"RuPaul's Drag Race" - Season 9 Quiz

Answer: Fourteen

In the first episode, thirteen new queens walked through the workroom doors and introduced themselves. After the competition field was narrowed to twelve queens in season 8, this ninth season marked a return to the expanded pool as the show moved from the Logo Network to VH1, increasing the budget.

A fourteenth queen was introduced at the end of the first episode to round out the group.

Answer: Lady Gaga

After the thirteen new queens were introduced, Lady Gaga also followed them into the workroom, sparking the challenge for the week to have the queens not only devise a look inspired by their home state, but to also walk the runway in a Lady Gaga look to compete in the Miss Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent pageant.

The queens were also encouraged to be bold without fear since no one was to be eliminated following the first challenge. In fact, after Nina Bo'Nina Brown won the crown, Ru stopped the ceremony to introduce the fourteenth competitor.

Answer: Cynthia Lee Fontaine

Taking Miss Congeniality in season 8, Cynthia Lee Fontaine ended up taking most of a year off drag between season 8 and 9 to take care of personal health issues (as she was diagnosed with liver cancer). She reappeared at the end of episode one when Ru ended the Miss Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent pageant and she entered the workroom shortly thereafter, becoming a formal competitor in time for the first maxi challenge featuring an elimination.

She would inevitably be sent home in tenth place, the same position she was eliminated in in her first season.

Answer: False

Eureka actually sustained the injury in the show's second episode when she and the other contestants participated in a highly physical cheerleading-themed challenge. During the routine, while performing the splits, she ended up injuring her knee enough that Ru and the producers deemed her injuries serious enough to necessitate withdrawal from the competition. Nonetheless, she was told that she would be eligible to return for season 10-- open invitation-- and she did. That week, no one was eliminated though a lip-sync was held.

Answer: A Night of a Thousand Madonnas

With the competition in full swing, queens competed in the typical Snatch Game competition in Week 6, bringing forth their best celebrity impersonations to wow the judges. This went as could be expected, but the runway for this episode was a reprisal of season 8's Night of a Thousand Madonnas.

In season 8, four queens wore kimonos as per Madonna's mid-1990s oeuvre; this season, two queens wore the "Material Girl" Monroe dress and two wore Madonna's 2013 Met Gala look. Interestingly, none of these duplicates went home Cynthia Lee Fontaine left this week.

Answer: Michelle Visage

Much to Michelle Visage's surprise, week eight featured another roast challenge (like in season 5) only this time the focus was her; she found out when the judging panel convened. The final eight ended up taking shots with mixed success but Peppermint won her first challenge with this one, being the last remaining queen to do so.

After a lipsync to Dolly Parton, Farrah Moan was the one eliminated in this week.

Answer: She didn't know the words

At the end of a challenge involving creating their own TV pilots as duos (or a trio), the lipsync at the end of the episode featured teammates Nina Bo'Nina Brown and Valentina, both of whom flopped with their improvised pilot for 'Nina and Tina'. As the music for Ariana Grande's "Greedy" started playing, the judges were shocked when Valentina refused to remove the mask for her club girl costume.

When she finally did, it was revealed that she didn't know the words to the lipsync. Ru eliminated her immediately after, creating one of the bigger upsets of the season.

Answer: Show crew members

In the tenth week of competition, the final six queens ended up getting the surprise of the makeover challenge only this year, Anastasia Beverly Hills was sponsoring them to makeover "RuPaul's Drag Race" crew members from behind the camera. After Shea and Sasha paired up the queens with their respective partners, what followed was a runway presentation in which the queens wore matching outfits and then performed a lipsync to RuPaul's song "Click Clack".

Shea Couleé and Nina Bo'Nina Brown were put into the bottom two and the latter was eliminated.

Answer: A rhythmic gymnastic routine

For the queens' ball challenge in the second-to-last week, the final five were expected to make three distinct looks for different themes. In Rainbow-She-Betta-Do, teams needed an outfit inspired by the rainbow flag. Then, the queens had to create a Sexy Unicorn look complete with hooves and horns.

In the last, they had to create a couture Village People Eleganza Extravaganza look. Additionally, the queens had to create a rhythmic gymnastics routine choreographed by mini-challenge winner Sasha Velour. Alexis Michelle sashayed away, leaving four queens to go to the semi-finals and, subsequently, the finals.

Answer: Sasha Velour

In the live finale, the final four competitors went head to head in one-on-one lipsync battles in front of the audience. After semi-final rounds in which Trinity Taylor and Shea Couleé were knocked out of contention, Sasha Velour and Peppermint battled it out to Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right, But It's Okay" and Velour walked away with the crown being the only queen from the season not to lipsync for her life until the finale (mirroring the feat of previous winners Tyra Sanchez, Bianca Del Rio, and Violet Chachki). Sasha won a one-year supply of Anastasia Beverly Hills cosmetics, the crown, the title, and $100,000.