Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A lucky accident that changed medicine

Alexander Fleming noticed in 1928 that a mould had contaminated one of his petri dishes and was killing the bacteria around it. That mould was a Penicillium fungus, and the substance it produced became penicillin. The discovery did not immediately transform medicine: it took the work of Howard Florey and Ernst Chain during the 1940s to turn it into a usable drug. Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945.

The chickpea at the heart of the Middle East's favourite dip

Hummus is built on chickpeas, blended with tahini, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil. The word itself is simply Arabic for "chickpea". Versions of the dish appear across the Levant, and its exact origins are debated, which is why it can be a surprisingly sensitive topic at regional dinner tables. Outside the Middle East it is often sold as a health food, though traditional recipes are generous with olive oil and tahini.

A cheese named after a small Dutch town

Edam takes its name from the town of Edam in North Holland, where it was historically traded and exported. The cheese is traditionally coated in red wax, though the wax is purely packaging: the cheese inside is pale yellow. Edam is made with partly skimmed milk, which gives it a firmer, lower-fat character than its better-known Dutch cousin, Gouda.

Pebbles, and a cartoon stone-age family

Pebbles Flintstone is the infant daughter of Fred and Wilma in The Flintstones, which first aired in the United States in 1960. The show transplanted mid-century suburban life into a prehistoric setting, complete with stone cars and dinosaur-powered appliances. Pebbles was introduced as a baby in the early 1960s, and the character later grew up in spin-off series and TV films.

A capital that few players can place on a map

Windhoek is the capital of Namibia and sits on a high plateau roughly in the centre of the country. It grew from a settlement near hot springs, and its name comes from the Afrikaans for "windy corner". Namibia itself became independent in 1990, one of the last countries in Africa to do so.