Stolen cupcakes, strange space things and a sudden holiday – take the Thursday quiz

Who stole Connecticut’s cupcakes? Photograph: The Picture Pantry/Ruth Black/Getty Images/Alloy

The challenge is the same as it ever was – 15 questions of varying degrees of difficulty, topicality, and downright silliness. You will find them interspersed with some jokes, some political mischief, along with the regular references to Sparks, Kate Bush, Doctor Who and the official dog of the quiz, Willow the miniature dachshund. There are no prizes, but we always like to hear how well you did in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 110

1. 

   SIMPLY THE BEST: We lost Tina Turner last week. Which British pop act was involved in producing her comeback single Let's Stay Together in 1983?

   1. Heaven 17

   2. Soft Cell

   3. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

   4. Japan

2. 

   WE GO AGAIN: Which classic newsroom satire is to get a new lease of life in a stage production?

   1. The Day Today

   2. Drop the Dead Donkey

   3. KYTV

   4. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

3. 

   IT'S A DOG'S LIFE: This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz. She is worried because she can't remember who broke into a bakers in Connecticut this week and stole 60 cupcakes before running away. Can you remind her?

   1. It was a black bear

   2. It was a bobcat

   3. It was a gaze of raccoons

   4. It was 30-50 feral hogs

4. 

   TWINKLE TWINKLE: Which star in the constellation of Orion (not pictured) is currently freaking out astronomers by pulsating from bright to dim twice as fast as usual?

   1. Betelgeuse

   2. Rigel

   3. Bellatrix

   4. Raxacoricofallapatorius

5. 

   ALSO IN SPACE, BUT A LOT CLOSER: Astronomers have spotted an enormous plume of water vapour blasting out of Enceladus, a tiny moon of which planet?

   1. They spotted an enormous plume of water vapour blasting out near Mercury

   2. They spotted an enormous plume of water vapour blasting out near Jupiter

   3. They spotted an enormous plume of water vapour blasting out near Saturn

   4. They spotted an enormous plume of water vapour blasting out near Uranus

6. 

   HE'S SO HIGH: The renowned US mountain guide Garrett Madison has achieved a rare Everest region "triple crown", climbing three of the world's tallest peaks in one season. Aside from what westerners tend to call Mount Everest, what were the other two peaks that make up his "triple crown"?

   1. Unstoffe and Graff Vynda-K

   2. Aconcagua and Llullaillaco

   3. Erlang and Xueshan

   4. Lhotse and Nuptse

7. 

   THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS BULLIES, WITH DOMINIC RAAB: This week the former deputy PM would like to know the name of the bully in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip?

   1. Moe

   2. Joe

   3. Poe

   4. Gavin Williamson

8. 

   FAKE OR FOR REAL: One of these is NOT a headline from the Guardian in the past week. Can you spot the story the didn't make it on to this hallowed website?

   1. Cadbury flake now too crumbly for 99 cones, say ice-cream sellers

   2. US to give away free lighthouses as GPS makes them unnecessary

   3. Mysterious rodent-human 'mummy' leaves museum pleading for help

   4. Sparks: The Girl is Crying In Her Latte review – one artful banger after another

9. 

   GEE, THAT WAS FUN: Speaking of Sparks, they played two massive nights at London's Royal Albert Hall this week. Of course the quiz master was there. But according to John Lennon, how many holes does it take to fill up an Albert Hall?

   1. Two thousand holes

   2. Four thousand holes

   3. Six thousand holes

   4. Exactly 1,057 holes

10. 

    A BIG SURPRISE: That is a 1977 Sparks song where "boy meets girl and here we go once again". But why did Latvia wake up and suddenly get the big surprise of a national holiday this week?

    1. Government computer systems went into holiday mode as a result of an AI glitch

    2. The first day at Riga port recorded ice-free is officially the start of spring in Latvia and declared a national holiday

    3. Grandmaster Alexei Shirov became the first ever Latvian to top the world chess rankings

    4. Latvia beat the US to win the bronze medal in the men's ice hockey world championship

11. 

    THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE: Element 6 is carbon. Which of these processes does not involve an exchange of carbon?

    1. Animal respiration

    2. Plant photosynthesis

    3. Organic decay

    4. Rust

12. 

    WOMEN'S WORLD CUP 2023: Thirty-two non-football questions about the teams in this summer's Fifa Women's World Cup, you say? Sign me up! Portugal have qualified for the first time. What was the name of Portugal's currency before it adopted the euro?

    1. Portuguese dollar

    2. Portuguese peso

    3. Portuguese escudo

    4. Portuguese peladon

13. 

    WOMEN'S WORLD CUP 2023: South Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea, are making their fourth appearance at the Fifa Women's World Cup finals. But in which year was the Republic of Korea founded?

    1. 1938

    2. 1948

    3. 1958

    4. 1968

14. 

    SWEET BABY CHEESES: Canadian Delaney Irving won the women’s cheese rolling race at Coopers Hill, near Gloucester, England, despite what?

    1. Running the wrong way at the start

    2. Being on crutches

    3. Being knocked unconscious

    4. Using terrible cheese from the US

15. 

    ROCKING ALL OVER THE WORLD: Leyton Orient are still the champions of League Two in the English Football League, and the quiz master is still literally in this photo. Orient's players have adopted the Grammy-winning country song Wagon Wheel by Darius Rucker as an anthem. It is based on a song usually known as Rock Me Mama by whom?

    1. Bob Dylan

    2. Neil Young

    3. Lou Reed

    4. Kate Bush

Solutions

1:A - It was co-produced by Martyn Ware of Heaven 17, Human League and British Electric Foundation fame, and featured the Heaven 17 vocalist Glenn Gregory on backing vocals. It reached No 6 in the UK charts, which at that time was her biggest solo hit in the UK., 2:B - Twenty-five years after it concluded on television, the newsroom satire will tour the UK and reunite seven of its original cast members. The play is written by the duo behind the TV series, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin. The pair said their script – the first stage version of the sitcom – plunges the characters into “the cut-throat world of modern 24-hour news gathering”. Do they also write quizzes on the side, though?, 3:A - Workers at Taste by Spellbound in the town of Avon were loading cakes into a van for delivery on Wednesday when the bear showed up. CCTV footage shows the bear dragging a container of cupcakes from the garage into the parking lot. The bear then ate 60. Top work., 4:A - Betelgeuse, the closest red giant to Earth, used to move between brighter and dimmer in 400-day cycles. But from late 2019 to early 2020, it underwent what astrophysicists called “the great dimming”, as a dust cloud obscured our view of the star. Now, it is glowing at 150% of its normal brightness, and is cycling between brighter and dimmer at 200-day intervals – twice as fast as usual. It is currently the seventh brightest star in the night sky, up three places from its usual 10th brightest., 5:C - The record-breaking plume reached nearly 6,000 miles into space – covering the distance between Ireland and Japan, or roughly 2m ancient Sumerian cubits – and poured water into the void at an estimated rate of 300 litres a second. Enceladus harbours a deep saltwater ocean beneath an icy outer crust., 6:D - Locally known as Sagarmatha (Nepalese), Zhumulangma Feng (Chinese) and Chomolungma (Tibetan), Peak XV of the British Empire's survey in the 1800s ended up being given the name Everest by the Royal Geographical Society., 7:A - He is a bully at Calvin's school and seems to beat up or threaten Calvin every time he appears. At one point, Calvin says of him: "Never argue with a six-year-old who shaves.", 8:C - No, this was a headline somewhere, but it was in the "weird news" section of the Mirror, where the quiz master used to ply his trade. Apparently a mysterious box arrived at Wayne County Historical Museum in Richmond, Indiana, and inside was something resembling a mummy with a rat-like head, a humanoid body and pointy teeth and claws, accompanied by a note saying it was the “Richmond Rat Boy”. An absolute shoo-in for next month's Fortean Times magazine, where the quiz master will no doubt eventually ply his trade., 9:B - Be honest, you are all singing A Day In the Life to yourselves now, aren't you? Lennon didn't specify whether he meant the Royal Albert Hall or the Albert Hall in Manchester, although the fact the 4,000 holes were in Blackburn, Lancashire, strongly suggests the latter – which didn't stop the Royal Albert Hall once "unearthing" correspondence suggesting they had asked for the lyric to be removed from the album, a "fact" that came to light on 1 April 2015., 10:D - In the end, after a nocturnal parliamentary session to declare the holiday, there was confusion about who was working and who was not. Court hearings were cancelled and schools and universities were closed, but national exams for high school students went ahead, with staff paid at holiday rates. Yes, you did read that right. The bronze medal., 11:D - Rust involves water and oxygen, not carbon., 12:C - The Portuguese escudo was the currency of Portugal from 22 May 1911 until the euro was introduced. It was subdivided into 100 centavos, and had replaced the Portuguese real, 13:B - 1948 saw Korea divided into two entities. The Republic of Korea was founded on 15 August 1948, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was founded in northern Korea on 9 September 1948. The US supported the south, the Soviet Union supported the north, each government claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula, and we are still at this impasse more than seven decades later., 14:C - Video footage posted on social media showed Irving falling while pursuing the double gloucester down the almost vertical Coopers Hill in Brockworth, near Gloucester. The 19-year-old said she only realised she had won the women’s race when she woke up in the medical tent., 15:A - Dylan's version was just a fragment recorded in 1973. Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show wrote a verse for Dylan's chorus, and the band had a hit with it, and then in 2013 Darius Rucker won a Grammy for his version. So, rock me mama like a wagon wheel.

Scores

1. 0 and above.

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

If you 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 this town ain’t big enough for both of us.