On May 18, a day after the Star reported on a video of Mayor Rob Ford appearing to smoke a crack pipe, Toronto Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke posed five questions to the mayor on the Star’s front page:

Do you understand why this damning video requires a proper and thoughtful explanation?

Have you ever smoked crack cocaine?

How well do you know the men in Friday’s front-page photo? (The photo, provided to the Star by the man who was trying to broker the video sale, shows Ford flanked by three alleged gang members outside what police call a “crack house”: Anthony Smith, who was shot dead in March, and Muhammad Khattak and Monir Kassim, who were arrested in June’s Project Traveller drugs-and-guns raid.)

Did you call Justin Trudeau a homophobic slur?

Did you refer to your football team as “f---ing minorities”?

Ford has come closer than ever to answering question No. 1 after denying for months that the video existed. On Tuesday morning, he suggested that he couldn’t be sure what the video showed.

“There’s been times when I’ve been in a drunken stupor. That’s why I want to see the tape,” he said. “I don’t even recall there being a tape or a video, and I know that, so I want to see the state that I was in.”

He also provided a definitive answer to question No. 2 on Tuesday: “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine,” he told reporters at City Hall.

That leaves question No. 3. Ford still hasn’t explained his relationship with the men who appear in the photo; he and his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, have only said that he has his photo taken with lots of people.

Questions No. 4 and 5 also remain unanswered.