Douze Points Trivia Quiz: Day 4

/ Sekhmet Morgan

The Eurovision Times – The summer remains a terrible time for Eurovision fans as it’s the season without any news. So the Eurovision times team has come up with a new game: a Trivia Quiz on European history, geography, culture and on Eurovision. Fourth day!

Each day, for a full week, we will publish ten questions of different difficulty. The first question will be the easiest and will be worth 1pt. The tenth question will be the toughest and will be worth 12pts!

Most questions will have answers around the Internet but not on Wikipedia. In a perfect world, there’s no need to cheat and look online but since there’s just no way for us to verify who looked where, there is no rule that says you can’t look online. After all, this quiz is only a summer fun game and if you end up learning something it’s good enough. We will be very suspicious though if you get every answer right every day!

After the week (and an extra week for people to vote in case they were busy one day or a few during the week), the points of each participant will be counted and we’ll announce a winner. What will he or she win? Not much, except the title of the Douze Points Trivia Quiz champion for a year, which is definitely something!

Of course, in the comment section you won’t get to give hints to one another or worse, give an answer. But you’ll still get to use the questions as excuses for more broad discussion.

Quiz.04

~ THURSDAY ~

01 In which European country can you find the tallest bridge in the world?
02 Legend has Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe’s fake nose made of gold, but what material was it instead?
03 In which year did a singer become a spokeperson the same year he or she participated?
04 The UK’s Gina G co-wrote a song that became a summer hit representing which drink?
05 Which Romanian born writer was a member of the French Academy?
06 In Homer’s Iliad, what weapon would Pandarus carry?
07 Picture of the day: in which European country was it taken?
08 Which European country has the only elected reigning monarch that can be voted out?
10 Which European city is the only one in the world to have hosted the world championships in athletics twice?
12 A monument was raised at Tjentište by sculptor Miodrag Živković to commemortate Which Bosnian battle?

Picture of the day:

Now it’s your turn to play! You’ll get to give your answers by email on our new address, eurovisiontimesesc@gmail.com or via the feedback messagery below!

141 thoughts on “Douze Points Trivia Quiz: Day 4”

  2. And once again I fail at the 7 points. The places I have travelled to seem to be totally incompatible with DPTQ’s choice of pictures. :(

    It is a rather ugly neoclassicist structure btw.

      • I am not a big fan of most things neoclassical although there are a few buildings I love. The one in this picture lacks everything antique civilizations stood for imo.

        Btw, I knew that you wouldn’t be able to do DPTQ without an Académie française question. If I was in charge, people would have to deal with English Romanticism instead. :)

        Questions 10 and 12 were very easy imo but 8 is quite tricky and I am not sure that I got it right from a strictly constitutional perspective.

        Jedward’s dog, Gina G’s drink song. I am not very good at gossip. And neither do I know much about popular culture beyond ESC, which is no surprise because my interest in culture more or less ends with the end of high modernism.

          • Calm down. I did not intend to criticise you, and there should be a nice mix of questions so that everyone’s area of expertise is covered. And that’s what you have achieved so far. Even people who do not know much about ESC can be quite successful in DPTQ. :)

            Btw, I have just shown that hideous building to my father who is an architect. He doesn’t know it either and agreed that some aesthete should demolish it as soon as possible.

  6. Definately the most difficult set of questions so far. I think I have the answer only to #1 and 5.
    Should I, as a Greek myself, be ashamed for not ever having heard of Pandarus? even though we’ve been taught Iliad at school back in early 80’s? :P
    Btw, I was always on the Trojans’ side in the Iliad ;) :D

        • Haven’t read the play in a long time and didn’t go see it at the Comédie Française who performed it this year but I’m not sure Pandorus’ weapon (and function in the war) is mentioned in it but it gives you things to read anyway if you’d want ;)

            • no? last year they did Goldoni and they regularly do Ancient Greek plays! why would you think that? the comédie-française is a theater company legally and can do whatever they wanna perform! historically, they’re the “official legal” compagny, along with the Italians and the Academy of music, but since the Republic, things have changed and theaters have been more legal and the Comédie-Française is a compagny no more no less, just a very selective one but they’ve created modern works (like Marie N’Diaye) and of course classics every year

            • I’ve always had an idea that they were the French counterpart of the Compañia Nacional de Teatro Clásico at Teatro de la Comedia in Spain, and that their main goal is to preserve the classic plays of their country, like Molière, Racine and Corneille. Not that they never do anything else, but that non-French plays made up just a tiny minority in their repertoire.

            • it’s definitely more diverse than that, for instance Racine’s Phèdre which was performed last year was the first time they reprised it (in a new mise en scène) since the triumphant 95 one with Martine Chevalier… they do feel the need to preserve the classic plays but French theater productions are definitely there all around the country and most of all Paris to play the classics too, and on the other hand the introduction in the repertoire to other broad perspectives in the Comédie Française is significant and relevant and it’s always noticed and discussed; id say every year 50% of their show is classics but it’s definitely not just French, as I said, ancient Greek, elizabethan or Italian are definitely in it as well, and the rest is more modern creations (like a play inspired on La Fontaine’s fables, Koltès’ amazing plays were finally introduced to the repertoire in 2007 etc.)

            • it’s hard to say, i don’t like either brecht or goethe to name “the big ones” and in case you forgot I dont speak German and never studied it, so all I know is more or less on my own time and research and feel like I don’t know enough “small plays” to be able to coin a favorite though I admit that the 18th century specialist in me would land towards Lessing in general lol

            • Despite the fact that Lessing absolutely hated French drama, in particular Racine and Corneille?
              I love Goethe’s ‘Faust’ and Schiller’s ‘Don Carlos’ most … not very original, I know, but at the end of the day masterpieces are masterpieces.

            • well, of course, it’s interesting to see that, don’t forget my thesis is on Diderot, who himself, though loved French classicism, theorized the “bourgeois drama” against their theories, which is something that Lessing aproved of!

            • Of course, Lessing adored Diderot. Just like you. Soulmates. :) Diderot was one of Lessings main inspirations too when he wrote his poetics which aimed at overcoming the formalism of classicist drama.

              And I like Lessing too, in particular his “Miss Sara Sampson”.

            • Diderot’s the man of my life obviously, one does not write a full phd thesis on someone he doesn’t adore! He has always been extremely loved in Germany’s late 18th and full 19th century (Lessing, Goethe, Marx, Hegel, Freud…)

            • I wrote my PhD thesis on Harvey Fierstein and Terrence McNally, whom I don’t love, although McNally’s ‘Lisbon Traviata’ is a good piece of dramatic art and probably the best artistic comment on the AIDS hysteria in the USA back then. But then I had Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels in America’ and David Greenspan’s ‘Dead Mother or Shirley Not in Vain’ too, which are two fantastic plays. :)

            • I would say that “Cid” is my favourite French play.

              I’m also kinda fascinated by Alfred Jarry’s “Le Roi Ubu”. Mostly because it’s like Macbeth but with The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland playing the main role… :/

        • I have always been on the side of the Trojans too but then I am on the side of the losers on most occasions … I guess that it is a reflex trying to compensate for the wrongs of mankind in the past. Totally pathological imo … but perhaps quite endearing too, at least I hope so.

          F. e. I am on the side of the Native Americans against the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch too.

            • only if the losers are grand, who cares for losers who are total losers: as you yourself pointed out, the Trojans had Hector, Paris… while at the same time Achilles is the “angry” one which means we’re not necessarly meant to root for him

            • I am even on Portugal’s side in ESC. LOL

              But I really like most of their ESC songs, and I think (or hope) that I would love them as much if they had represented any other country.

    • That’s because they had Apollo, the music god, on their side, right? He was such a badass, giving King Midas donkey ears for corrupted voting in the first music contest of the world. ;)

          • Well the Iliad is supposed to be the song of “the wrath of the son of Peleus”: Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾿ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾿ ἔθηκε so he cant be considered that great of a guy he’s more of a complex tormented figure which would explain why some romanticism would adore him but it’s truly not the noblest of men considering what he did to Hector

  7. I think that 1965, 1989, 1994 and 1997 would be my top UK songs. I agree that the UK have been one of the most overrated countries. Strangely enough, I like some of their cheesier stuff. “Looking high, high, high” for example is great entertainment imo in its fantastic rhyming:

    But when I arrived all brown
    And tanned by wind and weather
    You sure could have knocked me down
    With a proverbial feather

  8. Re: UK in the ESC, “Power to All our Friends” is by far my most fav UK entry.
    Last time I loved an entry by them was in 1994. 1998 was very good too.

  9. Considering that The Beatles, The Who, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and Blur all come from the UK, their Eurovision efforts are often disappointing. But there are some songs inbetween that I like:

    1967 (guilty pleasure)
    1970 (nice little song, unpretentious)
    1976 (again guilty pleasure – banal, but in a good way. Naive. Silly choreography, but I’m more interested in songs than in dance routines)
    1977 (sounds better than it actually is, but I like it anyway)
    1997 (love it, grandiose without being bombastic)
    2001 (because of the chord progression in the chorus)
    2008 (I’m a sucker for Motown!)
    2009 (because of the melody. On the contrary I’m not so impressed by Jade as a vocalist)
    2012 (meancholic, soulful, intense)

  11. Before I started posting for this quiz I had been a long time reader and always was amazed by how different my tastes were.

    I love pretty much all of the UK entries from 2003-2013, apart from 2004 and 2008.

    Apart from the UK, my faves often do quite well in the contest (not this year by a longshot)

  12. Btw, since Hector was mentioned, this is called: “Hector and Andromache”. Music by Manos Hadjidakis, lyrics by Iakovos Kambanellis, singing by Lakis Pappas. The painting on the video is called Hector and Andromache too and was painted by Giorgio de Chirico. I absolutely adore the last two verses: “…Whoever doesn’t promise his coming back home, is not fit for war.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBpRfnrxUcg
    Good night :)

  13. In case any of you were interested, my faves for each year I’ve seen and their placing

    1997 UK 1st
    1998 UK 2nd
    1999 Sweden 1st
    2000 Russia 2nd
    2001 Greece 3rd
    2002 Malta 2nd
    2003 Turkey 1st
    2004 Ukraine 1st
    2005 Romania 3rd
    2006 Finland 1st
    2007 Ukraine 2nd
    2008 Armenia 4th
    2009 Turkey 4th
    2010 Germany 1st
    2011 Sweden 3rd
    2012 Sweden 1st
    2013 Belarus 17th

    So overall, I do very well, but I guess 13 really is unlucky for some. (Although Sweden only narrowly beat Greece in 2012 who came 16th I believe, so maybe it’s the start of a more long term decline of the shake it songs which I love :( )

    • 1997 Slovenia 10th
      1998 UK 2nd
      1999 BiH 7th
      2000 Latvia 3rd
      2001 Russia 12th
      2002 France 5th
      2003 Romania 10th
      2004 Serbia 2nd
      2005 Slovenia 12th in semi-final :(
      2006 BiH 3rd
      2007 Serbia 1st
      2008 Serbia 6th
      2009 France 8th
      2010 Turkey 2nd / Israel 14th
      2011 Germany 10th
      2012 Albania 5th
      2013 France 23rd :(

      • At least we can agree on 1998! :)

        Seriously though, Albania 12 I’ve never understood that one, although people must like it, it came 5th after all, (don’t seem to remember it doing so well with televoters though (who I am more in-tune with))

        • Albania came 8th in televoting which is fantastic if we consider what a sophisticated and demanding song “Suus” is.

          And yes, we can always come back to UK 1998 if we become exasperated with each other. :)

            • Yes, the Albanian entry of 2012 caused a great deal! :)

              I loved Graham Norton when he commented before the start of the song,

              “if you have any young children or dogs you might want to send them out of the room now ;)”

            • I hate Graham Norton. He is silly and shallow imho and reinforces all the wrong stereotypes about ESC in the UK. For example, he made fun of all the votes in 2010 but when the UK gave significant points to Niamh’s lame ballad (with bad vocals) in 2010, he said “well done”. To this guy, neighbour or cultural voting is only a bad thing if it happens somewhere else than in the space of the British isles. Honesty, if the BBC does not change its attitude and commentator, the UK will find itself on the wrong side of the score board at the end of the day for many more years to come.

              (Btw, I know a bit about the UK because I have lived in London for several years, and I have taught English Literature and Culture at Munich University in the past too.)

    • 1997 Poland 11
      1998 Ireland 9
      1999 Estonia 6
      2000 Sweden 7
      2001 France 4
      2002 France 5
      2003 Belgium 2
      2004 Serbia & Montenegro 2
      2005 Croatia 11
      2006 Bosnia & Herzegovina 3
      2007 Serbia 1
      2008 Serbia 6
      2009 France 8
      2010 Israel 14
      2011 Germany 10
      2012 Albania 5
      2013 France 23

        • this community is very open minded and we respect everyone but if you’ve read us for a while you know we’re like the anti-shake-it esc community in the Internet and of course, the more we live together, the more our taste intertwines in the end! id also have a lot of common with these two (like Albania 2012, while Germany 2011 is my second and France 2013 my third)

          • Yeah the anti shake thing was one of the put offs and I only joint for the quiz, but you all seem a nice bunch so might stick around a little :)

            I think it’s also great how we can have such different tastes, (Eulenspiegel and I had 0 in common) but still have one big shared passion, which is the ESC itself.

            • I’m not necissarily anti shake. The shake-it type of song is normally not my cup of tea, but I acknowledge the musical qualities that some of them can have (production-wise in particular). There are good and bad songs in every genre :-)

            • I agree with that; but esc shake-it means glitter, pointlessness, fake rhythm, poor vocals (and that’s an euphemism), shallow performances, boring typical routines… i mean in the late 90s that was already oldfashion, but now 15 years later it’s just painful, there’s often one good if not more strong schlager per year somewhere in the NF, but it rarely comes to esc, all the other ones being copy-pasted from one year to the other

            • I agree many of the shake-it entries are cheap, gimmicky and of poor quality (like Greece 2004 which is one of the worst imo.). But some have actually got some obvious musical qualities, e.g. in terms of production. You can do great things in a recording studio.

              The same goes for a lot of mainstream pop outside Eurovision. I often dislike it personally, and in many cases I react to it because of non-musical aspects (rap songs being sexist etc.) but I often acknowledge it as good musical craftsmanship.

            • Like everything it had it’s time, early to mid noughties it was winning, then in the late noughties it had been reduced to around top 5, then the start of this decade has just seen them fall right down to the mid to low teens.

              If it was televoting only, they’d be down to around Top 10 territory, but the Juries have really killed them off, I fear one day they will be extinct all together. :(

            • I am not anti shake it! either. I love Belgium 2004 and Cyprus 2005 f. e. … as everyone here has read hundreds of times. *YAWN*

            • And I like many of the Danish schlagers of the 80’s, particulary 1988 and 1989. There’s a shake-it lover in all of us.

        • If we talk age, Eulenspiegel could be my son, which he is not … although I had some fleeting affairs in the past and thus cannot be 100 % sure. There was a Swedish lady in Zell am See once …

          I would be very proud to have a son like Eulenspiegel though … even though he likes fish and Hapsburg baroque. ;)

      • We agree 8 years in a row (2006 to 2013). WOW! And on 2004 too. If we consider that I love Croatia 2005 too, that makes it 10 years. Only 15 years more and we can celebrate our silver wedding. ;)

    • 1997: can’t decide, either UK, Poland, Italy, Ireland or France
      1998: Finland
      1999: Iceland
      2000: Latvia
      2001: Bosnia and Herzegovina
      2002: France
      2003: Norway
      2004: Serbia and Montenegro
      2005: Denmark or Hungary
      2006: Bosnia and Herzegovina
      2007: Serbia
      2008: Portugal
      2009: Estonia
      2010: Belgium
      2011: Germany or Italy
      2012: Sweden
      2013: Netherlands

    • 1997 Slovenia 10
      1998 Malta 3
      1999 Lithuania 20
      2000 Austria 14
      2001 Germany 8
      2002 Finland 20
      2003 Poland 7
      2004 Albania 7
      2005 Moldova 6/Romania3/Slovenia 12th in semi (depending on my mood)
      2006 Germany 14
      2007 Slovenia 15
      2008 Bosnia & Herzegovina 10
      2009 Cyprus 14th in semi 2 (in the final: Armenia 10)
      2010 Albania 16
      2011 Serbia 14
      2012 Albania 5
      2013 Hungary 8

  14. The Gina G question should have been: “Explain how on earth the entry only placed 8th” LOL

    But all’s well that ends well I guess because this song became the biggest ESC hit in the last 30-40 years.

    I am listening to it now! Pretty much all the 1997 party compilation CD’s I own have this song. And, this is one time I can use the term “worldwide hit” and not be accused of being hyperbolic lol.

    That song was 12 points in 1996 and 12 points in 2013.

  15. My personal winners from 1997 onwards…

    1997: United Kingdom
    1998: United Kingdom or Netherlands
    1999: Lithuania or Bosnia & Herzegovina
    2000: Latvia
    2001: Russia
    2002: Macedonia
    2003: Russia, or either Belgium or Estonia
    2004: Serbia & Montenegro
    2005: Slovenia
    2006: Bosnia & Herzegovina
    2007: Serbia
    2008: Portugal or Bosnia & Herzegovina
    2009: France
    2010: Estonia
    2011: Germany
    2012: Albania
    2013: Norway

  17. My post 1990 esc winners (subject to changes though):
    1991: France
    1992: Yugoslavia
    1993: Norway
    1994: Ireland
    1995: Norway
    1996: Ireland
    1997: Italy/Greece
    1998: Croatia
    1999: Croatia
    2000: Latvia
    2001: France
    2002: France
    2003: Russia/Estonia/France/Portugal
    2004: Serbia & Montenegro
    2005: Greece/Moldova/…
    2006: Germany
    2007: Bulgaria
    2008: Serbia
    2009: BiH
    2010: Spain/Estonia
    2011: Italy
    2012: Israel
    2013: Hungary

  19. My winners from 2006 to 2013 (I have been watching Eurovision since 2006):
    2006: Finland 1st
    2007: Serbia 1st
    2008: Ukraine 2nd
    2009: Azerbaijan 3rd
    2010: Sweden 11th in SF (in the Final: Albania 16th)
    2011: Azerbaijan 1st or Slovenia 13th (worst Eurovision year ever, imo)
    2012: Sweden 1st
    2013: Israel 14th in SF (in the Final: Italy 7th)

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