reading Word of the week: kosher
Have you heard that thing about Salvador Dali and the spoon? I have come across this story in so many places that I can’t remember where I heard it first. It’s used to illustrate the benefit of taking short naps, especially to aid creativity, and offers a way to do it. The story goes that… Continue reading Salvador Dali’s Spoon
Cricket, the sport rather than the insect. It could be considered Universal Knowledge for a billion or more people on the planet. Almost everyone in India or Pakistan, most people in Bangladesh, England, the West Indies, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand would have some idea of the game, and many of them… Continue reading How to Celebrate a Hundred
Since the autumn I have been revisiting Narnia. Does CS Lewis’s imaginary world, first described in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, count as Universal Knowledge these days, especially for the generations brought up on Harry Potter? As a child I read the seven Narnia Chronicles more than once and have been re-reading them… Continue reading Narnia and Hogwarts
You know Jenga, the game where you build a tower out of wooden blocks and then try to remove one block at a time until the whole tower collapses. The word means “build” in Swahili, as I learnt last year from this article featuring the inventor Leslie Scott and Alan Hassenfeld from Hasbro. I assumed… Continue reading Word of the week: Jenga
In previous pieces I have mentioned Universal Knowledge, with the understanding that there isn’t much of it, and that some people’s idea of what is universally known is very different from other people’s ideas. Porlock, Battleship Potemkin, Cargo Cult: I never assume that these terms are familiar to friends and family. And the same goes… Continue reading Usually I’m Anthony Trollope, but not this week
The Compartments 