Jonathan Player for The New York Times

HONG KONG — The application period for Oxford, the 800-year-old British university, ended Monday, which is why it felt free to release sample questions asked in the infamously difficult interviews held at its various colleges.

The practice of releasing questions started in 2009. According to a spokeswoman at the Oxford press office, who asked not to be named, Oxford felt the need to “do away with the mythology of our interviews.”

“There were crazy, anecdotal stories going around,” she said. “We want students not to be intimidated.”

Oxford has even gone so far as to shoot videos of mock interviews.

According to an Oxford statement, Stephen Tuck of Pembroke College asked a potential history major: “Imagine we had no records about the past at all, except everything to do with sport – how much of the past could we find out about?” Dr. Tuck said in the statement that, to be fair, he had asked this of someone who had mentioned sports in his or her statement.

One student seeking to study English at Mansfield College was asked about J.K. Rowling’s move from the wildly popular Harry Potter series to an adult novel, which was critically panned. The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani called the characters in the book, “The Casual Vacancy,” self-absorbed, small-minded, snobbish and judgmental folks, whose stories neither engage nor transport us.” One wonders how that would go over in an interview.

David Popplewell of Brasenose College grilled an experimental psychology candidate by asking: “Why do human beings have two eyes?”

Meanwhile, a student hoping to study biology was asked, “Why do many animals have stripes?” One presumes that the answer found in many children’s books — that zebras and tigers need to hide in the grass — won’t quite cut it.

A tricky one came from Helen Swift at St. Hilda’s College. “Should poetry be difficult to understand?”

None of these exact questions are likely to come up again. But if you’re planning on applying next year, you might as well start practicing.

For more IHT education news, go to global.nytimes.com/education.