Big cats, vampire bats and a hapless chap called Matt – take the Thursday quiz

Pinch, punch, first day of the month, and you’ve got a quiz to tackle. The usual drill – 15 questions, some topical, some general knowledge, some with jokes, some with weird facts, and one with anagrams just because we can. It’s only for fun and to pass the time, but let us know how you get on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 10

1. UK NEWS: It emerged that tourists had been erroneously charged as much as £2,104.18 for visiting Brighton's pier. What was the reason given for the error?

   1. The company handling the transactions had been targeted by Bitcoin ransomware

   2. The transactions had been processed using the date rather than the amount

   3. A misplaced decimal point had rounded up every transaction by a factor of 100

   4. Parents are used to paying ludicrous sums to keep their children amused at the seaside so they thought nobody would notice

2. ON THIS DAY: The Sony Walkman went on sale for the very first time in Japan on 1 July. But which year?

   1. 1978

   2. 1979

   3. 1980

   4. 1981

3. COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING: Which of these motorways in the UK is the longest?

   1. M1

   2. M4

   3. M5

   4. M6

4. GLOBAL NEWS: Cambodian authorities confiscated which type of big cat that was being illegally kept as a pet from a private residence after they saw videos of the animal on the social media app TikTok?

   1. Lion

   2. Tiger

   3. Cheetah

   4. Leopard

5. EYE KNOW WHO YOU ARE – BATMAN EDITION: Which film star is playing Batman here?

   1. Christian Bale

   2. Ben Affleck

   3. Michael Keaton

   4. Val Kilmer

6. TRUE OR FALSE: Bats comprise about 20% of all classified mammal species worldwide.

   1. True

   2. False

7. A HAPLESS CHAP CALLED MATT: No, not that one. Matt Berry is fond of shouting "Bat!" just before his vampire character Laszlo Cravensworth transforms in What We Do In The Shadows. But what is the name of his ever-alluring vampire wife, played by Natasia Demetriou?

   1. Drusilla

   2. Rosanna

   3. Nadja

   4. Natalia

8. SPORT: In 1976 Niki Lauda suffered a severe accident in a grand prix which nearly killed him. At which circuit?

   1. Nürburgring, Germany

   2. Österreichring, Austria

   3. Zandvoort, Netherlands

   4. Monza, Italy

9. CITIES: If you were travelling from Náměstí Republiky to Černý Most, which European city's transport system would you be using? Plot twist – it's anagram time…

   1. Cube trash

   2. Was raw

   3. Dub paste

   4. Rage up

10. MUSIC: When MTV first started broadcasting in the US, what was the first music video they played? Planet Earth by Duran Duran, Video Killed The Radio Star by the Buggles, Vienna by Ultravox, or Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush?

    1. Duran Duran

    2. Buggles

    3. Ultravox

    4. Kate Bush

11. DIGITAL CULTURE: A number of Black creators on TikTok are on indefinite “strike”, refusing to choreograph dances on the app to protest against the appropriation of their content by white users, who, they say, often copy the moves and then go on to greater commercial and viral exposure than the originals. But what is the new Megan Thee Stallion song they are refusing to dance to?

    1. Thot Shit

    2. Bad Bitches

    3. Butter

    4. Peaches

12. KIDS' TV THAT GROWN-UPS SHOULD WATCH: What is the name of the two useless crew-mates in spectacular CBeebies pirate-themed game show Swashbuckle?

    1. Hook and Crook

    2. Line and Stinker

    3. Cook and Line

    4. Barry and Terrance

13. RADIO COMEDY: In Douglas Adams' peerless Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, what drink had effects similar to "having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick".

    1. Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

    2. Total Perspective Vortex

    3. Bugblatter Beast of Traal

    4. Jynnan Tonnyx

14. ONLY IN AUSTRALIA: New South Wales police have fined two men for breaching coronavirus restrictions after they were startled while sunbathing naked on a beach south of Sydney and ran into the bush, becoming lost and needing to be rescued. What did the men say startled them?

    1. Deer

    2. Quokka

    3. Kangaroo

    4. Koala

15. AND FINALLY: Last week Conservative MP Joy Morrissey launched a campaign to try and get something important for every household in Britain. What was it?

    1. Affordable rent and tax-free pandemic mortgage relief

    2. Flammable cladding removed at no cost to leaseholders in order to protect their lives

    3. Damp-proofing and adequate heating for all

    4. Exactly one picture of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II each

Solutions

1:B - Hence the sum of £2,104.18 being charged for a visit on the 18 April 2021. Worldpay are in the process of issuing refunds. Although frankly, to be fair, as per the fourth option, parents are used to paying ludicrous sums to keep their children amused at the seaside and businesses don't seem to think any of them notice., 2:B - If you'd managed to get one shipped over you'd be just in time to listen to your cassette copy of the Tubeway Army album Replicas which featured Are 'Friends' Electric, which was released in April but became the UK No 1 album in the charts at the end of July 1979., 3:D - Linking the north-west of England with the Midlands, the M6 is about 30 miles longer than the M1, with a total length of 232 miles (373km). It actually contains the first bit of motorway to be constructed in Britain, the Preston by-pass, opened on 5 December 1958. Imagine being the first place in the country anyone wanted to bypass., 4:A - The 18-month-old male, weighing 70kg (154lbs), had been imported from overseas by the owner to be raised in his home. Authorities used social media clips to pinpoint where the animal was being held captive. There's a great Duran Duran song featuring both Kelis and the newsreader Nina Hossain called The Man Who Stole A Leopard in a similar vein to this story, and you should check that out., 5:B - With at least two films behind him, bizarrely Affleck counts as one of the longest-running stints in the role of the very rich man who enjoys secretly punching people at night while dressed up as a weirdo., 6:A - It's true. There are about 1,400 species of the cute furry little fliers., 7:C - It is Nadja. Drusilla was in Buffy and played by Juliet Landau, Rosanna was the mother of a race of alien fish vampires that invaded Venice in Doctor Who, and Natalia might have tricked your memory., 8:A - Incredibly, despite the life-threatening nature of his injuries after his car caught fire following the crash, Lauda only missed two races before returning to finish second in the championship behind James Hunt., 9:D - Yes, you'd be travelling from Republic Square on Line B on Prague's metro system. Founded in 1974, and it was, apparently, pre-Covid, the fifth busiest in Europe. The others were Bucharest (Cube trash), Warsaw (Was raw) and Budapest (Dub paste)., 10:B - What else? The channel opened with one of the creators, John Lack, saying "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll”, despite the Buggles being brilliant, but quite clearly not rock'n'roll. I mean, look at them., 11:A - The action was meant to make white creators rethink compensation, citation and ethical collaboration with Black creators on TikTok, said Amanda Bennett, co-founder of the consultancy firm define&empower, who made a viral video explaining the strike. “Black creators are tired of white people profiting off our work and appropriating Black culture,” she said. “We’ve seen the way older generations of Black creators have been disrespected and erased, and we aren’t having it any more.”, 12:C - Cook, played by Joseph Elliott, and Line, played by Richard David-Caine, have been mainstays on the frankly excellent children's gameshow since it first aired in 2013. Any grown-up who doesn't think kids TV is as good as when they watched Crackerjack should be sat down in front of this and re-educated., 13:A - Of course it was. The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal wouldn't hesitate to eat a Vogon's grandmother, the Total Perspective Vortex uses a piece of fairy cake to extrapolate the whole of creation, and roughly 85% of all planets have some drink with a similar sounding name to Jynnan Tonnyx. People have actually made earth recipes for the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, although sadly none of them feature one of the vital ingredients – a measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V., 14:A - Some questions about this story remain unanswered. Police sent a helicopter to search for the pair, who were fined $1,000 for breaching public health orders. As celebrity chef Adam Liaw put it: "Let those among us who have NOT been startled by a deer while sunbathing naked and then run into a forest before getting lost requiring police to render assistance cast the first stone.", 15:D - Of course. Just another day on a perfectly normal set of islands.

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   Hope you enjoyed it – don't forget to let us know how you got on in the comments

2. 15 and above.

   Hope you enjoyed it – don't forget to 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 quizmaster’s word is always final and there are no refunds.