Diamond treaties, soup throw flavours and banned AI art – take the Thursday quiz

A replica of the famous Koh-i-noor diamond. But what was the name of the treaty that ceded it to the British? Photograph: Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP/Getty Images

Welcome once again to the Thursday quiz, which is normally written by Tuesday lunchtime and thus is somewhat reluctant to include much topical content at the moment, as even a simple question such as “Who is British home secretary” might have a different answer by the time it gets published. You face 15 questions, a few in-jokes and then some increasingly petulant replies from the quiz master in the comments if you quibble or point out typos. There are no prizes, it really is just for silly fun, but let us know how you got on.

The Thursday quiz, No 78

1. 

   WE'LL MISS YOU, ROBBIE: We'll miss Robbie Coltrane, who we sadly lost last week. Everyone knew his character in Cracker as Fitz, but what was the character's full name?

   1. Dr Ernest 'Fitz' Fitzgerald

   2. Dr Eric 'Fitz' Fitzgerald

   3. Dr Edward 'Fitz' Fitzgerald

   4. Dr Evil 'Fitz' Fitzgerald

2. 

   PERICOMBOBULATION: In Blackadder III, Coltrane played Samuel Johnson in the process of completing his English dictionary (pictured). When was Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language first published in the real world?

   1. 1655

   2. 1705

   3. 1755

   4. 1805

3. 

   57 VARIETIES: Just Stop Oil protestors threw a can of some delicious Heinz soup over the pane of glass that was carefully protecting one of Vincent Van Gogh's sunflower paintings. But what variety was the soup?

   1. Lentil

   2. Tomato

   3. Carrot and Coriander

   4. Chunky Vegetable

4. 

   GCSE SCIENCE WITH RON FROM SPARKS: I Predict is a 1982 song by Sparks where they predict you'll get wet if you walk in the rain. But if you were to dip some litmus paper into a dilute of sulfuric acid, what pH do you predict it would most likely indicate?

   1. pH1

   2. pH5

   3. pH7

   4. pH13

5. 

   ENSEMBLE CASTS: Carolyn Jones, John Astin and Jackie Coogan (not pictured) were integral members of the cast of which 1960s US sitcom?

   1. The Addams Family

   2. The Beverly Hillbillies‎

   3. The New Phil Silvers Show

   4. I Dream of Jeannie

6. 

   BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS: Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has won the Booker prize for fiction, with his second novel. What is it called?

   1. Small Things Like These

   2. The Angel's Kiss

   3. Treacle Walker

   4. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

7. 

   TAMMY'S TEASER: Tammy Wynette is an absolute star who had a hit single with D-I-V-O-R-C-E in 1968. But which V is a small moon of Jupiter?

   1. Vanth

   2. Varuna

   3. Varos

   4. Valetudo

8. 

   IT'S A DOG'S LIFE: This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, deep in thought. You measure the height of a dog up to the area above their shoulder. Willow is worried you don't know the name for that part of a dog. What is it?

   1. Pastern

   2. Withers

   3. Stifle

   4. Pyrovile

9. 

   1966 AND ALL THAT: A series of questions not related to football leading up to the 2022 Fifa World Cup awarded to Qatar, which has been accused of imposing ‘chilling’ restrictions on media coverage of the tournament. The 1994 World Cup was held in the US, but when did the US purchase Alaska from the Russian empire?

   1. 1847

   2. 1867

   3. 1897

   4. 1907

10. 

    SPORT, BUT A LONG TIME AGO: Angered by the exclusion of women from the Olympic movement, a five-day multi-sport event organised by Alice Milliat (not pictured) known as the 1921 Women's Olympiad, took place where?

    1. Monte Carlo

    2. Montpellier‎

    3. Metz

    4. Marseille‎

11. 

    SCOTTISH THINGS: The incredible stone-built Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae is on which island of the Orkney archipelago?

    1. Muckle Green Holm

    2. Holm of Scockness

    3. Start Point

    4. Orkney Mainland

12. 

    JEWEL IN THE CROWN: The Koh-i-noor diamond was ceded to the British in 1849 as one of the conditions of what is often known as "the last treaty of … ?"

    1. Lahore

    2. Rawalpindi

    3. Islamabad

    4. Jalandhar

13. 

    IN THE ARMY NOW: One of the most famous and successful K-pop boy bands in the world has announced this week that their members will be going off to do military service in South Korea. Which band?

    1. Seventeen

    2. EXO

    3. BTS

    4. NCT 127

14. 

    NEW FACE IN AI HELL: Here is what happened when the Thursday Quiz asked an AI to draw King Charles III with Liz Truss, who was still prime minister at the time of writing. But which sci-fi fandom has banned AI art in its Reddit community?

    1. Dune

    2. Star Trek

    3. Blade Runner

    4. Battlestar Galactica

15. 

    AND FINALLY AND THIS IS NOT A THURSDAY QUIZ IN-JOKE: Robbie Coltrane genuinely starred as the protagonist in which 2011 music video by Kate Bush (not pictured)?

    1. Experiment IV

    2. King of the Mountain

    3. Deeper Understanding

    4. Babooshka

Solutions

1:C - Series creator Jimmy McGovern said the character was named after the English poet and writer Edward FitzGerald. Coltrane won three consecutive Baftas in the role., 2:C - Prepared between 1746 and 1755, Johnson's was not the first dictionary to be published, but gained enormous popularity as it was regarded as showing English as it was used, rather than just providing a collection of difficult and obscure words., 3:B - It was tomato soup. You can insert your own Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Cans art joke here. The gallery has since confirmed the painting was not harmed. , 4:A - The pH range goes from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral. A pH of less than 7 indicates acidity, whereas a pH of greater than 7 indicates a base. And all the people complaining about it being spelled "sulfuric acid" in the comments indicates they didn't pay attention when sulfur was defined as the official international spelling of sulphur for academic purposes by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry decades ago, or when that was explained in the quiz the other week either. You can tell by the look on his face that Ron thinks you should have known that., 5:A - That is the original lineup of Morticia, Gomez and Uncle Fester to you. And did you know that the California child actor's bill is known as the Coogan bill? It was passed in the 1930s after Coogan discovered that all his earnings from his work as a child star – he was in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid – had been squandered. Well now you do., 6:D - The Booker-winning novel tells the story of the photographer of its title, who in 1990 wakes up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. With no idea who killed him, Maali has seven moons to contact the people he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos of civil-war atrocities that will rock Sri Lanka., 7:D - Also known as Jupiter LXII and originally known as S/2016 J 2, it was discovered by Scott S Sheppard and his team, in data collected in 2016 and announced in 2018. Valetudo is about 1km across and is named after the Roman goddess of health and hygiene. Vanth is a satellite of likely dwarf planet 90482 Orcus. Varuna is a large trans-Neptunian object in the Kuiper belt. , 8:B - The stifle is the dog's "knee", and the pastern is "the area of the foot between the wrist and the toes". The bit above the shoulders is called the withers, and apparently the name has nothing to do with the withering gaze a dachshund can give you if you aren't paying direct attention to them when, say, you are busy writing a quiz for a national newspaper website., 9:B - Alaska was formally transferred to the US on 18 October 1867, through a treaty ratified by the US Senate. The US paid $7.2m for it. In return, the Russians got to not have Sarah Palin as regional governor., 10:A - It was the first of three Women's Olympiads, or Monte Carlo Games, held annually at the venue, and the forerunner of the quadrennial Women's World Games. The athletes competed in 10 events, and there were exhibition events in basketball, gymnastics, pushball and rhythmic gymnastics, 11:D - Skara Brae is a Neolithic village that was occupied from about 3100BC to 2500BC, and for a prehistoric settlement, the state of preservation – the height of the surviving walls and the internal fittings – is unparalleled in northern Europe., 12:A - The treaty followed the second Anglo-Sikh war between the Sikh empire and the East India Company. Clause three stated: "The gem called the Koh-i-noor, which was taken from Shah Sooja-ool-moolk by Maharajah Runjeet Singh, shall be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England." The treaty was agreed and signed while the Sikh leader, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was a child., 13:C - The decision that the seven members will serve with the military has ended a long national debate over whether they should receive an exemption. Jin, the oldest member of the group, will be the first to swap his stage outfit for a uniform soon after he turns 30 in December. The six other members, born between 1993 and 1997, will follow suit, with the band expected to reform in about 2025., 14:A - The online community on the subreddit of r/Dune has almost a quarter of a million fans, and moderators have banned AI art, describing it as "low-effort content", which the Thursday Quiz takes as a personal affront. It chimes with the universe they love though, since in the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the Butlerian Jihad led to the destruction of “thinking machines” across the known universe. , 15:C - Coltrane portrayed the man installing and using the computer software that Kate was singing about in Deeper Understanding, when it was released as a single from her slightly odd 2011 album Director's Cut, in which she rerecorded some songs from her 1989 and 1993 albums that she felt needed reworking. Bush said of Coltrane: "I’m really going to miss him. I had so much respect for his many talents and his generosity of spirit. We’ve lost one of our great treasures."

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 often quite sharp.