Play the Slate News Quiz
With Jeopardy! superchampion Ken Jennings.
Welcome back to Slate’s weekly news quiz. I’m your host, 74-time Jeopardy! winner 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 to the score of a Slate-ster whom I’ve talked into taking the quiz on the record. This week’s contestant is Ayana Morali, co-executive producer of Slate V.
Think you can ace my quiz and beat Morali? Good luck!
A Denver man was arraigned this week for robbing a bank while wearing a nametag. A drunk Gainesville, Florida man was arrested after being run over by his own pickup when he got out of the truck to yell at another driver. Finally, in Oregon, a toddler wearing a diaper drove a Jeep into the side of a neighbor’s house, then wandered home to watch cartoons. You’ll have to be smarter than all of these master criminals put together to ace this week’s Slate News Quiz.
A Denver man was arraigned this week for robbing a bank while wearing a nametag. A drunk Gainesville, Florida, man was arrested after being run over by his own pickup when he got out of the truck to yell at another driver. Finally, in Oregon, a toddler wearing a diaper drove a Jeep into the side of a neighbor's house, then wandered home to watch cartoons. You'll have to be smarter than all of these master criminals put together to ace this week's Slate News Quiz.
Question 1 of 12
By midweek, the death toll from Operation Protective Edge had reached 1,300 where?
Question 2 of 12
Ten million gallons of water from a ruptured water main flooded what facility on Tuesday?
At one point, a geyser on Sunset Boulevard was spraying water 30 feet into the air.
Question 3 of 12
Late last week, militants from ISIS claimed to have blown up a tomb in Mosul said to belong to what biblical figure?
The tomb, located inside a Sunni mosque, also once contained a tooth said to belong to the whale that swallowed him. ISIS's strict brand of Islam condemns all religious shrines as idolatrous.
Question 4 of 12
After Donald Rumsfeld's entry was changed to call him "an alien lizard who eats Mexican babies," Wikipedia temporarily banned edits coming from where?
"Wikipedia ... has a behavioral guideline against disruptive editing," said one administrator after a long of list of vandalism from congressional IP addresses came to light.
Question 5 of 12
A new study from Aberystwyth University in Wales published this week in the American Journal of Infection Control extols the hygienic benefits of what?
A handshake spreads 20 times as many microbes as fist bumps, and twice as many as a high-five, the researchers found.
Question 6 of 12
The New York Times reported Tuesday that al-Qaida has taken in as much as $165 million since 2008 from what surprising source?
European governments deny paying the ransoms, but the Times found that the practice is widespread, though typically masked behind a network of proxies and "development aid."
Question 7 of 12
Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk died at age 93 on Monday in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Van Kirk was the last surviving what?
Van Kirk was the navigator aboard the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Question 8 of 12
Why did Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf close the country's borders over the weekend?
The largest-ever outbreak of the deadly virus has killed at least 672 people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, including the doctor leading the fight against the outbreak.
Question 9 of 12
Is it global warming? Meteorite strikes? Methane explosions? Scientists remain unsure of the cause of what puzzling new natural phenomenon?
The three mysterious, newly discovered holes, all about 230 feet deep, may be a unique geologic process not seen for the last 8,000 years.
Question 10 of 12
The deputy prime minister of Turkey faces backlash for a speech in which he urged women not to do what?
Hundreds of Turkish women took to Twitter and Instagram to post pictures of themselves laughing in defiance of Bulent Arinc's condemnation of "moral corruption."
Question 11 of 12
What $570 million debacle will be slowly broken down into scrap over the next two years?
The salvaged Italian ocean liner reached its final destination, a Genoa shipyard, this week.
Question 12 of 12
Over the weekend, Russia regained control of the Foton-4, a satellite containing what unusual payload?
The copulating lizards are one of several experiments designed to measure the effects of microgravity on living organisms.
Ukraine
Iraq
Syria
Gaza
UCLA
The Kremlin
El Prado Museum
Rikers Island
Isaac
Joshua
Jonah
Daniel
China
The U.S. House of Representatives
The Google campus
Joe Biden's computer
Fist bumps
Bidets
Circumcision
Not going to Comic-Con
Decommissioned Soviet tanks and trucks
Kidnap ransoms from European nations
Counterfeit U.S. and Chinese currency
Merch sales
Von Trapp Family Singer
Crew member of the Enola Gay
Original Harlem Globetrotter
AOL subscriber
To keep out U.N. inspectors
To stem a flood of refugees from Sierra Leone
To prevent Boko Haram attacks
To stop the spread of Ebola
Glass in the Sahara Desert
Flashing lights off Australia
Giant holes in Siberia
Sharknado 2
Laugh
Ride bicycles
Text men
Chew gum
The Yangmingtan Bridge in Harbin, China
The Houston Astrodome
The Costa Concordia
The Sarah Palin Channel
Soccer jerseys
Radioactive fruit
The ashes of a game show host
Geckos having sex
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Quiz Template by Chris Kirk and Andrew Morgan