Movie Maths Trivia Quiz

Answer: "... Years A Slave" (2013)

"24 Hour Party People" is a British movie about the Manchester music scene, directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan. An earlier movie, "Two Mules for Sister Sara", is a Western starring Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine as Sara (a prostitute posing as a nun). Divide 24 by two and you get 12, the number of years that Solomon Northup was a slave in mid-nineteenth century America.

His 1853 book about his experiences was made into a much-acclaimed movie in 2013, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and directed by Steve McQueen.

Answer: "... Days of Night" (2007)

Sydney Pollack's political thriller "Three Days of the Condor" stars Robert Redford as a CIA researcher caught up in a plot involving Middle Eastern oil fields. "10 Things I Hate About You" is a teen comedy based on the plot of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew", starring Julia Styles and Heath Ledger. If you multiply three by 10, you get 30, as in vampire horror movie "30 Days of Night", the title referring to the month-long polar night endured annually by a small Alaskan town.

Answer: "... Dark Thirty" (2012)

"12 Angry Men" was directed by Sidney Lumet and starred Henry Fonda, the 12 men of the title being members of a jury tasked with determining the guilt of a young man accused of murder. Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys" starred Bruce Willis in a time-travel drama about the attempt to prevent the spread of a deadly virus. Subtracting 12 from 12 gives you a big fat zero, as in "Zero Dark Thirty", Kathryn Bigelow's movie that dramatises the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Answer: "... Hours" (2010)

The adventure fantasy movie "47 Ronin" starred Keanu Reeves and was one of 2013's biggest box-office flops. Much more successful was Michael Anderson's "Around the World in 80 Days", based on Jules Verne's novel and starring David Niven and a huge number of stars in cameo roles. For the sake of completeness, I should mention that it was subjected to a totally unnecessary remake in 2004. 47 plus 80 gives 127, the number of hours real-life walker Aron Ralston was trapped by a boulder before escaping by cutting his own arm off.

This unpromising scenario was made into an Oscar-nominated movie in 2010, directed by Danny Boyle.

Answer: "...Years BC" (1966)

There are some big numbers here! The 1967 movie is "Five Million Years to Earth", the US title of a British-made science-fiction movie otherwise known as "Quatermass and the Pit". "Five Easy Pieces" is a drama starring Jack Nicholson and Karen Black. Divide one by the other, and you get the legendary "One Million Years B.C.", starring Raquel Welch in an eye-catching stone-age bikini, and a variety of Ray Harryhausen-animated dinosaurs.

Answer: "... Blocks" (2006)

The tantalisingly-named "Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag" starred Joe Pesci in a black comedy about exactly what it says in the title. Guy Ritchie's successful comedy thriller "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" gave ex-footballer Vinnie Jones his first major film role, and also featured the debut film appearance of Jason Statham. Multiply eight by two and you get 16, as in Richard Donner's crime thriller "16 Blocks", starring Bruce Willis and Mos Def.

Answer: "Year ..." (2009)

Taking Disney's two live-action Dalmatians films in reverse order of release, you get 102 minus 101, which gives you one, as in "Year One", a 2009 comedy starring Jack Black and Michael Cera as cavemen in a historically dubious "biblical romp".

Answer: "The Number ..." (2007)

What you are doing here is adding Steven Soderburgh's casino heist movie "Ocean's 11" to its first sequel, "Ocean's 12", to get the Joel Schumacher movie "The Number 23", which starred Jim Carrey. "Ocean's 11" was a remake of the 1960 movie starring Frank Sinatra and other members of his "Rat Pack", although Soderburgh's version with George Clooney was successful enough to spawn two sequels, the third being "Ocean's 13". "The Number 23" was directed by Joel Schumacher, and was based on an apparently genuine theory about the universal significance of that number.

Answer: "The ... Musketeers" (1973)

Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs" tells the story of a young couple's love affair, punctuated by performances of the nine songs of the title. "Three Men and a Baby" is a comedy directed by Leonard Nimoy, about three bachelors who find themselves unexpectedly having to look after a baby.

Divide nine by three and you get another three. Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel "Les Trois Mousquetaires" has been filmed over 20 times, perhaps most entertainingly by Dick Lester in 1973 in a version starring Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay and Richard Chamberlain as the title characters, with Michael York as d'Artagnan.

Answer: "... Ghosts" (2001)

"Six Days Seven Nights" was directed by Ivan Reitman and starred Harrison Ford and Anne Heche as two mismatched people who discover their feelings for each other after their plane crashes on a deserted island. Adding six and seven gives 13, as in Steve Beck's horror film, "13 Ghosts", about a group of people trapped in a strange house with the titular ghosts (or 12 of them, to be accurate).

Editor's note: Please do not send correction notes about "Apollo ..." (2011), as that year's film was "Apollo 18" and does not answer the question.