Bunkagame — September 9, 2026

Question 1

Which 2014 pop song from Taylor Swift's album '1989' hit number one in New Zealand, Canada and Australia, went six-times platinum in both New Zealand and Canada, and was re-recorded as 'Taylor's Version' in 2023?

Accepted Answer

'Shake It Off' was the lead single from Taylor Swift's fifth studio album '1989', released in August 2014. It topped charts across the English-speaking world and earned Swift three Grammy nominations, with the Taylor's Version re-recording arriving alongside her ownership fight over the original masters.

Question 2

Which 2012 science-fiction film, written by Alex Garland and starring Karl Urban as a helmeted futuristic lawman, premiered at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2012, and later saw Garland talk up sequel plans at the London Film and Comic Con?

Accepted Answer

Dredd is a 2012 British-South African film adaptation of the Judge Dredd comics. Directed by Pete Travis and shot in 3D, it underperformed at the box office but built a strong cult following, prompting the fan campaign 'Make a Dredd Sequel'.

Question 3

Which 2015 song, featuring Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, hit number one in Lebanon and topped Mexico's Anglo airplay charts, served as a tribute to the late actor Paul Walker, and appeared on the 'Furious 7' soundtrack?

Accepted Answer

'See You Again' became one of the best-selling singles ever, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 weeks in 2015. It was written as a farewell to Paul Walker following his 2013 death, and its emotional music video spent years as YouTube's most-viewed clip.

Question 4

Which water pipe for smoking flavoured tobacco is known as 'shisha' in Switzerland, Germany and Austria, and by the Arabic variant 'شيشة' across Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain and the wider Arabian Peninsula?

Accepted Answer

The hookah, thought to have originated in Mughal India or Persia in the 16th century, uses water to cool tobacco smoke drawn through a long hose. It is a social fixture in cafés across the Middle East and, under the name shisha, is now popular worldwide.

Question 5

Pianist Katharina Treutler played this globe-spanning video-game concert series in Aarhus, Tokyo and Stockholm during 2014, and a scheduled Tokyo performance on 13 February 2021 was replaced by a livestreamed show with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Which concert franchise is being described?

Accepted Answer

Final Fantasy concerts are a long-running series of orchestral tours performing the video-game music of composer Nobuo Uematsu and colleagues, including 'Distant Worlds' (launched in Stockholm in 2007) and 'Symphonic Fantasies'. They have played hundreds of dates across Japan, Europe, North America and Australia.

Question 6

Which NASCAR driver became the first to win a race and a championship in a Toyota in the Cup Series, claiming victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 2008, and later married Samantha Sarcinella in Chicago on New Year's Eve 2010?

Accepted Answer

Kyle Busch has won two NASCAR Cup Series championships (2015 and 2019) and more than 60 Cup-level races. His 2008 Atlanta victory made Toyota a Cup-winning manufacturer for the first time, breaking the American Big Three's decades-long grip on the series.

Question 7

Which George Gershwin folk opera, set in a Black tenement community in 1920s Charleston, was first revived in Maplewood, New Jersey by producer Cheryl Crawford, and toured to Minneapolis in 1995 as part of the Houston Grand Opera's ten-city international tour?

Accepted Answer

Porgy and Bess premiered in 1935 with music by George Gershwin and libretto by DuBose Heyward. Cheryl Crawford's 1941 Maplewood revival trimmed the score and helped establish the work in the American canon after a lukewarm original run.

Question 8

Which team sport was introduced to British Columbia in the 1870s by England international Alfred St. George Hamersley, and had its Canadian breakthrough at the 1991 World Cup when the national side beat Romania and Fiji then narrowly lost to France in the quarterfinals?

Accepted Answer

Rugby union in Canada is strongest on the West Coast and in Atlantic Canada. The 1991 World Cup run remains the men's team's high-water mark; the Canadian women's side has since done better, winning silver at the 2014 Women's Rugby World Cup.

Question 9

The Korbel brothers, emigrants from Bohemia, began producing this style of wine in California's Russian River Valley in 1892 using the méthode champenoise. In cool-climate Patagonia, small wineries are now making an elegant, mineral-driven version of it too. Which style of wine?

Accepted Answer

Sparkling wine covers any wine with significant carbonation, with Champagne (from the French region of the same name) being its most famous example. California's Sonoma and Napa valleys and Argentina's Patagonia have both emerged as respected New World producers using traditional bottle-fermentation methods.

Question 10

In Shimosuwa in central Japan, huge trees are ceremonially cut and dragged from the mountains to the shrines. At Bikuni Shrine in Shakotan, Hokkaido, a massive tengu statue is passed through fire during a July cleansing rite. Which indigenous Japanese religion performs both ceremonies?

Accepted Answer

Shinto is Japan's indigenous religion, centered on kami (spirits or gods) that inhabit natural features and shrines. Its rites blend purification, festival theatre and offerings. The Onbashira log-dragging ritual at Shimosuwa's Suwa Grand Shrine and the Shakotan tengu fire festival are two vivid regional examples.