Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A Dutch currency that vanished into wallets

The Netherlands was one of the first countries to adopt the euro in 1999 for electronic payments, with coins and notes arriving in 2002. Before that, the Dutch guilder had served for centuries and was among the oldest currencies in Europe still in circulation. The krone, by contrast, belongs to Denmark and Norway, which both chose to stay outside the eurozone.

The road that defined a generation

Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road" in a burst of spontaneous prose, drawing on his own travels across America with Neal Cassady. Published in 1957, the novel became a defining text of the Beat Generation, a loose movement of writers who rejected postwar conformity. William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, both listed among the wrong answers, were close friends and fellow Beats.

Yalta: a resort with a political past

Yalta sits on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula, facing the Black Sea, where a mild climate made it a favoured holiday destination in the Soviet era. In February 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met there for a conference that shaped the postwar map of Europe. The town's name is now inseparable from that diplomatic moment.

Two capitals, one ancient city

Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent, is the largest city in Central Asia, while Samarkand and Bukhara are older Silk Road centres famed for their blue-tiled mosques and madrasas. Samarkand in particular served as the capital of Timur's empire in the fourteenth century. Tashkent later grew into the region's main administrative and industrial hub.

Avocado: fruit, not vegetable

Guacamole takes its name from the Aztec Nahuatl words for avocado and sauce, and the avocado itself is botanically a fruit, specifically a large berry with a single seed. Its creamy texture comes from high fat content, unusual among fruits. Onion, chilli and lime are traditional additions, but they play supporting roles.