General QuizQM: Aniruddha Mitra

Kunal Doshi

Prelims

• 20 Questions

• Multiples of 5 star-marked.

1.

The device shown here has got the official name SyncStop. It is used to keep data secure when one is charging their devices using a public computer. It is used to protect your device from data thefts and to turn a normal USB cable into a charge-only cable. What is the unofficial name given to it?

Answer

USB Condom

2.

This word has been picked from the Latin language in which it meant ‘somewhere else’. This word is currently used in a specific field and almost unheard elsewhere.

What is the word?

Answer

Alibi

3. What is this picture a funny take on?

Answer

• Jihadists will get 72 virgins in heaven.

4. Connect.

1. Airplane

2. Highway

3. Roller Coaster

4. Race Track

5. Suspension Bridge

Answer

Final Destination death sequences.

5.

X is a play by the American author Raymond Carver. The play has four main characters – Mel, Teresa (Terri), Laura, and Nick. The four characters meet up at Mel’s place and talk about their own versions and understandings of love. The women talk about their abusive relationships in the past. The play includes Ed shooting himself as he is unable to reconcile with Terri.

What is the name of the play, and give its recent claim to fame?

Answer

‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’. The play staged during ‘Birdman’.

6.

An early variant of the game was played in the Roman Empire, around the 1st century BC. It was called Terni Lapilli and instead of having any number of pieces, each player only had three, thus they had to move them around to empty spaces to keep playing. Another closely related ancient game is Three Men's Morris which is also played on a simple grid.

Name the game.

Answer

Tic Tac Toe

7.

• Bob Mankoff in the New Yorker humor section, ran a caption contest for this Magritte Painting

• The winning caption references both a 1985 Spanish novel and the fact that the painting was completed in 1928, 10 years after a pandemic which is counted among the worst in recorded history.

• So what is the caption?

Ans.

• Love in the Time of (Spanish) Influenza

8.

• The Kill Order(2012)

• The Fever Code(2016)

• _____________(2009)

• The Scorch Trials(2010)

• The Death Cure(2011)

Ans.

• The Maze Runner

9.

• Narendra Modi recently concluded the CEO Conclave held in Gandhinagar by uttering the following lines :

• “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.”

• Which famous poet has written these lines ?

Ans.

• Robert Frost

10.

• Recently , Roger Federer made history by becoming only the third male to have registered 1000 wins as a professional tennis player.

• Who are the other two ?

Ans.

• Jimmy Connors

• Ivan Lendl

11.

• ___________ is the name of a foreign exchange company based out of Ahmedabad. The name itself describes the function of any forex company.

• ____________ is also the name of a very famous Arthur Hailey novel.

Ans.

• Moneychangers

12.

• A X stock is a stock of a large, well-established and financially sound company that has operated for many years. It typically has a market capitalization in the billions, is generally the market leader or among the top three companies in its sector. X derives its name from a game.

• What is X, why is named after that specific thing ?

Ans.

• Blue Chip Stocks

13.

• ________ IPO - A company's highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) that becomes a blockbuster with investors. In the stock market, stocks that have the ability to explode out of the gate are mostly give this title.

• Connect to a 1977 film.

Ans.

• Death Star IPO

14.

• Following is the logo of an international organization set up in 1961. What is its name and why is it in public consciousness again now ?

Ans.

• SPECTRE

15.

• _________ is a member of the X-Men. ___________ possesses superhuman agility, the ability to teleport, and adhesive hands and feet. Another mutant with similar ability is Azazel who featured in X-Men First Class.

• Also the name of a movie.

• FITB

Ans.

• Nightcrawler

List it

• List the last natives ( men’s and women’s) to win the respective Tennis Opens.

• +3 for each.

• +6 for getting all correct.

Answers

• Australian Open – Mark Edmondson, Chris O’Neil

• Wimbledon – Andy Murray, Virginia Wade

• French Open – Yannick Noah , Mary Pierce

• US Open – Andy Roddick, Serena Williams

Infinite Pounce

1.

"Welcome to the Monkey House" is a Kurt Vonnegut short story. The plot goes In the not-so-distant future, the government urges people to commit suicide to keep the population stable. They also design a new drug called ‘Ethical Birth Control’ which helped in supressing the population’s sexual desire.

What exactly did the drug do?

Answer

It made sex non-pleasurable.

2.

The shoe shown in the picture went on sale last year to celebrate the anniversary of a particular memorable event. The shoes are made from special silicon rubber developed by GE.

Why are these shoes significant?

Answer

The shoes worn by the crew of Apollo 11.

3.

In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, this was the seminal act of e-commerce. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of X.

What is the item that was sold in this transaction which is considered to be the first e-commerce deal?

Answer

4.

Theories of the phrase's origin include Pliny the Elder's NaturalisHistoria, regarding the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison. In the antidote, one of the ingredients was a X. Threats involving the poison were thus to be taken with that ingredient, and therefore less seriously.

The Latin word salis (which is a part of the latin form of the phrase) means both X and ‘wit’.

Give the phrase.

Answer

• Taking it with ‘a grain of salt’ or ‘a pinch of salt’.

5.

Aishwarya Rai recently gave this statement:

I was definitely not the fittest body of all the 87 contestants. I can vouch for it, I can put a stamp on it. And yet I won the title. People believe that this is an imperative thing and this becomes the deciding factor. That's not true. Getting the 'Miss Perfect 10' title was not only about literally your physicality, it was all about how you presented yourself, your confidence and so much else that went with it."

Put context.

6.

This piece of music was composed by Beethoven. It is widely believed that it was dedicated to Therese Malfatti, a student and love interest of his. In 2012, the Canadian musicologist Rita Steblin suggested that Juliane Katharine Elisabet Barensfeld, who used X as a variant first name might be the dedicatee. The score was not published until 1867, 40 years after the composer's death in 1827.

Name the classical piece.

Answer

Fur Elise.

7.

The book shown on the right is ‘The Coral Island’ written by R.M. Ballantyne. It inspired another author to write an extreme parody of this book which negated the positive morality of leadership and helping nature of the book.

Name the author and the book.

Answer

‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding.

8.

• X is a class of dice games for two or more players requiring the ability to deceive and detect an opponent's deception. Also famously featured in Pirates of the Caribbean.

• X also has a very significant recent Indian MELA connect.

• Give me X and the connect.

Ans.

• Liar’s Dice

• India’s official entry to the

87th Academy Awards.

9. Connect.

• Only 2 Indian sportspersons (Col. Homi Motivala – yachting and P. Gopichand – badminton), who have won the triple of Arjuna, Rajeev Gandhi Khel Ratna and Dronacharya awards

10.

• “Our cook cooked it, I painted it and we ate it. That was one of the few times I've ever eaten the model.”

• The creator speaking about a part of a painting, regarded as an iconic representation of the Thanksgiving holiday.

• ID the painting and the artist.

Ans.

• Freedom from Want

• Norman Rockwell

11.

• ___________is a site dedicated to removing ______from the comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a secondary character. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

Ans.

• GarfieldMinusGarfield

12.

• Able was I ere I saw Elba.

• _________ is supposed to have said this to Barry Edward O’Meara who was his physician.

• Who and what is so special about this saying ?

Ans.

• Napoleon

• Whole sentence is a palindrome.

13.

• In a Modern family episode,

• Manny: U don’t like anything Jay does. Scotch, Golf or Eisenhower documentaries.

• Gloria: That’s true. ________________.

• FITB with a four word phrase which is the complete opposite of Eisenhower’s original campaign slogan.

Ans.

• I don’t like Ike.

14.

• Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout

• Ah, Wilderness! By Eugene O’Neill

• The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie

• Dawn’s Left Hand by Lan Wright

• The Throne of Saturn by Allen Drury

All the following titles are inspired from a 11th century collection of poems, which were translated to English in the 1860’s.

Ans.

• The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

15.

• J.G. Farrell, one of the most respected authors of his time, won two bookers, one in 1973 for the Siege of Krishnapur, and one for Troubles.

• What is unique about Troubles in terms of the Booker prize and when did it get it ?

Ans.

• Winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize

16.

• In H.Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quartermain uses a certain phenomenon to escape from the natives. He and his freienduse the natives’ ignorance of this phenomenon. The natives believed that Quartermain was using witchcraft.

• Tintin also uses the same phenomenon to escape in The Prisoners of the Sun.

• What phenomenon, used as a sort of deus ex machina( due to its convenient timing) by writers?

Ans.

• Eclipse

17.

• X is Neil Mukherjee’s second book and was met with critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, eventually losing out to Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The novel is set in 1967 Calcutta and follows the life of a family fractured by extremist political activism. The book deals with the chasm between generations.

• It also shares its name with a very famous 2006 German drama film, which was widely acclaimed as one of the best movies of its time.

Ans.

• The Lives of Others

18.

• X was a 30- second gunfight between Outlaw Cowboys and lawmen that is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the Wild West.

• It was made into a 1957 film starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. X continues to be referenced in a lot of movies even today.

Ans.

• Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

19.

• Lion on killing Witch Doctor in DOTA2, says ‘All we need now is a ________”.

• FITB And give me the person it is a homage to.

Ans.

• Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis

20.

• Which pigment, popular with artists, synthesized for the first time by the paint maker Diesbach in Berlin around 1706, is also used in medicine as an antidote for poisoning by certain heavy metals such as cesium and thallium?

Ans.

• Prussian Blue

Written RoundChess variants

+5 for each

For all correct – Thunderous round of applause

1.

• Played with two boards: a piece moved on one board passes "through the ______" onto the other board.

Ans.

• Alice Chess

2.

• When capturing, the capturing piece is removed from play also. So, a king cannot defend itself by capturing an attacker. A capture is not allowed if it exposes the king to discovered check.

Ans.

• Kamikaze Chess

3.

• After each move, the square vacated "disappears" from the chessboard. Pieces may not occupy disappeared squares, but may pass through them.

Ans.

• Cheshire Cat Chess

4.

• Players' minor pieces are concealed so the opponent does not know what they are until revealed. When covered, pieces move in a restricted way (as queens that can only move two squares).

Ans.

• Schrodingers Chess

5.

• Played on a board distorted in the centre. Due to the distortion, some pieces can make U-turns, attack the same square multiple ways, and bishops can possibly change square colours (e.g., starting on a black square and ending on a white square).

Ans.

• Singularity Chess

6.

• A capture on any square results in an _________which kills (i.e. removes from the game) all pieces in the eight surrounding squares, except for pawns.

Ans.

• Atomic Explosion Chess