madras school of economics general quiz 2014 finals

Finals

Ramesh Natarajan

1.In 1891, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, one of

Indian cricket's earliest big names both as a player

and an administrator, incurred the rage of Lord

Kitchener due to the Maharaja making a pass at an

English girl, rumored to be Lord Willingdon's

daughter.

It led to the restriction of his entry into the Indian

summer capital, Shimla. This incensed the Maharaja

and in response he bought a nearby hilltop and

erected something which continues to hold a sporting

record.

What did he build and what record is this? This

question is connected to prelims Q1.

At Chail, the world‟s highest cricket

ground.

Incidentally, the first edition of Roadies

(Prelims Q1) was from Chennai to Chail

to coincide with the 2003 WC being held

at the same time.

2.The year was 1987. Four years earlier, Hironobu

Sakaguchi had left school mid-semester so that he

could take a job as a game developer.

Now, he was starting to wonder if this video game

thing was really for him. He decided to give it one last

shot with his latest title – an expansive role playing

game – but if it wasn‟t a hit, he was going back to

college to finish his electrical engineering degree.

As a sort of inside joke, he decided to call the game

_____ _____, because he figured it would most likely

be his last.

FITB.

Final Fantasy

3.CS Krishna and Karthik Laxman (both IIMA

graduates), drained by months of mind-

numbing work on a "Shadow Union Budget"

under former Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha,

wrote an article titled "Government mulls direct

cash transfers by dropping money bags from

the sky" taking a dig at the government's much

hyped Direct Cash Transfer schemes.

Buoyed by the response to the article, what did

they start?

The Unreal Times

4.In a standard QWERTY keyboard, you

can find two bumps/nipples mostly on two

alphabet keys.

What are the two alphabets and what

purpose do they serve?

F and J.

Helps users correctly position their left

and right hand on the keyboard without

having to look at it.

5.Connect.

Vasundhara Das

6.These hand held devices became popular

worldwide in the late 1990s. A US Patent was

awarded to Taiwanese inventor Tsao-i-Shih in

1996 for this device.

The handle contains batteries and a charging

mechanism that generates high voltage. The

circuit is composed of an electronic oscillator, a

step-up transformer and a voltage multiplier,

similar to the circuit in an electroshock weapon

or a stun gun, but with much lower power.

What device?

Electric Flyswatter / The World Famous

Mosquito Bat

7._________ refers to five sacred souls - Hazrat

Muhammad, Hazrat Ali, Hazrat Fatima, Hazrat Immam

Hussain, Hazrat Immam Hassan.

These are five sacred souls in Islam and are used as a

source to invoke highly spiritual sensations both in the

praise of Allah as well as to get holy help from the

souls themselves.

FITB.

Panchathan

AR Rahman‟s recording studio is called

Panchatan

8.The founders of this corporation founded by

Stepan Pachikov and launched in 2008,

deliberately kept their logo as a/an ________ ,

because it is supposed to remember

everything.

Which company? What logo?

Evernote.

Elephant.

9.Starting with the initials VT, the

registration number of all Indian civil

aircrafts serves as a reminder of the

country's colonial past.

The registration prefix VT was assigned to

India in 1929, and it has continued ever

since.

What does VT stand for?

Viceroy‟s Territory.

10.The Bombay Quadrangular was a premier

cricket competition in India in the early 20th

century. It was played among the Hindus,

Europeans, Parsis, and Muslims.

In 1937, a new team was introduced and the

competition became a Pentangular. The fifth

team was created to provide representation for

members of three minority Indian religions.

Name the three religions.

Buddhists, Jews, and Indian Christians.

11.The actor Vikram, in a recent interview on a

television channel, said that when he goes for

shooting in the smaller towns of India, he gets

recognized a lot. He felt surprised himself,

since Raavan and David, the two major

Bollywood movies he has acted in didn‟t

necessarily set the box office alight for people

in small-town India to know him. After talking to

the people there, he came to know there is

another logical reason for his popularity.

What reason did Vikram cite for his popularity?

The dubbing of regional language

movies on Hindi channels. Video

Follows.

12.Buzzfeed, predictably, put out a list recently,

mocking someone‟s actions. The list included weird

names like -

• Jart Liters

• Annjeen Jewels

• Maddow Mohogany

• Janet Loorenstein

• Brat Spit

• Helen Denergis

• Merl Strep

• Lunesta Knee-Congo

• Bento Tinderbox

Who was being mocked?

John Travolta aka Jorn Tromolto.

He pronounced “Idina Menzel” as “Adele

Dazeem”.

13.Why is the man in the picture, Shyam Saran Negi, in

the news? There is a reasonable chance of you having

seen him on YouTube in a campaign initiated by

Google India.

Independent India‟s first voter.

14. The girl in the picture

was at the center of a

famous case, and she

broke a virtual 35 year

silence to tell her story

and reflect on the events

that took place then,

which had lifelong

repercussions on both

her and the person

whose name has been

blanked out.

Who is the person in

question?

The Roman Polanski case.

15. In the Goodreads „Best Books of 2013‟ list, this

book emerged as the best book in the „Food &

Cookbooks‟ category. The title of the book is

___________ ___________ : Cocktails with a

Literary Taste.

FITB.

Tequila Mockingbird.

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

Kepler

2

Rorschach

3

Uruguay

4

Satyajit Ray

5

Ferris

6

Sydney Harbor Bridge

1. __________, _________, and ___________ : The World

of Tamil Politics, is a book written by author-journalist

Vaasanthi.

The three blanks all start with the same letter „C‟,

representing three influential factors in Tamil Politics.

FITB.

Cut Outs, Caste and Cine

Stars

2. The Water of Life Foundation in India is an

organization founded by Sudharshan Dheer. He

named the foundation after a book called Water

of Life, written by John Armstrong. The book

advised Dheer to do something to treat a viral

infection that had rendered his right hand

almost immobile. After following the advice,

Dheer found that his ailment was coming under

control.

What did the book primarily instruct Dheer to

do which prompted him to name the

organization after the book?

Drink Urine.

3. In 2007, Microsoft Office introduced a change to its

default settings. According to Joe Friend, a senior

Project Manager at Microsoft, the change was

necessitated due to two factors -

1) Growth of digital consumption. Since more and

more documents wouldn't be printed and would solely

be consumed on digital devices, screen readability

would become more important.

2) Office was looking to modernize the look and feel

of documents created by Office applications since

they hadn't changed substantially since the early 90s.

What was the change that was brought about?

The default font was changed from Times

New Roman to Calibri.

4. There are two possible origins for this drink-

1) Robert Butt invented it as an entry to create a new

mixed drink in 1972 while he worked at the Oak Beach

Inn on ________ _______, NY. Various local New York

references also echo Butt's claims.

2) It was claimed to have been invented in the 1920s

during Prohibition by an "Old Man Bishop" in a local

community named ______ _______ in Kingsport,

Tennessee. The drink was then perfected by Ransom

Bishop, his son.

FITB.

Long Island Iced Tea.

5. This metaphor was conceived by

Adam Smith to describe the self-

regulating behavior of the

marketplace. Individuals can make

profit, and maximize it without the

need for government intervention.

What metaphor?

Invisible Hand.

6.The five rings you see in the

Olympic logo now represent the five

continents. But, they were originally

invented in 1913 by Pierre De

Coubertein, president of IOC, for a

different reason.

What was the reason and why were

they forced to make the change?

A ring for each of the 5 previously

successfully completed games. The

Olympics didn‟t happen in 1916 due to

the World War I and hence the sequence

was disrupted.

7.Arthur Chu has won more Jeopardy games

than nearly anyone else on earth. Chu has

amassed more than $277,000 in winnings. A

strategy Chu uses while he quizzes is

something called Forrest Bounce, named after

its pioneer, the 1985 champion Chuck Forrest.

How does this strategy work and what

advantage does it give a player?

Jeopardy board image follows.

Rather than starting with the first clue in a

category and working his way down the

column, he jumped around the board. (It

taxes people‟s brains to move around like

this, but the person who knows which

clue is coming next has a split-second

advantage.)

8. A 2009 study in the Journal of Applied

Psychology in the US examined 576,292 mining

injuries that were sustained in the years 1983 to

2006.

It was found that on a particular Monday

(usually in the month of March), coal miners

reported a 5.7% increase in the number of on-

the-job injuries reported.

What did they mention as the reason for the

sudden spike in the injuries that occurred?

The Mondays were post DST (Daylight

Savings Time) Mondays. Workers due to

lack of sleep tended to become „zonked‟

resulting in a higher number of injuries.

9.The roots of this initiative were set when

Shashank Mani Tripathi, now 48, first embarked on

a journey in 1997 to commemorate 50 years of

India's independence.

The seed had been planted in his mind years ago,

when he saw a film in 1954 as a child, which was

about a teacher's quest to instill pride in the

country's heritage and values in children. The film

also featured a song - 'Aao bachchon tumhen

dikhayen jhaanki Hindustan ki'.

What is the initiative in question? The initiative is

named after this movie.

Jagriti Yatra.

10.Robert Ward, of the Economist Intelligence Unit,

coined an acronym CIVETS, for six favored

emerging market economies.

These countries are supposed to have a diverse

and dynamic economy and a young growing

population.

Expand CIVETS. Picture if needed.

+6 for 3 correct.

+7 for 4 correct.

+8 for 5 correct.

+10 for 6 correct.

11.The movie Frozen recently entered the list of

Top 10 grossing movies of all time.

What is unique about Frozen‟s entry into this list

when compared with the rest of the 9 movies?

It is the only movie which is neither a

sequel nor has it been directed by James

Cameron.

12.Connect to an association started in 1907.

Bharat Scouts and Guides.

Boys – Bunnies (3-6), Cubs (5-10), Scouts

(10-17), and Rovers (16-25)

Girls – Bulbuls(6-10), Guides(10-18),

Rangers(18-25)

Ages in brackets

13. _________ is the apparent loss of fine motor

skills without apparent explanation, in one of a

number of different sports. The technical term

is focal dystonia.

Athletes affected by it demonstrate a sudden,

unexplained loss of previous skills. They

sometimes recover their ability, sometimes

compensate by changing technique, or may be

forced to abandon their sport at the highest

level. The word has its origins in the world of

golf.

What‟s the good word.

Yip/Getting the yips

14. ____ __ ___ ___ is a 2013 American comedy film

written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan

Goldberg in their directorial debut, starring an

ensemble cast including Rogen, James Franco, Jonah

Hill as fictional versions of themselves in the aftermath

of a global apocalypse.

The film was released on June 12,

2013, and was a critical and

commercial success.

Name the movie (4,2,3,3). Also, last

question.

This Is The End.