Moon landers, departed owls, alphabets and quangos – take the Thursday quiz

A passenger plane flies in front of a full moon in Turkey – but which private US company just put a lander on the moon? Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Today is an incredibly special day in the history of the Thursday quiz, as it is the first time it has fallen on a leap day. The Thursday quiz will not fall on 29 February again until 2052 when, thanks to Liz Truss, the quiz master will probably still be working to pay off the mortgage that her economic policies vastly increased. Thanks, Liz. She is in the quiz again to celebrate. It is just for fun but let us know how you got on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 149

1. 

   Sweden is finally joining Nato, after the last of the alliance's members agreed to ratify its membership. Which country was holding out?

   1. Turkey

   2. Greece

   3. Hungary

   4. Estonia

2. 

   Which tech company surpassed Google's parent, Alphabet, to become the third most valuable company in the US behind Microsoft and Apple?

   1. Intel

   2. Nvidia

   3. AMD

   4. Kerblam!

3. 

   One of the internet's most-beloved animals since Harambe, the escaped Eurasian eagle owl that was living in Central Park, New York, has sadly died. This is him on a memorial mural. What was his name?

   1. Flaco

   2. Fernando

   3. Felix

   4. Ron

4. 

   Speaking of Harambe (not pictured), it is now eight years since he became an internet meme after he was shot and killed when a small child got into his enclosure and the gorilla was judged to be a threat. Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, wants to know in which zoo?

   1. Boston

   2. Atlanta

   3. San Diego

   4. Cincinnati

5. 

   A US private company successfully got its Odysseus lander to the moon, although it does appear to have tripped over since. Space is hard, as people often note. Which company?

   1. Astrobotic

   2. United Launch Alliance

   3. Intuitive Machines

   4. Magpie Electricals

6. 

   Barbra Streisand released the first of her 36 studio albums in 1963. Will you put the first four Barbra Streisand albums in the correct order?

   1. The Barbra Streisand Album, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album, People

   2. The Barbra Streisand Album, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album, Simply Streisand

   3. The Barbra Streisand Album, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album, Barbra Four

   4. The Barbra Streisand Album, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album, Color Me Barbra

7. 

   The play The Revenger's Tragedy, first performed in 1606 and published in 1607, is usually attributed to …

   1. Ben Jonson

   2. Christopher Marlowe

   3. Thomas Kyd

   4. Thomas Middleton

8. 

   Every fan of Sapphire & Steel knows "all irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life." Radium can be assigned. Is Radium a metal or a non-metal?

   1. Metal

   2. Non-metal

9. 

   One question about every country taking part in the Euro 2024 finals this summer. This week: Hungary. How many letters are there in the Hungarian alphabet?

   1. 24

   2. 34

   3. 44

   4. 54

10. 

    You've always wanted to pass GCSE computer studies, right? Try this one. What is cloud computing?

    1. Storing large amounts of data on a single computer

    2. Making off-site hard copy data backups

    3. Using the internet to store and access software and data remotely

    4. Using the internet to message others

11. 

    There are usually 24 leap years in a century, which is just about half the number of days that Thursday quiz favourite Liz Truss was prime minister. Last week she found herself having to explain to an American audience what a "quango" was. What is "quango" generally understood to stand for?

    1. Quality and governance organisation

    2. Quality assurance in non-government organisations

    3. Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation

    4. Quite useless and now get out

12. 

    We lost the lovely Pamela Salem, who was excellent as Toos in the 1977 Doctor Who story Robots of Death, and even better as Prof Rachel Jensen in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks. But in which James Bond movie did she play Miss Moneypenny?

    1. Never Say Never Again

    2. For Your Eyes Only

    3. The Spy Who Loved Me

    4. Moonraker

13. 

    Scientists have finally detected the force that makes apples fall from trees on the microscopic scale in an exciting experiment. But which of these phrases did NOT feature in the Guardian report about it. Repeat, for those chattering at the back, which of these phrases did NOT feature in the Guardian report about it?

    1. "This is something we definitely need to probe with experiments"

    2. "A magnetic particle that was levitated above a superconductor"

    3. "A tiny gold pendulum suspended in liquid nitrogen"

    4. "An electrical bicycle wheel fitted with brass weights"

14. 

    Major League Baseball players are unhappy with their new uniforms. Why?

    1. MLB has removed the US flag that was traditionally worn on the right upper arm of the shirts

    2. The pants are too see-through

    3. The tightness is said to be restricting pitching and batting actions

    4. They have a mottled fabric pattern which makes it look like they've been trodden on by 30-50 feral hogs

15. 

    This is Willow again, still the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz. She claims there has never been a 30 February. Is this true or false?

    1. True – Willow is right and there has never been a 30 February

    2. False – Willow is wrong and there has been a 30 February

Solutions

1:C - Hungary is the last of the 31 members of the alliance to agree to Sweden joining, 2:B - Nvidia makes the chips that are crucial to training and operating AI systems – and demand for this crucial infrastructure is soaring even if AI is terrible at writing quiz questions (See Thursday quiz passim), 3:A - Flaco was rescued by New York's zoo in 2010, when he was less than a year old. He was reputed to be the only owl of his kind in the wild in North America. He escaped last year after his enclosure was vandalised and seemed to be getting along fine until he appeared to have flown directly into a building, 4:D - Texas-born Harambe, 17, was shot and killed by a zookeeper in May 2016 in Cincinnati zoo. The facility has complained about internet memes featuring the gorilla, saying it made it hard to move on, and at one point the zoo closed its social media accounts because it was being trolled so much, 5:C - It was Intuitive Machines who made the first successful private landing on the moon, although the lander appears to have come in too fast and then tripped over on contact with the surface, cutting the mission short, 6:A - All of them sold more than a million copies each, and she released an awful lot of albums mentioning her name including Je m'appelle Barbra, Color Me Barbra, Classical Barbra and Barbra Joan Streisand, 7:D - It was long attributed to Cyril Tourneur, but Thomas Middleton is now the name most commonly associated with it, 8:A - The Royal Society of Chemistry describe Radium as "a soft, shiny and silvery radioactive metal", which was discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie. The name is derived from the Latin "radius", meaning ray, and it isn't entirely clear why it would be safe to assign Radium to a mission on Earth. But to be honest, the logic of the selection of elements and non-elements in the Sapphire & Steel list is sketchy at best, 9:C - With the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet as its base, Hungarian has five letters with an acute accent, two letters with an umlaut, two letters with a double acute accent, eight letters made up of two characters, and one real show-off letter made up of three characters, 10:C - Well done if you picked this option – you've got one point towards your fictitious computer studies GCSE, 11:C - Just like the so-called leftwing economic establishment, apparently quangos had it in for her during her farcically short spell as prime minister, 12:A - She played the part opposite Sean Connery in the 1983 Warner Bros movie, which James Bond fans will now argue about in the comments as to whether or not it is "canon". That picture shows Salem recording audio plays for Big Finish productions, where she reprised both of her Doctor Who roles in new stories, 13:C - The experiment did indeed, for reasons not clear to the quiz but which presumably make sense to the scientists, feature "an electrical bicycle wheel fitted with brass weights" as part of the mavity-detecting apparatus, 14:B - Hoo boy. Don't Google the images while at work, 15:B - Willow is wrong. For unfathomable reasons Sweden decided to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar by omitting leap years for decades instead of just making the switch, then got their sums wrong or some such and had to add an extra day back in, so in Sweden the year 1712 had a 30 February and everybody born that day never had another birthday ever again

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had lots of leap year 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 – and can show your working – feel free to email martin.belam@theguardian.com, but remember the quiz master’s word is final and he is busy watching that Raven Numan single he mentioned last week.