Punchline! Trivia Quiz

Answer: E

Eating clocks is TIME consuming.

Drop the E from TIME and you're left with TIM, which is the first name of Tim Berners-Lee or, correctly, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA FBCS. Tim is an English computer scientist who also became a director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which was set up to continue the development of the Web.

Answer: N

I read a book on the history of glue, couldn't put it DOWN.

Drop the N from DOWN and you're left with DOW. Jennifer Aniston gained fame (and a Primetime Emmy Award) for her role in the television sitcom "Friends" (1994-2004). Her mother, Nancy Dow, was also an actress though with limited success. She played the role of Athena in "The Beverly Hillbillies" (1966) and Tersa in 1967's "Wild, Wild West".

Answer: I

I ordered helicopter chips at the bar but the barman said they only had PLAIN.

Remove the I from PLAIN and you're left with PLAN. It could be a plan of action, a master plan or a game plan. They all represent a scheme, a way to proceed or a strategy.

Answer: L

Why did the apple run away? Because the banana SPLIT.

Remove the L from SPLIT and you're left with SPIT. In a number of cultures spitting is considered taboo or unsociable. It can show contempt, disrespect and has the capacity to transmit infectious diseases. In some parts of Northern India it was not uncommon for a mother to spit lightly on her new born child. The belief here is that it conveyed a sense of imperfection in the child and, as a result, kept them saved from the sight of the evil eye.

Answer: H

How do you make Holy Water? You boil the HELL out of it.

Remove the H from HELL and you're left with ELL, or, as it was previously called, a cubit. An ell is the measurement from the point of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, roughly eighteen inches.

Answer: C

What happens when you tell jokes to eggs? They CRACK up.

Remove the C from CRACK and you're left with RACK. Whilst the question was alluding to a coat rack or a hat rack, the word rack can also mean to cause distress or torment. The rack was also an instrument of torture (which I have no intention of describing in detail here - those jokes are torture enough).

Answer: N

Is there anyone in need of an Ark because I NOAH guy.

Remove the N from NOAH and you're left with OAH. "Oah", which is a dedication to his workmates, is the first single from Norwegian singer-songwriter Alexander Rybak's second album entitled "No Boundaries".

Answer: U

When a clock gets hungry it simply goes back FOUR seconds.

Remove the U from FOUR and you're left with FOR. The first line of the chorus of the song "For What It's Worth", "Stop, children, what's that sound?", is highly recognizable and helped propel the single into the top ten of Billboard's Hot 100 charts in the US and onto Rolling Stone Magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Written by Stephen Stills, who was inspired by the Sunset Strip curfew riots, it is often mistaken for an anti-war song.

Answer: P

With the "p" being silent, pterodactyl is pronounced "ter-uh-dak-til", representing a genera of flying reptiles that are now extinct. These creatures were prevalent in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, had short tails, bird-like beaks and teeth.

Answer: Punchline

In this 1988 comedy Tom Hanks plays a struggling medical student (and by struggling we mean financially, though he's not very good at the medical part either) who does a bit of stand-up comedy on the side. Now at this bit he's pretty good but he doesn't have the wherewithal to take it to the big time. Sally Field is a housewife who wants to be a comic and, whilst she has a natural humour within her, she doesn't have the necessary skills to bring it out. Together they form a bond and use each other's strengths to bolster their own weaknesses.