IIT Madras Grandmaster 2015Thu, 24/April/2015 @ CRC , 7pm

The definitive lone wolf quizQM: Anand R Aiyer

IIT Madras Grandmaster

● This quiz is more than a contest, it is a great annual tradition.

● Honored to be QM this year. Hosts for previous editions were Jayadev Bhaskaran (JB/Golden Smaug/FuFa), Akshay Rangamani (Asalan Lion Periyamani), Tempo, Srivats. True quiz legends.

● Think of former winners JB, service, Amith Jagalur. I am honored to be in their company.

● I wish you the best of luck● Quiz Hard, Quiz Fair.

“X, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,” such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates... Y their author, had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start.

For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the "real" people beyond the "true" story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. "Windmuller," or "Ramsdale," who desires his identity suppressed so that "the long shadow of this sorry and violent business" should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, "Louise," is by now a college sophomore, "Mona Dahl" is a student in Paris. "Rita" has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. "Richard F. Schiller" died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. "Vivian Darkbloom" has written a biography, "My Cue," to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.

As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects; and still more important to us than scientific significance and literary worth, is the ethical impact the book should have on the serious reader; for in the poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson; the wayward child, the egotistical mother, the panting maniac—these are not only vivid character in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils.

Identify the work of literature being discussed.

The Answer

LolitaHumbert Humbert

“Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”

“The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you”

“Power flows from the barrel of a gun”

“We should support whatever our enemies oppose and oppose whatever our enemies support.”

“Politics is war without blood, while war is politics with blood.”

“In walking a tiger, use a long stick”

Identify the source of these and 427 others divided into 33 chapters.

The Answer

Quotations from Mao Zedong

Identify

The Answer

Marilyn MonroeArthur Miller

While some of his poetry is free verse (with no concern for rhyme or meter), many have a recognizable sonnet structure of 14 lines, with an intricate rhyme scheme.

A number of his poems feature a typographically exuberant style, with words, parts of words, or punctuation symbols scattered across the page, often making little sense until read aloud, at which point the meaning and emotion become clear, Thus used typography to "paint a picture" with some of his poems

At age 6, he showed examples of his unconventional style, writing this poem to his father.

FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD,

HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN,FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR,LOVE, YOU DEAR,ESTLIN.

The Answer

ee cummings

A combine painting is an artwork that incorporates various objects into a painted canvas surface, creating a sort of hybrid between painting and sculpture.

Items attached to paintings might include photographic images, clothing, newspaper clippings, ephemera or any number of three-dimensional objects.

_____ and his artist friend, flat mate Jasper Johns used to design window displays together for upscale retailers such as Tiffany's and Bonwit Teller in Manhattan before they became better established as artists.

The Answer

Robert Rauschenberg

______ _________ is a phrase used in American English to describe the stereotype of residents of the Southern United States as particularly warm, sweet, and welcoming to visitors to their homes, or to the South in general.

Food figures highly in this, A cake or other delicacy is often brought to the door of a new neighbor as a mechanism of introduction. Many club and church functions include a meal or at least a dessert and beverage.

Other features include proper local etiquette (i.e., calling one "Sir" or "Ma'am", opening doors for women (as well as men removing their hats when in the presence of a woman or inside her house), cooking enough for everyone who might be around at mealtime.

While persons from outside the region often mistake many of the customs as being disingenuous or fake in some way, in actuality the customs are often a way to make the visitor feel as comfortable as possible in an unfamiliar setting.

The Answer

Southern Hospitality

It was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, consisting of a select group of U.S. Army volunteers under the command of Captain _____ and his close friend Second Lieutenant ______. Their perilous journey lasted from May 1804 to September 1806.

The primary objective was to explore and map the newly acquired territory, find a practical route across the Western half of the continent, and establish an American presence in this territory before Britain and other European powers tried to claim it.

The campaign's secondary objectives were scientific and economic: to study the area's plants, animal life, and geography, and establish trade with local Indian tribes. With maps, sketches, and journals in hand, the expedition returned to St. Louis to report their findings to Jefferson

The Answer

Lewis and Clark Expedition

Connect

The Answer

Lisa Marie Presley

This folk dance owes it's origins to the word meaning beauty ______.

Originating as a form of entertainment for soldiers. It is performed by dancers in nine yard sarees, with songs in quick tempo that are usually naughty and erotic in nature. It is believed their origin is in the Prakrit Gathas collected by Hala.

The Answer

Lavani

Among the earliest to oppose British rule. Waging a war with the British six decades before the First Indian War of Independence. He was captured and hanged in 1799 AD.

Identify this Polygar chieftan.

Additionally, Identify the actor who portrayed him in the 1959 movie of the same name, the first tamil film to be shot in technicolor

The Answer

Veerapandiya KattabomanSivaji Ganesan

A coonskin cap is a hat fashioned from the skin and fur of a raccoon. The original coonskin cap consisted of the entire skin of the raccoon including its head and tail. Beginning as traditional Native American headgear, coonskin caps became associated with American and Canadian frontiersmen of the 18th and 19th centuries, and were highly popular among boys in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom in the 1950s

In the 20th century, the iconic association was in large part due to Disney's television program Disneyland and the first three "Davy Crockett" episodes starring Fess Parker. In the episodes, which once again made Crockett into one of the most popular men in the country, the frontier hero was portrayed wearing a coonskin cap. The show spawned several Disneyland Davy Crockett sequels as well as other similar shows and movies, with many of them featuring Parker as the lead actor. Parker went on to star in a Daniel Boone television series (1964-1970), again wearing a coonskin cap.

Crockett's new popularity initiated a fad among boys all over the United States as well as a Davy Crockett craze in the United Kingdom. The look of the cap that was marketed to young boys was typically simplified; it was usually a faux fur lined skull cap with a raccoon tail attached. A variation was marketed to young girls as the Polly Crockett hat. It was similar in style to the boys' cap, including the long tail, but was made of all-white fur (faux or possibly rabbit). At the peak of the fad, coonskin caps sold at a rate of 5,000 caps a day.[5] By the end of the 1950s, Crockett's popularity waned and the fad slowly died out. The fad is recalled by numerous cultural references, such as the wearing of coonskin caps as part of ____ ______ uniform modeled on the boy scouts in another Disney series.

The Answer

Junior Woodchucks

Around the spring of 1892, ______ began to work with Daniel Hayward, a first-class cricketer and the father of future England batsman Thomas Hayward, on his batting technique. His main fault was a tendency to back away from the ball when facing a fast bowler, making it more likely he would be dismissed. Possibly prompted by the suggestion of a professional cricketer who was bowling at him in the nets at Cambridge, he and Hayward began to practise with his right leg tied to the ground. This affected his future batting technique and contributed to his creation of the _______, a shot with which he afterwards became associated.

Which Batsman who played 15 Tests for England, scoring 989 runs at an avcerage of 44.95 and 307 FC matches, scoring 24692 runs at an average of 56.37. Also name the shot.

The Answer

RanjiLeg Glance

Identify

The Answer

Bruce SpringsteenJimmy Fallon as Neil Young

Incorporated as a joint venture on February 5, 1919, by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood: Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo. The four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures.

The Answer

United Artists

Meaning "property" or "owned slave" of the king, or 'white slave', This is an Arabic designation for a warrior class of slaves from the balkans and central asia.

Particularly in Egypt, but also in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India, They held political and military power. In some cases they rose to be Sultans, while in some they rose to be amirs or beys.

The use of these soldiers gave rulers troops who had no link to any established power structure. Local warriors were often more loyal to their tribal sheikhs, their families, or nobles than to the sultan or caliph. If a commander conspired against the ruler, it was often not possible to deal with the conspiracy without causing unrest among the nobility.

Also who was the first such Sultan of India

The Answer

MamlukQutb-ud-din Aibak

Connect

The Answer

The Blue DahliaRaymond Chandler

King _________, the ruler of the prosperous Vijayanagara empire had an empire stretching from Karnataka to Kanyakumari. One day, the king set out from his capital at Hampi and went on a tour of his kingdom. While traveling through _______, a trading city and a sea port on the eastern coast of his empire, a beautiful building caught the king’s eye. The king looked with amazement at the building’s architecture and it carvings. The religious king thought it was a temple. He knelt on the street and bowed down before it with folded hands. The people around looked at the king with surprise. There was a stunned silence. A wise old man walked up to the king and asked him, “Your Majesty, why are you bowing down in front of a brothel?”

The owner of the house was brought to the king in chains. She fell on the kings feet and asked for mercy. In a desperate plea, asked the king, the permission to break down the house herself. The king agreed. The courtesan broke down her beautiful house and in its place dug a water tank for the people around. The place was named _____ after her in her memory.

The Answer

KrishnadevarayaAayi Mandapam, Pondicherry

Connect to identify the specific variant of the game

The Answer

BaccaratChemin de fer

“My addresses will never be as eloquent as Y. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking.” - X

YES

The Answer

“I'm a Ford, Not a Lincoln”

_____ got the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a friend of Sean Lennon who had just turned 21 who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!"

He replied to him, "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 -- I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful."

The friend replied, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties".

He retorted, "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?" .... What Song?

The Answer

We didn't start the fireBilly Joel

Identify the Nobel Laureate noted for his development of radiocarbon dating

The Answer

Willard Libby

Snuppy question. This breed is one of the oldest dog breeds in existence. Distinguished by its thick, fine, silky coat and its tail with a ring curl at the end. Identify.

The Answer

Afghan Hound

Identify the person or give fundae

The Answer

James Meredith In 1962, he became the first African-American student

admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi

______ was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. She came to the throne of Egypt in 1478 BC. Officially, she ruled jointly with Thutmose III who had ascended to the throne as a child one year earlier.

She is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty.

According to Egyptologist James Henry Breasted she is also known as "the first great woman in history of whom we are informed.

The Answer

Hatshepsut

Her only film appearance. She does not sing.

What greek tragedy of a woman's vengence against her husband's new lover and their children?

Bonus: Identify the director

The Answer

Maria CallasPasolini's Medea

Identify this iconic Lucasarts game. Named after it's theme and after an exuberant Spanish courtship dance and a genre of Spanish folk song.

The dance, probably of Moorish origin, was popular in Europe in the 18th century and survives in the 20th century as a folk dance in Spain, Portugal, southern France, and Latin America.

The Answer

Grim Fandango

Identify the artist. Who himself wrote:"Its nothing accurate at all, just an improvisation of things I've seen. It's no particular hotel lobby, but many times I've walked through the Thirties from Broadway to Fifth Avenue and there are a lot of cheesy hotels there. That probably suggested it. Lonely? Yes, I guess it's lonelier than I planned it really."

The Answer

Edward Hopper

Identify

The Answer

Terry Richardson

What is depicted?

The Answer

Prisoner's Dilemma

If you were in Kolkata and called upon the Chaturdola Agency, what would you be hiring? #KolStylez

The Answer

Palanquins

This stadium named it's home dressing room and it's away dressing room after these two players

The Answer

MaracanaPele and Garincha

Identify the Historical character and the actor famous for starring in epicsCalled the champion by his people

The Answer

El CidCharlton Heston

Identify the memorial and the regiment

The Answer

Garhwal RiflesNeuve Chapelle

Identify the memorial and the regiment

The Answer

Garhwal RiflesNeuve Chapelle

The essay "Notes on ____" by her, codified andmainstreamed the cultural connotations of theword ____, and identified it's evolution as adistinct aesthetic phenomenon.To start very generally: ___ is a certain modeof aestheticism. It is one way of seeing theworld as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way,the way of ____, is not in terms of beauty, butin terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.The ultimate ___ statement: it's good because it's awful

Random Examples:Zuleika Dobson, Tiffany lamps, Scopitone films, The Enquirer headlines and stories, Swan Lake, Bellini's operas,Visconti's direction of Salome and 'Tis Pity She'sa Whore, certain turn-of-the-century picturepostcards, the old Flash Gordon comics,women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.), stag moviesseen without lust.

The Answer

Camp