Thursday news quiz: Long-haul flights, changing lights and a lot of Turkish cats

One of the many cats of Istanbul, and they have a lot of questions for you. Photograph: Martin Belam/The Guardian

Last weekend the quiz master was taking in the sights, sounds and overwhelming history of Istanbul. Did that deter the writing of 15 questions on the week’s headlines, random pop culture and general knowledge? Absolutely not. However, you may detect a certain “Cats of Istanbul” flavour to today’s effort, which is in no way a transparent attempt to show off the quiz master’s holiday photos. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 266 – Cats of Istanbul special

1. 

   This Istanbul cat lives near the Dolmabahçe Palace and wants to know where Brigitte Bardot’s personal items were sold this week at an auction to raise money for her animal welfare foundation …

   1. New York

   2. London

   3. Paris

   4. Munich

2. 

   This feline is interested in finding out which former occupant of No 10 Downing Street modelled clothes in designer Edeline Lee’s London fashion week show. Help the cat out …

   1. Victoria Starmer

   2. Samantha Cameron

   3. Liz Truss

   4. Carrie Johnson

3. 

   This Istanbul cat is hopefully looking for some scraps from the table, and also hoping you can remember which airline has announced a new 18-hour non-stop direct flight route between New York and Sydney …

   1. Delta

   2. Qantas

   3. Virgin

   4. Ruskin Air Services

4. 

   This Istanbul cat was hiding up in a pedestrian subway. It wants to know who has just set a new record for weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with the song Choosin' Texas …

   1. Miranda Lambert

   2. Karen Gillan

   3. Mae Estes

   4. Ella Langley

5. 

   This Istanbul cat is puzzled as to why it can't reach the food behind the glass, and even more puzzled to find out that 800,000 what have been stolen across far north Queensland …

   1. Sheep

   2. Bees

   3. Koalas

   4. Cows

6. 

   This Istanbul cat is staring like that because it cannot believe an English football club tried to market a merchandise collection called "United 93" without noticing the implied reference to 9/11. Who?

   1. Carlisle United

   2. Hartlepool United

   3. Oxford United

   4. Sheffield United

7. 

   Here is proof that the quiz master actually was in Istanbul. Facebook, meanwhile, was banning ads for the play A Room of One’s Own in Spain because it related to feminism. Whose words are the play based on?

   1. Gertrude Stein

   2. Sylvia Plath

   3. Virginia Woolf

   4. Gloria Steinem

8. 

   Talking of plays, this very sleepy Istanbul cat wants to know about an Australian play written by 95-year-old Liz Hicklin that recounts how she lost her lover to which literary love rival?

   1. Gertrude Stein

   2. Sylvia Plath

   3. Virginia Woolf

   4. Gloria Steinem

9. 

   There aren't a whole lot of dogs in Istanbul, but this fine specimen was spotted. Tell this dog which TV network was criticised by Donald Trump at the UN general assembly for asking a question …

   1. CNN

   2. NBC

   3. Telemundo

   4. GlobeLink News

10. 

    The former England boss Fabio Capello appears to have fallen on hard times and to be shilling shoes in Istanbul. But what misfortune befell the footballer Andros Townsend this week?

    1. He managed to score a hat-trick of own goals in one game

    2. He got bitten by a dog that had run on to the pitch

    3. He got run over by a pitch roller

    4. His shorts fell down as he was running up to take a penalty

11. 

    This Istanbul cat was doing its best impression of Ron from Sparks. It is also looking shocked because Ofcom has announced it is investigating which porn site for potentially not conducting checks on underage users properly?

    1. OnlyMans

    2. Pornhub

    3. SinCentral

    4. SpankVault

12. 

    This corvid of Istanbul is a hooded crow, and it wants to know which tasty snack of a spider has been spotted in Cheshire for the first time …

    1. Wasp spider

    2. Bee spider

    3. Dragonfly spider

    4. Feral hog spider

13. 

    These ceramic fish in Istanbul look like they have seen things. Terrible things. Possibly an advert by a shoe company that has been criticised for invoked racist imagery associated with the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. Which brand?

    1. Nike

    2. Vans

    3. On

    4. Converse

14. 

    This Istanbul cat is glaring because it has discovered that world records for solving a Rubik’s Cube are gendered, which frankly the Thursday quiz finds baffling. A six-year-old girl has just set a new record for women – who famously have entirely different hands to men – by solving a 3x3 puzzle on several occasions in an average time of under 4.5 seconds. Where?

    1. South Korea

    2. China

    3. Japan

    4. Syldavia

15. 

    And finally … when filming Argo, which actor was so dissatisfied with the lighting inside Istanbul's Hagia Sophia that they paid for the lightbulbs to be replaced with a softer, yellower hue?

    1. Tom Cruise

    2. Ben Stiller

    3. Sylvester Stallone

    4. Ben Affleck

Solutions

1:C - They fetched nearly €1m (£858,000, US$1.15m, A$1.61m, quite a lot of Roman denarii), which was almost 20 times the estimate, 2:A - The London-based, Canadian-British designer’s clothes are a favourite of the Princess of Wales and have also been worn by celebrities including Taylor Swift and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 3:B - The airline hopes to have the service up and running in 2028 , 4:D - Ella Langley’s record-breaking song has spent 23 weeks at the top, surpassing Mariah Carey’s anthem All I Want for Christmas Is You, 5:B - 44 colonies have been stolen from three different beekeepers, and the suspect is believed to be a 'commercial farmer', 6:C - It was intended to reference the club being founded in 1893, but instead drew obvious comparison with the United 93 flight that was involved in the 2001 al-Qaida terror plot, 7:C - The stage production is an adaptation of a series of talks Woolf gave in 1928 about the education opportunities for women. A Meta spokesperson said: "This ad was removed in error and quickly restored.", 8:B - Hicklin debuts her first play at Melbourne fringe festival this October, called Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend, which is about her romantic relationship with a young Ted Hughes, 9:A - The US president has banned CNN and two other news providers from the White House, leading to a boycott, 10:C - The former Tottenham and Crystal Palace attacker currently plays in Thai League 1 for PT Prachuap, and was warming up when a member of staff at Pattani appeared to lose control of the pitch roller and it crashed into the 13-cap England international, 11:B - Oooooo-er missus, etc, 12:A - Native to mainland Europe, north Africa and Asia, the Argiope bruennichi, commonly known as a wasp spider, is rarely seen in the north and west of Britain, 13:D - The Instagram ad photo showed the K-pop singer Karina wearing a skirt and holding a pair of Chuck 70 X sneakers, but in such a way that it looked a little like dangling feet and a white KKK hood, 14:B - Lian Yunzhi, who is from Chengdu, is "the first female speedcuber to average under 4.5 seconds", CCTV said, in a sentence the Thursday quiz is surprised it has typed out, 15:D - The building was being used to represent a location in Tehran

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople! 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 and are absolutely 100% positive you aren’t attempting to factcheck a joke – you can complain about it in the comments below. Why not watch The Lovecats by The Cure instead?

The Lovecats by The Cure