The European Investigative Journalism Conference

We have a winner!

Thank you for your work on the quiz questions – some were more difficult than they looked! Several hundred took a look at the quiz; in the end, we had to draw lots between a Belgian and a German contestant with 100 per cent correct answers, and we have a winner:

Claudia Jentsch gets a free masterclass at the next Dataharvest conference! Congratulations!

Here are the correct answers:

1.) Please find a chronological list of the heads of state of the USA.

You can find a lot of these lists, but the first hand source is The White House. Library of Congress  is also a credible source.

2.) What was the cargo of this railroad car when the photo was taken?

The railroad car is carrying trichlorosilan – which can be found by searching for the orange numbers on the sign on the side. They refer to the United Nations ADR treaty, that regulates transport of dangerous goods and give all dangerous substances a 4-digit number.

3.) Which company operates the copiers at the University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in Hamburg?

That was a tricky one! To find the answer, you have to search Tenders Electronic Daily to find the original tender for the university copiers. In that you will find different facts to use as your next search terms, for example the number of the tender: 2015/S 137-252970. Searching for that you will find that the contract was won by Ricoh Deutschland GmbH.

Yes, there are also public copy shops on the campus for the students to use, and they are run by the Elbe Werkstätte and Sönke Kruse GbR.

4.) The Internet company Yahoo has scanned the accounts of its users on behalf of US secret services. So what did Edward Snowden recommend via Twitter?

Snowden recommended to close Yahoo accounts in protest. The full tweet was “Use @Yahoo? They secretly scanned everything you ever wrote, far beyond what law requires. Close your account today.”

5.) Who is depicted here, and where does this statue stand?

The statue depicts Albania’s national hero Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, and it is placed in Peshkopi, Albania, which can be found by a reverse picture search. The goat helmet also led some to the answer. The metadata in the picture says that it is Djengis Khan, but this guy doesn’t look very Mongolian, does he? Metadata can be faked too.

Thank you to all who participated – and to Albrecht Ude in Berlin, who crafted these conundrums.