Round 1 at the Old Pequliar on April 7, 2009
Caution! This round proved insanely difficult. Use at your own risk.

Name the city that’s host to all of these features. Anywhere on the globe is fair game.

1) Where can you tour Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia, celebrate Hogmanay, and drink up at the Whisky Heritage Centre?

2) Where can you take the the 25 de Abril Bridge across the Tagus River, and get a view of the Christo Rei “Christ the King” statue while riding the scenic Santa Justa Lift?

3) Where can you see the King Mango Strut parade or catch an NBA game in American Airlines Arena after a dip in the Venetian Pool?

4) Where can you visit the top of the tallest free-standing structure in the Americas, then get your sport on at an Argonauts football game or the Hockey Hall of Fame?

5) Where can you see an opera at the Teatro Colón, the government in action at the Casa Rosada, and an original cast of Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker?

6) Where can you go shopping at the Namdaemun Market, visit Five Grand Palaces, and honor the ancestors of the royal family at the Jongmyo shrine?

7) Where can you see the Victoria Memorial and the Tower of the Martyrs, then get swept up in a massive celebration of the Hindu festival Durga Puja?

8) Where can you visit a patch of rainforest at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and the Asian Civilisations Museum while staying at the historic Raffles Hotel?

9) Where can you watch cricket at the stadium that hosted the 1956 Summer Olympics, visit Eureka Tower, the world’s tallest residential tower, and see the preserved body of Phar Lap?

10) Where can you visit the Topkapi Palace, take a spin through a Whirling Dervish Hall, and get yourself scrubbed up at the Cağaloğlu Bath?

ANSWERS:

1) Edinburgh

2) Lisbon

3) Miami

4) Toronto

5) Buenos Aires

6) Seoul

7) Kolkata (Calcutta)

8) Singapore

9) Melbourne

10) Istanbul

1) There are two King Counties in the US. We’re in one of them. The other is one of the 254 counties in which state?
2) 48 US states are divided into counties. Louisiana is divided into parishes. Which state is divided into boroughs?
3) Which of these cities is closest to Tokyo, as the crow flies: San Francisco, Portland OR, Seattle, or Vancouver BC?
4) The Minoan civilization, one of the oldest in Europe, originated on which Mediterranean island?
5) What Russian city is the world’s northernmost city with a population greater than 1,000,000?
6) By population, what country is the world’s largest constitutional monarchy?
7) What island nation, conquered by the Japanese in 1942, was renamed Shonanto until the British repossessed it in 1945?
8) The Blue Nile and White Nile rivers meet to form the Nile in what country south of Egypt?
9) What city, recaptured by the Union in 1862, was the most populous in the Confederate States of America?
10) If you start in Bellevue and drive north on I-405, what’s the next city you’ll come to?

Round 1 at the Old Pequliar on August 7, 2007. Average score (out of 18 teams): 4.72

Answers:

1) Texas
2) Alaska
3) Vancouver
4) Crete
5) Saint Petersburg
6) Japan
7) Singapore
8) Sudan
9) New Orleans
10) Kirkland

Used Jan 9, 2007, at the Old Pequliar.

1. What’s the tallest peak in the Olympic Mountains?
2. What strait connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean?
3. What country is Mount Kilimanjaro in?
4. What word meaning “mapmaking” combines the Greek words for “map” and “write”?
5. Colorado has the highest average elevation in the US. What state has the highest average elevation east of the Mississippi?
6. Name one of the two Mexican states that borders Arizona.
7. Name two of the three US states that contain parts of Yellowstone National Park.
8. What’s the largest city by population in the UTC -6 time zone, a.k.a. Central Time?
9. In 2005, what Asian city surpassed Singapore as the busiest port in the world, measured by total shipping tonnage? (shipping tonnage = total mass of cargo transported though the port)
10. Within Seattle city limits, Washington State Route 522 is known as what street?

1. Mount Olympus (7962 ft)
2. the Strait of Gibraltar
3. Tanzania
4. cartography
5. West Virginia
6. Sonora or Baja California
7. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming
8. Mexico City
9. Shanghai
10. Lake City Way