Mega-Whats 2014 The 5th National Open Quizzing Championships

Conducted by

The Karnataka Quiz Association Est. 1983

Set by

Arun Hiregange and Kiran Vijayakumar

The Rules

1. +10/-5 on the pounce; +10 on the bounce

2. Part points available on the pounce

3. If you give one part correct and one part wrong, you get -5

4. If you just attempt one part and if you’re wrong, you get -5

5. If you just attempt one part and if you’re right, you get +5 (or as the case maybe)

The Design

Three rounds:

I. Written 5

II. Clockwise 18

III. Anti-clockwise 18

Written

1

Her father was a war hero, a tank leader sergeant who died in the Finnish Winter War during World War II in the Lemetti area in Finnish Karelia when she was two years old. When she was asked how the country should thank her for her service to the country, she replied that the government search for, and publish, the location where her father was killed in action. This was done, and a monument (shown here) now stands at the site. Who is she?

1

1

Valentina Tereshkova.

2

Identify the artist.

2

2

Anthony Quinn (based on the various roles that he portrayed).

3

The ____ frog (Conraua ____) is the largest extant anuran on Earth. The largest known specimens can grow up to 33 cm in length from snout to vent, and weighs up to 3 kg. This animal has a relatively small habitat range, mainly in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Due to their classification as an endangered species, the Equatorial Guinean government has declared that no more than 300 ____ may be exported out of the country per year. Fill in the blank.

3

3

Goliath.

4

Ad created by Honda. For which event was it created?

4

4

The Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) Race.

5 On 10 October 1789, who proposed the following six articles before the French National Assembly in favour of the reformation of capital punishment? Article 1: All offences of the same kind will be punished by the same type of punishment irrespective of the rank or status of the guilty party. Article 2: Whenever the Law imposes the death penalty, irrespective of the nature of the offence, the punishment shall be the same: decapitation, effected by means of a simple mechanism. Article 3: The punishment of the guilty party shall not bring discredit upon or discrimination against his family. Article 4: No one shall reproach a citizen with any punishment imposed on one of his relatives. Such offenders shall be publicly reprimanded by a judge. Article 5: The condemned person's property shall not be confiscated. Article 6: At the request of the family, the corpse of the condemned man shall be returned to them for burial and no reference to the nature of death shall be registered.

5

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.

Clockwise

1

With his brother Robert, he operated an oil company in Baku, which at one point produced 50% of the world's oil. He is credited with creating the Russian oil industry and was the first to experiment with carrying oil in bulk on single-hulled barges. The world's first successful oil tanker was his Zoroaster, designed with Sven Almqvist. The design was widely studied and copied, with him refusing to patent any part of it. A news article about him published on April 12, 1888 in the Paris newspaper Ideotie Quotidienne is perhaps the link to a lasting legacy, though indirect. Who, or what are we talking about?

1

Ludvig Immanuel Nobel. His obituary under the headline "Le Marchand de la Mort est Mort" (“the drummer of death is dead" / "the merchant of death is dead") mistakenly mentioned his brother Alfred’s name. This is supposed to have lead to the formation of the Nobel prizes.

2

Mahopanishad describes the ‘lakshanas' (characteristics) of great men who are elevated to the Bramhi sthiti (one who has attained Brahman while still alive). Fill in the blanks with a phrase that has been appropriated by Hindutva organisations these days. “udārah pēśalācārah sarvācārānuvrttimān | antah-sanga-parityāgī bahih-sambhāravāniva | antarvairāgyamādāya bahirāśōnmukhēhitah || ayam bandhurayam nēti gananā laghucētasām | udāracaritānām tu ____ ____ || bhāvābhāva-vinirmuktam jarāmaranavarjitam | praśānta-kalanārabhyam nīrāgam padamāśraya || esā brāmhī sthitih svacchā niskāmā vigatāmayā | ādāya viharannēvam samkatēsu na muhyati ||”

2

Vasudhaiva kutumbakam.

3

Shown here is the 1955 debut album of the Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould. It launched Gould’s career as a renowned international pianist, and became one of the most well-known piano recordings and was also Columbia's bestselling classical album. Take a look at the cover based on a set of photographs taken by Dan Weiner, and tell us the classical work it was based on.

3

3

Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which were 30 in number.

4

What title was first created in the 1930s when William Cameron Menzies made revolutionary contributions to the craft of art direction in the making of Gone with the Wind?

What title was first granted to Walter Murch by Francis Ford Coppola in recognition for his extraordinary contributions to the 1972 film Apocalypse Now?

Both these titles have been since used commonly in movie credits.

4

Production designer.

Sound designer.

5

This writer's brush with commercial cinema resulted in a critical essay in Life titled Mis____d ____. His 1958 novel The ____ was made into a 1965 movie ____. Here's his description of an early conversation with its little-known Poland-born American director: "He brushed aside my comments and went on with his own explanation of what I must have had in mind when I created such-and-such character. I began to realise that monologue is the privilege of the filmmaker, and that it was futile to try butting in with my own observations. But for some obscure reason, they seemed to need my presence, though not my voice. I must be seen and not heard." Identify the writer. Fill in the blank. (All blanks are same.)

5

R.K. Narayan.

Guide.

6

From MCC’s Laws of Cricket: Law 16 (Start of play; cessation of play) 1. Call of Play The bowler’s end umpire shall call Play at the start of the match and on the resumption of play after any interval or interruption. 2. Call of Time The bowler’s end umpire shall call Time when the ball is dead on the cessation of play before any interval or interruption and at the conclusion of the match. See Laws 23.3 (Call of Over or Time) and 27 (Appeals). 3. Removal of bails After the call of Time, the bails shall be removed from both wickets. What grim symbolism, introduced in 1926, owes its origin to the highlighted portion here?

6

Old Father Time, the weather vane at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

7

This illustration shows 19-year old Elizabeth Siddal at 7 Gower Street in London during the winter of 1851. Oil lamps were placed under the tub to warm the water, but she had to face these harsh conditions on many days for hours. As a result, she caught a severe cold, and her father later sent a letter to the person responsible for this, demanding £50 for medical expenses. Why did Siddal have to undergo all this? Who made here do this?

7

7

Posing for Ophelia. Sir John Everett Millais.

8

S.J. Perelman is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker. He co-wrote scripts for the Marx Brothers films Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932), and for the Academy Award-winning screenplay Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). He is highly regarded for his humorous short stories were infused with a sense of ridicule, irony, and wryness and frequently used his own misadventures as their theme. Perelman chose to describe these pieces as ____ — a French literary term meaning “literary or scientific articles; serial stories” (literally “little leaves”) — and he defined himself as a ____iste. Connect the blanked word with the term given to the witty exchange of one-liners as seen here.

8

[Video removed]

8

Feuilleton and Stichomythia – the words which ended in a tie at the Scripps National Spelling Bee 2014.

9

Born Claes Pieterszoon, he adopted a flower as his heraldic emblem and changed his name to match it. He examined and signed the fitness reports for the first Dutch settlers on the island of Manhattan. His most impressive work on medicine was his Observationes Medicae, published in 1641 and again in 1652 by Lodewijk Elzevir. Some called it the "book of monsters", because he dissected animals brought back from the Dutch East India Company's ships and also because of the fantastic stories that he related. His description of the symptoms of Beriberi in a Dutch seaman went unnoticed until the cause (vitamin B1 deficiency) was recognized two hundred years later by Christiaan Eijkman. Who?

9

Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

10

Situated in Aachen Cathedral and made in 1215 at the command of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, what does it contain?

10

10

The remains of Charlemagne.

11

First time visitors to the Kohima War Cemetery may be surprised to find that this structure is situated in the middle of a _____. Fill in the blank with something that provided the centre stage for an unrelated event on 20 June 1789.

11

11

Tennis court.

12

Theories about the name of which literary character? 1. From the hero of The Story of Young Renate Fuchs, by

German-Jewish novelist Jakob Wassermann. 2. From Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who wrote Venus in Furs

(1870), a novel whose hero assumes the first name at one point. A "Venus in furs" literally recurs in the picture that the character has hung on his bedroom wall.

3. From the name of the author himself. The character's surname is similar to the author's surname in its play of vowels and consonants: "Five letters in each word. The first and second consonants in the character's name has the same positions as the first and second consonants in the author's surname. The same vowel is in the second and fifth positions in both words."

12

Gregor Samsa, from The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

13

Contents of The ____ ____ Cookbook published by the Viking Press in 1973. Fill in the blanks.

13

13

Nero Wolfe.

14

The term ____ designates the process or event of accounting for members in a military unit. This practice of inspections led to the coining of the English idiom ____ ____, meaning being sufficient. In Tudor England, these were periodic assessments of the availability of local militia to act as a defense force when needed. To some extent, the system was an outdated remnant of the feudal system where local lords had their own armies, which they provided for the King as required. What term/idiom are we talking about?

14

Muster/Pass muster.

15

In France, they are called "le camembert" after the cheese. Sometimes "un diagramme en fromage" is also used, though this usage is less popular. What are we talking about?

15

Pie charts.

16

According to US military lore, what tradition is followed to ensure that the military dogs are not mistreated by their trainers?

16

Every military working dog is a noncommissioned officer – in tradition at least. Some say the custom was to prevent handlers from mistreating their dogs; hence, a dog is always one rank higher than its handler.

17

The austere beauty of ____ has been seen by many in western culture as a glimpse of an otherworldly system of perfection and certainty. Abraham Lincoln kept a copy of ____ in his saddlebag, and studied it late at night by lamplight; he related that he said to himself, "You never can make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means; and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of ____ at sight". Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote in her sonnet ____ Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare, "O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized!". Einstein recalled a copy of the ____ and a magnetic compass as two gifts that had a great influence on him as a boy. What are we talking about?

17

Euclid’s Elements.

18

What does this convey? Where was this famously used in the early part of the nineteenth century?

18

18

“England expects that every man will do his duty.” Battle of Trafalgar.

Anti-clockwise

1

This wandering monk, sometimes called Nangta Baba, was said to have been 250 years old when he died. This could be because multiple babas had the same name. He arrived at Dakshineshwar in 1864 and is said to have initiated Ramakrishna into Advaita Vedanta. Name this monk who shares his name with a beaked variety of a fruit.

1

1

Totapuri.

2

This word for a work of literature or art which is a medley made from fragments of different works or in a style that imitates another work or writer/artist, comes from an Italian word for a pie made of different ingredients which itself ultimately derives from a Latin word meaning “dough” that also is the origin of a very common Italian food item. Give both words: the work of literature/art and the food item.

2

Pastiche.

Pasta.

3

As a result of the success of a certain actor/director’s movie in Sweden, most of his movies were released in Swedish with related titles. For example: ______ For The Sheriff, ______ For The Lunatics, ______ For World History, ______ For Space, ______ For The Slum, ______ For Frankenstein etc. Fill (one common word).

3

Springtime.

4

“Unlike any other running shoe on the market. A breakthrough in running shoe design, ______ is our first model designed specifically to promote a more natural, healthier and more efficient forefoot strike. While many folks have been running in their Vibram FiveFingers for years, the ______ is our first model created exclusively for a more natural running experience.… It also distributes forefoot impact without compromising important ground feedback essential to a proper forefoot-strike running form.” Taken from the Vibram Five Fingers website. Whose name fills the blank?

4

4

Bikila.

5

The French Open men’s trophy is named after The Musketeers and the women’s trophy after Suzanne Lenglen. The Australian Open trophies are named after Norman Brookes (former world No. 1 and president of LTA of Australia) and Daphne Akhurst (5-time Australian Open winner). The US Open trophies don’t have specific names, nor does the Wimbledon men’s trophy. Lastly, the Wimbledon women’s trophy is called the Venus Rosewater dish. What was Venus Rosewater famous for?

5

It is a rosewater dish with the figure of Venus in the centre.

6

This “invincible rock” is formed over centuries by the decomposition of plants and the activity of microrganisms such as Euphorbia royleana and Trifolium repens. In the variant found in the Caucasas mountains, it is commonly called mumijo. Studies have shown that the typical Oxygen Radical Absorbency Capacity (ORAC) of the variety found in the Andes is significantly higher than most common foods that are touted for their antioxidant capacity. If you happen to visit Himalayan tourist spots like Manali, chances are good that you will be accosted by hawkers trying to sell you some. What?

6

6

Shilajit.

7

Although the League of Nations and other international meetings had used simultaneous interpretation prior to 1945, its successful use in this place gave the method new importance. The various participants there spoke four different languages and it was vital that the proceedings were understood by everyone. An American company was brought in that had acquired a Boston businessman’s patent and modified it. One channel sent out the exact words of the speaker; other channels transmitted immediate translations in English, Russian, French, and German. Events took place at the dictation speed of 60 words per minute. A monitor flashed a yellow light to notify the speaker if he was going too fast, or a red light if he should stop and repeat what he had said. Which company setup this system and where/for what?

7

Nuremberg trials.

IBM.

8

Cecil Adams (not) answering what question in The Straight Dope? If I had an honest atom in my body, I would say "I don't know" and shut up. I don't do this only out of a recognition that if everybody did likewise 90 percent of all human conversation would cease. So let me pass along the following comforting admixture of conjecture and BS. Noting that the earliest citation of “____ ____ ____” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1903, word detectives William and Mary Morris guess that it all started with the comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids, which began around that time. The kids are named Hans and ____, who make trouble for the Captain. The Morrises note, “By the end of the strip, their actions had the effect of putting whatever plans the Captain had made permanently ____ ____ ____.”

8

On the fritz.

9

One of the oldest national anthems in existence, its fifteen stanzas are written in first person and tell the tale of the singer: his life and his struggle against the Spanish. In what non-obvious way does it pay tribute to him? Wilhelmus van Nassouwe Ben ick van Duytschen bloet, Den Vaderlant getrouwe …

In Godes vrees te leven Heb ick altyt betracht, Daerom ben ick verdreven ...

Lydt u myn Ondersaten Die oprecht zyn van aert, Godt sal u niet verlaten …

Lyf en goet al te samen Heb ick u niet verschoont, Mijn broeders hooch van Namen ...

Edel en Hooch gheboren Van Keyserlicken Stam: Een Vorst des Rijcks vercoren ...

Mijn Schilt ende betrouwen Sijt ghy, o Godt mijn Heer, Op u soo wil ick bouwen ...

9

Van al die my beswaren, End mijn Vervolghers zijn, Mijn Godt wilt doch bewaren ...

Als David moeste vluchten Voor Saul den Tyran: Soo heb ick moeten suchten ...

Na tsuer sal ick ontfanghen Van Godt mijn Heer dat soet, Daer na so doet verlanghen ...

Niet doet my meer erbarmen In mijnen wederspoet, Dan dat men siet verarmen …

Als een Prins op gheseten Met mijner Heyres cracht,

Van den Tyran vermeten ...

Soo het den wille des Heeren Op die tyt had gheweest, Had ick gheern willen keeren ...

Seer Prinslick was ghedreven Mijn Princelick ghemoet, Stantvastich is ghebleven ...

Oorlof mijn arme Schapen Die zijt in grooten noot, V Herder sal niet slapen …

Voor Godt wil ick belijden End zijner grooter Macht, Dat ick tot gheenen tijden …

9

Acrostic of starting letters spells Willem Van Nassov.

10

John Strong, captain of an English expedition which landed here in 1690, named it after the title of Anthony Cary, Treasurer of the Navy, who sponsored his expedition. The title itself came from a Scottish town. The other name that people have applied to the same place came via Frenchman Louis-Antoine de Bougainville who named it after Saint-Malo which was the town in northwest France where his ships had started their voyage. The UN documentation for this place skirts controversy by using both names. Which place?

10

Falklands / Malvinas.

11

In recent times we’ve come across this as a first name, though classic movie fans may know it as the surname of an actress who didn’t have too many roles but did star in an all-time great movie. The name comes from “new” and came for example to be applied to new settlers to a city, people who created new arable land or recent converts to Christianity.

This map may help.

What name?

11

11

Novak.

12

This “hopelessly useless” student went on to develop:

• a radical theory of radicals

• theory of isomerism e.g. HNCO is isocyanic acid while HCNO is fulminic acid

• “law of minimum” for plant nutrition

• the silver mirror, replacing the mercury mirror

• a meat extract and baby food

• a precursor to stainless steel using Ni & Fe

• Super-phosphate fertilizer

12

All of us would have first come across his name in school chemistry labs. Who / why?

12

Justus von Liebig.

13

He was a contrarian in an era when his competitors usually shaved all their body hair to decrease drag. When they questioned his choice and the potential increased drag, he claimed tongue-in-cheek that it helped create a pocket of air to breathe. People took him seriously and this spawned a generation of imitators across Europe. Who / what trademark look?

13

Mark Spitz’s trademark mustache.

14

William Safire talking on the origin of which phrase? When did that phrase first become the favorite figure of speech meaning "incontrovertible incrimination"? The answer is elementary, Watson. In an 1893 Sherlock Holmes story, The Gloria Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of a grisly murder by a sham chaplain aboard a prison ship: "We rushed into the captain's cabin . . . there he lay with his brains smeared over the chart of the Atlantic... while the chaplain stood with a ____ in his hand at his elbow." A good copy editor would have fixed Doyle's awkward "in his hand at his elbow", but that Holmes citation seems to be the start of the cliché that grips us today.

14

Smoking gun.

15

What is common to the following? • Splitting the Atom • Jet Boat • Stamp-Vending Machine • Spreadable Butter • Bungee-Jumping • Tranquilizer Gun • Electric Fences • Zorbing • Disposable Syringe • Egg beater • Women’s vote • Referee’s whistle

15

All by New Zealanders.

16

In the 1949 Serie A, the team which was leading with four games left to play in the season fielded its youth team (Primavera) for those last four games. Their opponents in each of these matches also fielded their youth sides though they could well have played their senior teams. Primavera won each of the matches and so the scudetto. Which team was this and why did their opponents behave so?

16

Torino’s senior team had been wiped out by the Superga crash.

17

One of Aesop’s fables gave rise to a misogynistic proverb which has various forms, the most familiar of which equates three things as having one similar aspect. Of the three things, one (after which the fable is named) provides an edible nut, the second is a spaniel or a dog or a donkey and the third is what makes the proverb misogynistic. Recite the proverb.

17

A woman, a dog and a walnut tree; the more you beat them the better they be.

18

This cartoon character is said to have been named after the nickname of which Nobel prize winner?

18

Jimmy Neutron from James Chadwick.

#