Weekly Quiz #32
A free weekly 20-question general knowledge quiz
Welcome to the 32nd weekly quiz!
As always, we’re aiming for interesting questions that could come up in future quizzes across a range of difficulties and topic areas: new stuff, traditional quiz areas, “I should know this but I don’t” questions. Enjoy.
Questions
In the news
“I had rather thought that I would celebrate my 100th birthday quietly, but it seems that many of you have had other ideas.” This is a recent quote by which man following a celebration at the Royal Albert Hall on May 8?
Alongside Anna Wintour and honorary chair Lauren Sanchez, last week’s 2026 Met Gala saw three other women co-chair the event, who between them have an Academy Award, multiple Olympic gold medals, and multiple Grammys. Name any one of the three.
Which founder of CNN, Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1991, died last week aged 87?
After voicing a version of the character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which Oscar-winning actor will star as ageing private investigator Ben Reilly in the TV series Spider-Noir, set for release this month?
Set to host one of three FIFA World Cup Opening Ceremonies next month, which city officially became the first outside the US to have a WNBA team when its home team played its first match last week?
Last week, which British band announced that their 25th upcoming album, Foreign Tongues, will be released in July? The album will feature the final song recorded with Charlie Watts prior to his 2021 death.
During excavations at a church in March this year, Dutch authorities found what they believe to be the long-lost remains of French soldier and musketeer captain Charles de Batz de Castelmore (1611-1673), better known by what name, by which he appeared in fictionalised form in an 1844 novel?
Mixed bag
By modern coordinates of longitude, which of the Ancient Seven Wonders of the World was located the furthest to the east?
In video games and tabletop role-playing games, what words are represented by the term NPC? The term has been used online as slang to refer to someone who lacks introspection or independent thought.
Bauxite is a sedimentary rock that is the main global source of which metal, which is refined via the Bayer process and then smelted industrially using the Hall–Héroult process?
The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad borders which two European countries?
Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Eleanor Catton’s 2023 novel Birnam Wood take their titles from lines in which Shakespeare tragedy?
Meaning “Three Baskets”, the Tripiṭaka (Sanskrit) or Tipiṭaka (Pali) is a traditional term for the main scriptural collections of which religion?
Represented in linguistics by the symbol ə, what five-letter word is used to describe the mid-central vowel sound that can be heard in most English accents in the pronunciation of the a in about, the i in animal, and the u in supply?
Which type of regulatory protein found in cardiac muscle is used as a diagnostic marker to detect heart damage such as in a heart attack, as it is leaked into the bloodstream only when the heart is injured?
Pictures
This is an image of which jazz guitarist and composer (1910-1953), known for his unique playing style using only two fingers on his left hand thanks to an injury from a fire?
Seen here at the ruins of Persepolis, the winged symbol known as the Farāvahār is one of the most prominent symbols of which religion?
This is a partially obscured logo of which women’s health app, which has over 460 million downloads?
This is an image of which animal, the fastest land mammal in the Americas?
Incorporating various elements of Belarusian and Yiddish folktales and culture, the 1911 painting I and the Village is a work by which Russian-French artist?
And that’s this week’s quiz! I hope you enjoyed it.
Answers
David Attenborough. The man who frequently tops the list of most admired Britons celebrated his 100th birthday at the Royal Albert Hall alongside many others, including Prince William, Judi Dench, Olivia Colman, and Sir Michael Palin. The evening ended with a montage over Attenborough’s narration of What a Wonderful World. Call me maudlin and overly earnest, but you love to see it. A true global treasure.
Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams. This is Kidman’s third time as a co-chair, while Beyoncé has previously served as honorary chair, and this is Venus Williams’s first time - her sister Serena was co-chair in 2019. This year’s Met Gala theme was “Costume Art”, which saw a range of art and history-inspired outfits, including Claire Foy and Julianne Moore channelling John Singer Sargent’s 1883-84 painting Madame X, Rachel Zegler as Lady Jane Grey in Delaroche’s 1834 painting, and Hunter Schafter as Klimt’s 1912-13 Mäda Primavesi. Or if you prefer Australia’s CSIRO comparison of outfits to our local wildlife.
Ted Turner. Turner founded the world’s first 24-hour news channel when he launched CNN in 1980. The network’s popularity surged during the 1990-91 Gulf War, leading him to be named Time’s Man of the Year in 1991, for “influencing the dynamic of events and turning viewers in 150 countries into instant witnesses of history”. 1991 was a big year for Turner - he also married Jane Fonda, and as owner of the Atlanta Braves, he saw them become the first team in National League history to reach the World Series one year after finishing last.
Nicolas Cage. Set in 1930s New York, Spider-Noir is based on an alternate history comic series of Spider-Man, and it will be available to watch in both colour and black-and-white. The role of Ben Reilly is Cage’s first ever leading role in a TV series. He said of the role, “For me, this character was 70 percent Bogart, and 30 percent Bugs Bunny… I was basically Mel Blanc doing Bogart, with that sarcastic sense of humour.”
Toronto. The Toronto Tempo played its first ever WNBA match last Friday night, eventually going down to the Washington Mystics. They are one of two new teams in this season’s expanded WNBA, the other being the Portland Fire. Toronto is one of three cities that will host an opening ceremony for the FIFA World Cup, along with LA and Mexico City. Their opening ceremony, ahead of Canada’s first match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, will see performances from Alanis Morissette, Alessia Cara, and Michael Bublé among others.
The Rolling Stones. The album was announced at an event in New York alongside Conan O’Brien, who quipped that this album might be the one where the group will finally “make it after decades of obscurity”. It is seen as a continuation of the band’s 2023 album Hackney Diamonds, which reached number one in 20 countries and won the Best Rock Album Grammy Award.
D’Artagnan. The Fourth Musketeer in Alexandre Dumas’s books, including 1844’s The Three Musketeers, was a real historical figure, who died at the Siege of Maastricht in the Franco-Dutch War. A semi-fictionalised account of his life published in 1700 by French writer Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras later became the basis for the character as he is portrayed in the novels by Dumas.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The other six wonders were clustered around the Mediterranean (the Great Pyramid and Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt, the Statue of Zeus and Colossus of Rhodes in Greece, and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis in modern-day Turkey). Babylon is by considerably the furthest to the east, located in modern-day Iraq.
Non-player character. The term originated in tabletop games where it referred to a character controlled by the gamemaster rather than the players. In video games it refers to a computer-controlled character with a pre-determined and usually limited set of behaviours. It has been used online as slang to refer to someone who lacks introspection or independent thought, or whose identity is determined unthinkingly by their surroundings and information that they consume.
Aluminium (or aluminum). Bauxite was first discovered and named in 1821 by French geologist Pierre Berthier near the village of Les Baux in France. Alongside aluminium, bauxite is also the world’s main source of gallium, which is produced exclusively as a byproduct of the processing of other ores, primarily bauxite, but also the zinc ore sphalerite. The world’s largest producer of bauxite is Guinea, followed by Australia and China.
Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg during Prussian rule, is an exclave on the Baltic Sea separated from mainland Russia, situated between Poland and Lithuania.
Macbeth. Zevin’s (excellent) novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow follows the relationship between friends Sam and Sadie who begin a video game company together. In 2024 it was included in the New York Times list of 100 best books of the 21st century. It takes its title from Macbeth’s soliloquy of the same name, which also includes the line “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” which itself inspired the title of Faulkner’s 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury. Booker Prize-winning New Zealand author Eleanor Catton took the title of her novel Birnam Wood from the prophecy spoken by an apparition produced by the three witches, that says that Macbeth “shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.”
Buddhism. In ancient India, the Buddhist scriptural canons were organised into three main divisions, the Vinaya (monastic rule), Sutra (which contain teachings of the Buddha), and Abhidharma (more systematic and scholastic works). While the name Tripiṭaka is a common term referring to the scriptural collections of schools of Buddhism, many canons do not follow the strict division into three, but rather have four or five divisions.
Schwa. Sometimes called the “lazy” vowel in English, the schwa is in fact the most common vowel sound in spoken English, used frequently in unstressed syllables.
Troponin. Troponin is a type of muscle found in cardiac and skeletal muscle that typically exists only in muscle cells, only circulating in very small amounts in the blood. Cardiac troponins in the blood are a marker of heart muscle damage, and are used to diagnose heart attacks and other types of heart damage.
Django Reinhardt. Born in Belgium into a French Romani family, Reinhardt is considered one of the greatest guitar players of all time and one of the first major jazz musicians from Europe. At the age of 18, he knocked over a candle in the wagon he was travelling in, which was engulfed in flames, leaving him with burns on more than 50% of his body, including the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand.
Zoroastrianism. The Farāvahār was particularly prevalent during the Achaemenid Empire and appears in many architectural works from the period. There is no universal consensus on exactly what the Farāvahār represents, but the most common belief is that it depicts the fravasi, the Zoroastrian concept of one’s personal spirit. It has since become a secular and cultural symbol among Iranian peoples outside of its original religious symbolism.
Flo. Flo is an ovulation, period and pregnancy tracking app that was originally founded in Belarus, and went on to become Europe’s first femtech unicorn company (valued at over $1 billion while privately owned). It was named as one of the Best Inventions of 2023 by Time and has over 75 million active monthly users.
Pronghorn. The pronghorn is also sometimes called the pronghorn antelope, American antelope, or prairie antelope, despite not being a true antelope. It is the only surviving member of the family Antilocapridae and is most closely related to the giraffe and okapi. The pronghorn is native to the western and central interior of North America and can reach speeds of up to 89km/h (55mph).
Marc Chagall. Born in modern-day Belarus to a Jewish family, Chagall was called “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century” by art critic Robert Hughes. His paintings often include nostalgic and surreal imagery of shtetl scenes and his early memories of his life and environment in Russia before he moved to Paris, which formed part of his style which has been called nostalgic surrealism.