Q 01/05

Portugal's Braganza stone, long famed as which far costlier gem, is said to be probably a topaz?

A) Sapphire

B) Diamond

C) Emerald

D) Ruby

Answer · why

B) Diamond

Diamond was the claim, but a colourless topaz cut as a brilliant can pass for one, and the two gems share almost the same density.

Q 02/05

Which director made the 1969 spy thriller Topaz, about a French agent in the Cuban Missile Crisis?

A) Alfred Hitchcock

B) Stanley Kubrick

C) John Frankenheimer

D) John Huston

Answer · why

A) Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock first ended the thriller with a duel in a French football stadium, but test audiences panned it and he shot a replacement ending.

Q 03/05

The Topaz camp of World War II, named after a nearby mountain, held Americans of which ancestry?

A) German

B) Italian

C) Japanese

D) Hungarian

Answer · why

C) Japanese

Japanese Americans were held there from 1942 to 1945, and with some 9,000 internees and staff the camp became the fifth-largest city in its state.

Q 04/05

The crimson topaz and fiery topaz, both found in the Amazon Basin, are large species of which bird?

A) Parrot

B) Toucan

C) Honeycreeper

D) Hummingbird

Answer · why

D) Hummingbird

Hummingbird males of the genus Topaza are by far the largest in their range, and only the giant hummingbird of the Andes is bigger.

Q 05/05

The island of Topazios, usually credited with naming topaz, actually yielded which green gem?

A) Peridot

B) Emerald

C) Jadeite

D) Malachite

Answer · why

A) Peridot

Peridot was mined on the Red Sea island now called Zabargad, and before modern mineralogy the two stones were routinely confused.