Charlie Brooker has scoured through a whole year's worth of cultural detritus to test your knowledge of what was really important during the last 12 months. View the answers here
Descriptions
Throughout the year, I wrote some characteristically cynical things as part of my ongoing quest to depress Guardian readers to death. But, shorn of context, can you tell what I'm going on about? Find out by deducing who or what is being described in the following extracts:
1 "A device that answers a rhetorical question you weren't really asking."
2 "A simulated man with a simulated face. A humanoid. A replicant. An Auton. A construct."
3 "It will be a staggering 5,600ft tall ? more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth ? and will be capped with an immense dome of highly polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs."
4 "A child who idolised ___________ would grow up to be a sanctimonious, flip-flopping, phone-tapping Peeping Tom who thinks puns are hilarious and spends half its life desperately rooting through bins for a living."
5 "Like a small piece of fried potato failing to recall a repressed abuse memory while sitting on your tongue."
6 "___________ sounds like a once-respected stage actor who's taken the Hollywood dollar and now finds himself sitting at a press junket, patiently telling a reporter that while, on the face of it, his role as the Fartmonster in Guff Ditch III: Fartmonster's Revenge may look like a cultural step down from his previous work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, if you look beyond all the scenes of topless women being dissolved by clouds of acrid methane, the Guff Ditch trilogy actually contains more intellectual sustenance than King Lear."
Fictional taglines
Several motion pictures were released during 2010, most of which had snappy poster taglines such as "A Journey Beyond Your Imagination" or "From The People Who Brought You Yentl". The following taglines weren't used, but should have been. What films are they advertising?
1 You Only Dream Thrice.
2 Because 162 Minutes of Sanctimonious Blue Arseholes Apparently Wasn't Enough.
3 Greedier Isn't Goodier.
4 Hey, At Least It's Not Scarecrow and Mrs King.
5 Abu Dhabi Bang Gang.
Indistinguishable from magic
Technology is now so advanced that we've become accustomed to wearily shrugging at miracles. Which of the following is real and which have I made up?
1 The iDoser. Forget meow meow, the iDoser is a piece of software that plays audio files designed to stimulate your brain, allegedly mimicking the effect of various illegal narcotics in the process.
2 Pocket Heatwave. Aimed at campers who fancy a brew ? or lazy office workers who want to reheat their coffee without leaving their desk ? this is a handheld LED device, similar to a small torch or a laser pointer which, when aimed into a cup of water, uses light to heat the fluid from room temperature to boiling point in less than 45 seconds.
3 Kittylimpics. Yes, it's a videogame for cats, which uses Microsoft's Kinect motion-recognition system. Plop your feline in front of Kittylimpics, and laugh as it chases photo-realistic birds, mice and butterflies around the screen. The Kinect system tracks your cat's movements, marking it for speed, accuracy and grace; its score is automatically entered into an online league table.
4 Clothes in a Can. The ultimate in figure-hugging partywear: spray-on clothing you literally squirt over your body.
5 TV Hat. A personal cinema for your face, the TV Hat is essentially a baseball cap with headphones, blinkers ? and a built-in screen. Pop the hat on, connect it to your laptop, and watch movies or TV shows while remaining absolutely oblivious to the outside world.
6 iPhone Autopilot. Available from the App Store, Autopilot allows you to keep a conversation going during those times when you need to concentrate on something else. It stores your oft-used conversational tics ("uh-huh", "OK", and so on) and repeats them automatically in response to a caller when activated. Need to step away from the phone during a conversation? Just activate your autopilot for a few moments and they will be none the wiser.
Random quickfire entertainment
1 According to a protester's placard, why did Nick Clegg cross the road?
2 Why did millions of people watch 50-year-olds Yonni and Susana kiss on live TV?
3 What was going to be blown sky-high if it didn't get its shit together?
4 In perhaps the worst of the profoundly dreadful Halifax "radio station" TV commercials, which song is played to promote individual savings accounts?
5 Which soap character became a pipe smoker?
6 Why did so many of the cast of Andrew Lincoln's new TV series have non-speaking parts?
7 What is a human centipede?
8 What did John F Kennedy, Fidel Castro, Robert McNamara and Richard Nixon team up to fight?
Bulgaria Madeleine McCann Ryan Babel Financial crisis Mikel Arteta Poland
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