University Challenge: Are you ready for your starter for 10?

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University Challenge: Are you ready for your starter for 10?
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1. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, what relation is the murdered Tybalt to Lady Capulet?

2. Alkanes are hydrocarbon compounds with only a single carbon bond. The first four members of the series are: methane, ethane (molecular model above), propane and which other?

3. From the Latin for “to drink”, what name is given to water that is deemed fit for human consumption?

4. Species in which family of seabirds include Roseate, Sandwich and Arctic, the last of which is noted for the distance of its migratory flights?

5. Which year marked the first publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the start of Captain Cook’s final voyage and the Declaration of Independence by the American colonies?

6. On a sand barrier facing the Atlantic, the town of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina is the site of a memorial to which pioneer aviators?

7. From the Greek for “likeness”, what word of four letters is used in both religious art and computing? 

8. What is the numerical value of 1,000 to the power of 1, minus 1,000 to the power of 0?

9. Used in English since the First World War, which German term means a political policy determined by practical considerations, rather than by morality?

10. In chemistry, if a chemical change involving loss of electrons during a reaction is called oxidation, what term is used for a change involving gain of electrons?

11. Alternatively named Chopinianawhich one-act romantic ballet without a plot was choreographed by Michel Fokine to music by Chopin? 

12. Which honorary title was first conferred in around 1642 on Charles I's daughter Princess Mary? 

13. For the Moon it is 2.4km per second, for the earth 11.2km per second and for Jupiter 59.5km per second. Which velocity is this?

14. Icterus is the medical name for which condition, caused by an excess of the bile pigment bilirubin in the blood?

15. What word of four letters links: the sprinkler of a watering-can, the design on a compass card and a pink or pale-crimson colour?

16. Exiled as a regicide after the fall of Napoleon, which French painter is noted for works such as The Oath of the Horatii and The Death of Marat?

17. Rashid and Dumyat, also known as Rosetta and Damietta, are distributaries that carry the waters of which river to the Mediterranean Sea?

18. Which Czech-born film-maker was the director of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (starring Jack Nicholson) and Amadeus?

19. In a work of 1964, Evelyn Waugh observed that “only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write...” What?

20. Giving the answer in roman numerals, which number is double DXC? 


These are all “starter” questions, though they do get progressively harder! Compiled by Thomas Benson, Questions Editor of University Challenge 

University Challenge is on tonight at 8:00pm on BBC2.