Lost lions, heavy seals and long, long days ahead – take the Thursday quiz

This lion isn’t lost, but where did a circus lion escape this week? Photograph: skynesher/Getty Images

Those two great pillars of the Thursday quiz, namely British political meltdowns and cute animals doing crazy things, have been out in force over the last seven days. You face 15 vaguely topical news questions, with a little bit of maths with goths thrown in for good measure. There are no prizes, it is just for fun, but let us know how you get on in the comments.

The Thursday quiz, No 134

1. 

   Feral hog fanatic David Cameron is unexpectedly back in the UK government. How many previous prime ministers have taken a lesser post in a subsequent UK government since the 18th century?

   1. 4

   2. 10

   3. 14

   4. 1,057

2. 

   Talking of former prime ministers, Liz Truss will have to go to the Remembrance Day service for the rest of her life. Assuming she has a long fulfilling life full of good health, in which year will she have attended more Remembrance Day services as an ex-prime minister than she had days as prime minister?

   1. 2041

   2. 2051

   3. 2061

   4. 2071

3. 

   This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz. She remembers that scientists have rediscovered a long-lost species of mammal named after David Attenborough in Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains but can't remember which one. Can you remind her?

   1. It was a long-armed lemur

   2. It was a long-winged fruit bat

   3. It was a long-toed squirrel

   4. It was a long-beaked echidna

4. 

   Another of this week's animal celebrities in the news was Kimba the lion (not pictured) who heroically did one from the circus it was being kept in, and decided to go for a lovely stroll instead. Which European capital city was he close to?

   1. Lisbon

   2. Madrid

   3. Rome

   4. Bern

5. 

   Also making a splash was Neal the 600kg seal who took a nap in front of a woman’s car, stopping her from going to work on Tuesday. An absolute chonky boi hero. Where did this happen?

   1. Australia

   2. New Zealand

   3. Canada

   4. South Africa

6. 

   Warner Bros is reported to have decided to take a $30m tax write-down by not releasing a completed live-action/animation comedy starring John Cena featuring which titular Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon character?

   1. Foghorn Leghorn

   2. Wile E Coyote

   3. Pepé Le Pew

   4. Beep the Meep

7. 

   Talking of movies, superhero movie The Marvels (not pictured) appears to have recorded the lowest ever North American opening weekend box office for any Marvel Cinematic Universe film, taking $47m, which is still more than people pay for the Thursday quiz. Which Marvel film has it displaced as worst-performing by that measure?

   1. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

   2. Thor (2011)

   3. Ant-Man (2015)

   4. Doctor Strange (2016)

8. 

   Which prime minister (not pictured) decided to personally open a new exhibition about the Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien, highlighting their government’s growing interest in shaping the output of the country’s cultural institutions?

   1. Rishi Sunak of the UK

   2. Giorgia Meloni of Italy

   3. Viktor Orbán of Hungary

   4. Ulf Kristersson of Sweden

9. 

   A book club in Venice, California has finally finished reading the book it started in 1995. Which book?

   1. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

   2. The Odyssey by Homer

   3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

   4. Fly Fishing by JR Hartley

10. 

    We all know that Donald Trump only hires the very best people. How much has his social media platform Truth Social lost since it launched in October 2021?

    1. $7m

    2. $37m

    3. $73m

    4. Confounding expectations, it has actually made a $3.7m profit

11. 

    For tenuous quiz-related reasons, Carl McCoy from Fields of the Nephilim has been asked to solve 4x + 3 = 18 + 2x. What is x?

    1. 3.5

    2. 5.5

    3. 7.5

    4. 10.5

12. 

    Dominica has created the world’s first marine protected area for what?

    1. Sperm whales

    2. Octopuses

    3. Sharks

    4. Very naughty aquatic miniature dachshunds

13. 

    How many times has Suella Braverman left the job of UK home secretary?

    1. Once

    2. Twice

    3. Thrice

    4. Whatever the posh word for four times is

14. 

    Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car (not pictured) won country song of the year 35 years after its debut after a new version was recorded by which artist?

    1. Luke Combs

    2. Sean Feucht

    3. Darius Rucker

    4. Ron from Sparks

15. 

    Talking of big gaps in music, the Beatles newest platter, Now And Then, has reached No 1 in the UK singles chart, giving the band a record 54-year gap between chart-topping singles. Who previously held the record?

    1. Rolling Stones

    2. Cliff Richard

    3. Tom Jones

    4. Kate Bush

Solutions

1:C - According to the government's own website – and what could possibly go wrong by relying on that for fact-checking – 14 ex-premiers have previously come back in a different government role since the 18th century. Sir Alec Douglas-Home was the most recent. , 2:D - According to some numbers hastily scribbled on the back of an envelope by the Thursday quiz while it was down the pub, Liz Truss had 49 days as prime minister, ending on 25 October 2022. She went to the 2022 Remembrance Day service as an ex-prime minister for the first time, this year was the second time, and so if she does it 48 more times she will have done it on 50 occasions, which takes her up to 2071, when she would be 96., 3:D - Described as having the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater and the feet of a mole, it hadn't been seen since 1961. It's just shy. Maybe it could give some lessons about disappearing to David Cameron and Liz Truss., 4:C - Kimba had a good walk around Ladispoli, near Rome, before being sedated and forced back to the circus. Boooo. Examinations by vets concluded he bore no ill-effects from his excursion., 5:A - Amber Harris woke up at 6.20am to the sound of what she thought was "somebody breaking into my car", she told ABC Hobart. "I looked out my bedroom window and, nope, there is Neil looking up right at me." Neil is, apparently, something of a local celebrity in Tasmania. He would be very welcome to stop the Thursday quiz having to go to work any old time., 6:B - Production on the film had completed last year and, according to Deadline, test screenings had been under way. The plot of Coyote vs Acme saw Looney Tunes character Wile E Coyote pursue legal action against Acme after the company’s products failed him in his pursuit of Road Runner. , 7:A - Presumably inflation has a lot to do with how movies consistently rake in bigger and bigger numbers, but that's above the Thursday quiz's pay grade to ponder. The Incredible Hulk previously had the MCU’s worst recorded opening taking $55.4m on its release in June 2008. Which is still more than people pay for the Thursday quiz., 8:B - In her 2021 autobiography-cum-political manifesto I Am Giorgia, Meloni described Tolkien’s 1954 fantasy epic as a “sacred” text. As a youth activist in the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, Meloni had visited schools dressed as a hobbit, and in 2008 she was photographed next to a sculpture of Gandalf for the style supplement of Corriere della Sera newspaper. The Thursday quiz has no further comment., 9:A - Starting in 1995, between 10 and 30 people would show up to monthly meetings at a local library. At first they read two pages a month, eventually slowing to just one page per discussion. At that pace, the group – which now meets on Zoom – reached the final page in October. It took them 28 years. The weirdos., 10:C - A filing by Digital World Acquisition Corp, the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that plans to merge with Truth Social’s owner, Trump Media & Technology Group’s (TMTG), showed the social media company has been losing money heavily. In 2022, Truth Social posted a loss of $50m, with net sales of just $1.4m. It lost $23m in the first half of this year, with net sales of $2.3m., 11:C - Four lots of 7.5 gives you 30. Add 3 and you get 33 on one side of the equation. On the other side two lots of 7.5 gives you 15. Add 18 and you get 33 again. Moonchild, lure me down!, 12:A - Nearly 300 sq miles (800 sq km) of royal blue waters on the western side of the island nation that serve as key nursing and feeding grounds will be designated as a reserve, the government announced on Monday., 13:B - Just the twic: she resigned from the Liz Truss government for sending an official document from her personal email to a fellow MP, which is a serious breach of ministerial rules, and this week got sacked for criticising the police in a newspaper article that Downing Street asked to be changed and which she didn't. A bit like the editors tearing their hair out at the Thursday quiz each week, one imagines., 14:A - Combs’s cover reached top spots on several music charts, including Billboard magazine’s Country Airplay chart, which tracks the most played songs on US country music stations., 15:D - It was Kate Bush, who topped the charts with Wuthering Heights in the 1970s and then hit the top spot again the other year with the Stranger Things-inspired revival of Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had fun – let us know how you got 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 he is probably busy hanging out with his favourite stranger.