England’s cat, ancient jeans and the king’s coins – take the Thursday quiz

King Charles III – but which coins will be the first to bear his image? Photograph: Jacob King/AFP/Getty Images

It is the last topical Thursday quiz of the year! Don’t fret, there will be quizzes over the next few weeks, but they will be pre-written without the news elements. You will still love them, we are sure. So today, for the last time in 2022, you face 15 questions of varying difficulty that are either vaguely topical or general knowledge in nature. There are no prizes, but let us know how you got on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 86

1. 

   BYE THEN: Kyrsten Sinema decided US politics would be too boring if a party were actually able to pass legislation in the Senate easily, so has quit the Democratic caucus to become an independent just as the Democratic party won a majority. Which state does she represent?

   1. Arkansas

   2. Arizona

   3. Delaware

   4. Illinois

2. 

   FRESHLY MINTED: The first coins to feature King Charles III are being distributed and going into circulation. What denomination are they?

   1. 10p

   2. 20p

   3. 50p

   4. £1

3. 

   END OF THE LINE: Boeing has produced its last ever 747 (pictured). But when did the first one take flight?

   1. 1965

   2. 1969

   3. 1975

   4. 1979

4. 

   I DON'T FEEL A DAY OLDER THAN 100: Which country is to scrap its traditional ageing system where everyone is born aged one and adds a year every 1 January, making nearly everyone in the country suddenly younger?

   1. South Korea

   2. China

   3. Japan

   4. Vietnam

5. 

   HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Speaking of birthdays, it would have been Nero's birthday today, the scurrilous old fiddler that he was. But what was his name at birth?

   1. Lobus Caecilius Lucius Petrus

   2. Servius Sulpicius Galba

   3. Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus

   4. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus

6. 

   IT'S A DOG'S LIFE: This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian's Thursday quiz. She is worried because she thinks she has forgotten which city is the capital of Namibia. And also because of the snow. Can you help her with the capital city at least?

   1. Windhoek

   2. Yaoundé

   3. Niamey

   4. Monrovia

7. 

   IT'S COMING HOME: England did not win the World Cup. But Kyle Walker and John Stones have adopted a cat they met in Qatar. What have they called it?

   1. Cristiano

   2. Fred

   3. Dave

   4. Ronald

8. 

   THE CHANCES OF ANYTHING COMING FROM MARS: The 1897 novel War of the Worlds by H G Wells features a Martian capsule landing in England and then starting an invasion. Where does the first capsule land?

   1. Wimbledon Common

   2. Epping Forest

   3. Hampstead Heath

   4. Horsell Common

9. 

   VILLAGE PEOPLE'S POSER: Young man, there's no need to feel down, Village People had a smash hit in 1978 with YMCA. But which A in Norse mythology is one of the first two humans, alongside Embla?

   1. Ask

   2. Álfheim

   3. Auðumbla

   4. Adric

10. 

    JEAN GENIE: Auction officials have sold what they describe as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world (not pictured) for $114,000. When do they date from?

    1. 1857

    2. 1877

    3. 1897

    4. 1907

11. 

    GOOD NUCLEAR THINGS: Boffins at the US National Ignition Facility in California claim to have created more energy than they used for the very first time in which process?

    1. Nuclear fission

    2. Nuclear fusion

12. 

    BAD NUCLEAR THINGS: How many nuclear reactors were there at the Chornobyl power station in the Soviet Union?

    1. Three

    2. Four

    3. Five

    4. Six

13. 

    MUSIC DISCOGRAPHIES: A niche new round which is going to generate complaints. Which of these is the correct order for the first four albums by Spandau Ballet?

    1. Diamond, Journeys to Glory, True, Parade

    2. Journeys to Glory, Diamond, Parade, True

    3. Diamond, Journeys to Glory, Parade, True

    4. Journeys to Glory, Diamond, True, Parade

14. 

    ON THIS DAY: On 15 December 2001 the Leaning Tower of Pisa was reopened after a lengthy project to stabilise it. But when was the wacky building originally completed?

    1. 1172

    2. 1272

    3. 1372

    4. 1472

15. 

    ART FOR ART'S SAKE: Sculptures created by leading artists including Tracey Emin and David Bailey were expected to raise thousands of pounds for research into Parkinson’s disease when they were auctioned this week. What were the sculptures all of?

    1. Brains

    2. Trees

    3. Hands

    4. Father Christmas

Solutions

1:B - “I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington. I registered as an Arizona independent,” she said in an op-ed for Arizona Central, a local media outlet. Democrats had held the Senate 50-50, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, holding a tie-breaking vote. Raphael Warnock’s victory in last week's runoff election in Georgia had handed them their 51st seat. , 2:C - The first coinage featuring King Charles III will appear on the 50p coin in circulation in post offices around the UK from last Thursday. Created by sculptor Martin Jennings and personally approved, the king’s portrait faces to the left, in the opposite direction to the late Queen. , 3:B - The first 747 was rolled out in September 1968. Everybody looked at it admiringly for a bit, then it went for its first flight on 9 February 1969. It is now in the Museum of Flight in Seattle. , 4:A - South Koreans are deemed to be a year old when they are born, and a year is added every 1 January. The unusual – and increasingly unpopular – custom means a baby born on New Year’s Eve becomes two years old as soon as the clock strikes midnight. A separate system exists for calculating the age of men entering national service and the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke. While some people are expected to continue using their “Korean age” in daily life, others said they were delighted by the prospect of turning back the clock., 5:D - It was indeed Lucius. Servius Sulpicius Galba was his successor, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus was his father, and he probably didn't fiddle while Rome burned but who can begrudge me calling him a fiddler?, 6:A - It is Windhoek, which has been Namibia's capital since the country gained independence from South Africa in 1990. The population of Windhoek in 2020 was around 430,000., 7:C - The cat was transported to a local veterinary clinic for tests and vaccinations and will spend four months in quarantine before what is presumably a free transfer to Manchester City where Stones and Walker play., 8:D - The story is told from the point of view of a narrator, and the first capsule lands on Horsell Common, which is near the character's home in Woking, Surrey., 9:A - Ask and Embla were the first two humans created by the gods. Ask is sometimes given as Askr, which literally means ash tree in old Norse., 10:A - Pulled from a sunken trunk in an 1857 shipwreck the white, heavy-duty miner’s trousers with a five-button fly were among 270 Gold Rush-era artefacts that sold for a total of nearly $1m in Reno earlier this month., 11:B - The amount of energy created was very small and in an unusable format, and you only create more energy than used if you kind of ignore all the energy used to get the process started, but nevertheless it was an incredible holy grail moment for nuclear physicists trying to replicate the way that the sun makes energy., 12:B - There were four reactors, all of which had been decommissioned by 2000. It was unit four that had the catastrophic disaster in 1986, although there have been incidents with all the reactors in the plant over the years. And yes it is in the Guardian style guide to spell it Chornobyl, so don't start moaning about that in the comments., 13:D - The band's commercial success peaked with their third album True, which featured the singles True, Communication, Lifeline and Gold., 14:C - The bell tower was completed in 1372, although construction had originally begun in 1173. The building is placed on unstable soil and only has about three metres worth of foundations. At no point in the 199 years did it seem to occur to anybody to say "I think we've made a mess of this.", 15:A - Fifteen works have been created for the charity auction, Me, My Brain and I, by artists including Gavin Turk, who were asked to reflect what their brain means to them. Some of the artists have been affected by Parkinson’s.

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 quizmaster’s word is final, he is very busy with Harry and Meghan again, and it is his last day until Christmas Eve so he is not going to read it.