Japanese names, Harry’s fame, and what to do when it rains – take the Thursday quiz

Prince Harry arriving at the UN headquarters earlier this year. Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP

For a while it looked like there would be no Thursday quiz from the Guardian this week. But then fortunately somebody emailed 15 secret vaguely topical and general knowledge questions to the wrong personal Gmail address, and everything was fine and dandy. There are no prizes, but you can earn yourself bonus points by spotting oblique references to Doctor Who hidden in the wrong answer options. Let us know how you get on in the comments. And if you do make some kind of hideous mess of it, don’t worry too much, you can always just say sorry and come back next week.

The Thursday quiz, No 80

1. 

   BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS: Prince Harry has announced the title of his memoir – what is it?

   1. Heir

   2. Hair

   3. Spare

   4. Flair

2. 

   AMATEUR HOUR: That is a 1974 song by Sparks where, when you turn pro, she'll let you know. A museum in Düsseldorf has discovered that a painting by whom has probably been hanging upside-down for some 75 years?

   1. Rothko

   2. Pollock

   3. Mondrian

   4. Van Clomp

3. 

   SECRETS OF THE STARS: Here is a picture of the milky way above the skies of New Zealand. Meanwhile, one of Australia's three national flags depicts the constellation of the Southern Cross. How many stars are on that flag?

   1. Five

   2. Six

   3. Seven

   4. Eight

4. 

   TAMMY'S TEASER: Tammy Wynette had a hit single with D-I-V-O-R-C-E in 1968. But which R was the name of the very first vehicle manufactured by Renault in 1898?

   1. Renault Voiturette

   2. Renault Caravelle

   3. Renault Monaquatre

   4. Renault McGann

5. 

   SPORT: Always a popular category. We are slap bang in the middle of the 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup in the cricket. If it rains, what is the full name of the DLS method used to determine the result?

   1. Duckworth–Lewis–Staines method

   2. Duckworth–Lewis–Stem method

   3. Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method

   4. Davison-Lumley-Smith method

6. 

   WEIRD WORDS: This week the Collins Dictionary announced its word of the year. What was it?

   1. Sportswashing

   2. Lawfare

   3. Permacrisis

   4. Splooting

7. 

   1966 AND ALL THAT: Talking of sportswashing, here is our regular series of questions that aren't about football leading up to the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar. The 2002 Fifa World Cup opening match was staged in South Korea. The Korean peninsula was divided in August 1945 upon which parallel north?

   1. 35th parallel

   2. 36th parallel

   3. 37th parallel

   4. 38th parallel

8. 

   1966 AND ALL THAT (SLIGHT RETURN): A series of questions that aren't about football leading up to the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar, where Peter Tatchell was recently detained for staging a peaceful protest. The 2002 Fifa World Cup final match was staged in Japan. But when did Japan adopt the yen?

   1. 1871

   2. 1906

   3. 1946

   4. 1971

9. 

   NAME GAME: This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, on the bus. She heard that in Japan they set a new world record for the most people with the same name gathering in one place – 178. But she can't remember the name. Can you?

   1. Yukihiro Takahashi

   2. Naoko Mori

   3. Fumio Kishida

   4. Hirokazu Tanaka

10. 

    SCOTTISH THINGS: Dumbarton sits on the banks of which of these Scottish rivers?

    1. Clyde

    2. Cassley

    3. Tay

    4. Tweed

11. 

    ONE OF SHEFFIELD'S FINEST: Pulp have announced they are to play live again next year after a long hiatus. Which of their hits includes the line: 'Your house was very small, with wood chip on the wall'?

    1. This Is Hardcore

    2. Disco 2000

    3. Babies

    4. Common People

12. 

    ON THIS DAY: On 3 November 1978 Dominica – officially the Commonwealth of Dominica – gained full independence from Great Britain. What is its capital called?

    1. Charlotte Amalie

    2. Roseau

    3. Santo Domingo

    4. Port-au-Prince

13. 

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY: It is Dolph Lundgren's birthday today. Happy birthday, Hans! That is his birth name, by the way, and he is definitely not pictured here. What was the name of his character in Rocky IV?

    1. Ivan Drago

    2. Gary Glassjaw

    3. Clubber Lang

    4. Apollo Creed

14. 

    GCSE SCIENCE WITH THE INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED CORRECT ACADEMIC SPELLING: Sulfur (not pictured) has which atomic number?

    1. 4

    2. 8

    3. 12

    4. 16

15. 

    CLOSE TO THE EDIT: Which pop star (feet not pictured) edited out a clip from their latest video after a backlash against the moment where a bathroom scale's dial spins to the reading 'Fat'?

    1. Taylor Swift

    2. Rihanna

    3. Beyoncé

    4. Kate Bush

Solutions

1:C - Publishing simultaneously in 16 different languages, the book is billed as ‘full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom’, just like the Thursday quiz., 2:C - The 1941 picture, a complex interlacing lattice of red, yellow, black and blue adhesive tapes titled New York City I, was first put on display at New York’s MoMA in 1945 but has hung at the art collection of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf since 1980, apparently the wrong way. You can tell from the look on his face that Ron thinks they should have known that., 3:B - It is six. The constellation itself is depicted by five stars in a cross-shape, but there is an additional star on the flag, placed under the representation of the British Union flag, and representing the Commonwealth, 4:A - The Renault Voiturette, which means Renault Little Car, was Renault's first ever produced automobile, and was manufactured between 1898 and 1903. The name was used for five models., 5:C - An incredibly sophisticated statistical model mostly designed to still make sure that South Africa get set impossible targets, the DLS method was devised after a fiasco in 1992 when a 12-minute delay in play meant South Africa, needing 22 runs from 13 balls, were set a revised target of 21 runs from one ball, to the general hilarity for anyone not South African, who took it really badly in a world cup semi-final for some reason., 6:C - The word is defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity” and Collins said it chose the word as it “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people”. “Lawfare” is the strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent. “Splooting” is the act of lying flat on the stomach on a cool surface with legs stretched out as a way of countering unusually high temperatures. “Sportswashing” is a term for organisations and countries that use sports activities to enhance their reputations or distract from unacceptable policies., 7:D - It was done on the apparently arbitrary basis that to US officers looking at a National Geographic map it appeared to approximately divide the country in two. It stands as yet another stunning example of "you rarely get peace after arbitrarily drawing straight lines on maps". That is South Korean striker Ahn Jung-hwan scoring against Italy in 2002 by the way., 8:A - Japan got into a bit of a pickle in the 1860s when people realised that their gold coinage was massively undervalued compared with the price of gold elsewhere in the world, so there was a huge outflow of them. What with their being multiple currency types in circulation as well, the government put a stop to all that madness in 1871 with the New Currency Act, which introduced the yen, sen and rin. That picture shows Ronaldo scoring in the 2002 final – there was an absolutely belting interview with him by Sid Lowe the other week, you should check that out., 9:D - The Tanaka Hirokazu association organised the successful attempt in Shibuya Ward, which saw them outdo the 2005 record set by 164 Martha Stewarts. It was a dream come true for 53-year-old Hirokazu Tanaka, the man who brought his namesakes together after years of strenuous efforts and two previous failed attempts., 10:A - It sits on the north bank of the River Clyde, at the confluence with the River Leven, 11:B - Once the tickets go on sale for the new dates, we can all confirm we are meeting up at two o'clock by the fountain down the road., 12:B - With a population of about 15,000 and on the west coast of the island, the settlement was founded by French colonisers. The British seized control of the island in 1763., 13:A - Lundgren's Wikipedia page has some of the best 'damned with faint praise' lines of all time, saying "Lundgren has starred in more than 80 films, almost all of them in the action genre" and having a sub-section called "2010s: Expendables and direct-to-video films", 14:D - As a solid it is lemon yellow, and when burned it melts into a blood-red liquid and emits a blue flame, which sounds quite flash. Scientists of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry all agreed to spell it sulfur in academic circles in the 1990s, and the questions about sulfur will continue each week until we can go a week without someone in the comments absolutely insisting it is spelled sulphur in this context without bothering to look it up first., 15:A - The video for Taylor Swift’s song Anti-Hero, the lead single from her new album Midnights, has been altered days after its initial release to remove the segment. In the new version, Swift steps on to the scale, receiving a look of disapproval from a doppelganger also played by Swift, but no reading is shown.

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had fun – let us know how you got on in the comments

If you do think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers, please feel free to email martin.belam@theguardian.com, but remember the quiz master’s word is final, and the beatings will continue until morale improves.