Madrid Pub Quiz

Copyleft: feel free to use these questions in your quizzes. This is not a game, there’s no scoring, and questions are provided as a service only. Some answers are a little lengthy as players requested clarification. “NEW” means less than a month old. Spanish flags denote Spanish-based questions.

Literature

160 questions in this category

Richard III (in Shakespeare's play of the same name)
Captain Flint’s.
With thanks to David Keen for pointing out a typo
‘The Spy Who Came In from the Cold’ by John Le Carré
’Tis
With thanks to Keith Woodcock from Chippenham for pointing out a typo in the question
Peppermint Patty
With thanks to Keith Woodcock from Chippenham for correcting the question
Peter Pan
The Disney version is slightly different: ‘second star to the right…
With thanks to Yvonne Steyn from Somerset West, South Africa for fine-tuning the question
Isaac Asimov.
The rules are introduced in his 1942 short story ‘Runaround’ although they were foreshadowed in a few earlier stories.
With thanks to Chris Wilkins for correcting this question
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Published as The Sorcerer’s Stone in the US market.
With thanks to Matt Jones for fine tuning the answer
The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van
Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker
Bloomsday (the day in 1904 that the events in ‘Ulysses’ take place)
George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 and an Oscar in 1938 for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion)
Reginald or Reggie.
Jeeves’s first name was not revealed until the penultimate novel, Much Obliged, Jeeves. Bertie Wooster learns Jeeves’s name when he hears another valet greet Jeeves with “Hullo, Reggie.”
…that a man lay down his life for his friends.
New Testament (John 15)
He created Batman
Robert Kane (born Robert Kahn; October 24, 1915 – November 3, 1998) was an American comic book writer, animator and artist who co-created Batman (with Bill Finger) and most early related characters for DC comics.
Love’s Labours Won
Love's Labour’s Won is a lost play attributed by contemporaries to William Shakespeare, written before 1598 and published by 1603, though no copies are known to have survived.
Hand for hand, foot for foot.
Exodus 21:23–27
Winnie-the-Pooh
Heffalumps are mentioned, and only appear, in Pooh and Piglet’s dreams in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and seen again in The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Physically, they resemble elephants.
Macbeth
According to a theatrical superstition, called the Scottish curse, speaking the name Macbeth inside a theatre, other than as called for in the script while rehearsing or performing, will cause disaster.
The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel: Rupert of Hentzau (1898), by Anthony Hope (1863-1933).
Nowadays the term connotes a quaint minor European country, or is used as a placeholder name for an unspecified country in academic discussions.
Cocaine
Holmes occasionally used morphine and cocaine, the latter of which he injects in a seven-percent solution; both drugs were legal in 19th-century England.
Amen
Amen concludes the last book of the New Testament, at Rev. 22:21.
Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus, three novels by Henry Miller
The title comes from a sentence near the end of Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn: “All my Calvaries were rosy crucifixions, pseudo-tragedies to keep the fires of hell burning brightly for the real sinners who are in danger of being forgotten.”
A pig (in Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White)
Ezra Pound
On 24 May 1945 Ezra Pound was transferred to the United States Army Disciplinary Training Center north of Pisa, where he was placed in one of the camp’s 6-by-6-foot (1.8 by 1.8 m) outdoor steel cages, with tar paper covers, lit up at night by floodlights. Engineers reinforced his cage the night before he arrived in case fascist sympathizers tried to break him out.
Jorge Semprún
Semprún deals with the experience in two books: Le grand voyage (1963) treats the journey to Buchenwald, and Quel beau dimanche! (1980) his camp experiences.
José Echegaray (in 1904; Benavente was in 1922)
Bertolt Brecht
Die Dreigroschenoper is a “play with music” adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar’s Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill.
Mercury
Erethism also known as erethismus mercurialis, mad hatter disease, or mad hatter syndrome, is a neurological disorder characterized by behavioral changes such as irritability, low self-confidence, depression, apathy, shyness and timidity, and in some extreme cases with prolonged exposure to mercury vapors, by delirium, personality changes and memory loss.
Christopher Robin
Botswana, in the "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series by Alexander McCall Smith
The sewers of Vienna
‘Our Man In Havana’ by Graham Greene
George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney
‘The Name of the Rose’ (Il Nome Della Rosa) by Umberto Eco
Carlo Collodi
Cervantes died on the 23rd of April in the Gregorian calendar and Shakespeare died on the 23rd of April in the Julian calendar which is the 3rd of May in the Gregorian calendar.

Questions compiled by Luis de Avendaño. Additional questions provided by Alex Carter, Antony Reid, Antonio Vázquez, Declan Forde, Peter Moore, Steve Owen, John Wirnsberger, Clive Mendes, and Jennifer Riggins. These questions have all been used at the Moore’s Irish Pub quiz (formerly O’Donnell’s) and at Triskel. New questions are added at irregular intervals.

Madrid Pub Quiz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Feel free to use these questions in your quizzes. Questions compiled by Luis de Avendaño. Additional questions provided by Alex Carter, Antony Reid, Antonio Vázquez, Declan Forde, Peter Moore, Steve Owen, John Wirnsberger, Clive Mendes, and Jennifer Riggins. These questions have all been used at the Moore’s Irish Pub quiz (formerly O’Donnell’s) and at Triskel Pub, in Madrid.

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, Whitaker’s Almanac, The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Collins Gem Fact File, Diccionario Enciclopédico Espasa 1 and Wikipedia.

This page layout was last updated on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024 @ 10:41am CEST (Europe/Madrid). Website designed and maintained by Luis de Avendaño.
This website was first published on January 1st 1999 at www.avendano.org/quiz. Website hosting by pair Networks.