New Year’s trivia questions and answers

A. Samoa Samoa went straight from 29 to 31 December so that its working week would match Australia and New Zealand, its main trading partners.

C. New Year postcards The cards are called nengajō. Post offices promise delivery on New Year’s Day for cards marked nengajō and posted in late December.

A. One The whole country keeps Beijing time, UTC+8, even though its territory stretches across roughly five hours of solar time.

B. France Metropolitan France sits in a single zone; its overseas territories, from French Polynesia to New Caledonia, add the other eleven.

D. 180 degrees It is not a straight line: it zigzags around islands and borders so that no country is split across two dates.

A. It goes forward a day Westbound travellers set their clocks forward 24 hours; eastbound travellers repeat a day, which is why some flights land before they took off.

A. Alaska The line passes between Alaska's Aleutian Islands and Russia's Commander Islands, so all of Russia stays on the Asian side of the date.

D. Blazing fireballs Around 40 swingers parade the High Street from midnight for some 20 minutes, then the balls are thrown into the harbour; reports of the ceremony go back to 1911.

C. Nine Japan keeps UTC+9 all year and has no daylight saving time, while London is on UTC+0 in winter.

B. Copacabana The fireworks are fired from boats anchored offshore and last about 12 minutes, while around two million people pack the sand.

A. Round Many families set out twelve of them, one for each month of the year ahead, and the Department of Agriculture urges people to buy local.

C. Netherlands The name means oil balls; the yeast dough is often studded with raisins or currants, and stalls sell them on Dutch streets through winter.

B. Lentils The small round pulses stand for coins, and they are classically served with cotechino, a slow-cooked pork sausage.

B. Money Since the mid-2010s, messaging apps such as WeChat have let people send digital red envelopes to friends and family.

D. Fifteenth It falls on the first full moon of the lunar year, which lands in February or early March on the Gregorian calendar.

C. Seven Typical items include sabzeh, sprouted wheat or lentils, and sib, an apple, each standing for a hope such as rebirth or beauty.

A. Honey The dip expresses the wish for a sweet year; the bread at the meal is dipped in honey too, instead of the usual salt.

B. A ram's horn In the Bible the shofar announced the new moon and the anointing of kings; today its main uses are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

C. 2023 Songkran was inscribed at the committee's 18th session; the Thai New Year comes in April, after the rice harvest.

C. Black-eyed peas The peas stand for pennies, and the dish is often eaten with collard greens on New Year's Day for a prosperous year.

D. Burj Khalifa At the stroke of midnight, fireworks are launched from the tower itself, and as of 2026 it is still the world's tallest building.

C. Vienna Philharmonic The programme always includes the Strauss family, and the broadcast reaches around 50 million viewers in more than 150 countries.

A. Brandenburg Gate The same spot hosts fan zones for big football tournaments; Germany's 2014 World Cup winners held their victory rally in front of it.

D. Auckland The show that welcomed 2026 fired 3,500 shots from three levels of the tower in five minutes, after lasers and projections from 9 pm.

B. Pasadena The route runs about five and a half miles, and when 1 January falls on a Sunday the parade moves to the Monday.

C. U2 Taken from the album War, it became the band's first UK top-ten single, peaking at number 10.

C. 9 pm As of 2026 the 9 pm show is called the Calling Country fireworks, a celebration of sky, land and sea by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists; it was once known as the family fireworks.

B. Garry Marshall It is the middle film of his holiday trilogy, between Valentine's Day (2010) and Mother's Day (2016).

A. Jools Holland The show has run on BBC Two since 1994, with Holland's 19-piece Rhythm and Blues Orchestra backing many of the guests.

A. Red and white NHK's show began on radio in 1951; the red team is made up of female artists and the white team of male artists.

D. Seven In the earliest Roman calendar the year began in March, so September really was the seventh month.

C. August The month had been called Sextilis, the sixth month of the old Roman year; the renaming came in 8 BC.

C. Janus Janus was the god of doorways and beginnings, shown looking back at the old year and forward to the new one.

A. One That spare day is why a common year starts and ends on the same weekday, and why each date shifts one weekday a year.

B. 1900 Century years are leap years only when divisible by 400, which is why 1900 missed out and 2000 did not.

D. 14 January The Julian calendar now runs 13 days behind the Gregorian one; the gap grows to 14 days from 2100.

A. The Hijra to Medina The year has 12 lunar months of 354 or 355 days, so Islamic dates move about 11 days earlier each year.

C. 21 January and 20 February It starts on the new moon that falls in that window; the next one, in 2027, is on 6 February.

B. February Full moons come about 29.5 days apart, so a 28-day month can slip between two of them; it last happened in 2018 and will next happen in 2037.

C. 53 A 53-week year happens when 1 January falls on a Thursday, or on a Wednesday in a leap year.

B. Babylonians At their 12-day spring festival Akitu, people pledged to repay debts and return borrowed farm tools.

C. Health 79% of those with a resolution said it concerned health; money or finances came next at 61%, then personal relationships at 57%.

D. Garnet Garnets are usually red but also come in orange, yellow, purple and green, and some change colour under different light.

C. Vietnam Tết celebrates the arrival of spring, and the public holiday is short even though the celebrations run for weeks.

A. A baby It wears a sash showing the new year's number, and J. C. Leyendecker painted one for Saturday Evening Post covers every year from 1907 to 1943.

A. Strontium Barium salts burn green and copper blue; a deep, rich blue is the hardest colour to make and is seen as the mark of an expert firework maker.

B. With a swim in the Atlantic The club calls itself the oldest winter bathing club in the United States, dating from 1903, and its members swim every Sunday from November to April.

D. Philadelphia The first official parade was held on 1 January 1901; clubs compete in divisions such as the comics, the fancies and the string bands of banjos and brass.

A. Sixteen The station circles Earth about every 93 minutes and keeps Coordinated Universal Time, so the crew's official new year starts at midnight GMT, usually followed by a day off.

B. Methodists Wesley called them Covenant Renewal Services, a yearly chance to renew one's promises, and many congregations still end them at midnight.