Dutch, Double Dutch, or Duchess? Quiz

Answer: Dutch

Stroopwafel is a large, thin cookie made of two waffles held together with a syrup or melted sugar filling. They were first made in the Netherlands somewhere in the late 1700s to early 1800s. The name literally means "syrup waffle", though in other countries they can be made of other materials like thin cookies.

Answer: Dutch

The klompen, or wooden shoes, are a kind of Dutch clog and date from almost 900 years ago, with the first pair believe to have been produced somewhere around 1230. These shoes are an ancient equivalent of modern safety shoes and were generally worn by farmers and builders. Around 3,000,000 of these shoes are still produced every year, and though the vast majority of them are sold to tourists, there are still a substantial number of Dutch people who use them to keep their feet safe when they are at work.

Answer: Dutch

A canal city in the southern Netherlands, this beautiful town is the home for the manufacture of Delftware, pottery painted in a distinctive blue. The city is the home to some of the more famous painters that the Netherlands has given the world including the great Baroque painter, Johannes Vermeer.

Answer: Double Dutch

This is a jump-rope trick where you lift one leg and place it over one arm and inside the rope as it is twirling. Because you will be turning the rope at the same time you will have to hop to maintain your balance. The danger with this trick is that if you mis-time it, you will end up twisting the rope around your leg and usually tripping your jumper at the same time.

Answer: Double Dutch

This is a skill for the jumper where they need to perform a cartwheel followed by a back-flip in the air. This requires serious coordination not only from the jumper but also the turners. They need to slow down their turns as much as possible and also widen their grip to the maximum to give the jumper enough room to be able to complete both tricks.

They also need to walk forward as the trick is performed as the jumper will move forward as they do the cartwheel.

Answer: Double Dutch

This is purely a jumper's trick. The jumper springs forward onto their hands and lowers themselves to the ground as if they are doing a pushup. As they nearly reach the ground, they push back up while snapping their legs back like a frog to give them momentum.

They then straighten up to a standing position and continue jumping. This is not a technically difficult trick, but it requires quite a bit of upper-body strength.

Answer: Duchess

The twice-married and twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson, is probably the most well known and perhaps most infamous duchess of the 20th century, the Duchess of Windsor. She so totally enraptured Edward, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) that he had to abdicate the English throne to continue to be with the woman he loved.

This was not the only scandal she was involved in, as she and her now defunct-king husband were admirers of Adolf Hitler and made a visit to meet with him in 1937.

Answer: Duchess

Rachel Meghan Markle, a biracial American actress, married Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex in 2018 thus becoming the Duchess of Sussex. The couple has been involved in such diverse charity work as fighting for clean water, supporting elephants, and writing a cookbook - the proceeds of which went to support migrants.

In 2020, the couple stepped back from, but did not renounce, their royal title. Since then they have complained publicly and vociferously about the invasion of their privacy all while managing to produce 3 docuseries, 2 documentaries, and an extended Oprah interview.

Answer: Duchess

The "Duchess of Malfi" is one of the best Jacobean tragic plays, produced and staged in The Globe, the same theatre that many of Shakespeare's plays were. The story, like many Jacobean tales, is bloody through and through. It opens with the widowed Malfi falling for and secretly marrying a stablehand, Antonio. They elope and have three children together.

Her brothers and a cardinal hatch a plan to kidnap Malfi and Antonio. They grab the duchess and her two youngest children, but Antonio and the eldest son escape. The cardinal has Malfi and her children murdered, confesses this to his mistress, and then murders her with a poisoned Bible(!?!?). Meanwhile the brother has switched sides, goes to kill the cardinal at church, but mistakenly kills Antonio who is also there to kill the cardinal. Finally, the brother kills the cardinal and is then himself killed fighting another of the plotters against Malfi. They both die together. Malfi's oldest son is now the only surviving member of the play who is standing on the proverbial pile of bodies. The play ends with him inheriting his mother's fortune, though he had promised his dad that he would turn his back on it.

A rollicking good time!!

Answer: Dutch

This Dutch word, Gezelligheid, meaning enjoying in a cozy way the good things in life, is very close to the Danish concept of hygge, which became an international phenomenon in the mid-2010s and was actually voted runner-up word of the year 2016 by Collins Dictionary.

The concept is one that is close to the mindfulness movement of slowing down and taking pleasure in small things. Both the Danes and the Dutch have sought to export products and services around these twin ideas, all while maintaining that the word is basically untranslatable.

They say that the word encompasses the heart of Dutch culture and so must be experienced rather than learned...Score one for the Dutch Tourist Board.