Mega-Whats 2013Finals

Arun Hiregange & Kiran Vijayakumar

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Written Round- 5 questions- 10 points each; no negatives

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Three videos. What common phrase links them all?

<Videos removed>

W1

Walk the Dog

Identify both people in this routine. They were long time partners on stage and TV.

<Video removed>

W2

Jack Benny & Mel Blanc

I’ll give you half of the information: the red stripe represents the ocean and the red semicircle the sun. So what is this the flag of?

W3

Greenland

What two words have been blanked out?

W4

Berlin Airlift

Taken from archives of the Theosophical Society of Australia: “Over seventy Australian theosophists attended the Jubilee celebrations at Adyar in December 1925 when, it was claimed, the Lord spoke through the chosen vehicle, Krishnamurti, for the first time. [Jiddu’s discoverer Charles] Leadbeater's party returned to Australia in early 1926 hugging the idea that the Coming had begun. They brought with them the young Peter Finch, abandoned at Adyar by a gallivanting Buddhist grandmother; and, more auspicious, Annie Besant's loyal lieutenant since 1902, _______, with his beautiful young wife ______.” Name both.

W5

George ArundaleRukmini Devi Arundale

Anticlockwise- 24 questions- +10 / -5 on the pounce- +10 on the pass

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The story concerns Frederic, who, having completed his 21st year, is released from his apprenticeship to a band of tender-hearted ruffians. He meets Mabel, the daughter of a military man, and the two young people fall instantly in love. But Frederic is told a detail about his birth and the wording of his apprenticeship, which convinces him that he has to continue his duties for many many more years. Much drama ensues but of course Mabel & Frederic are re-united and all ends well. What is this a plot of? And what technicality of birth derails Frederic’s life, a trait that many people like Rossini, Rukmini Devi Arundale, Herman Hollerith, Khaled etc. share?

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Birthday on 29th Feb

Giles Debunne setup a website to research a typically French social conundrum. This map was the result. What does it depict?

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When in France, how many times to do the cheek kiss?

Thomas Fuller used it in 1659, in The Appeal of Injured Innocence : "I hope, sir, that we are not mutually _______ by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.“Shakespeare had used it in King Lear:“Will you with those infirmities she owes,______, new adopted to our hate,Dow'rd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath,Take her or, leaue her.”

At least in the past participle form, these seem to be the earliest uses of this recent honoree of Oxford Univ. Press’s Word of the Year award. Fill with a word we’ve seen for less than a decade.

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Unfriend(ed)

What connects wildfires in the USA and the New York City Subway system to cricket?

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The unit of measurement: chain

This is a war memorial at Reading, and you can see it on the crest of Reading FC and on the Reading Post’s front page.

It was built in 1886 & named to commemorate the deaths of men of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot who died fighting.

We all have one more reason to remember that conflict. What?

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Maiwand Lion

“I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery.”

Harvard psychologist Edwin G. Boring popularised this ambiguous drawing depicting either a young woman or an old woman, which is known as the “Boring Figure”. He is also the man behind a misconception that we have all been taught, usually accompanied by a diagrammatic “map”. It came about because of Boring’s mistranslating a German paper written in 1901 titled “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes”. What misconception?

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A set of five is named after the queen shown here, who was the first in the set. The others are shown on the next slide.

Who was this queen? What is the set? You could say that this ACK cover depicts why this set is appropriately named after her.

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The two above are from Central India and the ones on the left from East/North-East India.

Rani AbbakkaClass (IndianCoast Guard Patrol)

Rani DurgavatiRani Avanti BaiRani GaidinliuRani Rashmoni

Thence Northward marched the King, resolved to quellThe Northern princes with his dreaded shafts.As, when his beams have drained moist Southern lands.The Sun too turns him North. His mighty acts.Wrought on their husbands, Huna dames proclaimed,Recorded on their cheeks in angry scars.His horses, resting after toils of war,Refreshed on Sindhu's banks, their shoulders shook.Where saffron-tendrils clung. Akshota trees,Bruised by the chains that bound his elephants.Bent low : bowed too Kambojas, fain to yieldBefore his prowess : heaps of gold, fine steeds.In tribute offering, which the mighty KingAccepted graciously, and spared their pride.

What 19-sarga work is this excerpted from? It is named after the King referred to here.

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Raghuvamsha

Is the answer to the question raised repeatedly in the movie script shown in the next slide, given in this news clipping dating from 17th July 1866?

Explain!

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Chico: That's the Jewish neighborhood?Hammer: (pause) Well, we'll Passover that...You're a peach, boy. Now, here is a little peninsula, and, eh, here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.Chico: ______?Hammer: I'm alright, how are you? I say, here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.Chico: Alright, _____?Hammer: (pause) I'm not playing "Ask Me Another," I say that's a viaduct.Chico: Alright! _____? Why that..._____? Why a no chicken?

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Q: Why a duck?

A: Because of this news article describing how the Prince of Wales got out in an 1866 cricket match

This list was released not long ago this year before an event. What is it all about?

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Drivers’ preferences for the milk they would drink if they won the Indy 500

What is common to the Loch Ness monster (Nessiteras rhombopteryx), Hooke’s Law, Newton’s invention of calculus, Galileo’s 1610 discovery of the phases of Venus & Huygens’ 1656 discovery of the rings of Saturn?

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All announcements were in the form of anagrams

Ceiiinosssttuv -> Ut tensio, sic vis

Nessiteras rhombopteyx -> Monster hoax by Sir Peter S

6accdael3eff7i3l9n4o4qrr4s9tl2vx ->  "Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitates involvente, fluxiones invenire; et vice versa“

This animal is endemic to the island of Borneo. The Malay call it monyet belanda or orang belanda. We know that orang means “man”. The use of belanda was because the natives felt that these animals resembled their colonisers, as far as a certain body part went. The English name by which we know this animal refers to this very body part.

Which animal is this and what does orang belanda translate to?

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Proboscis monkey

Dutch man

Nearly every child in the world is affected by these by the age of 5. It was named by Thomas Flewett in 1974, after observing how it looked under an electron microscope, as also shown in the picture on the next slide.

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Rotovirus

This is the translation of a traditional harvest festival song “Sikpui Hla”, that has been used as proof of a certain claim. An eagerly anticipated DNA test done in 2003-04 could not conclusively prove or disprove the claim. Explain. While we are preparing for the Sikpui Feast,The big red sea becomes divided;As we march along fighting our foes,We are being led by pillar of cloud by day,And pillar of fire by night.Our enemies, O ye folks, are thick with fury,Come out with your shields and arrows.

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Bnei Menashe, a group of people in Manipur/Mizoram who claim to be one of the Lost Tribes of Israel

About 2000 of them had managed to emigrate to Israel till early 2013, with many more in the queue.

Rosignano ______ is a borough in Tuscany, Italy. Its White Beaches (Spiagge Bianche) are shown below, whose sand gets it colour because of its composition: 90% limestone and 10% Calcium chloride. Fill and connect the blank to a village formerly known as Geddesville, NY and to the flow diagram.

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Solvay

Solvay processVillages of Solvay & Rosignano Solvay named because its factories had been setup there

Alex Diggelmann was a Swiss artist who designed the trophy presented annually to the winners of the UEFA Cup (now the Europa League). He also designed many posters for sporting events, like the Arosa placard shown here. What was his absolutely unique sporting achievement in 1948 through two commercial posters, one for the "World Championship for Cycling" and another for the "World Championship for Ice Hockey“?

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Diggelmann won an Olympic silver and a bronze medal in 1948 for Applied Graphics for those two posters, making him the only person to win two Olympic medals in the same event in the same year

Give a 11-letter word to connect. Pics can be seen clockwise from top left.

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Avoirdupois

Grain, Dram (comes from Drachma), Ounce, Pound, Stone, Quarter, Hundredweight, Ton

Stephen Fry said on his BBC TV show QI that he'd asked Steve Jobs to confirm a fact about Apple Inc. Jobs replied "It isn't true, but God we wish it were!“

Fry also tried to get a creation of someone at the core of that question classified as the greatest British innovation ever.

So what was the question Fry put to Jobs?

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Does the logo represent the bite Alan Turing took out of an apple when committing suicide?

There was a time when its posters adorned many a schoolboy's bedroom wall alongside Farrah Fawcett and even today – more than 40 years after its launch - it remains an attention-grabber.All angles rather than curves, it was nonconformist down to its name, a cry of astonishment that took it away from the traditional way of naming in its family.

What are we talking about?

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Connect this T-shaped building, built as a meeting hall, to the audio.

<Audio removed>

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Raga Hindolam

Hindola Mahal

Both are named to mean “swing”

Indian Yellow was a transparent yellow pigment used in oil paintings and watercolours. It was fluorescent, making it bright and vivid to look at in sunlight. It was commonly used by artists across Europe by the end of the 18th century. A certain Mr. T. N. Mukharji is said to have described the process that the British outlawed in the early 20th century, declaring it cruel to the animal used in making the foul smelling pigment.

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What was this admittedly anecdotal process, that involved a possible urushiol overdose?

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Dried urine of cows that have been fed only mango leaves and water

Birds are known to be fond of chemicals found in some smelly plants, for the same reason that the plants themselves produce them: they act as insecticides. On similar lines, researchers in Mexico City have confirmed by examining sparrow and finch nests that these birds use certain objects discarded by humans to line their nests with plant-sourced insecticides. What objects?

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Cigarette butts, for the nicotine

In 1772, as a midshipman, he went on his first survey mission along the coasts of India, Iran and Arabia. In 1780 he was captured by a French man-of-war off the Cape of Good Hope and kept prisoner until 1784. Later he participated in a number of survey missions e.g. along the Hooghly river & near Singapore. His work was exceptionally trustworthy and accurate, to the point that later surveyors complained that they were left with not much to do. After retiring he received a government commission on all of the Company’s cotton exported from Bombay as reward for inventing a machine which made "a considerable improvement in the packing of cotton.“ His name lives on in India. Who?

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Archibald Blair after whom Port Blair is named

C/-43 K1 (depicted above on a coin) was the most famous of its time. Connect the two words in its popular name and the objects on the right.

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Caesar Comet & Rambutan

All three words come from “hair”

Written Round- 5 questions- 10 points each; no negatives

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Designed by Denis Mann in 1972 and built by Caithness Glass of Scotland, it features the nine Muses. What is it used for?

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Trophy for the BBC Mastermind winner.1

Its theme tune is called College Boy composed by Derek New. The current version was recorded by The Balanescu Quartet. What you will hear now is a live jazz version of the same. What are we talking about?

<Audio removed>

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University Challenge.2

This annual “institution” started in 1904. Earlier, it used to be attempted twice – once on the day before the Christmas holidays, and again in the New Year after the holidays. Always introduced with the Latin motto: “Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est” (To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition). Appearing in The Guardian since 1951. What are we talking about? Or how is it popularly billed as?

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King William’s College Quiz – The World’s Most Difficult Quiz.3

“Fifty million people watched, but no one saw a thing.” Tagline for?4

Quiz Show.4

It is a procedural defence that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction. In common law countries, a defendant may enter a peremptory plea of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict (autrefois means “previously” in French), meaning the defendant has been acquitted or convicted of the same offence. Guarantee against it is a constitutional right in Canada, Mexico and USA. What 2-word term are we looking for?

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Double jeopardy.5

This board game was published by Milton Bradley in 1985 to cash in on the popularity of similar products. Each set had 12 decks of 28 cards – 3 rounds per card. Each round had 6 questions connected by a theme. That’s 1,008 themes and 6,048 questions to answer. 150 chips (50 maroon and 100 white) were to be used to keep track of scores. What was its name?

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Stage II.6

Anticlockwise- 24 questions- +10 / -5 on the pounce- +10 on the pass

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Connect to get a 4-5 word term.1

National Library at Kolkata romanization (NLK transliteration). It is the most widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages.

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In 2006, as part of the 25th anniversary of Guernica’s arrival in Spain (after its long exile in New York), a Picasso: Tradition and Avant-Garde retrospective was held. In the same room in Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid where Guernica was displayed, there were three other paintings critical of war. The first one was painted in 1814. The second was painted between 1867 and 1869 and the third was painted in 1951 — both drew inspiration from the first. Identify the three paintings, each featuring a firing squad.

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Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808; Édouard Manet’s Execution of Emperor Maximilian; Pablo Picasso’s Massacre in Korea.

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The first part of his pen name comes from a family joke about mispronunciation of the US name of this Renault car. The second part was to put his works on bookstore shelves between crime fiction stars Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie. His main character’s name came from a comment his wife made about his height: “Hey, if this writing thing doesn’t pan out, you could always be a ____ in a supermarket.” Identify the pen name and the character.

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Lee Child. Jack Reacher.3

One popular theory about the origin of this phrase attributes it to a Roman Consul named Gaius Popillius Laenas who did this in 168 BC. He was sent as an envoy to prevent a war between Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Egypt. He did something challenging Antiochus and the troops withdrew. Some attribute it to an incident in the Indian mythology which too gave rise to an idiom. Identify the phrase heard in a sporting context earlier this year. Also identify the Indian idiom/phrase.

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Line in the sand. Lakshman Rekha.4

Impossible objects or illusions such as this are also called “poiuyt” after this MAD creation. How was the word coined?

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Letters from the top row of a QWERTY keyboard in reverse.5

Where would one come across these together?6

Caldecott Medal.6

The story starts with a memento presented by a New Zealand group to its Indian counterpart during a 1935 visit after being awed by the group’s performance. It was used annually till 1947 when it was with undivided Punjab and housed in Lahore. After partition, the West Punjab authorities refused to return it to India. The annual event continued and in 1951, one of the national dailies found a replacement for it. Just name the replacement which has been used since then.

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Rangaswamy Cup for the National Senior Men’s Hockey Championship, donated by The Hindu in 1951 in honour of one of its editors, S. Rangaswamy.

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These are attempts, usually organized by amateur astronomers, to find as many objects as possible, during one night, from a catalogue compiled by French astronomer Charles ____ during the late 18th century. Typically an observer begins at sundown and will observe through the night until sunrise in order to see all 110 relatively bright deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters). What 2-word term, that can refer to a more disorderly version of a sporting event, is used for such attempts?

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Messier marathons.8

This novel was written in German as the second part of a trilogy—the first was written in Hungarian in 1938 and the third was written in English in 1943. The author’s companion, the sculptor Daphne Hardy, translated it into English and took it to England to find a publisher. On the way to England, the author lost the original. He heard a false report that the ship carrying Hardy had been torpedoed and all persons lost (along with his only manuscript); he attempted suicide. Identify this 1940 work that was translated back to German as Sonnenfinsternis (literally ‘solar eclipse’) .

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Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.9

These items were donated to the Nobel Museum in Stockholm by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. What innovative activity was done by them in 2004 using these?

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They first isolated individual graphene planes by using adhesive tape. They simply stuck a flake of graphite debris onto plastic adhesive tape, folded the sticky side of the tape over the flake and then pulled the tape apart, cleaving the flake in two. As the experimenters repeated the process, the resulting fragments grew thinner. Even more unexpectedly, the newly identified bits of graphene turned out to have high crystal quality and to be chemically stable even at room temperature.

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That he also dabbled in poetry is not very well known. He wrote Urdu poetry under the aptly-chosen pen name of Seemab (meaning mercury). While teaching at the Benares Hindu University (1921 onwards), he composed the kulgeet or the ceremonial hymn in Sanskrit, which is still being used today. Who are we talking about? In 1936, when he was conferred the OBE by the British Government, his friends joked that in his case, it stood for Oil Borer of the Empire.

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Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar.11

This clever (and almost illusory) work by Sterling Hundley paints a tragic tale combining two events – one from March 4, 1841 and another from April 4, 1841. What tale?

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William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of USA, took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day. He wore neither an overcoat nor hat, and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history. He died on his 32nd day in office of complications from pneumonia, serving the shortest tenure in US presidential history. He was also the first president to die in office.

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Superfecundation, also known as heteropaternal superfecundation, is common in animals such as cats and dogs. It most commonly happens within hours or days of the first instance of fertilization with ova released during the same cycle. There is a small time window when eggs are able to be fertilized. Sperm cells can live inside a female’s body for 4–5 days. Once ovulation occurs, the egg remains viable for 12–48 hours before it begins to disintegrate. Thus, the fertile period can span 5–7 days. Give us an example of this phenomenon from Indian mythology.

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Superfecundation is the fertilization of two or more ova from the same cycle by sperm from separate acts of sexual intercourse. Heteropaternal superfecundation occurs when two different males father fraternal twins. Nakula and Sahadeva were fathered by the Aswini Kumaras.

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In this trial held in January 1914, J. Cuming Walters led the prosecution, while Cecil Chesterton acted for the defence. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, the foreman stating that it was a compromise on the grounds that there was not enough evidence to convict the defendant but that they did not want to run the risk of being murdered in their beds. Both sides protested and demanded that the jury be discharged. The foreman claimed that the jury would be only too pleased to be discharged. The judge ruled that the case was insoluble and fined everyone, except himself, for contempt of court. What was the trial about?

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The trial of John Jasper for the murder of Edwin Drood. (G.K. Chesterton was the judge and G.B. Shaw was the jury foreman.)

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This is a depiction of the prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling painted by Michelangelo in 1509. An iconic 1943 work, featuring Mein Kampf irreverently, used the exact pose for its subject. Identify the artist and the work/subject. The work was loaned the U.S. Treasury Department for the duration WWII for use in war bond drives.

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Rosie the Riveter by Norman Rockwell.

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X is a singing technique whose goals are to train singers in sight reading and sight singing, to give them more precise pitch and to improve recognition of musical intervals. Y is a system of attributing a distinct syllable to each note in a musical scale. X is a form of Y, and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Z is the equivalent of Y in Hindustani classical music. The etymology of X, Y and Z share something in common. Identify any 2 and briefly describe the common etymology.

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X — solfège (also called solfeggio, solfeo, solfedge or solfa).Y — solmization.Z — sargam.They are derived from the musical notes.

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This is the only known picture of the final goal by Ricardo Infante for Estudiantes de la Plata in a 3-0 win over Rosario Central in 1948. One week later, the magazine El Gráfico published a cartoon—the title was a pun based on his name. Infante referred to a youth and it was clubbed with a term for skipping school, which, it would appear, was being used in this sense to imply the forward had done something tricky. What are we talking about?

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Rabona. It is a method of kicking the football whereby the kicking leg is wrapped around the back of the standing leg—effectively with one’s legs crossed. The title of the cartoon was “El infante que se hizo la rabona”.

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On December 24, 1968, in what was the most watched television broadcast at the time, the crew of Apollo 8 were orbiting the Moon. Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman spoke on air, “We are now approaching lunar sunrise and, for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. […]” What followed was controversial and became the focus of debates between groups. Madalyn Murray O’Hair sued the US government, alleging violations of the First Amendment. The suit was (cheekily) dismissed by the Supreme Court citing lack of jurisdiction. What were the controversial words/content?

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The Book of Genesis (verses 1 through 10, using the King James version): "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..."

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One of X’s middle names meant “the friend of God”, but he preferred another that meant “the lover of God”. One of Y’s middle names meant “the gift of God” and another was “Wilhelm”. For his works, Y adopted a pseudonym where “Wilhelm” was replaced by “the lover of God” in homage to X, 20 years his elder. Y was an author, jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist – his work formed the basis of a famous 19th century opera featuring himself as the protagonist. Identify X and Y.

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X – Wolfgang Theophilus / Amadeus Mozart.Y – Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (E.T.A. Hoffmann).

The opera is Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann.

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Chrysopogon zizanioides is a perennial grass of the Poaceae family, native to India. Its name in northern India may be easily confused with poppy seed. It is used for perfumery, agriculture and bioengineering. A technology of soil conservation and water quality management (by planting it as hedgerows) used in more than 100 countries is named after it. Identify its common name and the named used in northern India.

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Vetiver. Khus.20

During the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia described the two qualities he felt New Yorkers would need to survive the economic depression. He used these qualities as the name of a 1911 creation by Edward Clark Potter and this has ensured that they remained popular even after many decades. Either tell us what the two qualities were or the 1911 creation.

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Patience and Fortitude, the lions guarding the New York Public library.21

Examples of Muthuswami Dikshitar’s lyrics. What clever wordplay has he done in these?”vINA bhErI vENu vAdyAdi vinOdinimOdini raksha mAm” “abhaya varada pANI ali vENI ASrita mA vANI kalyANI””nikhilAgama sannuta varadAyainirvikArAyai nitya muktAyaisaMsAra bhIti bhanjanAyai” “ambujA ramaNa sOdari ati rathi ambari kAdambari nIlAmbari”

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“smaraNAt kaivalya prada caraNAravindaMtaruNAditya kOTi saMkASa cidAnandaMkaruNA rasAdi kandaM SaraNAgata sura bRndam” “AnandAmRtAkarshiNi amRta varshiNi harAdi pUjitE SivE bhavAni””kEdArESvaraM viSvESvaraMkamalA pati nuta padaM SaSi dharam” “sadyOjAtAdi panca mukharishaDvarga - rahita hRtsancAra”

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Embedding the names of the ragas of the composition in the lyrics.

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This official “aid” called “le petit bâton rouge” (meaning ‘the little red stick’) was originally used only at Avery Island, Louisiana. These days workers at various locations in Central and South America also use this. Another integral part of the overall process is white oak barrels previously used for aging Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey. What are these sticks used for?

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For determining the ripeness of peppers used for making Tabasco sauce. Peppers that do not match the color of the stick are not harvested.

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Regarding the 2 pieces, he told Paris Review that he was pleased about the coincidence “though I couldn’t duplicate the pattern indefinitely”. Who? What coincidence?

<Audios removed>

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David Mitchell about his novels number9dream (2001) Cloud Atlas (2004) being named after songs by husbands of Yoko Ono.

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