going in-cogni-to - mains

Going In-Cogni-To

The Quizzotica General Quiz

Questions by:

M.V.R. Murty

071602, IIT-R’12

Finals format

• 10 Infinite Pounce Clockwise • +10/0 on the bounce

• +10/-10 on the pounce

• Written Round

• 11 Infinite Pounce Anti-clockwise • +10/0 on the bounce

• +10/-10 on the pounce

• Written Round (Differential scoring)

Question 1

• Before entering politics, X was a huge football fan. He had indeed, made investments in TV to broadcast football, and a few years after that, bought a struggling top-tier club, and made them continental champions.

• His stroke of genius, though, was to realise through long research, that nothing united his country like football. He named his party after a chant for the national team, the candidates were referred to by a colour that the national team was known by, and local chapters were called “clubs”.

• Even as the politician fell into corruption and other scandals that plagued the rest of his career after his meteoric rise, the club he owned saw a similar change in fortunes, never really recovering from a massive fixing scandal.

… and the answer is:

Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party

Question 2

Et voila, a poetic piece about a _______ called X, some poor folk call it X, they really must take our advice...

Said snack was first made in France so please give the pronunciation a chance, its origins to 1904 we can trace and X is set in a sans serif typeface.

The discussion remains open wide, as to the way the class divide, determines how you articulate, the name of the _______ on the plate.

If you're born with a silver spoon, it appears you say X, like peace. Whilst if you dance to a peasant's tune, your favoured choice is X, like mice.

Which one are you?

Thanks to biscuitpoetry.blogspot.com

Question 3

• I’d always wondered about cities in West Bengal outside of the capital. One man, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy founded 5 of them, it seems – Durgapur, Kalyani, Bidhannagar, Ashokenagar and Habra.

• He’s also famous for an anecdote (possibly apocryphal) about how he convinced Mahatma Gandhi to take fluids during a fast, as his doctor. Gandhi asked Dr. Roy why he should be treated by an eminent doctor for free when there’s 400 million people who needed it more. He responded that it’d be impossible to treat 400 million people for free, but easier to treat one man who represented those 400 million.

• The second Chief Minister of West Bengal, he instilled calm and order in a city devastated by riots after the death of Gandhi in 1948. As a contemporary of Nehru, his 14-year reign as CM is also considered as significant as Nehru’s.

• His death day is the same as his birth date, and is celebrated in India as what?

National Doctor’s Day

• July 1

Question 4

• When the founder of this entity was a kid, he used to watch “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show”, which had a segment called “Peabody’s Improbable History”.

• Mr. Peabody, a beagle who is also a Harvard graduate and a Nobel laureate, builds a _____ machine—it’s meant to sound like a UNIVAC, one of the first commercial computers—and he uses it to take a boy named Sherman on adventures in time. “We just set it, turn it on, open the door, and there we are—or were, really,” Peabody says.

• What “machine” gets its name from here?

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine

Source: This lovely piece on the Archive in the New Yorker.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150202101815/http:/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb

Question 5

• The term X has nothing to do with scribbling on a certain common item.

• Its origins lie in the field of surveying. Surveyors chiseled in horizontal marks in stone structures, into which an angle iron was fitted to give support for a levelling staff – this support structure being called the name of aforementioned common item.

• These marks were indicated with a chiseled arrow below the horizontal line to distinguish them.

• The purpose of these lines was to establish a reference for elevation – a bunch of marks formed a network of points at which height has been precisely measured.

• What term does this give rise to?

Bench marks -> Benchmarking

Question 6

• The British in the 19th century were wary of the Chinese monopoly over tea – a lucrative trade at the time. So, as legend goes, they created an alternative supply channel by starting plantations en masse in the hills of Assam and Darjeeling.

• Most of the tea grown was for export, and the early 20th century saw a maturing of those markets, so domestic consumption needed to be promoted.

• Indians didn’t really take to a combination of sugar, boiled leaves and water, though – even with milk. In addition, industrialisation saw CTC tea (Crush, Tear and Curl) – a cheaper but horrible tasting version – become readily available in the market. But, Indians needed to be made to like tea.

• Only an aggressive ad campaign (pics in following slide) coupled with ready availability of stalls making milky, sweet tea to cancel out the bitter CTC taste led to tea becoming the top hot beverage in the country.

• Which entity ran this campaign?

Indian Tea Market Expansion Board

• Now part of the Tea Board of India.

Question 7

• The origin of this surname, like most British surnames, comes from the name of a place.

• According to the Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names, it comes from “____’s cot”, where the blank is an Old English endearment for a young man.

• It came into prominence in the 19th century thanks to a notorious Irish rent collector of the Earl of Erne, Captain Charles Cunningham X, of County Mayo, Ireland.

• The famine of 1878 had led to many tenants on farm lands being evicted. The Land League was formed for the protection of their interests.

• In 1880, X sent some to cut oats and offered them about half their usual wages. The tenants refused to work, and were outraged when they were served with eviction papers.

• They banded up and all workers, including servants, herders and drivers, refused to work on X’s estate. A decree was issued that meant X was ostracised and “socially excommunicated.”

• An American journalist covering the saga coined an eponymous phrase to reflect the actions of the workers. What word comes from this surname?

Boycott

• I’m sure his grandmum would be able to answer this question.

Question 8

“How about a round of applause

for this young lady, who we love

very much,” Krasny said. “Serena

Williams suffered an injury a

couple days ago. And I’m going to

ask you a question in a second,

Serena, but the triumphant, the

courageous return of you the other

night, I want to first say: Welcome

home. You belong here, we love

you, and welcome back to Indian

Wells.”

Serena didn’t get injured in 2001,

but was booed. Give me a story.

Source: The New York Times

Venus Williams withdrew with an injury moments before the 2001 semifinal

Question 9

• While considered to be a fundamental taste in Asian cooking, it is not discussed so much in Western cuisine. This taste is referred to as xianwei in Chinese cooking, and in the language of the word it’s most commonly referred in, its characters mean “delicious flavour”.

• It’s a taste sensation produced by the free glutamates found in fermented and aged foods. In English, it’s often referred to by the words “meaty” or “savoury”.

• It’s only in the 21st century that it’s been scientifically recognised. What am I talking about?

Umami, the 5th fundamental taste

• For extra points, please write down the name of the purported 6th fundamental taste - also supported by research backed by Ajinomoto, the world’s most famous MSG company.

• It comes from the Japanese root words for “rich” and “taste”, and is said to be found in garlic, amongst other things. It’s also described as “heartiness” or “mouthfulness”, and describes compounds in food that don’t have a flavour of their own, but enhance other flavours.

Kokumi

Question 10

• In the late 1980’s, X was scheming to become the governor of his home state. But, as he told Time Magazine in 1989, “My biggest liability in _____ is the question, 'What's the boy ever done?' He could be riding on Daddy's name.”

• His father’s connections helped him befriend one of his assistants, who later helped run his campaigns. He told X that baseball was his ticket to the big time as “it gives him… exposure and gives him something that’s easily recalled by people.”

• So after a string of unsuccessful companies (including a big oil business) and a failed run at the House of Representatives, X bought the _____ Rangers, having scraped together $500,000 and a few influential friends.

• Becoming the public face of the team as it built a new stadium, got into the playoffs for the first time in its history, and built a wide fan-base thanks to a couple of Latino future-MVP superstars, X ran a successful campaign for governor in 1994 – and never looked back.

• Oh, he also made a neat $14.9 million from the sale of the franchise on a total investment of a little over $600,000. Name this astute businessman-turned-politician.

George W. Bush

End of Round 1

Scores, please?

Followed by Written Round 1.

Audience Emoji Question

• Some folks decided to find the most-used emoji on Twitter. Here’s what they had.

• Nice and simple – what set is no. 1?

• For the whole list, visit here.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-100-most-used-emojis/

Audience Emoji Answer

• Pile of poop was surprisingly low at No. 88!

• Speaking of emoji hearts…

Audience Emoji Question - 2

Oh glorious love, shining in its myriad hues!

Can you explain these, without further clues?

Know-led-ji of Emoji

Almost all of you use them almost everyday. Let’s see if you know what some of them mean.

Source: www.iemoji.com

Scoring for Emoji round

• +2.5 for each correct answer • 2.5 * 8 = 20

• +5 if a team gets all 8 right • 25 points at stake, overall

1 – Not a phallic image

2 – Alien monster?

3 – A Mailbox?

4 – Straight out of a Barjatya movie?

5 – Not a brinjal

6 – Bob Dylan may guide you to the Answer

7 – Bob Dylan can really help you again

8 - … and ending with a slightly phallic image again

Exchange sheets, please.

… and the answers are:

1 – Not a phallic image

1 – Map/Silhouette of Japan

2 – Alien monster?

2 – Alien monster from Space Invaders.

3 – A Mailbox?

3 – Mahjong Tile: Red Dragon

4 – Straight out of a Barjatya movie?

4 – Moon viewing ceremony

It’s a traditional festival celebrating harvest in Japan.

5 – Not a brinjal

5 – Roasted Sweet Potato

6 – Bob Dylan may guide you to the Answer

6 – Wind Chime

7 – Bob Dylan can really help you again

7 – Blowfish/Puffer fish

8 - … and ending with a slightly phallic image again

8 - Tokyo Tower

Audience Emoji Question - 2

Oh glorious love, shining in its myriad hues!

Can you explain these, without further clues?

Audience Emoji Answer - 2

Love for Nature Duty, honour, valour Deep, stable love

(or)

Trust, loyalty, peace

Friendship

End of Round 2

Scores, please?

Followed by Infinite Pounce Anti-clockwise.

Question 11

• In the 1500s, new sources of silver were discovered in various regions of central Europe, mostly Bohemia. With such abundance, small coins made of still-scarce gold were replace by large silver coins. The Joachimsthal region adjusted the purity and weight to make the coin easily divisible into existing weights and measures.

• This coin became popular, and coming from that region, was called the Joaschimsthaler. Slowly, though, the –thaler suffix came to refer to any such heavy coins.

• Later in the same century, Spain struck massive amounts of silver in the New World, and minted them like no tomorrow. As others’ mines slowly got depleted, Spain’s thalers were being used everywhere from the West Indies to the far East.

• Commonly known as a peso de ocho, or piece of eight, the Spanish thaler became the preferred currency of international trade.

• How does this ubiquity live on even today?

The name “Dollar” and the $ Symbol

Question 12

• The following is a passage from a book called “Indian Cricket Uncovered”.

• “I can only view sport in its national setting and would have time for sport only if it led to greater national well being – national health and, what is far more important in India to day, national character… Communalism is indisputably the bane of Indian political life and, for that matter, of Indian national life. It would follow therefore, even as two and two is four that communal cricket is opposed to national cricket.”

• The Bombay Chronicle, in an issue in November 1935 argued – “Communal tournaments were perhaps, necessary at a certain stage in the history of Indian cricket… it is time they were given a decent burial.” Its sports editor, meanwhile, consistently wrote in support of the Ranji Trophy. Even Mahatma Gandhi stepped in with a word against it, and you can imagine what followed.

• This, amongst other similar justifications, is widely believed to be the prevailing logic behind the dissolution of what was often described as the “foremost tournament in pre-partition India”.

• Which tournament is this?

The Bombay Pentangular (ex. Quadruangular)

Question 13

A tweet by the US Federal Communications Commission

suggesting their comments page may have crashed.

The Society of Women Engineers, a group that encourages women to pursue

careers in engineering, reporting a sharp uptick in donations in September’14.

• These are just 2 examples of a phenomenon dubbed the “X Bounce” – increases in public activity/interest on pages/causes mentioned by X.

• Connect to a TV/Internet personality.

John Oliver

Question 14

• This term, now more commonly used in another sport popular in America, was first used in a sporting context in American football.

• Here’s an extract from a book called “San Francisco 49ers – Where have you gone?” • “R.C. Owens is one of the most celebrated players in 49ers history. He still

answers to the nickname X, for the athletic feat that has become a widely used description of one of __________’s most exciting plays.

• “Owens… became famous for his leaping catches of passes lofted far downfield. Quarterback Y.A. Tittle knew all he had to do was throw the ball in the air above the defenders, and there was a good chance Owens would use his six-foot-three frame to catch the pass before anybody else could get a finger on it.”

• Etymologically, it’s a phonetic respelling of a French phrase – the cry of a circus acrobat about to leap.

Alley-oop

Question 15

• Soon after his first meeting with Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson is trying to figure him out, in A Study in Scarlet. • "It is simple enough as you explain it," I said, smiling. "You remind me of X’s Y. I had no

idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories." • Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that you are complimenting me

in comparing me to Y," he observed. "Now, in my opinion, Y was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as X appeared to imagine.“

• While many were surprised and even miffed at the idea that Sir AC Doyle was criticising a much-loved character, one of the earliest popular detectives (created even before the word detective was!), he responded very cleverly, much like one of X’s characters would – “I didn’t criticise Y – Holmes did.”

• Identify X and Y, said to be the blueprint for the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin

Question 16

• After selling his first enterprise for around $1 million, X moved on to found a second firm close to his first yet highly disparate – children’s clothes.

• The brand My Child’s Destiny wasn’t as successful as, say, Destiny’s Child (sorry) and was declared bankrupt in two years.

• After losing two homes and all his cars, he tried his hand at a children’s bookshop in 1993, and failed. Divorced by his wife, and watching his first business become a billion-dollar firm just by marketing to the right gender was too much for X, and the Stanford Business school graduate jumped to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge in the August of that year.

• You might have heard this story in a popular movie – who’s X and what was his first enterprise?

Roy Raymond, Victoria’s Secret

• A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie but he's too embarrassed to shop for it at a department store. He comes up with an idea for a high-end place that doesn't make you feel like a pervert. He gets a $40,000 bank loan, borrows another $40,000 from his in-laws, opens a store, and calls it Victoria's Secret. Makes $500,000 his first year. He starts a catalog, opens three more stores, and after five years he sells the company to Leslie Wexner and the Limited for $4 million. Happy ending, right? Except two years later, the company's worth $500 million and Roy Raymond jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. Poor guy just wanted to buy his wife a pair of thigh-highs.

• —Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) to Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network (2010)

Question 17

• “The day's second over was to be bowled by 17-year-old Malachi Jones, playing his first World Cup match. His first delivery was a length ball just outside off, which Indian opener Robin Uthappa prodded at nervously.

• “Perhaps astounded with his own feat, he then set off on a joyous, celebratory run to nowhere - screaming and blowing kisses at the crowd. The bowler, Jones, had also sprinted off in triumph, weeping with joy at getting a wicket off his first ball, before being tackled by his team-mates.”

• A review by Cricinfo of what?

Dwayne Leverock’s catch

Question 18

• "I had reached a plateau in my life where business was no longer giving me the excitement I wanted from it," said this Yale School of Management and St. Xavier’s, Mumbai graduate.

• On a 2004 visit to the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, he began researching a tomb that holds the body of one Yuza Asaf, believed by some to be Jesus Christ himself. After collating immense amounts of material, he decided to convert his research into a novel, publishing it under the pseudonym, Shawn Haigins.

• As the novel was about how things would’ve been if Jesus had survived his crucifixion, and had a fast-paced plot, it drew obvious comparisons to The Da Vinci Code, and gave this businessman-turned-writer the title “India’s Dan Brown”.

• He’s written two more novels in the mythology/history space, and has collaborated with best-selling writer James Patterson on a contemporary thriller. Which Indian popular novelist am I talking about?

Ashwin Sanghi

Question 19

• According to newspaper reports, the Women and Child Development Minister wrote to her Indian Cabinet colleagues earlier this month, urging them to switch from phenyl-based floor cleaners to “gaunyle”, adding that the former is “chemically bad for the environment”.

• Gaunyle is made from X (bottles from an Indiamart seller pictured here), which is believed to cure common cold, asthma and blood pressure, and perhaps even battle (an as-yet unspecified) cancer.

• The product to be supplied to the government is reported to be manufactured by the ____ ___ Foundation, a Delhi-based non-profit organisation. They’ve a one-page website I’ve put a screenshot of on the next slide. Identify X.

Cow Urine

Question 20

• On the next slide is an infographic, where some text is obfuscated. Identify what it’s depicting. Some of the text is below.

• We may live in a world defined by invisible meta-data and the Cloud, but the roughly 3x5 inch _____ _______ known as the X still carries a lot of weight...

• [They] are a reflection of geopolitics, the relationship between two nations, and a country's stature relative to the rest of the world.

• Just ask any one of the developing world's citizens if they'd rather the win the lottery or a U.S. X, chances are they'd say the latter (though they'd be wrong in thinking the American X is the most powerful of them all)

Answer 21

• It means “the estimation of something as having no value”, and is often considered to be self-referential.

• Its origins lie in a combination of similar Latin stems – floccus, meaning “a wisp, or piece of wool”; naucum, “a trifiling thing, worthless”; _____, meaning “nothing”; and pili, meaning “hair”, signifying something insignificant.

Question 21

• What is floccinaucinihilipilification?

End of Round 3

Scores, please?

Followed by Written Round (Differential Scoring)

Questions from the Eurotrip!

Differential Scoring


• All 8 teams crack – 0 points

• 6 or 7 teams crack – 5 points



• Only 1 team cracks – 20 points

Question 1

• Thanks to its position on the Zwin estuary in the centre of northern Europe, and a flourishing cloth business, Brugges became an important trading town for the Duchy of Flanders. It was the junction of two major trading empires – the Meditteranean area’s Italians and Spanish in the South, and the German Hanseatic merchants in the North.

• All these traders had to stay in the city when they came to trade, and as there were a limited number of inns, innkeepers became prosperous, famous and even more entrepreneurial – adding services such as brokerage between traders.

• One such famous innkeeping family was of the van der Beurs. The square in front their massive inns in Brugges and Antwerp were where most of the trading action took place.

• Though their business has clearly died down a lot, how does their family name continue to live on today?

Question 2

• I took the adjacent picture on a geographical feature in Lithuania called The Curonian Spit near the end of September last year.

• It’s a 98 km long, curved sand-dune “spit”, that seperates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea (see image on the next slide)

• At its thinnest, it’s less than 400 m wide, meaning you can see two water bodies on either side of you!

Question 2 (contd.)

• This UNESCO World Heritage Site is split 50-50 between Lithuania and Russia – the Russian side being heavily militarised.

• This is the closest we got to Russia, despite being at least 500 kms away from the mainland’s westernmost borders and almost 1000 kms from St. Petersburg.

• Name this exclave of Russia (or its biggest city; same thing), and give me a story for why Russia owns it.

Question 3

• This is a train by a French long-distance rail service called TGV, or Train à grande vitesse, standing at the Basel railway station. Lyria is the service between France and Switzerland.

• The tagline on this train in German reads “Geschwindigkeits Weltrekord auf der Schiene”.

• Nice and simple – what does it say in English?

Question 4

• The etymology of the name of this European capital city is uncertain.

• One story suggests it comes from the name for the Italian city of Verona in the local royal language.

• The more popular local legend is that the founder of this city vowed to name it on the first animal he met on the hunt, and this turned out to be a ____.

• The coat of arms of the city (images on next slide) from the 13th century is widely used even today on all federal buildings. Which city is this?

Question 5

• Albayzin (also spelled Albaicin) is a UNESCO World Heritage site just across a canyon from another much more famous World Heritage Site.

• It’s famous for its white mansions with walled gardens called Carmen (from the Arabic karm for grapevine) and narrow, winding cobblestoned streets.

• Occupied since the early Roman period, this town saw its cultural peak during the 14th century, when it became the home of the commoners while the royals lived in the palace on an adjacent hill across the canyon.

• Identify the famous royal complex.

Question 6

• This picture (bigger on next slide) is from the Valley of Temples in Agrigento, one of the great ancient Greek cities in Sicily.

• Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s one of the biggest tourist attractions in Sicily.

• In the background is the Temple of Concordia, whose 6-column façade lends itself to which organisation’s logo?

• Also, identify the mythical character whose statue is in the foreground. I can tell you that I was told only the limbs of this sculpture were ruined by war.

Exchange sheets, please.

… and the answers are:

Question 1

• Thanks to its position on the Zwin estuary in the centre of northern Europe, and a flourishing cloth business, Brugges became an important trading town for the Duchy of Flanders. It was the junction of two major trading empires – the Meditteranean area’s Italians and Spanish in the South, and the German Hanseatic merchants in the North.

• All these traders had to stay in the city when they came to trade, and as there were a limited number of inns, innkeepers became prosperous, famous and even more entrepreneurial – adding services such as brokerage between traders.

• One such famous innkeeping family was of the van der Beurs. The square in front their massive inns in Brugges and Antwerp were where most of the trading action took place.

• Though their business has clearly died down a lot, how does their family name continue to live on today?

Stock exchanges are also called Bourses

• That was a picture taken from the Place de la Bourse/Boursplein in Brussels, home of the Brussels Stock Exchange.

Question 2

• I took the adjacent picture on a geographical feature in Lithuania called The Curonian Spit near the end of September last year.

• It’s a 98 km long, curved sand-dune “spit”, that seperates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea (see image on the next slide)

• At its thinnest, it’s less than 400 m wide, meaning you can see two water bodies on either side of you!

Question 2 (contd.)

• This UNESCO World Heritage Site is split 50-50 between Lithuania and Russia – the Russian side being heavily militarised.

• This is the closest we got to Russia, despite being at least 500 kms away from the mainland’s westernmost borders and almost 1000 kms from St. Petersburg.

• Name this exclave of Russia (or its biggest city; same thing), and give me a story for why Russia owns it.

Kaliningrad / Koenigsburg

• Russia retained it after World War II, as it’s got the only western ports that are ice-free all year round!

Question 3

• This is a train by a French long-distance rail service called TGV, or Train à grande vitesse, standing at the Basel railway station. Lyria is the service between France and Switzerland.

• The tagline on this train in German reads “Geschwindigkeits Weltrekord auf der Schiene”.

• Nice and simple – what does it say in English?

World’s Fastest Railway Speed – 574.8 km/h

Question 4

• The etymology of the name of this European capital city is uncertain.

• One story suggests it comes from the name for the Italian city of Verona in the local royal language.

• The more popular local legend is that the founder of this city vowed to name it on the first animal he met on the hunt, and this turned out to be a ____.

• The coat of arms of the city (images on next slide) from the 13th century is widely used even today on all federal buildings. Which city is this?

Bern

• The entire city is obsessed with bears – at least one souvenir you get from here has a bear reference, half the bars are named after bears, and there’s a bear park! A bear park!

Question 5

• Albayzin (also spelled Albaicin) is a UNESCO World Heritage site just across a canyon from another much more famous World Heritage Site.

• It’s famous for its white mansions with walled gardens called Carmen (from the Arabic karm for grapevine) and narrow, winding cobblestoned streets.

• Occupied since the early Roman period, this town saw its cultural peak during the 14th century, when it became the home of the commoners while the royals lived in the palace on an adjacent hill across the canyon.

• Identify the famous royal complex.

Alhambra

Question 6

• This picture (bigger on next slide) is from the Valley of Temples in Agrigento, one of the great ancient Greek cities in Sicily.

• Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s one of the biggest tourist attractions in Sicily.

• In the background is the Temple of Concordia, whose 6-column façade lends itself to which organisation’s logo?

• Also, identify the mythical character whose statue is in the foreground. I can tell you that I was told only the limbs of this sculpture were ruined by war.

Our good sponsors, UNESCO, and Icarus

Scores kya hain?

Khel khatam, dukaan band!

Hope you had fun!

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