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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Martin Belam

Detective debuts, Pilton pop and crabs in disguise – take the Thursday quiz

You’ll need to know your crabs for question 1 today!
You’ll need to know your crabs for question 1 today! Photograph: Feng Yu/Alamy

Recently dubbed “daft and tiresome” by one satisfied customer, it is time again for the Thursday quiz. You will need to know a little bit about the week’s news. You will need to know a little bit about some vaguely topical general knowledge. And you will need to know that it is just for fun, and that there are no prizes. There is a bonus point available if you can spot a hidden reference to Doctor Who among the incorrect answer options. We would love to hear how you got on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 61

  1. A crab costume

    SUITS YOU, SIR: Lamarckdromia beagle is a type of crab (not pictured) newly discovered off the coast of Western Australia. But what does the species like to wear as if it were a hat?

    1. Seaweed

    2. Coral

    3. Sea sponges

    4. Other smaller crabs

  2. Donkeys

    I SAY I SAY I SAY: Which comedian this week claimed he had to speak to the police after somebody complained about one of his jokes, leading to him 'putting the words giant donkey dick (not pictured) into a message to a police detective (not pictured)'

    1. Ed Gamble

    2. Joe Lycett

    3. Lee Mack

    4. Mike Wozniak

  3. Colombia's new president

    ELECTION WINNER: This is the new president of Colombia after he won the election at the weekend. What is his name?

    1. Gustavo Petro

    2. Rodolfo Hernández

    3. Iván Duque

    4. Juan Manuel Santos Calderón

  4. French President Macron

    ELECTION LOSER: Emmanuel Macron's coalition has lost its overall parliamentary majority. He formed his party as La République En Marche, but what has it changed its name to?

    1. La France Insoumise

    2. Territoires de progrès

    3. Renaissance

    4. Génération.s

  5. Woman in a lab

    GCSE SCIENCE CORNER: And it is biology this week. These statements illustrate differences between plant and animal cells. One of the four is INCORRECT. Which one?

    1. Plant cells have a cell wall and animal cells do not

    2. Plant cells have permanent vacuoles and animal cells do not

    3. Plant cells have chloroplasts and animal cells do not

    4. Plant cells lack a distinct nucleus and animal cells do not

  6. Africa

    GEOGRAPHY: One of these statements about rivers in Africa is NOT true. Which one?

    1. The Orange River flows through Pretoria in South Africa

    2. Kinshasa is located on the banks of the Congo River

    3. The Zambezi River flows through Tete in Mozambique

    4. The Maputo River flows through the country of Eswatini

  7. KENNETH BRANAGH in DEATH ON THE NILE (2021), directed by KENNETH BRANAGH. Credit: 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS / Album<br>2F1CP4B KENNETH BRANAGH in DEATH ON THE NILE (2021), directed by KENNETH BRANAGH. Credit: 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS / Album film still

    DETECTIVE INSTINCT: Which of these was the first story to feature Agatha Christie's detective creation Hercule Poirot?

    1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

    2. The Mysterious Affair at Styles

    3. Peril at End House

    4. The Unicorn and the Wasp

  8. Ron!

    STRAVINSKY'S ONLY HIT: That's a 2020 song by Sparks where 'he toned it down a bit'. But that's not important right now. Which of these works IS NOT by composer Igor Stravinsky?

    1. Hungarian Dances

    2. The Firebird

    3. The Rite of Spring

    4. Petrushka

  9. Wings

    WACKY MACCA THUMBS ALOFT: Stravinsky isn't playing Glastonbury, but Paul McCartney is. He was 80 at the weekend. Happy birthday, Macca! In 1970, what was his first solo album called?

    1. Back To The Egg

    2. Ram

    3. McCartney

    4. McCartney II

  10. Glastonbury

    IT WERE ALL FIELDS ROUND HERE WHEN I WERE A LAD: Glastonbury started life as the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival. When?

    1. 1966

    2. 1968

    3. 1970

    4. 1972

  11. 1966 AND ALL THAT: This is the start of a new exciting weekly series of questions not about football leading up to the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar. The 1930 Fifa World Cup was held in Uruguay. Which of these facts about Uruguay's national anthem is true?

    1. In terms of music, at 105 bars, it is often considered the world's longest

    2. The lyrics are considered the oldest of any national anthem in the world

    3. It was written by an Argentinian

    4. All of the above

  12. Wallace and Gromit

    SWEET BABY CHEESES: Which of the following options is NOT a variety of cheese that originates in Wales

    1. Sealyham

    2. Pant-Ys-Gawn

    3. Brefu Bach

    4. Golden Cenarth

  13. Waterloo

    COULDN'T ESCAPE IF I WANTED TO: There is a new project to try and find out what happened to all the bodies left behind on the battlefield at Waterloo in 1815 (not pictured). But which present-day country is the battlefield of Waterloo located in?

    1. Netherlands

    2. Belgium

    3. France

    4. Luxembourg

  14. Hot air ballon

    ALLONS-Y: The website Wikivoyage lists 23 locations visited by fictional Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days, none of them by hot air balloon. No 21 is Cobh, Ireland. In 1912 the Titanic set sail from the port there. But, pre-independence, what British royalist name did the town have when she set off?

    1. Queenstown

    2. Queensport

    3. Queensmere

    4. Queenscove

  15. Kate Bush

    THIS WOMAN'S WORK: Kate Bush has enjoyed her two UK No 1 singles an incredible 44 years apart. But which of these pairs of events were also 44 years apart?

    1. Apollo 11 makes the very first crewed moon landing and London hosts the summer Olympics and Paralympics

    2. Apollo 11 makes the very first crewed moon landing and Instagram is launched

    3. Apollo 11 makes the very first crewed moon landing and Benedict XVI resigns as pope

    4. Apollo 11 makes the very first crewed moon landing and Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft performs a close flyby of Pluto

Solutions

1:C - Crustaceans in this family fashion and use sea sponges for protection. They trim the creatures using their claws and wear them like hats. It forms a camouflage from predators such as octopuses and other crabs, 2:B - Lycett said he hoped the joke amused the investigating officers and that it would stay in his standup routine for the remainder of his UK and Ireland tour, 3:A - The former fighter in the M-19 militia beat populist business tycoon and fellow political outsider Rodolfo Hernández in a runoff on Sunday. Petro will take over from Iván Duque, who took over from Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, 4:C - As part of a broader centrist coalition, Macron ended up with 245 lawmakers supporting him, short of the 289 required for an absolute majority. Overall the group of parties lost 102 seats on where they had stood previously, 5:D - This isn't true. Both plant cells and animal cells have a distinctive nucleus. It is prokaryotic organisms like bacteria that lack a nucleus, 6:A - This isn't true. Pretoria straddles the Apies River. The Orange River forms part of the borders between South Africa and Lesotho and South Africa and Namibia, 7:B - Written during the first world war and published in 1920, it introduced the character of Poirot as a Belgian refugee from the war. Hastings and Japp also appear in the story, 8:A - A cycle of 21 Hungarian Dances is a popular work by Johannes Brahms, and lots of people have made dance music in Hungary over the years, but Stravinsky never wrote any. You can tell by his face that Ron from Sparks knows a Hungarian dance or two, 9:C - It was McCartney, featuring Maybe I'm Amazed and loads of other stuff that mostly got a negative reception at the time it seems, 10:C - Organiser Michael Eavis set up the gig, featuring Tyrannosaurus Rex, Steamhammer, Quintessence, Stackridge and Al Stewart among others, for September 1970. Tickets cost £1. Insert your own 'back to the 1970s inflation' punchline here, 11:A - Musically it is judged to be the longest national anthem in the world, although some sources cite Greece, because the original poem used for the words for that anthem has 158 verses, though only two are usually sung, thank the lord. Japan's beautiful haunting anthem has the oldest lyrics – they date back to the 9th century. Uruguay's anthem was actually written by Francisco José Debali who was Hungarian, 12:A - The sealyham terrier is actually a rare Welsh breed of small to medium-sized terrier, and not a cheese at all. Pant-Ys-Gawn is a goat's milk cheese, Brefu Back is a soft ewe’s milk cheese from the foothills of Snowdonia, and Golden Cenarth is a semi-soft cheese washed in cider, 13:B - The battle took place in what was then the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as it existed between 1815 and 1839, but the battlefield is now located in a municipality in Wallonia in modern-day Belgium, 14:A - Cobh was known from 1849 until 1920 as Queenstown, after Queen Victoria had visited it, but the local council understandably binned that in the middle of the Irish war of independence. In ancient times it was known as Cuan an Neimheadh, which translates as 'the Harbour of Neimheidh', 15:C - It was this pair of events, taking place in 1969 and 2013 respectively. Instagram was launched in 2010, London hosted the pair of events in 2012, and New Horizons gave us those beautiful views of Pluto in 2015

Scores

  1. 0 and above.

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

  • If you do 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 always final, and fact-checking jokes is for dullards.

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