Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall Trivia Quiz

Answer: Versailles

The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles is 73 meters long. 357 mirrors are framed in the 17 arches opposite the windows, reflecting the marble pillars and statuary, gold columns and crystal chandeliers. Work on the huge room started in 1678 and went on for six years. At that time mirrors were very high-end luxury items and to have so many large ones in one hall added to the extreme opulence of the palace.

After World War One, the peace treaty, known as the Treaty of Versailles, was signed here on 28 June 1919. Today the hall is used by the French government for official state occasions, such as banquets in honour of foreign heads of state.

Answer: Perseus

Perseus managed to behead Medusa by looking at her reflection in a highly polished shield given to him by the goddess Athena. He kept her head to use as a weapon against his enemies: even after death the sight of it petrified anyone who looked at it. Eventually he gave the head to Athena, who placed it on her shield.

Answer: Narcissus

The word "narcissism" has entered the language as a psychological term, describing a personality disorder by which the patient is totally self-centered and suffers from excessive vanity and self-admiration.

Answer: He has no reflection.

Vampire legends have existed for centuries in many parts of the world. Bram Stoker based his Gothic horror story "Dracula" on the traditional eastern European folklore. His setting for "Dracula" is Transylvania, which is an actual region in Romania. Stoker invented many of the myths surrounding vampires, including the belief that a vampire has no reflection. Traditional folklore makes no mention of this, nor of the vampire's ability to change into a bat, another Stoker embellishment to the legend.

Answer: "The Looking-Glass War"

George Smiley appears in nine of Le Carré's spy novels, of which "The Looking-Glass War" (1965) is the fourth. Smiley is not always a major character. Sometimes he just has a peripheral role in the plot.

He and James Bond are arguably the two most famous British literary spies, but they are total opposites. Whereas Bond is a suave, well-dressed, handsome ladies' man who knows his way around a casino and is well versed in unarmed combat, Smiley is less of a macho fantasy character and more realistic. He is short and a bit portly, dresses like a middle-aged bureaucrat and keeps a low profile. Nevertheless, the more cerebral Smiley novels are every bit as suspenseful as the action-packed Bond ones.

Answer: Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie created a number of fictional sleuths, but Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot are the two who appeared in most of her detective novels. She, together with her contemporaries, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham, were known as the "Queens of Crime" during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction": the 1920s and 1930s. This was the period when the conventions governing the "detective puzzle" genre was established. Detective fiction, especially those books of the "cozy mystery" genre, still adhere to those patterns today. Examples of these "rules" are: no supernatural agencies must be involved; not more than one secret passage or hidden room is allowed; no undiscovered poisons may be used; no secret twins must appear unless the reader has been prepared for them; the detective himself may not be the murderer ... and so forth.

Agatha Christie herself broke this last rule, twice! I will not mention the two of her works in which the detective is the murderer, because I don't want to be a spoiler! (If you are really aching to know, message me and I'll tell you!)

Answer: Photocopier

Photocopiers do not use mirrors to reproduce images: rather they rely on electrically charged particles of toner that stick to the "shadow" outline of the original images that appear on a blank page. The copied page then passes through two hot rollers, that fuse the toner on to its surface.

Telescopes contain concave mirrors that intensify and focus the light from celestial bodies, heliographs are mirrors that reflect the sun in order to flash messages over long distances. We have all played with a kaleidoscope: a triangle of mirrors in a tube produce geometric patterns made by the reflection of a handful of beads or other small colourful objects in the tube.

Answer: Mathematics

Making up fantasy tales to amuse the children of his friends was a hobby with Professor Dodgson, who published them under the pen name Lewis Carroll. He was a serious mathematician who published several scholarly treatises, mainly in the fields of linear and matrix algebra and mathematical logic.

Queen Victoria was delighted by Alice in Wonderland and graciously let it be known that she would be pleased to accept the dedication of Lewis Carroll's next work. In due course Her Majesty was presented with a copy of "An Elementary Treatise on Determinants", loyally inscribed to her by the author.

Answer: Johannes (Jan) Vermeer: "Girl With a Pearl Earring"

"Girl With a Pearl Earring" is just a head-and-shoulders portrait of a girl wearing a turban and a pearl earring.

In "Las Meninas", we see the little Infanta Margarita and her entourage in the foreground, while off to one side is the artist Velazquez himself, at his easel, painting them. At the back of the room is a mirror on the wall in which we see the reflection of the king and queen, the Infanta's parents, watching the scene from the same viewpoint as ours.

"The Rokeby Venus" shows the nude figure of a woman reclining on a couch with her back to the viewer. In front of her, a winged cherub holds up a mirror in which her face is reflected.

"A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" shows a bar in the foreground, with an array of bottles and fruit on it. The barmaid is in the centre of the picture, and behind her a large mirror reflecting the room, and the patrons at their tables.

If you are not already familiar with these paintings, I recommend finding them on Google Images - they are well worth a look!

Answer: No difference, they are two names for the same thing.

We have all seen one-way mirrors being used in the interview rooms on TV police dramas. One detective interrogates the suspect while his/her colleagues watch from the next room, through the glass.

One-way glass is coated with a layer of metal so thin that it is partially transparent. The preferred metal is aluminium (or aluminum if you are in America).

When the glass is placed between a brightly lit room and a darker room, the people in the well-lit room see only their own reflection, while those in the darker room see right through the glass.