A is for ... Trivia Quiz

Answer: They burrow in the earth.

All of these are true, but neither name refers to the animal's diet, although its common names of African ant bear and Cape anteater do. The genus name Orycteropus is from Greek roots meaning burrow and foot; the 'aard' part of aardvark refers to the same thing.

The species name afer relates to it living in Africa, but that is not involved in the Afrikaans name, which does compare the fleshy snout of the anteater to that of a pig. They are not closely related, however - aardvarks are more closely related to elephant shrews.

Answer: Air

All right, I am not much of a riddle writer, and clever acrostics are much longer than fits into a quiz question, but you get the idea - the first letter of each line is selected to form a message. Sometimes, it is as simple as producing the letters of the alphabet. In other cases, it can be a meaningful message. In the episode of 'The Simpsons' titled 'My Mother the Carjacker', Homer's mother communicated to him by way of a newspaper acrostic.

There are a number of variants on acrostic puzzles, some as simple as having the cryptic letters in the middle or at the end of the line. Others are more complex. Anacrostic puzzles, also called double crostics, have two parts. One is a series of clues, with the letters of the answer written as dashes with a number underneath. The second part is a quotation or similar, written as a series of blanks with numbers underneath. The numbers and letters in the two parts match, so if you work out that A is on top of 7 in the first answer, you can transfer that information to the quote. And when the quote lets you determine the number that goes with E, you can fill that in for the questions whose answer you don't know. When finished, the first letters of the answers in the first part spell out the name of the author of the quotation and/or its source.

Answer: Rainbow

The very first logo used by the Apple company in 1976 was not apple-shaped. Rather, it used an image of Isaac Newton, whose association with a falling apple as the supposed inspiration for his theory of gravity made some sort of link. However, both because the link was not immediate, and because the image was hard to reproduce clearly on the smaller products being developed, it was changed in 1977 to an apple with a bite taken out of the top right portion, a shape which has remained with only slight adjustments for over 40 years.

The first one had horizontal stripes in the six (clearly distinguishable) colors of the rainbow, with green on top (apparently because that's where a leaf would be), followed by yellow, orange, red, purple and blue.

Answer: 19th century Britain

Let's start in the middle of the word and work out. Establishment is used here in reference to the fact that the Church of England was established as the official state church in England following Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church, although there was a lengthy period when Roman Catholics and various Protestant groups vied to remove that status.

This was expanded to include Wales and Ireland. During the later part of the 19th century, a movement to disestablish the Church (separating Church and State) was led by the Liberal Party, a position called Disestablishmentarianism. Those who wanted to maintain the Church of England as the official state church were antidisestablishmentarianists, who subscribed to the policy of antidisestablishmentarianism. Clear? Disestablishment happened in Ireland in 1871, and in Wales in 1920.

The Church of England remains the official state church in England.

Answer: Cary Grant

James Stewart and Frank Capra made several classic movies together, but this was not one of them. Bob Hope was originally planned for the role of Mortimer Brewster that eventually went to Cary Grant, but had contractual issues. Boris Karloff played the role of Jonathan Brewster (Mortimer's serial-killer brother) on Broadway in the hit play that was the source for the movie. Cary Grant had a chance to show his comedic talents as he coped with discovering that his two elderly aunts had developed a practice of poisoning lonely bachelors who answered their Room to Rent sign, kindly putting them out of their misery.

Their brother Teddy, thinking he was Teddy Roosevelt, buried the corpses in the cellar under the impression that they were workers on the Panama Canal who had died of yellow fever.

It was with great relief that Mortimer learned, at the end of the film, that he was not actually a member of this murderous clan after all!

Answer: Bon Scott

The Young brothers were the original core of the group, which also included Bon Scott, Phil Rudd and Mark Evans (replaced in 1977 by Cliff Williams). Following Bon Scott's death from alcohol poisoning, the band considered breaking up, but decided to continue, with Brian Johnson as a replacement singer. 'Back in Black' was a hugely successful album, reaching Number One in the United Kingdom and Number Four on the US Billboard 200 chart (on which it remained for 131 weeks).

Answer: Christmas

The word advent comes from the Latin word 'adventus', which means arrival. The season of Advent anticipates the arrival of Jesus, so precedes the celebration of his birth on Christmas Day. The exact dates of its celebration vary from church to church.

In the Roman Catholic Church, the Western Orthodox Church, the Anglican Church and a number of Protestant churches, it is considered to start on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which can be any time between 27 November and 3 December. In Western Churches Advent is considered to be the start of the liturgical year; in some other churches the season is celebrated as the final liturgical season, anticipating the arrival of Christ in the Second Coming, rather than his physical arrival in Bethlehem.

Answer: No

Although Johann Bayer categorised it as a single star, named Rigil Kentaurus, from the ancient Arabic name meaning foot of the Centaur, it has since been discovered to be a three-star system. Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B are a binary star, with official names Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman, and often referred to as Alpha Centauri AB.

This system was considered to be the star closest to our sun until the discovery in 1915 of a third nearby star, designated Alpha Centauri C, which is gravitationally bound to the AB binary. Since it is the closest star of the system to us, it is now designated Proxima Centauri.

Answer: Pong

You probably had to be there in the early '70s to see how excited people were over this game for two players. The game screen simulated a table tennis (or ping pong) table, with the net running up the middle of the screen. Each player had control of a small paddle which they could move vertically to make the ball bounce back and forth, scoring a point if the ball left the screen before their opponent could return it. That's it. So great was its popularity that other companies almost immediately started producing their own versions, both arcade versions and home systems, and a new industry was underway.

Answer: France

Adieu is a common French expression of farewell, derived literally from 'à Dieu', or 'to God' - a similar origin to that of the English goodbye (originally God be with you before the inevitable contraction). It suggests a more lengthy, perhaps even permanent, separation than the common alternatives, which include 'au revoir' (until we meet again) or 'à demain' (until tomorrow).

It is actually used in English (the exile could be said to have bid adieu to his native land), and is common in French-speaking regions such as some parts of Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and a number of Pacific island nations formerly part of the French empire.