Brick By Boring Brick Trivia Quiz

Answer: A round peg on the top of one snaps into the bottom of the other.

The top of a rectangular Lego brick has short, round pegs -- nubs, really -- in a grid pattern. The spacing is constant across Lego sets, so the number of pegs tells you about the size and shape of the block: a 2x4, for example, or a 1x3. The pegs snap easily into gaps in the bottom of the next block. Generations of children have discovered just how flexible this arrangement is!

Answer: Pink Floyd

A song of defiance against the forces of conformity at school, Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" was first released as a single in 1979. The song hit the number one position on the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100, and was banned by South Africa's apartheid government when it was adopted as a protest song.

After all, the song starts with the proud declaration, "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control".

Answer: Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was a tremendously influential modernist, a prominent member of the De Stijl movement, and a founding father of neoplasticism. His best-known works, painted between 1920 and 1944, look something like stained-glass windows with rectangular panes, viewed from afar.

I've taken some artistic liberties with Ella's toys for this question: Lego's Basic Bricks bucket really features green bricks instead of black ones.

Answer: Straw and sticks

The Three Little Pigs are from an old, old fairy tale, first set down in print in 1843. In the story, each Little Pig built himself a house. The first used straw, the second used sticks, and the third used bricks. Then a wolf came -- as so often happens in fairy tales -- and tried to "huff, and puff, and blow [each] house in!" He was not stopped by straw or sticks, and the first two pigs lost their homes (and, in some tellings, their lives) -- but the third pig stayed safe and sound in his house of brick. Let's hope Ella's house of Lego bricks does as well by its inhabitants!

Answer: Clay

Bricks are ceramic pieces, clay blocks that are fired in a kiln for strength and stability. (Historically, many civilizations have dried their bricks in the sun, but that's much less common now.) Bricks can be individually molded or mechanically extruded into long cables that are then sliced to size. During the firing process, iron oxides in the clay produce the classic, dark color known as "brick red," while clays with more limestone content yield a paler shade. Add some mortar to bind the bricks together, and you're set!

Answer: Jaundice

Jaundice, which comes from the French for "yellow," is caused by a buildup of a pigment called bilirubin, which is produced when red blood cells are broken down in the body. The excess bilirubin gives a yellow cast to the skin, and to the membranes that cover the whites of the eyes.

It's a common condition in newborns, and usually isn't very serious for them. In older children and in adults, however, jaundice often signals liver failure, and that is very serious indeed. Luckily, Lego people are made out of plastic, so they don't have livers to worry about.

Answer: The Emerald City

"All roads lead to Rome," as the proverb goes, but the Yellow Brick Road is an exception: it goes to the Emerald City. In L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," and in the classic 1939 movie adaptation, Dorothy Gale and her companions (her dog Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion) follow the road through the fantastical land of Oz to reach its capital, the Emerald City. (They expect to find help there, but instead they start another adventure.) "Follow the Yellow Brick Road!" they sing in the movie, and the Lego people will soon follow suit.

Answer: The Red Pyramid at Dahshur, Egypt

A true pyramid has four triangular sides that meet in a point at the top; in a step pyramid, the sides are terraced, going up in steps rather than as a smooth, inclined plane. Step pyramids were popular monuments in many civilizations, from the Sumerian ziggurats of the third millennium BC to the pyramids at Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, built in the first millennium AD by an unknown people. The earliest pyramids of the Egyptian pharaohs were step pyramids, as were several buildings of the Mississippian people in North America and the famous Mayan temples at Chichen Itza and other sites on the Yucatan peninsula.

Dahshur's Red Pyramid, built for the Pharaoh Sneferu around 2600 BC, was probably the world's first successful true pyramid and represents a triumph of ancient engineering. Much of the building's facing is gone now, but at 104 meters (341 feet) it's still the third-largest pyramid in Egypt.

Answer: Keystone

The keystone gets its name from the fact that it is the "key" to the arch: it holds the arch together and gives it its tremendous structural strength. Picture stone pillars curving toward each other near the top of an arch. Each pillar grows more and more horizontal as it rises. The wedge-shaped keystone is held in place by the tremendous pressure of the stones pushing in from both sides.

This structure can't really be duplicated in rectangular Lego bricks: the pieces only lock top-to-bottom, so the central piece of Ella's arch sits on top of and between its neighboring blocks, rather than being wedged in the middle of them. It may not be earthquake-proof, but it is attractive!

Answer: To save them from flooding

The Abu Simbel temple complex was built around 1230 BC for the Pharaoh Ramses II, to give thanks for his victories and to impress his southern neighbors with his greatness and power. The statues and reliefs are magnificent -- they're part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- but they were threatened by the construction of the Aswan Dam, which flooded a section of the Nile Valley and created Lake Nasser over the spot where the temples were built.

It took five years and forty million dollars to move them to high ground. Workers cut the structures into huge blocks -- each weighed an average of twenty tons! -- and reassembled them in their new home. Ella may not have that kind of budget, but the smaller scale of her Lego monuments should work in her favor.