It's Nice to Belong Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mercury

Since the demotion of Pluto from planet status, our Solar System has consisted of eight planets. The four planets closest to the Sun are the inner rocky planets: Mercury, Venus, our own fair Earth and Mars; the four planets most distant from the Sun are the gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The sequence starts with Uranus and works its way toward the Sun, skipping out every other planet, hence:

Uranus >> Jupiter >> Earth >> MERCURY

Answer: Pawn

Chess has developed a reputation as a very tough board game in which to excel, but with a little bit of time spent reading over the rules of the game, chess is a game that everybody can enjoy. The 64 squares and 32 pieces mean that there is an enormous number of possible arrangements that the pieces can find themselves in, and as such it is very, very unlikely to find yourself playing the same game twice.

The sequence relates to the assignment of a relative value to each of the pieces on a chessboard. There are a few systems that are used to give pieces their relative value but the simplest, and most commonly used, gives the queen a value of nine points, the rook a reasonable six, the bishop and knight a value of three and the pawn just one. Whilst not being as strong as the queen, the king is the most important piece on the board because its capture results in a player's defeat. Consequently, relative value systems give the king an arbitrary value that is very, very high and in real terms means that anything to do with the king is of utmost priority. So the sequence is of chess pieces of decreasing relative value:

Queen >> Rook >> Bishop/Knight >> PAWN

Answer: £125,000

This sequence shows a few of the rungs on the original prize ladder of the British version of the massively popular quiz show, 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. This sequence is also applicable to a large number of other versions of the show worldwide except that the currency symbol would be different. By answering nine consecutive questions correctly, a player would be entitled to walk away with £16,000; the next two questions then give the player a chance to double up, firstly to £32,000 and then to £64,000. As a contestant gets closer to the £1,000,000 jackpot, they answer questions of increasing difficulty, but the prize money goes up handsomely to compensate: £125,000, £250,000, £500,000 and finally, £1 million. Revisions were made to the structure of this ladder in the original UK version and in other worldwide versions as well. The sequence is:

£16,000 >> £32,000 >> £64,000 >> £125,000

Answer: Woodlouse

Though perhaps this proportionality stops at eight legs, as I'd imagine that there are many more people who have arachnophobia than there are people who are afraid of the very gentle woodlouse. The woodlouse, which has fourteen legs, is something of an oddity as it is a crustacean that is quite happy existing far away from large bodies of water; compare that to the likes of barnacles, crabs, shrimp and lobsters and you get an idea about the isolation of the woodlouse from the rest of the Crustacea subphylum of the phylum Arthropoda. That said, the woodlouse seeks out damp places and it is in such an environment that the gilled creature thrives.

The other options of boll weevil, cicada and woodworm are all insects and thus have just six legs, less than the eight legs of spiders. So the sequence goes:

Snail >> Cockroach >> Spider >> WOODLOUSE

Answer: Fahrenheit

Despite its ostensibly literary nature, this is a sequence about numbers. Each part of the sequence gives a famous author followed by a part of the title of a book written by that author. The first in the sequence is 'The Three Musketeers', a publication from the 1840s written by Alexandre Dumas; the second is Joseph Heller and his 1961 novel, 'Catch-22'; the third is John Buchan's 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' and the final is Ray Bradbury's novel about the burning of books, 'Fahrenheit 451'. As you can see, the number in the title of each piece of literature increases as the sequence progresses:

Dumas' 'Musketeers' >> Heller's 'Catch' >> Buchan's 'Steps' >> Bradbury's 'FAHRENHEIT'

Answer: Ten-Pin Bowling

Whether it be points, rankings or records, numbers and sports are inextricably linked. Prior to 2006, the perfect score in gymnastics for an athlete competing on any piece of apparatus was ten - "Perfect 10". In snooker, a game of precision and skill, the maximum score without any fouls or free balls is 147 and achieving that score in a frame is often lucratively rewarded, particularly at the World Snooker Championships. In darts, the maximum value that can be obtained by the use of just one dart is sixty (treble-20) and thus for a set of three darts, 180 points can be scored. The maximum score in bowling is 300 and this can be obtained in a "perfect game"; such a game is brought about by achieving twelve consecutive strikes. Here is the full sequence:

(Olympic Gymnastics of old = 10) >> (Snooker = 147) >> (Three darts = 180) >> (TEN-PIN BOWLING = 300)

Answer: Guadalcanal

This historical sequence puts various battles in chronological order starting with the Battle of Agincourt (1415), a part of the Hundred Years' War fought between England and France. Seventy years later, the House of York and the House of Lancaster went head-to-head as part of the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485). The sequence then moves on to the Battle of Gettysburg (1863), arguably one of the most internationally well-known battles to take place in 19th century America. Out of the four options (Guadalcanal, Lexington and Concord, Austerlitz and Waterloo), only one takes place AFTER the Battle of Gettysburg, and that was WWII's Battle of Guadalcanal, a battle where the belligerents took to the Pacific in 1943. The full sequence is:

Agincourt (1415) >> Bosworth Field (1485) >> Gettysburg (1863) >> GUADALCANAL (1943)

Answer: Slumdog Millionaire

The Academy Awards are known for their annual selection of a Best Picture, a process that very rarely proceeds without generating controversy. One of the most controversial winners, in terms of many thinking it should never have been chosen, was the 2005 film 'Crash' which was astonishingly chosen over Ang Lee's beautiful love story 'Brokeback Mountain'. The next year saw a Hollywood remake of an Asian film, 'The Departed', take the top prize and 2007 proved to be a good year for the Coen Brothers as their thriller, 'No Country for Old Men', was deemed to be the Best Picture of the year. The winner in 2008 was Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire', an excellent film that simultaneously showed the beauty and deprivation of India. Here's the sequence:

'Crash' (2005) >> 'The Departed' (2006) >> 'No Country for Old Men' (2007) >> 'SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE' (2008)

Answer: Pearl

Granted, if 'Pokémon' were a cup of tea, it wouldn't be the blend of choice for many, but the anime was a massive success amongst the younger generations in the 1990s and 2000s. Just as successful as the television programmes, maybe even more so, were the video games available for Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. For each subsequent Generation of Pokémon, three different games were released for the aforementioned consoles. 'Pokémon Blue' featured Generation I species, 'Gold' featured Generation II and 'Ruby' featured Generation III. Out of 'Pearl', 'Red', 'Yellow' and 'Sapphire', only 'Pearl' carries on the sequence of games of increasing Generations. Full sequence is below:

'Blue' >> 'Gold' >> 'Ruby' >> 'PEARL'

Answer: Barack Obama

This sequence of US Presidents progresses century by century. George Washington, famous as being the first official holder of the US Presidency, was incumbent in the years 1789-1797 (18th century). Next in the sequence is James K. Polk who was President from 1845 to 1849, though I could have chosen from a significant number of other 19th century incumbents. The 20th century representative in the sequence is the hefty William H. Taft, President from 1909 to 1913. Out of the options (Barack Obama, George H. W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson), only Obama continues the sequence as he is the only one of the four to be US President in the 21st century. The sequence is as follows:

George Washington (18th century) >> James K. Polk (19th century) >> William H. Taft (20th century) >> BARACK OBAMA (21st century)