Q 01/05

'Saved by the bell' comes from which sport, rather than the coffin bell-pulls people often credit?

A) Fencing

B) Boxing

C) Cycling

D) Rowing

Answer · why

B) Boxing

Boxing spares a floored fighter when the bell ends the round before the referee counts him out; the tale of bells fitted to coffins for the buried-ali...

Q 02/05

Which measuring idiom is falsely said to come from a law letting husbands beat wives with a thin stick?

A) Foot the bill

B) Inch by inch

C) Go the extra mile

D) Rule of thumb

Answer · why

D) Rule of thumb

Rule of thumb has no such law behind it: the myth is often traced to a ruling rumoured of Judge Francis Buller in 1782, mocked in cartoons as 'Judge T...

Q 03/05

'Pandora's box' is a mistranslation: in Hesiod's Greek, what kind of container did Pandora actually open?

A) A chest

B) A jar

C) A basket

D) A cage

Answer · why

B) A jar

A jar is what Hesiod gave Pandora, a large storage pithos; Erasmus, retelling the tale in Latin in the 16th century, wrote pyxis, a box, and the slip ...

Q 04/05

Which metal, used to turn fur into felt, poisoned 19th-century hat-makers and is widely linked to 'mad as a hatter'?

A) Lead

B) Arsenic

C) Mercury

D) Cadmium

Answer · why

C) Mercury

Mercury compounds used in felt-making caused erethism, with tremors so common in Danbury, Connecticut that locals called them the Danbury Shakes; the ...

Q 05/05

'Humble pie' began as 'umble pie', a lowly dish with which filling?

A) Stale crusts

B) Pig trotters

C) Deer offal

D) Sheep's head

Answer · why

C) Deer offal

Deer offal, the innards once called umbles, filled the pie; the unrelated word 'humble' merged in as a pun, and by 1830 eating humble pie meant a humi...