Following First - A quiz

FOLLOWING FIRST

Hari Parameswaran

Rules or some such…

◦ The questions or answers will be about people, things, places etc. that were second (or were, in general, not first), or followed a famous first, or were imitations/inspirations/remakes/reinterpretations, or some such thing

◦ Note that I will interpret and stretch the meaning of these terms to my convenience on occasion

◦ All answers are guessable, so please do

◦ There are no questions on Eratosthenes in this quiz

◦ All questions on bounce/pounce, with +10/-5

◦ All answers are guessable

◦ Order

◦ Written 6

◦ Clockwise 16

◦ Written 6

◦ AntiClockwise 16

Written-1

◦ The name of Professor Kushal Talaksi Shah is not as well known in Indian History as it should be.

◦ This playwright, politician and a professor of Economics was one of key member of the Constituent Assembly of India who helped shape the Indian Constitution.

◦ He also contested in the first Presidential Election, and came in second behind DrRajendra Prasad, getting 92,827 votes (as compared to 5,07,400 garnered by DrRajendra Prasad).

◦ The question is about the amendment no 98 proposed by him on 15th November 1948, where he asked for 3 words to be inserted in the then proposed Clause (1) of Article (1). This was opposed by Dr. Ambedkar who prevailed, stating that these were not appropriate to be laid down in the Constitution, and were also superfluous because they were covered in the Fundamental Rights and in Article IV.

One of these words was “Federal”. What were the other two?

Written -

◦ In 1951, “Ente Makananu Shari”, with lyrics by Punaloor Balan, and dealing with the ideological conflict between a progressive student leader and his conservative father, became the first.

◦ What, taking front stage at Chavara on Dec 6, 1952, was the more famous second?

Written - 3

◦ This is an excerpt from a tone poem by Richard Strauss for the Cello and Viola backed up by an orchestra.

<AUDIO REMOVED>

◦ Subtitled “Phantastische Variationen über ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters“, it is based on a work first published in 1605.

◦ The Solo cello in the work represents the protagonist of the aforementioned work, while the solo viola represent the character we are interested in, a character whose given name origins from the Latin for “saintly/holy“, and whose last name derives from the word for “belly“ or “paunch“.

◦ Who are we talking about?

Written - 4

◦ It is generally considered that the earliest Malayalam movie that had a sequel was one that came out in 1959, and was directed by P Subramaniam, with screenplay by Thikkurissi Sukumaran Nair (who also played a role).

◦ The sequel came out in 1979, with a lead actor who was far more famous in Tamil.

◦ However, the first Malayam movie that was a sequel was released in 1971. This was a sequel of a film released in 1966.

◦ Although neither of these were not advertised as sequels, everyone considered them as such.

◦ Interestingly, the titles of both of these sequels had the same word added to the title of the original movie (i.e. if the original movie was X, then the sequel was X’s ____”.

◦ Fill in the blank

Written - 5

◦ If he was the second who eventually was first, who was the first, in a sequence of events which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described in an invited article for the Daily Mail as “It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.”

◦ To set the matter to rest, the two battled twice again, both won by the man on the right.

◦ So who came second?

Written - 6

◦ What was the 1987 original? What was the name of the 2014 spinoff in the original language?

◦ Exchange Sheets

Written-1

◦ The name of Professor Kushal Talaksi Shah is not as well known in Indian History as it should be.

◦ This playwright, politician and a professor of Economics was one of key member of the Constituent Assembly of India who helped shape the Indian Constitution.

◦ He also contested in the first Presidential Election, and came in second behind DrRajendra Prasad, getting 92,827 votes (as compared to 5,07,400 garnered by DrRajendra Prasad).

◦ The question is about the amendment no 98 proposed by him on 15th November 1948, where he asked for 3 words to be inserted in the then proposed Clause (1) of Article (1). This was opposed by Dr. Ambedkar who prevailed, stating that these were not appropriate to be laid down in the Constitution, and were also superfluous because they were covered in the Fundamental Rights and in Article IV.

One of these words was “Federal”. What were the other two?

◦ Socialist and Secular

Written - 2

◦ In 1951, “Ente Makananu Shari”, with lyrics by Punaloor Balan, and dealing with the ideological conflict between a progressive student leader and his conservative father, became the first.

◦ What, taking front stage at Chavara on Dec 6, 1952, was the more famous second?

◦ Ningalenne Communistaki - The second play to be staged by Kerala People's Arts Club, and by far one of the most influential plays in Kerala

Written - 3

◦ This is an excerpt from a tone poem by Richard Strauss for the Cello and Viola backed up by an orchestra.

◦ Subtitled “Phantastische Variationen über ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters“, it is based on a work first published in 1605.

◦ The Solo cello in the work represents the protagonist of the aforementioned work, while the solo viola represent the character we are interested in, a character whose given name origins from the Latin for “saintly/holy“, and whose last name derives from the word for “belly“ or “paunch“.

◦ Who are we talking about?

◦ Sancho Panza

Written - 4

◦ It is generally considered that the earliest Malayalam movie that had a sequel was one that came out in 1959, and was directed by P Subramaniam, with screenplay by Thikkurissi Sukumaran Nair (who also played a role).

◦ The sequel came out in 1979, with a lead actor who was far more famous in Tamil.

◦ Now, the first sequel to be released was in 1971, a sequel of a film released in 1966.

◦ Although neither of these were not advertised as sequels, everyone considered them as such.

◦ Interestingly, the titles of both of these sequels had the same word added to the title of the original movie (i.e. if the original movie was X, then the sequel was X’s ____”.

◦ Fill in the blank

◦ Makan

◦ The first movie to have a sequel was “Aana Valarthiya Ambaadi”

◦ The first sequel was “Kayamkulam Kochunniyude Makan”

Written - 5

◦ If he was the second who eventually was first, who was the first, in a sequence of events which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described in an invited article for the Daily Mail as “It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.”

◦ To set the matter to rest, the two battled twice again, both won by the man on the right.

◦ So who came second?

◦ Dorando Pietri

Written - 6

◦ What was the original? What was the name of the 2014 spinoff in the original language?

Clockwise round

Clockwise - 1

◦ In “Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers”, Shashi Tharoor reflects on authors who were diplomats, and calls out two names from the Indian diplomats.

◦ The first is Nina Sibal, who was posted in Cairo and Paris, and later deputed to UNESCO, for her two novels, out of which he specifically mentions “Yatra”.

◦ The second name he calls out started out his literary career with short stories after being influenced by Gogol’s “Evening in a village near Dinkaka”, before joining the IFS in 1965. Before retiring in 2001, he served as a diplomat in Brussels, Cairo and Rangoon, and later as the Indian High Commissioner to Jamaica and Singapore, and then the Ambassador to Mozambique.

◦ Who is this second author?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ B M C Nair (Mohanachandran)

2◦ The Summer Olympics have been held in 22 different cities, with London having hosted

3 of them).But we are not very interested in the cities that won in this quiz, but in the cities that have not hosted the Summer Olympics despite bidding for it multiple times.

◦ In this category, a North American city stands out with its failed 7 attempts, coming in ahead of Toronto, Budapest and Istanbul (5 failed attempts each). The city first tried for the (later cancelled) 1944 games, and then continuously from 1952 to 1972, but failed each time.

◦ This city, which takes its name from the French for a narrow body of water, was the fifth largest in its country from the 1920s to the 40s, but began a rapid decline from the 80s, dropping from being the 6th largest to being the 18th largest today.

◦ Name it.

◦ This 1951 stamp commemorates the founding of the city.Name the person in the foreground.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Detroit

◦ Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac

3

◦ Considering a certain property of elements, it is generally agreed that the element with atomic number 76 is the first in this regard.

◦ However, if you use the space lattice method then the element that is otherwise held to be the second comes out on top (and which is why IUPAC has no official answer for this).

◦ At any rate, the element that is generally considered to be second was discovered in 1803, and was named after someone from Greek Mythology.

◦ There is a part of the human body named after this character, who is sometimes depicted as carrying a caduceus. This character plays the role of a divine messenger in the Illiad, and is also referred to with the epithet Podas ôkea (swift footed).

◦ Which element? Which property?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Iridium, held to be the second most dense element after Osmium

4

◦ Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen was the first one, starting out in 1663 and lasting for 5 years.

◦ The generic term now used didn't show up till 1731 in London.

◦ Later, Edward Cave (who also set up what was likely the first water-powered spinning mill in the world), used the word for the first time in this context with his venture that started out in 1731.

◦ This venture had the motto "E pluribus unum", a reference to the many sources.

◦ The term in question was also used as a reference to the same, in terms of a place where things from different sources were kept.

◦ What generic term are we talking about?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Magazine

5◦ When it became clear to the Congress in 1945 that the AITUC was overwhelmingly

controlled by the communists, and INC saw that there was no way it could be under their control, they decided to get into the game themselves.

◦ With his background in working with unions (he had been the labor minister in the Bombay Government, and was instrumental in getting the Bombay Industrial Disputes Act through), he was the natural choice for leading the effort, and he was instrumental in setting up the INTUC as a result.

◦ Name this Punjabi Hindu who served, among other things, as the Chairperson of the Planning Commission, Minister of Home Affairs, and Minister of External Affairs.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

6

◦ The highest (and largest) plateau in the world is the so called “roof of the world” – the Tibetan Plateau.

◦ The second highest plateau is the Deosai Plateau in northern Pakistan.

◦ In his book shown on the right, French ethnologist Michel Peissel states that the animal shown here, found on the Deosai plateau, was the one being talked about in a tale that was popular throughout Greece and later Europe for a long time, specifically the habit of tribes like the Minaro to collect something from their burrows.

◦ The tale described them as “'bigger than a fox, though not so big as a dog'‘, though the term used referred to a much smaller animal.

◦ What tale? For bonus points, identify the animal shown here.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ The “gold-digging ants of the Indies” described by Herodotus

◦ This is the golden Himalayan Marmot

7

◦ Hermann Emil Fischer was the second person to win the Nobel in Chemistry. He won in 1902 – “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his work on sugar and purine syntheses". A two part question on him

◦ The image on the right shows a technique that is associated with him. What is it used for?

◦ He, along with Joseph von Mering, was the first to discover the medical properties of a class of chemicals which had been first identified in 1864. This class got its name either from a saint who has a feast day on Dec 14, or the person who gave the sample which led to the first isolation. In either case, the name originates from the Greek for “foreigner”. Which class of chemicals?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ The Fischer Projection is used to provide a 2-D representation of complex carbohydrates which preserves their structural properties

◦ Barbiturates

8

◦ This is Dali’s “Retrospective Bust of a Woman” sculpture/assemblage.

◦ The “ingredients” used were painted porcelain, bread, corn, sand, and a zoetrope strip.

◦ The piece was constructed around an inkstand, on top of which was placed a replica of a painting that Dali regarded as a marvelous example of sexual repression.

◦ Which painting, completed in 1857, was Dali’s inspiration here?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ The Angelus – Jean-Francois Millet

9

◦ “From me to you” was the first Beatles song to reach number 1 on the UK chart.

◦ The question is about their second number 1 on the UK charts. It was a much more popular song, and was ranked 64 in Rolling Stones list of “500 greatest songs of all time”. It was also the Beatles all-time best selling single of all time in the UK.

◦ About the part that John Lennon put in after being inspired by Elvis Presley’s “All shook up”, Paul McCartney called up his father at home as soon as they finished the song, his father asked if they couldn’t use the word “Yes” instead of the American term actually used. The same part got used in multiple articles and headlines, and political speeches and edicts that talked about eschewing Western music.

◦ Which song?

◦ Also, which reversal from the standard practice until then (for Beatles songs) started with this song?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ “She Loves You (Yeah Yeah Yeah)

◦ The songs were shown as written by Lennon-McCartney, as opposed to McCartney-Lennon as done before

9

John Fletcher, who followed William Shakespeare as the house playwright for the King’s Men, is thought to have collaborated with Shakespeare on at-least 3 plays (Henry VIII, The two Nobel kinsmen, and Cardenio).

He also wrote a play – “The Woman’s Prize, or the Tamer Tamed” – as a sequel to “The taming of the shrew”.

In this play, Katherina is dead, and Petruchio is married to Maria, a lady who rivals Katherina in temper. Petruchio tries his usual tricks but they don’t work this time around. Indeed, Maria turns the table and resorts to a technique that was also used in Aristophane’s Lysistrata, where this techniques is shown to be used as an attempt to end the Peloponnesian war.

The same technique was used in 2006 in Pereira, Colombo, and is believed to be a reason for the murder rate declining by 26.5% by 2010. Liberia saw success using this technique too.

What technique are we talking about?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Sex strike/boycott

10

◦ The first one, which was 22 feet high, appeared in London in 1868. It was the brainchild of a railway engineer named John Peake Knight. It was removed in 1869 because of an explosion which injured a policeman.

◦ Later versions of it appeared in Paris, and in various other places in the world, but the one that most closely resembles the systems used today appeared in Detroit, the brainchild of William L Potts, who used materials from the railroads and about 37 dollars of other items to come up with it.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ The first traffic signal that had automatic lights and 3 signals (Red Amber and Green). All previous systems had 2 signals – for stop and go.

11

◦ Robert Marshak was a physicist who worked with his advisor, Hans Bethe, to come up the theory of Nuclear Fusion in the formation of stars. He is also the person who first hypothesized about the pi-meson.

◦ In 1957, he and his student proposed had come up with a theory about weak interactions, but were confused because a lot of the experimental evidence seemed to indicate their theory was incorrect. A few months later, they were in California where they met the experimental physicist Felix Boehm for lunch, and Felix indicated that current results indicated their theory was correct.

◦ However, there was another person at the table, who scrambled and worked with Feynman to propose the idea before Marshak and his student did. Feynman acknowledged the debt.

◦ Name both the famous usurper who apparently had a bent towards the literary when it came to naming things, and the student, one who missed out on glory in other occasions too.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Murray Gell-Mann

◦ E C G Sudershan

12◦ The first known circumnavigation around the world can be

said to be that done by Juan Sebastian Elcano, part of Magellan’s expedition, and the first circumnavigation under one leader is by Francis Drake’s 1577 expedition.

◦ One of the subsequent successful effort, and among the earliest to complete it in an eastern direction from Europe was launched in 1585, with the last part being done as a prisoner of the Spanish.

◦ The leader of this expedition claimed to have discovered a land mass north of Japan. There were several attempts to find this land, and indeed, one of the prime aims of the Russian “Great Northern Expedition” led by Vitus Bering was to find and map this land.

◦ His more famous grandfather was the protagonist of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Opera “L’Afrocaine” and an antagonist in a 2011 movie.

◦ Name him, or the land.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ João da Gama

13◦ Way before books like “In cold blood”, this 19th century had penned books on true

crimes and mysteries in his series of books that were characterized as Les Crimes célèbres.

◦ In the sixth volume of this series, he presented a case that he elaborated later in one of his works, a novel that was itself third in a series.

◦ Given the fame and recognition of the title, most people think that this tale is a standalone work. In reality, it was just the third part in this third novel in the sequence. The confusion of it being a standalone book may be because the original novel was huge, with 268 chapters. As a consequence, the English edition was released in 3 parts, and the third part was given this title.

◦ This title was also used for several films that borrowed plot elements from the book, including a 1929 version starring Douglas Fairbanks.

◦ The 1998 movie version also saw the star of the movie get the Raspberry for Worst Movie combo, given to the worst screen pairing or cast. Normally given to two people, he got the award all by himself.Name the “book”/movie?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

14

◦ Yohan Blake, the Jamaican athlete, has two seconds to his name. He is the holder of being the second fastest ever to run100 meters (9.69, along with Tyson Gay). He also has the second fastest 200m to his credit (19.26 seconds).

◦ He is a keen cricketer, and wanted to play for the West Indies at one time, and has also recently expressed interest to play with RCB.

◦ On 16 Aug 2012, he became the first person not officially associated with cricket to do something, by taking part in a tradition that was first done by Peter Baxter in 2007.

◦ What?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ First person not associated with cricket to ring the bell at Lords

15

◦ If you leave aside enclaves and oversea territories, and put aside mythical constructs like the Ram Setu, and the Spain-Morocco sandbar separation that was unearthed (pun intended) by a 1930 earthquake, Vatican city would still not qualify as the shortest border with another country, but would come in second place.

◦ The shortest border as accepted is a mere 0.15 km long, and is between two countries that appear in a group of 4 in quiz questions.

◦ Name the two countries in question.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Botswana and Zambia

16

◦ Till quite recently the most popular sense of this term was in the world of computers. In computing, this term was taken from another phrase which refers to a seemingly impossible task. Most sources say that the first usage of this latter phrase came from the stories of Baron Munchausen, where the Baron talks about rescuing himself and his horse from a swamp using such a technique.

◦ An associated word, which was also associated with computers, is now getting used in the world of entertainment. In this context, it first appeared in the world of comics, and then started getting used in the film industry.

◦ What term in the entertainment word are we talking about?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Reboot

Back to Writtens…

◦ 6 questions

Written - 7

◦ If you look at the list of bestselling cars ever, the first American model is the Ford F-Series coming in at number 2, and Ford Escort coming in at number 5.

◦ There are two other American cars in the top 10 list, with Ford coming in again at number 8 with 16.5 million sold, and Chevrolet breaking in to the list at number 10 with 14 million of their model sold.

◦ Neither of them were ever sold in India, but both are well-known names in India, the latter thanks to Bollywood.

◦ Name both.

Written - 8◦ Kurt Gödel shot to fame by solving David Hilbert’s 2nd problem,

showing that axiomatic systems of mathematics cannot be shown to be consistent or complete within the system.

◦ In the early 1940s he sought to tackle another problem, a problem that many had wrestled with earlier. Gödel took the approach that was first taken by Anselm of Canterbury, and elaborated later by Leibniz.

◦ Gödel resolved the problem to his satisfaction – a simplified form is shown on the right. However, he never told anyone about it, releasing it only in 1970 when he thought he was dying. His fear was that people may not understand that he was “only engaged in a logical investigation”, and “showing that such a proof with classical assumptions (completeness, etc.) correspondingly axiomatized, is possible”.

◦ In 2013, German newspapers came up with misleading headlines when two researchers used a computer to prove that the proof was correct.

◦ What was his proof about?

Written - 9

◦ This was the replacement

<VIDEO OF “Ali Baba” from Agneepath Removed>

◦ What was the original, which Mukul Anand felt would not go well with Amitabh’s character in the movie. He went on to use it in his next movie, and the song, which could be interpreted as an exhortation for a kiss from from one of the days of the week, proved to be a superhit.

◦ Name the song.

Written 10

◦ For a long time, this “first” for FIFA World Cup was awarded to Guillermo Stábile, for his match against Mexico in 1930.

◦ In 2006 FIFA announced that he was actually the second, and that the first was the American Bert Patenaude, against Paraguay.

◦ Give me a term that is more much more prevalent and common in sports like cricket to described this achievement.

Written 11

◦ In northern parts of India (especially in Punjab), this type of nose-stud is called using a term that originates from the resemblance of the ornament to the flower buds of the Syzygium aromaticum.

◦ What are they called in that part of India, as referenced to in a song from the Akshay Kumar starrer “Patiala House”?

Written 12

◦ In 2013, IBNLive did a poll to find out what were considered to be the India’s greatest films to date.

◦ Mayabazaar topped the list, and 4 Malayalam movies made it to the top 10, including Manichitrathazhu at number 2, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha at number 3, and Vanaprastham.

◦ The name of the fourth Malayalam movie on the list refers to an insect of the order Odonata and suborder Anisoptera.

◦ The title refers to the traditional belief that spotting these insects near the ground is indicative of a change of weather.

◦ Which movie?

◦ Exchange Papers…

Written - 7

◦ If you look at the list of bestselling cars ever, the first American model is the Ford F-Series coming in at number 2, and Ford Escort coming in at number 5.

◦ There are two other American cars in the top 10 list, with Ford coming in again at number 8 with 16.5 million sold, and Chevrolet breaking in to the list at number 10 with 14 million of their model sold.

◦ Neither of them were ever sold in India, but both are well-known names in India, the latter thanks to Bollywood.

◦ Name both.

◦ Ford Model T

◦ Chevy Impala

Written - 8◦ Kurt Gödel shot to fame by solving David Hilbert’s 2nd problem,

showing that axiomatic systems of mathematics cannot be shown to be consistent or complete.

◦ In the early 1940s he sought to tackle another problem, a problem that many had wrestled with earlier. Gödel took the approach that was first taken by Anselm of Canterbury, and elaborated later by Leibniz.

◦ Gödel resolved the problem to his satisfaction – a simplified form is shown on the right. However, he never told anyone about it, releasing it only in 1970 when he thought he was dying. His fear was that people may not understand that he was “only engaged in a logical investigation”, and “showing that such a proof with classical assumptions (completeness, etc.) correspondingly axiomatized, is possible”.

◦ In 2013, German newspapers came up with misleading headlines when two researchers used a computer to prove that the proof was correct.

◦ What was his proof about?

Written - 9

◦ This was the replacement

◦ What was the original, which Mukul Anand felt would not go well with Amitabh’s character in the movie. He went on to use it in his next movie, and the song, which could be interpreted as an exhortation for a kiss from from one of the days of the week, proved to be a superhit.

◦ Name the song.

◦ Jumma Chumma De De from “Hum”

Written 10

◦ For a long time, this “first” for FIFA World Cup was awarded to Guillermo Stábile, for his match against Mexico in 1930.

◦ In 2016 FIFA announced that he was actually the second, and that the first was the American Bert Patenaude, against Paraguay.

◦ Give me a term that is more much more prevalent and common in sports like cricket to described this achievement.

◦ As a clue, the first time an Indian achieved this was in 1987 (and 2001 if you want to look at test cricket).

Written 11

◦ In northern parts of India (especially in Punjab), this type of nose-stud is called using a term that originates from the resemblance of the ornament to the flower buds of the Syzygium aromaticum.

◦ What are they called in that part of India, as referenced to in a song from the Akshay Kumar starrer “Patiala House”?

◦ Laung

Written 12

◦ In 2013, IBNLive did a poll to find out what were considered to be the India’s greatest films to date.

◦ Mayabazaar topped the list, and 4 Malayalam movies made it to the top 10, including Manichitrathazhu at number 2, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha at number 3, and Vanaprastham.

◦ The name of the fourth Malayalam movie on the list refers to an insect of the order Odonata and suborder Anisoptera.

◦ The title refers to the traditional belief that spotting these insects near the ground is indicative of a change of weather.

◦ Which movie?

◦ Thoovanathumbikal

Anticlockwise Rounds

1◦ Both the first Super Bowl, and the second one were won by the Green Bay Packers. In

the second one, the losing team were the Raiders, and this question is dedicated to Oakland, who came second in the second Super Bowl.

◦ These are two sculptures, one in downtown Oakland, and the other on the Oakland/Berkeley border.

◦ What’s the literary reference from 1937 here (or there)?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

Ans

◦ Gertrude Stein’s reference to an Oakland neighborhood – “There is no there there”

2

◦ Out of the total of 32 UNESCO World Heritage sites in this particular country, the first one was featured in a Sherlock Holmes novel.

◦ It is, however, the second World Heritage site in that country that we are interested in. More than two millennia old, it was rediscovered by British Officer John Smith on 28 April, 1819.

◦ A map of the site is given here. Name it.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Ajanta Caves

3

◦ The 1983 Booker Prize was a close battle between two books, one of them being J M Coetzee’s “Life and Times of Michael K”. The two books were drawn and the decision was left to the chair Fay Weldon.

◦ She had chosen the other book, but changed her mind as she was phoning in the result, giving the prize to Coetzee.

◦ The book that lost did get acclaims, but, as the NYT review put it – “It is probably easier to play croquet (as in ''Alice in Wonderland'') with flamingos as mallets and hedgehogs as balls than to give a coherent plot summary of _____”

◦ The book was set in a town called “Q” (and the real life place is obvious given the story), and focused on the relation between two characters, members of the Harappa and Hyder family respectively.

◦ Book, and real life inspirations, please

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Raza Hyder, inspired by Zia-ul-Haq

◦ Iskandar Harappa, inspired by Bhutto

4

◦ Out of the 12 people who won the EGOT awards in competitive categories, Richard Rodgers was the first.

◦ The question is about one who came later, starting out on the EGOT journey in 1961 with a Grammy for the album shown below (the only one in this list to start out with one) and completing it in 2012.

◦ Who are we talking about?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Mike Nichols

5

◦ For some reason, Kudhiravattam is reading a German novel in “Minnaram”. The novel – “Flug in Gefahr” - is a translation of the novelization of the teleplay that Arthur Hailey wrote, and which resulted in a 1956 Canadian television movie starring James Doohan (that’s “Scotty” to you). The novelization was done by Hailey and John Castle

◦ In 1957, it was adapted into the movie “Zero Hour!” starring Dana Andrews.

◦ What 1980 movie, frequently voted as among the best of its genre, took its plot and characters from “Zero Hour!”?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

6◦ 2013 was proclaimed as the year to honor a particular family in their country of

origin, and specifically to honor a father and his two sons from that family.

◦ Constantijn was the eldest son of, and was named after, a well known poet and a statesman of the time.

◦ He himself had some small fame in politics, being the secretary to two regents, besides being an accomplished poet and musician. His diaries, comprising of 1500 pages across seven volumes, about the happenings in the court are considered to be as important as those of Pepys.

◦ Today, most people only remember the younger son, who, among other things, came up with a rudimentary internal combustion piston engine used to water the Versailles Palace gardens, and who has an ESA probe named after him.

◦ Name the family in which this lesser known brother was born.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Huygens

7

◦ The critical success and sales of this book led the industrial design firm Loewy and Snaith to contact Dmitri Borgmann to invent brand names for the client companies.

◦ It was he who then came up with a five letter name that was used by one of their client companies as their new name. He was paid 10000 USD for that work, leading some to say that at 2000 per letter, he was the highest paid writer in history.

◦ Which corporate giant got its new name thus.

◦ Secondly, what complex linguistic construct was seen for the first time in this book, with the current popular version being created independently by William Rapaport many years later.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

8

◦ Connect both of these debuts

◦ The novel by Kamel Daoud, an Algerian writer and Journalist which won the Goncourt du Premier Roman (the Goncourt prize for first novel)

◦ The debut single by the Cures heard below

◦ http://www.nospoiler.com/y/SdbLqOXmJ04

ANSWER FOLLOWS

8

◦ Both inspired by L’Étranger◦ Meursault, Contre-enquête imagines the backdrop of the

Arab killed by Meursault

◦ The song “Killing an Arab” was “"was a short poetic attempt at condensing my impression of the key moments in L'Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus” according to Robert Smith of The Cure

9◦ It is of course a much older tale. The original work is lost, and the earliest recension we

know of it is in a 11th century collection.

◦ The first English version was by Sir Richard Burton. In the preface to the Memorial edition, Isabel Burton, who acted as the editor, introduced the tale as being “the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which inspired the “Golden Ass” of Apuleius, Boccacio’s “Decamerone” and all that class of facetious fictitious literature” (This is but a distillation of what Sir Richard himself says in the preface to the first edition).

◦ Sir Richard translates the name of the protagonist as “Sun of Victory”.

◦ The edition had illustrations like the ones below. Name the tale.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Betal Pachisi

10

◦ The key word in this biological two-word term came from earlier word that meant “riding on horseback as a form of exercise”, and which in turn came from the Medieval Latin term for “achievement” or “exploits” (there are many cognates in English and French from this root even today).

◦ The “record” associated with the biological term is shared by Virginia Opossum, the rare water Opossum and the Eastern native Cat of Australia.

◦ The second in the list is Mesocricetus auratus - a colorblind and nearsighted animal that is unusually solitary (and indeed, that’s how most of them have seen them).

◦ The entire population of these animals extant today seem to have descended from a single brother-sister pairing, from littermates imported in 1930 from Aleppo by Israel Aharoni at the University of Jerusalem.

◦ What term are we talking about? Which animal?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Gestation Period

◦ Golden/Syrian Hamster

11◦ If you look at the list of oldest pages on Wikipedia (starting from 17

January 2001), many of the first focused on musical artistes of the day, the constitutions of USA and of Japan, and movie directors. The first fictional character appeared on 22 Feb 2001 – an entry on “Betty Pope” stating simply that “Betty Pope was a mean lady”.

◦ On 27 February, a slew of additional characters from the same work of fiction showed up, including entries for “Mystery Worker”, “Newsstand owner”, “Bartender”, “Bum number 1” (as the character whose statement opens the book), “Board of Directors”, “Conductor” etc.

◦ Identify this book, about which screenwriter John Rogers has quipped that it was one of “two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life”, the other being “Lord of the Rings”.

◦ For the second part, identify the 2007 video Game, considered to be one of the best games of all time, that was inspired from the same source. The game is set in 1960, and explores a world that is based on the ideas in the book in question.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

12

◦ The song and images are from the 2010 production of a musical called “Shine!”. The primary inspiration is a Bildungsroman that was published in a serialized form in 1867, and which is considered to be among the most influential American works published before 1900. Identify it.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Horatio Alger, Jr.’s “Ragged Dick”

13

◦ When you consider the oldest national flags still in use, the first one is from Denmark, and the second oldest is the flag of the Netherlands.

◦ There is this story about how the Dutch flag was related to the flag another country. The latter country’s own flag was not allowed to be flown in at the time. In 1945, the military contingent – the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration – put up the Dutch flag on what was then called Hotel Yamato.

◦ In a historical incident that happened on 19 September, 1945, revolutionaries stormed the Hotel Yamato, and tore away the bottom part of the Dutch flag, and the resulting part was their own flag.

◦ Which country?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Indonesia

14

◦ In 2000, the Fuji Research Institute, polled 2000 adults in the Tokyo region to find out what they thought were the greatest inventions of the 20th century in the areas of manufactured goods, culture and technology.

◦ Instant Noodles topped the polls, with 692 of the respondents placing it as the greatest 20th century invention. The films of Akira Kurosawa came in at number 7, and sushi closed the list at 10th place.

◦ In keeping with the theme of the quiz, identify the item on the right that got the second place in this poll.

◦ I need both the blanked out part, and what it is.

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Juke

◦ Karaoke

15◦ If you look at Dictionaries or Encyclopedias of World Mythology, and skip to words

starting with the second letter ‘B’ – the first entry tends to be “ba”, the soul of a person in Egyptian mythology.

◦ The second entry deals with a mythological entity from the near east whose name is mentioned in the Old Testament. The name meant “lord” or “owner/possessor” in the Northwest Semitic languages, and was used as a generic name for many gods of rain, agriculture and fertility.

◦ When the followers of a god settled down and took possession of a region, that god was given this appellation. One of these was also worshiped as the supreme god in Carthage during the 5th c BCE. Some early Hebrew scriptures also use this name as a synonym for Yahweh.

◦ However, the name began to get deprecated as the newer religions began to dominate and this name began to take negative connotations.

◦ Name?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Ba’al

◦ The Philistine god of Ekron, Ba’al Zebub, went on in a modified form Beelzebub.

16

◦ The second Indo-Pakistan war in 1965 had one civilian VIP casuality – Balwantrai Mehta, who was the second chief minister of Gujarat.

◦ He was flying to the Kutch border in a Beechcraft for a political meeting, when the plane was shot down by PAF pilot Qais Hussein, who mistook it for a recon aircraft (in 2011, he wrote a letter to the daughter of the Beechcraft pilot admitting his mistake).

◦ The question is about the committee he chaired in 1957 – the committee proposed the establishment of a system of democratic decentralization.

◦ By what name is this scheme commonly known now?

ANSWER FOLLOWS

◦ Panchayati Raj

That’s all Folks….