McCain (the frozen chip company) was founded in Canada

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 11: Well done, you beat us!
5+ out of 11: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) What is the only animal that does not have a nervous system?
2) What is the SI unit of magnetic field strength?
3) ...and what is the full form of this unit in SI base units?
4) What is ergophobia the fear of?
5) What is the fear of numbers called?
6) Is metrophobia the fear of subway cars, cities, poetry or measurements?
7) Who said "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.": Richard Nixon, Charles de Gaulle, John Diefenbaker, or Francisco Franco?
8) Who said "We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.": George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, or John McCain?
9) Who said "Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore. Anyone [in his place] would go nuts.": Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, or Hassan Rouhani?
10) Who said "I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.": Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin?
11) Who said "I would lean towards the idea, for myself, that you are born a pedophile, and it’s actually a problem that we do not know yet how to treat this pathology.": Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Viktor Orbán, or Alexis Tsipras?

The answers

1) Sponge
2) Tesla
3) kg·s⁻²·A⁻¹
4) Work
5) Arithmophobia
6) Poetry
7) Charles de Gaulle
8) George W. Bush
9) Vladimir Putin
10) Arnold Schwarzenegger
11) Nicolas Sarkozy

The doctor's excuses

1) I really like jellyfish, and so I am sad that this was not the correct answer (although apparently I don't know enough about them to know they did have rudimentary senses). Incidentally my dog has no nose and is thus very bad at smelling. Didn't know the sponge thing.
2) When we used to watch university challenge on the reg (it's harder when you're in Canada [ooer missus!]) they would always ask about magnetic flux and so we finally learned that the SI unit for that was the Weber. Unfortunately that wasn't the question. Quiztrolled :(
3) Not only did we not know in detail what a Weber was, we were also wrong about it being a Weber in the first place... double-wrong.
4) We thought of 3 things here... that an erg was a unit of energy and work (in the physics sense), that an erg was also a sand dune-type thing, and that ergo was latin for "therefore" (or something). Turns out we went for the wrong one of the three... which was maybe dumb of us. Although now I want to know what the actual fear of sand dunes is.
5) I find phobia questions deathly dull if I'm honest... perhaps I have a phobia of questions about phobias!!!! (I tried to find out what the Ancient Greek for that would have been and failed magnificently.)
6) Subway cars seemed dumb, so a 1 in 3 chance, and those Greeks sure did love their measurements! (They were also noted poets, but whatevs trevs.)
7) Nixon (famously) went to China, as immortalised in the John Adams opera Nixon In China. We guessed that this might have informed the sort of expert opinion we see in the quote.
8) We thought that Republicans didn't care about Africa, and Clinton seemed the odd one out (we thought the fact that it sounded like such an obvious "Bush-ism" was a red herring).
9) Rouhani was the only one we'd not heard of, which is a pretty boring reason for an answer, but we were pretty lost at sea otherwise.
10) It seemed mildly odd to put Bachmann in there since she seemed much less famous than the others. Also we had memories of her having to defend herself from allegations that she was a witch, and so maybe she's really dumb? Turns out you should always bet on an evil cyborg from the future.
11) Since we'd not had the answers yet, we didn't know how dismal a strategy "go for the one you know least about" (here, Orbán) was proving, and as such the streak of failure continued.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (5 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


Our alternative questions

Question 2

1) What three word phrase, attributed to Sir Alex Ferguson, can describe the nervous final minutes of a sporting event?
2) Which country's (slightly censored) 100 dinar banknote is pictured here?
3) If the magnetic flux through a surface is 100 webers and the surface is 10 square meters, what is the resulting magnetic flux density in Teslas? (As a hint, consult the picture in the previous question!)
4) Which 17th century philosopher came up with the proposition "je pense, donc je suis"?
5) Roman numerals were widely used in Europe until around the 14th century AD, at which point they began to be replaced by numerals bearing which demonym?

Question 6

6) Which city's subway system (the busiest in the world) uses this logo?
7) The First Republic of France was founded in 1792 during the French Revolution. Which numbered republic of France did de Gaulle found in 1958?
8) Who added to his growing list of controversial remarks by commenting on John McCain with "He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured."?
9) According to World Health Organization figures, approximately how many people in Africa died of AIDS-related disease in 2012? If you're within 25% of the WHO estimate you get the point.
10) Schwarzenegger went AWOL from the Austrian army so that he could participate in the Junior Mr. Europe bodybuilding competition and was punished by time in military prison. What does AWOL stand for?
11) The president of France also holds the title (along with the Bishop of Urgell) of Co-Prince of which European microstate?

The answers

1) Squeaky bum time
2) Serbia (and yes, that is good old Nikola on there)
3) 10 (the formula on the banknote tells us to divide the magnetic flux of 100 webers by the surface area in square meters, i.e. 100 divided by 10)
4) René Descartes
5) Arabic numerals (Hindu-Arabic or Indo-Arabic acceptable).
6) Beijing
7) Fifth republic
8) Donald Trump
9) 1,108,000 (so 831,000 to 1,385,000; you can read more here here)
10) Absent WithOut Leave (or Absent Without Official Leave)
11) Andorra

How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!

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