Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A capital that keeps its own time

Montevideo, the answer to the first question, sits on the northern shore of the Rio de la Plata and is the capital of Uruguay. It is one of South America's smaller capitals by population, yet it has an outsized cultural footprint, having hosted the first FIFA World Cup in 1930. The city's name is often traced to a Portuguese sailor's exclamation upon sighting a hill, though the exact origin is debated.

When a country changes its name

Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon for much of its modern history, a name inherited from colonial rule and used officially until 1972. Renaming the country was part of a broader push to reclaim indigenous identity and distance itself from its colonial past. Similar renamings have happened elsewhere, from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe and from Burma to Myanmar.

Solving the longitude problem at sea

John Harrison's marine chronometer, the answer to question six, was a breakthrough in navigation. For centuries, sailors could work out their latitude fairly easily but struggled with longitude, which requires knowing the time difference between the ship and a reference point. Harrison's precision timepieces, developed in the 18th century, kept accurate time on long voyages and finally made reliable longitude calculation possible.

The river that drains a rainforest

The Congo River, which flows through the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the deepest river in the world and the second-largest by discharge after the Amazon. Its vast basin supports the second-largest rainforest on the planet and is home to an extraordinary range of species, many of them found nowhere else. The river has also long served as a vital transport route across Central Africa.