Comic heroes, gameshow hosts and space probes: take the Thursday quiz

Fifteen questions on general knowledge and topical trivia plus a few jokes every Thursday – how will you fare?

The quiz master is away, recuperating from his recent exertions at the Winter Olympics. Fortunately, before he left, he passed a crumpled piece of paper into the hands of one poor overworked member of Guardian production staff, and said, “This will probably do.” Before you are 15 general knowledge and somewhat less topical questions than usual. There is still a hidden Doctor Who reference to spot among the wrong answers and, of course, along the way you’ll meet some of your favourite familiar friends from the quiz. It is just for fun and there are no prizes, but let us know how you get on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 44

1. THAT'S NUTS: Forestry and Land Scotland is introducing which animal to act as a deterrent to grey squirrels moving north up the A9 corridor and invading?

   1. Mink

   2. Pine martens

   3. Ferrets

   4. The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

2. TO BOLDLY GO: Nasa has announced a new mission called HelioSWARM which will consist of nine small spacecraft that will fly in formation to simultaneously measure the conditions of what?

   1. Polar ice caps on Mars

   2. Micro-gravity on the moon

   3. The solar wind

   4. The existence of a European Super League™

3. WHO AM I? Born in London and finding fame in a series of fantasy films, I recently said that my early attempts to do the voice of a famous comic book hero in a Matt Reeves' directed film were 'absolutely atrocious'. Who am I?

   1. Matt Smith

   2. Benedict Cumberbatch

   3. Daniel Radcliffe

   4. Robert Pattinson

4. AEROFLOT: That's a Sparks song from 2000 where they are enjoying 'vodka on ice, and a hostess who's witty'. But that's not important right now. On Friday British Twitter got gripped watching a live stream of planes attempting to land at Heathrow during Storm Eunice. What was the name of the channel?

   1. Skyscanner

   2. Speedbird TV

   3. Aviation in Action

   4. Big Jet TV

5. ENSEMBLE CASTS: Richard Ayoade, Edward Tudor-Pole and Richard O'Brien have all hosted which game show?

   1. The Weakest Link

   2. The Crystal Maze

   3. The Krypton Factor

   4. Fort Boyard

6. ON THIS DAY: 24 February marks the anniversary of the Battle of Roslin, part of the First War of Scottish Independence which would include a decisive Scottish victory at the Battle of Bannockburn eleven years later. But which year was the Battle of Roslin?

   1. 1253

   2. 1303

   3. 1353

   4. 1403

7. LITERATURE: The Brontë sisters, along with their brother Branwell, wrote extensively when they were young about a fictional world. What was it called?

   1. Glass Town

   2. Peladon

   3. Pellucidar

   4. Lilliput

8. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: It is Rose Matafeo's birthday tomorrow. Happy birthday, Rose! But what was the name of her show which won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Comedy Show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018?

   1. Horndog

   2. The Darkness of Robins

   3. Spaghetti for Breakfast

   4. A Bic for Her

9. CITIES IN DISGUISE: Which US city was first known as Terminus, and later Thrasherville, before adopting its current name in 1847?

   1. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

   2. Sacramento, California

   3. Atlanta, Georgia

   4. Charleston, South Carolina

10. MUSIC: Queen singer and absolute legend Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara, but he also released a 1973 single under which pseudonym?

    1. Larry Lurex

    2. Tommy Tomorrow

    3. Peter Plastic

    4. Simon Ferocious

11. FIBONACCI NUMBERS: First described in Indian mathematics, and forming a sequence where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, F₁ is one. But which element has the atomic number of one?

    1. Helium

    2. Hydrogen

    3. Carbon

    4. Neon

12. LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION: Which of Northern Ireland's counties is Ballymena in?

    1. Down

    2. Armagh

    3. Antrim

    4. Fermanagh

13. ALLONS-Y: Wikivoyage lists 23 locations visited by fictional Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. No 4 is Brindisi, Italy. But which of these famous Roman roads is said to have eventually terminated there?

    1. Via Appia

    2. Via Popilia

    3. Via Aurelia

    4. Via Flaminia

14. SIX NATIONS: The men's Six Nations features lots of subsidiary cups contested between specific sides, like the Calcutta Cup between Scotland and England. But which of these options is NOT a trophy contested during the Six Nations fixtures?

    1. Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy

    2. Auld Alliance Trophy

    3. Centenary Quaich

    4. Webb Ellis Cup

15. MUSIC: Which hugely successful artist released albums called Music Box, Daydream and Butterfly during the 1990s?

    1. Mariah Carey

    2. Whitney Houston

    3. Celine Dion

    4. Kate Bush

Solutions

1:B - Predatory pine martens have been shown to reduce the invasive grey squirrel population. Experts say that because native red squirrels and martens evolved alongside each other over thousands of years, the reds appear less affected by martens. Or maybe they just aren't as tasty, 2:C - Space is filled with charged particles and magnetic fields that originate on the Sun. This 'solar wind' is turbulent and can damage technology on Earth and in space. Because it is a form of radiation, it can also be harmful to astronauts. Nasa understandably want to know what is up with that, 3:D - Pattinson said that on taking up the role of Batman for the imaginatively titled film The Batman 'Everyone does this kind of gruff, gravelly thing, and I’m like, I’m going to do the opposite, I’m gonna go really whispery. I tried to do it for the first two weeks, and it just looked absolutely atrocious, and they told me to stop doing it.', 4:D - The channel hit a record 200,000 concurrent live viewers while exuberant founder and host, Jerry Dyer, gave a football-style commentary in praise of the pilots. And at one point he actually sung a bit of Sparks. Meanwhile his lifelong nemesis – a Twitter account called The Lies of Big Jet TV – tried to discredit him. Sensational stuff, Jeff. You can tell by his face that Ron from Sparks thinks you should have known that, 5:B - That has got to be about as easy a point as you are ever going to get on the Thursday quiz, surely?, 6:B - It was 1303. The First War of Scottish Independence lasted from when England invaded Scotland in 1296 until beyond the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn (Blàr Allt nam Bànag) which ultimately set the two countries on the path to the 1328 Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton., 7:A - Glass Town was initiated by Charlotte and her brother Branwell. Each child had an island they administered and they wrote magazines and short stories about what was happening there, some of which survives. Not a patch on my extensive spreadsheet about my six year plan for being in charge of Doctor Who on TV, I'm sure, 8:A - It was described as a history of her brushes with love and sex, and the show centred around the fact that age 26 she had kissed as many as nine whole other human people. She has since then been brilliant on Taskmaster, and in my six year plan for being in charge of Doctor Who on TV is who I would cast as the 16th Doctor, 9:C - Long inhabited by the indigenous Creek people and their ancestors, what became Atlanta was founded as the terminus of the new Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1836, and excitingly named Terminus, 10:A - I Can Hear Music was a glam rock effort that was released in 1973, and there is reputed to be an incredibly rare early acetate version of it where the artist name was put as 'Larry Lurex and the Voles from Venus', 11:B - In Greek, hydrogen means 'water-former', and it is the lightest and simplest element. The electrically neutral atom contains a single positively charged proton and a single negatively charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force. Do you get the idea that this is going to be a weekly series asking questions pegged to the Fibonacci numbers now?, 12:C - Its name comes from an Baile Meánach in Irish, meaning ''the middle townland', and it claims to be Northern Ireland's eighth largest town, 13:A - It originally ran from Rome to Taranto and then was later extended to Brindisi. They even have a big column by the port marking the end of the road which the quizmaster himself has visited, 14:D - The Webb Ellis Cup is the formal name of the Rugby Union World Cup trophy. The others are all real. The Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy is contested between France and Italy annually, the Auld Alliance Trophy between France and Scotland, and the Centenary Quaich between Scotland and Ireland, 15:A - She was a busy lass in the nineties – as well as those three albums she also issued her self-titled debut, an album called Emotions and her ubiquitous-in-December Merry Christmas album

Scores

1. 0 and above.

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

2. 4 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 quizmaster’s word is always final, and genuinely he is away so we might just all have to live with it if there are any disputes.