An Owl in the Dark Trivia Quiz

Answer: He can't see in the dark.

Raoul has an unthinkable affliction for an owl, night blindness. But with the help of a mouse named Bertram, he finds a new and happy life as a diurnal creature. Even his originally dubious family eventually become proud of his courage and resourcefulness. "Raoul the Owl" was first published in 1962.

Answer: Oatmeal

Drammach is a Scottish dish of oatmeal and cold water.

"This, though it is but cold water mingled with oatmeal, yet makes a good enough dish for a hungry man; and where there are no means of making fire, or (as in our case) good reason for not making one, it is the chief stand-by of those who have taken to the heather."
("Kidnapped", Chapter 20: "The Flight In The Heather: The Rocks" by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Answer: Ormolu

A gold-colored alloy of copper and zinc, sometimes including tin, ormolu can be cast into shapes. Often gilded, it was used especially in the Eighteenth Century for decorating furniture and making ornaments.

Osmium (symbol Os, atomic number 76) is a hard, brittle, bluish-white transition metal in the platinum group. The rarest stable element in the Earth's crust, it is found in trace amounts in platinum ore. It is also found with nickel. Alloyed with platinum, iridium and other platinum-group metals, it is used in the manufacture of fountain pen nib tipping and electrical contacts, as well as in other applications that require extreme durability and hardness.

Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding. It is thought that this ancient art developed not long after the Chinese introduced paper to Japan in the Sixth Century A.D. Though initially known as orikata (folded shapes), in 1880 it became known as origami. The term origami comes from the Japanese words oru (to fold) and kami (paper).

Oolong - black dragon - is a broad class of black China tea, with characteristics ranging from sweet fruity flavor and honey aroma to woody and thick with roasted aroma, which is defined at its most basic by its leaves being semi oxidized and strongly sun-withered before being twisted and curled.

Answer: A reservoir of icy bodies surrounding the Solar System

First described in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, the Oort cloud is a theoretical region of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 au (0.03 to 3.2 light-years), well beyond the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc. Long period comets are thought to originate from this roughly spherical structure that encloses the Solar System and whose outer edge defines its furthest boundary.

Answer: Opals

The Australian town of Lightning Ridge in northwestern New South Wales is a world-renowned centre of the mining of opal, a mineraloid that can come in almost any imaginable color, especially the highly prized black opal. The first opal mine was established in Lightning Ridge in 1905.

The web site "Opals Down Under" gives a simple, easy-to-understand explanation of how opal is formed:

"Opal is formed from a solution of silicon dioxide and water. As water runs down through the earth, it picks up silica from sandstone, and carries this silica-rich solution into cracks and voids , caused by natural faults or decomposing fossils. As the water evaporates, it leaves behind a silica deposit. This cycle repeats over very long periods of time, and eventually opal is formed."

As with most things, though, it's not quite as simple as that. There are two broad classes of this material, common opal and precious opal, the latter being the gemstone we usually associate with the word. The precious opal's characteristic iridescence or play of color is caused by refraction which, in turn, is produced by the gem's composition. Unimaginably small spheres of silica pack together over unimaginably long stretches of time, filling natural voids in forming or already solidified rock and sometimes replacing organic matter such as wood or bone as it decays.

The Australian Opal Centre (originally The Lightning Ridge Opal and Fossil Centre), which you can visit online, has a wealth of information about opals in general and opalized fossils in particular. You can also do an Internet search for "opalized fossils" to find some spectacular images and fascinating links.

Neil Sedaka's 1974 "Lightning Ridge", released as the B-side of "A Little Lovin'", was inspired by accounts of the opal mines.

'Onyx' properly refers to the parallel banded variety of the mineral chalcedony. Its cousin agate has curved bands. While onyx's bands can be any color, black and/or white are most common. Confusingly, onyx can also be used as a descriptive term, applied to parallel banded varieties of alabaster, marble, obsidian and opal, as well as to materials with contorted banding, such as "Cave Onyx" and "Mexican Onyx".

Orchids and oleanders have nothing to do with stone; rather, they are flowering plants.

Orchids, which often have beautifully colored and fragrant blooms, are perennials, meaning they grow year to year without being replanted and they are herbaceous, meaning they have no permanent woody parts. Some orchids grow on the ground while others are Epiphytes, growing in trees or on supports such as trellises. There are nearly as many orchid species as species of the bony fishes, more than twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal species.

Oleander is a tree or shrub and, though there is only one species (classified in the genus Nerium), it is cultivated worldwide, usually as a shrub, though it can grow to seven to twenty ft. (two to six m) in tree form. Extraordinarily hardy, oleander has clusters of pink or red flowers that bloom year-round, most profusely in summer.

Answer: Only the Lonely

The Flying Pickets were a British a cappella group who came to prominence during the miners' strike of the mid 1980s. Their 1983 single "Only You" and 1985 follow up "Only the Lonely" both could be heard in heavy rotation on BBC Radio 2.

"Only the Lonely", written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson, was Roy's first major success as a recording artist. In the U.S. the song peaked at No. 14 on Billboard's R&B chart and at No. 2 on the magazine's Pop music chart, while it reached No. 1 on the UK Singles chart, all in 1960.

Answer: The Philadelphia Orchestra

Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Eugene Ormandy (November 18, 1899 to March 12, 1985) was a fine violinist. It was as a conductor and recording artist, however, that he is renowned. Under his baton from 1931 through 1936 The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, now the Minnesota Orchestra, made a number of recordings, several of them highly regarded. In December 1950 Ormandy directed New York's Metropolitan Opera in a production of Johann Strauss' "Die Fledermaus" in English, which was recorded. There is a July 1952 recording of Ormandy conducting the Prades Festival Orchestra with Pablo Casals in the Robert Schumann "Cello Concerto", and in November 1966, he recorded Antonín Dvořák's "New World Symphony" with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1978, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3", with Vladimir Horowitz as soloist for a live recording.

But it is the Philadelphia Orchestra with which his name was synonymous for generations of music lovers. During his forty-four years with the Philadelphia, the orchestra earned three gold records and two Grammy Awards. Among a constellation of other notable recordings, Ormandy and the Philadelphia collaborated with The Mormon Tabernacle Quire on several records that are considered definitive. Upon his retirement in 1980, the orchestra named him conductor laureate.

Answer: Atomic research and Country & Western music

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as the facility came to be called, in Oak Ridge Tennessee is where Enrico Fermi and his Manhattan Project colleagues worked to unlock the secrets of the atom. In the years since the Second World War that laboratory has expanded its research to include allied scientific disciplines, but it remains synonymous with atomic energy.

Founded in 1947, The Oak Ridge Boys are an American quartet specializing in Country & Western and Gospel music.

Answer: Equestrian

Except in the most dire circumstances, one always mounts a horse from the left or 'near' side. Thus, the 'off' side is the right. The terms near side and off side are not used in the other sports listed.

Answer: Dots 1, 3 and 5

Dots 1, 3 and 5 form O. Dots 1 and 5 form E, dots 1 and 3 form K and dots 1 and 6 are the sign or contraction for CH.