tabloid! 2013 quiz: how well do you remember year’s biggest stories?

1 Joey Essex was hot favourite to win I’m A Celebrity, but went out early. Lady Gaga made her silver-screen debut in Machete Kills. Robert Galbraith wrote a book. Whose is not a pseudonym?

2 “I was Hannah Montana’s mother. Where did I go wrong?” So said which actor, not without her share of controversy in her younger years, and with a certain amount of tongue poking cheek?

3 “Nolle timere” were poet Seamus Heaney’s final words, via text message, to his wife. What do they mean?

4 Supermodel Cara Delevingne made her sort-of screen debut in which bestselling video game?

5 Breaking Bad ended after five fantabulous seasons. Fans would go into raptures as the opening titles rolled, with their credits rendered into chemical symbols. What two elements were highlighted in the series’ title?

6 “I was the Justin Bieber of the 70s. Really. Ask your mother.” Which beschnozzed global treasure?

7 In April the Boston Marathon was bombed, killing three people. A week later, an 80-storey building collapsed in Savar Upazila, killing 1,129. In which country?

8 The first was Legal Steps, the 4,000th was Mountain Tunes. What?

9 “Well, plenty more to come from here. Of course, none of it news, because that will come from Buckingham Palace. But that won’t stop us. We’ll see you later.” That was during the royal birth: later, this broadcasting delight would take to the BBC’s screens clutching a ream of photocopying paper, having “mistakenly” carried it on set instead of his iPad. Who?

10 There’s a new Pope, the delightful Francis, who embarked on a no-frills pontiffship to the extent that he drives a 1984 Renault 4 (which surely says a lot about, if nothing else, the power of prayer). Three days after his election, he personally lifted the phone to Buenos Aires to apologetically cancel his daily delivery of what?

11 The asteroid which exploded over Chelyabinsk was the largest natural object to have entered the Earth’s atmosphere since the “Tunguska event” in the same country. In which decade?

12 Who was the UK’s representative at Eurovision?

13 The Boston Marathon bombing, Cleveland kidnappings and George Zimmerman trial all took second place in 2013 on Bing, a search engine most popular in America, to which far-more crucial overseas event?

14 3-D printers are now available on eBay for under 1,000. But in which decade did the first fully working version of this apparent cutting-edge technology actually appear?

15 David Bowie had not only a show at the VA but also a new album, greeted in critical circles by pieces of drooling hagiography. What intimately links him to William Shatner?

16 Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud set a new record for a single art sale. Which painting had previously held the same record?

17 On 1 July, which country became the 28th member of the EU, but, far more importantly, was subsequently beaten by Scotland in what’s normally referred to as “the football”?

18 Who is Dr Kristi Funk, and what’s her link to Jon Voight?

19 The president of which “axis of evil” ( GW Bush) country tweeted the following: “@Barack Obama I express my gratitude for your #hospitality and your phone call. Have a good day Mr President”?

20 Model Hollie May Saker demonstrated, if not quite her sisterhood for the cause, then a spiffing right hand when she punched a topless feminist protester during the Tuileries show for which designer?

21 Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Morocco: not the past five Eurovision winners, but the chief shooting locations for which HBO mega-series?

22 Peter Capaldi was named as the 12th Doctor. Or maybe the 13th. Which one was John Hurt again? Never mind: who was roughly halfway there; who was the sixth Doctor?

23 “If you’re not getting a call from a xxx, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” So said South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on the uproar over surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. What, roughly, were the missing words?

24 Of what is a “cronut” a hybrid?

25 Which white boy wrote “Free Nelson Mandela”? And who sang it in the original Coventry band?

26 Which of the 14 British Overseas Territories features, on Trip advisor, just one one entry under “nightlife travellers recommend”? The entry reads, incidentally: “OK for a quick lunch”. (Clue: the territory was tangentially in the news this year.)

27 What deed did Poirot accomplish in his final case that he had never done before — besides die?

28 “Sandals Resorts is disappointed that Ms XX was not happy with her stay, and as a gesture of goodwill is willing to offer her a refund on condition that she does not choose our resorts for any future weddings.” A statement possibly unrivalled this year for its passive-aggressive simpering cattery but which model-turned-author did Sandals expect, by inference, to have many future weddings?

29 667 Govan Road. Whose early address? (Clue: his autobiography became, on publication, the fastest selling on record.)

30 Who said: “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship, is recorded”?

31 How many sets did it take Andy Murray to win the Wimbledon men’s final?

32 A certain boy band member, much in the news this year, not least for having a shoe thrown at him while on stage in Glasgow, got straight on to Twitter this April to tweet “RIP Baroness Thatcher. x”. It says something about her legacy, although perhaps more just about the generation gap, to learn that the first four responses to his epistle were: “Is he your friend?”, “May he rest in peace. Amen”, “It’s market thatcher something to do with our queen” and “Who?” Who was that floppy-haired young “singer” dude?

33 Which British newspaper appointed the UK’s first-ever female sports editor?

34 Which singer closed down Disneyland, California, commandeered the area in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle and bedecked the place with 15,000 flowers and 10,000 crystals to renew her wedding vows for the fifth time?

34 Cameraphone footage emerged of a woman who’d forced an aircraft into an emergency landing in Kansas after she refused to stop singing a Whitney Houston song. Which one (the song, not the aircraft)?

35 Which 2013 film claimed to have the greatest cast alive but was panned as the worst film of all time (everyone)?

36 Which West End hit was greeted, in the pages of the Sunday Telegraph, with the words: “It’s hilarious. God have mercy upon my soul”?

37 Which former soldier’s Wikipedia entry was altered in August to respect his wishes for a gender change? (Either Christian name will suffice.)

38 Charles Saatchi said he was wiping cocaine from his wife’s nose. Nigella said she didn’t have a drug problem, she had a life problem. Among the more quotable elements of the Divorce of the Year was the revelation that Charles Saatchi kept a “huge wodge of cash” where?

39 What links Silvio Berlusconi to Alphonse Capone?

40 “Selfie” was the Oxford Dictionaries’ new “word of the year” and has already led to the further delights of the “belfie”, “drelfie” and “welfie”. What are they?

41 “I wanna do a concert in space” and “Worst birthday ever” were among the fascinating tweets shared by which superstar?

42 The Carl Froch vs George Groves fight was mired in controversy after the referee stopped it early, angering both fans of The Saint and The Cobra. Which is which?

43 What sporting event links the birthplaces of Napoleon (2013) and Geoffrey Boycott (2014)?

44 Which self-proclaimed revolutionary can perform the Eka Pada Rajakapotasana?

45 Whose “firsts” this year included visits to the Everest Base Camp, the Ceremonial South Pole, the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan in Mongolia and Chichen Itza in Yucatan?

46 Who wrote the new Jeeves and Wooster? And “prose retellings” of which respective Shakespeare plays are to be undertaken by Margaret Atwood and Howard Jacobson?

47 The cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon will forever be associated with who, who died this year?

48 The White House had a particularly bad year, being blown up by terrorists not once but twice. Name either Hollywood blockbuster.

49 Rory McIlroy’s miserable 2013, which included missing the cut at Muirfield, was widely ascribed to his having changed choice of clubs to Nike. From which brand?

The answers

1 Joey Essex. Lady Gaga is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta; Robert Galbraith is JK Rowling

2 Brooke Shields

3 Be not afraid

4 Grand Theft Auto V

5 Bromine, barium

6 Barry Manilow

7 Bangladesh

8 Jockey AP McCoy — first and last of his 4,000 winners

9 Simon McCoy

10 Newspapers

11 1908

12 Bonnie Tyler, who sang ‘Believe in Me’. They didn’t

13 The royal baba. Bless

14 1980s

15 Iman. Bowie’s married to her; Billy Shatner snogged her in Star Trek VI

16 Munch’s The Scream

17 Croatia

18 She performed a double-mastectomy on Angelina Jolie, who is Voight’s daughter

19 Iran’s Hassan Rouhani

20 Nina Ricci

21 Game of Thrones

22 Colin Baker

23 Terrorist organisation or, for our American friends, organization

24 A croissant and a doughnut

25 Jerry Dammers; Stan Campbell

26 Gibraltar

27 Killed a man

28 Katie Price, the bride formerly known as Jordan

29 Sir Alex Ferguson’s

30 Edward Snowden

31 Three

32 Harry Styles

33 The Mail on Sunday

34 Mariah Carey

35 I Will Always Love You

36 Movie 43

37 The Book of Mormon

38 Bradley/Chelsea Manning

39 In a “zippy freezer bag above the fridge”

40 Both fell ultimately to tax fraud

41 A photograph of your bottom; one of you drunk; one of you working out

42 Justin Bieber

43 Froch’s The Cobra

44 The Tour de France, which started this year in Corsica; 2014’s Grand Depart is in Yorkshire

45 Russell Brand

46 Google Streetview

47 Sebastian Faulks; The Tempest; The Merchant of Venice

48 Graphic designer Storm Thorgerson

49 White House Down; Olympus Has Fallen

50 Titleist