Pop quiz! Plus what Trump and Obama agree on

A quick quiz to find out if you're wised up and ready for 2016. Photos / AP, Supplied, Dean Purcell

Were you across the news and plugged into the zeitgeist in 2015, or did you miss the crucial indicators of what's happening out there? Do this quick quiz to find out if you're wised up and ready for 2016.

1. Who said: "We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly if they were there [and the US had spent domestically] we would've been a lot better off. We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East. We've done a tremendous disservice to humanity."

A. Barack Obama
B. Jon Stewart
C. Donald Trump

2. Who wrote a poem called Two of Me containing the lines "There is only one of me it's true, but I wish this were not the case, because I wish that I could have you."

A. Cameron Slater
B. Colin Craig
C. The Topp Twins

3. Who said: "[The Government] would destroy the planet in order to be able to live the life they want."

A. Nicky Hager
B. Lucy Lawless
C. Eleanor Catton

4. Who got "bitten severely on the bum", according to broadcaster and former Maori Party candidate Derek Fox?

A. Bear Grylls
B. The eight Charlie Hebdo writers and cartoonists massacred by Islamist terrorists in Paris in January
C. Investors in Ross Asset Management, described as "New Zealand's biggest Ponzi scheme"

5. Finish this sentence from Greens co-leader Metiria Turei: "New Zealanders know you can't walk into a cafe and ... "

A. Start tugging on someone's hair
B. Use the toilet without buying anything
C. Breastfeed your pet piglet

6. Who said the following to Muslim immigrants living in Europe: "It is incomprehensible that you can turn against freedom but, if you do not like freedom, in heaven's name pack your bags and leave. If you do not like it here because humorists you do not like make a newspaper, then may I say you can f*** off."

A. Marine Le Pen, leader of French anti-immigration party Front National
B. Nigel Farage, leader of British anti-immigration party UKIP
C. Ahmed Aboutaleb, Moroccan-born mayor of Rotterdam and self-described "secular Muslim"

7. Who or what was accused of putting his private parts in a dead pig's mouth?

A. Charlie Sheen
B. British Prime Minister David Cameron
C. Another pig

8. According to Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, who or what will "bring death to America and wipe Israel off the map"?

A. The international treaty under which Iran has agreed to freeze its nuclear programme for at least 10 years
B. Isis
C. Russia

Answers

1. Donald Trump in this week's candidates' debate. You could be excused for thinking it was Obama since rival candidate Carly Fiorina promptly slammed Trump with the worst insult one Republican can direct at another: "Wow, that's exactly what President Obama said."
2. Colin Craig, in the course of getting "inappropriate" with his former press secretary.
3. Eleanor Catton in comments made at an Indian literary festival that led broadcaster Sean Plunket to brand her an "ungrateful hua".
4. The Charlie Hebdo staffers who, according to Fox, "paid the price" for their editor's "assumption of cultural superiority".
5. Start tugging on someone's hair.
6. Ahmed Aboutaleb.
7. David Cameron. Kudos to the authors of what was undoubtedly the most lurid and scurrilous non-story of the year.
8. The international treaty. It's worth noting that A) America is the most heavily nuclear-armed country in the world; B) Israel is the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East; and C) the other 16 Republican presidential contenders broadly or completely agree with him.