Odd One Out / Common Bond Trivia Quiz

Answer: Communication

Communication is the transfer of information, which the other three terms all attempt to hinder.

A Chinese wall is a protocol that is set up within an organisation to prevent transfer of information that could lead to a conflict of interest. For example, an investment firm might institute a Chinese wall between those members who advise clients and those who may have inside information.

An embargo is a ban on trade with a specific country or group of countries. It is a form of economic sanction used to apply pressure in international diplomacy.

A blockade involves physically preventing people or goods from either entering or leaving a specific place. In the American Civil War, the Union blockade of Confederate ports played a major role in damaging the economy by preventing the export of cotton (and removing the income that would have resulted).

Answer: Writing

Of course, if you are ambidextrous or broke the hand you do not use for writing, you may not be too badly inconvenienced, but you could well find it challenging to write with a broken hand.

The other activities are not hand-dependent. You can do simple arithmetic in your head; blinking certainly does not put any strain on your hand; and you may not feel like whistling, but you could.

Answer: LMNOP

Sixteen, although written as a word, is the representation of a number, and could also be written as 16. 1/4 (one quarter) is also a number, a fraction rather than an integer. 56789 is a string of five numbers which may be intended as a sequence, or may represent a large number.

LMNOP is a string of letters with no particular meaning. The letters do not represent anything else, and do not relate to any physical object or theoretical concept - aside from being a sequence found near the middle of the alphabet used in English.

Answer: Greek

Fennel is a flowering plant in the carrot family, native to the Mediterranean. The bulbous base of some species is cooked and eaten as a vegetable, but it is more widely known for the use of its leaves and seeds to add an anise flavour to foods. It is therefore both spice and herb in culinary terms.

Mace is a spice obtained from the lacy outer coating of the nutmeg seed. Tasting a bit like nutmeg, a bit like cinnamon and with a hint of pepper, it originated in Indonesia. (The chemical spray called mace marketed for use as a personal defense weapon is not related!)

Cayenne is a mildly pungent chili pepper, whose fruits are dried and ground to be used as a spice in cooking.

Greek is a type of cooking, but not a herb or spice. There is, however, a spice called fenugreek whose seeds are used in making curry and medicinal remedies.

Answer: Vowel

These may all rhyme (depending on how you pronounce vowel!), but vowels are different, not only because the word can be pronounced with two syllables. They are a representation of specific open-voiced sounds used in languages, whereas the other three are about raw emotional expression, voiced or not voiced. It can also be noted that vowel is the only one of the four words with two vowels.

A scowl is a facial expression showing pain or anger. A growl is a guttural sound such as that made by a dog that is in threatening mode. A howl is a long wailing noise, again commonly used to describe a dog's vocalisation.

Answer: Roman

Three demonyms refer to residents of, or artefacts from, the North American continent. Canada and Mexico are two of the three countries that make up the continent, along with the United States of America - of which Texas is a state.

Rome, Italy, is not just a hop, skip and a jump from North America - except over the Internet.

Answer: Russian

Romance languages are those which have evolved from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. The five most widely spoken of them are Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French and Romanian. (The era of European colonization spread them around the world, so the number of people speaking these languages is far larger than the population of their country of origin.) Of these, Italian is the closest to its origins, while French is the most different, due to interaction with other language groups. There are also many regional variants.

Russian is an East Slavic language. Because of its different origin, it is written using a different alphabet, a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet developed in the 9th century for use in transcribing Slavic words. Watchers of international sports competitions during the 20th century may recall seeing the letters CCCP used to represent competitors from the USSR - CCCP is the Cyrillic representation of the acronym SSSR (for Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) as it would be written in the Roman alphabet. This use of similar characters to represent different sounds has been a popular red herring in murder mysteries, from 'Murder on the Orient Express' to 'Murder, She Wrote'.

Answer: Cipher

Three of these are superheroes, while a cipher is a secret code written in letters or numbers. Cypher, which is an alternate accepted spelling, does appear in the Marvel universe. One was a character in X-MEN; another was a member of the A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics). But not Cipher.

Spider-Man first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) as a teenager who developed superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. In the following 60 years, he has matured to be in his late 20s.

Vartox belongs to the DC Comics world of superheroes, where he is a friend of Superman. He first appeared in Superman #281 (November 1974).

Batman also belongs in the DC universe, having made his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 (March 30, 1939). He is unusual in that he does not possess superpowers; he just has a lot of gadgets, is a genius, and is a master of multiple martial arts as well as being almost inhumanely fit.

Answer: Soup

Carrot, bean and onion are vegetables which may be combined as ingredients in the larger pot of soup. Soup, which can be hot or cold, is basically a liquid in which vegetables and/or meats have been cooked. While they may be thick (either because the liquid has been thickened or because the solid ingredients outweigh the liquid stock), they are generally not as thick as a stew, although that distinction can be hard to draw.

Answer: Alphabet

A system for COMMUNICATION, an alphabet is a system of WRITING which combines individual characters, such as the series LMNOP, to form words. The GREEK alphabet was the first to introduce the use of specific characters for VOWELS; earlier alphabets concentrated on consonants, with or without diacritical marks to indicate the presence of a vowel. English is written using an alphabet based on the ROMAN alphabet. A number of other alphabet-based writing systems use different alphabets, such as the Cyrillic alphabet used for RUSSIAN.

When it is desired to conceal the actual words being used in a written communication, it can be written in CIPHER. The phrase ALPHABET SOUP can refer to a kind of soup made with pasta pieces shaped like letters floating around; it is also used to describe the overuse of acronyms to render communication unclear or confusing, a metaphorical reference to the random letter combinations you may find in the soup.