Ten new ways to test your smarts today
Fortunes made and lost. Deep-sea discoveries. A record sale. A record fail. One magazine coming back from the dead. Our news quiz has much to unpack
1
Her name is Viatina-19 Mara Imoveis. She’s Brazilian, but from the Indian Nellore variety. She has a distinctive hump and cascading dewlap skin. She was sold for $4.8 million and is thus the most expensive of her kind. What is she?
2
India is the world’s largest exporter of this food, though yield is low this year. Still, we sent 50,000 tonnes of it to Bangladesh, 14,400 tonnes to the UAE and smaller quantities to Bhutan, Bahrain and Mauritius. No tears. Just guesses.
3
Ilia Malinin is only 19. But his four-minute routine just earned the highest score in history. An unprecedented six clean quadruple jumps, including a quad Axel and two quads that opened other combinations. Blades, ice, music. 4 Which sport?
To gardeners, X is the part of a plant that’s cut to make a new plant. In business, X is a young heir of a super-rich family. In India, 10 families, collectively worth $382 billion have Xs under 40 in prominent corporate positions. What is X? beca5use
The Afanasy Nikitin Seabed in the Indian Ocean is in the news India is hoping to mine there. It’s named for a merchant who visited India and wrote about it in 1469. One trip, many Steppes. Which country did he come from?
6
Two rival gangs are terrorising tourists and locals in Lopburi, a Thai temple town. Local police captured one of their leaders using a tranquiliser gun. Other cops are carrying slingshots to break up fights. Why no gangmember arrests?
7
Model Karlie Kloss, who co-owns Bedford Media, has announced plans to resuscitate a weekly American magazine that ran from 1883 to 1972. Its photo archives are legendary. She’ll be literally bringing it back to life. Which magazine?
8
In 1984, you could buy tickets to Ghostbusters and another movie, X. In 2021, Ghostbusters released a sequel and X was remade. This year, part 2 of X has released, and there’s yet another Ghostbusters movie coming. X is full of Spice. Give X.
9
The starting price for a Birkin handbag is Rs 29 lakh. But money alone isn’t enough. It’s sold only to buyers who’ve made other purchases within the brand. Some customers are crying fowl, launching an antitrust lawsuit against which French label?
10
X Raveendran set up his edtech company in 2011. At its peak, it had a valuation of $22 billion. The 2023 Forbes Billionaire Index put his net worth at $2.1 billion. Recent calculations have brought it to 0. Name the firm with lessons to learn.
1. A cow
2. Onions
3. Figure skating
4. Scion
5. Russia
6. They are monkeys
7. Life
8. Dune
9. Hermes
10. Byju’s