Five pub quiz questions 3 – Quick Quiz answers

By British Expat, 27 October 2019

We asked you five “pub quiz” type questions. Here come the answers!

1. The new town of Poundbury, in Dorset, is built in line with whose principles?
   HRH Charles, Prince of Wales. It was started in 1993 on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall on the western outskirts of Dorchester and currently has 3,500 residents, with a planned final total of 6,000. It’s attracted both criticism and praise, being described by one critic as “fake, authoritarian, heartless and grimly cute”.
2. In the game of darts, the thrower must stand behind a line 2.37 metres from the board. What is the name of that line?
   The oche – though apparently it’s only been spelt that way since the 1970s; before then it was the “hockey”. The distance of 2.37 metres equates to 7′ 9¼″ in imperial measurement. The original distance laid down by the British Darts Organisation was eight feet, and the new standard distance is a compromise with the national bodies of other darts-playing countries.
3. Sir Elton John was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight but legally changed his name in 1972. What is his current middle name?
   Hercules. Sir Elton adopted the name “Elton John” in 1967 in tribute to two members of the Bluesology group he was playing with at the time: saxophonist Elton Dean and singer Long John Baldry, whom Bluesology had been supporting since 1966. Exactly why he chose “Hercules” is unclear, but we like the story that it was inspired by the carthorse in Steptoe and Son.
4. In which country did the Orange Revolution take place? A bonus point if you can say when it happened.
   Ukraine, from November 2004 to January 2005. The protests took place after the second “run-off” round of Ukraine’s Presidential election, which the authorities were accused of having rigged in favour of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the ally of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma. A re-run ordered by the Supreme Court reversed the result in favour of Viktor Yushchenko, who had campaigned against the abuse of state power by the Kuchma/Yanukovych government and who had mysteriously suffered dioxin poisoning during the election campaign.
5. The tall chef’s hat, known as a toque, traditionally has 100 folds. What are these 100 folds said to represent?
   The hundred different ways of cooking an egg. “Said to”, because of course there are many more than a hundred different ways. Even the most basic methods, like boiling or frying, have variants. Soft-boiled, hard-boiled, or somewhere in between? Over easy, over medium, over hard, or sunny side up? And then there are all the different omelettes, crepes, sauces, cakes, meringues, custards… And that’s before you even go beyond hen’s eggs.

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