Students taking Tripos exams this term have expressed frustration after being faced with "bizarre" examination questions.

Cambridge has a reputation for quirky phrasing in the tests it sets students, but this year some of the questions have been seen as deliberately perverse.

The question "Why so many sperm?" was set in the essay paper for the Human Reproduction exam, which is a component of the Part 1B Medical Science Tripos.

Tom Morley, a second year medic from Queens’, commented: "The question is probably trying to ask why, on average, the male ejaculate contains 30 million sperm despite the fact that only one is needed to fertilise an egg. But, given the wording, it could equally be trying to ask about the mechanisms of sperm production and why a male can produce so many sperm.

"The really frustrating thing is that a deliberately ambiguous, jokey question can usually be avoided if there are a large number of essay titles to choose from.

"In this exam, however, we had to write two essays out of five, and given that one was an essay about ethics (which many will have decided not to prepare at all), it is likely that lots of people were forced into having a go at a question that was essentially the examiners having a bit of a laugh."

Another male medical student, who wished to remain anonymous, said the question was "ambiguous and grammatically iffy. But funny."

It has been seen as so eccentric that some students have set up a Facebook group in its honour. The group had 154 members at the time of writing, which represents the majority of second-year medical students.

Most of the members had used the exam question as an excuse to post jokes on the wall of the group, but one frustrated medic simply wrote: "But WHHHYY!??"

Unpopular exam questions have not been limited to the Department of Medicine. Second year English students taking the Shakespeare Part I examination were posed the question: "Do Shakespeare’s works hold any answers for the credit-crisis generation?"

One English student complained: "The question is asking you to speculate on how we should deal with the recession, which isn’t really relevant to English Literature."

But another second-year English student, Georgina Bryan, chose to answer the question in the exam. She said: "Taking it on will probably prove to have been either a great idea or an incredibly foolish one, but one hour into the exam and panicking, it seemed like a good gamble to take. At least I’ll have avoided the dumping of pre-prepared answers which examiners continually warn against - and who’s to say Antony and Cleopatra doesn’t hold the answer to the credit crisis?"

Finance, trading and investment feature in several of Shakespeare’s plays. In The Merchant of Venice, Antonio the merchant says to Bassanio: "Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea; / Neither have I money nor commodity / To raise a present sum."

Such a statement could be seen as reminiscent of the insubstantial nature of modern stock trading.

Controversy over Cambridge exam questions last erupted in 2008, when lyrics from Amy Winehouse’s song ‘Love is a Losing Game’ were used as part of a final year Practical Criticism exam question.

Third year English students were asked to compare the extract, along with other lyrics by Bob Dylan and Billie Holiday, with work by Sir Walter Raleigh.