French kings, a Tammy teaser and no one-trick pony – take the Thursday quiz

Baby horses at sunset. But which one used to star in Rentaghost? Yes, it’s that kind of quiz this week. Photograph: Michael Probst/AP

The quiz master is away, but the moment has been prepared for. Secret blueprints hidden in an air-conditioning unit within the Guardian’s London offices have been discovered that outline 15 somewhat less topical questions than usual, as they had to be set out in advance. There are no prizes. It is just for fun. Let us know how you get on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 70

1. 

   HAPPY BIRTHDAY: It is Rachel Bilson's birthday today. Happy birthday, Rachel! But what was the name of her character in The OC?

   1. Marissa Cooper

   2. Summer Roberts

   3. Zoe Hart

   4. Kaitlin Cooper

2. 

   SECRETS OF THE STARS: Which of these stars is the brightest member of the constellation of Taurus?

   1. Electra

   2. Merope

   3. Aldebaran

   4. Ron

3. 

   TAMMY'S TEASER: Tammy Wynette had a hit single with D-I-V-O-R-C-E in 1968. But which I is a country with a population of around 40 million people?

   1. Italy

   2. Indonesia

   3. Iraq

   4. Iran

4. 

   I'M AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT, DAVE: On 25 August 1991, Linus Torvalds announced the first version of what would become which computer operating system?

   1. Linux

   2. LDAP

   3. NewDos

   4. Wotan

5. 

   1966 AND ALL THAT: A series of questions not about football leading up to the 2022 World Cup. The 1966 Fifa World Cup was held in England. But who was British prime minister in 1966?

   1. Sir Alec Douglas-Home

   2. Harold Macmillan

   3. Harold Wilson

   4. Edward Heath

6. 

   WHY THE LONG FACE? What was the name of the pantomime horse (not pictured) that used to appear in British children's TV show Rentaghost?

   1. Mr Twinkle

   2. David

   3. Myrka

   4. Dobbin

7. 

   THE VINYL COUNTDOWN: What does the RCA stand for in the name of the famous record label?

   1. Radio Corporation of America

   2. Radiogram Company of America

   3. Recording Company of America

   4. Radiophonic Corporation of America

8. 

   GCSE SCIENCE CORNER: Which of these provide the human heart muscle with the glucose and oxygen it needs to operate?

   1. Pulmonary artery

   2. The coronary arteries

   3. Hepatic vein

   4. Aorta

9. 

   GCSE SCIENCE BUT IN THE 1600s: Who (not pictured), on this day in 1609, demonstrated his first telescope (not pictured) to Venetian lawmakers?

   1. Leonardo da Vinci

   2. Galileo Galilei

   3. Nicolaus Copernicus

   4. Tycho Brahe

10. 

    MYSTERIOUS THINGS: Where would you find a Stockbridge damper?

    1. At a horse show

    2. In a pendulum-driven grandfather clock

    3. In the propulsion mechanism of a submarine

    4. On an electricity pylon or transmission tower

11. 

    MYSTERIOUS THINGS (SLIGHT RETURN): Who wrote the horror novel The Fog, published in 1975

    1. James Herbert

    2. John Carpenter

    3. Stephen King

    4. J R Hartley

12. 

    OFF WITH THEIR HEADS: Today marks the anniversary of the death of French king Louis IX (not pictured) in 1270. How many kings named Louis did the French monarchy eventually get up to by the time of the last one, who died on 16 September 1824?

    1. Louis XVI (16th)

    2. Louis XVIII (18th)

    3. Louis XX (20th)

    4. Louis XXI (21st)

13. 

    MUSIC: The band Wet Leg were the breakout cult 6Music success of 2021. But which island did Hester Chambers and Rhian Teasdale grow up on?

    1. Isle of Sheppey

    2. Isle of Man

    3. Isle of Mull

    4. Isle of Wight

14. 

    COUNTRIES IN DISGUISE: The territory that used to be the Kingdom of Lombardy is now mostly in which modern European country?

    1. Germany

    2. France

    3. Spain

    4. Italy

15. 

    COMMONWEALTH GAMES: The 22nd Commonwealth Games took place in Birmingham earlier this month. How many countries are members of the Commonwealth, according to its own website?

    1. 36 – which is both the square of six and a triangular number, making it a square triangular number.

    2. 44 – the same number of years between Kate Bush's two UK No 1 singles.

    3. 56 – the number of years between England's men winning the World Cup in 1966 (see question 5) and England's women winning the Euros.

    4. 66 – like the route that winds from Chicago to LA in the song

Solutions

1:B - She was of course Summer Roberts, originally only intended to appear in a couple of episodes, but proving popular enough that she was written into the series properly. Who doesn't love a show that once delivered the line – not by her, mind – "Why watch the plight of fictional characters when you can watch real people in contrived situations?", 2:C - An orange-hued giant star, the name is derived from Arabic and probably originates in the appearance the star has of following the Pleiades across the night sky., 3:C - Iraq has the smallest population among these four, at about 40 million. Italy's population is about 60 million, Iran's is about 83 million and Indonesia is by far the largest, with a population of 273 million., 4:A - On 25 August 1991, Torvalds posted the following to comp.os.minix: "I'm doing a (free) operating system." On 5 October 1991, he released the first official version – helpfully numbered v0.02. Versions of it have subsequently been installed on billions of devices, and started 1m nerdy arguments about what the word 'free' truly means., 5:C - Wilson's first stint as prime minster ran from 16 October 1964 until 19 June 1970., 6:D - Initially appearing as a one-off in a Christmas special, the pantomime horse costume was mistakenly brought to life by jester Timothy Claypole and Dobbin subsequently became a regular feature., 7:A - Its name was derived from the initials of its defunct parent company, the Radio Corporation of America. Ironically, given that the parent company was originally spun off as part of an antitrust settlement, the RCA label was sold to BMG, which then merged with Sony. Incidentally that picture appears to have been taken in the Reckless Records branch where the quiz master used to work., 8:B - The pulmonary artery carries deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs. The hepatic vein carries deoxygenated blood back to the heart. The aorta carries oxygenated blood from the heart around the body. But it is the coronary arteries that actually keep the heart itself working., 9:B - Only Galileo Galilei was alive in 1609. Brahe died in 1601, Copernicus in 1543 and Leonardo in 1519. The woman in the picture is using binoculars, not a telescope, which you can presumably see twice as much stuff with., 10:D - A Stockbridge damper is a tuned mass damper used to suppress wind-induced vibrations on slender structures such as overhead power lines., 11:A - Herbert's 1975 novel was not connected to the 1980 film of the same name written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill., 12:B - Louis XVIII was king for two periods. There is a disputed Louis XIX that some claim was king for a few minutes but since he wasn't an option and the question specifically asked 'who died on 16 September 1824' we can safely ignore him as a charlatan. That picture has nothing to do with the monarchy by the way. It is just a random picture of a pretty coat of arms in a random church in France., 13:D - They are both from the Isle of Wight, and described themselves in a Guardian interview as "country bumpkins". The single Chaise Longe has been streamed over 11m times on Spotify, and the follow-up Wet Dream was guaranteed to make every middle-aged straight male 6Music listener blush., 14:D - With its capitals having been Milan and Venice, the kingdom eventually became part of Italy in the 19th century having been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and no doubt some pedant in the comments will be able to identify one village that ended up in Switzerland by mistake or something., 15:C - On its website, the Commonwealth describes itself as "a voluntary association of 56 independent and equal countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Pacific". The Commonwealth Games were first held in 1930 as the British Empire Games, and nowadays England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as separate teams, even though the Commonwealth website lists the United Kingdom as one member country.

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 genuinely, he is probably in either a castle or a pub in North Wales at the moment, so we might all have to just live with it.