2014 KQA Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open Quiz Prelims

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The Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open Quiz

Prelims

Vivek + Venky

Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open 2014

1

Allan _________ was a Scottish poet in the first half of the 19th

century who among other things, contributed to the London Magazine. He edited The Works of Robert Burns in 1834, which contained new preface material drawing from his experiences when his father was Burns’ neighbour.

His son became an Indian Army Officer and acted as a deputy to Sir Mark Cubbon, the Chief Commissioner at Bangalore. Here, apart from playing an active role in developing the Horticultural Gardens at Lalbagh, the son undertook many constructions including the one he built for Sir Mark Cubbon in the nearby Nandi Hills and possibly, a large bungalow in Bangalore, known as the Balabrooie.

Fill in the blanks with his surname.

ANSWER


Cunningham

The son was Francis Cunningham


2

On February 22, 2002, conductor George Pehlivanian, X's neighbour and friend from Paris, was scheduled to lead the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra as a guest conductor. Deeply troubled by the news, he was initially reluctant to perform; however, he decided to go ahead with his concert rather than give in to the despair wrought by the evil inflicted on X.

In August 2002, in the spirit of X’s love for music, his family invited people across the globe to dedicate a musical event on the day he would have turned 39 years old - October 10, 2002. Thus, the seeds were planted for X World Music Days - now an entire month of worldwide "Harmony for Humanity" concerts. The 2014 edition just concluded.

Who is X?

ANSWER


Daniel Pearl


3

Which Indian cricketer completes the list and what is the list

about?

ANSWER


Mohammed Azharuddin

Centuries in first and last Test

The others were Reggie Duff, Bill Ponsford,

Greg Chappell


4

In the current Union Cabinet of Ministers, there are

four former CMs, apart from the Prime Minister. Two

are women.

Who are the two male former-CMs who are current

Cabinet Ministers?

ANSWER


DV Sadananda Gowda, Rajnath Singh

Railways, Home


*5

In this 1997 board game, each player guides a species of

primitive amoeba drifting through the ________ ____. The

player controls whether and how his amoebas move, eat

and procreate using the 10 biological points which she

receives each turn, and can buy “gene” cards to accelerate

progress.

The name of the game references a term proposed by

Soviet biologist Alexander Oparin in 1924, while trying to

explain the origin of life.

What’s the name/term?


5*

A group of lions is called a pride of lions. Similarly, a group

of owls is named after a type of regular meeting where

elected representatives meet and discuss policies and laws.

What is a group of owls called? The picture is a clue.

ANSWER


Primordial Soup


6

Which Asian capital city's name means “city of love”? From

1919 until 1927, the city was renamed Poltoratsk after a

local revolutionary. In 2013, the city was included in the

Guinness Book of Records as the city with the world's

highest concentration of white marble buildings.

ANSWER


Ashgabat

Capital of Turkmenistan


7

There is often confusion on how to pronounce the

name of this Italian brand. According to their website,

there is no correct way of pronouncing the word.

______ is a brand name with undefined national

identity. And that's the way we like it. As a literary

name, it was used by British travel writer Bruce Chatwin

in his book “The Songlines”, referred to the little ____

______ he usually bought from a stationery store in

Paris.

Which brand?

ANSWER


Moleskine


8

What message does this ad convey? Specific two words.


ANSWER


Don’t Spit


9

The Torta della Nonna is a popular Florentine

dessert. It is a double-crust tart filled with a

delicately flavoured pastry cream. It is ideally paired

with sweet strawberries and a glass of dessert wine.

What is the common English name for this dish?

ANSWER


Grandmother’s Cake


*10

Allan Eustace, senior vice president of knowledge at a

global corporation, was recently part of a project by

Paragon Space Development Corp. and its Stratospheric

Explorer team, whose goal is to develop a

self-contained commercial spacesuit. Mr Eustace had

planned it in the utmost secrecy, working for almost

three years with a small group of technologists and

carrying just two GoPro cameras during his effort.

Which company does Allan work for and whose 2012

effort did he eclipse?

ANSWER


Google

Felix Baumgartner


11

This is the red flower called Butea. The local name

for this flower gives its name to a town in India on

the banks of the Bhagirathi river. The town

witnessed a key event in Indian history. Either give

the local or the anglicized name of the town.

ANSWER


Palashi / Plassey


12

The train connecting Dadar and Mysore is named after a

river, which is one of the few rivers that flows westward in

India. The river originates at Ambutheertha, where it is

believed that Rama broke a bow to win the hand of Sita,

and leads to a natural formation that is the third highest of

its kind in India.

Name the train/river.

ANSWER


Sharavathi

Plunges 253m to form the Jog Falls


13

This is the extract of a training/promotional program that

this brand ran in order to train waiters at restaurants on

how not to provide the free glass of tap water that they

would normally give to patrons. After an internal document

outlining the success of this program leaked in 2001, and

went viral, the company withdrew.

Which company tried this program?


13

ANSWER


Coca Cola


14

The word originates from a mid 19th century English dialect

meaning, 'to soak a wooden vessel'. Since World War 1, the

sense of the term has extended to cover a particular

activity, which is the most familiar context.

Used these days also in reference to making a series of

investments or watching a number of TV show episodes

among others, it is a synonym of extremity in an endeavour.

What’s the word?

ANSWER


Binge


*15

One of the most sparsely populated territories in the world

with just 500,000 people across 266,000 sq.km., it was

occupied by Spain from the 19th century till 1975. After

Spain relinquished power, Mauritania and Morocco fought

a war over this region.

Four years later, Mauritania withdrew, but this territory is

still disputed with Morocco and the SADR both claiming

sovereignty. The UN today lists it under a list of 17 “Non

Self-Governing Territories”.

What is the two-word name of this region?

ANSWER


Western Sahara


16

This book details with the

acutely cheap labour in this

country, where women and

children work in impoverished

conditions to create clothes for

brands like Walmart, Benetton

and Gap, and bring in 70% of

the country’s forex. An

example of “poverty

literature”, which country does

this book deal with?

ANSWER


Bangladesh


17

Ben Edwin Perry was a professor of classics at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1924 to

1960. In an attempt to make some sense of the varied

sources of a particular work, Perry published a survey and

created an eponymous index of 725 narratives of an

Ancient Greek personality, after separating the Greek and

Latin pieces. The standard reference of scholars, what does

the Perry Index reference?

ANSWER


Aesop’s Fables


18

This is the 2014 Tamil-film, Pannaiyaarum Padminium. The

story revolves around the obsession and love of an old

landlord. Who or what is the object of his affection?

ANSWER


Fiat PAL Premier Padmini car


19

Though the cocktail is 19th century, the use of this word in

its name is older. It appears to derive from the Persian

gulab. By itself it was originally a syrup used to make

medicine easier to swallow.

It became part of a standard drink, possibly to mask the

flavour of rough whiskey back in the days.

What cocktail which has now become a tradition at Churchill

Downs?


ANSWER


Kentucky Mint Julep


*20

The place has seen several different dynasties rule over it,

starting with the Rashtrakutas, over to the Chalukyas and so

on. It finally came under Kakatiya control and then on to

the rulers from Delhi.

Originally a wealthy place, it was famed for its flower

gardens—which gave it the name X. In the recent set of

place names to be changed, it has been given the official

name Y, meaning ‘stone city’.

What are X and Y?

ANSWER


Gulbarga and Kalaburgi


21

Circa 1939. A retailer Montgomery Ward had been buying

and giving away colouring books every year, and decided

that making his own book would work well. So he

commissioned an artist Robert May to make one in story

form.

May had not seen the creature that he wanted to use in his

story. His story idea was initially rejected because the

character looked like it favoured frequent swigs of alcohol.

May’s friend Denver Glenn then made a cuter bouncy

character using zoo animals as models.

What resulted?

ANSWER


Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer

A red nose was closely associated

with alcoholism and drunkards


22

They became a regular ICC member in 1997 and have

proved their competitiveness ever since. Their first test was

against India in 2000.

But in all these years a particular thing has never happened.

This is ironic considering Jagmohan Dalmiya became ICC

president with their help.

What has not taken place, thereby not giving the said ICC

member a chance at improving their current 0-6 record?

ANSWER


No India-Bangladesh Test series in India

In all the 16 years that Bangladesh have been a Test playing

nation they have never been invited for a tour in India!

During this time we have seen eight different board

presidents.


23

One sense of this word is a person in a group who does not

do as much work as the others. In the case of these birds,

they were given the name from a French meaning—to go

by—because they lived in large migratory flocks.

Once the most abundant bird in North America, accounting

for more than a quarter of all birds, it became extinct in

1914.

What two-word name was this creature known by?


ANSWER


Passenger Pigeon


24

The 1964 Honda SuperHawk CB77 is a rather unremarkable

bike, and is Honda’s first sports model. Motorcycle

enthusiasts aside, others remember the model from its role

in a two-month trip from St. Paul, Minnesota to Petaluma,

California, in 1968. The trip resulted in something that saw

121 rejections before seeing light of day.

Either give a person’s name or give the result connected to

all this.


ANSWER


Robert M Pirsig

Zen and the

Art of Motorcycle Maintenance


*25

He was born Harold Herman Brix. He was an athlete first up

in his career. He competed in the 1926 Rose Bowl, and was

a track-and-field star. Two years later he won a silver in

shot-put at the 1928 Amsterdam Games.

In 1931 he broke his shoulder when filming a football film,

Touchdown. This incident was fortuitous for another person

who went on to make the most of it.

Who was the other guy, and what did he do?


ANSWER


Johnny Weissmuller

He starred in the Tarzan movies and

became a big star

Herman Brix also went on to star in Tarzan movies a few

years later.


26

In January 1850, after a trip to Lahore, Lord Dalhousie’s

wife stitched a chamois leather bag with a loop. It went

under Dalhousie’s belt, tucked under his waistband, and

was on his person day and night for an entire month.

When Dalhousie slept, two massive dogs, Baron and Banda,

were chained to his camp bed, bristling at the sight of

anyone approaching the Governor-General.

What was all this about?

ANSWER


Dalhousie was carrying the Kohinoor

After a trip to Lahore on his first visit as conqueror,

Dalhousie forced the eleven-year-old Maharajah Dalip

Singh to part with the diamond


27

Both words relate to law enforcement in the present-day

context, but in days of yore both related to men who took

care of horses.

The first word is from the Germanic elements of ‘horse’ and

‘servant,’ and denoted a high-ranking officer of state in

medieval times.

The second word from Old French denoted a head officer

of the place were horses were tethered and tended to.

What are the two words?

ANSWER


Marshall

Constable


28

This practice dates back to the Middle Ages. People at the

church used a staff—something akin to a bishop’s crozier—

which signified the person’s role as well. By the 17th century

other devices came into use. Rolled up sheets of paper and even

unadorned hands are seen in pictures from this period.

A large staff was responsible for the death of one Jean-Baptiste

Lully, who injured his foot while entertaining a king. The wound

became gangrenous. The man refused amputation, and he died

two months later.

What practice, that has amended a little in terms of how it is

done, which is just as well seeing what happened to Lully?

ANSWER


Using a baton to conduct an orchestra


29

This trophy for the game between Minnesota and

Wisconsin, one of the longest rivalries in NCAA Football was

instituted in 1948. What is it called, after a giant lumberjack

in American folklore?

ANSWER


Bunyan’s Axe


*30

It was always thought that they were suction pads, but

recent nanoscale photos show that they are covered in a

series of ridges. The ridges are tufted with billions of tiny

tubular elastic hairs, and the hairs bear even tinier spatula-

shaped boots. The natural force between atoms and

molecules is enough to stick the spatulas to the surface of

most anything.

What are we looking at?


ANSWER


A gecko’s foot

will also accept ‘a lizard’s foot’


31

These machines revolutionised exercises. In the words of

the inventor, Arthur Jones, the spiral cams that were

developed for the purpose of regulating the variations of

resistance provided by the machines, are unavoidably

appropriate. They closely resemble a type of shell fish with

a smooth, spiral, chambered shell. What are they called?


ANSWER


Nautilus


32

Rubens painted this theme several times. The story begins

at the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis to which all of the

gods were invited, all except Eris, the goddess of discord.

When she appeared at the festivities, she was turned away,

and in her anger cast a golden apple amongst the

assembled goddesses addressed “To the Fairest.” Three

goddesses laid claim to the apple--Aphrodite, Hera and

Athena. What did it lead to?


ANSWER


The Judgment of Paris

The three goddesses appearing before the shepherd prince,

each offering him gifts for favour. He chose Aphrodite,

swayed by her promise to bestow upon him Helen, the

most beautiful woman, for wife. The subsequent abduction

of Helen led directly to the Trojan War.


33

He was the second of the representatives to sign the

Japanese instrument of surrender on behalf of each of the

Allied Powers. ID the man briefing President Roosevelt, a

man who was in a class of his own.


ANSWER


Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz

after whom the Nimitz class of

nuclear-powered super-carriers is named


34

It made a comeback when Donovan released a hit rock

song in 1968. Although the song didn't feature an actual

___ ___ in the mix, the repeated reference in the song's

lyrics sparked a new curiosity. ID the instrument.

ANSWER


Hurdy Gurdy


*35

By what name, evoking memories of the how plates will look

after a sumptuous seafood lunch, are these patterns called?


ANSWER


Herringbone


36

On September 24, 1988, at Pusan, 450 kilometers from

Seoul, in very rough seas, two Singapore sailors were

thrown into the rough water. They were injured and unable

to right their damaged boat. Upon seeing the capsized

crew, another sailor Lawrence Lemieux, who was nearby,

sailed to rescue them.

Such stuff does not normally get a mention in the sports

pages, but in this case it did.

How do we know Lemieux, in conjunction with 22 others,

including Luz Long?

ANSWER


Winners of the Pierre de Coubertin medal

for sportsmanship

Finals in a few minutes…

Education

2014 KQA Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open Quiz Prelims