Stag do mishaps, pizza origins, and a very ugly dog – take the Thursday quiz

Ugly dog contestant Rascal Deux appeared in 2016 – but what was the name of this year’s ugly dog contest winner? Photograph: Peter Dasilva/EPA

A couple of weeks ago the quiz master received possibly the most unnecessarily rude and sneering email complaining about a minor typo that he has ever seen. It was nothing to do with the Thursday quiz, but he is still furious about it, so thought he would mention it. Here is this week’s selection of 15 general knowledge, vaguely topical and downright obscure and silly questions, which will now almost certainly include a minor typo somewhere. Let us know how you got on in the comments, but do try and avoid suggesting the quiz master learned nothing at school and doesn’t give a [REDACTED] about their job. Have fun!

The Thursday quiz, No 114

1. 

   [PLACEHOLDER TEXT]: What is the name of the "law" which maintains: "If you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written."

   1. Poe's law

   2. Betteridge's law

   3. Godwin's law

   4. Muphry's law

2. 

   COUP WAS THAT: Who is the boss of the Wagner PMC group which staged an aborted armed rebellion in Russia at the weekend?

   1. Vyacheslav Gladkov

   2. Dmitry Peskov

   3. Yevgeny Prigozhin

   4. Sergei Shoigu

3. 

   MATHS WITH RISHI SUNAK: An interim study by the Electoral Commission said how many people were turned away from voting in May's local elections in England due to new voter ID restrictions?

   1. About 14,000

   2. About 8,000

   3. About 4,000

   4. Exactly 1,057

4. 

   THE WORLD'S UGLIEST DOG: Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, is not the world's ugliest dog. But she does know that a dog from Tucson, Arizona, has just been granted that title. Who?

   1. Scooter

   2. Bluto

   3. Hugo

   4. Potus

5. 

   YUM YUM: A restaurant called Central has just been declared the best in the world. It is located in the capital of which South American country?

   1. Ecuador

   2. Peru

   3. Uruguay

   4. Chile

6. 

   WOMEN'S WORLD CUP 2023: On the topic of South America, here are this week's non-football questions about some of the 32 teams at this year's Fifa Women's World Cup, which looms ever closer. How many countries does Brazil share a land border with?

   1. 6

   2. 8

   3. 10

   4. 14

7. 

   WOMEN'S WORLD CUP 2023: Canada's women will also be at the Fifa Women's World Cup. Sam Panopoulos claims to have invented what type of pizza in Canada in the early 1960s?

   1. Calzone pizza (available in different varieties but crucially folded)

   2. Hawaiian pizza (pineapple and ham)

   3. Windsor pizza (maple syrup and apple with bacon)

   4. New Yorker pizza (pastrami, pickle and rocket)

8. 

   WHAT A MISTAKE-A TO MAKE-A!: Nine men have been charged with “causing public alarm” near Turin after doing what as part of a stag do?

   1. Stripping the stag naked and then suspending him in gaffer tape from a city landmark

   2. Staging what appeared to be an armed kidnap of the stag

   3. Getting obscene tattoos on their foreheads

   4. Releasing 30-50 feral hogs into town

9. 

   THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE: Element number 10 is neon. Which of these bands has NOT released a cover version of Kraftwerk's song Neon Lights?

   1. Depeche Mode

   2. U2

   3. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

   4. Señor Coconut and his Orchestra

10. 

    TOUGH ON CRIME, TOUGH ON CAUSES OF CRIME: John Murray, a university friend of Keir Starmer, told a podcast that the Labour leader had been caught doing which of these naughty things on the French Riviera when they were both students?

    1. Illegally selling ice-creams

    2. Illegally drinking underage

    3. Illegally working in a night club

    4. Illegally proroguing parliament

11. 

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Today is the anniversary of the birth of Eva Narcissus Boyd, better known as Little Eva. Which dance craze song was she famous for, taking it to No 1 the US in 1962?

    1. The Mashed Potato

    2. The Chicken Walk

    3. The Castrovalva

    4. The Loco-Motion

12. 

    THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS BULLIES, WITH DOMINIC RAAB: This week the former deputy PM would like to know: what was the name of the bullying medical professional played by Louise Fletcher in the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

    1. Nurse Ratched

    2. Novice Hame

    3. Sister Buckingham

    4. Gavin Williams

13. 

    BEAT THE CLOCK: The 1979 song was one of Sparks' biggest hits in the UK. But this week a shot put and hammer throw champion unexpectedly ran in the 100m hurdles at the European Championships to avoid her team being disqualified. Who was Jolien Boumkwo representing?

    1. The Netherlands

    2. France

    3. Germany

    4. Belgium

14. 

    ROCKING ALL OVER THE WORLD: Leyton Orient are still the champions of League Two in the English Football League, and the quiz master is still literally in this photo. Orient's mascots are called Theo and Cleo, but which Cleo frequently appeared with the much-missed Kenny Everett on his TV shows?

    1. Cleo Lemon

    2. Cleo Moore

    3. Cleo Demetriou

    4. Cleo Rocos

15. 

    OOOH MATRON: Which pop star (not pictured) is stepping down as CEO of her lingerie brand, Savage X Fenty?

    1. Miley Cyrus

    2. Rihanna

    3. Lizzo

    4. Kate Bush

Solutions

1:D - The name is a deliberate misspelling of "Murphy's law". "Clark's document law" and "Barker's proof" additionally state that flaws in a printed or published work will only be discovered after it is printed and not during proofreading. And, yes, the [PLACEHOLDER TEXT] was deliberate. That's the joke, as Rainier Wolfcastle would no doubt observe., 2:C - In times gone by Prigozhin notoriously used British courts to attempt to sue for libel journalists who had linked him to the Wagner group, and yet there he was., 3:A - Campaigners have warned the policy targeted a barely existing problem of voter impersonation, and risked particularly affecting people from disadvantaged groups. Last month Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them – as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections. We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”, 4:A - Scooter, a Chinese crested with sparse hair, a ratlike tail and a tongue that just won’t stay in his mouth, was born with hind legs that faced backwards. With the help of therapy and a bespoke cart, Scooter is able to walk and “has no idea that he is any different from any other dog”. The competition, held as part of the Sonoma-Marin fair in Petaluma, California, for the past 50 years, promotes dog adoption and showcases extraordinary canines that have defied adversity – and celebrates their imperfections., 5:B - It is the first South American restaurant to win the title, and three other Lima restaurants were in the top 50, meaning the Peruvian capital took more slots than any other city. Central’s fine dining menu showcases Peru’s unique spread of biodiversity by taking diners through “15 different Peruvian ecosystems, categorised by altitude – from 15 metres under the Pacific Ocean to 4,200 metres up in the Andes,” according to World’s 50 Best Restaurants., 6:C - It is 10 – Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela and *checks notes* France. The border in the north located between the Brazilian state of Amapá and the French region of Guyane is, apparently, France's longest land border., 7:B - "It was an invention by accident" he once told a newspaper. Which is one way of spelling "culinary abomination" we guess. Presumably that is why he tried to palm the guilt off to Hawaii., 8:B - Armed with pellet guns and wearing balaclavas and black helmets, the group turned up at their friend’s home, gagged him and loaded him into the back of a van before speeding off. Police checkpoints were set up across the area as a hunt was launched to find the “kidnappers” and their captive. The van was found outside the home of one of the men. The groom, trapped inside, was apparently still unaware that it was all a joke., 9:A - Depeche Mode have done a few covers in their time, including Iggy Pop's Dirt, David Bowie's Heroes and Gerry and the Pacemakers' I Like It, but unlike U2, OMD and Señor Coconut, they've never touched Neon Lights. Señor Coconut and His Orchestra performed a whole album of Kraftwerk covers called El Baile Alemán (The German Dance)., 10:A - A Labour spokesperson said: “We are happy to make clear that no arrests were made, or even names taken, and that the only loss of liberty occurred to some cut-price ice-creams". It was Boris Johnson who was ruled by the UK's supreme court to have unlawfully prorogued parliament., 11:D - Little Eva's biggest hit was with the Carole King and Gerry Goffin-written The Loco-Motion. She was discovered because she had been earning extra money as their babysitter., 12:A - She won an Academy award, Bafta and Golden Globe for best actress in the role. Sarah Paulson picked up the baton of playing the character in the inevitable unwanted streaming prequel series., 13:D - Boumkwo agreed to compete when Belgium’s two hurdlers had to pull out due to injury. Had no Belgian athlete competed in the event, the team would have been disqualified. She was cheered on by the crowd and congratulated by her opponents as she earned two points for the team. The 29-year-old finished the race without knocking any of the hurdles down in 32.81 seconds, which was 19 seconds after the winner, but still much faster than the quiz master would have done it. You can tell by the look on his face that Ron from Sparks thinks you should have known this., 14:D - Not a fan of the modern world, she once said you wouldn't be able to make the Kenny Everett show these days because of "these professional campaigning women with thick ankles and shrill ovaries who have nothing better to do than to police people’s opinions", and that after he died everything changed into "this angry, yelling, terrorising comedy". I hope she doesn't do the quiz., 15:B - Rihanna named Hillary Super, the former chief executive of the US fashion company Anthropologie Group, as the new CEO of her underwear venture which she created five years ago.

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, feel free to email martin.belam@theguardian.com, but remember the quiz master’s word is final and it’s one for the ages.