A Limerick Category Tour Trivia Quiz

Answer: Striped skunk

There are about a dozen species of skunk, mammals related to polecats, mostly found in the Americas. The striped skunk is found in North America, mainly in the contiguous states of the USA, and in southern Canada and northern Mexico. Its scientific name, "Mephitis mephitis" comes from the name of a Roman goddess of foul-smelling gases. This is quite apt, because of the striped skunk's tactic of spraying unpleasant smelling liquid as a defense mechanism.

Pepe le Pew is a cartoon character introduced by Warner Brothers in the 1940s. He is amorous and French-accented and was originally voiced by Mel Blanc. Many of his cartoons follow the formula of his mistaking a black cat who has acquired a white painted stripe for a fellow skunk and potential love object. The 1949 Pepe Le Pew cartoon "For Scent-imental Reasons" became the second Warner Brothers short to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Answer: Halo

CHEESE and PAINT might not seem to have much in common, but there is a type of artists' paint called casein paint, which uses casein, the protein in milk that makes cheese production possible. When soldiers are made to STAND at attention for too long in hot weather, they sometimes FAINT.

This was seen during a rehearsal for Trooping the Colour in the UK in 2023. The LOBLOLLY pine is a type of tree found in the southeastern USA. A FOLLY is a building made to create a visual effect. It often looks historical but has no practical purpose, such as Wimpole's Folly in Cambridgeshire, England.

A HALO is a ring of light commonly shown in paintings above the heads of saints and holy figures. It is also the name of a video game franchise and a driver protection feature used in Formula One race cars.

Answer: Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian is someone who you could say is famous for being famous. She has become a trend setter in clothes, makeup, and the desirable shape of women's bodies. She has amassed a fortune and advised President Trump about criminal justice matters. The Kardashian surname came to public notice when Kim's father Robert was part of the Dream Team of defense lawyers that defended O. J. Simpson in the 1995 murder trial that set the tone for so much of the culture war and "post-truth" landscape that followed it.

In 2006 Kim started working for her friend Paris Hilton as a stylist and made some appearances on Hilton's "reality" TV show "The Simple Life". The fame she acquired from that role was magnified in 2007 following the "accidental" release of a sex video of Kim and Ray J, which generated millions of dollars. That year, Kim, her mother Kris Jenner and family started the reality TV show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians", which ran for 20 seasons and cemented their place as prominent influencers and entrepreneurs. Her marriage to rap superstar Kanye West lasted from 2014 to 2022.

Answer: Snoopy

"Peanuts" is a comic strip that ran from 1950 to the death of its creator, Charles M. Schulz, in 2000, and continued in publications worldwide in reruns after that. It centres on Charlie Brown, his schoolmates, and his anthropomorphic dog Snoopy, whose thoughts are often shown in speech bubbles. Snoopy was not originally given a breed but was later referred to as a beagle. One storyline from 1957 featured Snoopy's consternation when he heard Charlie Brown say that "his kind" of dog are "a dime a dozen". The phrase was later used for a song title in "Snoopy! The Musical" (1975).

Snoopy is notable for his flights of fancy, or alter egos, one of which involves dressing in an old-fashioned aviator's helmet and scarf, and sitting on top of his doghouse, which he imagines is a World War I Sopwith Camel biplane. He assumes the character of a James Dean-type student Joe Cool, by simply donning a pair of sunglasses. Snoopy has been known to accompany Charlie Brown to school and help Charlie's sister Sally with homework. Snoopy sleeps on the roof of his doghouse, sometimes with his friend Woodstock, a yellow bird, perched on him.

Answer: Voldemort

Voldemort was the main antagonist of the "Harry Potter" series. Born Tom Marvolo Riddle, he was orphaned at a young age and later discovered that he was a wizard, his father was a Muggle, and his mother was a witch descended from the great wizard Salazar Slytherin. As a teenager, he became obsessed with becoming the greatest dark wizard of all time, opening the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts and causing the death of a fellow student. Aiming to achieve immortality, he created Horcruxes by committing murder. During the First Wizarding War, now calling himself Lord Voldemort, he led the forces of darkness. When he attempted to kill the infant Harry Potter, his spell rebounded and tore him from his body, leaving him a barely living, ghost-like shell. Believed to be dead, he was still feared so deeply that most in the wizarding world refused to speak his name.

In "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", Voldemort survived by attaching himself to Hogwarts professor Quirinus Quirrell, on the back of his head and concealed by a turban. His attempt to steal the Philosopher's Stone and obtain immortality was thwarted by Harry Potter. In "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", a Horcrux in the form of Tom Riddle's diary nearly restored him to full power before Harry intervened again. Finally, in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", his followers Wormtail and Barty Crouch Jr. succeeded in restoring his physical body through trickery and the capture of his nemesis, Harry Potter. When he returned, he was transformed, with pale skin, slitted nostrils, no nose, and a snake-like face.

Answer: Virginia

Patsy Cline, born VIRGINIA Patterson Hensley, was one of the most celebrated American singers of the twentieth century. Among her hits was the 1961 release "Crazy", a song written by Willie Nelson, and released after recovery from a life-threatening car crash. She died in 1963 in a plane crash at the age of 30.

The territory of West Virginia was part of VIRGINIA until the time of the US Civil War, when an 1861 vote for Virginia to secede from the Union went against the wishes of the citizens of the northwestern corner of the state. After some deliberation and dispute, West Virginia was formed as a state in its own right in 1862, and was admitted to the Union in 1863, the 35th state to be admitted and the only one due to the Civil War.

VIRGINIA Wade was a leading British tennis player, winner of three major singles titles - only a French Open away from a career grand slam. She was equally successful as a doubles player, winning four major women's doubles events. She became the only British woman to win a title at all four major tournaments.

The Apgar score, a ten-point method for quick assessment of the health of newborns, was developed by VIRGINIA Apgar, an American doctor and anesthesiologist, in 1952. Its use continued well into the 21st century.

Ginger Rogers starred in ten movies with Fred Astaire, such as "Top Hat", where one of the standout musical numbers was "Isn't This a Lovely Day (to be Caught in the Rain)". Born VIRGINIA Katherine McMath in 1911, Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for "Kitty Foyle" (1940).

Answer: Canary

The Canary Islands are an autonomous community of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean, about 60 miles off the coast of southern Morocco. They are made up of many islands, including seven main ones: Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro. The Canary Islands form the largest archipelago in Spain.

Punta de la Restinga, on the island of El Hierro, is the southernmost point of Spain. Also on El Hierro, Punta de la Orchilla is Spain's westernmost point. Mount Teide, a volcano on Tenerife standing about 12,000 feet high, is the highest point in Spain.

The canary bird is named after the islands, not the other way around. The name "Canary Islands" comes from the Latin "Canariae Insulae", meaning "Islands of the Dogs", referring either to large dogs once found on the islands or possibly to seals, sometimes called "sea dogs." A pair of dogs appear on the islands' coat of arms and flag.

Answer: Henry VIII

Henry VIII is probably the most famous King of England, known for his six wives and for creating the Church of England after splitting with Rome, and consolidating the power of the monarchy in the process.

As a young man, he was an impressive physical specimen. While the average male height was around 5 ft 4, Henry stood around 6 ft 1 or 2. He was an avid jouster, hunter, archer, and skilled in swordplay and axe fighting.

Henry was also a talented musician and composer, writing over 30 works, including "Pastime with Good Company." He played the organ, lute, harpsichord, and recorder, and enjoyed poetry. He was a serious patron of the arts, with his most significant artistic patronage being that of Hans Holbein the Younger, the great artist who became his court painter in 1533, and whose portrait of Anne of Cleves caused Henry to decide to proceed with marriage number four.

The second son of Henry VII, Henry was trained for the Church and he remained a committed scholar. In 1521, Pope Leo X named him "Defender of the Faith" for a treatise defending Catholicism against Martin Luther.

After his elder brother Prince Arthur died in 1502, Henry became heir. He married Arthur's widow Catherine of Aragon in 1509, after ascending the throne, and they had a daughter, Mary. Henry later claimed the marriage was invalid, citing a biblical passage forbidding a man from marrying his brother's widow, and that God's anger with him was reflected in the lack of a male heir. When the Pope refused an annulment, Henry broke with Rome, created the Church of England, and divorced Catherine. To modern eyes this seems self-serving, but Henry's qualms may well have been genuine.

His second wife, Anne Boleyn, gave birth to Elizabeth, and was executed for adultery and treason. Jane Seymour, wife number 3, gave birth to Edward VI, Henry's only legitimate male heir, but died shortly after childbirth. His fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves, was a politically arranged affair that Henry quickly had annulled. The fifth of Henry's wives, Catherine Howard, was executed for adultery and treason. Henry's final wife. Catherine Parr, was a wealthy widow who was to outlive Henry, acting as a nurse and companion in his later years.

Answer: Haggis

Haggis is the most famous Scottish dish. It consists of sheep's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs) plus some meat, suet, and oatmeal, well seasoned and cooked in an ox bung (casing derived from intestine) or sheep's stomach. Haggis is served with neeps and tatties (mashed swede or turnip plus potatoes) and whisky.

The Scottish celebration of the haggis is associated with the consumption of the dish on Burns Night (25 January), a night to celebrate the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. Burns Night celebrations will include the recitation of his "Address to a Haggis". "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great Chieftain o' the Puddin-race!".

Answer: Midas

King Midas was a mythical king of Phrygia (located in what is now Turkey) in Greek mythology. There are two main stories about him. In one, Midas judges a music contest between Apollo and Pan and unwisely declares Pan the winner. Furious, the Olympian god Apollo punishes him with donkey ears, which Midas tries to hide, but the secret is eventually revealed.

In the more famous story, Midas shows kindness to a friend of another Olympian, Dionysus. In return, the god grants him a wish. Midas asks for everything he touches to turn to gold. Dionysus knows this is a foolish request, but he is a god of his word and grants the wish. At first Midas is delighted, but he soon realizes the gift is a curse when his food, drink, and even (in some versions of the story) his daughter turn to gold, and he begs for the power to be taken away. He is told to wash in the Pactolus River, and he returns to normal. The river was said to carry gold (actually electrum, an alloy of gold and silver) from that day on due to this. Nowadays we say someone has "the Midas touch" as if it is a good thing, where the story is clear that it was anything but.

Answer: Mrs. Malaprop

"The Rivals" was Richard Brinsley Sheridan's first play, a comedy first staged in 1775. It is set in Bath, which in the late 18th century was a fashionable spa town, and concerns a young couple, Jack Absolute and Lydia Languish, and the obstacles to their romance caused by Jack's father, Sir Anthony, Lydia's aunt, Mrs Malaprop, and two other rivals for Lydia's affections.

The character Mrs Malaprop has difficulty with the English language, confidently and loudly mangling phrases. The word "malapropism" comes from the character's name. Some of the best examples are as follows - apologies if my shoehorning them into the Limerick offends!

"O, he will dissolve my mystery!" (should have been "resolve")
"Oh! it gives me the hydrostatics to such a degree." ("hysterics")
"He is the very pine-apple of politeness!" (pinnacle)
"Why, murder's the matter! slaughter's the matter! killing's the matter! - but he can tell you the perpendiculars." ("particulars")
"...she's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile." ("alligator")

Answer: Die Another Day

The "James Bond" series of movies has had some outlandish plots and ridiculous scenes over the years, but surely the worst offender was "Die Another Day". In this 2002 outing, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) emerges from 14 months of capture and torture by the North Koreans with a Gandalf beard wearing pyjamas and walks into a Hong Kong hotel asking for his usual room. After some grooming, he is back to being the suave Bond with no apparent ill effects. He is under suspicion by his employers and has his licence to kill temporarily revoked. He soon uncovers a plot by billionaire Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) to use a space-based laser weapon to create global chaos. Graves is secretly the North Korean Colonel Moon, whose whole looks have been changed by gene replacement therapy, and who has acquired a fortune in blood diamonds in record time.

Bond travels from London to Cuba to Iceland, using gadgets like an invisible car for some reason. He survives the melting of a glacier by the space laser by using an improvised kite-surfing parachute and a sled to surf a massive tsunami. The CGI effects in this scene are notoriously bad. This movie also includes the wooden performance of Madonna as a fencing instructor. She also contributed the lacklustre theme song. This terrible movie spelled the end of Brosnan's Bond career, and the franchise took a different, more believable course for the Daniel Craig movies starting with "Casino Royale" in 2006.

Answer: Hallelujah

"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, is one of the most covered songs of the last 50 years. Cohen spent five years writing it, producing around 150 verses in piles of notebooks. It was first released on his album "Various Positions" in 1984. Cohen could not settle on a definitive set of lyrics, and performed the song live in many different ways, as did Bob Dylan. It was not until John Cale picked the verses for his cover of the song in 1991 that the song became settled. In fact, Cohen and subsequent performers can be said to have from then on performed covers of Cale's version.

An electrifying cover by Jeff Buckley in 1994 raised the profile of the song. "Hallelujah" was made massively more prominent by its use in the 2001 movie "Shrek", where Cale's version was used, and a cover by Rufus Wainwright featured on the soundtrack album. The song grew in prominence further in 2008, when Alexandra Burke released it as the winner of the UK talent show "The X Factor", and it competed in the UK charts against the Cohen and Buckley versions. It has subsequently been used as a staple of singing talent shows, been covered multiple times and become a cliche in movies and TV.

The lyrics are rich with biblical, soulful and sexual imagery. Such as: "Now I've heard there was a secret chord, That David played and it pleased the Lord, But you don't really care for music, do ya?".
And: "She tied you to a kitchen chair, She broke your throne and she cut your hair, And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah"
And: "... remember when I moved in you, The holy dove was moving too, And every breath we drew was Hallelujah"

Cohen said of the song: "This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah.'"

Hallelujah means "Praise God" or "give thanks to God".

Answer: Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin is known for work such as "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" and "The Yellow Christ". He was an artist who achieved limited success in his lifetime, but became appreciated after his death for his use of colour in a movement called Synthetism, which followed on from Impressionism. His colourful life is almost a cliché of the artist turning his back on civilisation to embrace the "noble savage" and inspired the Tony Hancock satirical movie comedy "The Rebel". Like some other artists his behaviour was and is considered unacceptable and debate rages about how to separate our critical view of the artist from their art.

Paul Gauguin was born in 1848 and spent some of his early life in Peru. After a spell in the merchant marine, he joined the French Navy before becoming a Paris stockbroker. Athletic and tough, he boxed and fenced, and he had a reputation as a brawler who did not avoid a fight. He drank heavily and could be quarrelsome. Gauguin only started painting at the age of twenty-seven as a part-time activity. After the 1882 market crash, he abandoned finance to paint full time, eventually leaving his Danish wife and five children.

He was mentored by leading Impressionist Camille Pissarro and moved around to places like Martinique, Panama and Brittany. Gauguin spent time with Vincent van Gogh, who he admired, but the two men were incompatible, and they had to split up. He moved to Tahiti, and later the Marquesas Islands, where he produced much of the work that makes him regarded as a great painter, He died aged 54 in Atuona, in the Marquesas Islands .

Answer: Matthew

The Christmas concert was always a highlight for budding thespians at my primary school. The best roles for us boys were the three kings - best outfits, no acting alongside girls, and a great song: "We three kings of Orient are, Bearing gifts we traverse afar, Field and fountain, moor and mountain, Following yonder star", delivered while standing around the manger with the shepherds, assorted animals, angels, innkeeper and wife, Joseph, and Mary. The three kings had names: Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior, and were from Arabia or Africa, India, and Persia, respectively. In pictures we were shown, Balthazar was portrayed as a black man, but we tended not to black up for the role at my school, anyway.

It's interesting to me how many of the aspects of the story of Jesus have acquired details that are some distance away from the accounts in the Bible. In the case of the three kings there is so much difference it's surprising. For a start, it's only the Gospel according to Matthew (Chapter 2) that covers this part of the Christ story (KJV used for quotes). Matthew is traditionally considered to have been a tax collector before being called to Christ.

Firstly, they were not kings, and no number given: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem". Some translations call these wise men magi. They were perhaps astrologers who studied omens in the skies rather than royalty.

After hearing of the arrival of these foreigners, who had been guided by a star in the east, Herod consulted with his experts, and they felt that Bethlehem was the expected place. He pointed the three wise men in that direction and asked them to return to him once they found the young child.

At this stage the star appeared again to the wise men: "When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was". Not a baby - so the visit was some time after the virgin birth. Nowadays we mark their visit as Epiphany, or 6 January.

When the wise men found the child in a house, not within a manger in a barn, they "worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh". Three named gifts, not three wise men.

A dream told them, correctly, that Herod's intentions were evil, and they returned home without revisiting him. An angelic appearance to Joseph along similar lines caused him to take his family to Egypt to remain safe until Herod's death.

Answer: Quantum Mechanics

Named for the great scientist Isaac Newton, Newtonian mechanics was used highly successfully for two centuries to describe a vast array of things we observe at the human scale - billiard balls colliding, the trajectory of a missile, the stopping distance of a car, and the orbits of planets. But when the scale is massively larger or smaller, scientists noticed oddities or unexpected results. Albert Einstein developed his Special and General Theories of Relativity to explain the physics of the very large or very fast.

At very small scales, strange phenomena appeared that Newtonian mechanics could not explain - light sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a stream of particles. Matter, like electrons, was found to behave like a wave.

Quantum mechanics was developed by a group of scientists in the early twentieth century, including Max Planck, who proposed that energy comes in discrete packages or "quanta"; Albert Einstein, who explained the photoelectric effect by saying that light behaved as particles; and Niels Bohr, who described electrons as inhabiting defined energy levels within atoms. Other key scientists in the quantum mechanics journey were Werner Heisenberg, whose uncertainty principle said it is impossible to know both the velocity and position of a subatomic particle; Paul Dirac, who developed quantum field theory; and Erwin Schrödinger, who created a thought experiment about a cat that could be considered both alive and dead until the box is opened.

The theory of quantum mechanics has been tested rigorously, and results have confirmed its validity. Much of modern technology is informed by it. But it flies in the face of "common sense" and it is very hard to explain many of its features. It is probabilistic - God playing dice, to paraphrase Einstein. A feature that is hard to fathom is entanglement, where a pair of particles can be a vast distance apart, but as soon as one is measured, the correlated state of the other can be determined. In the words attributed to Niels Bohr, "If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."

Answer: Garfield Sobers

A Barbadian, Sir Garfield (Garry) Sobers is generally considered head and shoulders above everyone else as an all-round cricketer. Donald Bradman, the greatest batsman, called him a "five-in-one cricketer." He was a magnificent fielder, taking 109 catches in Test cricket. He also took 235 Test wickets, a left-hander who bowled expertly in three distinct styles: fast-medium, off spin, and wrist spin, often switching between them in a single spell. His batting was his strongest suit. He scored over 8,000 Test runs at an average of nearly 58, with a highest score of 365.

Malcolm Nash was a Welsh bowler who never played Test cricket but had a long and successful career with Glamorgan County Cricket Club, playing a leading role in their County Championship-winning season in 1969. He took nearly 1,000 first-class wickets and bowled 55,380 balls - but he is famous for just six of them.

Nash was also a versatile bowler who normally bowled left-arm medium pace but was being encouraged to develop his left-arm spin. In a match played at St Helen's Cricket Ground on 31 August 1968 between Glamorgan and Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, he came up against Sobers. Fortunately for history, the match was televised by the BBC.

Sobers struck the first four balls of Nash's over cleanly out of the ground for six, damaging a nearby pub with the second. Nash appeared to have him caught on the boundary from the fifth ball by Roger Davis, but the fielder fell backwards over the rope, conceding another six. From the sixth ball, Sobers launched a mighty blow over the terraces and into the road beyond. In the immortal words of commentator Wilf Wooller: "And he's done it! He's done it! And my goodness it's gone... way down to Swansea."

Sobers had become the first player to hit six sixes in an over in first-class cricket. Nash bore it with good grace and later came to enjoy the attention and fame that followed the great all-rounder's feat.

Answer: Pluribus

After the incredible success of his linked TV crime dramas "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul", Vince Gilligan followed them in 2025 with "Pluribus", which was also based in New Mexico, but was a dystopian science-fiction. Rhea Seehorn from "Better Call Saul" starred as Carol Sturka, a curmudgeonly author of romantasy fiction based in Albuquerque.

Scientists on Earth pick up a signal from space that they determine encodes RNA. They synthesize the material in their laboratories, only to discover that it is a potent virus that rapidly infects nearly the whole human race, with those affected gleefully infecting the people they meet. It causes those affected to collapse, and a lot of people don't recover, but those who don't die wake up as part of a global hive mind.

Carol's partner dies, but she is unaffected by the virus. She is the only person in the USA who is not in the hive mind. There are a handful of others - a dozen - in her shoes around the world. The people she interacts with all speak with the knowledge of everything that was in everyone's mind, including private details of Carol's life with her partner.

When Carol is unpleasant or violent, the whole population collapses physically and thousands die. They end up withdrawing from the whole of Albuquerque to protect themselves from her. They want Carol to join them and attempt to modify the virus to achieve that. Carol wants nothing of the sort and sees it as her duty to get rid of the virus and save humanity.

Answer: The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda is a flagship Nintendo series that began in 1986 and has continued well into the 21st century. The stories are usually set in the kingdom of Hyrule and tend to centre on Princess Zelda, who is often in peril, and the evil Ganon, whom the player must defeat while playing as Link, a young hero.

The princess is missing or kidnapped in the first game in the series, "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), and again in "A Link to the Past" (1991).

The Moon threatens the land of Termina in "Majora's Mask" (2000), where neither Zelda nor Ganon is a central character.

Time manipulation features prominently in "Majora's Mask", in which the Moon will crash in three days and the player can repeatedly reset the clock, and in "Ocarina of Time" (1998), where Link travels seven years into the future, becomes an adult, and can move backwards and forwards between childhood and adulthood.

Ganon is repeatedly defeated but returns in "The Wind Waker" (2002) and "Twilight Princess" (2006).

Answer: The Pantheon

Modernist architecture, emerging in the early 20th century, used clean lines, functional forms, and new materials like reinforced concrete, often called the building material of the twentieth century. Architects such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe used concrete to create bold, airy spaces, often with cantilevers and open plans. Later, brutalist architecture emphasised raw, textured concrete and massive geometric forms, with examples like London's Barbican Centre (architects Peter Chamberlin, Geoffrey Powell and Christoph Bon) or Boston City Hall (architects Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell).

However, concrete has a much longer history. The Pantheon in Rome, completed around AD 126 under Emperor Hadrian, remains one of the most impressive concrete structures ever built. Originally a temple to all Roman gods, it has served as a Christian church since the 7th century. Its dome, nearly 43 metres across, features a central oculus - an open circular skylight - which illuminates the interior naturally. The building also houses the tomb of the Renaissance artist Raphael (1483-1520).

Concrete is a mix of coarse particles bound with cement, which hardens as it cures. It is said to be the most-manufactured material in the world. The Romans used a mix of lime, volcanic ash, and aggregate in their construction. The Pantheon's concrete is remarkable for its lightness and durability, achieved by gradually using lighter volcanic materials toward the top, allowing the enormous dome to stand unsupported for nearly 2,000 years.