The Voyage of Captain X... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mediterranean Sea

The xebec (pronounced "zeebeck", and also spelled chebec, chebeck, shebeck, xebeck, xebecque, xebeque, zebec, zebeck or zebecque) was a small ship used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean sometime between the 16th to mid 17th (sources vary) and 19th centuries. It was designed for speed and was a favourite vessel of the Mediterranean corsairs, or pirates.

The earliest xebecs had two masts, while later types had three. The vessel had lateen sails, which are the large triangular sort that appear skewed or tilted in relation to the mast. If you search for some images on the internet you'll see what I mean.

Answer: The Xenon

Xenon is one of the noble, or inert, gases; its chemical symbol is Xe, its atomic number is 54, and it is found as a trace gas in the Earth's atmosphere (less than one tenth of a part per million). The name is derived from Greek "xenos" meaning "strange". It glows blue to lavender when excited by electric discharge.

The British scientists William Ramsay & Morris Travers discovered xenon in 1898 while working on isolating other noble gases from air. In the 1930s Harold Edgerton developed the xenon flash lamp.

Xenon is used in arc lamps for film projection systems, in dermatological lasers, as a general anaesthetic, and in medical imaging.

Although originally thought to be completely non-reactive (hence the name of the group of elements: "Inert Gases"), compounds of xenon have since been synthesised.

"Xargon" is the name of a computer game; "Xeon" is a branded name for some types of multi-processing CPUs; "Xyron" is the name of a company specialising in craft equipment for scrapbooking, card-making and suchlike.

Answer: The Legend of Xanadu

"You'll hear my voice on the wind 'cross the sand,
If you should return to that black, barren land
That bears the name of Xanadu.
Cursed without hope was the love that I sought;
Lost from the start was the duel that was fought
To win a heart in Xanadu."

A lively song but with sad lyrics, "The Legend of Xanadu", by British band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, was released on 9th February 1968 on the Fontana label. It shot up the UK charts, reaching the number one spot in the week ending 23rd March, displacing Esther and Abi Ofarim's "Cinderella Rockafella", only to be knocked off the top the following week by Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay", and by the beginning of May had disappeared altogether from the Top 40. The band is still going strong and had a European Tour scheduled for 2008.

Xanadu is generally regarded as a mythical place, but may be based on the city of Shang Tu in China visited by Marco Polo on his travels and reported as the place where Kublai Khan built his summer palace.

"Mr. X" is from Ultravox's 1980 album "Vienna"; "X Static" is from the Foo Fighters' 1995 album "Foo Fighters"; "Xmas in February" is from Lou Reed's 1989 album "New York".

Answer: Xenophon Xanthus

The Captain's family name "Xanthus" is Greek for the colour yellow and describes his blond hair colour; his given name "Xenophon" is also from the Greek and means "strange voice" or "strange sound" - a perfect description of his singing. His parents must have been psychic!

Xenophon was an Athenian, born about 435 BC (sources give varying dates from 440 to 430); a pupil of Socrates, he later turned to soldiering and writing. His diverse works included treatises on the horse and hunting, accounts of various military campaigns, and commentaries on various rulers.

Answer: A xiphias

A "xiphias" is the swordfish Xiphias gladus, found in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. The scientific name is another case of a creature receiving the same name twice: the Greek word "xiphos" describes a type of sword, as does the Latin "gladus". Swordfish are migratory predators and are often fished for sport.

A "xeme" is Sabine's Gull (Xema sabini), a small North American seabird with a shallowly-forked tail.

A "xenurine" is a species of armadillo found in South America; it is also known as the Broad-banded armadillo, tatouay, or cabassou.

A "xiphosuran" is an animal of the class Xiphosura; this class of the animal kingdom includes many extinct creatures as well as those "living fossils", the horseshoe crabs.

Answer: No

While many people believe that using the word "Xmas" is just a modern, commercial, slapdash way of avoiding writing out "Christmas" in full, the letter X as a representation of the word "Christ" has been in use for many centuries.

In the Christian church, as early as the first century, the letter X was used to represent Christ: it is the Anglicised form of the Greek letter chi which is written like a large "X", and the hard "ch" sound in the English word "Christ" would originally have been the chi sound in Greek. The chi-rho, or labarum, found in Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christian symbolism (chi-rho is the symbol that looks like a monogram of X and P) represents the first two sounds of the word: "ch" and "r".

By the fifteenth century, Xmas was in common use as a symbol for Christmas and, after the invention of the printing press, the substitution of "Christ" with "X" was commonplace as a way of shortening words to reduce printing costs on pamphlets and tracts.

Answer: It is a strong ale

The system of grading the alcoholic strength of beers with different numbers of Xs derives from the old practice of partigyle (or parti-gyle). This involved drawing off liquid in stages from the fermentation vessel during the course of the fermentation.

The result was a range of beers of diminishing strength: first, a strong ale or barley wine (XXX); next, an "ordinary" beer (XX); finally, a weak or "small" beer (X).

What's the difference between ale and beer? These days, none at all - the words are interchangeable; but traditionally a beer was made with hops, while an ale did not contain hops.

Answer: Christopher Columbus, Hippocrates and Homer

The Greek island of Xios (Chios) in the northern Aegean Sea has had a chequered history, and has been a possession of several different powers. There is controversy over the claim that Christopher Columbus, Homer and Hippocrates of Xios were born here.

Traditionally, Columbus was an Italian from Genoa, but there is evidence to suggest that he may not have been Italian. According to some sources, he never claimed to be from Genoa itself, but from the Republic of Genoa which, at the time of his birth, included the island of Xios; the family name Columbus is found on the island to the present.

Hippocrates of Xios was a mathematician (and a completely different person from the physician, Hippocrates of Kos, usually associated with the name) whose work "Stoicheia" was the first known systematically organised geometry textbook.

Homer, the author of the epic works "Odyssey" and "Iliad", was reputedly born on the island of Xios in the 8th century BC. It is not proven that he actually wrote these works as original compositions: it is possible that he collected stories from oral tradition which he then wrote as a single composition.

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) was Macedonian; Alexis Zorba was a fictional Cretan from the 1964 movie "Zorba the Greek"; the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975) was from Izmir (formerly Smyrna); a "bouzouki" is a Greek stringed instrument of the lute family; Euclid (c325-c265 BC) was a mathematician from Alexandria in Egypt; Nana Mouskouri (b1934 in Crete) is a popular Greek singer; Odysseus was the legendary king of the Ionian island of Ithaca (not far from Xios); Plato (c424-c348 BC) was an Athenian philosopher; Socrates (c469-399 BC) was also a philosopher who was probably Athenian.

Answer: Xerxes

Xerxes I (c519-465 BC), also known as Xerxes the Great, ruled the Persian Empire for 20 years from 485 BC until his assassination. He was the son of Darius the Great and was succeeded by his own son, Artaxerxes. The armies of Xerxes attacked Greece in 480 BC, winning the Battle of Thermopylae (the one where King Leonidas and the Spartans held the field against the superior numbers of Persians, but lost in the end) and burning Athens; his fleet was defeated at Salamis later in the same year.

Xangria or Xangra is a place name from the Mediterranean island of Gozo.

Xanthippe was the wife of the Greek philosopher Socrates.

Dr. Xargle is an alien teacher who writes amusing textbooks for his students about the strange habits of Earth creatures (e.g. "Dr. Xargle's Book of Earthlets"). The children's author Jeanne Willis translates them into English.

Answer: A wooden statue

A xoanon was an ancient Greek carved wooden statue representing a deity or the spirit of a hero. The word means "scraped" or "carved thing" and is distinct from the word used to describe stone statues, "agalma".

Xoana representing deities were often carved from the wood of a tree sacred to that particular deity and were plank-like in appearance, bearing only a superficial resemblance to the human shape. They were cult objects, held in great veneration, and believed to be a focus for the power of the deity.

As Captain X gives the order to set sail for home, a plaintive cry goes up from the crew: "What about the fabled Treasure of Knowledge?" "Aharr, shipmates," he growls in reply, "if ye've navigated the treacherous reefs and shoals of this quiz, then ye've found it already!"