The festive season brings with it a unique intellectual tradition for many British families: the formidable King William's College general knowledge paper. The 2025 edition, officially numbered 121, has been released, promising its customary blend of erudite, cryptic, and devilishly tricky questions designed to test even the most polymathic minds.
A Century-Old Tradition Evolves
First published in the Guardian in 1951, the quiz is no longer a formally sat examination. Instead, it is dispatched to the school's pupils and their relatives to be wrestled with over the Christmas holiday. The paper carries a telling Latin motto: "Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est" – "To know where you can find something is, after all, the greatest part of learning." In a modern concession, the editor explicitly permits the use of search engines, though the questions are famously constructed to make such digital sleuthing far from straightforward.
The 2025 Brain-Teasing Challenge
This year's paper comprises eighteen sections, each probing a different facet of deep-cut knowledge. The opening salvo focuses on events of 1925, asking contenders to identify what gave the Bluebirds the blues and what brought joy to Beatrice and Alfred in North Parade. It moves swiftly to the worrying amnesia of Charles Edward Biffen and the posthumous publication of a novel by an author whose friend Max defied his wishes.
Subsequent sections demand geographical precision, nautical know-how, and architectural awareness. One part asks where Montagu came to grief irretrievably, while another probes the identities of various lighthouses, including one that is uniquely thatched. Literary and cultural figures abound, with queries on who was Mandy, who enjoyed the regular company of Cissie, and which butterfly is named after the giant with 100 eyes.
From Cathedrals to VC Heroes
The quiz's scope is breathtakingly broad. It tours European cathedrals, asking which houses the country's only papal tomb and where a rose in the apse ensures a city's continuing prosperity. It commemorates military valour with a detailed section on Victoria Cross-winning surgeons and soldiers, recounting specific acts of bravery from Little Andaman to Passchendaele.
Classical mythology, astronomy, and obituary completion tasks further stretch the solver's repertoire. One must identify the final resting place of the bronze age toxophilite and determine who was shown carrying Bananaman's 45th birthday cake during 2025. The challenge concludes with sequences to complete, ranging from biblical sons to successors of St Peter.
The Ultimate Test of Curious Minds
This is more than a simple trivia test; it is a cultural artefact that rewards lateral thinking, wide reading, and a detective's perseverance. As in previous years, the answers will be published on the Guardian's website on 13 January 2025, allowing months of festive frustration to finally be resolved. For generations, this paper has been a beacon for the curious, a shared holiday trial that separates the casually knowledgeable from the truly erudite. The question for 2025 remains: are you up to the challenge?
