Quiz of the Day

Bat. A flying squirrel only glides. A bat wing is a hand, with skin stretched between very long fingers.

Salim-Javed. Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar wrote Zanjeer and Deewaar, the films that made Amitabh Bachchan a star. The other three pairs are composers.

Lord's. Lord's has been the headquarters of the MCC since 1814, and the club is still custodian of the laws.

Great Pyramid. Greek writers listed seven wonders. Six were lost to earthquakes and war, and only this one survives.

Mount Everest. It sits on the border of Nepal and China, and it is still pushed a few millimetres higher each year.

A playback singer. The song is recorded before the scene is shot, so the actor works to a track that is already finished.

22 yards. Twenty two yards has been the distance since the written laws of 1744, and it is exactly one chain.

Shah Jahan. He raised it as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and his son Aurangzeb later confined him in Agra Fort.

Pacific Ocean. It covers more of the planet than every piece of dry land added together.

Picturisation. Because the tune is locked first, the visuals are built to fit music that cannot be changed on set.

100°C. High in the mountains the air presses down less, so water boils cooler and rice takes longer to cook.

A Bengali novel. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay published it in 1917, and Hindi versions followed in 1936, 1955 and 2002.

A six. A four is waved across the chest instead, so arms going straight up always means the ball cleared the rope.

1,000. Milli always means one thousandth, which is why a millimetre is a thousandth of a metre too.

The Earth turning on its axis. The Earth spins once every 24 hours, so your side of the planet turns into the sunlight and out again.

A colour release. K. Asif had shot only a few sequences in colour, and the 2004 version colourised the whole film digitally.

1983. India bowled the West Indies out for 140 at Lord's and defended a total of 183 to win by 43 runs.

Jupiter. The storm is wider than the whole Earth, and astronomers have watched it for well over a century.

Palindrome. Malayalam and level both work backwards, and so does the number 121.

A masala film. The word borrows from the spice blend, because the film serves several genres in one helping instead of picking a lane.

Indian Ocean. It is the only ocean named after a country, and its surface water is the warmest of any.

Greek. Alpha and beta are the first two Greek letters, so the word really just means 'a b'.

Bombay. The Hindi film trade grew up in the city now called Mumbai, and Tamil cinema is nicknamed Kollywood after the Chennai suburb of Kodambakkam.

Kolkata. Eden Gardens opened in 1864, which makes it one of the oldest grounds anywhere outside England.

Vitamin D. Ultraviolet light starts the reaction, and the body needs the result to absorb calcium for bone.

Light travels faster than sound. Sound needs about three seconds to cross a kilometre, while light crosses it almost instantly.

Sholay. Ramesh Sippy directed it, and its dialogue sold on gramophone records as briskly as its tickets sold at the door.

Slip. Slips stand in a line next to the keeper, and gully fills the gap a little squarer of the last one.

Five. The five stand for five continents, counting the Americas as one, and the ring colours plus the white ground appear in every national flag.

Mercury. Mercury also has the shortest year of all. It goes round the Sun in just 88 Earth days.

Five. Five days give both sides two innings each, which is why a draw counts as a genuine result.

Red blood cells. Haemoglobin inside them picks up oxygen in the lungs and lets it go in the tissues.

Blue whale. It lives on tiny shrimp-like krill, and a newborn calf is already longer than a car.

Guru Dutt. He directed and starred again in Kaagaz Ke Phool, the first Indian film shot in CinemaScope.

Fifty. The early World Cups ran to sixty overs a side, and fifty became the standard in the late 1980s.

Nile. The Nile runs northwards into the Mediterranean, which is why Upper Egypt sits in the south.

206. A baby starts with about 300, and many of them fuse together as the child grows.

Mother India. Mehboob Khan directed it, and Lagaan earned the same nomination more than forty years later.

Two. Two bails rest in grooves across three stumps, and the wicket is only broken once a bail is dislodged.

1945. It ran from 1939 to 1945, six years in all, while the First World War had ended back in 1918.