Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The prize that came with a guilty conscience

Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1867, a discovery that made him wealthy and, by many accounts, uneasy about how his explosives might be remembered. When a French newspaper mistakenly published an obituary for him in 1888, it condemned him as a merchant of death. That episode is often cited as the spark behind his decision to leave his fortune to a set of prizes honouring human achievement.

A thriller that changed the music video

Michael Jackson's Thriller arrived in 1982 and became a defining pop record of the decade. Its 14-minute short film, directed by John Landis, blended horror imagery with choreography and pushed music video toward cinematic territory. The album also featured contributions from artists such as Paul McCartney and Eddie Van Halen, showing how broadly Jackson drew from pop, rock and funk.

Camus and the absurd

Albert Camus published The Stranger in 1942, the same period in which he was developing his idea of the absurd. The novel follows Meursault, a man whose emotional detachment unsettles those around him. Camus was born in Algeria and wrote about the Mediterranean world with a spare, cool style that still feels modern.

Two capitals, two very different cities

Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, and Rabat is the capital of Morocco. Both are political and cultural centres, but they sit in very different worlds: Zagreb in inland Central Europe, Rabat on Morocco's Atlantic coast. The quiz's other options, Belgrade and Sarajevo, are capitals too, which is what makes this kind of question deceptively tricky.

A mountain range shared, not owned

The Himalayas stretch across several countries, including Nepal, India, Bhutan, Pakistan and China. That is why a question about which country they are in can feel awkward: no single nation can claim the whole range. The highest peak, Everest, sits on the border between Nepal and China's Tibet region, a reminder that geography rarely respects neat national lines.