Swimming pools, studios and lots of places called Athens – take the Thursday quiz

The Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

The Thursday quiz summer of shrinkflation continues with yet another themed week. You can’t have failed to notice that the Olympics have been going on in Paris, so this is a quiz about (mostly) non-sporting Olympic things. Remember, it is just for fun, but since there are fewer questions than normal every answer carries a lot more pressure with it, like having to make an archery shot and knowing that if you don’t make a 10 you’ve blown your medal chances. Have fun, guess well, and let us know how you get on in the comments!

The Thursday quiz, No 172 – Olympic week!

1. 

   Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, would like to know which country is Olympic National Park in?

   1. Greece

   2. Canada

   3. Croatia

   4. US

2. 

   There are five Olympic rings, but which element has the atomic number five?

   1. Boron

   2. Carbon

   3. Nitrogen

   4. Dalekanium

3. 

   It is obvious that an Olympic-sized swimming pool has to be 50m long because all the races are in multiples of 50m. But how WIDE does an Olympic-sized swimming pool have to be?

   1. 20m

   2. 25m

   3. 32m

   4. 36m

4. 

   It feels like an actual age ago already, but who won the first Olympic gold medal at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics?

   1. Grace Brown of Australia in women's time trial cycling

   2. Natsumi Tsunoda of Japan in the women's 48kg judo

   3. Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao of China in mixed 10m air rifle

   4. Ronald Mael of the USA in the 100m standing still and staring archly at the camera

5. 

   The Olympus Trip 35mm compact camera (very much not pictured) was hugely successful during the 1970s and 1980s. Which famous celebrity photographer fronted an ad campaign for it?

   1. Annie Leibovitz

   2. David Bailey

   3. Mario Testino

   4. Harold Chorley

6. 

   Olympic Studios is famous for being a place where artists such as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Prince and the Eagles recorded. Where was it?

   1. New York

   2. London

   3. Paris

   4. Munich

7. 

   How many of the Greek gods were believed to live on Mount Olympus?

   1. Just Zeus

   2. Zeus and his wife Hera

   3. Zeus, Hera and his council of five, making seven in all

   4. Zeus, Hera and ten others, making 12 gods of Olympus

   5. Zeus, Hera, ten others, 30-50 feral hogs and one very naughty miniature dachshund

8. 

   Italian Olympic gymnast Giorgia Villa (not pictured) has made a stir with her photoshoots promoting which famous Italian produce?

   1. Parmesan cheese

   2. Gucci bags

   3. Vespas scooters

   4. Looted antiquities

9. 

   The Olympics obviously started in Athens. But how many places called Athens in the US have their own Wikipedia page?

   1. Less than 10

   2. Between 10 and 20

   3. Between 20 and 30

   4. 1,057

10. 

    Which of these bands isn't from Athens in Georgia, US (very much not pictured)?

    1. Devo

    2. REM

    3. The B52s

    4. The Olivia Tremor Control

11. 

    Athens (not pictured) is a bitmap slab serif font designed in the early 1980s for which type of computer?

    1. Windows 2.0

    2. Apple Macintosh

    3. ZX Spectrum

    4. HAL 9000

12. 

    Which hip-hop artist turned up to the Olympics equestrian events in Paris dressed as if ready to take part?

    1. Lizzo

    2. Eminem

    3. Snoop Dogg

    4. Megan Thee Stallion

Solutions

1:D - Olympic National Park is on Washington's Olympic Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest, 2:A - It is a cheeky little brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid or a brown powder, 3:B - It is 25m wide, 4:C - It was the Chinese pair who got the whole winning jamboree going, 5:B - The ads subverted the idea that a professional photographer such as Bailey would need a lot more equipment to get a perfect shot. It obviously worked, Olympus sold 10m of the cameras, 6:B - It had more than one location over the years, but always in London, 7:D - It was generally accepted that there were 12 gods hanging around up there, having defeated the 12 titans, 8:A - Three months before the Tokyo Olympics, Villa signed a sponsorship deal with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium (PRC) and produced a series of images which would probably be banned in the US, as the cheese has flavour, 9:C - At the time of writing 23 places in the US called Athens were listed on the Athens (disambiguation) page of Wikipedia. There are no bonus points for going and editing the page to make your own spurious answer correct, 10:A - Devo are the odd ones out here, hailing from Akron, Ohio. I mean they are pretty odd-bods full-stop, 11:B - It was designed by Susan Kare in 1983-84 as part of the “City” font series for the Apple Macintosh, 12:C - He attended the dressage competition in costume and in the company of Martha Stewart, despite confessing to being afraid of horses. He said: “I am interested in the horses that dance and I want to give them some carrots and apples"

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you got a gold medal – 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 you will have to keep it to yourself, as the quiz master is refusing all calls today. Why not just enjoy recently re-released rare thematically related Sparks track Sports instead …

Sports by Sparks