Scoffed burgers, abandoned pets and bears popping up in court – take the Thursday quiz

This isn’t a Big Mac – it is ‘a cultivated chicken burger at Super Meat’. But can you remember the world record for eating Big Macs? Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

We would say the 150th Thursday quiz is a milestone that should be celebrated, but instead we will just note that writing it feels like a life sentence. Fifteen questions await you in the usual mix of the topical, the obscure, any news story that has featured animals, plus a few jokes. And this week we are mercifully Liz Truss-free, although we have just made you remember her again with that mention. It is just for fun, but please let us know how you get on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 150

1. 

   Who (not pictured) has been appointed the new prime minister of Pakistan?

   1. Omer Ayub

   2. Asif Ali Zardari

   3. Gohar Khan

   4. Shehbaz Sharif

2. 

   How much has the EU fined Apple over App Store restrictions on music streaming?

   1. €180,000

   2. €1.8m

   3. €1.8bn

   4. €1.8tn

3. 

   People are having a tizzy that a statue planned for near Winchester Cathedral would lead to the “Disneyfication” of the place of worship and become a magnet for tourists keen to get a selfie. Who is the statue to be of?

   1. Jane Austen

   2. Emily Brontë

   3. Florence Nightingale

   4. Princess Diana

4. 

   Don Gorske, who sounds like he might not have much going on in his life, has set a new world record for the most Big Macs consumed during a lifetime. How many Big Macs does he claim to have eaten in his 70 years?

   1. 1,057

   2. 34,128

   3. 44,128

   4. 54,128

5. 

   A judge in a court in London got over-excited and made a somewhat weirdly constructed judgment in a trading standards case last week. Whom did he quote and what was the case?

   1. He quoted Winnie The Pooh in a case about the labelling of honey

   2. He quoted Paddington Bear in a case about the labelling of marmalade

   3. He quoted Rupert the Bear in a case about the labelling of some checked trousers

   4. He quoted Baloo the Bear in a case about the labelling of some fruit

6. 

   The jokers at Royal Mail, privatised by the Conservative government in order, they said, to improve the service, are putting up the price of first class stamps in the UK again. Brilliant. How much is it going to cost you now?

   1. 90p

   2. £1.05

   3. £1.20

   4. £1.35

7. 

   You've always wanted to pass GCSE business studies, right? Try this one. If a successful café wants to become even more successful by "changing the elements of the marketing mix", which of these things could it do?

   1. Conduct primary research in the local area

   2. Employ an additional worker

   3. Offer "buy one get one free" on drinks

   4. Invest in 30-50 feral hogs

8. 

   What was the name of the first episode of the hugely successful British sitcom by John Sullivan, Only Fools and Horses?

   1. Big Brother

   2. A Slow Bus to Chingford

   3. The Long Legs of the Law

   4. Diamonds Are for Heather

9. 

   Every fan of Sapphire & Steel knows "all irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life". Sapphire can be assigned, and frequently was. Sapphires are made of corundum, which is the crystalline form of what?

   1. Cobalt oxide

   2. Indium oxide

   3. Aluminium oxide

   4. Sulfur oxide

10. 

    What was found abandoned outside Canning Town tube station (not pictured) in London (pictured) with a note saying: “I need a new owner”?

    1. A guinea pig

    2. A rabbit

    3. A ferret

    4. One very naughty miniature dachshund

11. 

    Speaking of very naughty miniature dachshunds, here is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz. She knows that at the Brits awards they made Kylie drink from a shoe, but she can't remember which prize Kylie was awarded. Which of these was it?

    1. International song of the year for Padam Padam

    2. International album of the year for Tension

    3. International artist of the year

    4. Global icon

12. 

    Korean artist Nam June Paik is widely credited with pioneering which art form (not pictured)?

    1. Kinetic art

    2. Video art

    3. Edible art

    4. Miniature dachshund art

13. 

    One question about every country taking part in the Euro 2024 finals this summer. This week: as much as it sticks in the Thursday quiz's craw to say it, defending champions Italy, who beat England on penalties in the last final. Which strait separates the south of Italy and Sicily?

    1. Strait of Messina

    2. Strait of Cantanzaro

    3. Strait of Bari

    4. Strait of Palermo

14. 

    Today would have been the birthday of astronomer Frederick William Herschel. Happy birthday, your Frederickness! In 1787 he discovered the two largest moons of Uranus. What did he name them?

    1. Titan and Dione

    2. Titania and Oberon

    3. Triton and Nereid

    4. Mestor and Garm

15. 

    Just in time for her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, some genealogy website or other has "discovered" and "announced" that Taylor Swift is related to which tortured poet?

    1. Emily Dickinson

    2. Louisa May Alcott

    3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    4. Ron from Sparks

Solutions

1:D - Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) party, was the nominated candidate of a new eight-party coalition that was formed after no single party managed to win an outright majority in the election on 8 February. He will presumably last longer than 49 days. See, we made you think about Liz Truss again, 2:C - Regulators said consumers may have paid two or three euros a month more for music streaming because of the lack of open competition on Apple's platform. The fine will not, of course, be distributed back to customers who had been allegedly exploited or musicians paid a pittance for streaming over the years, deary me, no no no, but instead will go to the coffers of individual EU states. Nice work if you can get it , 3:A - The idea was to celebrate one of the greatest British authors with a beautiful statue set up in a cathedral for the 250th anniversary of their birth, but NIMBYs gonna NIMBY, 4:B - Gorske recounted how his love affair with Big Macs began as soon as he had his first one on 17 May 1972, and here we all are. This would definitely not have qualified to be on Roy Castle's Record Breakers back in the day, that is for sure, 5:A - The case centred around whether you can call honey "raw" and the judge went all AA Milne and existentially philosophical about the whole thing, 6:D - The fourth increase in two years will take the price of a first-class stamp to £1.35 and comes into effect on 2 April. Absolute chancers, 7:C - Yes, other examples might include reducing prices or adding new items for sale. Well done if you picked this option – you've got one point towards your fictitious business studies GCSE, 8:A - In the first episode Derek and Rodney buy from Trigger a load of unopenable briefcases because the combinations are locked inside, and the rest, as they say, is history …, 9:C - Aluminium oxide is also a common ingredient in sunscreen and is often also present in cosmetics such as blush, lipstick, and nail polish, many of which were used by Joanna Lumley when she played Sapphire. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) adopted aluminium as the standard international name for the element in 1990, about the same time as they adopted sulfur as the standard international scientific spelling for element 16, 10:A - Staff at Canning Town station discovered the animal, which has been named DiscoPig, alone inside a cage with the note. Awwwwwww, 11:D - She was indeed awarded global icon, at an awards ceremony that was inevitably drowned out on social media by loads of joyless old people moaning that they hadn't heard of any of the artists and music was much better in their day oblivious to the fact they sounded like dads moaning about Top of the Pops back in the 1980s. Having said that, the Thursday quiz does have to point out that Sparks were unfairly completely overlooked yet again, 12:B - He began incorporating television and video cassettes into his work in the 1960s and became very influential in the development of the pop video and early video effects, 13:A - At its narrowest point it is just 3.1 km (1.9 miles / 6,900 ancient Sumerian cubits) wide, which is about the same distance that Giorgio Chiellini dragged Bukayo Saka by the throat at Wembley in 2021, 14:B - They were named after characters in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, presumably because it has an ass and a character called Nick Bottom in it so the Uranus jokes write themselves, 15:A - Far be it for the Thursday quiz to suggest this was just a cynical PR ploy by the genealogy website and that by the time you go back six generations it is almost impossible not to be tangentially related to someone famous

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 is very busy listening to the new Max Richter and Sparks collaboration.