The 50/50 Challenge

Hidden so nobody spots the answers before playing. Quizmasters, this is for you.

1. 1. Who painted The Arnolfini Portrait, with its famous convex mirror?
   • A. Jan van Eyck (answer)
   • B. Hans Holbein the Younger
   Jan van Eyck painted it in 1434. His signature appears above the convex mirror on the back wall.
2. 2. The Rosetta Stone displays three scripts. How many languages do they represent?
   • A. Three
   • B. Two (answer)
   The languages are Egyptian and Greek. Egyptian appears in hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts; Greek supplies the third script.
3. 3. Hokusai's The Great Wave was originally produced using which technique?
   • A. Woodblock printing (answer)
   • B. Copperplate engraving
   It is a woodblock print from the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series, first published around 1830-31.
4. 4. English borrowed the word robot from which language?
   • A. Polish
   • B. Czech (answer)
   Robot comes from Czech, popularised by Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., written in 1920.
5. 5. Who received the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature?
   • A. Wisława Szymborska (answer)
   • B. Zbigniew Herbert
   The 1996 literature prize went to Polish poet Wisława Szymborska.
6. 6. Which phenomenon was singled out in Einstein's 1921 Nobel citation?
   • A. General relativity
   • B. The photoelectric effect (answer)
   The citation especially recognised his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, not general relativity.
7. 7. In which subject did Marie Curie receive her second Nobel Prize in 1911?
   • A. Chemistry (answer)
   • B. Physics
   Her first prize was Physics in 1903. Her second was Chemistry in 1911.
8. 8. How old was Lawrence Bragg in the year of his 1915 Physics Nobel Prize?
   • A. 35
   • B. 25 (answer)
   Bragg was 25 in the award year and shared the prize with his father William Henry Bragg.
9. 9. Which moon orbits opposite to its planet's rotation?
   • A. Titan
   • B. Triton (answer)
   Neptune's Triton has a retrograde orbit. Saturn's Titan does not.
10. 10. Which moon has surface lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane?
    • A. Titan (answer)
    • B. Europa
    Titan has liquid hydrocarbon lakes and seas. Europa's proposed ocean lies beneath ice.
11. 11. Where did Galileo discover an internally generated magnetic field?
    • A. Callisto
    • B. Ganymede (answer)
    Galileo discovered Ganymede's intrinsic magnetic field, distinct from a response induced by Jupiter.
12. 12. Which moon orbits the asteroid Ida?
    • A. Dactyl (answer)
    • B. Phobos
    Galileo discovered Dactyl orbiting Ida. Phobos orbits Mars.