Lost swans, unbroken records and a seatless underground – take the Thursday quiz

A swan signing that there is a question about Hart to Hart too. Photograph: Maureen McLean/Rex/Shutterstock

One silver lining in the cloud that is Thursday is that it is time for a quiz. Fifteen vaguely topical questions on news, current affairs and quirky things, laced with a few jokes and the occasional pointed observation about Nick Clegg. It is just for fun so there are no prizes, but we love to hear how you got on in the comments. Not you, though, Clegg. Not you.

The Thursday quiz, No 132

1. 

   Police officers were called in to usher a swan back to the River Avon after it ended up among shoppers in Bath city centre, echoing a famous scene in which of Edgar Wright’s movies?

   1. Shaun of the Dead

   2. Hot Fuzz

   3. The Sparks Brothers

   4. Baby Driver

2. 

   What is going to be shot from the air at the Kosciuszko national park in New South Wales because they are doing so much damage to the park’s threatened wildlife and ecosystems?

   1. Kangaroos

   2. Quolls

   3. Horses

   4. Some very naughty miniature dachshunds

3. 

   A silver ticket from 1766 promising free shows for life is up for auction. Which theatre has said it will honour the 257-year-old promise?

   1. Bristol Old Vic

   2. Westcliff-on-Sea Palace Theatre

   3. Bath Theatre Royal

   4. Camden Dingwalls

4. 

   That otter (not pictured) that kept stealing surfboards in Santa Cruz has had a baby. Awwwwww. But what is the otter's rather unusual name?

   1. 01

   2. 811

   3. 8055

   4. 841

5. 

   The Pan American Games (mascot pictured) got excited when the world record was smashed in an event, only for organisers to discover they had measured the distance wrong. Which event?

   1. Women’s 20km walk

   2. Women's marathon

   3. Women's discus throw

   4. Women's long jump

6. 

   In the UK, BBC Radio 2's mid-morning show has lost 1.3 million listeners since Ken Bruce left. Careless. Who took over from Bruce?

   1. Rylan

   2. Graham Norton

   3. Scott Mills

   4. Vernon Kay

7. 

   Which EU member state has banned under-18s from the World Press Photo exhibition in case – SHOCK! HORROR! – they see one set of images with an LGBTQ+ theme?

   1. Poland

   2. Greece

   3. Italy

   4. Hungary

8. 

   It is the anniversary of Expedition 1 docking and the first humans arriving on the International Space Station, which has had people on it continuously ever since. What year did Expedition 1 dock?

   1. 1991

   2. 1994

   3. 1997

   4. 2000

9. 

   An artist has collected 6,000 copies of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and recycled them into a new edition of George Orwell’s surveillance dystopia novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Who?

   1. Tracy Emin

   2. David Shrigley

   3. Banksy

   4. Ron from Sparks

10. 

    In the UK, which Labour politician (not pictured) has admitted they 'should’ve done better' after their most recent book was accused of containing plagiarism?

    1. Angela Rayner

    2. Bridget Phillipson

    3. Rachel Reeves

    4. Yvette Cooper

11. 

    It is Stefanie Powers' birthday today. Happy birthday, Stef, if you'll forgive the Thursday quiz's familiarity, and also the fact we didn't find a picture of you in time. What was the name of her character in Hart to Hart (almost pictured)?

    1. Judith Hart

    2. Jolene Hart

    3. Jennifer Hart

    4. Romanadvoratrelundar Hart

12. 

    There have been calls in Spain this week for retailers to stop selling which type of Halloween costumes?

    1. Sexy nurse

    2. Sexy nun

    3. Sexy Christoper Columbus

    4. Sexy feral hog

13. 

    Also in Spain, the heir to the throne has pledged allegiance to the constitution in a coming of age ceremony that sounds like something from the 16th century but nevertheless happened in 2023. What is their name?

    1. Doña Victoria de Marichalar y Borbón

    2. Leonor, Princess of Asturias

    3. Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo

    4. Jabe of the Forest of Cheem

14. 

    The former UK deputy prime minister and latter-day Facebook ethics fig-leaf Nick Clegg has likened concerns over AI to what?

    1. The 1970s moral panic about recreational drug use

    2. The 1980s moral panic about video games

    3. The 1990s moral panic about dangerous dogs

    4. Signing up to five years of austerity politics and ensuring your party faced a massive wipe-out at the next election

15. 

    Finally, here is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, enjoying an open-topped sightseeing bus tour of Bristol. But which city is going to be introducing seatless carriages on its metro to increase capacity?

    1. Beijing

    2. Mumbai

    3. Seoul

    4. Tokyo

Solutions

1:B - Hot Fuzz famously features a sequence where Simon Pegg is sent to catch a swan. In real life a constable and two police community support officers worked together to move the swan away from shoppers to the river, one using a fluorescent jacket to usher the bird away., 2:C - A senate inquiry found that thousands of feral horses were posing an extinction risk to native species. The New South Wales environment minister, Penny Sharpe, said: “There are simply too many wild horses in Kościuszko national park. I want to make sure our national parks staff have all the options they need to reach the population target and protect this precious alpine environment.", 3:A - Fifty tokens were minted for the original shareholders at the theatre and entitled the owner to watch every performance. The Bristol Old Vic was known as the Theatre Royal and was built on King Street between 1764 and 1766. It opened on 30 May that year., 4:D - The sea otter, known as 841, rose to national prominence this past summer after reports and photos of an aquatic mammal harassing surfers and swimmers became national news. Now, she’s making headlines again as images of her floating on her back with a small otter lying on her belly are circulating. Awwwwwwwwwwwww., 5:A - The only sport where you can get a yellow card for going too fast, the games started on 20 October and finish on 5 November. Peru’s Kimberly García thought she set the world record in the women’s 20km walk. Eleven other competitors seemingly finished their race below the world record but they appear to have walked only 17km, which seems suboptimal., 6:D - Vernon Kay’s show remains the UK’s most popular on radio with 6.9 million listeners – approximately 6,898,943 more people than do the Guardian's Thursday quiz – while Radio 2 is still the most listened-to channel in the country, so it isn't all doom and gloom for BBC bigwigs., 7:D - The photographs document a community of elderly LGBTQ+ people in the Philippines who have shared a home for decades and cared for each other as they age. It is the first time the World Press Photo has faced censorship in Europe. In Europe. In 2023. An EU member state. Because LGBTQ+ people exist. The Thursday quiz is shaking its head., 8:D - William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev were on board. Krikalev is now the person who has spent the third most time in space of any human, having made six space flights totalling more than 803 days sitting in a tin can. Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing he can do., 9:B - Shrigley came up with the idea after seeing newspaper reports in 2017 about a charity shop pleading for no more copies of the wildly popular Dan Brown novel. We all know that Ron from Sparks collects snow globes, not Dan Brown novels., 10:C - Reeves said: "If I’m guilty of copying and pasting some facts about some amazing women and turning it into a book that gets read, then I’m really proud of that." Which sounds a bit David Brent, to be honest., 11:C - She starred alongside Robert Wagner as the jet-setting mystery-solving couple Jonathan and Jennifer Hart for 110 episodes, an implausible number of scrapes for one couple to get into., 12:A - Thursday quiz colleague Sam Jones in Madrid wrote: "Spain’s general nursing council has called on retailers to stop selling 'sexy nurse' Halloween costumes, complaining that the outfits damage the public’s perception of the profession and perpetuate a 'sexualised, trivial and frivolous' image of women. It also criticised 'zombie' and 'killer' nurse outfits, saying they did nurses few favours either.", 13:B - Leonor swore the oath in Spain’s congress as she turned 18 on Tuesday, and was accompanied by her parents, King Felipe and Queen Letizia, her sister, Sofía, and Spain’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. The ceremony that was boycotted by republican government ministers and Catalan and Basque nationalist MPs., 14:B - “New technologies always lead to hype,” he said. “They often lead to excessive zeal among the advocates and excessive pessimism among the critics. I remember the 80s. There was this moral panic about video games. There were moral panics about radio, the bicycle, the internet". Clegg's party lost 49 of its 57 seats at the 2015 general election after going into coalition with the Conservative government, and decades later the moral panic about video games continues unabated., 15:C - The trial programme, scheduled to start in January, will involve the removal of seats from two carriages on subway trains running on two of the South Korean’s capital’s nine major lines during morning and evening rush hours. Mmmmmmmm, comfy.

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had fun – unless you are Nick Clegg. 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’s busy watching Nadine Shah’s Topless Mother.