- Today is 28 February. Why does February have so few days?
a) Because the Emperor Augustus took one of the days and added it to August
b) Because the Roman King Numa added February at the end of the year 713 BC and there were only 28 days left between January and March
c) Because the Romans kept it as a month of purification, and they didn’t want to spend too long fasting
d) Nobody knows.
- Shrove Tuesday can fall on 29 February, and will do so next in
a) 2028
b) 2096
c) 2100
d) 2244
- The pancake bell was rung at church about 11 a.m. on Shrove Tuesday
a) to announce that lunch was ready
b) to call people to confession
c) to tell people to fetch their flour from the church tithe barn
d) to warn people that the Carnival Procession was about to start
- The pancake race in Olney, Buckinghamshire, dates back to around
a) 1945
b) 1845
c) 1545
d) 1445
- Many English places had traditional football matches on Shrove Tuesday, but this custom died out in the 19th century because
a) it became illegal to play football in the street
b) the newly-founded Football Association made people pay to watch
c) Shrove Tuesday stopped being a public holiday
d) Queen Victoria was not amused by it
- Pancakes are made from
a) bitter
b) butter
c) batter
d) banter
- The Czech word for pancake, palačinka, comes from
a) the German word Palatschinke, “palace ham”
b) the Latin word placenta, “flat cake”
c) the Hungarian word palacsinta, “an archery target”
d) an Arabic expession, b’al al sukr, “before the sugar”
- Pancakes contain little or no
a) calcium
b) potassium
c) vitamin C
d) vitamin D
- In Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the jester Touchstone talks of
a) enormous walking pancakes
b) pancakes with mustard
c) praying to a pancake
d) pancakes on horseback
- Pancake syndrome is
a) an African disease caused by mites in flour
b) a term used by comedians to describe an audience which fails to laugh at jokes
c) a disease attributed to certain squadrons in Word War II whose aircraft crashed more frequently than normal
d) mental confusion caused by doing too many impossible quizzes
