2008 King William's College Quiz

Peter Hornby • January 6, 2009

The Guardian has published the 104th annual King William's College Quiz.  Just to remind you, this is a lethally difficult general knowledge quiz taken by the pupils of King Williams College, on the Isle of Man.  The students take the test twice, once on sight before the holidays, and once, after what I assume is a pretty hectic couple of weeks of research, after their return from the Christmas holiday.

The questions are set by Dr Pat Cullen, who seems to have trained at the knee of Torquemada.  He takes special care to phrase the questions so that skill in Google searching is of little or no help.

On my first pass over this year's quiz, I think I was able to answer ten questions out of the 180, which is unusually good - I'd normally expect between two and five.

So, ladies and gentlemen, start your search engines!  The quiz can be found on the school's website.

And, to get you started, here's question 17.6 from this year's quiz:17.6 - In which town did la Baronne de la Chalonnière encounter Alexander Duggan at the Hôtel du Cerf?