University Challenge is an iconic UK television quiz show that has just celebrated its 50th anniversary.

Teams of four students from opposing universities and colleges compete in a knock-out style competition that eventually sees two teams go head to head in each year’s final.

The University of Manchester – a bit like Manchester United in soccer – holds the gong for the most wins in the show’s 50-year history, having triumphed on four separate occasions.

Questions are tough: it is not unusual for individual contestants to sit through the whole 30 minutes without answering any questions at all.

Strictly Boardroom this week tests your knowledge with a mining and minerals version of the University Challenge format – with 10 questions to follow.

“No conferring” is the show’s mantra, with each question below “your starter for 10”.

In the present context that means no looking up the answers on Wikipedia as you go through!

Here we go:

1. Douglas Adams’Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy famously advised that the number 42 was the answer to life, the universe and everything. Which minor metal has atomic number 42?
2. In which month of which year was nickel sulphide first discovered in drilling at Kambalda?
3. Three Australian inland cities, all starting with the letter B, owe their existence to mineral discoveries. Name them
4. In which metal does one single South American company control around 85% of world supply? Name the metal and the mine
5. If a gold nugget weighs two-thirds and half a gold nugget, how much does a gold nugget weigh?
6. Name at least five rare earth metals and a different use for each one
7. Name five countries that are currently producers of tin
8. Two parts to this question: in what year was Agricola’s De Re Metallica first published? Which former Leonora mine manager later translated the work?
9. What musical note do you get if you drop a grand piano down a mine shaft?
10. Finally, a “viewer question” from someone called Ian in Broken Hill: “How can you explain why it was warmer in the medieval warm period than now yet there were no carbon dioxide emitting industries?”

Your answers on a postcard to Strictly Boardroom please – or else your suggestions for far better questions!

Good hunting.

Allan Trench is a professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business and research professor (value and risk) at the Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, a non-executive director of several resource sector companies and the Perth representative for CRU Consulting, a division of independent metals and mining advisory CRU Group (allan.trench@crugroup.com).