Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A novel that defined an era

F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925, and it is now widely regarded as one of the great American novels. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway and centres on the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his obsession with Daisy Buchanan. Set on Long Island during the Jazz Age, it captures both the glamour and the emptiness of the era's wealth.

The beast that gave us a word

The Chimera of Greek mythology combined a lion, a goat and a dragon or serpent into a single creature, and it was said to breathe fire. It appears in the story of Bellerophon, who defeated it with the help of the winged horse Pegasus. From this monstrous hybrid, English took the word "chimera" for anything imagined but impossible, or for an organism made of genetically distinct tissues.

A fountain fed by an ancient aqueduct

The Trevi Fountain in Rome stands at the end of the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct originally built in the first century BC to supply the city with water. The monumental baroque fountain we see today was designed by Nicola Salvi and completed in the 18th century. Visitors still follow the tradition of tossing a coin into the water, a custom made famous by the film Three Coins in the Fountain.

Elements, nutrients and a confusing pair of symbols

Strontium is a soft, silvery metal that gives fireworks their red colour, while thiamine and folate are vitamins, not elements. Selenium, whose symbol is Se, is a nonmetal found in soils and used in glassmaking and electronics. Its symbol is easy to confuse with Si for silicon and Sr for strontium, a trap that catches out plenty of careful readers.