Test your brain power

Think you’ve got what it takes?

Test your skills with questions created by the Imperial Quiz Society to put University Challenge 2024–25 wannabes through their paces. Good luck! 

Question 1

What doubled letter begins all of these: a new Japanese religion founded in 1892 by Deguchi Nao; a type of drink with oxidation between that of green and black tea; a mixture of cornstarch and water that displays non-Newtonian properties; and a region of the outer Solar System which may contain trillions of comets?

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The answer to this puzzle is:

O (Oomoto, oolong, oobleck, Oort Cloud)

Question 2

What surname links all of the following: the founder of twistor theory; a two-dimensional compactified spacetime diagram; a ‘kite’ and ‘dart’ that are the basis of a type of aperiodic tiling; and the two impossible objects that take the form of a staircase and a triangle respectively?

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The answer to this puzzle is:

Penrose (Roger Penrose, Penrose diagram, Penrose tiling, Penrose stairs, Penrose triangle) 

Question 3

“It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”

Which physicist said this, remarking on an experiment performed by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under his supervision, where alpha particles were fired at a thin gold foil?

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The answer to this puzzle is: 

Ernest Rutherford