Q 01/05

In everyday English, 'Timbuktu' has become shorthand for a place that is what?

A) Fabulously rich

B) Unbearably hot

C) Impossibly far away

D) Dangerously lawless

Answer · why

C) Impossibly far away

Impossibly far away: no European explorer managed to reach the fabled city until 1826, and the long, difficult journey made its name a byword for the ...

Q 02/05

Timbuktu lies a short distance north of which great river?

A) Senegal

B) Congo

C) Nile

D) Niger

Answer · why

D) Niger

Niger: Timbuktu grew up where the river's great bend touches the Sahara, so goods arriving by camel caravan could continue their journey by boat.

Q 03/05

In which Disney film does a scheming butler end up shipped to Timbuktu in his own packing case?

A) The Aristocats

B) One Hundred and One Dalmatians

C) Lady and the Tramp

D) The Rescuers

Answer · why

A) The Aristocats

The Aristocats ends with Edgar the butler packed off to Timbuktu himself, the fate he had planned for Madame's cats.

Q 04/05

Per a 17th-century chronicle, Timbuktu was named after a slave woman guarding Tuareg goods. What did her name mean?

A) 'Keeper of the well'

B) 'The one having a lump'

C) 'Mother of the dunes'

D) 'The distant one'

Answer · why

B) 'The one having a lump'

Other theories derive it from Songhay words for a hollow, a Berber phrase for small dunes, or a Zenaga root meaning 'hidden'.

Q 05/05

Timbuktu grew rich from its position on trans-Saharan trade routes in which three commodities?

A) Salt, gold and ivory

B) Silk, spices and silver

C) Copper, cotton and dates

D) Horses, tin and wine

Answer · why

A) Salt, gold and ivory

Salt, gold and ivory crossed paths here: slabs of Saharan salt came south by caravan and were traded for gold and ivory heading north to the Mediterra...