General Quiz

By

Chinmay & Jitaditya

The Foreplay

1.

• W Somerset Maugham – Paul Gauguin (Moon & Six Pence)– Shloka from Katha Upanishashad (Razor’s Edge)– Map of Lambeth (Liza of Lambeth)– Cake & Ale– Of Human “Baondage”

• It happened in the early 60’s . Because of this a number of Central and State ministers like Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jagjivan Ram, Morarji Desai and S.K. Patil had to resign from their posts. A few Chief Ministers also had to resign ....So what was this “phenomenon” ?

2.

• Kamaraj Plan– When senior congress leaders were asked to

resign from their posts and concentrate in strengthening the party

• In a postcard to his friend, he (during the 1920s) listed six New Year wishes: – Prove the Riemann hypothesis– Make 211 not out in the fourth innings of the last Test

Match at Oval– Find an argument for the non-existence of God which shall

convince the general public– Be the first man at the top of Mount Everest – Be proclaimed the first president of the USSR or of Great

Britain and Germany– murder Mussolini.

• But we know him for some other reasons!

3.

• G H Hardy, Ramanujan’s mentor

4.

• Bhopa Gas Tragedy– Methyl Isocyanate (MIC)– Dominique Lapierre & Javier Moro (It was Five

Past Midnight in Bhopal)– Sevin, the flagship pesticide brand of the UC

factory– Mahesh Mathai (Director, Bhopal Express)

• This film opens at a railway crossing where a man is about to kill his wife when the narrative spins into the past via a song. A circular story, told in flasback. It was directed by a German born director who later went on to join Nazi party and had to go back to Germany as WWII drew near.So name the film (Bonus for the director’s name)

5.

• Achhut Kanya (1936) starring Ashok Kumar & Devika Rani

• Director: Franz Osten

• Margaux and Mariel were two sisters who made their debut in a critical and commercial disaster X. But they are more famous because of their illustrious grandfather Y. In fact Margaux tragically emulated her grandfather in 1996.

• X was lifted in bollywood as Z by B R Chopra & it had a better response than the original. It also contained a certain scene that received cult status in many engineering campuses.

• So name X, Y & Z

6.

• X= Lipstick• Y= Ernest Hemingway, Margaux also

committed suicide thus emulating him• Z=Insaaf Ka Tarazu

7.

• Valkyrie – Valkyrie’s Vigil, by Edward Robert Hughes – Paolo Coelho– Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Operation

Valkyrie)– Valkyrie (comicbook character)– Statue of a Valkyrie by Stephan Sinding in

Copenhagen – Music: Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner

Give me X & Y• Kypria • X• Aethiopis• Little X• Iliou persis • Nostoi • Y• Telegony

8.

• X= Iliad• Y= Odyssey

– The complete epic cycle consisted of many other books which are now mostly lost

9.

• Kon-Tiki– Thor Heyerdahl.Kon-Tiki is the raft used by Heyerdahl in

his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands. It was named after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.

– In Inca mythology, Apu Qun Tiqsi Wiraqutra, commonly known today as Con-Tici Viracocha or simply Viracocha, was the creator of civilization, and one of the most important deities in the Inca pantheon.

– Coat of arms of Peru, from where Heyerdahl started the journey

– Flag of Tuamotus or the Tuamotu Archipelago. Heyerdahl travelled up to this island.

One Word Connect…………

10.

• Naxal– Naxalbari Village in Darjeeling district– Kanu Sanyal– Charu Mazumdar

11.• Nelson Mandela explained X as follows;

“ A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of X but it will have various aspects. X does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?

So what is X?

• Ubuntu (philosophy)

12.

• Bofors– SAAB AB & BAE Systems now owns two parts of

Bofors– Journalist Chitra Subramaniam who revealed the

scandal – Eni also holds Snamprogetti where Ottavio

Quattrocchi worked at that time

What comes next?13.

• Gandhi’s Settlements– Tolstoy– Phoenix– So the 3rd is Sabarmati Ashram

14.

• Agatha Christies Novels– CAT among the pigeons– Murder in Mesopotamia– Murder in the Orient Express– Nemesis

15.

• The etymology of this word seems to start with Latin for the meeting point of three roads to indicate something commonplace and/or vulgar.

• First used in English around 1440, it was meant to indicate something that meant to be of concern only to the lowly undergraduates.

• Another story relates the origin to Roman “Cursus Publicus”. First book related to the word’s modern connotation was published in 1966, authored by Edwin Goodgold and Dan Carlinsky of the Columbia University.

• The Word?

• Trivia

16.

• Piloted by Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger, US Airways Flight 1549 (an Airbus 320), on January 15, 2009, became presumably the first ever large bodied Aircraft to have achieved something… what?

• A successful emergency water-landing with 100% survival rate. (155 passengers)

17.

• Identify the movie.

• Birds, Alfred Hitchcock

18.

• Word origin:• It means “an offence against grammar” said to

have been frequently committed by the people of Soloi, in Cilicia, a town noted for its bad Greek. Another meaning of the word was 'bar- barous', thus furnishing an instance of a word desig- nating the opinion of the people of one city, in this case Athens, of the inhabitants of another particular town.

• Solecism

19.

• In the Hindu mythology, connect:– MahaBali– Parashurama– Hanuman– Markandeya– Vyasa– Kripacharya– Ashwattama

• The seven people with the boon of “Chiranjeeva” or Long-lived.

20.• The "perfect pint" of this drink is

the product of a lengthy "double pour", which should take 119.5 seconds. Makers have promoted this wait with advertising campaigns such as "good things come to those who wait". Draught version should be served at 6°C, while Extra Cold version should be served at 3.5°C.

• What is this drink?

• Guinness

21.

1792-1822, Romanticism

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throwsThe only shadow that the Desert knows:"I am great ______," saith the stone,"The King of Kings; this mighty City showsThe wonders of my hand." The City's gone,Nought but the Leg remaining to discloseThe site of this forgotten Babylon.We wonder, and some Hunter may expressWonder like ours, when thro' the wildernessWhere London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guessWhat powerful but unrecorded raceOnce dwelt in that annihilated place.

• Ozymandias of the Watchmen series

• Pic1: Shelley (wrote this sonnet in competition with Horace Smith (the one shown previously)

• Pic2: The statue of Rameses II, namesake of the character

• Pic3: Alan Moore, the creator of Watchmen

OZYMANDIASI met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains: round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.

One of Shelley’s better known short poems

22.

• Owing to the length of the song (approximately 14 minutes 22 seconds), Radio Jockeys generally used it as an opportunity to take a bathroom break. The album (containing this version) went on to top the US charts for ten weeks and became the best selling live album of all time as well as one of the best selling double albums. Billboard Magazine named the singer artist of the year for 1976 as a result of the success of the album, as did the readers of Rolling Stone Magazine. Currently, the record for best selling live album of all time is held by Garth Brooks (Double Live, 1998)

• Identify the Artist and the Track

• “Do you feel like we do”, Peter Frampton, “Frampton comes alive”

23.• Identify the game, a parody of Scrabble, Monopoly, Dartboard, and popularized by

Ernie Kovacs

• Gringo, from the MAD Magazine

23.Comic relief: Where would you find this entry?A full set of the rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together to

form a single volume, they underwent gravitational collapse and became a black hole.

A brief summary, however, is as follows:

Rule One: Grow at least three extra legs. You won't need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.

Rule Two: Find one good player and clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.

Rule Three: Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall round them. The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what's going on leads them to imagine that it's a lot more exciting than it actually is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life-affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.

Rule Four: Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the walls for the players. Anything will do - cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.

Rule five: The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a 'hit' on another player, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance. Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.

Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.• Curiously enough, the more the obsession with the game grows in the higher dimensions, the

less it is actually played, since most of the competing teams are now in a state of permanent warfare with each other over the interpretation of these rules. This is all for the best, because in the long run a good solid war is less psychologically damaging than protacted game of _______

• Obviously the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy• Brockian Ultra-Cricket

24.

• In “Freakonomics” Steve Levitt compellingly argues this case as the single most influential reason for an unprecedented and unforeseen crime drop the US. The crime rates, which were popularly projected to result in streets flowing with blood, fell in the 1990s by about 48% across the states in the US.

• What was Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) about?

• According the mother the right to abort a fetus before it becomes “Viable”

25. Identify the exact product

26.

• An undergraduate in French from the Tufts University, he has been influential in a field totally different though as irrational as French :P . He finished his MBA and PhD at the Graduate School of Business (University of Chicago) in Economics and Finance and has spent all of his teaching career at the University of Chicago. His article in the International Economic Review, 1969 was the first to study the behavior of Stocks under news (reaction to events).

• Eugene F. Fama, • Note: He gained fame ‘working’ with French

27.

• "The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."

• Oscar Wilde’s impromptu response on being asked "What is the love that dare not speak its name?”, by Charles Gill, the prosecutor. Wilde was charged with Indecency and was, as a result of this reply, acquitted.

28.

• "Nobody's gonna hurt anybody. We're gonna be like three little Fonzies here. And what's Fonzie like? Come on Yolanda what's Fonzie like?!“

• Identify the movie

• It HAD TO BE “Pulp Fiction”

29.

• X is a rather sadly rated action movie starring John Travolta, directed by John Woo (1996). The plot involved theft and towards the end, recovery of Thermonuclear Weapons from America’s Arsenal. One of the memorable lines from the movie is:

• 'I don't know what's scarier -- losing a nuclear weapon, or that it happens so often, there's actually a term for it.’

• What is the term, which is also the name of the Movie

Answer

• Broken Arrow

The After Play

CONNECT!

• Showing the middle finger...

– The 1st one depicts the final scene from The Clouds by Aristophenes (to right) which was a satire on Socrates (below) which is the earliest known instance of using the finger in a derogatory manner.

– Battle of Agincourt. A popular urban legend incorrectly states that during the Hundred Years' War, the French would cut off the middle fingers of captured English archers so they would be unable to use their bows, and that after the Battle of Agincourt, the victorious English showed the French that their middle fingers were still intact.

– Baseball player Charles Radbourn gave the finger in 1886.

– The band The Supersuckers performed the song "Born With A Tail" live, where the band tells every person in the audience to raise their middle finger.

– Mirek Topolánek, prime minister of the Czech republic, gave the finger to left-wing deputies in the Czech parliament and later explained the gesture to the media and the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic as a friendly gesture towards Miroslav Kalousek, one of his cabinet ministers.

– In 1968, captured crew members of the USS Pueblo (AGER-2) used a discreet version of the finger as a covert signal of "obscene derisiveness and contempt" (quoted from a newspaper caption) in propaganda photos taken by their North Korean captors.The gesture was explained to the North Koreans as 'the Hawaiian Good Luck sign'.