Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The island nation that is easy to underestimate

Fiji is an archipelago in the South Pacific made up of around 330 islands, though only about a third of them are inhabited. The two largest, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, are home to the vast majority of the population. Many of the smaller islands are tiny coral atolls that barely rise above sea level, which makes the country particularly exposed to rising oceans.

A director who changed the summer blockbuster

Steven Spielberg directed Jaws in 1975, and its success helped invent the modern summer blockbuster. The film was famously plagued by a mechanical shark that kept malfunctioning, which pushed Spielberg to suggest the shark's presence rather than show it. That restraint, paired with John Williams' ominous two-note theme, became one of the most effective examples of suspense in cinema.

The flightless bird built for speed

The ostrich is the world's largest living bird and, despite being unable to fly, it can sprint at speeds that leave most predators behind. Its wings are not useless, though: they help with balance and steering during those fast runs. Peacocks and swans, by contrast, are both capable of flight, even if the peacock's heavy train makes takeoff a serious effort.

A capital that tells a Nordic story

Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and is built across a cluster of islands where Lake Malaren meets the Baltic Sea. That geography gives the city its nickname, the Venice of the North, and means bridges do much of the work that roads do elsewhere. Sweden itself is the largest of the Nordic countries by population.

A region on the edge of the desert

Mauritania lies within the Sahel, the semi-arid belt that stretches across Africa just south of the Sahara. The Sahel acts as a transition zone between the desert and the greener savannas further south, and it is notoriously vulnerable to drought. Its name comes from the Arabic word for coast or shore, a nod to its position at the desert's edge.