Play the Slate News Quiz

With Jeopardy! superchampion Ken Jennings.

150924_QUIZ_Giraffes — Six-day-old newly born giraffe calf (C) is seen next to its parents six-year-old father Buddy (L) and eleven-year old mother Jacky at their enclosure in Buenos Aires' zoo July 16, 2013. The baby giraffe, still without a name, was one meter (3.2 feet) tall and weighed 85 kilos (187 pounds) when it was born, and the zoo launched a contest amongst children to find a name for it.

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 with the score of a Slatester whom I’ve talked into taking the quiz on the record. This week’s contestant is staff writer Christina Cauterucci, who blogs for Slate’s XX Factor.

Think you can ace my quiz and beat Cauterucci? Good luck!