Answers · Sunday, 8 November 2026
6 questions, easy to hard, then Ivy's pick. Here is every answer, and why.
- Question 1
Who discovered penicillin in 1928?
- A. Alexander Fleming ✓
- B. Marie Curie
- C. Joseph Lister
- D. Louis Pasteur
Answer: Alexander Fleming. He noticed mould killing bacteria on a petri dish he had left out over his holiday. Mass production only came in the 1940s, thanks to Florey and Chain, who shared his Nobel Prize.
- Question 2
Which thought experiment imagines a cat that is both alive and dead until observed?
- A. The Chinese room
- B. Zeno's arrow
- C. Maxwell's demon
- D. Schrödinger's cat ✓
Answer: Schrödinger's cat. Schrödinger meant it as a reductio ad absurdum, mocking the idea that quantum superposition applies to big things. The internet took it literally.
- Question 3
'MOON STARER' is an anagram of which profession?
- A. Astronomer ✓
- B. Astrologer
- C. Star hunter
- D. Moon ranger
Answer: Astronomer. Both words have ten letters and the same multiset of letters, which makes it one of the rare anagrams whose meaning matches the original. 'Eleven plus two' and 'twelve plus one' is another.
- Question 4
True or false: Samsung began in 1938 as a trading firm selling dried fish and noodles.
- A. True ✓
- B. False
Answer: True. The name means 'three stars'. It moved into electronics only in 1969 and its group now accounts for roughly a fifth of South Korea's exports.
- Question 5
Which American poet wrote 'The Road Not Taken'?
- A. Walt Whitman
- B. Carl Sandburg
- C. Emily Dickinson
- D. Robert Frost ✓
Answer: Robert Frost. Often read as a hymn to individualism, but Frost called it a joke about a friend who agonised over every walk. The two roads were 'really about the same'.
- Ivy's pick
Which company's engineer built the first digital camera in 1975, before the company later went bankrupt?
- A. Polaroid
- B. Fujifilm
- C. Canon
- D. Kodak ✓
Answer: Kodak. A Kodak engineer built the first digital camera in 1975; management shelved it to protect film. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
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