Huxley, Hitchcock, and Hitchhiker’s Guide – take the Thursday quiz

The quiz remains the same. Fourteen questions on general knowledge and some topical date-based trivia, featuring some infuriating anagrams, the sublime Kate Bush and a hidden Doctor Who reference for you to spot. Do let us know how you get on in the comments – but beware, points can be deducted for displays of extreme pedantry.

The Thursday quiz, No 24

1. GEOGRAPHY: What is the capital city of Mozambique?

   1. Maputo

   2. Monrovia

   3. Mogadishu

   4. Maseru

2. ANAGRAM TIME: Early doors for the anagrams today. Which of these is NOT a major London railway terminus?

   1. Bleary Omen

   2. God Pant Din

   3. Orate Owl

   4. Leave Wry

3. WHAT THE HELL IS IT THIS TIME: That's a Sparks song that imagines a busy god vexed every time someone prays to them because of something trivial like hoping Arsenal wins. But that’s not important right now. Which gospel's opening includes "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

   1. Mark

   2. Matthew

   3. Luke

   4. John

4. POETRY CORNER: "You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies, / You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I'll rise" is the opening stanza of Still I Rise by which of these poets?

   1. Wanda Coleman

   2. Maya Angelou

   3. Claudia Rankine

   4. Anne Spencer

5. EYE KNOW WHO YOU ARE: Who is this?

   1. Sid James

   2. Frankie Howerd

   3. Kenneth Williams

   4. Bernard Bresslaw

6. TV & FILM: Clive James would have been celebrating his birthday today. Of an early TV appearance he once said "During the recording, the task of keeping the little bastards under control was given to me. With the aid of a radio microphone, I was able to shout them down, but it was a near thing ... they attacked everything around them." Who was he talking about?

   1. The PG Tips chimps

   2. The Blue Peter dogs

   3. Rod Hull and Emu

   4. The Sex Pistols

7. ENSEMBLE CAST: We are a little bit heavy on the TV and entertainment questions this week, but let's just roll with it. Which US sitcom featured these three actors among its main cast? Tony Danza, Judith Light and Alyssa Milano?

   1. Soap

   2. Frasier

   3. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

   4. Who's The Boss?

8. ON THIS DAY: Too many fluffy entertainment questions so far? Well, suck this up. On 7 October 1949, the constitution of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik – often referred to as East Germany – was adopted. But who was the first General Secretary of the DDR?

   1. Jospeh Zaroff

   2. Erich Honecker

   3. Walter Ulbricht

   4. Wilhelm Pieck

9. MUSIC: Who won best female solo artist at the Brit awards in 1984?

   1. Tracey Ullman

   2. Annie Lennox

   3. Toyah Wilcox

   4. Kate Bush

10. EARLY SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was written in 1931. It is set in AD 2540, but in the novel the year is given as 632 in what new dating system?

    1. AC – After Curie

    2. AE - After Edison

    3. AF – After Ford

    4. AT – After Tesla

11. LATER SCIENCE FICTION COMEDY: In Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, what was Bowerick Wowbagger doing?

    1. Spending a year dead for tax reasons

    2. Insulting everyone in the entire universe in alphabetical order

    3. Writing poetry considered to be the worst in the Galaxy

    4. Constructing the coastlines of continents on artificial planets

12. TRUE OR FALSE: This is the very first image of the far side of the moon, sent back to Earth by Soviet probe Luna 3 in 1959

    1. True

    2. False

13. COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING: Which of these Alfred Hitchcock movies was made first?

    1. Dial M for Murder

    2. Strangers on a Train

    3. North by Northwest

    4. The Birds

14. RANDOM OSTRICH TRIVIA TIME: To finish off, on the whole, how many metres can a fully grown adult ostrich cover with one stride?

    1. Two

    2. Five

    3. Eight

    4. Twenty

Solutions

1:A - Officially named after the Portuguese explorer and settler Lourenço Marques until 1976, after Mozambique gained independence from Portugal it was renamed in honour of Chief Maputsu I of the Tembe clan. The port city has a present day population of around 2.7million., 2:D - Good spot. Waverley is, of course, in Edinburgh. Your other options were Marylebone, Paddington and Waterloo, 3:A - That is verses 2 and 3 of Mark's Gospel, and he is of course talking about John The Baptist. You can tell by his face that Ron from Sparks thinks you should have known that., 4:B - Born in St Louis, Missouri in 1928, Still I Rise featured in her third volume of poetry that was published in 1978., 5:C - "Ooh matron!", 6:D - Yes, it was when the punks made their TV debut on the Granada Television pop music show So It Goes with co-presenter Tony Wilson. Let us never forget that Freddie Mercury once called Sid Vicious "Simon Ferocious"., 7:D - Of course. The show was an exquisite study of how to string a premise out for several seasons while the audience were shouting "Oh for god's sake just kiss!" at the TV. See also: The X-Files, companions Ian and Barbara in early Doctor Who, and any documentary featuring Pet Shop Boys, 8:D - He served as president of the new republic until 1960, but lost his role as general secretary to Walter Ulbricht almost immediately in 1950., 9:B - Lennox kept winning in this category in the 1980s despite not releasing a solo album until 1992. Everyone forgets that Tracey Ullman had a big string of hits around this time. And poor Kate Bush didn't even get nominated this year. Toyah Wilcox has seen a recent resurgence in popularity after her series of lockdown videos doing cover versions in ludicrous fancy dress outfits with her husband guitarist, Robert Fripp., 10:C - Much of the book is a response to the production line methodology introduced by Ford which helped popularise motor vehicles and the concept of mass production. Huxley was clearly not a huge fan., 11:B - Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged became immortal after an accident with a few rubber bands, a liquid lunch, and a particle accelerator, and then set off to insult everybody in order. Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings was the galaxy's worst poet, Hotblack Desiato spent time dead for tax reasons, and Slartibartfast was the man who specialised in fjords., 12:A - It's true. Well, mostly. Soviet media at the time called the spacecraft "the Automatic Interplanetary Station" and it was only later designated as Luna 3. The picture revealed that the far side of the moon had a very different make-up to the near side. Up until that point scientists had no way of knowing whether the dark side of the moon was actually made of Wensleydale cheese., 13:B - Strangers on a Train was in 1951. Of the options you had, Dial M for Murder came next in 1954, North by Northwest was in 1957, and The Birds came later in 1963., 14:B - It's five. If you chose 20 you either don't know how big an ostrich is or how big a metre is, do you?

Scores

1. 0 and above.

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

2. 3 and above.

   We hope you had fun – 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 quiz master’s word is always final, and there will be so many things still in his inbox from during his holiday that he is sure to ignore it.