Questions

100 points

Tip 1: They won 32 of their 38 games that season.

Tip 2: They finished 19 points clear of Manchester United.

11 points

Tip 1: They won just once all season.

Tip 2: Southampton's dreadful 2024–25 side still finished above this mark.

106 goals

Tip 1: It works out at close to three goals per game.

Tip 2: Their goal difference that season was +79.

49 matches

Tip 1: It began in May 2003 and covered the whole Invincibles season.

Tip 2: It lasted well over a full 38-game season, but not two.

86 matches

Tip 1: That is more than four full seasons of home games.

Tip 2: A season has 19 home games.

15 goals

Tip 1: They kept a record number of clean sheets that year.

Tip 2: It was less than one goal every two games.

104 goals

Tip 1: They kept only one clean sheet all year.

Tip 2: It works out at more than two and a half goals per game.

36 goals

Tip 1: It was his first season at Manchester City.

Tip 2: It is close to one goal per game across a 38-game season.

260 goals

Tip 1: He played 441 games, for Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United.

Tip 2: Harry Kane is second with more than 200.

658 appearances

Tip 1: He has appeared in every season since 2002–03.

Tip 2: Gareth Barry held the record before him with just over 650.

7.69 seconds

Tip 1: He was playing for Southampton.

Tip 2: It took less than ten seconds.

176 seconds

Tip 1: He was playing for Southampton against Aston Villa.

Tip 2: It took less than three minutes.

83,222 people

Tip 1: Spurs were using Wembley while their new stadium was built.

Tip 2: It was well over 80,000.

3,039 people

Tip 1: Wimbledon were sharing a ground with Crystal Palace.

Tip 2: It was under 5,000.

43 years old

Tip 1: He was a goalkeeper.

Tip 2: He was past his 40th birthday.

40 years old

Tip 1: He was playing for West Ham against Portsmouth.

Tip 2: He had scored a hat-trick at 37, also a record.

310 appearances

Tip 1: The run lasted from August 2004 to October 2012.

Tip 2: That is a little over eight full seasons.

8 clubs

Tip 1: They included Everton, Crystal Palace and Blackburn Rovers.

Tip 2: Craig Bellamy scored for seven, and Bent played for more.

12 hat-tricks

Tip 1: All of them came for Manchester City.

Tip 2: It is more than ten.

5 hat-tricks

Tip 1: He was playing for Blackburn Rovers.

Tip 2: That is one every seven or eight games.

162 assists

Tip 1: He played 632 games, all for Manchester United.

Tip 2: Kevin De Bruyne is second with just under 120.

53 goals

Tip 1: He stood over two metres tall.

Tip 2: It is more than 50.

41 goals

Tip 1: He scored 177 league goals in total.

Tip 2: It is close to a quarter of his league goals.

56 penalties

Tip 1: He took 67 in total.

Tip 2: Frank Lampard is second with 43.

18 goals

Tip 1: He played 265 Premier League games.

Tip 2: James Ward-Prowse fell just one short.

10 own goals

Tip 1: He was a centre-back for clubs such as Manchester City.

Tip 2: It is a round number.

113 red cards

Tip 1: They are one of the few clubs ever-present since 1992.

Tip 2: It is more than 100.

105 yellow cards

Tip 1: It averages close to three a game.

Tip 2: It is more than 100.

12 yellow cards

Tip 1: That season had 42 games each.

Tip 2: It was far less than one per game.

19 points

Tip 1: Manchester City beat Manchester United to the title.

Tip 2: It is more than six wins' worth of points.

7 games

Tip 1: The season was interrupted by the pandemic.

Tip 2: They clinched it before the end of June.

97 points

Tip 1: They lost only one game all season.

Tip 2: They finished one point behind Manchester City.

75 points

Tip 1: They averaged just under two points a game.

Tip 2: It is fewer than 80.

42 points

Tip 1: 40 points is the famous survival target.

Tip 2: They were above that target and still went down.

66 points

Tip 1: They finished high enough to reach Europe.

Tip 2: It is well above the usual survival target of 40.

775 wins

Tip 1: That is across 34 seasons.

Tip 2: It is more than 700.

24 wins

Tip 1: It started in February 2019 and ended in July 2020.

Tip 2: That is more than one full season of home games.

18 wins

Tip 1: City's run lasted from August to December.

Tip 2: It is almost half a season.

32 matches

Tip 1: They won one game all season, in September.

Tip 2: The run covered the rest of the 38-game season.

20 defeats

Tip 1: The run spanned two separate spells in the top flight.

Tip 2: It is more than half a season of games.

55 matches

Tip 1: They scored in every game of 2001–02.

Tip 2: That is well over one full season.

4 goals

Tip 1: That season had 21 home games each.

Tip 2: It is fewer than five.

9 goals

Tip 1: Crowds were mostly absent that season.

Tip 2: It is fewer than ten across 19 home games.

68 goals

Tip 1: Their home goal difference was +54.

Tip 2: It is well over three a game.

55 goals

Tip 1: Ian Holloway's side were famous for attacking football.

Tip 2: It is about a goal and a half per game.

39 goals

Tip 1: He played for Tottenham Hotspur.

Tip 2: It beats Haaland's best single-season total.

11 matches

Tip 1: It ran from August to late November.

Tip 2: It was during Leicester's title-winning season.

8 goals

Tip 1: He was playing for Reading.

Tip 2: It is fewer than ten.

13 titles

Tip 1: All of them came between 1993 and 2013.

Tip 2: It is more than ten.

25 clean sheets

Tip 1: They played 38 games.

Tip 2: They kept one in about two of every three games.

410,000 species

Tip 1: Land plants include mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants.

Tip 2: Flowering plants alone make up the large majority of the total, which is well above 100,000 but below a million.

1858

Tip 1: Worth was an English-born designer working in the French capital.

Tip 2: This was in the middle of the 19th century, during the Second French Empire.

6.67%

Tip 1: Steel typically contains only a small fraction of this carbon.

Tip 2: The limit is well above steel's roughly 1% carbon but far below 20%.

1,250 °C

Tip 1: Early Bronze Age kilns could not reach this temperature easily.

Tip 2: It is well above the roughly 1,085 degrees Celsius at which copper melts.

500,000 tons

Tip 1: Food irradiation uses beta particles or gamma rays from sources such as cobalt-60.

Tip 2: The practice is used in over 40 countries, yet the total is far smaller than a million tons.

1948

Tip 1: It came in the World Health Organization's very first years.

Tip 2: It came in the years right after the Second World War.

1.2%

Tip 1: A normal beer is often around 4 to 5 percent ABV.

Tip 2: De-alcoholised beer in the UK must be under 0.5%, and low-alcohol beer is allowed a little more than double that.

1683

Tip 1: The constant is roughly 2.718 and is the base of natural logarithms.

Tip 2: This was in the late 17th century, decades before Euler gave it the letter e.

552 deaths

Tip 1: This was before the measles vaccine was introduced in the United States.

Tip 2: The death toll was in the hundreds, well under a thousand.

2,525 km

Tip 1: It flows through India and Bangladesh.

Tip 2: It is longer than the Rhine but shorter than the Nile, and sources differ slightly.

0.92%

Tip 1: Argon is the third most abundant gas in the air, after nitrogen and oxygen.

Tip 2: It is a noble gas and makes up less than one percent of the air.

1543

Tip 1: Vesalius was a professor of anatomy at the University of Padua.

Tip 2: The year is the same one in which Copernicus published his heliocentric work.

5,610 metres

Tip 1: It is a dormant stratovolcano in the Alborz range.

Tip 2: It is higher than Mont Blanc but lower than Mount Kilimanjaro.

3,474 km

Tip 1: It is a bit over a quarter of Earth's diameter.

Tip 2: It is smaller than the width of Australia but larger than that of Pluto.

86 billion neurons

Tip 1: Neurons communicate with one another through synapses.

Tip 2: The number is far more than there are people on Earth, but fewer than a trillion.

1,723 °C

Tip 1: Its high melting point and viscosity make it hard to work with.

Tip 2: It is hotter than a typical iron-smelting furnace, but below 2,000 degrees Celsius.

30 km/s

Tip 1: A complete orbit takes about 365 days.

Tip 2: It is far faster than a rifle bullet but only a tiny fraction of the speed of light.

27.4%

Tip 1: The other main types are igneous and sedimentary rock.

Tip 2: Igneous rocks make up about 65% of the crust, and metamorphic rocks make up a bit more than a quarter.

868

Tip 1: It was found at Dunhuang and is now in the British Library.

Tip 2: It was printed during the Tang dynasty, in the 9th century.

25 kg

Tip 1: The coco de mer is also called the double coconut palm.

Tip 2: It weighs more than a bowling ball but less than a person.

720 degrees

Tip 1: For an ordinary simple polygon the exterior angles sum to a single full turn.

Tip 2: A pentagram winds around its centre more than once, so its total exceeds that of simple polygons.

528 mm

Tip 1: Beijing has a semi-arid, monsoon-influenced climate, so it is much drier than tropical cities.

Tip 2: Close to three-quarters of the total falls in just three summer months, June to August.

325 kg

Tip 1: A 100 W bulb running all year uses roughly 876 kWh of electricity.

Tip 2: Coal holds about 6.7 kWh of energy per kilogram, and much of that is lost as heat in the plant.

98.4%

Tip 1: Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest living relatives.

Tip 2: The figure is in the high nineties, but not quite 99.

54 chromosomes

Tip 1: Sheep and goats are different species that seldom interbreed, partly because their chromosome counts differ.

Tip 2: Humans have 46 chromosomes; sheep have more than that, but fewer than goats.

56 years

Tip 1: He died in Vienna in 1827 after months of illness that left him bedridden.

Tip 2: He had been composing since childhood, but he did not reach 60.

1526

Tip 1: This was in the early 16th century, a few decades after Columbus's first voyage.

Tip 2: It came after 1520 and before 1530.

34%

Tip 1: Maps of invented worlds are a classic feature of the fantasy genre, from Tolkien onwards.

Tip 2: Fewer than half of the books had one, but more than a quarter did.

4 km

Tip 1: The Bering Strait separates the two, and the Diomede Islands sit in the middle of it.

Tip 2: You could cross by a short boat ride; the gap is far smaller than the width of the English Channel.

12 years

Tip 1: Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, so the glow fades as it decays.

Tip 2: It is longer than a decade but much shorter than a human lifetime.

30 taste buds

Tip 1: Birds generally have very few taste buds compared with mammals.

Tip 2: Humans have thousands of them, and a catfish has over a million; a chicken has only a tiny fraction of the human number.

1560

Tip 1: Bruegel was a Flemish Renaissance painter known for detailed scenes of peasant life.

Tip 2: It was painted in the mid-16th century, a few years before his death in 1569.

574 lines

Tip 1: These lines were later shown to come from specific chemical elements absorbing light.

Tip 2: It was several hundred, but fewer than a thousand.

64.4%

Tip 1: Istanbul straddles two continents, divided by the Bosphorus strait.

Tip 2: The European side holds roughly two-thirds of the population.

14 years

Tip 1: It was presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by a professor, since the author was considered too young to present it.

Tip 2: He was still at school at the time, in his mid-teens at most.

21 letters

Tip 1: Letters such as J, U and W were added much later.

Tip 2: It had fewer letters than the modern 26-letter alphabet, but more than 20.

1952

Tip 1: Building started in 1948 on land beside the East River.

Tip 2: It was finished in the early 1950s, around the time of the Korean War.

1886

Tip 1: He was a German physicist trying to confirm Maxwell's electromagnetic theory.

Tip 2: It happened in the late 1880s, about a decade before Marconi's first radio communication system.

44%

Tip 1: This was the last multi-party election held before the Nazi dictatorship took hold.

Tip 2: The Nazis won the most seats but still fell short of a majority of the vote.

1980

Tip 1: It was the first human disease eliminated by deliberate health care interventions.

Tip 2: It happened in the same year as the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

168 men

Tip 1: The force also had one cannon and 27 horses.

Tip 2: It was a few hundred men at most, tiny compared with Atahualpa's army of tens of thousands.

1286

Tip 1: This is well before the invention of the microscope and the telescope.

Tip 2: It was in the late 13th century.

1865

Tip 1: It appeared more than a century before humans first landed on the Moon.

Tip 2: It was published in the 1860s, the same year as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

829 km

Tip 1: It ran from eastern Texas to near Kansas City.

Tip 2: It is a little longer than the distance from Stockholm to Berlin.

1323

Tip 1: Ockham was a medieval English Franciscan friar and philosopher, famous for a principle about simplicity.

Tip 2: It was in the first half of the 14th century, a few decades before Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were begun.

1206

Tip 1: This was the moment the Mongol tribes were united under one ruler, after decades of fighting.

Tip 2: It happened in the early 13th century, a few years after 1200 and well before the Mongols captured Zhongdu.

1961

Tip 1: The robot was invented by George Devol and was the first commercial programmable robot.

Tip 2: It was installed in the early 1960s, around the time Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.

57 sovereign states

Tip 1: This makes English the most geographically widespread language in the world.

Tip 2: There are about 195 sovereign states in total, and English is official in roughly a quarter to a third of them.

1,006 kanji

Tip 1: Kanji are Chinese-derived characters, and adults are expected to know about twice this many everyday ones.

Tip 2: The number is a little over one thousand.

15.9 million

Tip 1: Heart attacks are among the leading causes of death and hospitalisation globally.

Tip 2: It is more than Sweden's population of about 10 million, but less than Australia's 27 million.

66 kg

Tip 1: It is a semi-aquatic South American rodent, often seen relaxing with other animals.

Tip 2: A big one weighs about as much as a slim adult human.

217,996 songs

Tip 1: It is one of the largest folk song collections in the world, kept in a Cabinet of Folksongs in Riga.

Tip 2: The number is in the hundreds of thousands, but fewer than 300,000.

227 rules

Tip 1: The East Asian Dharmaguptaka code has a few dozen more rules than this one.

Tip 2: The count is between 200 and 250.

40%

Tip 1: The basin stretches from the Rockies to the Appalachians and includes the Missouri and Ohio rivers.

Tip 2: It is more than a third but less than half of the lower 48 states.

20 cm

Tip 1: It was the largest hailstone by diameter and weight ever recorded in the United States.

Tip 2: It was bigger than a grapefruit but smaller than a basketball.

825

Tip 1: Al-Khwarizmi worked in Baghdad, and the word algebra comes from the title of this book.

Tip 2: It was in the early 9th century, during the Abbasid Caliphate, long before the printing press.

1990

Tip 1: It was an international research effort that took more than a decade to complete.

Tip 2: It was launched in the last decade before the year 2000.

1910

Tip 1: Aarne was a Finnish folklorist, and his system was later expanded by Stith Thompson.

Tip 2: It was in the first decade of the 20th century or just after it.

16 million

Tip 1: It is one of the largest humanitarian networks in the world, with societies in nearly every country.

Tip 2: It is more than Sweden's population, but fewer than 20 million.

1597

Tip 1: Peri was an Italian composer working in Florence at the end of the Renaissance.

Tip 2: It was in the final years of the 16th century.

9.5 magnitude

Tip 1: The magnitude scale is logarithmic, so each whole step is about 32 times more energy.

Tip 2: It was above 9 but below 10.

7.7 mm

Tip 1: It was formally described by scientists in 2012.

Tip 2: It is less than one centimetre long.

26 years old

Tip 1: He succeeded Isaac Barrow in 1669, just one year after receiving his MA.

Tip 2: He was in his mid-twenties, young for such a post.

1.75 million

Tip 1: This happened during the European financial crisis, when Italians bought fewer cars.

Tip 2: It was more than 1 million but fewer than 2 million.

1,568.7 km²

Tip 1: The city sits in the Chao Phraya River delta, and its metropolitan region is much bigger.

Tip 2: It is roughly the size of Greater London, more than 1,000 but fewer than 2,000.

22,117 km

Tip 1: China shares borders with more countries than almost any other nation.

Tip 2: Its land border is among the very longest of any country, well above 20,000 km.

47%

Tip 1: Oxygen is the single most abundant element in the crust, mostly locked up in silicate minerals.

Tip 2: It is more than a third but less than half of the crust's weight.

21,171 metres

Tip 1: It is a shield volcano on Mars and dwarfs anything on Earth.

Tip 2: It is roughly two and a half times the height of Mount Everest.

100 self-portraits

Tip 1: He portrayed himself so often that the works form an intimate autobiography.

Tip 2: More than 40 of them are paintings.

4.5 billion years

Tip 1: Radiometric dating of rocks and meteorites has pinned the age down fairly precisely.

Tip 2: It is between 4 and 5 billion years, and about a third of the age of the universe.

24 churches

Tip 1: One large Western church sits alongside a number of smaller Eastern churches.

Tip 2: The count is more than 20 but fewer than 30.

5 million km²

Tip 1: At its height the empire ringed the Mediterranean Sea.

Tip 2: The area is smaller than that of modern Brazil's 8.5 million km² but bigger than Western Europe's.

66 million years

Tip 1: A large meteorite impact is thought to have triggered it.

Tip 2: It is well after the breakup of Pangaea but long before humans appeared; think of a number in the tens of millions.

1947

Tip 1: Both were founded in the years right after the Second World War.

Tip 2: It was in the late 1940s.

1801

Tip 1: This followed the political union of Great Britain with Ireland.

Tip 2: It happened in the first years of the 19th century.

1915

Tip 1: It came about a decade after his special relativity paper.

Tip 2: It was in the middle of the First World War.

2,994 metres

Tip 1: It lies near the border with Venezuela in the Amazon region.

Tip 2: It is well below 3,500 metres, and far lower than many peaks in the Andes.

97 years

Tip 1: Century years are leap years only if divisible by 400.

Tip 2: It is slightly fewer than one year in four, so a bit under 100.

1687

Tip 1: It was in the late 17th century.

Tip 2: It came just before the Glorious Revolution in England.

32,000 machine tools

Tip 1: Ford pioneered mass production using special-purpose machines.

Tip 2: The figure is in the tens of thousands.

746 watts

Tip 1: James Watt's horse-based unit is still used for engines and cars.

Tip 2: It is a bit more than three-quarters of a kilowatt.

4.3 billion

Tip 1: It uses 32-bit addresses, and the world has long since run short of them.

Tip 2: It is fewer than the number of people alive today, but more than 4 billion.

200 km

Tip 1: Oceanic lithosphere is thinner than continental lithosphere.

Tip 2: Oceanic lithosphere averages around 100 km thick, and the continental kind is thicker than that.

630 species

Tip 1: Carnivorous plants are a tiny fraction of all plant species.

Tip 2: There are several hundred of them, but fewer than a thousand.

1596

Tip 1: He was born in the late 16th century.

Tip 2: He died in 1650, in his early fifties.

92.75 days

Tip 1: It is a bit more than three months.

Tip 2: It is the second longest of the four equinox and solstice intervals, but longer than 90 days.

1869

Tip 1: It appeared in the second half of the 19th century.

Tip 2: It came out less than a decade after Russia freed its serfs in 1861.

255 metres

Tip 1: Moscow sits on a fairly flat plain.

Tip 2: The main weather station in Moscow is at 156 metres, and the highest point is not far above it.

418 metres

Tip 1: It lies between Jordan, Israel and Palestine.

Tip 2: It is the lowest land surface on Earth, a few hundred metres below sea level.

694 nm

Tip 1: Red visible light lies roughly between 620 and 750 nm.

Tip 2: It was deep red, toward the longer end of the visible range.

81%

Tip 1: The large majority of these deaths were male.

Tip 2: It was more than four in five, but not nine in ten.

5.2 million km²

Tip 1: It is one of the most densely populated regions on Earth, but not very large.

Tip 2: It is roughly half the area of Canada and about a tenth of Asia.

31 city-states

Tip 1: Athens and Sparta were both members of the coalition.

Tip 2: Only a small minority of the many hundreds of Greek city-states joined.

1923

Tip 1: It was one of the last countries in Scandinavia to require them.

Tip 2: It happened in the 20th century, between the two world wars.

3.8 million

Tip 1: Household air pollution is a major killer worldwide.

Tip 2: It is more than the annual deaths from malaria, but fewer than 5 million.

91 kg

Tip 1: A petrol or diesel car contains much less copper.

Tip 2: An internal combustion car had about 24.5 kg in 2023, and an electric one has several times that.

1805

Tip 1: It was in the early 19th century.

Tip 2: It was the year of the Battle of Trafalgar.

289 million years

Tip 1: It dates from before the dinosaurs.

Tip 2: It is from the Permian period, a bit before 300 million years ago.

302 neurons

Tip 1: Its whole nervous system has been mapped.

Tip 2: Males have 383, more than hermaphrodites, but both are in the hundreds.

264 million people

Tip 1: It is the most common of the mental disorders listed globally.

Tip 2: It is several times as many as those with dementia (about 50 million).