From Godard’s big mouth to Drake’s Toosie Slide: the Observer culture quiz

Test your arts knowledge with these questions from our critics
  
  

Drake, populariser of the Toosie Slide, performing in Paris, 2017.
Drake, populariser of the Toosie Slide, performing in Paris, 2017. Photograph: EDMOND/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock

  1. What can you see in every scene in David Fincher’s Fight Club?

    1. A copy of the New York Times

    2. A knife

    3. A Starbucks cup

  2. Jean-Luc Godard is known for his pithy pronouncements on cinema. Which if the following did he not say?

    1. "The hardest thing to do is genuine simplicity."

    2. "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun."

    3. "Tracking shots are a question of morality."

  3. Angelina Jolie and Matt Damon in the 2007 film The Good Shepherd.

    What do Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon and Jeff Bridges have in common?

    1. They all turned down offers of roles in the Transformers series

    2. They all won Oscars but then subsequently lost the statuettes

    3. They are all fluent in Spanish

  4. Before Megan Fox was famous, she had a job which required her to dress up as what?

    1. A banana

    2. Smurfette

    3. A wedge of gouda

  5. Which Young British Artist did not exhibit in the first, pioneering Freeze show?

    1. Sarah Lucas

    2. Tracey Emin

    3. Damien Hirst

  6. Jacopo Robusti is also known as…

    1. Tintoretto

    2. Titian

    3. Giorgione

  7. Puccini described the disastrous premiere of one of his most popular operas as “a lynching”. Which opera?

    1. Madam Butterfly

    2. La Bohème

    3. Tosca

  8. Which drug-addicted fictional detective played a stringed instrument?

    1. Sherlock Holmes

    2. Lord Peter Wimsey

    3. Hercule Poirot

  9. Jodie Comer as Villanelle in series three of Killing Eve.

    Villanelle, the protagonist in the book series behind the TV show Killing Eve, is the creation of which former specialist writer for a national newpaper?

    1. The Times’s crime correspondent

    2. The chess columnist of the Washington Post

    3. The dance critic of the Observer

  10. The title card (a shot with images and/or text, also known as an intertitle, inserted at segment intervals) for which UK TV series featured a penny farthing?

    1. The Prisoner

    2. Tales of the Unexpected

    3. Adam Adamant Lives!

  11. Which terrestrial channel broadcast a soap opera at 8pm on its launch night?

    1. Channel 5, Family Affairs

    2. Channel 4, Brookside

    3. ITV, Coronation Street

  12. Which star of the BBC con artist show Hustle recorded an audiobook of Chris Ryan’s Alpha Force: Survival?

    1. Adrian Lester

    2. Robert Glenister

    3. Robert Vaughn 

  13. Which was the first original play by a living female dramatist to be produced on the National’s Olivier stage?

    1. Top Girls

    2. Her Naked Skin

    3. Blasted

  14. Which play contains a conjuring governess?

    1. The Cherry Orchard

    2. Arcadia

    3. The Children’s Hour

  15. Nina Simone performing in Algiers, 1969.

    Which playwright inspired Nina Simone’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black?

    1. Lorraine Hansberry

    2. August Wilson

    3. Langston Hughes

  16. When asked “What is jazz?” who replied “Madam, if you don’t know by now, don’t mess with it!”?

    1. Fats Waller

    2. Duke Ellington

    3. Louis Armstrong

  17. Only one member of the Beach Boys actually surfed. Was it…

    1. Dennis Wilson

    2. Carl Wilson

    3. Mike Love

  18. How do you do the Toosie Slide, as per Drake’s recent single?

    1. “To the left, take it back now y’all, one hop this time, right foot two stomps”

    2. “Right foot uhhp, left foot slide, left foot uhhp, right foot slide”

    3. “You put your left leg in, you put your left leg out, in out, in out, shake it all about”

  19. Ed Sheeran with a guitar, name unknown.

    Ed Sheeran names his guitars. Which of these is not a Sheeran axe?

    1. Herbert

    2. Cyril

    3. Nigel

  20. Who designed Florence’s Pazzi Chapel?

    1. Borromini

    2. Bernini

    3. Brunelleschi

  21. Which architectural style came first?

    1. Perpendicular

    2. Early English

    3. Decorated

Solutions

1:C, 2:A - Martin Scorsese said this., 3:B, 4:A, 5:B, 6:A, 7:A - He rewrote it after its premiere at La Scala, Milan in February 1904, 8:A, 9:C, 10:A, 11:B, 12:A, 13:B, 14:A, 15:A, 16:A, 17:A, 18:B, 19:A, 20:C, 21:B

Scores

  1. 20 and above.

    Flipping heck! You'll be putting us out of a job next. Well done.

  2. 16 and above.

    Wow, impressive stuff! Maybe next week you can hit full marks…

  3. 11 and above.

    Pretty good stuff, hotshot!

  4. 6 and above.

    A solid result. But we know you can do better than solid. Come back next week to really impress us…

  5. 0 and above.

    Uh-oh. It's fair to say you could do with a bit of work on your cultural immersion… better get revising for next week!

 

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