Ballpark
Puzzle #17 · 6 October 2026
The five questions from that day's Ballpark, each with its answer, the fact behind it and a link to the source. Rather play it first? It is in the archive.
1. How far does an Arctic tern fly on its yearly pole-to-pole round trip, per a 2010 tracking study?
70,900 kilometers
70,900 km on average, every year of a life that can last 30 years. Source
Image: Darrel Birkett · CC BY 2.0, cropped
2. How many months in a row did Arica, Chile, go without rain in the longest dry spell on record?
172 months
172 months, more than 14 years, from October 1903 to January 1918. Arica is considered the driest inhabited place in the world. Source
Image: Jowyto · CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped
3. How many years can a Greenland shark, the longest-lived animal with a backbone, live, according to Guinness World Records?
392 years
392 years, and perhaps longer, based on a 2016 study. The sharks grow only about 1 cm a year and do not mature until around 150 years old. Source
Image: Hemming1952 · CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped
4. How many mirrors are in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles?
357 mirrors
357 mirrors across 17 arches, facing 17 windows along a 73 m hall. They showed France could rival Venetian mirror makers. Source
Image: Myrabella · CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped
5. How long is the theoretical course of the Vendée Globe, the solo nonstop round-the-world yacht race?
45,000 kilometers
45,000 km. Charlie Dalin set the race record of 64 days 19 hours in the 2024-25 edition. Source