Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A capital that moved twice

Bishkek, the answer to the first question, has changed names more often than most capitals. Founded in 1878 as the Russian garrison town of Pishpek, it became Frunze in 1926, named after the Soviet military commander Mikhail Frunze, who was born there. When Kyrgyzstan declared independence in 1991, the city reclaimed a version of its older name, and today it is the country's largest city, home to roughly a million people, with the snow-capped Ala-Too mountains visible from many streets.

The ocean that swallows the others

The Pacific is not just the largest ocean - it is larger than all the rest combined, covering about a third of the planet's surface. Ferdinand Magellan named it "Mar Pacifico", meaning peaceful sea, after his expedition crossed it in 1520 without hitting a major storm. That calm did not last: the Pacific Ring of Fire, the belt of volcanoes and earthquake zones around its edges, produces most of the world's seismic activity.

Ravioli and the art of the filling

Ravioli, the answer to the pasta question, are defined less by their shape than by what is hidden inside. The classic version stuffs squares of egg pasta with ricotta and spinach, though fillings vary from region to region and can include meat, pumpkin or seafood. The sealed edges matter: they keep the filling from leaking during boiling, which is why ravioli are pressed firmly shut before they ever meet the water.

Gibraltar, a rock with two names

Gibraltar, which belongs to the United Kingdom, sits at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and guards the narrow strait between Europe and Africa. Spain ceded the territory to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and it has remained British ever since, though Spain has long disputed the claim. To the ancient Greeks and Romans, the rock was one of the Pillars of Hercules, marking the edge of the known world.

Leonardo, the original Renaissance man

Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452 in the Tuscan village of Vinci, is the archetypal polymath: painter, anatomist, engineer and inventor. His surviving notebooks, filled with mirror-written observations and sketches of flying machines, reveal a mind that treated art and science as a single pursuit. He spent his final years in France, at the court of Francis I, and died there in 1519.