Can you answer these five strange university interview questions?

Bizarre university interview questions – designed to test candidates' ability to think laterally – have persisted for decades. In Jack Rosenthal's Radio 4 drama Eskimo Day, a father insists his daughter will need to prepare for left-field questions on her big day at Cambridge. Here's a selection of the best university interview curveballs. How well do you think you’d do? Read on to find out.

If you’re looking to study Veterinary Science at Cambridge, you might want to brush up on Wallace & Gromit’s mission to eat the moon on crackers. According to Do You Think You’re Clever? – a book by John Farndon aimed at answering the lateral Oxbridge entry questions – potential students have genuinely been asked, "Is the moon made of green cheese?" Although the rumours about instantly being dismissed for wearing The Wrong Trousers, like Wallace's mechanical trousers from the story of the same name, remain unconfirmed.

When applying for a post at Stanford University in California, you probably wouldn't expect a question about who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman (unless you’re actually Batman, in which case you’re prepared for everything). But this was an actual question posed to candidates during interviews for a position as a medical simulationist. It was designed to see how candidates would test such a putative conflict scientifically, and not simply by smashing two action figures together like they did when they were five.

Less tangential than most of the obscure questions on the list, this question was posed to kick off some History interviews at Oxford University. Although it wouldn’t give you the complete picture, the idea is that you could probably learn a significant amount about the world today through sport. The key is "everything to do with sport", as it would include all the financial aspects – giving you an insight into how the economics works; and tell-all autobiographies, which would show there was a healthy market for ghost writers.

This was the challenge given to potential Music students at Cambridge when they were asked to conceive of a new musical instrument. Interviewees said this question made them treble and some needed to take a minuet to compose themselves. One student confessed, "My answer fell flat but I've been feeling off-key all day."

Not just the fruit equivalent of “to be or not to be”... Medical students at Cambridge had to be able to discern the advantages and disadvantages of different types of fruit. You might think it’s all Much Ado About Nothing and know many Merry Wives of Windsor who live in a Hamlet, who insist that when they get their grapefruit from the Merchant of Venice, they come As You Like It. Shakespeare puns will not get you into a medical school, but you might get in for English. Just so you know: All’s Well That Ends Well.