Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The canal that redrew the map of trade

The Suez Canal opened in 1869 after a decade of construction, linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and sparing ships the long haul around Africa. It was not the first attempt at such a route - ancient rulers had tried connecting the two seas centuries earlier - but the modern canal turned Egypt into a strategic chokepoint for world shipping. The Panama Canal, the quiz's decoy, was not completed until 1914.

The salt in your kitchen, at the atomic level

Table salt is sodium chloride, written as NaCl: one sodium atom paired with one chlorine atom. That pairing is not cosmetic. Sodium on its own reacts violently with water, and chlorine is a toxic gas, yet together they form a stable crystal we sprinkle on food. The other options, Na2CO3 and HCl, are washing soda and hydrochloric acid - both real chemicals, neither one table salt.

Why the Maldives sits at the bottom of the size chart

The Maldives is Asia's smallest country by both land area and population, a chain of around 1,200 coral islands scattered across the Indian Ocean. Only roughly 200 of those islands are inhabited, and much of the land sits barely a metre or two above sea level. That low elevation makes the country one of the most exposed places on Earth to rising seas.

A small gland with a big job

The pancreas produces insulin, the hormone that moves glucose from the bloodstream into cells. When the pancreas cannot keep up, the result is diabetes, a condition that has been treated with injected insulin since the 1920s. The pancreas also makes digestive enzymes, so it works double duty - which is why it appears in both biology exams and medical headlines.

Truffaut, the critic who became a filmmaker

François Truffaut directed "The 400 Blows" in 1959, a semi-autobiographical story about a boy navigating neglect and trouble in Paris. Before turning to directing, Truffaut wrote sharp film criticism, and his debut became a defining work of the French New Wave, a movement that favoured location shooting and personal storytelling over studio polish.