1. The most common form of aluminium ore, a wild goat, a rectangular array of numbers and radiation with a wavelength of between 0.01 and 10 nanometres. What do each of these have in common, and why was it in the news this year?
2. Four guests are seated for Christmas dinner. One arrived from a German valley, one is good with tools, one is said to be wise and the other has asked for a chair with a sturdy back. One by one, three of them will leave the table. Which will be the last one seated?
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3. In 2028, a crystallographer will join an abolitionist and a fire god. Where are they?
4. Time to gather round the table and do some bonding. Initially, what can be forged from these intriguing combinations of foods?
SWEET NOUGAT + CHESTNUT UDON
CHIPOLATAS + FLAMING EGGNOG
CHOCOLATE UNICORNS + ZESTY NACHOS
ANGEL GINGERBREAD + ASIAN UME
5. How about a brisk walk to work off your Christmas meal? On your journey, you see a large dog, but not on a lead, a big bear, but not in a cave, and a bull, but not in a ring. Where are you looking?
6. Hark! A rapid equalisation of pressure between a vessel and its surroundings has just occurred, creating a fabulously festive oscillation. What just happened?
7. After receiving a clutch of Turdus merula, a trio of Gallus gallus domesticus and a couple of Streptopelia turtur, where might you expect to find a Perdix perdix?
8. China鈥檚 giant Sky Eye has just one, laboratories tend to have a few and Christmas dinner has many. What is it?
9. Three friends decide to play a game of animal, vegetable, mineral. In a bid to stump each other, player A has chosen the source of the world鈥檚 most widely used antibiotic, player B has chosen the raising agent in bread and player C has chosen the subterranean quarry of a porcine hunter. Why is this game a non-starter?
10. What alcoholic beverage comes next in this list: a government agency responsible for the development of memory foam, an intergovernmental organisation comprising 22 member states dedicated to the exploration of space and a planned experiment designed to detect gravitational waves?
11. The following items have all been left in a specific location: golf balls, a hammer and feather, six US flags and 96 bags of human waste. What vehicles would you need in order to retrieve them?
12. The answer to this one is more basic than you might think, so you should be able to put your finger on it. Assuming they could, why is it that a reindeer might count the 14 days of Christmas, a sloth the 20 days and horses the 1100 days, while dogs and cats would join us in the 12 days of Christmas? (And why would a snake be completely flummoxed?)
13. This boy, who is thought to have been born in December centuries ago, brings warmth to the Pacific but can make winters colder on UK shores. Who is he?
14. In this place, which often comes in pairs, you will find a foot support, a tool for metalworkers, a percussive instrument and something to beat it with. Where is the place, and which of the objects is the odd one out?
15. On the morning of 25 December 1968, after a long journey, people anxiously waited for confirmation of what we had all longed to hear. Eventually, the message came: 鈥淩oger, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.鈥� What was the profession of the person who sent the message?
Answers
1. The clues describe bauxite, an ibex, a matrix and X-rays. Each of these contains an "x", which was in the news in July when Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X.
2. The guests are each representatives of the genus Homo, which, in order, are: Homo neanderthalensis (the Latin translation of which is "man from the Neander valley"), Homo habilis (meaning "handy man"), Homo sapiens (meaning "wise man") and Homo erectus (meaning "upright man"). H. neanderthalensis, H. habilis and H. erectus are now extinct 鈥� or have left the table in this analogy 鈥� so only H. sapiens remains.
3. Mars. These titles describe people or deities after whom Mars rovers are named. The crystallographer is Rosalind Franklin, who lends her name to the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover, which is due to touch down on the Red Planet in 2028. She will join two seasoned Mars rovers: NASA's Sojourner, which is named after the abolitionist Sojourner Truth and landed on Mars in 1997, and the China National Space Administration's Zhurong, which touched down on Mars in 2021 and is named after a Chinese fire god.
4. The food combinations describe common alloys, with their initials representing atomic symbols. So, for example, combine Sweet nougat (Sn, or tin) with Chestnut udon (Cu, or copper) and you get bronze. C (carbon) + Fe (iron) = steel, Cu (copper) + Zn (zinc) = brass and Ag (silver) + Au (gold) = electrum.
5. Up. These are all constellations 鈥� Canis Major (the great dog), Ursa Major (the great bear) and Taurus (the bull) 鈥� that can be seen in much of the northern hemisphere on Christmas day this year, weather permitting. UK stargazers will also be treated to a sight of Jupiter on 25 December.
6. Sounds like someone just opened another bottle of champagne, that festive oscillation being the characteristic pop! That pop, at 600 hertz, is the result of gas rapidly and repeatedly going in and out of the bottle of bubbly right after the cork is released, until the pressure both inside and out is equal. Cheers!
7. The species listed are calling birds (known today as the common blackbird), hens, European turtle doves and the grey partridge, which, as the lyrics of The Twelve Days of Christmas suggest, would be found in a pear tree (Pyrus communis).
8. A dish. China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), known as Sky Eye, is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, Petri dishes are often found in labs for growing cultures and dishes of food are likely to be extremely plentiful at Christmas dinner.
9. Every player has chosen a type of fungus: respectively, Penicillium (a genus of fungus), baker's yeast and truffles. Fungi aren't animal, vegetable nor mineral. Looks like it is going to be a long night.
10. A mimosa. The answers to the clues are NASA, which in 1966 developed memory foam (then known as temper foam), ESA and LISA. Each of these ends with a vowel followed by -sa, with the vowel sequence in alphabetical order: a, e, i... o.
11. A rocket and a moon buggy. These items were all left on the surface of the moon during the six successful Apollo missions. Why did the astronauts leave all of this stuff behind? To lighten the load before launch and to make room for more moon rocks.
12. This is a question about counting systems. If we work from the assumption that humans' base 10 system originates from our having 10 fingers, we could suggest that animals with eight digits on their two front limbs, such as reindeer, would count in base 8, three-toed sloths would count in base 6 and horses, which have just one toe on each foot, would count in base 2, or binary. The number 12 is 14 in base 8, 20 in base 6 and 1100 in base 2. (Snakes, of course, have no digits at all.)
13. The boy, both figuratively and literally, is El Ni帽o, the periodic fluctuation in Earth's climate system that affects weather all over the world. It is thought to have got its name from Peruvian fishers, who named it "El Ni帽o de Navidad" after the newborn Jesus Christ.
14. The place is the ear. Respectively, the clues describe a stirrup, anvil, drum and hammer. Three of these are the names of the bones 鈥� or ossicles 鈥� of the human ear, leaving the drum 鈥� or tympanic membrane 鈥� as the odd one out.
15. Astronaut. After leaving the moon's orbit on 25 December, Apollo 8 command module pilot Jim Lovell that the crew members were on their way home and, presumably, they had also caught a merry sight.
Leonie Mercedes is looking forward to hearing many rapid equalisations of pressure this holiday period
