Hard
Medicine & The Body
Milestones in Medicine
Ten discoveries that changed medicine, and the people who were usually ignored at the time.
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Who discovered X-rays in 1895?
The full library
Every quiz, in one place
Pick a subject, choose your level, and dive in. Each quiz is written and fact-checked by hand, with an explanation after every answer.
260 quizzes · page 3 of 6
Medium
Flags & Emblems
Flag Colours and What They Mean
Where the colours on national flags come from, and the families of flags that share them.
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On the flag of Ireland, the orange band is generally understood to represent which group?
Hard
Flags & Emblems
Flags That Break the Rules
Square flags, two-sided flags, a flag with a rifle on it and one that is flown upside down in wartime.
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The off-centre cross used by Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland is known as what?
Easy
Flags & Emblems
Creatures and Emblems on Flags
Dragons, lions, temples and one island drawn in copper — ten things countries put in the middle of their flags.
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Which country's flag features a temple complex?
Medium
Flags & Emblems
National Emblems Beyond the Flag
Coats of arms, national animals, plants and personifications — the symbols countries use when a flag will not do.
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Which flower is the emblem of the Japanese imperial family?
Easy
Physics
Motion, Mass and Momentum
Ten questions on how things move, why they stop, and what a force actually does to them.
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Newton's third law says forces come in pairs. What is true of the two forces in a pair?
Medium
Physics
Energy, Heat and Temperature
Where energy goes, why heat only ever flows one way, and why a metal handle feels colder than a wooden one.
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What does the temperature of a substance actually measure?
Medium
Physics
Light, Sound and Waves
Why thunder lags behind lightning, how a straw appears to bend in a glass, and what makes a passing siren drop in pitch.
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Why can sound not travel through the vacuum of space?
Hard
Physics
Electricity and Magnetism
Circuits, compasses and induction: ten questions on the two forces that turned out to be one.
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Ohm's law relates three quantities. Which statement expresses it?
Medium
Chemistry
The Elements Up Close
Ten elements with a distinguishing feature — a strange symbol, a record melting point, a name borrowed from Greek.
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Which element does the symbol K stand for?
Hard
Chemistry
How Atoms Bond and React
Electrons changing hands, molecules changing shape, and the rules that decide how fast any of it happens.
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In an ionic bond, what happens to the electrons involved?
Easy
Chemistry
Everyday Chemistry Explained
Why bread goes stale, why onions sting and why ice floats — ten kitchen-cupboard questions with real answers.
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Baking soda makes a cake rise by releasing which gas?
Medium
Chemistry
Discoveries That Made Chemistry
Ten moments that turned alchemy into a science, from the death of phlogiston to the first fully synthetic plastic.
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Which chemist named oxygen and showed that the phlogiston theory of burning was wrong?
Medium
Biology
Inside the Living Cell
Ten questions on the machinery packed inside a single cell, from ribosomes to the membrane that holds it together.
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Which cell structure assembles proteins from amino acids?
Hard
Biology
Genes, Alleles & Inheritance
Base pairs, codons, alleles and the arithmetic of what gets passed on — ten harder questions on genetics.
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In DNA, which base always pairs with adenine?
Medium
Biology
Evolution & Natural Selection
How the mechanism actually works, what it acts on, and the evidence that convinced biologists it does.
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On which ship did Charles Darwin make the voyage that shaped his thinking?
Easy
Biology
Ecosystems & Food Webs
Who eats whom, what happens to the energy along the way, and why removing one species can change everything.
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What is an organism that breaks down dead material called?
Medium
Film & TV
Directors and Their Signatures
Ten directors and the films that made their names recognisable.
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Which director made Vertigo, Rear Window and North by Northwest?
Medium
Film & TV
How Television Actually Works
Pilots, showrunners, syndication — the vocabulary behind what reaches the screen.
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A television "pilot" is best described as what?
Easy
Sports
The Rules of the Game
Scoring, team sizes and the basic laws of ten different sports.
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In basketball, a shot made from beyond the arc is worth how many points?
Medium
Sports
Olympic Feats and Firsts
The flame, the motto, the records and the events that came and went.
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Which city hosted the first Winter Olympics, in 1924?
Medium
Music
Genres and Where They Began
Ten musical genres and the places that produced them.
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Reggae developed in which country?
Easy
Music
The Orchestra, Section by Section
Who sits where, what each family does, and why the oboe gets to tune everyone.
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Which section contains the violin, viola, cello and double bass?
Medium
Video Games
How Video Games Are Made
Engines, sprites, patches and the words studios actually use.
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In game development, an "engine" provides what?
Easy
Mathematics
Measures and Everyday Maths
Percentages, averages, units and the arithmetic that actually turns up.
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What is 25% of 200?
Medium
Food & Drink
How Food Is Made
Fermentation, curing, baking — the processes behind ordinary food.
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What makes bread dough rise?
Easy
Food & Drink
Drinks of the World
Coffee, tea, beer and spirits — what they are made from and where they come from.
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Coffee is made from the roasted seeds of what?
Medium
General Knowledge
Signs, Symbols and Standards
The everyday symbols and conventions nobody explicitly teaches you.
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The symbol & is called what?
Medium
Video Games
Consoles and Their Generations
The machines themselves — who made them, what they changed, and in what order.
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Which company released the Nintendo Entertainment System?
Easy
Mathematics
Shapes, Angles and Space
Geometry as it actually gets used — sides, angles, area and volume.
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How many sides does a pentagon have?
Medium
General Knowledge
Collective Nouns and Curious Names
A murder of crows, a parliament of owls, and the proper names for ordinary things.
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A group of ravens is traditionally called what?
Medium
History
Revolutions and Their Consequences
The upheavals that replaced a system rather than just a ruler.
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The storming of the Bastille in 1789 marked the beginning of which revolution?
Hard
History
Empires and How They Ended
Rome to the twentieth century — what actually brought the great empires down.
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The Western Roman Empire is conventionally dated as ending in which year?
Medium
Technology
The Computer, Step by Step
Processors, memory, storage and what each part actually does.
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What does the CPU do?
Medium
Technology
Communication Before the Internet
Telegraph, radio, television and satellites — how messages travelled first.
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The electric telegraph transmitted messages using what?
Medium
Arts & Literature
Movements, Manifestos and Broken Rules
Ten art movements, the cities they started in and the rules each one set out to break.
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Impressionism took its name from a painting by which artist?
Medium
Arts & Literature
How Novels Are Built
Narrators, serials and the machinery underneath the books people actually finish.
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A story told by a character using the word "I" is written in which narrative person?
Easy
Language & Words
Parts of Speech and Punctuation Marks
Nouns, adverbs, semicolons and the Oxford comma, without the schoolroom dread.
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A word that names a person, place or thing is which part of speech?
Medium
Language & Words
Scripts, Alphabets and Writing Systems
Abjads, syllabaries and alphabets, and the very different ways writing can encode speech.
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Which writing system uses characters that mostly stand for units of meaning rather than…
Medium
Philosophy & Ideas
Thought Experiments and What They Show
Trolleys, caves, veils and demons — the imagined cases philosophers argue through.
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The trolley problem asks whether a person should do what?
Medium
Philosophy & Ideas
Bad Arguments and Their Names
Straw men, red herrings and false dilemmas — the recurring faults in everyday reasoning.
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Attacking the person making a claim rather than the claim itself is which fallacy?
Medium
Poetry
Figures of Speech in Verse
Enjambment, caesura, volta and the rest of the toolkit poets reach for by name.
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A simile differs from a metaphor in which way?
Medium
Poetry
Poets and the Lines They Left
Ten poets across six centuries, and the single works most readers know them by.
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"I wandered lonely as a cloud" opens a poem by whom?
Medium
Theatre & Dance
The Language of Backstage
Upstage, blocking, the strike and the calls — the working vocabulary of a theatre.
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On a stage, which area is described as upstage?
Medium
Theatre & Dance
The Musical, From Broadway to the West End
Show Boat to Hamilton: the sources, the songwriting partnerships and the shows that shifted the form.
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Which musical is adapted from Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion?
Hard
Photography
Photographers and the Pictures They Made
Cartier-Bresson to Vivian Maier: ten photographers and the work their names are attached to.
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Which photographer is associated with the idea of "the decisive moment"?
Medium
Photography
From Glass Plates to Sensors
Daguerreotypes, wet plates, 35mm, Polaroid and the arrival of the digital sensor.
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A daguerreotype produced its image on what?
Medium
Architecture & Design
The Words Architects Use
Plans, elevations, cantilevers and curtain walls — the working vocabulary of building design.
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In architectural drawings, what does an elevation show?