Heroes, superheroes, and someone who lost to a lettuce – take the Thursday quiz

Lettuces! But who is trying to unseat Liz Truss? Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

Regular readers will know that during the summer months the Thursday quiz likes to have little themes now and then. With a huge era-defining general election in the UK keeping everyone at Guardian Towers busy, what better week to pull out a “here’s one we prepared earlier” quiz and choose to mostly ignore current affairs? Here are 15 questions about heroes and superheroes. And Liz Truss. There are no prizes. It is just for fun. But do let us know how you got on in the comments

The Thursday quiz, No 167

1. 

   BATMAN: When did Adam West start playing the Caped Crusader on television?

   1. 1962

   2. 1964

   3. 1966

   4. 1968

2. 

   BANANAMAN: Quirky slapstick hero Bananaman (not pictured) first appeared in which British comic?

   1. Nutty

   2. Crackers

   3. Fruitloop

   4. Wackadoo

3. 

   U WHAT?: Bono (not pictured, but bongos are) and The Edge from U2 inexplicably wrote a musical about a superhero. What was it called?

   1. Batman: Light up the Dark

   2. Superman: Flight from the Dark

   3. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

   4. What a Racket: Switch Off the Music

4. 

   CONDORMAN: Which British sitcom star implausibly played the titular superhero in 1981 Disney film Condorman?

   1. Leonard Rossiter

   2. Richard Briers

   3. Robert Lindsay

   4. Michael Crawford

5. 

   BUCK ROGERS: He famously got stuck in the 25th century, but who had a hit with a song called Buck Rogers in the UK which extolled the virtues of having a new car with a CD player in it?

   1. Stereophonics

   2. Feeder

   3. Supergrass

   4. Idlewild

6. 

   THE FLASH: Which year did Adobe announce as the end-of-life moment for the Adobe Flash platform that had powered interactive content on the web for years? You can see this is getting quite tenuous now

   1. 2014

   2. 2016

   3. 2018

   4. 2020

7. 

   DOCTOR MYSTERIO: What was name of the superhero who appeared in the 2016 Doctor Who Christmas special The Return of Doctor Mysterio?

   1. The Ghost

   2. The Spirit

   3. The Phantasm

   4. Mr Huffle

8. 

   IBIS THE INVINCIBLE: A magical superhero and an Egyptian prince. But what is an Ibis – aside from a chain of hotels?

   1. A type of orchid

   2. A type of crystal

   3. A type of wading bird

   4. A type of very naughty miniature dachshund

9. 

   THE GIRL WITH THE X-RAY EYES: X-rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. What is their wavelength range?

   1. 0.01–10 nm

   2. 10 – 100 nm

   3. 100 - 1,000 nm

   4. 1,057 nm exactly

10. 

    TARZAN: Who created Tarzan, later played on screen by Johnny Weissmuller?

    1. Edgar Rice Burroughs

    2. Harry Sullivan

    3. Charles Stross

    4. Robert Shea

11. 

    NED LUDD: A hero to some. His origin story is that he smashed two knitting frames about three decades before the Luddite movement was at its peak. When did he apparently smash the frames?

    1. 1579

    2. 1679

    3. 1779

    4. 1879

12. 

    WAT TYLER: A folk hero. One of the contributions to Wat Tyler's great uprising in England in 1381 was the poll tax. How much were the hobnobs trying to charge people for existing in the poll tax of 1380?

    1. One pence

    2. One shilling

    3. One pound

    4. One grotzit

13. 

    DAVID BOWIE: A hero, and someone who released an album called "Heroes" in 1977. Who was credited on the album's sleeve as having produced it?

    1. Bowie and Iggy

    2. Bowie and Visconti

    3. Bowie and Eno

    4. David Bowie and Ron from Sparks

14. 

    DOCTOR DOOM: Which year did the first-person shooter game Doom come out? Hint: it was not when the ZX Spectrum was knocking about

    1. 1987

    2. 1993

    3. 1997

    4. 2003

15. 

    LIZ TRUSS: Hero of the Thursday quiz, the 49-day wonder PM is up for election today. Who is standing against her, representing the Monster Raving Loony party?

    1. Baron Bono of Boston

    2. Duke Van Dyke of Devizes

    3. Earl Elvis of East Anglia

    4. Lord Liberace of Lincoln

Solutions

1:C - They made three series, 120 episodes, and it was glorious fun instead of constantly remaking some grim origin story, 2:A - When Eric Wimp was turned into the hero, he famously had "the muscles of 20 men and the brains of 20 mussels". The character later appeared in the Dandy and then the Beano, 3:C - Bono called it "pop-up, pop-art opera", director Julie Taymor called it a "rock’n’roll circus drama", and critics mostly called it a load of old codswallop, still it is nice to see people trying new things, eh?, 4:D - Ooh Betty, the Thursday quiz has no idea why either, 5:B - The 2001 single went top five in the UK, 6:D - In July 2017, Adobe deprecated Flash, and announced the end of 2020 as the date it would cease support, distribution, and security updates for Flash Player , 7:A - In the story the Doctor accidentally allows an eight-year-old boy to swallow an alien wish-granting gem and the kid grows up to be a superhero, with "hilarious" consequences, 8:C - Most ibises are freshwater wetland birds and have spread over much of the globe, 9:A - X-rays were first observed and documented in 1895 by German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röentgen. How is your score at the minute … not great? Not terrible?, 10:A - The first book in the series was published in 1912, 11:C - Yes, his origins are shrouded in mystery, but the alleged events happened years before the Luddite movement reached its peak in the 1810s, as workers destroyed the machinery that was thieving their wages and skilled labour, much as how the Thursday quiz feels about LLMs in 2024. The picture is some textile machinery at Leeds Industrial Museum, which is well worth a visit, 12:B - It was a shilling for everybody over 15 and at some point everybody had enough and told the hobnobs to do one and started setting fire to things, 13:B - Recorded in Berlin in mid-1977 it was released in the October of that year. Brian Eno certainly contributed to the album, and his impact on Bowie's Berlin albums is the stuff of legend, but the original release credited it as "produced by Bowie and Visconti", which it was, 14:B - Released on 10 December 1993, for DOS. The game begins on the moons of Mars and finishes in hell. No wonder busybodies were fretting about the evil of videogames etc, etc, 15:C - Yes. You just had to kind of remember that her constituency is in Norfolk to get this. Or have a random stab in the dark …

Scores

1. 0 and above.

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

If you really do think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers – and can show your working – feel free to email martin.belam@theguardian.com, but remember the quiz master’s word is final and if you are in the UK, today you have a chance to go out and be a hero yourself …

David Bowie – “Heroes” – official video