Quiz of the year The party's over, the lights are dim, and you're wondering whether to buy that bumper pack of Alka Seltzer. What to do with those last precious moments of the year?

Just cast your mind back over the last 12 months and give your brain a workout in the Great Register Quiz. No deadlines, no prizes, no stamped addressed envelopes. Just a 21 question recap of the year in tech, science and whatever else we fancied writing about, before 2006 is consigned to oblivion.

Enjoy.

1. According to Bill Joy, who should know, how many times have Apple and Sun nearly merged?

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   3.

2. What did we not find on Google Earth this year?

   • A pot farm
   • North Korean nuclear facilities
   • A giant German earwig
   • A dalek
   • CIA rendition flights

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   A dalek.

3. How did the 42-year old male doctor who posed as a teenage girl in chatrooms get caught and what happened to him?

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   He sat next to a special constable on a train while using his laptop. He was struck off by the GMC, received a five-year risk of sexual harm order and a civil order. Full story here.

4. Which UK islands found themselves banned from buying from Apple's online store?

   • The Isle of Man
   • The Isle of Wight
   • The Scilly Isles
   • The Channel Islands

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   The Channel Islands.

5. After years of rumours Dell and AMD finally got it together this year. But when did they announce it and what Dell boxes first got AMD chips?

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   May 2006; Opteron in four-socket systems. See the article here.

6. Which UK reseller cancelled its management buyout?

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   Computacenter.

7. How much was spent online for Christmas last year?

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   £5bn.

8. Which poster child for dot-com madness claimed a June comeback but never made it?

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   Boo.com.

9. The European Space Agency ESA landed on the moon this year with SMART - 1. Which of the following countries has not announced that it also has lunar ambitions:

   • India
   • Kazakhstan
   • China

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   Kazakhstan (Borat's home country - but chosen because all Russian space launches are all from Baikonur Kosmodrome in Kazakhstan, so it is actually perfectly space ready.) Read the article about NASA and China's proposed co-operation here.

10. The Atlantic hurricane season came to a pretty mild close, with none of the hurricanes that formed making landfall at their most intense. Where else in the solar system was odd weather seen?

    • Dust devils on Mars
    • Rain on the moon
    • Hurricanes on Saturn

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    Hurricanes on Saturn. There were dust devils on Mars, but they were spotted in 2005, not 2006.

11. Officially, how many planets are there in the solar system?

    • 8
    • 9
    • 10

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    8. Pluto was demoted to a "dwarf planet" in August.

12. Blair's bloody silly ID card scheme will allow who to have two ID cards?

    • Transsexuals
    • Transvestites
    • Transformers

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    Transvestites.

13. How long did it take Steve Fossett to fly round the world?

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    67 hours.

14. Which great British company broke a world speed record this year and how fast did they travel?

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    JCBDieselmax; 350 miles per hour.

15. Where would you find a menu bar that reads (from left to right)?

    • Home
    • Find
    • Look
    • Leave
    • Frame

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    On BBC News 24. The "program" was mocked up by a graphic designer to illustrate a news story.

16. Who complained that the internet was a bad thing because "people go to the wrong websites"?

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    Silicon Valley's Victor Meldrew, Andrew Keen, interviewing Esther Dyson: "But don't they often find out the wrong things? They go to the wrong blog, the wrong website; isn't that the problem?"

17. Which virtual Kingdom was set ablaze in 2006?

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    The Prinicipality of Seeland, which was severely damaged in a fire in June. It turned out that its servers had moved been moved off the rig several years ago.

18. Who turned to downtrodden Ancient Greeks to remind its customers they can't keep what they've sold?

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    Napster, apparently inspired by the stoics, for its "Own Nothing - Have Everything" marketing campaign.

19. Who argued that the composer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic couldn't have managed today without a computer?

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    Wikipedia-quoting Judge Conrad Rushing

20. Who invited bloggers to murder its staff?

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    The BBC again, but only metaphorically. The Beeb had trouble filling its Digital Assassins day. In the end, more Beeb staff were involved in planning the event than actual attendees.

21. Which company aped Microsoft by settling a lawsuit by offering disgruntled litigants a discount on its own service?

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    Google, which settled a class action click fraud suit brought by Adsense customers with ... rebates on Adsense. In 2002, Microsoft settled antitrust lawsuits brought by individual US states by offering rebates against future purchases of Office and Windows.

How’d you do?

Less than 10 correct

You should be reading The Register more often — have you signed up to our RSS feed?

10 to 18 correct

You’re right on top of things — have you signed up for our Readers Panel?

More than 18 correct

It’s great to have you on board, but really, shouldn’t you be getting out a bit more?

Finally, in the spirit of giving here are some stories that were meant to happen this year but didn't:

• Google didn't start making PCs
• We haven't all died of bird flu
• David Blunkett did not return to British politics
• Relaxed licensing laws didn't lead to Britain's streets filling with beer-filled lunatics, or not more than last year anyway.
• Bush didn't invade Iran or Belgium

Merry Xmas ®