Rising Sun Trivia Quiz

Answer: Matutinal

Matutinal, or matutine, animals are usually active just before the sun rises. There is enough light to enable them to see, but it's still dark enough to confuse any predators. Some matutinal animals are coyotes, porcupines, bobcats and deer.

Vespertine animals are active at dusk. An animal which is active at both dusk and dawn is known as crepuscular. Diurnal animals are active during the day, while nocturnal animals prefer the night.

Answer: Rising Sun

In the clue, 'RIS' is inside 'GSUN', so the answer is almost 'RIS IN GSUN'. Rearranging the letters with the correct spacing gives 'RISING SUN', which is the title of this quiz.

Answer: The Animals

'The Animals' started in the early 1960s in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. The name came from their animal-like antics when performing. They came to fame after they recorded 'The House of the Rising Sun' in 1964. It was based on a folk song, and they had been using it to close their set while on tour with Chuck Berry.

Both 'The Creatures' and 'The Beasts' are names of bands formed after the 1960s. As far as I am aware, there is no band called 'The Fauna'.

Answer: Dew

The best day for washing one's face in the early morning dew is the first of May. It is supposed to ensure a beautiful complexion. The custom has been known over many parts of Europe, and carried on well into the twentieth century in parts of Scotland and Ireland.

It is quite possible that any of the other three could have a beneficial effect on the skin, but you try them at your own risk!

Answer: East

As the earth spins on its axis, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In the northern hemisphere it will be in the south in the middle of the day. It is in the north at midday in the southern hemisphere.

Answer: Reveille

Reveille comes from a French word meaning 'to wake up'; it is pronounced 're-vall-ay'. It is used first thing in the morning to rouse troops for the day. It can also be played on memorial occasions, such as on Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in London. The Last Post or Taps may be played to indicate the start of a period of silence, and Reveille will be played to signal the end.

The assembly call is used to assemble troops in a given place. The mess call is used to summon troops to meals, and may be heard at sunrise, for breakfast, but will also be heard for other meals during the day. Taps is sounded at the end of the day, and also at military funerals. The Last Post is used on similar occasions.

Answer: Suva, Fiji

The sun rises in the east, so the most easterly country is the first one to see the sunrise. Of the four choices, that is Suva in Fiji. Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea will wait another two hours. Two hours after that, the sun will rise in Manila in the Philippines. An hour later it will be sunrise in Jakarta in Indonesia.

The easternmost islands of Kiribati are the very first place in the world to see the sunrise, two hours earlier than Fiji. This is because, although they lie east of the 180° meridian, the whole of Kiribati lies west of the International Date Line, so it is the first place in the world to start a new day.

Answer: Milk and newspapers

Nowadays almost anything can be ordered online and delivered to our doorsteps, or possibly somewhere not too far away from our homes, by a variety of delivery companies, and can arrive at almost any hour of the day or night.

It was different when I was a small child. The milkman came very early with the milk for breakfast. We had no refrigerator, so the milk wouldn't keep longer than a day, especially in summer. We had a standing order at the newsagents for the newspapers my father wanted, and the magazines for my mother. The paper boy would collect them in a satchel very early in the morning and deliver them in time to be read with breakfast every day.

The postman arrived with letters and, occasionally, parcels after breakfast; sometimes there was a second delivery later in the morning or after lunch. The greengrocer's boy brought a box of fruit and vegetables in the carrier on the front of his bicycle during the morning after my mother had telephoned an order. The butcher's boy would do the same. The baker came three times a week with a van full of loaves of bread for us to choose from. We also had a coalman who came about once a month during the winter, with sacks of coal for the fires, and coke for the boiler which produced hot water.

Answer: Mushrooms

All four items can be gathered from the wild and used for culinary purposes. However mycophiles are particularly interested in mushrooms. There are many different varieties of mushroom to be found over most parts of the world. Be warned - they are not all edible.

Many can be poisonous, and some can be deadly! Good advice is to leave it alone if you are not absolutely certain of the variety; there are some edible mushrooms which have very similar looking poisonous varieties. However, I believe that if you have sound knowledge or expert guidance, mushrooms picked at sunrise can be very tasty.

Answer: Vincent van Gogh

The picture is one of a series painted by van Gogh of the view from his window in Saint-Paul Hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It shows the wheat field with a stone wall around it, and the sun rising over the hills in the background.

Of the wrong answers, although all were renowned for their landscapes, none were alive in 1889. Pieter Bruegel the Elder lived in the sixteenth century. John Constable was alive in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Georgia O'Keeffe was a twentieth-century artist.

Answer: Ernest Hemingway

All four were American authors who wrote well-known novels in the twentieth century. However, it was Ernest Hemingway who wrote 'The Sun Also Rises' in 1926. It tells the story of some British and American people who travelled from Paris to see the bullfights and the running of the bulls in Pamplona in Spain.

The novel was filmed twice in the twentieth century, and turned into an opera in 2000.

Answer: Rising Sun

Michael Crichton wrote the book, 'Rising Sun' in 1992; it is about a murder in a fictional Japanese company's Los Angeles headquarters. The plot of the film was changed from that in the book, so Michael Crichton refused to have anything to do with it, and producer and director, Philip Kaufman, assisted Michael Backes with the script. Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes play the detectives investigating the death of a call girl at an opening party in the office, but part of the crucial surveillance video footage is missing.

Answer: Thus Spake Zarathustra

The book, also known as 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' in English, was written in the mid-1880s by Friedrich Nietzsche. It tells of a hermit called Zarathustra and his interactions with the people he meets when he leaves his mountain home.

Richard Strauss wrote his nine part tone poem in 1896, and gave it Nietzsche's original German title - 'Also sprach Zarathustra'. He conducted the first performance in Frankfurt himself. The first recording was made in 1935 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under their Russian conductor - Serge Koussevitzky. The first movement came to prominence when it was used in the film '2001: A Space Odyssey' directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Answer: Fei Fei Sun - a politician from China

Fei Fei Sun is not a politician - she is a supermodel. She was born in the Shandong province of China, and represented China in an international modelling contest, and went on to model in both London and Paris before settling in New York. She has modelled for many famous designers. She has also appeared on the covers of 'Vogue' in many different countries.

Jonny Sun's first book was published in 2017; it is called 'Everyone's a Aliebn when Ur a Aliebn Too', and is based on a social media character he developed while at university to help overcome feelings of depression and isolation. A year later he illustrated 'Gmorning, Gnite! Little Pep Talks For Me & You' written by Lin-Manuel Miranda - an actor and playwright.

Nike Sun studied mathematics and statistics at Harvard University, the University of Cambridge and Stanford University. She went on to work at the University of California in Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been awarded both the Rollo Davdison and the Wolfgang Doeblin prizes for her work on probability.

Stefanie Sun was born and educated in Singapore. She wrote her first song while studying marketing at university, and went on to make an album which won an award for the best new artist. After making more albums, she achieved popularity not only in Singapore but amongst other Chinese-speaking nations. In Singapore, she has had an orchid named after her, and she also can be seen in Madame Tussaud's Waxworks.

Answer: Stonehenge

Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire is probably the most famous stone circle in England, if not the world. Druids believe in a peaceful relationship with nature. They gather to celebrate the longest day in the year, the summer solstice (21 or 22 June), when the sun rises behind the Heel Stone in the north east of the circle. On the shortest day, or the winter solstice (21 or 22 December), the sun sets to the south west of the circle, which is another occasion for Druidic celebrations.

The other three places are also stone circles. Long Meg and Her Daughters is just outside Penrith, and Castlerigg is near Penrith, both in or near the Lake District in north-west England. Avebury is in Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge.

Answer: Summer solstice

The summer solstice, in June in the northern hemisphere and in December in the southern hemisphere, is the longest day in the year. The winter solstice is the shortest day. On the equinoxes the day and night are equal lengths.

Answer: Cricket

Cricket has been described as the most popular sport in India. The Indian Premier League was started in 2008 with ten teams. Each team was allowed to have up to four overseas players chosen from up to eight in their squad, so some of the most famous international players took part in the tournament alongside India's best cricketers.

The SunRisers Hyderabad replaced the Deccan Chargers in 2012, and won their first title in 2016.

Answer: Breakfast time

'Sunrise' was a breakfast programme on Sky News, which ran for just over thirty years. It started in February 1989, when Sky News was launched in the United Kingdom. The last episode was shown in October 2019, after which it was replaced by a programme called 'Sky New @ Breakfast'.

Both Australia and New Zealand have broadcast breakfast news programmes with the title 'Sunrise'.

Answer: Racing cars

I'm sure that there are games which do all of these things. However 'Trackmania Sunrise' involves racing very fast cars round extreme motor circuits. There are three scenarios - Coast with slower cars on small roads, Bay using bouncy cars without much traction, and Island which involves very fast cars on wide roads. The game was developed by Nadeo and launched in 2005.

Answer: Japan

In Japanese, the country is called 'Nippon' which means 'where the sun rises'. The red disc symbolises that sunrise, which can be seen over the Pacific Ocean to the east.

Bangladesh has a similar flag to that of Japan, but the background is green, not white. Laos has a white disc on a dark blue horizontal stripe, with stripes of red at the top and bottom. The flag of Palau has a yellow disc on a pale blue background.