Which Number? Trivia Quiz

Answer: 28

Born in New Orleans LA, Marshall Faulk of San Diego State was taken number two overall by the Colts in the 1994 draft. He joined the Rams in 1999 and won Superbowl XXXIV in January 2000 and the league MVP in the 2000 season. He retired in 2005 and was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2011. He wore number 28 for both the Colts and the Rams.

The number 28 is also the number of Chinese constellations (or mansions); the number of tiles in a domino set (picture clue); the postal code of Madrid province, and the approximate number of grams in an ounce. Messier object M28 can be found in the Sagittarius constellation.

Answer: 43

Born Richard Lee Petty in 1937 in the unincorporated community of Level Cross in central North Carolina, he was nicknamed simply "The King". Driving car number 43, he won the NASCAR drivers' title seven times between 1964 and 1979, a record since tied by both Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson. He is also a seven-time winner of the Daytona 500. He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame Inductee in 1997.

Messier M43, known as the De Mairan's Nebula, is part of the larger Orion Nebula (M42). Nicknamed "W", George W Bush was the 43rd US President and his father, George H.W. Bush was number 41 (picture clue). Opened in 1981, I-43 runs from Beliot in southwest Wisconsin to the outskirts of Green Bay on the shore of Lake Michigan.

43 was also the number retired by the Oakland Athletics to honour their ace relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley; the direct dialling code for Austria; was the title of a song on the eponymous 1981 debut album by Level 42; and is the name of a popular Spanish liqueur. Agent 43 is a main villain in the US/Canadian TV series "Odd Squad".

Answer: 17

Having won the first Stanley Cups in franchise history in the 1990-91 and 1991-92 seasons, the Pittsburgh Penguins enjoyed their best-ever regular season in 1992-93: their 56-21-7 record included a streak of 17 consecutive wins, setting a new NHL record. Star Mario Lemieux was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and missed the first quarter of the season but was unstoppable on his return and won his fourth Art Ross Trophy as the league's highest points scorer.

The WWII four-engined heavy bomber flown by the USAAF and other Allies was the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. The 1980 Blondie Number One was "Call Me", and the number to call the police in France is 17 (picture clue). Made of gold, the galleon is the highest-value coin in the British wizards' currency: 17 silver Sickles make up one gold Galleon, and there are 29 bronze Knuts to a Sickle (as explained in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone").

According to the Hackers' "Jargon File", 17 is the least random number. For a Sudoku puzzle with a unique solution, 17 is the minimum possible number of givens. The atomic number of chlorine is 17, and Group 17 in the Periodic Table is known as the Halogens. Without parental consent, 17 is the minimum age for buying or renting M-rated video games in the US and Canada, and in the UK and Canada it is also the minimum age at which one can donate blood. Adapted from a Broadway play, the 1953 Billy Wilder film staring William Holden was set at "Stalag 17".

Answer: 94

With the atomic number 94, plutonium is named after the dwarf planet and former planet orbiting outside of Neptune (picture clue). Plutonium was used in both the first atomic bomb tested in New Mexico in July 1945, "Trinity", and in "Fat Man", which was exploded over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9 that same year. ("Little Boy", which landed on Hiroshima three days earlier, contained uranium.)

Discovered in 1884 by French astronomer Guillaume Bigourdan, the lenticular (between elliptical and spiral) galaxy designated NGC94 is about 260 million light years away in the Andromeda constellation.

94 is also the number of Haydn's "Surprise Symphony; a nonsense number frequently used in the satirical magazine "Private Eye" (eg. "continued on P.94"); and the length in feet of an NBA court. Messier 94 is a spiral galaxy in the Canes Venatici constellation. I-94 is a US interstate running from the Canadian border at Port Huron MI in the east to the junction with I-90 near Millings MT in the west.

Answer: 39

There were 39 historic or ceremonial counties in England prior to various reorganizations of local government in the 20th century. Of those, Huntingdon and Middlesex were disestablished in 1965. Cumberland, Westmorland, Sussex, Yorkshire, Rutland, Worcestershire and Herefordshire were all disestablished in the 1974 reorganization, although the latter three have since been revived, Rutland in 1997 and the other two in 1998.

Of the 74 official delegates named to the Philadelphia Convention in May 1787, 55 attended and of those, 39 actually signed the Constitution document. Published in 1915, John Buchan's classic novel "39 Steps" (picture clue) has been adapted for the screen numerous times with Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 version starring Robert Donat the best-known.

39 is also the atomic number of yttrium, a silvery-metallic transition metal with the chemical symbol "Y"; the title of songs by Queen (from the "A night at the Opera" album) and by The Cure (from the "Bloodflowers" album); according to Halakha, the number of categories of activity prohibited on Shabbat; the international direct-dialing code for Italy; the number of wooden boards in a standard bowling alley; the number of counties in the US state of Washington; and Japanese Internet chat slang for "Thank You".

Messier object M39 is an open cluster in the constellation Cygnus. Due to a belief that it is associated with pimps, 39 is considered an unlucky number in Afghanistan. Pier 39 is a shopping centre and popular tourist attraction in San Francisco CA.

Answer: 80

Antique car lovers will recognize the photograph as a 1948 Ford Mercury, and the element which has an atomic number of 80 is mercury. The Mercury division was created in 1938 by Edsel Ford to bridge the price gap between the Ford and Lincoln brands. The Mercury brand was discontinued in January 2011.

Running 2,900 miles from the George Washington Bridge across the Hudson River at Teaneck NJ in the east to San Francisco CA in the west, I-80 is the second-longest highway in the Interstate system. Only I-90 (Boston MA to Seattle WA) is longer, at 3,020 miles.

Former Mississippi State Delta Devil Jerry Rice wore the number 80 throughout his 15-year career with the San Francisco 49ers, with whom he won three Superbowl titles. After three years in Oakland with the Raiders, Rice finished his career in Seattle in 2004. The Seahawks had previously retired the number 80 jersey in honour of Steve Largent, but permission was given for Rice to wear that number for his season in Seattle. Elected to the NFL Hall of Fame in 2010 holding more than 100 NFL records, in 2010, Rice was also named as the greatest NFL player of all time in a poll by NFL Network's "NFL Films".

80 is also the length (in years) of the Dutch Revolt (1568-1848), also-known as the Eighty Year War; and the length of time (in days) that Phileas Fogg was given to circumnavigate the globe in the classic 1873 Jules Verne novel "Around the World in 80 Days". 80 is also a semi-perfect number: adding some subsets of its divisors (e.g., 1, 4, 5, 10, 20 and 40) produces a total of 80.

Answer: 16

The number 16 jersey has been retired in honour of numerous Hall of Fame players across multiple sports: amongst them are baseball pitchers Whitey Ford of the Yankees and Hal Newhouse of the Detroit Tigers, in football QB Joe Montana of the 49ers and RB Frank Gifford of the New York Giants, in basketball power forward Satch Sanders of the Boston Celtics and center Bob Lanier of the Bucs and Pistons, and in hockey winger Brett Hull of the Blues and center Pat Lafontaine of the Buffalo Sabres.

Founded in 1997 and led by vocalist Renata Dąbkowska, Sixteen represented Poland at the 1998 Eurovision contest in Birmingham with the song 'To takie proste' ("It's so Easy"). They finished 17th out of 25 entrants in a contest won by controversial Israeli singer Dana International (real name Sharon Cohen). The picture clue of a pawn shop sign might remind you of a different type of pawn, those used in a chess game: add the number of black and white pawns together and you get 16.

16 is also the number of regular season games played in the NFL; the number of drivers qualifying for the season-ending "Chase for the Sprint Cup" in NASCAR; the voting age in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, the Isle of Man and Nicaragua; the minimum age to get married without parental consent in Scotland; the number of different personality types in the Myers-Briggs classification system; a song on Green Day's 1990 debut album "39/Smooth"; the number of states in Germany; the number of counties in both Maine and Nevada; and the standard length of a bank card number.

F-16 is the designation of the USAAF's single-engine supersonic multirole fighter aircraft introduced in 1978 and known as the "Fighting Falcon". Just as the British PM lives at 10 Downing Street and the government is sometimes referred to simply at "Number 10", "Number 16" is shorthand for the Belgian government with the PM's official residence at 16 Rue de la Loi in Brussels.

Answer: 67

The European Highway E67 covers 1,040 miles between Prague, Czech Republic (picture clue) in the south and Helsinki, Finland, 600 miles of which (between Warsaw, Poland and Tallinn, Estonia) along what is known as the Via Baltica. The final stretch of the 'highway' is via the ferry crossing from Tallinn to Helsinki.

67 produces palindromic results when into consecutive bases, 232 in base-5 and 151 in base-6. The number of counties in each US state varies enormously amongst the 48 states that have counties (Alaska and Louisiana don't), from Delaware with just three to Texas, which has 254. There are two states each with 5, 14, 16, 23 and 95, but 67 is unique in equalling the number of counties in three different states.

67 is also the number of the French department 'Bas-Rhin'; and the atomic number for the rare earth metal Holmium, chemical symbol "Ho" and discovered by Swedish chemist Per Theodor Cleve and thus named after the city of Stockholm.

The Messier object M67 is an open cluster in the constellation Cancer. The U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier 'USS John F. Kennedy' is designated CV-67. Celebrating their 50th anniversary this year (2017), the Ottawa 67s are a junior ice hockey team playing in the Ontario Hockey League.

Answer: 22

The photograph shows the birthplace of Korean anti-Japanese guerrilla Kim Jong-suk, Kim Il-sung's first wife, Kim Jong-il's mother and current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's grandmother. The city of Hoeryong also harbours something significantly more sinister too, 'Kwalliso' #22, or simply Camp 22. Isolated from the outside world, prisoners and their families are held in lifelong detention here, with torture, forced labour and human medical experiments part of everyday life according to previous camp employees who have defected.

Known as the "Lazy caterer's sequence" (officially central polygonal numbers) dictates the maximum number of pieces into which a pizza (or cake, or any circular object) can be divided by a given number of straight cuts. For example, one cut will obviously divide the pizza into two pieces, two cuts into a maximum of four, three cuts into seven, etc. Six straight line cuts produces a maximum of 22 pieces.

Serious cricket buffs will have no problem with this question, since a cricket, pitch is exactly 22 yards or one chain in length, from wicket to wicket. One chain is also equal to four rods or 100 links, and there are 10 chains in a furlong and thus 80 chains to a statute mile. An acre (historically the amount of land that could be ploughed in one day with a yoke of oxen) is 10 square chains, or an area one chain by one furlong.

22 is also the atomic number of the lustrous transition metal titanium, chemical symbol "Ti"; a Lily Allen song from the album "It's Not Me, It's You"; a Taylor Swift song from the album "Red"; known as "Two Little Ducks" by bingo callers; the number of players on the field during and American football or soccer match; the number of players in an Aussie Rules squad (18 play at any one time); and the jersey number worn by Dallas Cowboys' legendary Hall of Fame RB Emmitt Smith (the Cowboys do not retire jerseys so, in theory, it is still available although it has not been issued since he retired in 2002).

F22 is the designation of the USAF stealth fighter known as the Raptor. "Catch-22" was a satirical WWII novel by Joseph Heller published in 1961.

Answer: 55

In the Fibonacci sequence, each number (after the first two) is the sum of the two previous numbers, thus 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,etc. A triangular number totals all of the integers from 1 to n (ie 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, 1+2+3+4, etc) to produce the sequence 1,3,6,10,15,21,28,36,45,55,66,78,91, etc. 55 is the largest number that can appear in both sequences.

Caesium is a soft, silvery-gold alkali metal with the atomic number 55 and the chemical symbol "Cs". It has a melting point of only 83.3F (28.5C): Mercury is the only elemental metal with a lower melting point, and only three others are liquid (or near liquid) at room temperature.

The official residence of the French President is the Élysée Palace (picture clue), officially 55 Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Paris. The British equivalent is of course 10, Downing Street or, simply, Number 10.

55 is known as "Speed Limit" to bingo callers, since 55 mph was the maximum speed allowed on any US roads between 1974 and 1986. Consequently, Van Halen vocalist/guitarist Sammy Hagar produced the song "I Can't Drive 55", which appeared on his 1984 album "VOA": the track just made it into VH1's "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs" at #100.

'Gazeta 55' is a daily newspaper published since 1997 in Tirana, Albania. The 1963 historical epic film "55 Days at Peking" starred David Niven and Charlton Heston. The Messier object M55 is a globular cluster in the constellation Sagittarius.