Weekly Quiz #2
A free weekly 20-question general knowledge quiz
Welcome to the second Weekly Quiz!
Again, we’re aiming for interesting questions that could come up in future quizzes, across a wide range of difficulties and topics: new stuff, traditional quiz topic areas, the “I should know this but I don’t” type questions. Hopefully something for everyone! And please feel free to comment with your score, any questions you were pleased to pull or annoyed to miss, information you found interesting… or anything really! Enjoy.
Questions
In the news
Each week I’ll include a few questions about recent events that are likely to come up in some way soon in the world of quiz. I personally find it helpful, as they’re frustrating to miss in quizzes.
Kevin Hart, Jimmy Carr, Whitney Cummings, Bill Burr, Dave Chapelle, and Jack Whitehall are among the comedians who recently performed at a comedy festival in which Middle Eastern capital city, the first of its kind in the country?
Last week, Guillaume was sworn in as the new Grand Duke of which European country?
Hetty Wainthrop and Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced ‘bouquet’, of course) are characters played on screen by which English actress, who died last week, aged 96?
In September, which Spanish midfielder won her third consecutive Ballon d’Or Féminin, becoming the first player to win the award three times?
David Mitchell and Robert Webb are back with a new sketch comedy TV show in 2025, their first TV sketch show since That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006-2010). What is the new series called?
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis, for their ground-breaking experiments with electrical circuits demonstrating that what quantum phenomenon can be observed at the macroscopic scale?
Which team won the Grand Final of Australia’s National Rugby League last weekend? They partly share their name with a London-based rugby league team and an NFL team who won Superbowl 50, in Peyton Manning’s last game.
Mixed Bag
The islands of Streymoy, Eysturoy, Vágar, Suðuroy, and Borðoy are part of which archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean?
One of the most translated texts in world literature, which classic Chinese text central to Taoism is credited to the philosopher Laozi? Its 81 verses provide guidance on how to live with goodness and integrity.
In the terms ACL and PCL, referring to ligaments in the knee, what word is represented by the letter C?
In James Gunn’s 2025 film Superman, which actor plays the title character?
What word completes the quote from Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski, about the view that an abstraction derived from something, or in reaction to it, is not the thing itself? “The map is not the _________”.
The skincare brand rhode was acquired by E.l.f. beauty in May 2025 in a US$1 billion deal. Which model and media personality founded rhode, naming it after her middle name?
The cerebral cortex of the brain is divided into four lobes: the frontal, temporal, occipital, and which other?
The French word sans and the German word ohne translate to what seven-letter word in English?
Pictures
This is the Pena Palace in the municipality of Sintra, on the outskirts of which European capital city?
Disney CEO Bob Iger said that he got his wrist slapped by The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau when he referred to the character below as Baby Yoda in internal emails. What is the character’s actual name? While he is not a younger version of Yoda himself, he is the same species.
This is the logo of which social media platform, which launched in 2023?
Who is this London-born singer-songwriter? She first rose to prominence with her 2020 single Go, which became popular on TikTok in 2022, reaching number 2 on the UK singles chart. She rose to further prominence recently by appearing on the first season of BBC’s The Celebrity Traitors.
Very popular in Japanese gardens and sometimes called a poor man’s bonsai, what Japanese ornamental plant form involves a ball of soil covered with moss on which a plant grows? Its name literally translates as “moss ball”.
And that’s it for the second weekly quiz! I hope you enjoyed it.
Answers
I’ll include a little bit of extra info with the answers. I find this extra detail helps me anchor the relevant information in the question in richer context, and thus helps me remember answers that I missed when they come up next time.
Riyadh. The first ever Riyadh Comedy Festival has been controversial, with many performers uncomfortably contorting themselves to defend their appearance amid reports of large fees, contract clauses banning disparagement of religion and the Saudi royal family, and the country’s questionable human rights and free speech track record.
Luxembourg. Guillaume (now Guillaume V) assumed the role after his father Henri abdicated after a 25-year reign over the world’s only remaining grand duchy.
Patricia Routledge. I fondly remember watching Hyacinth Bucket and her husband Richard in Keeping Up Appearances with my grandmother in the mid-’90s. In Hetty Wainthrop Investigates, Routledge plays the titular retired working-class woman from northwest England who solves a range of minor crimes. The series also stars a young Dominic Monaghan, a few years before he was cast as Merry in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Aitana Bonmati. One of the best players in women’s football of all time, the 27-year-old has won six league titles, seven cup titles, five supercup titles and three Champions League titles with Barcelona and the 2023 World Cup with Spain, alongside her individual awards, which include Best FIFA Women’s Player in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year in 2024.
Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping. Recent Taskmaster alumni Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Stevie Martin also appear, as does Olivia Colman for a brief sketch. One recurring segment is Sweary Aussie Drama. I swear we’re not all like that.
Quantum tunnelling. They won “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”. From the press release: “Quantum mechanics allows a particle to move straight through a barrier, using a process called tunnelling. As soon as large numbers of particles are involved, quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. The laureates’ experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale.” This work would later become the basis for superconducting quantum computing.
Brisbane Broncos. After some pre-game entertainment from Teddy Swims, the Broncos defeated the Melbourne Storm 26-22 to win their seventh premiership title. A month after sharing a Snapchat video of himself apparently drinking toilet water, Broncos fullback Reece Walsh won the Clive Churchill Medal for man of the match.
Faroe Islands. The Faroe Islands are an autonomous territory of Denmark. Despite having a population of around 55,000, around 200 new books are published in Faroese each year, or 1 for every 275 people.
The Tao Te Ching. The oldest excavated portion of the text is late 4th century BC. It has been translated into Western languages over 200 times.
Cruciate. From the Latin for ‘cross-shaped’. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most frequently injured ligament in the knee. Not to be confused with the MCL and the LCL, where the C stands for ‘collateral’.
David Corenswet. He stars opposite Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. Gunn was impressed after seeing Corenswet in the 2022 horror film Pearl.
Territory. “The map is not the territory” refers to a logical fallacy where a conceptual representation of reality is confused with reality itself. Similar is the phrase “all models are wrong (but some are useful)”. It was also referenced in the Prix Goncourt-winning novel The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq, in which a fictional version of himself is murdered.
Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin). Rhode is also her mother’s middle name.
The parietal lobe. Positioned behind the frontal lobe at the top of the brain, the parietal lobe is involved in processing and integrating sensory information, including touch, temperature, and pain, navigation and spatial awareness.
Without. For English speakers, sans is perhaps best recognised in Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders. Ohne perhaps in Lieder ohne Worte, or Songs without Words.
Lisbon. One of the major expressions of 19th-century Romanticism, the palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal.
Grogu (or Din Grogu). A pop culture phenomenon and internet meme since the series first launched, many writers have described Grogu/Baby Yoda as key to the success of the Disney+ streaming service. Despite looking like a baby, he is 50 years old during the first season of the show.
Threads. Meta’s answer to Twitter. Or X. Or whatever it is these days.
Cat Burns. Go was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2023 Brit Awards. Without any spoilers, Cat Burns has been charming, impressive and eminently watchable on the first two episodes of Celebrity Traitors that have been aired so far.
Kokedama. The technique involves forming a ball with wet akadama soil and peat. The plant is set into the ball, and then the moss is wrapped around the outside, alongside twine or wire, which keeps the bundle in place and is sometimes used to hang the plant in the air.