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One-Eye

The Oldie Quiz

Send your answers and full details to:

email: [EMAIL="editorial@theoldie.co.uk"]editorial@theoldie.co.uk[/EMAIL]
subject: MAY QUIZ

My answers:

1) The Fat Controller
2) February
3) Golf Balls
4) MacGregor
5) Zero
6) Stocks are for the ankles, Pillory is for the head and hands
7) His Dark Materials
8) Tomato
9) Only Summer Olympics host nation to win no gold medals
10) ARA General Belgrano
11) Bayer 04 Leverkusen
12) John Betjeman
13) Inspector Morse
14) Caribou
15) Greece
16) Robert Runcie
17) Amarone
18) Richard II
19) Clive Rice
20) Josephine Tey


notes:

Q4 To which clan did the Scottish folk hero Rob Roy belong?
- Clan Gregor would be technically correct

Q5 In the early 13th century the mathematician Leonardo de Pisa, also known as Fibonacci, travelled to North Africa and brought back the Hindu-Arabic number system — 1, 2, 3, 4... — that we use today. He also brought back a numerical concept unknown to the ancient Greeks, but one without which modern civilisation simply couldn’t have come into existence. What was that concept?
- not 100% sure of this.

Q9 What unique Olympic record does Canada hold? Luckily, we didn’t come close to emulating it in 2012.
- my answer is true, but I'm not sure if this is what they are after.

pootler

I think zero is right. He did develop the idea of zero:

Zero found its way to Europe through the Moorish conquest of Spain and was further developed by Italian mathematician Fibonacci, who used it to do equations without an abacus, then the most prevalent tool for doing arithmetic.

His other famous discovery was the Fibinacci sequence. Which came to be important in lots of ways, although I'm not sure modern civilisation would have failed to develop without it:

The Fibonacci sequence exhibits a certain numerical pattern which originated as the answer to an exercise in the first ever high school algebra text. This pattern turned out to have an interest and importance far beyond what its creator imagined. It can be used to model or describe an amazing variety of phenomena, in mathematics and science, art and nature. The mathematical ideas the Fibonacci sequence leads to, such as the golden ratio, spirals and self- similar curves, have long been appreciated for their charm and beauty, but no one can really explain why they are echoed so clearly in the world of art and nature.

pootler

Asked a Canadian friend about Q9 and he said they are the only nation to compete in every Winter Olympic and have gotten a medal in every one. Maybe that's more of a record than not winning any?

(But not winning any as host would be more unique maybe?)

One-Eye

pootler wrote: »

Asked a Canadian friend about Q9 and he said they are the only nation to compete in every Winter Olympic and have gotten a medal in every one. Maybe that's more of a record than not winning any?

(But not winning any as host would be more unique maybe?)

Question mentions UK in 2012 so I don't think it's about Winter Olympics.