January 2015 Quiz

Anything goes…

QM: Sridhar Babu

Anything goes• 10 questions regarding any topic at all (mixed bag)

• 10 points for correct answer for direct question

• 5 points for passed question

• No negative marks

• Sequence of passing: anti-clockwise

• Direct question will be addressed to the person next to whoever answered the previous one

• If nobody answers, direct question will be addressed to the next person in sequence

Anything goes…Question 1• The first one was for an astonishing new method

and apparatus discovered in the production of potash and pearl ash

• The second for a special process of making candles

• While there were just 3 in the first year (1790), there 3,02,948 in 2013

• What is being talked about? Keep in mind, there are veritable wars fought over these

• Patents

Anything goes…Question 2• Back in the day, animation was an artist’s job, and not a

computer’s. Every tiny detail of a cartoon had to be drawn painstakingly and meticulously some 30 to 40 thousand times, and omitting some small details or altering them to make things ‘easier to draw’ would not only make cartoonists breathe a sigh of relief but also potentially saved millions of dollars in man hours

• This is the norm rather than the exception even now, when animation is computer dominated. So much so, that in “The Simpsons”, God is the only character not to share this characteristic.

• What is being talked about?

• Cartoon characters are drawn with 4 fingers

Anything goes…Question 3• 74 sculptors and architects are rumoured to have

competed for designing this tomb

• Which Victoria Cross recipient’s tomb is this?

• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Anything goes…Question 4• Shown here is the cover of “Psmith,Journalist”,

a novel by PG Wodehouse, which continues the adventures of his much loved character, Psmith

• Famous in its own right, what is perhaps its (probably inadvertent) most famous impact on popular culture?

• “Elementary, my dear Watson”

Anything goes…Question 5• P and Q are a complex example of a tool set (some

extremely basic complementary tool sets: needle and thread, fishing rod and line, hammer and chisel)

• Their making requires no less than 22 raw materials like glue, wood, etc and 10 different tools

• This set was one of the earliest examples of tools being used to create tools, and is often credited with being key to humans aggregating in colonies

• What are P and Q?

• Bow and Arrow

Anything goes…Question 6• ________ is a black comedy that turns into a

tragedy that emerged from the Second World War

• Interestingly, a specific situation was named after the book

• To accomplish task A, one needs object B. However the only reason one needs to complete task A is to obtain object B

• This is an example of a ________ situation

• Fill in the Blanks

• Catch 22

Anything goes…Question 7• Guglielmo Marconi missed it as he had some

paperwork to do

• William Hershey missed it due to personal reasons

• JP Morgan missed it because he wanted to spend some more time in a French resort

• They all missed something in the early 1900s. Had they not missed this thing, their business and for that matter, the course of their lives would have been completely different

• What did they all miss?

• Titanic

Anything goes…Question 8• In 2008, Turkey’s 3rd largest town planned to sue Warner

Bros. for using the town’s name without prior permission

• According to Hussain Kalkan, the mayor of this town “There is only one X in this world. The American producer used the name without informing us.”

• The town in Turkey takes it’s name from a unit of weight in Turkish and is way older than the character of the same name who debuted in 1939

• Identify X and hence name this famous character

• BATMAN

Anything goes…Question 9

• The pictures above are of US patent 5255452. Identify the patent holder and the function of the invention

• Michael Jackson : Methods and Means for Creating the "anti-gravity illusion"

Anything goes…Question 10• This is the only movie on IMDb.com wherein the

rating goes upto 11

• Which movie and why is it so?

• “This is Spinal Tap” - A nod to the fact that the band's amps go up to 11