Thursday news quiz: Dachshunds, Dave Ball, drag acts and data disasters

There three dachshunds are excited that it is Willow week on the Thursday quiz! Photograph: Jas Lehal Media Assignments/PA

Once upon a time the Thursday quiz got into a spat online with someone complaining that featuring the official dog of the quiz was irksome and twee. Look away now, sir – because it’s one of everybody’s favourite weeks of the year: Willow week! Our adorable but very naughty miniature dachshund has 15 vaguely topical and general knowledge questions in store, each accompanied by a cute picture of herself. There are no prizes, but you can let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 221 – Willow week!

1. 

   This is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, who is asking all the questions this week. She wants to know who won Ireland's presidential election …

   1. Deborah Watling

   2. Heather Humphreys

   3. Catherine Connolly

   4. Norma Foley

2. 

   The former Labour leader and independent MP Jeremy Corbyn is to appear in a local pantomime. Willow wants to know who he will be playing …

   1. Corbyn Hood of Sherwood Forest

   2. The Wizard of Oz-lington

   3. Little Red Flag Riding Hood

   4. Chris Martin falling through a trapdoor

3. 

   Willow knows that a German firm whose furniture lift was used in the recent Louvre heist launched a cheeky ad campaign based on it. Which firm?

   1. Böcker

   2. Döcker

   3. Föcker

   4. Wöcker

4. 

   Willow and the Thursday quiz were devastated to lose Dave Ball of pioneering electronic duo Soft Cell last week. What was the name of the fictional club that was the setting for the band's classic Say Hello, Wave Goodbye?

   1. The Silver Canary

   2. The Pink Flamingo

   3. The Crystal Leopard

   4. The Very Naughty Miniature Dachshund

5. 

   Willow deserves her own statue, and here she is posing for it. But who will be immortalised in bronze in London's Leicester Square shortly?

   1. Judi Dench in GoldenEye as M

   2. Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins as Mary Poppins

   3. Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones as Bridget Jones

   4. Bobson Dugnutt as Todd Bonzalez in Moneyball

6. 

   Willow was shocked to discover the International Skating Union is investigating after two Chinese ice dancers were shown with what during a grand prix figure skating event?

   1. A toy ballistic missile

   2. A stuffed panda dressed as Xi Jinping

   3. A giant QR code linking to a TikTok account

   4. A framed signed picture of short-term UK prime minister Liz Truss

7. 

   Willow is hiding because she misheard about a new law in California that will allow year-round hunting and killing from next year, and thought it was about very naughty miniature dachshunds. What will people be allowed to hunt?

   1. Swans

   2. Wild turkeys

   3. Raccoons

   4. The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

8. 

   Willow is staring into the mid-distance here because she just heard that students at eight schools in Queensland had been taught the wrong topic for their final year 12 history exam due to bungling teachers. What should they have been studying?

   1. Napoleon of France

   2. Julius Caesar of Rome

   3. Alexander the Great of Macedon

   4. Ronald Mael of Sparks

9. 

   The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has sent Willow into a sulk by writing a poem about what instead of about her?

   1. The 30th anniversary of Pulp’s album Different Class

   2. The 40th anniversary of Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love

   3. The 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s album Wish You Were Here

   4. The 60th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s album Highway 61 Revisited

10. 

    Here is Willow with her favourite Pokémon, Quaxly and Charmander. The three of them want to know who is sharing a posthumous byline with Roger Hargreaves on two new Mr Men and Little Miss books?

    1. P G Wodehouse

    2. H P Lovecraft

    3. Ian Fleming

    4. Agatha Christie

11. 

    Willow knows that the Washington DC resident Sam O’Hara has filed a lawsuit alleging that his constitutional rights were violated when he was detained after doing what … ?

    1. Following the president's motorcade while playing Yakety Sax, the Benny Hill theme

    2. Following a funeral cortege while playing Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees

    3. Following a mounted police horse patrol while playing Crazy Horses by The Osmonds

    4. Following a national guard patrol while playing Darth Vader’s theme from the Star Wars films

12. 

    Here is Willow with her science fiction comics. She was sad to hear that June Lockhart, who starred in Lassie, had died. Lockhart also starred in Lost in Space. As whom?

    1. Dr Elizabeth Shaw

    2. Dr Karen Mitchell

    3. Dr Linda Harrison

    4. Dr Maureen Robinson

13. 

    Willow is quite suspicious of fruit, but at least – unlike a 13-year-old boy in New Zealand who had to have surgery as a result – she hasn't swallowed what?

    1. A strip of LED lights as he tried to make himself 'glow from the inside'

    2. Up to 100 high-power magnets he bought online from Temu

    3. A handful of tiny button batteries he had found in a drawer

    4. An action figure of Gary Barlow's massive son he bought off Etsy

14. 

    Here is Willow recording her podcast. She loves technology. Remind her what reason Amazon gave for the massive AWS outage that crippled bits of the internet recently?

    1. Customers were unable to deploy to SigmaOOD

    2. Customers were unable to connect to DynamoDB

    3. Customers were unable to upload to RedflareVM

    4. 30–50 feral hogs invaded a server farm, accompanied by a troop of escaped macaques engaged in a crime spree

15. 

    And finally … here is a bonus picture of Willow when she was a puppy. She is sad that Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman are leaving Strictly. When did Strictly Come Dancing first hit our screens?

    1. 1984

    2. 1994

    3. 2004

    4. 2014

Solutions

1:C - The independent pledged to be ‘president for all’ after taking 63% of vote, 2:B - The cameo will be on-screen in a drag production of Wicked Witches, 3:A - The ad boasted the lift could carry 'up to 400kg of treasures at 42m per minute – as quiet as a whisper'. That mirror in the photo could do with a clean, eh?, 4:B - 🎶 Standing in the door of the Pink Flamingo, crying in the rain 🎶 – the Thursday quiz thanks you, Dave, for all the great music and concerts over the years, 5:C - The statue will be unveiled on 17 November and joins a number of others portraying icons of cinema in Leicester Square, none of which are a very naughty miniature dachshund, 6:A - It appeared to be a DF-61, a new Chinese-made land-based ICBM capable of carrying nuclear weapons, which was unveiled at a military parade last month, and maybe not suited to the so-called 'kiss and cry' area where skaters sit waiting for their marks, 7:A - Officials have claimed it is essential to protect the state’s already diminished wetlands and native waterfowl, but the swans disagree. The English sparrow and the starling are also on the state's kill list of invasive species, 8:B - The affected pupils instead learned about his nephew Augustus, or Brian Blessed as British television viewers of a certain age will always picture him, 9:C - The poet and ardent Pink Floyd fan was approached by the group to write a new piece about the record and has produced a sprawling piece with no punctuation which sounds exactly like the kind of thing the Thursday quiz does not enjoy. A bit like Pink Floyd, 10:D - Mr Poirot and Little Miss Marple, themed on Christie's characters, will feature in the books for some reason. Presumably money, 11:D - The patrol was not impressed, 12:D - The show ran from 1965 to 1968, well before Willow was born, 13:B - Teenagers, eh?, 14:B - No, the Thursday quiz doesn't know what that means either, and couldn't be bothered to look it up, 15:C - It has been going slightly longer than the revival of Doctor Who

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 and are absolutely 100% positive you aren’t attempting to factcheck a joke – you can complain about it in the comments below. Why not remember Dave Ball by watching Bedsitter instead?

Bedsitter by Soft Cell