Ultimate Tribond Trivia Quiz

Answer: Party

A surprise party is, as the name suggests, prepared in secrecy, so that the center of the celebration is unaware of it until the surprise is sprung. In my opinion, they are a dangerous idea - if the surprised wanted a party, they will have spent time being sad because nobody was paying attention to their big moment; if, like me, they would rather not have a party at all, then the surprise will be unpleasant. And then there is the possibility that they don't even turn up!

If someone is missing, a search party may be organised to systematically try to locate them. (That could be an appropriate activity for the people at the surprise party where the birthday girl was a no-show.)

A slumber party usually involves older children, often in the 10-15 age range. They all gather at one person's house, and generally slumber is the last thing they have in mind for the evening.

Answer: Bats

Softball and baseball are similar games, played on a field that has four bases set in a square, around which players run in an attempt to complete a circuit and score a run. To start the action, a pitcher sends a ball in the direction of a player on the other team who has a bat in their hands, which they swing in an attempt to hit the ball. If successful, they get to run, and try to get safely to a base before the ball arrives. (That is enough detail - if you have played either game, you know it is a lot more complicated than that; if not, you have probably already lost track.)

Vampires, on the other hand, are traditionally creatures of the night, like bats.The existence of vampire bats (which are haematophagous, meaning they subsist on blood they suck from their prey) led to an association between bats and vampires even before Bram Stoker wrote about Count Dracula, who actually transformed into a bat as an escape technique.

Answer: Sticks

Originally, a yardstick was a piece of wood that measured one yard (three feet, 36 inches) in length. The term then came to be used in reference to any standard against which something could be measured - even intangibles, such as someone being described as a yardstick of proper manners.

A pogo stick is a (usually metallic) cylinder with a handle near the top, two footrests and an internal spring, such that one can stand on the footrests and compress the spring, which then rebounds and sends the stick into the air. In the 21st century the pogo stick has evolved from a children's toy into a piece of equipment that can be reach a height of up to 3 metres (10 feet), and are used in the competitive sport of Extreme Pogo.

Chopsticks are an item of tableware commonly found in Asia. They come in pairs, two long pieces of wood, bamboo or plastic with a tapered end that facilitates their use to gather food while eating. Effective eating with them takes a bit of practice, but then so does use of a knife and fork!

Answer: Wolves

The gray wolf, Canis lupus, is usually just called a wolf. They are the largest extant group of canids, found in North America and across Eurasia. As their name suggests, they usually have a dark gray coat, but often with a mixture of black, brown and white.

The red wolf is also called a dhole, and is a wild canid found in India and other parts of Asia. Their fur is described as red, but some might call it tan or chestnut.

A lone wolf is someone who keeps themselves separate from the main group of which they re a part, a metaphorical reference to a wolf that does not belong to a pack, as they usually do. The wolf involved is usually in the process of moving from the pack into which it was born to the one where it will participate as an adult. The fictional character John Rambo (played by Sylvester Stallone on film) used Lone Wolf as his field name.

Answer: Airports

These three airports are all located in the United States, and named for famous people. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was named for Edward "Butch" O'Hare, the first member of the US Navy to receive a Medal of Honor in World War II. LaGuardia Airport, in the New York district of Queens, was named after Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945. John F. Kennedy International Airport, renamed from Idlewild after the 1963 assassination of the American president, is also located in Queens.

Answer: Plastics

What everyday usage calls plastic, chemists more precisely call polymers. They are composed of lots of small units, called monomers, joined together to produce an artificial material whose properties depend on the nature and arrangement of the monomers.

Bakelite is the common name for an early synthetic plastic developed by Leo Baekeland, patented in 1909. It is most familiar from its use as the brittle brown plastic in old radios and telephones. Its technical name is Polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride. Note that the name starts with poly-, indicating that it is a polymer, and the rest of the name tells you about the small molecules from which it was synthesized.

PVC, whose full name is polyvinyl chloride, is often just called vinyl. It is the third most commonly produced plastic in the 21st century, behind polyethylene and polypropylene. Vinyl chloride, the monomer of PVC, is prepared by replacing one atom of hydrogen in a molecule of ethene by a chlorine atom. The carbon-carbon double bond then changes into a single bond as the molecules join onto others.

Polystyrene is made (you're probably ahead of me on this one) from a bunch of styrene units. While it has many uses, it will be most familiar from its use as protective packaging - the infamous packing peanuts/popcorn/noodles that fly everywhere when you open a box in which they have been used.

Answer: Shoes

These are only a few of the many types of shoe!

Pumps are slip-on shoes that do not require laces to keep them in place. They may be flat-soled or heeled. In the UK (and some other Commonwealth countries) they are referred to as court shoes, a reference to the time when the style was formal evening wear for gentlemen. They have come to be seen as a women's style, but some very formal men's events will still see flat pumps being worn.

Sandals are open shoes, often held in place by straps across the feet and/or around the ankles, leaving most of the foot exposed. They are usually flat-soled, but sometimes dress sandals may have a heel.

Clogs are wooden shoes, originally carved out of a single piece of wood, useful as the footwear of farmers and other workers who spend a lot of time (at least, at some seasons) in muddy ground. They have evolved over time, and some clogs have a wood sole and leather upper. They have been, at various times, hot fashion trends, not just practical work shoes.

Answer: Wind

A headwind is one in which the air is moving towards you, which tends to slow you down. In the days of sailing, moving upwind against a headwind required the technique of tacking, moving in a zigzag pattern to make progress. A tailwind is coming from behind you, so tends to make your motion get faster.

A crosswind is blowing from the side, and tends to push you off track, making it more difficult to reach the intended destination. Pilots flying in a cross wind actually point their plane somewhat upwind of their destination, so that the wind will blow them sideways to the right extent for an efficient trip.

Answer: Angles

An angle is formed when two straight lines (or, in three dimensions, surfaces) meet at a point. If the two lines are perpendicular to each other, the angle is called a right angle. If they meet at a smaller angle than that, the point where they meet looks sharp, and the angle is called acute. If the angle is larger than a right angle, the point where they meet is blunted in appearance, and the angle is called obtuse. If the angle gets so big that the point disappears, and it looks like a single straight line, it is called a straight angle. And if it gets even bigger, so that the two sides are starting to move back towards each other, it is called a reflex angle.

Answer: Missiles

A missile, in this context, is a guided self-propelled airborne weapon.

The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile (one that is fired from the ground at an aerial target) that first saw widespread use in the Gulf War of 1990-91.

The UGM-73 Poseidon is launched from a submarine and contains a nuclear warhead. US submarines carried them from 1971 until 1991, when they were withdrawn from service as part of the START I treaty.

The UGM-27 Polaris was the nuclear predecessor of Poseidon, carried by US submarines starting in 1961 before being phased out as Poseidon missiles came online.

Answer: Skiers

All three of these are champion skiers who have had significant success in World Cup skiing.

Ingemar Stenmark (born 1956 in Sweden) made his World Cup debut at 17, and went on to win 19 titles, including three consecutive World Cup Overall titles in 1976-1978. He was a specialist in slalom and giant slalom events.

Jean-Claude Killy (born 1943 in France) won all three Alpine skiing events at the 1964 Grenoble Olympics. He was the overall World Cup winner in both 1967 and 1968, the first two years in which it was held.

Karl Schranz (born 1938 in Austria) was involved in Killy's controversial slalom victory in Grenoble. Schranz claimed that someone had crossed the course in front of him due to the poor visibility, and was granted a rerun - which gave him the faster time. But then it was determined that he had missed a gate before the incident that had caused him to stop, so he was disqualified, and Killy won.

Answer: Apples

Crabapples are small wild apples. They are edible (contrary to popular rumor), but not as sweet or juicy as apples which have been specially bred for consumption. Most people who grow them do so for the flowers and the decorative appearance of the fruit.

Candy apples, also called toffee apples, are apples that have been given a sugary coating, and had a stick inserted for ease of holding them during consumption. Unlike caramel apples, whose coating is chewy, candy apples have a crunchy sugar coating, which is often colored - both red and green are popular colors.

Granny Smith apples are a light green-skinned apple (think of the Apple Records logo) developed in Australia. They are tart and crisp, and popularly used as a cooking apple because they keep their texture well when baked, and people who find them too tart can add sugar to taste.

Answer: Beans

Beans come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, has some cultivars that are called snap beans because they are eaten when the flesh is still soft enough to snap when bent.The entire fruit (botanically, that is what they are) is eaten, perhaps with the tips removed. According to shape, they may be given different names. A more cylindrical bean is likely to be called a green bean, while a flatter thin one is often referred to as a string bean, even though most contemporary cultivars have had the string running along one edge bred out.

Some legumes are not eaten whole, but have the actual beans removed from the interior, before being cooked or dried for later use. These are called shell beans, and the Navy bean (so called because it was at one time a staple of meals provided in the US Navy) is an example. They are white beans, similar to cannellini beans, and related to red kidney beans.

Answer: Triangles

A triangle is a shape with three sides - to a mathematician, they need to be straight sides, but common usage is more relaxed. Triangles can be given names to describe their shape: an equilateral triangle has all three sides the same length, an isosceles triangle has two sides that are the same length, and a scalene triangle has sides of three different lengths.

The Bermuda Triangle is a rather vaguely-defined area in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, near the Caribbean Sea, where legend has it that a number of mysterious events have occurred. The corners of the triangle are placed differently by various writers on the subject, but many are close to Bermuda, Miami (Florida) and San Juan (Puerto Rico).

A love triangle is something else again. The term describes a situation where two people are both romantically interested/involved with the same third person. It is usually only used to describe the situation when it is not to the satisfaction of all involved - if they are happy, it may be called a ménage à trois, although that usually implies that the relationships involve active sexual activity, which may not be the case in a love triangle, especially when there is an unresolved element of competition. Love triangles are a common plot feature in popular entertainment - consider "Dr. Zhivago", and Yuri's sense of being torn between Tonya and Lara.

Answer: Canals

These are three of the world's most famous canals.

The Erie Canal was constructed in the 19th century to provide water access between Lake Erie and the Hudson River. This meant that the port of New York City had ready access to shipments to and from the western part of the country. Its significance was greatly reduced when the Saint Lawrence Seaway was opened in 1959, and by the end of the century is was no longer in commercial use.

The Panama Canal was constructed between 1881 and 1914, providing a direct connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that did not require travelling all the way around South America and facing the dangers of Cape Horn or alternatively following the Northwest passage through the Arctic Ocean north of Canada.

The Suez Canal first opened in 1859, providing a much shorter route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean (by way of the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea) than was the case when ships had to travel south all the way around Africa. It has since been enlarged, and remains an important commercial channel.