New Zealand Culture Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which writer, born in Wellington in 1888 and a friend and rival of Virginia Woolf, is New Zealand's most celebrated author of short stories?

Question 2

Which Auckland teenager topped the United States singles chart in 2013 with Royals, a song mocking the luxury of mainstream pop?

Question 3

What is the New Zealand word for multi-day hiking in the backcountry, often staying in huts along the way?

Question 4

What is the Maori practice of permanently marking the body and face with chisels or needles, carrying information about a person's descent and status?

Question 5

What is the name for the Maori method of cooking food slowly in a pit oven over heated stones?

Question 6

What is the name for the fenced communal ground, with its carved meeting house, that is the centre of Maori community life?

Question 7

Which prime-time soap opera, set in a fictional Auckland hospital and running since 1992, is New Zealand's longest-running drama?

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About New Zealand Culture

How well do you know the culture of New Zealand, or Aotearoa -- the food, the slang, the holidays, the sport, the music and film, and the customs of Maori as the first people of the land? This quiz has one hundred and ten questions in five packs of twenty-two, written the way people search: why are New Zealanders called Kiwis, what is a bach, which dessert is named after a ballerina, what is the haka, who won the Booker Prize for The Luminaries, who was first up Everest.

The answer is always one of four choices of the same kind, and the question never gives it away. A short note after each answer adds the background -- a date, a place, a name, a story.

The first pack covers national identity and everyday life: the kiwi bird and the silver fern, the anthem and Waitangi Day and Anzac Day, pavlova and hokey pokey and L&P, jandals and togs and the bach, and the slang of sweet as and yeah nah. The second pack is Maori culture: the marae and the powhiri and the hongi, waka and ta moko and hangi and poi, mana and tapu, iwi and hapu and whanau, the King movement, Matariki, and the values of manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga. The third pack is the arts: Katherine Mansfield and Janet Frame, Keri Hulme and Eleanor Catton, Peter Jackson and Jane Campion and Taika Waititi, Crowded House and Lorde and Poi E, and the painters McCahon and Angus.

The fourth pack is sport and the outdoors: rugby and the All Blacks and the Ranfurly Shield, netball and cricket and league, Edmund Hillary and the America's Cup and Peter Blake, the runners Lovelock and Snell, Lisa Carrington and Valerie Adams, and the invented thrills of bungy, zorbing and the jet boat. The fifth pack covers founding stories and food: the Treaty of Waitangi, Kate Sheppard and the vote, Apirana Ngata, number 8 wire and Godzone and tall poppy syndrome, the pohutukawa and a summer Christmas, the Edmonds Cookery Book, Anzac biscuits, cheese rolls, kumara and whitebait, and Shortland Street.

About a fifth of the questions carry a photograph tied to the subject of the question, chosen so it does not reveal the answer. Every fact has been checked.