Sunday Afternoon Quiz

Here’s a quick quiz to test your mem­o­ry and think­ing skills which should work out your tem­po­ral and frontal lobes. See how you do!

  1. Name the one sport in which nei­ther the spec­ta­tors nor the par­tic­i­pants know the score or the leader until the con­test ends.
  2. What famous North Amer­i­can land­mark is con­stant­ly mov­ing backward?
  3. Of all veg­eta­bles, only two can live to pro­duce on their own for sev­er­al grow­ing sea­sons. All oth­er veg­eta­bles must be replant­ed every year. What are the only two peren­ni­al vegetables?
  4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
  5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bot­tle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bot­tle is gen­uine; it has­n’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?
  6. Only three words in Stan­dard Eng­lish begin with the let­ters “dw” and they are all com­mon words. Name two of them.
  7. There are 14 punc­tu­a­tion marks in Eng­lish gram­mar. Can you name at least half of them?
  8. Name the one veg­etable or fruit that is nev­er sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any oth­er form except fresh.
  9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet begin­ning with the let­ter “S.”

 —

Answers To Quiz:

  1.  The one sport in which nei­ther the spec­ta­tors, nor the par­tic­i­pants, know the score or the leader until the con­test ends: boxing
  2.  The North Amer­i­can land­mark con­stant­ly mov­ing back­ward: Nia­gara Falls (the rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the mil­lions of gal­lons of water that rush over it every minute.)
  3. Only two veg­eta­bles that can live to pro­duce on their own for sev­er­al grow­ing sea­sons: aspara­gus and rhubarb.
  4. The fruit with its seeds on the out­side: strawberry.
  5. How did the pear get inside the brandy bot­tle? It grew inside the bot­tle. (The bot­tles are placed over pear buds when they are small and are wired in place on the tree. The bot­tle is left in place for the entire grow­ing sea­son. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.)
  6. Three Eng­lish words begin­ning with “dw”: dwarf, dwell, and dwindle.
  7. Four­teen punc­tu­a­tion marks in Eng­lish gram­mar: peri­od, com­ma, colon, semi­colon, dash, hyphen, apos­tro­phe, ques­tion mark, excla­ma­tion point, quo­ta­tion marks, brack­ets, paren­the­sis, braces, and ellipses.
  8. The only veg­etable or fruit nev­er sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any oth­er form but fresh: lettuce.
  9. Six or more things you can wear on your feet begin­ning with “s”: shoes, socks, san­dals, sneak­ers, slip­pers, skis, skates, snow­shoes, stock­ings, stilts.

 

More brain teas­er games:

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49 Comments

  1. Stuart Buck on June 18, 2007 at 7:18

    Name the only veg­etable or fruit that is nev­er sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any oth­er form except fresh. 

    Hmmm. What about water­mel­on? I’ve nev­er seen it in any of those forms (it’s most­ly water, after all).



  2. Caroline on June 18, 2007 at 9:14

    Stu­art- I think you’re right! I don’t think water­mel­on is includ­ed in canned fruit cock­tail — the one place where I can think of it being in one of those forms. I’ll update the ques­tion and answer.



  3. Brian on June 18, 2007 at 5:17

    Actu­al­ly, pick­led water­mel­on rind is wide­ly avail­able so the orig­i­nal answer may still be correct.



  4. Caroline on June 18, 2007 at 6:56

    Back we go to the orig­i­nal ver­sion. Nice find Brian!



  5. Alex on July 29, 2007 at 10:38

    1) If you’re good at box­ing, like say if you’re a box­ing ref­er­ee, then you can pret­ty much keep the score. I think Sumo would be a much bet­ter answer for this question.

    8) What about cel­ery? I have eat­en cooked let­tuce, it’s not bad once you get used to the sog­gy texture.



  6. Jeff on August 13, 2007 at 3:35

    1A. How about a shoot­ing or archery match?

    1B. Box­ing scores are post­ed round by round in big match­es these days.

    6. Dwelling is dis­tinct from dwell, par­tic­u­lar­ly dwell as used in mechanics.



  7. Caroline on August 15, 2007 at 2:05

    1) In a sumo tour­na­ment, a win­ner is declared at the end of each round and the rounds are count­ed for the tour­na­ment win­ner. There­fore, the win­ner of the round may be unknown to every­one until the end, but the leader of the tour­na­ment would be known as the tour­na­ment progessed. In archery the arrows stay in the tar­get until the end of each end, so again, every­one involved would be able to see the run­ning score of each com­peti­tor. Riflery scor­ing is like archery — with the tar­gets left in place for each round, allow­ing peo­ple to see who is win­ning through­out the round.

    6) “Dwelling” in an inflect­ed form of “dwell” (accord­ing to Miri­am Webster’s.

    8) Cel­ery is often served cooked. (It is in almost all soup stocks.)



  8. janise on September 14, 2007 at 11:58

    1) Horse racing
    8) avocado



  9. scott on November 29, 2007 at 4:11

    1. In box­ing and rac­ing the leader can be quite obvi­ous long before the con­test ends.

    6. dweller

    8. avo­ca­do => gua­camole and used in soups and some oth­er cooked recipes.

    let­tuce is sold chopped up in bags which is tech­ni­cal­ly processed.



  10. Lars on November 30, 2007 at 4:31

    What about chess? Both in chess and box­ing, the obvi­ous leader can do a mis­take, and loose in a moment. I believe chess is a sport too.



  11. Necroid on December 2, 2007 at 11:11

    1.) Fish­ing (specif­i­cal­ly size contests)

    3.) What about pota­toes, leafy veg­gies like spinach or kale, which don’t need to be picked whole but can have leaves plucked?

    4.) Sun­flow­ers

    5.) How do they clean the bot­tles before bottling?

    6.)dwine (ori­gin of dwin­dle as opposed to anoth­er form)
    dweeb

    7.) Why do you dis­tin­guish between dash and hyphen, but not between sin­gle and dou­ble quotes? Also what about angle brack­ets„ tildes, Carots, slash­es, and would the amper­sand be con­sid­ered a punc­tu­a­tion mark?

    8.) Let­tuce is now sold in var­i­ous forms includ­ing shred­ded, and pre­mixed sal­ads which would have to be con­sid­ered processed.

    9.) If we are dis­tin­guish­ing between shoes and sneak­ers, then why not Steel-toed boots, or Stilet­to heels?

    Sor­ry to be so con­trar­i­an, I’m in a mood. speak­ing of which:
    2.) Nia­gara is tech­ni­cal­ly not mov­ing back­ward, the erod­ed debris is being moved forward.



  12. Necroid on December 2, 2007 at 11:33

    Also a fel­low role-pley­er remind­ed me of 6.) Dweomer



  13. omar on December 26, 2007 at 4:11

    You’ve nev­er had an asian noo­dle soup with let­tuce in it? Thats tasty and cooked!



  14. Jeni on January 23, 2008 at 9:24

    #8 I say a Banana. They are nev­er frozen, cooked, processed or canned.
    They are always sold fresh.



  15. Kathy on February 5, 2008 at 1:49

    Bananas are sold as dried chips.



  16. Ron on February 5, 2008 at 4:48

    Answer for 9 could be any phys­i­cal object that begins with the let­ter “S”.



  17. Bryan on March 7, 2008 at 3:02

    #3 There are at least three because an arti­choke is also a peren­ni­al vegetable.



  18. Susan on May 20, 2008 at 9:45

    What direc­tion are the faces on Mt. Rush­more looking?



  19. daniel yoon on June 10, 2008 at 2:25

    @Necroid- One ques­tion: what’s a sin­gle quo­ta­tion mark? BEcause the only thing that I can think of that looks like a sin­gle quo­ta­tion mark (look­ing at my key­board here) is an apos­tro­phe, which was list­ed. Oth­er­wise, go ahead.

    One more thing, and this is just a ques­tion. On Sun­flow­ers, is the whole top of it the fruit? Because then where does the flower part end and where does the fruit start?
    No wait, one more thing. If you’re going to get spe­cif­ic at all on num­ber 9, then I’m pret­ty sure you can come up with quite a few things to wear. The object was to find six or more, and the extras were just there to offer a wider range.



  20. SeattleGuy on June 10, 2008 at 3:45

    Susan, I agree — Artichoke.



  21. JP on June 10, 2008 at 4:12

    Straw­ber­ries are tech­ni­cal­ly not a fruit. They’re not even a berry — they’re actu­al­ly a swelling in the stem of the plant.

    And I have to agree with Ron — the way the “S” ques­tion is writ­ten, most any­thing begin­ning with S can be put on the feet.



  22. Thos Weatherby on June 10, 2008 at 4:29

    Don’t be a DWEEB. There is also a Kim Chi using let­tuce. Also found in Cole Slaw. Frozen banana’s and gua­camole. There’s a fruit from Thai­land that you only eat fresh. Don’t think it’s canned or cooked. Darian.



  23. John on June 10, 2008 at 5:44

    @daniel — there might be only one key for both apos­tro­phes and sin­gle quotes, but I’m fair­ly sure they count as dif­fer­ent punc­tu­a­tion marks — they have dis­tinct func­tions at any rate, and don’t some type­faces dis­tin­guish them?



  24. Eric D. on June 11, 2008 at 6:43

    you peo­ple make these types of quizzes no fun. You focus, focus, focus on tech­ni­cal­i­ties and then it just becomes point­less to try an answer.



  25. Alvaro on June 11, 2008 at 9:50

    Hap­py to see so much, and much of it unex­pect­ed, brain activ­i­ty going on :-)



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