Q 01/05

Which animal's name, repeated eight times, forms a grammatical sentence because it is also a New York city and a verb?

A) Badger

B) Buffalo

C) Phoenix

D) Turkey

Answer · why

B) Buffalo

Buffalo works three ways: a city in New York, the bison, and a verb meaning to bully. The sentence says bison from that city bully other bison from th...

Q 02/05

Cinderella's glass slipper is sometimes blamed on confusing French 'verre' with a homophone, 'vair', which means what?

A) Soft leather

B) Green velvet

C) Squirrel fur

D) Fine silk

Answer · why

C) Squirrel fur

Squirrel fur, or 'vair', was a rare fur reserved for nobility, so the theory sounded plausible. Most scholars think Perrault chose glass on purpose.

Q 03/05

Which shellfish takes a name from the Latin for 'little mouse', the same root behind the tissue that flexes your arm?

A) Oyster

B) Scallop

C) Cockle

D) Mussel

Answer · why

D) Mussel

Mussel and 'muscle' both come from Latin 'musculus', because a flexing bicep was thought to look like a mouse. The two spellings were not fully separa...

Q 04/05

Which baking staple's name began as a garden word used figuratively to mean the 'finest part'?

A) Flour

B) Yeast

C) Bran

D) Sugar

Answer · why

A) Flour

Flour was simply the 'flower' of the meal, and English spelled the two words alike for centuries. The modern spelling won out only around 1830, to end...

Q 05/05

Some apartment blocks in China skip the fourth floor because the Chinese word for 'four' sounds like the word for what?

A) Debt

B) Ghost

C) Death

D) Poverty

Answer · why

C) Death

Death and 'four' differ only in tone in many varieties of Chinese, a superstition known as tetraphobia. South Korean hospitals often skip room 4 for t...