1. 

   Bulgaria’s Moscow-friendly former president (pictured) has won an absolute majority in parliamentary elections. What is his name?

   1. Boyko Borisov

   2. Hector Alembick

   3. Delyan Peevski

   4. Rumen Radev

2. 

   Pedro Pascal, star of The Last of Us, The Mandalorian, Fantastic Four and Game of Thrones, among many franchises, is taking legal action against a company making a drink called what?

   1. San Pascellegrino

   2. Pedro Pascardi

   3. Pedro Piscal

   4. Prosecco Pascal

3. 

   Three people have gone to prison in California over a car insurance scam that involved what …?

   1. Smashing windscreens with frozen chickens to mimic bird strikes

   2. Dressing up in a bear costume to 'attack' cars

   3. Using the corpse of a deer to simulate wildlife collisions

   4. Using a trebuchet to launch debris at parked vehicles

4. 

   Which pop star has appealed for information after her car, containing vital medical equipment for her children, was stolen?

   1. Doja Cat

   2. Rebecca Loos

   3. Jade Thirlwall

   4. Jesy Nelson

5. 

   This Pokémon is Bouffalant, hanging out with some cousins in Cambridge. Which region of Italy does buffalo mozzarella traditionally come from?

   1. Monteluce

   2. Campania

   3. Alta Sabinia

   4. Castellara

6. 

   Here's Melvyn Bragg, he loves a flag. The flag of Guatemala features a bird, a scroll, a bay laurel crown, some rifles and some swords. But what are the two predominant colours it uses?

   1. Blood red and white

   2. Verdant green and white

   3. Sky blue and white

   4. Actinic silver and white

7. 

   'It's Friday, it's 5 to 5, it's Crackerjack!' was a famous TV rallying cry said by Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart (pictured here at a Tory party conference). It would have been his birthday today. Which of these was NOT a regular host of Crackerjack over the years?

   1. Eamonn Andrews

   2. Leslie Crowther

   3. Nicholas Parsons

   4. Stu Francis

8. 

   This week's guest feline is Jimmy, who lives at the Cinema Museum in Kennington and is a very handsome boy. He wants to know the title of the poem written by Simon Armitage to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Zoological Society of London. What is it?

   1. The Sun and the Zoo

   2. The Stars and the Zoo

   3. The Moon and the Zoo

   4. The Very Naughty Miniature Dachshund and the Zoo

9. 

   Farther or nearer with Geordie Alan Shearer! This week we imagine the England soccer legend wants to know, if he leaves his home town of Newcastle upon Tyne, which is farther or nearer – Tbilisi, Georgia, or Abuja, Nigeria?

   1. Tbilisi, Georgia, is nearer to Newcastle upon Tyne than Abuja, Nigeria

   2. Abuja, Nigeria, is nearer to Newcastle upon Tyne than Tbilisi, Georgia

10. 

    Dave Mason (pictured), a co-founder of the band Traffic, passed away this week. Which of these was in the band with him?

    1. Ginger Baker

    2. Muff Winwood

    3. Steve Winwood

    4. Trevor Ward-Davies

11. 

    Who (not pictured) is taking over as chief executive of Apple in September?

    1. John Ternus

    2. Craig Federighi

    3. Eddy Cue

    4. Ron Mael

12. 

    The very religious US secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, has been accused of mixing up a verse of the Bible with the script of which movie?

    1. Pulp Fiction

    2. Reservoir Dogs

    3. The Godfather

    4. Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 AD

13. 

    The Thursday quiz fondly remembers Keith Chegwin, so here is Cheggers plays population! According to the 2026 CIA World Factbook, which of these African nations has the largest population?

    1. Comoros

    2. Lesotho

    3. Eswatini

14. 

    On this day with Brian May! And his badger! 23 April is the anniversary of Edmund Ironside succeeding his father as king of England in 1016. The Thursday quiz imagines Queen's legendary guitarist wants you to tell him – and his badger – who was Edmund Ironside's father?

    1. Ælfwine the Martyr

    2. Eadwig All-Fair

    3. Æthelred the Unready

    4. Wulfric the Chronically Peckish

15. 

    The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was most definitely a collection of sounds and images that some people made and decided was worth releasing. What is Mario's brother's name?

    1. Bowser

    2. Luigi

    3. Yoshi

    4. Bobson Dugnutt

Solutions

1:D - With more than 97% of ballots counted, the Progressive Bulgaria party of Radev, a former fighter pilot and air force chief, had scored 44.7% of the vote, giving it an estimated 131 of the 240 seats in the national assembly, 2:C - Pascal, who was born in Chile and is a popular figure in his home country, did not attend a court hearing but filed to take control of the brand name on account of its similarity with his own name, 3:B - Ludicrous. Not least because you would expect this sort of thing in Florida, not California, 4:D - The former Little Mix singer has offered a £10,000 reward for information about a Land Rover taken from her Essex driveway, 5:B - This one, innit, 6:C - Guatemala, a country the quiz master spent an entire day spelling wrong in a live blog, does indeed have a sky blue and white flag with loads of stuff crammed in the middle, 7:C - Oooh, I could rip a tissue, as Stu Francis may have observed, 8:C - Armitage narrates the poem, which conjures up the night-time world at the zoo, in a specially commissioned animation illustrated by Greg King, which carries the words through a dreamlike journey from the zoo out into the wider natural world, 9:B - Abuja, Nigeria, is only about 5,168km away from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, whereas Tbilisi, Georgia, is about 6,560km away, a difference of about 2,923,200 ancient Sumerian cubits. Top bins!, 10:C - The original line-up was Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason, 11:A - He was previously senior vice-president for hardware engineering. But can he write a quiz? Exactly, 12:A - He sort of mangled actual bits of Ezekiel with bits of Samuel L Jackson's oratory from the film, although at least it wasn't Hunny Bunny's immortal first-scene line – 'Any of you fucking pigs move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya' – that he interpolated into his biblical verse, 13:B - Lesotho has a population of 2.2 million people, compared with Eswatini's 1.1 million people and Comoros's 900,000. That is according to the archived internet version of the 2026 CIA World Factbook, which has been discontinued by the Trump administration, 14:C - He earned his nickname by generally getting very poor advice and then failing to act on it promptly anyway, something you seldom see in British leaders today, eh?, 15:B - Of course it is. Gaming enthusiasts have known for years that Nintendo named its mustachioed, superhero plumber after the company’s landlord, the Washington state businessman Mario Arnold Segale, and it now emerges that maybe his dad was called Luigi

Scores

1. 0 and above.

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