Quick! Cue the "Q" Queue! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Quetzalcoatl

This most important god of Mesoamerica is also called the Plumed Serpent, as he is a mixture of rattlesnake and bird, specifically the brightly-colored quetzal. The Mayans knew him as Kukulkán. Credited with inventing the calendar, Quetzalcoatl was believed to be creator of the Earth and was the lord of science, agriculture, the arts, and crafts. He was sometimes pictured as a pale, bearded man, which is why the Aztecs tragically thought at first that the Spanish conquistadors who arrived in 1519 were avatars of Quetzalcoatl.

The Quinotaur was a five-horned bull of Frankish mythology. The Qilpoth were evil spirits in Jewish mysticism. The Qiqirn is a large, bald dog spirit in the Inuit tradition.

Answer: Quito

At 9350 feet (2850 meters) above sea level, Quito is the world's highest constitutional capital.* That altitude is so high that the malaria pathogen cannot survive. Quito was the first city in the Americas to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site; its historic center remains one of the best preserved and most unchanged sites in Latin America. (In fact, Krakow, Poland and Quito were the two first World Heritage Sites, both declared in September 1978.) Sitting just 16 miles (25 km) south of the Equator, Quito is nicknamed "the Florence of the Americas" for its blend of European and indigenous art and architecture.

*(La Paz, Bolivia, is actually higher, but it is Bolivia's executive and legislative capital, whilst Sucre is its constitutional and judicial capital.)


Quezon City is the most urbanized and populated city in the Philippines. In Queluz, Portugal, sits one of the last great Rococo palaces built in Europe. Quimper is a city in northwestern France noted for pottery manufacture.

Answer: quinine

Quinine is extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to the Andean region of Peru. The salts of this white alkaloid have been used since the 19th century as a tonic, an antipyretic, and an analgesic, in addition to its use to treat malaria, lupus, and babesiosis, a parasitic disease. (A tonic is any agent that is supposed to restore or improve health or well-being.) Without quinine, Europeans would not have colonized Africa as easily as they did. Cold tablets called Bromo Quinine were sold in the USA until the 1960s. Quinine was once the first-line treatment for malaria, but since 2006, the World Health Organization has recommended safer drugs. Over-the-counter quinine-containing remedies for leg cramps have been banned in the USA since 1994. Tonic water, still sold commercially for mixing drinks, is carbonated water containing lemon, sweetener, and quinine.

Quercetin is a yellow flavonoid found in tea and in many vegetables and fruits.
Quinoline is derived from coal tar and is used to make dyes.
Quartene is another name for butylene or butene, used to make synthetic rubber.

Answer: quokka

Quokkas are playful and photogenic, and if you are lucky you can photograph them with the characteristic smile that gives them the reputation for being the "happiest animal on earth". The quokka (Setonix brachyurus) lives in coastal areas of southwest Australia, mostly in offshore islands (Rottnest Island near Perth or Bald Island near Albany). The name comes from the Pama-Nyungan language.

Do not confuse the quokka with another Aussie 'Q' animal, a spotted, pointy-snouted, long-tailed cat-like marsupial known as the quoll. Nor confuse it with the similar-sounding quagga, an extinct species of zebra once found in southern Africa. You probably won't confuse it with the quelea, a small red-bellied African bird destructive to many crops.

Answer: Quincy

Quincy was technically not a coroner but a forensic pathologist, though he served the function that a coroner serves, as his job was to determine the facts of and reasons for suspicious deaths. He frequently conflicted with his boss and with the police in his zeal to find the truth. In the early seasons, the emphasis was on mystery and suspense, but in later seasons the show dwelt on social and public-health problems prevalent in the day: drunk driving laws, Tourette's, anorexia nervosa, gun control, toxic waste dumping, etc. Klugman himself was asked to testify before Congress on some of the complex social issues presented on the program. The show was also pioneering in the detail and accuracy with which it used forensic technology and methods, which paved the way for shows like 'Diagnosis: Murder', 'NCIS', 'Crossing Jordan', and the 'CSI' franchise.

Screenwriters Tony Lawrence and Lou Shaw earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1978 for their episode "...The Thigh Bone's Connected to the Knee Bone..." (season 2). Klugman appeared as Quincy in all but one of 148 episodes. In "Has Anybody Here Seen Quincy?", Klugman refused to appear because he felt Quincy would never mistake an unconscious person for a body.

Oh, just one more thing. Like Columbo, we never learn Quincy's first name.

Answer: quince

The quince shrub is a hardy plant that can tolerate drought and needs lots of warmth, so where apples could not flourish in ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding areas, quince did. Some ancients called quince the "golden apple" but others had specific names for it, like 'supurgillu' among the Akkadians, who were the first to build an empire in Mesopotamia. Freshly plucked from the plant, the quince is a bit too hard to eat, so it is typically cooked to make it soft. (Or, one may leave it out to rot a bit.) The white interior turns pinkish in cooking. The lovely pink blossoms and yellow fruit make quince a nice ornamental plant as well.


Quandong sounds Chinese but it's a native Australian fruit (rather peach-like). In the 1980s, a popular book asserted that "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", a savory egg custard in a pie shell. Wrap your eggs along with chopped meat or seafood in a dumpling and poach in stock or water, and you've got quenelle.

Answer: quaestor

Also spelled "questor", the quaestor was originally, during the Roman Monarchy (753-509 BC), a king-appointed investigator of murders. Then during the Roman Republic (509-27 BC), the quaestor was an elected official who took charge of and audited the state treasury. A rather low position, it served as a stepping stone to higher office. During much of the Roman Empire (27 BC - AD 476), the praefectus (prefect) replaced the quaestor, but during the reign of Constantine the Great (r.306-337) the job title quaestor reappeared, applied to an advisory position to the emperor.

This is not to be confused with the word 'quester' (with an E-R rather than an O-R), which means "one who goes on a quest" or "one who seeks after the truth".

Answer: Queequeg

Queequeg, born a prince on the island Kokovoko, wished to see the world and became a harpooner aboard the 'Pequod'. Captain Ahab calls him "Quohog", an alternative spelling of "quahog", which is a large marine clam. He is the first character that Ishmael, the narrator, introduces to the reader in 'Moby Dick' (1951). Ishmael assumes he was a onetime cannibal and a "heathen", but finds him to be the most civilized person he meets. Some critics read Queequeg not as an ethnic figure but a synthesis of ethnicities, in other words representing all humanity.

Quicksilver is a superhero of Marvel Comics. Don Quixote tilted at windmills in Miguel Cervantes' classic Spanish novel. Quasimodo went nearly mad and deaf from the bells in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.

Answer: quincunx

Another way to describe such a cross-shaped arrangement of five things in vexillology and heraldry is "in saltire" or "saltire-wise".

In ancient Roman currency there was a standard bronze coin called the 'as'. A copper coin worth one-twelfth of that was called 'uncia'. The phrase 'quinque unciae' ("five uncias") was shortened to 'quincunx' and designated a coin worth 5/12 of an 'as'. Dots on its face were arranged saltire-wise, so the name of the coin became the name of the arrangement.

The quincunx is an important feature of the Cosmatesque (or Cosmati) decorative inlay stonework typical of medieval Italian architecture, but it appears in other cultures, too. The high altar of Westminster Abbey has a Cosmatesque marble floor. A quincuncial plan also appears in the Khmer architecture of Cambodia: the towers of the temple Angkor Wat stand in a quincunx. The five-dots tattoo (arranged in a quincunx) on the hand can mean that one has spent time in prison.

A baseball diamond is also a quincunx (four bases plus the pitcher's mound). And if you look carefully at the base of the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo lunar missions, you see the engines form a quincunx, too.

Answer: "Quizzical"

Born Robert Goldberg in 1921, the rising entertainment star took the stage name Robert Lewis. On one program, when comedian F. Chase Taylor announced, "I'm Col. Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle", Lewis retorted, "Well I'm Robert Q. Lewis". The name stuck. When asked what the Q stood for, he would facetiously reply, "Quizzical".

On CBS radio he played a variety of characters in an assortment of comedy/variety programs that included such notable writers as Neil Simon, Goodman Ace, and Paddy Chayefsky. He was also a disc jockey, and he had a program in the 1970s called 'Robert Q.'s Waxworks' that featured records of days gone by.

On television, Lewis hosted or regularly appeared in a number of talk shows, game shows, and panel shows. He was probably best known in his lifetime for hosting "The Name's the Same" in the 1950s. New generations of American viewers got to know him through his appearances on "What's My Line?" (1950-1975) on the Game Show Network5

He made guest appearances on popular TV shows like "Bewitched" and "Emergency!"; he played himself in a Woody Allen movie; and he appeared in live theater late in his life, too, including a roadshow version of "The Odd Couple". A lifelong smoker, Robert Q. Lewis died of emphysema in 1991 at age 70.