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| Britain |
| For You Extreme Anglophile Scholars Out There |
| 2007-01-11 |
| King William's College - which was founded in 1833 - is situated at Castletown on the Isle of Man. Once a year they produce the brain-busting General Knowledge Paper (Exam), whose 100 or so questions are astoundingly difficult. Most educated people can find answers to fewer than 10 of the hundred. It helps to be very familiar with Britain, British history and literature. The GKP can be downloaded in .pdf format at this link, and the answers will be published, to great excitement, in The Guardian newspaper, on or about the end of January. So buckle your seatbelts, give it a go, and let us know how you did when the answers come out. If you can score an 11, you get serious bragging rights. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #8 Lots of the Lit'rachaw questions appear to be from period public schoolboy adventure stories, full of period public schoolboy slang. I've read a bit in the genre, and it's just as uninteresting as you'd think. I got bored at that point. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-01-11 19:59 |
| #7 Piss poor typography. Typical middle-nineteennities sort of get it on the web shit. Most of it set in what looks like Caslon Olde Style Bewildered. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2007-01-11 19:40 |
| #6 OK, 'moose, are you keeping an eye open for the answers...? |
| Posted by: BigEd 2007-01-11 19:01 |
| #5 Of course, I hope that you won't interpret the gist of my post in the sense that I presume you to be an erudite idiot! Hey, I resemble that remark! Except for the "erudite" part. I admit, the astronomy stuff was a gift. I didn't get any of the botany off the top of my head, but it probably wouldn't be too hard to find a couple of them. |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2007-01-11 16:15 |
| #4 Good on ya, Angie, I reckon that you've nailed the astronomical and botanical questions, in bulk. Of course, I hope that you won't interpret the gist of my post in the sense that I presume you to be an erudite idiot! ;-) |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-01-11 14:53 |
| #3 These are supposed to be hard? I've already got at least seven of them, and I'm only at the third section. Are we supposed to do these without looking it up? OK, I'm pretty sure I have my 11 now. |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2007-01-11 14:37 |
| #2 Geebus! Most of the questions considered important? Minute trivia from obscure works of literature or history... that is ... some of it. Not sure, but from that test I would surmise that the college's main goal is to keep one an erudite idiot. ;-) There was, some time ago, published a test for an 8th graders from 1899. A different scope, from grammar to arithmetic and geometry, sciences to history. More dependent on reasoning and logic than erudition. Very good, most fairly college educated people would be lucky to score 45%, nowadays. If you were educated between 50's and end of 60's, you'd be probably better off, scoring well above 60%. I've got 89% on that damn test for 8th graders. That's not bragging, I was quite put off that I did not make 100% as I expected I would. Sheesh! For 8th graders... |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-01-11 14:30 |
| #1 Wow... first glance at that thing tells me I'd score a ZERO with out serious library time. What's frustating is that I saw about 5 that are tantalizing (I know I read this somewhere) but I have absolutely no clue where to begin. |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2007-01-11 14:29 |