More Hodgepodge, More Mishmash Quiz

Answer: Edinburgh

It can be difficult to wander around Edinburgh without stumbling over a stuffed sheep or some other historical landmark that the Scots hold dear. The National Museum of Scotland and the Palace of Holyroodhouse are delightful examples, as is Edinburgh Castle.

Like this quiz, the museum is a mixed bag, covering everything from Scottish history to science and design. One minute you're admiring ancient artifacts, the next you're looking at Dolly the Sheep. You know, the cloned one. "But she died!" I hear you cry. Yep. If you were not aware, let me be the first to inform you that Dolly has in fact been stuffed and is on display in Edinburgh.

Looking at the images of Dolly, I feel I may have to amend my will so that Scots can gawk at my stuffed remains through a glass enclosure.

Anyway (that got weird), you've also got Holyroodhouse, sitting at the end of the Royal Mile like a... well, like a big old palace at the end of the road. It's the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland, but it is also steeped in drama from centuries past.

Fun Fact about Holyroodhouse: Mary, Queen of Scots lived there, and her secretary got murdered in one of the rooms. If nothing else, that puts your average office drama into perspective.

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

The 'Annunciation' from around 1472 is one of Leonardo da Vinci's earliest known works, back from when he was still a young apprentice in Florence. Watch young Leo flex his artistic muscles, experimenting with perspective, light, and those quirky, subtle, slightly mysterious expressions, which he would turn into his signature move.

The scene itself shows the angel Gabriel dropping in on Mary with some big news. Leo gives a surreally serene treatment to the scene, with Mary taking the news of her impending divine surrogacy with epic coolness.

Answer: Headlight beetle

The headlight beetles belong to the genus Pyrophorus. They earn their nickname.

These beetles have two bioluminescent... well, headlights on their pronotum just behind the head that shine with a light that fills fireflies with feelings of inadequacy. Early travelers in South America even used them as natural lanterns. It sounds just charming until you remember you're relying on a bug for illumination. Still, impressive bug.

While fireflies are beloved for their blinking summer light shows, most belong to the family Lampyridae and are more about communication than raw brightness. The Pyrophorus beetles are all about the spotlight... or the headlights. They produce a steady, bright glow that can be seen from a surprising distance, and unlike a lot of bioluminescent insects, they're not very subtle about it at all.

Answer: The Second Punic War

From a bug with headlights on its body to epic Carthaginian victories. Are you not entertained?

The Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca didn't like the Romans very much, and it showed. The Battle of Lake Trasimene took place in 217 BC during the Second Punic War, when Hannibal decided to show off again and went all-in on one of the most crushing ambushes ever pulled off. He positioned his troops along the hills surrounding a narrow road by the lake, waited for the Roman army to wander by as if it were just another morning march. Then he sprang his trap.

It really wasn't much of a battle, and it was actually kind of a downer if you were a Roman. In fact, it was more of a wholesale slaughter, with tens of thousands of Roman soldiers caught off guard and cut down or forced into the lake. The Roman commander, Gaius Flaminius, never really had a chance.

Everything was working against Rome that day, and that's not even counting the fact that the army was just out strolling with the enemy all around them. Visibility was terrible, communication broke down instantly, and the terrain meant they were boxed in. It's the kind of military disaster so perfect that it's still studied today. Like most of the battles Rome fought in Italy during the Second Punic War, it's usually studied as a cautionary tale about how not to do things.

Answer: Cumulonimbus

Look up during a brewing storm. See that cloud that looks like it hit an invisible ceiling and splattered outward like pancake batter? You're probably looking at a cumulonimbus cloud.

These towering giants grow vertically until they slam into the upper atmosphere with great fanfare. At that altitude, strong winds flatten their tops into that weird anvil shape. When you see that, you know things are about to get interesting.

By interesting, I mean lightning, heavy rain, and possibly hail dinging up your new car... and that's if you're lucky.

These guys stretch miles into the sky with enough energy to power severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and laser light shows that make you nervously count the seconds between thunder and lightning, like the kid in 'Poltergeist' before he gets swallowed by a tree.

The anvil top is a sign that the storm has reached the tropopause, where rising air just can't go much higher, so it spreads out instead. Nature hitting the ceiling and deciding to go sideways? It's a good metaphor for what's about to happen.

Answer: Avatar

Renaissance painters, stuffed sheep, dead Romans? It must be time to get big and blue! Yes, Pandora is the world of 'Avatar', the movie 'South Park' hailed as 'Dances with Smurfs'.

Pandora is stuffed to the gills with glowing forests, strange creatures, and very tall blue people (the Na'vi), which is about what we've come to expect from James Cameron. The movie pushed 3D filmmaking into the big time and became a huge box office smash worldwide.

It's the typical story of the big bad colonial power from across space coming to strip-mine a planet with or without the cooperation of the natives. It's the only place to obtain Unobtanium, after all, because... well, does it matter?

Plus, you've got humans in orbit transmitting their brain activity to avatars on the surface, where they can get freaky with the natives using their tails.

Answer: Declensions

If you've ever dipped a toe into Latin, get it out of there! It's awful!

Okay, okay. It's not all bad, but you definitely learn that the language loves its endings. Nouns don't just hang around in a sentence waiting for a preposition to come along to put them into context. Nope. Word order? Don't be a child. You can listen to someone speak for twenty minutes before they get to the verb. Latin nouns want endings. Lots of them.

The patterns of endings are grouped into declensions, which are basically categories that tell you how a noun will behave when it is acting as a subject, object, or something else entirely. Five main declensions, each with its own endings, quirks, and personality. It's just like 'Real Housewives'.

It's easy to mix this up with conjugations, but those belong to verbs, not nouns. Genders are a different thing altogether, and 'reclemptions' is... well, definitely not a thing, though it sounds like it should be, doesn't it?

If you're admiring my spreadsheet work, 'agricola' is the first declension masculine noun meaning 'farmer'.

Answer: Hot Stuff

Do you 'want some hot stuff, baby, this evening'?

Maybe you 'need some hot stuff, baby, tonight?'

If so, you can thank Donna Summer. By 1979, she was already riding high as a disco queen (not to be confused with a dancing queen, which is some Swedish thing), and 'Hot Stuff' just turned everything up to 11.

The song blended disco with a kind of sort of maybe rock edge. Well, it had a guitar solo, anyway. The song hit the charts and just kept rising, becoming her first platinum single in the US. Glitter, dance floors, bad fashion decisions... if this song doesn't have you flashing back to the late 1970s, nothing will.

Meanwhile, songs like 'Last Dance' and 'I Feel Love' were also good for her bank account, with the latter being a more electronic track.

Answer: Salah

In Islam, the five daily ritual prayers are called 'Salah', and they are one of the five core pillars of the faith. They're practiced at specific points throughout the day, based not on the clock but on the position of the sun. So, experiences vary as seasons progress and as your latitude changes. Schedules exist online for your location to make sure you're doing it right.

At the South Pole, things get interesting in June when the sun hides. Alternatives exist for scientists at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and elsewhere, such as using the nearest city experiencing days or following Mecca time.

In theory, the prayers create a kind of rhythm, a return to reflection no matter how chaotic a person's life may get. Dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset, night. It's a pause button on your day, a time to connect with something meaningful.

Answer: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Magical realism is... well, let's call it an acquired taste. However, if a taste is what you're looking for, this is a great place to start.

Gabriel García Márquez creates the town of Macondo like a living, breathing, almost mythic place and then proceeds to stuff it with generation after generation of the Buendía family. Each member is tangled up in their own mess of love, ambition, and the usual bouts of existential weirdness.

It's a dream where characters only occasionally remember the rules of physics. Yellow butterflies following people, girls folding laundry and ascending into the sky, ghosts hanging around, time behaving like time definitely doesn't in real life... I guess I'm trying to say, things get weird.

In a good way.