Play the Slate News Quiz

With Jeopardy! superchampion Ken Jennings.

Every Friday I’ll be testing your knowledge with 12 challenging questions on the week’s news events, big and small, including happenings in science, sports, politics, and culture both high and low. The questions are multiple-choice, and time is of the essence: You have 30 seconds to answer, and as the seconds tick away, the question’s point value drops from 50 all the way down to zero, so you’ll want to click on your answer as fast as you possibly can. There’s no penalty for an incorrect answer, so feel free to take a guess if your puny human brain fails you.

At the end of the quiz, you’ll be able to compare your score with that of the average contestant as well as with the score of a Slate staffer whom I’ve talked into taking the quiz on the record. This week’s contestant is Josh Voorhees, editor of The Slatest.

The Slate News Quiz might seem hard some weeks, but that's unavoidable in a complicated world where so much happens every single week. In the words of the late Andy Williams, who left us this week, "There's such a lot of world to see." Good luck with this week's quiz, my huckleberry friend.

Question 1 of 12

The New Yorker reported this week that the next global superbug, first seen in Kyoto in 2009, will be a drug-resistant strain of what?

Question 2 of 12

What sad news event cast a pall over the normally mirthful Internet acronym LMFAO this week?

"We're not breaking up," vowed SkyBlu, one half of the electropop duo.

Question 3 of 12

Paul Ryan was booed at the AARP's annual convention Saturday for criticizing what?

Question 4 of 12

A new study in the American Journal of Public Health found that what had overtaken car accidents as the leading cause of injury-related deaths in America?

Question 5 of 12

The Internet reacted with horror this week to a press release claiming that a global shortage could increase prices of what commodity by 5 to 7 percent by late next year?

Drought-stricken farmers have been slaughtering an unusually large number of pigs this summer to cut costs.

Question 6 of 12

What invention of Carnegie-Mellon computer science professor Scott Fahlman turned 30 years old on Sunday?

Question 7 of 12

The NCB, or National Coordination Body, was allowed to hold a rare public conference for foreign diplomats on Sunday. What does the NCB coordinate?

Question 8 of 12

Last week, 85-year-old Cecilia Gimenez announced that her lawyers would be seeking her share of her town's newfound popularity among tourists. What did Ms. Gimenez do to bring in the tourists?

Gimenez is the well-meaning amateur painter whose inept "restoration" of the 100-year-old fresco made headlines last month.

Question 9 of 12

Residents of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, now face fines if they don't do what each Monday and Thursday evening at exactly 7:30?

The city hopes that simultaneous semiweekly flushing will keep pipes from clogging.

Question 10 of 12

Amid social unrest over austerity measures, what European country now faces a crisis in its easternmost region, which has called for early elections to vote on secession?

Catalonia's economy is the biggest in Spain, and its movement toward independence has further destabilized the struggling Madrid government.