Q 01/05

In One Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade stays alive by ending each night's tale on which storytelling device?

A) Plot twist

B) Dream sequence

C) Cliffhanger

D) Flash-forward

Answer · why

C) Cliffhanger

Cliffhanger endings were Scheherazade's survival plan: she told King Shahryar stories for 1,001 nights, stopping each one short to put off her own exe...

Q 02/05

Which term for a mystery's false clue did William Cobbett popularise with a tale of distracting hounds from a hare?

A) Red herring

B) Wild goose chase

C) White elephant

D) Blind alley

Answer · why

A) Red herring

Red herring first meant a real food: a kipper cured in brine or heavily smoked until it was strong-smelling. In his 1807 story Cobbett said he had use...

Q 03/05

Comic-book sound effects such as 'bam', 'pow' and 'wham' are examples of which device, whose words imitate noises?

A) Assonance

B) Onomatopoeia

C) Internal rhyme

D) Consonance

Answer · why

B) Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia reached comics largely through cartoonist Roy Crane, who is credited with adding 'bam', 'pow' and 'wham' to what had been an almost entir...

Q 04/05

Which literary term names the role Lord Voldemort plays opposite the hero of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels?

A) Protagonist

B) Antihero

C) Confidant

D) Antagonist

Answer · why

D) Antagonist

Antagonist does not always mean villain. In Shakespeare's Macbeth the tyrant is the main character, so the opposing role falls to Macduff, who is argu...

Q 05/05

'The Star-Spangled Banner' has four of which unit of verse, though usually only the first is ever sung?

A) Cantos

B) Stanzas

C) Sonnets

D) Quatrains

Answer · why

B) Stanzas

Stanzas two to four of Francis Scott Key's poem are rarely performed, and in 1861 the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. even penned an unofficial fifth.