Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A play that gave a word to the language

Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris in 1897 and was an immediate triumph. The character was loosely inspired by a real 17th-century writer, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, though the famous oversized nose and the balcony scene are Rostand's inventions. The play's success was such that the French language borrowed the name: a "cyrano" can still mean a man who woos on someone else's behalf. The real Cyrano, notably, wrote early science-fiction style tales about journeys to the moon and the sun.

The periodic table's naming logic

Cerium and barium are both genuine elements, named after the asteroid Ceres and the Greek word for "heavy" respectively. "Aquarium" is not, despite sounding perfectly scientific - it comes from the Latin for a place where water is kept. Element names tend to follow strict rules set by international bodies, which is why newly discovered elements get names like oganesson rather than anything whimsical. The table itself is arranged not by name but by atomic number, which is why the alphabet is no guide to chemistry.

Counting the world's countries

The figure of 196 is the most commonly cited total: 193 member states of the United Nations, plus two observer states, the Vatican and Palestine, and Kosovo. The number is genuinely contested, because "country" is a political question as much as a geographical one. Taiwan, for instance, functions as a state but is not universally recognised as one. Any quiz answer here is a convention, not an absolute.

Mountains, peninsulas and a misplaced assumption

South Korea occupies the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, which is why it qualifies as a peninsular country, while Egypt and Morocco are not. The Rocky Mountains run from northern British Columbia down through the western United States to New Mexico, so the USA is the answer here - though Canada shares the range. Kilimanjaro, meanwhile, sits entirely within Tanzania, near the Kenyan border. It is a dormant volcano with three cones, and its highest point, Uhuru Peak, is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world.