This Letter Ladder Goes From Nuts to Nuclear... Quiz

Answer: Almonds

Yes, I know that almonds are not technically nuts, but it makes for a snappier title!

Almonds are the seeds of trees from the genus Prunus and have been cultivated since ancient times. You should exercise care when eating almonds if you should ever find yourself in a survival situation; unlike the domesticated or cultivated variety of almond which is harmless, the seeds of the wild almond contain hydrogen cyanide and eating just a few can prove fatal. Marzipan, a confection made from ground almonds and sugar, is often found as a covering in cakes or used as a paste to produce novelty items for cake decoration... Personally, and I know I'm not alone in saying this, I cannot stand the stuff!

Answer: Nomads

Nomadic peoples have existed since the beginning of human history; in fact, all modern humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers at the start. In modern times, nomadic peoples have been slowly disappearing due to a number of political, social and economic factors affecting their cultures. Those tribes struggling to survive and maintain their ancient cultures today can still be found across the globe but their ranges are becoming more and more restricted. Well-known nomadic tribes include the Bedouin and Tuareg of northern Africa and the Middle East, the Romani of Eastern Europe and the Bushmen or San people of southern Africa.

Answer: Mason

The secret societies that we know of today started as trade guilds as far back as the fourteenth century. The Guilds of Masons or Freemasons as they were to become known, were initially formed to regulate the highly skilled trade of stonemasonry and to ensure that business practices were adhered to.

Although freemasonry is generally believed to have its roots in Christianity, the fact that members are only expected to hold a belief in a deity has caused them to become viewed with suspicion and, in a historical context, outright hatred and hostility particularly in the theocratic states that existed in Europe. Freemasonry has been persecuted by the Roman Catholic church, the Protestant Church in its many guises, the Nazis, Soviet Russia and until very recently was still subject to the death penalty in Iraq under the dictatorship of Sadaam Hussein.

Answer: Amos

The minor prophet Amos was active in the area of northern Israel in around 750 BCE. The principal tenets of his writing discussed social justice, with many of his themes still being considered as relevant today as they were nearly three thousand years ago. Before he became a prophet, Amos was a shepherd and by all accounts was a great and stirring speaker with much of his writing being directed at the cities of Samaria and Bethel, both of which he considered to be idolatrous. Amos died in around 745 BCE, allegedly killed by the son of one of the priests of the golden calf in the city of Bethel.

Answer: Moa

The moa were a group of nine species of large flightless birds. With the largest species, Dinornis novaezealandiae, standing at around twelve feet in height when fully grown, moa were indigenous to New Zealand and became extinct only relatively recently. Unsurprisingly, their extinction only occurred since the arrival of humans on the islands, it taking less than two hundred years of hunting to exterminate these magnificent flightless birds. Prior to the arrival of the Māori peoples, moa were only predated on by the enormous Haast's eagle, the largest bird of prey ever to have existed.

There have been unconfirmed reports of sightings of creatures that may be the moa but these have been met with derision. However, the moa has been the subject of genetic research and, as the available DNA could still be considered relatively fresh, the moa has been the subject of research into resurrecting these impressive creatures.

Answer: Moan

Hands up if you've ever heard of the terms 'schimpf' or 'schimpfing'? I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't as it is a word used, almost exclusively, within the British armed forces and specifically the army. Why the army, you might ask; to be truthful compared to the other two services, the army have more to moan or schimpf about! The weather is too hot, too cold, too dry or too wet.

The food is too hot, too cold, undercooked or overcooked... Yes, believe me when I say that if ever there was a category of person who could moan, it's a serviceman and I have no reason to believe that it's any different in the armed services of other countries from across the globe... Did I ever bore you with the story about the time that we'd been on operations and our helicopters were cancelled because someone forgot to... moan, moan, and moan!

Answer: Manor

For many centuries, a manor was the term used to describe an area of land, its owner, occupants and tenants and was the basic social and economic unit in the feudal system; it was a grant of land made by the monarch to one of his or her servants, the lowest rank of which was a knight, in return for military service when called upon.

In modern times the word has been hi-jacked to describe any district over which a police force has jurisdiction and, alternatively, where its criminals ply their trade. Rarely, if ever, used in the United States, there has barely been a British gangster movie, television show, drama or comedy, in the last five decades in which the term has not been used.

Answer: Romans

According to Roman mythology, the eternal city was founded during the 8th century BCE by brothers of Trojan descent, Romulus and Remus. At its peak, the Roman Empire contained almost a fifth of the population of the world, some ninety million people.

The Roman Empire flourished for twelve hundred years, controlling the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, southern Europe from Turkey in the east to the Iberian Peninsula in the west, and Western Europe from the south of France to the Scottish borders in the north.

Although a plethora of reasons for the fall of Rome have been expanded upon, the Roman Empire as many understand it, finally came to an end in 476CE with the removal from power of the emperor Romulus Augustus. This was not the total end of the Roman Empire however; the Eastern Empire, centred on the city of Constantinople and known as the Byzantine Empire, remained in existence until 1453 when the city fell to the Ottomans under the Sultan Mehmed II.

Answer: Transom

Of course today a ship's transom is purely functional and, as such, tends to be very plain and uninteresting. On many smaller leisure craft, it is merely somewhere to paint the vessel's name and upon which to mount its engine. However, in the days of square-rigged sailing ships the decoration applied to the transom of the vessel gave its builders an opportunity to display their skills as carvers and as artists; look at the transoms of the Swedish 17th century man of war named 'Vasa' or the British ships of the line 'HMS Prince' and the 'Royal Sovereign'.

The work on these vessels was outstanding if impractical. Much of the decoration on vessels of this type was purely there to project an image of wealth and power... That and its guns of course!

Answer: Angstrom

Units of length on these magnitudes are difficult to imagine. The angstrom unit is the equivalent of one ten-billionth of a metre and is named for the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström. This unit is used to measure the wavelengths of light; for example, the central frequency of light in the red wavelength is 6870Å, of green light it is 5132Å and the frequency of violet light, the shortest wavelength in the visible spectrum is 4099Å, the symbol 'Å' being used to denote the measurement. Whilst the angstrom unit is internationally recognised having been defined by the International Astronomical Union and endorsed by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, it is not an official unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).