Norway is popularly called the Land of the Midnight Sun because of which reason?

The correct answer is B, Bhutan. Bhutan calls itself Druk Yul, which means the land of the thunder dragon, and the dragon appears on its national flag; the name is traced to the thunderstorms that roll through its Himalayan valleys. Option A, Nepal, is wrong; it is better known as the birthplace of the Buddha at Lumbini and as the country of Mount Everest, and it carries no dragon epithet. Option C, Myanmar, is wrong because it was historically called the Golden Land or the Land of Pagodas. Option D, Thailand, is the most tempting distractor because it is called the Land of White Elephants and, in older books, the Land of Smiles; candidates who recall only that the nickname involves an animal often pick it. Keep Bhutan with the dragon and Thailand with the white elephant.

The correct answer is B, Egypt. The annual flood of the Nile spread fertile silt over a narrow strip of desert and made settled agriculture and the Egyptian civilisation possible, which is why Egypt is called the Gift of the Nile. Option A, Sudan, is wrong although the Nile flows through it and the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet at Khartoum; the epithet is not used for Sudan. Option C, Ethiopia, is wrong even though the Blue Nile rises there at Lake Tana and supplies most of the flood water, because the gift was received downstream. Option D, Libya, is wrong since the Nile does not flow through it at all and it is largely desert. The lesson of the phrase is that a river, not the soil of the country itself, created Egypt's wealth.

The correct answer is B, Playground of Europe. Switzerland earned the name from its Alpine scenery, its lakes and the mountaineering and skiing resorts that drew European travellers from the nineteenth century onwards. Option A, Cockpit of Europe, is wrong; that belongs to Belgium, on whose soil so many European battles were fought that the country became a byword for a battlefield. Option C, Sick Man of Europe, is wrong because it was applied to the declining Ottoman Empire, that is to Turkey, in the nineteenth century. Option D, Workshop of Europe, is wrong; industrial epithets of this kind are used for Britain and Belgium rather than for Switzerland. Learning these four together is useful because question setters often place them in one set of options.

The correct answer is B. A cockpit was a pit where cockfights were staged, and Belgium received the name because its plains were the chosen battleground of European powers for centuries, Waterloo and the battles of the First World War among them. Option A is wrong; the epithet for a trading centre would be something like a mart or an entrepot, and Belgium's commercial fame rests on Antwerp's port rather than on this nickname. Option C is wrong because the phrase has nothing to do with aviation, even though it sounds modern to a reader who thinks of an aircraft cockpit. Option D is wrong since the geographical centre of Europe is placed in eastern Europe by most calculations, and in any case the epithet is historical rather than locational.

The correct answer is A, Emerald Isle. Ireland is called the Emerald Isle because its heavy rainfall and mild Atlantic climate keep the countryside green all year, emerald being the green gemstone. Option B, Island of Cloves, is wrong; that is Zanzibar off the East African coast, long the world's leading clove producer. Option C, Pearl of the Antilles, is wrong because it refers to Cuba in the Caribbean, which is also called the Sugar Bowl of the World. Option D, Land of Cakes, is wrong but is the nearest neighbour geographically, since it refers to Scotland and its oatcakes. All four options are island epithets, which is exactly how a paper setter builds a difficult-looking but answerable question on this topic. Learn the four together: Ireland is green, Zanzibar grows cloves, Cuba grows sugar and Scotland bakes oatcakes.