The Week’s Christmas quiz: looking back on 2022

Obituaries

1. Which is the only bird that can fly both upside down and backwards?

2. Which New Zealand-born physicist is credited with splitting the atom?

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

3. By what name – a nod to the Surrey town where it was supposedly discovered – is hydrated magnesium sulphate better known?

4. What is the igneous rock seen in hexagonal columns at the Giant’s Causeway, in Northern Ireland, and Fingal’s Cave, in the Inner Hebrides?

5. Which creature sparks fear in an ophidiophobe?

6. Which three US states have just four letters in their name? And list the ten US states whose names are two words.

7. In which European city would you find Manneken Pis?

8. By what name is serge de Nîmes more commonly known?

9. Which US state has the longest coastline, at 6,640 miles?

10. Which subatomic particles are found in the nucleus of an atom?

11. By what name is the River Isis known, when it reaches Dorchester?

Answers

1. Hummingbird

2. Sir Ernest Rutherford

3. Epsom salts

4. Basalt

5. Snakes

6. Iowa, Ohio, Utah; New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia

7. Brussels

8. Denim

9. Alaska

10. Protons and neutrons

11. River Thames