Run-Up to AntaragniGeneral Quiz

By: Vinamra and Siddharth

Rules

1. 30 questions in total, all infinite bounce and pounce.

2. +20/-10 on pounce and +10/0 on bounce.

3. Let’s Begin.

Ques 1.

The original title of the story, as published in New World Writing, was X-18.

Acquiescing to his publisher’s qualms about confusion with the similarly themed

novel Mila 18, Y dragged his title through a sequence of changes: X-11 (which was

deemed too similar to the contemporary film Ocean’s 11), followed by X-17 (which

posed the same problem with Billy Wilder’s war movie Stalag 17), and then X-14

(which Heller’s publisher thought just didn’t sound funny enough). Finally, the writer

landed on X-Z.

Safety Slide

Ans- Catch-22

Ques 2.

The Germans officially referred to the offensive as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein

("Operation Watch on the Rhine"), while the Allies designated it the Ardennes

Counteroffensive. The phrase "Battle of the X" was coined by contemporary press

to describe the X in German front lines on wartime news maps.

Give me X.

Safety Slide

Ans- Battle of the Bulge

Ques 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before

eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a Y. The students used the network to

quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of X.

Safety Slide

Ans- Drug Deal, Marijuana.

Ques 4.

An applicant has sought the X through the Right to Information Act (RTI). Vivek

Kumar, a senior official with the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in New Delhi,

confirmed receiving an RTI application enquiring about the X. The X stay with the

Indian prime minister. The procedures are explained to the premier by the country's

national security advisor as and when he or she assumes office.

Safety Slide

Ans- Nuclear Launch Codes

Ques 5.

_____, is an Indian technology demonstration and remote sensing CubeSat

satellite which was operated by the X. Built under the guidance of Dr. N. S. Vyas, it

is a nanosatellite which will be used to provide data for agriculture and disaster

monitoring. It is a 3-kilogram (6.6 lb) spacecraft, which measures 34 centimetres (13

in) in length by 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in height and width. Its development

programme cost around 25 million rupees. _____ was launched on 12 October 2011

into low Earth orbit by a PSLV-CA C18.

Safety Slide

Ans- Jugnu

Ques 6.

As Constantine Porphyrogennetos' warnings show, the ingredients and the

processes of manufacture and deployment of X were carefully guarded military

secrets. So strict was the secrecy that the composition of X was lost forever and

remains a source of speculation. It remains a matter of speculation and debate, with

various proposals including combinations of pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, calcium

phosphide, sulfur, or niter.

Safety Slide

Ans- Greek Fire

Ques 7.

Medieval printing presses did not contain the letter thorn so the letter y was

substituted owing to its similarity to some medieval scripts, especially later ones.

What did this lead to?

Safety Slide

Ans- "Ye" is also sometimes used to represent an Early Modern English form of the definite article "the", such as in "Ye Olde Shoppe"

Ques 8.

For the past 20 years, Zhang Fuguan has hardly parted from his boat.

Everyday, at 7 am, the 68-year-old man goes aboard the boat and sweeps it clean.

At 6 pm, he locks the cabin doors, checks the moorings and is the last man off the

boat.

Once every two years he leads a group of four workers, including his son, to

dismantle the wooden boat and furniture aboard into some 500 pieces and then

paint them, piece by piece.

"The work has always been done in the summer because it's easy to dry the paint,"

he said.

Of course the boat he looks after is not common. What is so special about his boat?

Safety Slide

Ans- On July 23, 1921, 13 delegates of the Chinese communists nationwide gathered in a French concession building at 76 Xingye Road in Shanghai to hold the CPC's 1st National Congress. The meeting was interrupted by French policemen.

So the delegates gathered on the boat and the Chinese Communist Party was founded at the end of the congress.

Ques 9.

The item that set him apart was the self-scouring steel plow, which was pioneered

in 1837 when X fashioned a Scottish steel saw blade into a plow. Prior to X's steel

plow, most farmers used iron or wooden plows to which the rich Midwestern soil

stuck, so had to be cleaned frequently. The smooth-sided steel plow solved this

problem, and greatly aided migration into the American Great Plains in the 19th and

early 20th centuries. Who is X?

Safety Slide

Ans- John Deere

Ques 10.

In some international treaties and agreements, XDRs are used to value penalties,

charges or prices. For example, the Convention on Limitation of Liability for

Maritime Claims caps personal liability for damages to ships at XDR 330,000.

Safety Slide

Ans- Special Drawing Rights. Currency issued by the IMF.

Ques 11.

In Greek mythology, X was the only child of King Menelaus of Sparta and his wife,

Helen of Troy. X means “messenger”. X, and particularly its pronunciation, is

famous for other reasons.

Safety Slide

Ans- Hermione

Ques 12.

Many farmers in Yorkshire believed that, for an hour over midnight on Christmas

Eve, bees hum a carol of praise to Jesus Christ. So strong was this belief that when

they didn’t do so on Christmas eve of 1752, the villagers were convinced that the

change that was enforced that year was the work of Satan. Conflicting accounts

report that the bees remarkably adapted and buzzed on the Christmas Eve despite

this change. What could possibly cause bees to give Christmas of 1752 a miss?

Safety Slide

Ans- Shift to Gregorian Calendar.

Ques 13.

During the economic crisis of 1837, he lost most of his wealth when the price of

indigo fell. By 1839 he sold most of his property and avoided bankruptcy. However,

in 1853 he founded The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, which later

merged with the Standard Bank to form Standard Chartered Bank in 1969. Who and

what did he establish in 1843?

Safety Slide

Ans- John Wilson - The Economist

Ques 14.

The issue started when X posted pictures of her on Facebook in which she is

addressing the audience at the Harvard University at its India Conference on March

7-8, 2015. It was followed by a series of articles published in the newspapers in X's

state. However, Harvard University confirmed that X had not delivered any speech

or lecture at the conference and was present only as a member of the audience.

She allegedly went on stage after the conference was over and clicked a few

photographs and published it in various newspapers. Identify X.

Safety Slide

Ans- Misa Bharti, daughter of Lalu Yadav

Ques 15.

Connect.

Safety Slide

Ans- Indian startups chosen as case studies at Harvard University.

Ques 16.

X Industries has come a long way since its inception in 1926, when X Gandhi

started a soda fountain in 1926. He passed on the business to his son, Ranchod Lal,

who ran a one-man operation. Eventually, Ranchod Lal's sons, Ramchandra and

Lakshman, inherited the business and they were instrumental in giving a new

direction to the company. The duo imparted a new vision to the venture. Identify X

Safety Slide

Ans- Vadilal

Ques 17.

#kolstylz

John Godwin from Godalming was announced as the winner of a Royal Society of

Chemistry (RSC) competition to find a solution to a 40 year old problem.

What was the problem?

Safety Slide

Ans- He solved the Italian Job cliffhanger ending.

Ques 18.

The marble slab was cut by an artist named Agostino di Duccio, who planned to

turn it into a statue of Hercules. Di Duccio abandoned his sculpture, which was

originally to be installed in a Florentine cathedral, and the marble was unused for 10

years until another sculptor, named Antonio Rossellino, decided to work with it.

Rossellino also abandoned his work because he found marble too difficult to sculpt.

What resulted?

Safety Slide

Ans- Michelangelo’s David

Ques. 19

There are technically five separate versions of Expressionist artist X’s most famous

work, Y. The first two, from 1893 and created with tempera and crayon on

cardboard, are located in the National Gallery in Oslo and the Z, respectively. A

privately owned third version created in 1895 with pastels recently sold for nearly

$120 million at auction. Yet another version from 1895 is a black and white

lithograph. A final version, done in 1910 by X due to the popularity of the previous

incarnations, is also held in the Z, and it made headlines in recent years for being

stolen in 2004 and recovered in 2006. GIve X and Y.

Safety Slide

Ans- Edvard Munch’s The Scream

Ques 20.

German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller was drawing his map of the Novus

Mundi (or New World) in 1507 he marked it with a certain name He later regretted

the choice, omitting the name from future maps, but it was too late, and the name

stuck. What name?

Safety Slide

Ans- America after Amerigo Vespucci

Ques 21.

An extract written 2 decades ago. Just identify X and Y.

Dear Reader:

I will be stopping X at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy

decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted, however, and I

believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small

panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic

compromises. I have not yet decided on future projects, but my relationship with

Universal Press Syndicate will continue.

Sincerely,

Y

Safety Slide

Ans- X- Calvin and Hobbes, Y- Bill (Watterson)

Ques 22.

While it typically refers to someone with a strong dedication to a particular set of

beliefs, the term “X” originally had a series of much more literal meanings. In its

earliest incarnation in the 1700s, the expression described condemned men who

struggled the longest when they were executed by hanging. The phrase later

became even more popular after 1811’s Battle of Albuera during the Napoleonic

Wars. In the midst of the fight, a wounded British officer named William Inglis

supposedly urged his unit forward by bellowing “Stand your ground and X … make

the enemy pay dear for each of us!” Inglis’ 57th Regiment suffered 75 percent

casualties during the battle, and went on to earn the nickname “the Xs.”

Safety Slide

Ans- diehard

Ques 23.

One of the most popular theory about the origin of the phrase X is, In 1837, the

Marquis of Waterford—a known lush and mischief maker—led a group of friends on

a night of drinking through the English town of Melton Mowbray. The bender

culminated in vandalism after Waterford and his fellow revelers knocked over

flowerpots, pulled knockers off of doors and broke the windows of some of the

town’s buildings. To top it all off, the mob literally painted a tollgate, the doors of

several homes and a swan statue with _______. Give X.

Safety Slide

Ans- Paint the town red.

Ques 24.

This quote is often attributed to either F Scott Fitzgerald or his contemporary,

Ernest Hemingway. There is no evidence in the collected works of either writer to

support that attribution; the idea was first associated with Fitzgerald in a 1996

Associated Press story, and later in Stephen Fry’s memoir More Fool Me. In

actuality, humorist Peter De Vries coined an early version of the phrase in a 1964

novel titled Reuben, Reuben.

What quote?

Safety Slide

Ans- Write drunk, edit sober.

Ques 25.

When she began research in Berlin in the early 1900s, she found herself at the

receiving end of so much prejudice from male scientists that she was forced to

work from an old carpentry shop. In 1918, she discovered protactinium in

collaboration with Otto Hahn. She was forced to leave Germany for Sweden after

the Nazis came to power where she continued her research into fission.

In 1997, the IUPAC formally approved the naming of element no. 109 in tribute to

her. Who?

Safety Slide

Ans- Lise Meitner

Ques 26.

In 2005, researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York

have changed the name of POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic gene (a gene found to

cause cancer) to the more unobtrusive Zbtb7 due to legal pressure from which

company?

Safety Slide

Ans- Nintendo (The gene was initially named Pokemon)

Ques 27.

One theory for the origin of this term is that it may be an alteration of the word

'coney' used for rabbits. Another theory suggests that the animals were brought to

Europe by way of a particular place, leading people to think they had originated

there. That place was also frequently used in English to refer generally to any far-

off, unknown country, and so the name may simply be a colorful reference to the

animal's foreignness. Which animal?

Safety Slide

Ans- Guinea Pig

Ques 28.

This mathematician wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances,

said to have been prized by gamblers. He is also reported to have correctly

predicted the day of his own death by noting that he was sleeping 15 minutes

longer each day. He did indeed die on 27 Nov 1754 - a date he predicted in

advance. Who, well known for his theorem combining complex numbers and

trigonometry?

Safety Slide

Ans- Abraham de Moivre

Ques 29.

Operation Lal Dora is often called India's 'Thin Red Line' moment in history. It was

an aborted military intervention that called for the amphibious landing of troops

from the 54th Division to help the PM of which African country fend off a coup?

Safety Slide

Ans- Mauritius

Ques 30.

To commemorate the successful conclusion of negotiations, Mussolini

commissioned the Via della Conciliazione, and signed the Lateran treaty along with

Pietro Gasparrion behalf of the Kingdom of Italy in 1929. What was established

thus?

Safety Slide

Ans- Vatican City