Which legend of squash, from Pakistan, won ten British Open titles and remained unbeaten for more than five years from 1981?

The correct answer is B, Pele. The Brazilian forward, whose full name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, was part of the Brazil squads that won the World Cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and no other player has three winners' medals. Option A, Diego Maradona, led Argentina to the title in 1986 and to the final in 1990, but he won the trophy only once. Option C, Franz Beckenbauer of Germany, won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and later as manager in 1990, which makes him a different kind of double but not a three-time winning player. Option D, Johan Cruyff of the Netherlands, is counted among the finest footballers ever and won three European Cups with Ajax, yet he never won a World Cup; his Netherlands side lost the 1974 final. Pele was also called the Black Pearl and spent almost his whole club career with Santos.

The correct answer is B, Berlin. At the World Athletics Championships held in Berlin in August 2009, Usain Bolt of Jamaica lowered his own world records to 9.58 seconds over 100 metres and 19.19 seconds over 200 metres, the two fastest times ever recorded. Option A, Beijing, is the obvious trap, because Bolt first stunned the world there at the 2008 Olympic Games, where he won both sprints and the relay, but those marks were slower than the Berlin times. Option C, London, hosted the 2012 Olympics, where Bolt retained his titles, and the 2017 World Championships, which were his last. Option D, Osaka, hosted the 2007 World Championships, a year before Bolt's rise, when Tyson Gay won the sprints. Bolt, nicknamed the Lightning Bolt, retired in 2017 with eight Olympic gold medals.

The correct answer is B, Michael Phelps. The American swimmer competed at five Olympic Games and finished with 28 medals, of which 23 are gold, far ahead of anyone else in any sport. His eight golds at Beijing in 2008 are also the most won at a single Games. Option A, Carl Lewis, won nine Olympic golds in athletics, four of them in the long jump at four successive Games, a great haul but not the record. Option C, Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union, held the overall record of eighteen Olympic medals in gymnastics from 1964 until Phelps passed it in 2012, and she remains the most decorated gymnast. Option D, Mark Spitz, won seven golds at Munich in 1972, the single-Games record that Phelps broke in Beijing. Phelps retired after the Rio Games of 2016.

The correct answer is A, Cassius Clay. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville in the United States, he won the light heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics, took the world heavyweight title from Sonny Liston in 1964 and changed his name to Muhammad Ali soon afterwards. He became world heavyweight champion three times, and his most famous fights are the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman at Kinshasa in 1974 and the Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier in 1975. Option B, Joe Frazier, was his great rival and a separate boxer who beat Ali in their first meeting in 1971. Option C, Sonny Liston, was the champion Ali defeated to win his first title. Option D, Sugar Ray Robinson, was an earlier American boxer often called the finest pound for pound fighter of all time. Ali was known as The Greatest.

The correct answer is C, 99.94. Bradman played 52 Test matches between 1928 and 1948 and scored 6,996 runs with 29 centuries, leaving him with an average of 99.94, a figure no batter has approached since. Famously, he needed only four runs in his final Test innings at The Oval in 1948 to finish with an average of exactly 100, and he was dismissed for nought. Options A, B and D are numbers close enough to look plausible, which is exactly how this question is set; 99.94 must be memorised as a figure, not reasoned out. Bradman was nicknamed The Don, and he is also remembered for the Bodyline series of 1932 and 1933, when England bowled fast and short at the leg side specifically to contain him. The Bradman average is one of the handful of cricket numbers that appear in every exam family.