Rude MPs, winning books and duos falling out – take the Thursday quiz

James Cleverly has apologised for using unparliamentary language – but where does he represent? Photograph: Leon Neal/PA

You may think it is poor form to phone in a lazy opening blurb for the quiz that doesn’t really have anything to say, but what are you going to do about it, eh? Fifteen questions await you, as usual, with some of them vaguely based on the news, some of them vaguely based on general knowledge, and a couple of them being about obscure weird things that only the author obsesses over. Let us know how you get on in the comments – where the platitudes of your compatriots can be your prize.

The Thursday quiz, No 136

1. 

   Irish author Paul Lynch (not pictured) has won the 2023 Booker prize. What is his winning novel called?

   1. The Bee Sting

   2. This Other Eden

   3. Prophet Song

   4. The Unicorn and the Wasp

2. 

   Which search engine last week began answering "No" if you asked it if Australia exists?

   1. Google

   2. DuckDuckGo

   3. Yandex

   4. Bing

3. 

   Geert Wilders got the largest number of seats in the election in the Netherlands last week, although negotiations to form a government have taken some time. But which party is Wilders the leader of?

   1. PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid)

   2. VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie)

   3. SW (Slegte Wolfbaai)

   4. NSC (Nieuw Sociaal Contract)

4. 

   James Cleverly has got himself into a hoo-ha over whether he called Stockton a "shit-hole" or called Labour MP Alex Cunningham a "shit MP" while he was in parliament representing the government as home secretary, one of the great offices of state. But where is Cleverly MP for?

   1. CANNYton

   2. BRAINtree

   3. WISEly

   4. BOFFINville

5. 

   Who is suing who?

   1. Daryl Hall is suing John Oates

   2. John Oates is suing Daryl Hall

6. 

   One of the world’s largest icebergs is drifting beyond Antarctic waters, after being grounded for more than three decades, according to the British Antarctic Survey. What is it known as?

   1. McCrimmon

   2. A23a

   3. India Charlie 35

   4. 841

7. 

   Fields of the Nephilim have challenged Jesus Jones to a five-a-side football match for tenuous quiz-related reasons. If the probability that Fields of the Nephilim win is 0.5, and the probability of a draw is 0.2, what is the probability that Jesus Jones win?

   1. 0.2

   2. 0.3

   3. 0.4

   4. 0.5

8. 

   Talking of football, we lost Terry Venables this week. His greatest achievement as manager of the notoriously trophy-shy England men's team was to reach the semi-finals of Euro 96. Who missed the decisive penalty?

   1. Paul Gascoigne

   2. Stuart Pearce

   3. Chris Waddle

   4. Gareth Southgate

9. 

   It is the anniversary of the time in 1936 that the Crystal Palace (are you sure about this pic – Ed) in London's Crystal Palace district burnt down. But where had the Crystal Palace originally been erected for the Great Exhibition of 1851?

   1. London's famous Olympia

   2. London's famous White City

   3. London's famous Hyde Park

   4. London's famous Walthamstow market

10. 

    It is the anniversary of Mark Twain's birth today. And the anniversary of Jonathan Swift's too. Both are considered literary greats in their respective homelands. Huzzah! But which of them wrote Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (are you also sure about this pic? - Ed)?

    1. Jonathan Swift

    2. Mark Twain

11. 

    These days Barbados is a republic. But before becoming a republic on 30 November 2021 it gained independence from the UK on 30 November. But which year?

    1. 1946

    2. 1956

    3. 1966

    4. 1976

12. 

    One reason for becoming a republic, the Thursday quiz supposes, might be if you found out the royal estates were collecting money from people who died without a will and were using it to upgrade a king’s property empire. What is the latin name of the archaic custom that was being used to do exactly this by the Duchy of Lancaster?

    1. Petrus dextrus

    2. Bona vacantia

    3. Curet porcos

    4. Injuriosum canem

13. 

    Unreactive metals are found as uncombined metals in Earth's crust, possibly because they are too lazy to combine with anything, just like the bloke in this picture. The science is unclear. But which of the following metals is found uncombined in Earth's crust?

    1. Gold

    2. Sodium

    3. Zinc

    4. Aluminium

14. 

    This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, thinking sadly about how upsetting it would be if someone stole her marbles. But when did an act of parliament grant the Parthenon marbles to the British Museum?

    1. 1616

    2. 1716

    3. 1816

    4. 1916

15. 

    The Thursday quiz was very sad to have lost Geordie, the guitarist of the British post-punk band Killing Joke, who died aged 64 this week. What was the name of Killing Joke's biggest hit in the UK?

    1. She Sells Sanctuary

    2. Liberator

    3. At Home He's A Tourist

    4. Love Like Blood

Solutions

1:C - Set in an imagined Ireland that is descending into tyranny, it was described as a “soul-shattering and true” novel that “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment” by the judging chair, Esi Edugyan., 2:D - It had ingested information about a conspiracy that reportedly dates to 2006, when a user on the Flat Earth Society forum reportedly claimed everything about Australia was made up and everyone who claimed to be Australian were “secret government agents”. Fair dinkum., 3:A - The Party for Freedom was registered with the Electoral Council in the Netherlands in 2006., 4:B - Cleverly has represented Braintree in Essex since 2015., 5:A - May the Thursday quiz be the 1,057th time you've seen someone joke he can’t go for that (no can do), about this story., 6:B - A23a split from the Antarctic’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986 and used to be the site of the Soviet Union Druzhnaya I Antarctic research station, which had to be airlifted off at some point., 7:B - It is a certainty that the match must end in a win for one of the teams or a draw, so the combination of those possible results must add up to a probabilty of 1, therefore the probability of Jesus Jones winning must be 0.3. I mean, this simplified model of probability doesn't allow for the fact that Pop Will Eat Itself might rock up and start a punch-up leading to no result, but it is the simplified version that children get taught at GCSE, and this is an example of how "mutually exclusive" probability works by the Eduqas board., 8:D - Oh Gareth. The quiz master was at that one., 9:C - Apparently it was three times as big as St Paul's Cathedral and then they schlepped it all the way to south London, the weirdos., 10:B - The 1896 novel is presented as if it is a translation of a French memoir about the saint, who was executed in 1431, roughly 235 years before Swift was born, and about 400 years before the birth of Twain., 11:C - On 30 November 1966, Barbados gained independence and became a Commonwealth realm with Elizabeth II as Queen of Barbados. , 12:B - Nice "work" if you can inherit it, the Thursday quiz guesses. At the weekend King Charles’s estate announced it was transferring more than £100m, including funds collected from dead people under the archaic system of bona vacantia, into ethical investment funds after an investigation by the Guardian., 13:A - Known chiefly for its properties of killing cybermen, who are inexplicably allergic to it, yes, it's gold. And the science is clear, that was just a joke, there is no need for lots of joyless nitpicking in the comments., 14:C - The British Museum Act 1816 authorised the Treasury to provide £35,000 to buy the Greek sculptures for the museum, and appointed Lord Elgin to the trustees board of the museum, and stipulated that the collection would be kept together and named the Elgin collection, rather than, say, "the Phidias sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens with the disputed paperwork saying it was OK to take them collection"., 15:D - The second single from their fifth studio album, Night Time, it reached No 16 in the charts in 1985. The Thursday quiz was at the gig at which this picture was taken. Rest well, Geordie, the Thursday quiz's favourite guitarist of all time.

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had 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 he’ll be listening to Killing Joke anyway.