1. Winning with The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952), who is the only person to win four best director Oscars?

   1. Frank Capra

   2. Fred Zinnemann

   3. John Ford

2. Which Austrian was described by the pianist Glenn Gould as “a bad composer who died too late rather than too early”?

   1. Schubert

   2. Mozart

   3. Bruckner

3. Which African mountain was first conquered in 1889 by Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller?

   1. Table Mountain

   2. Mount Kenya

   3. Kilimanjaro

4. 

   Owned by the Rijksmuseum, this painting appears on the packaging of Dutch Masters cigars. The Sampling ­Officials (1662), aka Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild, aka De Staalmeesters has been described as the “last great collective portrait” by which painter?

   1. Rembrandt

   2. Vermeer

   3. Rubens

5. Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman proved which of the Millennium prize problems in 2003, although he turned down the prize of $1m for doing so?

   1. Riemann hypothesis

   2. Poincaré conjecture

   3. Hodge conjecture

6. Christa Luding-Rothenburger of East Germany is the only athlete ever to win medals at winter and summer Olympics in the same year. In 1988, she won a silver and gold in which sports?

   1. Cycling & speed skating

   2. Swimming & skiing

   3. Athletics & curling

7. 

   In The Simpsons, who sang the immortal line, “I hate every chimp I see from chimpan-A to chimpanzee,” in a musical version of Planet of the Apes? You may remember him from such self-help videos as Smoke Yourself Thin and Get Confident, Stupid.

   1. Troy McCLure

   2. Mayor Joe Quimby

   3. Rainier Wolfcastle

8. When asked why he robbed banks, he apocryphally said, “Because that’s where the money is.” Which US bank robber gives his name to a rule of focusing on areas with likely high returns, or ruling out obvious explanations first?

   1. John Dillinger

   2. Willie Sutton

   3. “Baby Face” Nelson

9. The Oscar-nominated documentary Waste Land by Lucy Walker is about the “pickers” or “catadores” who scavange Jardim Gramacho, an enormous dump in which city?

   1. Rio de Janeiro

   2. Manila

   3. Mexico City

10. 

    Of the 27 moons known to orbit Uranus, which “shepherd moon” is closest to the planet? It is named after a Shakespearean tragic heroine.

    1. Portia

    2. Juliet

    3. Cordelia

11. Which writer oversaw the exhumation and reburial of many thousands of corpses during the 1860s rerouting of the Midland Railway through St Pancras?

    1. Thomas Hardy

    2. William Makepeace Thackeray

    3. Charles Dickens

12. Legend has it that peasants threw them into the river to distract fish from eating the body of the beloved poet Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in 278BC as a protest against corruption. What are bak chang or zongzi?

    1. Glutinous rice dumplings

    2. Fortune cookies

    3. Spring rolls

13. 

    Of the five successful 65-yard-and-over field goal attempts in NFL history (up to the end of 2013), four have been achieved in which city?

    1. San Francisco

    2. Miami

    3. Denver

14. The Bureaucrat, the Avalanche and Fistful o’ Dollars are among the eight great gambits used in which game?

    1. Chess

    2. Rock-Paper-Scissors

    3. Risk

15. Bencivieni di Pepo, who died in 1302 and according to Vasari taught Giotto, is regarded as one of the earliest great Italian painters. By what name is he best known?

    1. Cimabue

    2. Perugino

    3. Fra Angelico

Solutions

1:C, 2:B, 3:C, 4:A, 5:B, 6:A, 7:A, 8:B, 9:A, 10:C, 11:A, 12:A, 13:C, 14:B, 15:A

Scores

1. 4 and above.

   Oh dear. Not a strong score at all. You’ll have to try a lot harder if you’re going to become an international quiz champ. Maybe try reading some encyclopedias?

2. 9 and above.

   Not bad! Sure, a few of those answers may have been lucky guesses, but you could have done a lot worse. If you want to get even better, why not try reading some encyclopedias?

3. 14 and above.

   Suspiciously excellent. Are you one of the National Quiz Team already? If not, perhaps you should be.