A proud shark, an uncertain scientist and a broken dog statue – take the Thursday quiz

This dachshund is wondering if you know who made the dog statue that got broken in Miami? Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Thursday trundles round once again, bringing with it the same test of 15 vaguely topical and general knowledge questions, sweetened by a selection of predictable in-jokes, and the knowledge that if there was a quirky story about an animal on the Guardian website in the previous seven days, it will almost certainly feature here. There are no prizes, it is just for fun. Let us know how you got on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 96

1. 

   JAWS: The Progress Shark, a 10-metre model of a shark wearing a swimming leotard in LGBTQ+ colours, has become the symbol of Pride in which Australian city?

   1. Brisbane

   2. Melbourne

   3. Perth

   4. Sydney

2. 

   I DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE: Which country, using new mapping techniques (not pictured), has discovered that it has 7,000 more islands than it previously thought?

   1. India

   2. Japan

   3. Indonesia

   4. Papua New Guinea

3. 

   REPLACING WHAT WAS LOST: English Heritage unveiled a memorial at Lindisfarne Priory, in Northumberland, to which saint, replacing one taken down during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries?

   1. Saint Bede

   2. Saint Cuthbert

   3. Saint Irongron

   4. Saint Oswald

4. 

   GCSE SCIENCE WRITTEN BY AN AI: The Thursday quiz asked ChatGPT to "please write a multiple choice question about forces in physics aimed at GCSE students" and it said "What is Newton's second law of motion?"

   1. The force applied to an object is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration

   2. The force applied to an object is directly proportional to its mass and acceleration

   3. The force applied to an object is inversely proportional to its mass and directly proportional to its acceleration

   4. The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force applied to it and inversely proportional to its mass

5. 

   SCIENCE BUT NOW IN THE PAST: On 23 February 1927, which theoretical physicist (not pictured) wrote to Wolfgang Pauli outlining his uncertainty principle for the first time?

   1. Albert Einstein

   2. Erwin Schrödinger

   3. Werner Heisenberg

   4. Eric Stahlman

6. 

   THE LEFTWING ECONOMIC ESTABLISHMENT WITH LIZ TRUSS: According to the London Stock Exchange's own website, where and when was it first founded?

   1. In 1648 in the Counting House inn on Cornhill

   2. In 1698 in Jonathan’s Coffee House in Change Alley

   3. In 1748 in the Somers Town Coffee House on Chalton Street

   4. In 1917 in St Petersburg when it was founded by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, as part of a Soviet plot against the British economy

7. 

   HAPPY BIRTHDAY: It would have been enthusiastic diary writer Samuel Pepys' birthday today! Happy birthday, Samuel! You sure wrote a lot of stuff down! What was the date of the first entry in his famous diary?

   1. 1 January 1560

   2. 1 January 1610

   3. 1 January 1660

   4. 1 January 1710

8. 

   NOW THAT IS AS OLD AS I FEEL: The 4,500-year-old Sumerian Lord Palace of the Kings has been excavated giving unprecedented insight into Sumerian times. Where?

   1. Tello, Iraq

   2. Arar, Saudi Arabia

   3. Ruwaished, Jordan

   4. Arkavaz, Iran

9. 

   HIGHER OR LOWER WITH TONY YEBOAH: This week the Leeds United legend wants to know which of these four options is the tallest structure in the beautiful Scottish capital of Edinburgh?

   1. Barclay Viewforth Church

   2. St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral

   3. Scott Monument

   4. Fettes College

10. 

    OOOPS: A curious visitor at an art fair in Miami tapped a sculpture of a balloon dog by a famous artist and it smashed to smithereens. Hashtag awkward. Which artist?

    1. Damien Hirst

    2. Anish Kapoor

    3. Jeff Koons

    4. Marc Quinn

11. 

    IT'S A DOG'S LIFE: This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, on a train. She was delighted to learn that a puppy running alongside train tracks last week had been rescued by a trainee driver. But where?

    1. Slateford, Edinburgh

    2. Grangetown, Cardiff

    3. South Bermondsey, London

    4. Dawlish, Devon

12. 

    SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT: Which of these is the correct order for the first four solo studio albums released by the Grammy-record-holding artist Beyoncé?

    1. Dangerously in Love, B'Day, 3, I Am… Sasha Fierce

    2. I Am… Sasha Fierce, Dangerously in Love, B'Day, Lemonade

    3. Dangerously in Love, B'Day, I Am… Sasha Fierce, 4

    4. I Am… Sasha Fierce, Dangerously in Love, B'Day, 4

13. 

    VEXILLOLOGY CORNER: Which three colours are in the flag of Bolivia?

    1. Red, yellow, green

    2. Yellow, blue, red

    3. Red, white, blue

    4. Red, white, green

14. 

    MATHS WITH GOTHS: The bouncer at the Banshee in Manchester says they like your backcombed hair, but you can't come in unless you can recite Pythagoras' theorem. Which is …

    1. The difference between the squares of the two shorter sides of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse

    2. The sum of the squares of the two longer sides of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse

    3. The difference between the squares of the two longer sides of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse

    4. The sum of the squares of the two shorter sides of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse

15. 

    BON VOYAGE: That is a 1974 Sparks song that also featured in the musical Annette. But which animal said bon voyage to New York zoo, and keepers say they are now going to leave it to live in Central Park as they haven't been able to catch it and it seems to be doing fine?

    1. Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl

    2. Drago the ring-tailed lemur

    3. Marko the northern sparrowhawk

    4. Kate the lesser bushbaby

Solutions

1:D - The prop, suspended five metres in the air, has gained international fame online and is just one of 45 “rainbow moments” spread across Sydney as part of Rainbow City. The artist George Buchanan brought the creation to life by sewing together the shark-sized Lycra leotard in her garage in south Sydney, and said it was trickier than expected as sharks aren't symmetrical. , 2:B - In the first survey of its kind for 35 years, the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan has totted up a total of 14,125 islands – 7,273 more than previously thought. Islands are defined as land masses with a circumference of at least 100 metres, and this kind of thing is why the Thursday quiz hates setting questions about geography because it is less precise than you might imagine., 3:B - Cuthbert was a seventh-century monk who was prior and then bishop of Lindisfarne. His holiness, charm and teaching skills made him famous far and wide and he was said to have gifts of prophecy and healing. “This is the first time in 486 years that there has been something to memorialise the fact that Cuthbert was actually buried here,” said Mark Douglas, senior properties curator at English Heritage., 4:D - To explain the answer, it said: "This means that if you apply more force to an object, its acceleration will increase, and if you increase its mass, its acceleration will decrease. The law is often written as the equation F = m x a, where F is the force applied, m is the mass of the object, and a is its acceleration.", 5:C - Heisenberg originally concluded that the uncertainty principle was ΔpΔq ≈ h using the full Planck constant, and it states that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be predicted from initial conditions, and vice versa. Although the Thursday quiz is not certain about that., 6:B - The website says the stock exchange was founded when John Castaing started publishing a list of currency, stock and commodity prices at Jonathan’s Coffee House, including prices for gold, ducats, silver staters and pieces of eight. In 1773 it moved to Sweeting’s Alley, then in 1802 to Capel Court., 7:C - The first entry began: "Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of cold." He ended it in May 1669, due to his failing eyesight, writing: "And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal.", 8:A - Girsu, one of the earliest known cities in the history of humankind, was built by the ancient Sumerians, who emerged between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Known in modern Arabic as Tello, the ancient city was first discovered 140 years ago. Alongside the discovery of the palace and 200 cuneiform tablets containing administrative records, the main temple dedicated to the Sumerian god, Ninĝirsu, was also identified., 9:B - Building started in 1874, and at 90 metres (295ft) it is taller than Barclay Viewforth Church, which is 76 metres (249ft), the Scott Monument, which is 61 metres (200ft) and Fettes College, which is 60 metres (197ft)., 10:C - Benedicte Caluch, an art adviser with Bel-Air Fine Art, which sponsored the piece, told the Miami Herald the sculpture was covered by insurance, so the woman would not have to foot the bill for the damage. It was just an accident, said Caluch, while the art collector Stephen Gamson speculated that the woman tapped the sculpture out of curiosity, perhaps thinking it was a real balloon. Or maybe even a real dog. Speaking of which …, 11:C - The incident happened at about 7.50am near South Bermondsey on a Beckenham Junction to London Bridge train. The trainee and his teacher collected the uninjured female puppy safely from the tracks, brought her on to a nearby platform and fed her some ham. The teacher said he hoped that the incident would serve as a reminder to dog owners to keep their pets safe on railway platforms, although the Thursday quiz questions whether rewarding dogs with ham for running on the tracks might not in fact encourage them instead., 12:C - Those are the first four albums, before Beyoncé, Lemonade and Renaissance. No artist has won more Grammy's than Beyoncé, and she is estimated to have sold more than 200m records worldwide as a solo artist., 13:A - The national flag of Bolivia is described as a tricolor rectangle, with three equal horizontal bands of red, yellow and green. It was adopted in the 1850s., 14:D - That's the ticket. Get yourself in … they are already playing Severina by the Mission on the decks., 15:A - Zoo officials said they were suspending recovery operations but would keep a close eye on the owl. They had tried to lure Flaco with bait and recordings of eagle-owl calls. He showed interest but didn’t fall for the ruse, and is now living on a diet of Central Park rats. You can tell by the look on his face that Ron thinks you should have known that.

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had fun – let us know how you got on in the comments!

If you think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers, please feel free to email martin.belam@theguardian.com but remember the quiz master’s word is final and he doesn’t actually work on Thursdays at the moment.