Parliamentary punch-ups, painting mishaps and red carpet insults – take the Thursday quiz

The Thursday quiz always thought it was written with an incredible lack of self-awareness, but then it was unwittingly exposed to the new book by Liz Truss, and discovered that you could take it to a whole new level. Anyway, welcome to literally the best weekly internet quiz in the world, which would have an even higher audience if only the anti-repeated-in-joke coalition would leave it be. Sixteen questions face you this week, with varying degrees of topicality, obscurity and guessability. There are no prizes, but let us know how you get on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 156

1. A punch-up started in a parliament this week during debate of a "foreign agents" bill. Where?

   1. Bulgaria

   2. Kazakhstan

   3. Albania

   4. Georgia

2. What won the UK invertebrate of the year (not pictured) award, as decided by Guardian readers?

   1. The common earthworm

   2. The jumping spider

   3. The glowworm

   4. Rishi Sunak

3. This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, enjoying the weather in Bristol last year. But how did the out-of-breath BBC Radio 4 weather presenter Simon King explain his odd broadcast, which caused some listeners to think he was having a heart attack live on air?

   1. He began having an asthma attack just before he want on air and had forgotten his inhaler

   2. He had just run up some stairs to the studio

   3. He was experiencing a mild anaphylactic shock due to a nut allergy

   4. He had just read the new book by Liz Truss and was trying to recover from laughing so much

4. Who (not pictured, those are Willow's legs) admonished a photographer at the Olivier awards for asking her to "show a little leg", pointing out "you’d never say that to a man"?

   1. Sheridan Smith

   2. Sophie Okonedo

   3. Hannah Waddingham

   4. Maisie Williams

5. The US long-jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall observed: "Wait, my hoo haa is gonna be out" when she saw the new women's athletics kit for the US Olympics team. Who has made them?

   1. Nike

   2. Adidas

   3. Under Armour

   4. Puma

6. A restaurant in Verona, Italy, is offering diners a free bottle of wine if they do what …?

   1. Hand in their phones

   2. Complete a spaghetti twirling challenge

   3. Agree not to smoke

   4. Leave a five-star review on TripAdvisor

7. After 101 years, a lost Clara Bow short movie was discovered in a can of film bought at a yard sale. It has now been restored and shown at the cinema. What is it called?

   1. The Drugstore Driller

   2. The Pill Pounder

   3. The Shampoo Shafter

   4. The Tablet Tickler

8. One question about every country taking part in the Euro 2024 finals this summer. This week: Slovakia. The old city of Bratislava is one of Europe's most beautiful capitals to visit. But in which of these vague regions of Slovakia is it?

   1. South-west

   2. North-west

   3. North-east

   4. South-east

9. Which actor from the Star Wars series Andor has been announced as the new Doctor Who companion, joining Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson during their second series?

   1. Adria Arjona

   2. Fiona Shaw

   3. Denise Gough

   4. Varada Sethu

10. Talking of Doctor Who, it is David Tennant's birthday today! Happy birthday, David! Which character does he play in Good Omens?

    1. Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell

    2. Crowley

    3. Aziraphale

    4. Thaddeus Dowling

11. It is the anniversary of the murder of Æthelred I of Northumbria in 796. Sorry to remind you about that, Æthers. What is the name of the letter Æ in the Old English alphabet?

    1. Thorn

    2. Wynn

    3. Eth

    4. Ash

12. After making the Bundesliga boring by winning it 11 seasons in a row, as soon as the notoriously trophy-averse Harry Kane arrived, Bayern Munich promptly let someone else have a go. Who has just won the German men's football Bundesliga for the first time?

    1. Dreißig-Fünfzig Wildschweine FC

    2. VfL Wolfsburg

    3. Hertha BSC

    4. Bayer 04 Leverkusen

13. Also in Germany, why has Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne gallery sacked a technician and banned him from work in art galleries for three years?

    1. He had deliberately hung all the gallery's works by Piet Mondrian upside down

    2. He hung one of his own works in the gallery

    3. He was discovered reusing the canvases of priceless works held in storage for his own paintings

    4. 'He' was discovered to secretly be seven naughty miniature dachshunds stacked up inside a trench coat to fool authorities into giving them the job

14. You've always wanted to pass GCSE business studies, right? Try this one. A business owner uses the internet to gather information to help them improve their business offer. What is this called?

    1. Primary research

    2. Secondary research

    3. Segmentation

    4. Doomscrolling

15. Last week somebody complained in the comments that they were bored of oblique Sparks references in the quiz, so here is a less-oblique Sparks reference. That is how the Thursday quiz rolls. Or trolls, perhaps. Anyway, who produced the two hugely successful albums Sparks released in 1974, Kimono My House and Propaganda?

    1. Steve Winwood

    2. Jeff Winwood

    3. Muff Winwood

    4. Edwin Edward Wyndham Winwood

16. The quiz is also doubling down on the Wombles in an unexpected overtime bonus question. Who created the Wombles books?

    1. Enid Blyton

    2. Elisabeth Beresford

    3. Edith Nesbit

    4. Elizabeth Shaw

Solutions

1:D - The actual matter at hand is quite serious, and would appear to mark a turning point between Georgia forging closer ties with the EU or with Russia. After the opposition MP Aleko Elisashvili smacked the ruling Georgian Dream party’s Mamuka Mdinaradze in the face, a brawl developed., 2:A - A very dependable choice by the British public, who voted in their thousands for the humble but useful earthworm, 3:B - King was responsible for delivering the forecast on BBC Breakfast on Sunday at 7.45am, then on Radio 4 12 minutes later. The TV broadcast was running late, leaving him only a couple of minutes to reach the Radio 4 studio., 4:C - The national treasure, referencing a different body part, memorably added: "Don’t be a dick.", 5:A - It is indeed Nike, whose defence of the astonishingly thin, high-cut, hoo haa-revealing design is that you can wear shorts underneath it if you want, and that the company appears to quite enjoy being in the headlines., 6:A - Angelo Lella, the owner of Al Condominio, a restaurant that opened in the northern city in March, said the aim was to encourage diners to chat to each other instead of constantly glancing at their phones. The Thursday quiz has contacted the restaurant to get Thursday lunchtimes exempted from the rule for obvious quizzing-related reasons., 7:B - Apparently it is a reference to how pills were made in a pharmacy, and not a euphemism. Clara Bow steals the show in one of her earliest appearances before going on to become "The It Girl"., 8:A - Bratislava is in the south-west of the country, very close to the border with Austria, 9:D - Sethu plays Cinta Kaz in Andor, and will become part of the Tardis crew in 2025, 10:B - He plays Crowley, the demon co-star with Michael Sheen's angel Aziraphale, 11:D - Other letters lost from the Old English alphabet are Œ, Ð, Ƿ and Þ, which all seems a bit careless if you ask the þunresdæg ascung, which is the closest a quick Google could get to what the Thursday quiz would have been called in Old English., 12:D - After five runners-up finishes and six third places over the years, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, who were founded in 1904, finally won the title. The Thursday quiz is off to watch them almost certainly knock West Ham out of the Europa league later on today, as Leverkusen hold a 2-0 lead from the first leg, 13:B - The exhibition was about glitches in artwork and it isn't entirely clear whether it was a prank or an artistic statement. Either way he got busted and shown the door, 14:B - Because the information is second-hand, this counts as secondary research. Kids these days don't even do GCSE Business Studies, they do GCSE Business, whihc is practical as well as theoretical. But well done if you picked this option – you've got one point towards your fictitious business studies GCSE, 15:C - Mervyn "Muff" Winwood is Steve's elder brother, 16:B - Apparently the name was genuinely inspired by her daughter mispronouncing Wimbledon Common, which if she had posted on social media at the time would have caused the joyless Didn't Happen of the Year awards crew to descend en masse as they do every time a parent says their child has uttered amusing words

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had fun – let us know how you get 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 if you missed it there is still a special Liz Truss book quiz you could be doing instead.