Weekly Quiz #4

A free weekly 20-question general knowledge quiz

Oct 27, 2025

Welcome to the fourth Weekly Quiz!

Thanks to those of you who have sent me lovely messages telling me how much you’re enjoying the weekly quizzes and that you’ve shared them with friends and family. This truly makes me very happy. I’m having a blast writing them.

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

Gen Z-driven protests in September in which island country led to the impeachment and ousting of President Andry Rajoelina in October?
Fronted by nephew-in-law of King Charles III Mike Tindall, R360 is a proposed breakaway global sporting league in which sport? The governing bodies of the sport in several countries have announced that any player joining the competition would be banned from selection for their national teams.
Deliver Me From Nowhere is the subtitle of a film released this week starring Jeremy Allen White as which singer-songwriter as he chronicles the making of his 1982 album Nebraska?
After finally securing a coalition agreement with the Japan Innovation Party, who became Japan’s first-ever female prime minister on October 21?
Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in the 2025 MLB World Series, looking to go back to back. They will play against which other team, who defeated the Seattle Mariners in the American League Championship last week?
Little Miss Marple: Muddle at the Vicarage and Mr Poirot: Mischief on the Nile are new children’s books published this week that are a collaboration between the worlds of which two authors?
Untitled (How Does It Feel) is a 2000 song by which neo-soul singer-songwriter who died this month? The song won the 2001 Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

Mixed Bag

What four-letter word can precede coding to refer to a software development approach that relies heavily on prompting using Large Language Models, which then generate code based on the prompt?
The Onyx River is the longest river on which continent?
Also the name of a buddy stoner film starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, what two-word term describes a recurring large-scale flow of warm moist air north-east of the Hawaiian islands and extending north-east along the Pacific coast of North America?
The Tupi language family comprises around 70 languages spoken on which continent?
Which multinational company began in 1833 when Marcus Samuel started importing seashells from Asia, capitalising on their popularity in interior design at the time? He later passed on his business to his sons, and in 1907, the expanded company merged with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company.
Fashion designer Demna was appointed creative director of Gucci in March 2025. From 2015-2025, he served as creative director of which Spanish fashion house?
Which English king, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, is said to have died in 1135 from eating “a surfeit of lampreys”?
What three words complete the title of the 1994 best-selling meditation and mindfulness book by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn? Wherever You Go, _____ ___ ___.

Pictures

This is the Shwedagon Pagoda, a gilded stupa said to contain bodily relics of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. It is located in which former capital city in Southeast Asia?
This is the playing board of which 2004 board game, where players collect cards of types of train cars that can be used to claim railway routes in North America? It shares its name with a Beatles song.
This image depicts the word for the language of which country, in its native script?
This is one of five known photographs of the only specimen photographed alive of which extinct subspecies of plains zebra native to South Africa?
This is one of two official flags of which German state? The colours and lozenge-shape pattern can be seen in the logos of an automotive brand and a sporting team from the region.

And that’s this week’s quiz! I hope you enjoyed it.

Answers

Madagascar. Frequent water and power outages in the capital Antananarivo led to widespread protests, which spread across the country. On October 11, the military carried out a coup and Rajoelina fled the country shortly afterwards. On October 17, Colonel Michael Randrianirina was sworn in as the 9th president of the country.
Rugby (union). Backed by private investors, the competition is scheduled to begin in September 2026 and is set to feature eight men’s teams and four women’s teams touring the globe in a Formula One Grand Prix-style system, similar to Rugby Sevens.
Bruce Springsteen. The film also stars Jeremy Strong as Springsteen’s manager and producer Jon Landau. Springsteen recorded the songs on Nebraska unaccompanied on a four-track recorder in his bedroom, intending to re-record them with the E Street Band, but ultimately decided to release them as they were.
Sanae Takaichi. The former government minister, TV host, and heavy metal drummer was confirmed as PM several weeks after she was elected to lead the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, which has been the party in power in Japan almost continuously since 1955.
The Toronto Blue Jays. This will be the first time that the Dodgers and the Blue Jays have met in the postseason. The Dodgers meanwhile defeated the Milwaukee Brewers 4-0 to make the World Series, with Ohtani hitting three home runs and pitching six scoreless innings, with 10 strikeouts, in Game 4 - one of the greatest individual performances ever.
Agatha Christie and Roger Hargreaves. The new collaboration sees Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot join the world of the Mr Men and Little Misses. Little Miss Marple helps Inspector Nonsense and Constable Silly investigate a theft, while Mr Poirot meets Colonel Rush on the Nile to investigate a mystery involving Mr Tickle.
D’Angelo. His album Voodoo won the Best R&B Album Grammy in the same year, and he won the award again in 2016 for his final album, Black Messiah.
Vibe. Coined by Andrej Karpathy in February, vibe coding allows amateur programmers and even non-programmers to develop software by describing the project to an AI chatbot, which generates the code.
Antarctica. Technically a meltwater stream, it flows for just 32km, or 0.5% of the length of the Nile.
Pineapple Express. The meteorological phenomenon is accompanied by heavy rain and sometimes extreme storms. It is an example of an atmospheric river, a narrow corridor of concentrated moisture transport.
South America. The most widely spoken language in the family is Guarani, with 7 million native speakers. It is one of two official languages of Paraguay. English words from the language family include jacaranda, jaguar, piranha, tapir, cougar, manioc, and Paraguay and Uruguay.
Shell. Now the name makes more sense! Shell is the second-largest oil and gas company in the world behind ExxonMobil.
Balenciaga. His tenure as creative director included a horrific and bizarre 2023 ad campaign involving children holding teddy bears dressed in BDSM gear, amidst empty wine glasses.
Henry I. According to chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, Henry I apparently ignored his doctor’s advice and ate too many lampreys during a hunting expedition, became sick and died.
There You Are. As Kabat-Zinn writes in the introduction, “Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are… Like it or not, this moment is all we really have to work with. Yet we all too easily conduct our lives as if forgetting momentarily that we are here, where we already are, and that we are in what we are already in.”
Yangon (or Rangoon). It is the most sacred Buddhist pagoda in Myanmar, and is said to contain eight strands of hair from the head of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. Yangon was the capital of Myanmar until 2005, when it was replaced by planned city Naypyidaw.
Ticket to Ride. Called “one of the greatest gateway games ever made” by Board Game Quest for its balance of simplicity and depth, the game won the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award for game of the year.
Georgia. Kartuli, as it is known in the Georgian language, is the official language of Georgia and the primary language of around 90% of its population. The (quite beautiful) script used to depict the language is called Mkhedruli. So this image depicts the word ‘Kartuli’ in the Mkhedruli script.
The quagga. The quagga was extinct in the wild by 1878, and the last captive specimen died in 1883.
Bavaria (Bayern in German). The colours and pattern can be seen in the logos of BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke) and Bayern Munich.