Pub Quiz: Culture & Entertainment

Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Frost's The Road Not Taken reflects on a fork in the road and is often misread as a simple ode to nonconformity.

A metaphor directly equates two unlike things, as in calling time a thief, without using like or as.

Won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize

Shelley's Ozymandias reflects on a decayed ruler's monument, ironically boasting of works long since crumbled.

A simile compares two things explicitly using like or as, as in describing someone as brave as a lion.

Won the Booker Prize

Poe's The Raven follows a grieving narrator visited by a bird whose refrain of Nevermore became instantly famous.

Alliteration repeats initial consonant sounds across nearby words, adding rhythm to phrases like Peter Piper's tongue twister.

Set partly in Moscow

Maya Angelou's Still I Rise became an anthem of resilience and defiance against oppression.

Onomatopoeia forms words that imitate the sounds they describe, like buzz or clang.

Published in Spanish in 1982

Kipling's If— offers guidance on living with integrity, framed as advice from a father to his son.

Personification gives human qualities to non-human things, as when the wind is said to whisper.

A historical mystery

Henley's Invictus declares an unconquerable spirit, closing with the famous line about mastering one's fate.

Hyperbole exaggerates deliberately for effect, as in claiming to have told someone a million times.

A poetry collection

Wordsworth's poem celebrates a field of daffodils, inspired by a real walk he took with his sister.

The portrait hangs in the Louvre

Named after Impression, Sunrise

The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, hangs at the Louvre and is famed for its enigmatic smile.

The Eiffel Tower was built as a temporary structure for a world's fair yet became a permanent Paris icon.

Medieval Europe

Painted in 1889

Explored dreams and the unconscious

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night's swirling sky largely from memory while staying in an asylum.

The Burj Khalifa rises more than 800 meters, making it the tallest building on Earth.

Medieval Europe

Its finale includes the Ode to Joy

Emphasized geometry and primary colours

Leonardo's Last Supper mural covers the wall of a monastery dining hall in Milan.

The Sydney Opera House's distinctive sail-shaped roofs took far longer to complete than originally planned.

1920s and 1930s

The opera premiered in 1791

Pigment bonds as plaster dries

Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is nicknamed the Mona Lisa of the North, and its sitter remains unidentified.

The Empire State Building was completed in just over a year during the Great Depression and briefly stood as the tallest in the world.

Founded in 1919

Popular music

Bach's Baroque compositions, including the Brandenburg Concertos, are renowned for their intricate counterpoint.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, set beneath the Paris Opera House, became one of Broadway's longest-running shows.

The Beatles explored a wide range of recording techniques and musical styles across their albums.

Popular music

Les Misérables adapts Victor Hugo's novel into a musical set amid 19th-century French unrest.

Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, helped push the genre into the cultural mainstream.

Hamilton retold a founding father's story through hip-hop and swept a record number of Tony nominations.

1984 album

Chopin, remembered for his Nocturnes, composed almost exclusively for solo piano throughout his career.

Wicked reimagines the Wizard of Oz story from the perspective of its witches.

2011 album

Tchaikovsky's ballet scores, including The Nutcracker, remain among the most performed in history.

The Lion King musical's elaborate puppetry helped make it one of the highest-grossing shows in theater history.

Whitney Houston's powerful vocals on hits like I Will Always Love You made her one of history's best-selling artists.

2016 album

Brahms, often seen as Beethoven's heir, took decades to finish his first symphony before writing his Hungarian Dances.

Chicago satirized Jazz Age crime and celebrity, and its film version later won Best Picture.

1998 album

1977 space opera

A suspense classic built around identity, fear and perception.

Casablanca is a 1942 wartime romance that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

I Love Lucy helped pioneer the three-camera sitcom production format still used today.

Super Mario Bros. helped revive the video game industry after 1983 by popularizing side-scrolling platforming.

Adventure film character

Citizen Kane follows the rise and fall of a newspaper magnate and is frequently cited among cinema's greatest achievements.

The Twilight Zone told self-contained science fiction stories often carrying social commentary.

The Legend of Zelda's open, exploration-driven design influenced countless later open-world games.

Pixar character

A stranded visitor from another world befriends a young boy.

Gone with the Wind is an epic Civil War-era romance that held box-office admission records for decades.

Star Trek imagined an optimistic future in space and launched a decades-long media franchise.

Pac-Man became one of gaming's most recognizable characters, designed partly to broaden arcade gaming's appeal.

Pixar character

The Wizard of Oz is known for its transition from sepia-toned Kansas into vivid Technicolor Oz.

Sesame Street combined education with puppetry created in part by Jim Henson.

Tetris, created by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984, became one of the most ported games ever made.

DreamWorks character

A lonely New York cab driver descends into violent obsession.

Greek myth describes Zeus as an Olympian god associated with the sky, weather, law, and kingship.

Odin, the chief Norse god, is said to have sacrificed an eye for a drink from the well of wisdom.

Dragons appear across world folklore, often fire-breathing in Western tales but benevolent in many Asian traditions.

Judaism

Diwali lights lamps across India and the Hindu diaspora to mark light's victory over darkness.

Hera is an Olympian goddess whose myths connect marriage, queenship, and family life.

Thor wields the hammer Mjölnir, which famously returns to his hand after being thrown.

The phoenix regenerates from its own ashes and has come to symbolize renewal across many cultures.

Judaism

Chinese New Year and Vietnamese Tết follow lunisolar calendars that coordinate lunar months with the solar year.

Poseidon is the Greek god of the sea, earthquakes, and horses.

Loki, Norse mythology's shapeshifting trickster, both aids and torments the other gods across the myths.

The unicorn's single horn was once believed in medieval legend to purify poisoned water.

Christianity

Mexican families build ofrendas, decorated altars, to honor deceased loved ones during the Day of the Dead.

Hades rules the Greek underworld in myth and is also the name used for his realm.

Freyja, the Norse goddess of love and war, receives half of all warriors who die in battle.

The griffin, part lion and part eagle, was often depicted guarding treasure or sacred sites.

Christianity

Oktoberfest began in 1810 as a celebration of a royal Bavarian wedding and grew into the world's largest beer festival.