2014 KQA December Open Prelims and Final

KQA December Open -2014
Rajagopal P.S.
Kaustuba K.V.

Prelims
• 36 questions
• Star mark questions to break ties
• 8 teams in the final

1. Shown here (pic) is the predecessor to Colossus
(the world's first electronic programmable
computer, created at Bletchley Park to crack the
German Lorenz cipher machine.)
The machine consisted of three parts: "a frame
onto which two teleprinter paper tapes were
mounted -- weaving their way through a
convoluted network of reels -- and read optically; a
rack containing counters and another rack for
valved logic circuits." (copied straight from wired,
cuz I don't understand it either)
Someone with a funny bone at Bletchley park
named this contraption X, after the cartoonist best
known for drawings of ridiculously complicated
machines for achieving simple objectives. Who is

Alan Davies guess
• Rube Goldberg

• *2. "La petite mort" is a French
expression that literally translates to
"the little death", but what it is really
is a metaphor for orgasm. What ‘80s
pop rock hit song’s title is a direct
reference to this French phrase?

• (I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight

• *3. Someone’s explanation for why
the usage of a certain phrase seems
contralogical.
• “First you've got to prepare the
shortening, measure and mix and roll
out the dough, painstakingly fit it
perfectly into the plate, and that is
before you even start to make the
filling. And, yeah, you can add such
further time-consuming tasks as
latticing the top". What expression?

• 4. Just like NSE’s Nifty and BSE’s Sensex, there was,
around the year 2000, an unofficial benchmark index
comprising of the following companies
– Himachal Futuristic Communication
– Global Tele-Systems
– Zee Telefilms
– Satyam Computer
– Sterlite
– Aftek Infosys
– Silverline Technologies
– DSQ Software
– Pentamedia Graphics
– Ranbaxy
• These were collectively known as the K-10 stocks.
Where did the name come from?

• Ketan Parekh – companies he took positions in

• 5. I Will Survive was originally a B-
Side track to the single "Substitute".
Soon after the release of the single,
Gloria Gaynor and her manager
husband thought that the B-Side
perhaps had more potential than
Substitute, but found it difficult to get
airplay for it. The record label kept
pushing Substitute instead. Who/
What establishment did the couple
eventually turn to, to get the much
needed attention for the song as they
believed it to be as good an influencer
as any radio station?

• Studio 54. Today the song is identified
as the anthem of the discotheque

• 6. Xanthippe was an ancient Athenian
woman whose name has now come to
mean any nagging scolding person,
especially a shrewish wife. But her
husband nevertheless claimed that he
chose her precisely because of her
argumentative spirit. Who is the
husband?

• *7. CRM (where RM stands for resource
management) is a set of training
procedures imparted to people in jobs
where dangerous time critical decisions
need to be taken and human errors can
have devastating consequences. The
central idea is that skill of an individual
is less important compared to team
work/collaboration, effective
communication etc. Although it is now
being used increasingly in hospitals
among the surgical team and also in fire
fighting, where is this originally from; a
field where authoritative team leads who
refuse to accept feedback have cost
many people their lives

• The flight crew. Specifically, pilot and
first officer.
• CRM – Crew resource management.
Earlier Cockpit resource management

• *8. X was part of the plot of the 2007
episode "The Wheel" in season 1 of the
TV series Mad Men. In the episode, the
advertising agency comes up with the
name "X" for a machine, in place of the
name proposed by the company
producing it, "The Wheel". The agency
pitched the device as a nostalgic
conveyance that let its viewers travel
through their memories as a child would,
"around and around and back home
again to a place where we know we are
loved"

• Carousel, Carousel projector

• 9. Unlike the organizations for more popular
sports, the governing body of this sport tends
to recognize teams from generally
unrecognized governing bodies for disputed
territory.
• For example, it currently recognizes Kosovo
even though the country is excluded from
most other sports.
• It recognized another country in the 1950s
which had been isolated everywhere else.
This paved the way for greater political
interaction and engagement with the said
nation from the West. What country did it
recognize in the 50s? What term within the
realms of international affairs came about
because of this tendency of the governing

• China
• Ping Pong Diplomacy

• *10. The Mandarin name for owl when
translated to English would read "Cat
headed eagle/falcon“ due to the
presence of cat like ear tufts
• Similarly, a panda is known as Big
Bear Cat in Mandarin. What do pandas
have in common with cats?

• Interestingly, its scientific name, Ailuropoda
melanoleuca, which translates to black-and-
white cat-foot, is actually a misnomer. Its
foot is nothing like that of a cat.

• 11. Contrary to what might seem like the
most obvious connection, the phrase does
not come from an item of stationery. It
actually has roots in the mathematical term
for boundary.
• It comes from the field of aviation where
pilots are bound by certain limits of flight,
beyond which they would be performing a
risky maneuver. But, over the years pilots
have constantly been trying to go beyond
these limits, and hence the phrase. It
became popular (apparently) after the 1979
book by Tom Wolfe about the space
programme called The Right Stuff.
• What phrase?

• 12. An episode in the latest season of a tv show
parodied a famous photograph of two divas at a
dining table. Given below is another similar parody
from the same episode that didn’t quite create as
much buzz. What tv show? What photograph is
being parodied here?

• Modern Family, and this photo
This is the one that
did get attention

• 13. When reviewing a rough mix of a 1969
album, this rock journalist told the group
members that the album was less than
spectacular. Knowing that the critic was a
fan of a particular game, a band member
suggested that the album's title character
could also be an exceptional player of the
said game. The critic’s opinion of the album
immediately improved, and the band
subsequently wrote a song to be added to
the album.
• What song?
• Who is the critic who is most popular for a
weekend ritual he fabricated that reached
fever-pitch in the late ’70s?

• Pinball Wizard by The Who on their album
Tommy
• Nik Cohn, writer of the reportage, Tribal
Rites of the New Saturday Night, the basis
for Saturday Night Fever, which he later
revealed to be purely a work of fiction

• 14. One undesirable outcome of the success
of an early ‘90s intel chipset, Intel ZP, was
that it attracted attention of the party that
held the rights to the code-name that intel
assigned for the chip. This is the reason
why chipmakers have been giving names of
non-trademarkable geographical entities
like rivers, lakes, place names etc to their
chip platforms ever since, to avoid legal
trouble.
• What famously litigious party sued intel for
the codename of its ZP chips? Or Who/what
was intel ZP codenamed after?

• Zappa estate
• Chip was named Intel Zappa

15. The late ‘50s saw the ______ craze sweep
the U.S with more than 100 million units being
sold in less than three years. Nearly 25 million
of them in the summer of 1958 alone. This led
other extruders like wire makers, makers of
cable covering, pipes and hoses etc to stop
whatever they were making and start turning
out the more profitable _____. Later on, any
company that had the necessary facilities and
manpower opened a unit that made ______.
But by early ‘60s the fad receded and many
companies were left with large amounts of
unsold units.
What item which, during its peak days, was
banned in the Soviet as they saw it as a

16. In a field that he isn't well known for, he
was responsible for intercepting and locating the
signal when the first Soviet jet bomber made its
first flight from Moscow to Smolensk.
His most significant effort in the same field
concerned the reporting of a certain death.
Who is he? What is the significant effort being
spoken about?

Johnny Cash. He worked as a radio interceptor for
the US Air force before his singing career.
He was the first Westerner to copy and relay the
news of Stalin’s death.

• 17. In the '70s what American company’s
revenues briefly plummeted as more women
entered workforce in the US. In spite of the
fact that almost all of its employees were
women, this development had a two pronged
negative effect on its business, reducing both
its workforce as well as its customer base.

• Avon
• They couldn't hire because women found other jobs.
Avon only employed part time saleswomen and in the
‘70s women found full time employment elsewhere
• They couldn't sell because women were no longer home
all day

• 18. In 2014, comedian Mel Brooks placed his handprints and
footprints in the forecourt of Mann's Chinese Theater. At the
ripe old age of 88, Mel became the oldest-ever performer to
have his prints enshrined in the forecourt.
• What else was unusual/unique about his induction?

• 11 finger imprint.
• He came with a prosthetic finger attached.
Not many noticed it 

•19. The Reading Innovation Centre is a 8500 sq.m. facility
where 80 volunteers come in everyday stand in front of a
two way mirror to test ----. They then record their findings in
a "face map". The company has 120 chenists, biologists,
pharmacists and aeronautical engineers working here. The
last big product releases by this company in 2006 had 60
different parts and 78 individual welds. WHat company or
product (generic)?

•20. The 1st line of the nature paper announcing its
discovery said "Ex africa semper aliquid novi" (There is
always something new out of africa). In Indonesia, it is
known as Rajah Laut. Eastern Province Herald called the
discovery "the best fish story in 50,000,000 years. What are
we talking about?

•20A. Discovery of Coelacanth off the coast of South Africa
in 1939

•21. Legend hasit that the phrase in its current meaning
comes from a 1681 meeting between French Minister
Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a group of French businessmen.
When asked how the state could be of service to the
merchants and promote their interest, one said X. The
physiocrats promoted it in the 1750s. While English
equivalents of the concept existed, this phrase was quickly
adopted in English speaking countries from the 1770s and
is still in use. What phrase?

•22. In February/March of 1859, Farmers and zamindars in
Bengal engaged in a mutiny at the unfairness of a
particular law. The mutiny was brutally put down. This was
a forerunner to the non-violence movement of Gandhi.
Dinabandu Mitra wrote a play about it and it was translated
into English by Michael Madhusudan Dutt and performed in
England. What was this mutiny called?

•22A. Indigo Mutiny or Blue Mutiny

•23. First used in 1875 by Allen and Ginter co. for stiffening
and advertising purposes, they became a separate sought
after item leading to ----mania. Various actors, burlesque
stars, sportsmen, military heroes appeared with one
carrying baseballer Honus Wagner selling for more than $2
million recently. Even Bradman appeared in one. Military
and sports historians study these for details of old uniforms.
What were they originally used for or what are they called?

•23A. Cigarette Cards, the forerunners of Baseball trading
cards.

•24. Possibly created by noble women living as nuns in
convents (in Winchester or Canterbury) using laid/couched
work, split stitch, chain stitch and stem stitch, what features
623 people, 202 horses, 55 dogs, 506 other birds and
animals (some mythical) 49 trees, 41 ships, 37 buildings
and various aesop fables along the borders?

•25. Crime reporter X’s 1991 book was turned into the TV
show Y produced by Barry Levinson and X was asked to
write the pilot but declined because he didn't believe he
had the expertise.
•With a lackluster 1st season, the show was only renewed
for a 4 episode season 2. X co-wrote the 2nd season
premiere. Levinson got Z to star in the episode and the
show took off to run for 7 seasons. X believes Z acting in
that episode is what helped the show take off. X, Y and Z?

•25A. X = David Simon, Y = Homicide: Life on the Street, Z
= Robin Williams

• 26. Prussian Blue is non-toxic and is used as an
antidote for certain kinds of heavy metal poisoning.
Which toxic colourless anion formed during the process
of making Prussian Blue was named so by Guy-Lussac
because it is part of the Prussian Blue colour?

• 27. The original meaning of this word refers to
a law made by William The Conqueror that all
lights and fires should be put out at the ringing
of an eight o'clock bell. The word comes from
the French phrase for "cover the fire" and was
used to describe the time of blowing out all
lamps and candles. Its current sense of use
dates to the 19th century. What word?

• 27A. Curfew from courve-feu

• 28. A picture of phonetic notes used by
someone. Who used it or what has been
blanked out from the picture?

• 28A. JKF, for his Ich bin ein berliner speech

• 29. The Jaya He Art Museum is considered
India’s largest – 18feet high walls are filled with
art for 3.2 km length. Where is the museum
located?

• 29A. Mumbai Airport’s T2 terminal.

• 30. Published in 1872, this book was developed by
author from articles he had written including one called
“Darwin among the Machines”. It considered a scenario
where machines develop consciousness through
Dawinian Natural Selection. The first three chapters of
the book, collectively called Book of the Machines, are
a manifesto that considers the dangers of machinery
and ends by calling for the destruction of all machines.
The book is thus one of the first to consider AI. What
book are we talking about?

• 30A. Erewhon by Samuel Butler

• 31. X was the first black mainstream comicbook
superhero, introduced by Marvel a few months before a
namesake political party was formed in 1966. He
appeared under a related name in some issues to avoid
negative publicity associated with the party. A 13 issue,
200 page story arc from 1973 featuring X, called --------
’s Rage is considered to be the first Marvel graphic
novel. He is scheduled to appear in an upcoming
Marvel, the first with a black superhero movie from
Marvel. Who is X?

• 32. Officially Smallpox is the only eradicated human
disease. However there hasn’t a recorded case of X
since 2009 and there have only been 8 cases this
century, all thought to have been incubated in the
victims 50 years or more ago in childhood. Discovered
first and most prevalent in the Fore tribe, X means “cold
trembling” in the Fore language and is also known as
the “laughing sickness”. What is X?

• 33. It originated in the 15th century France as humorous
songs which were knowns as “songs from the valley of
River Vire” and it is literally “from the valley of Vire”.
Another origin has coming from the french for “city
voice”.
• It spread from there and now consists of a variety of
entertainment acts including songs, satirical skits,
circus acts, minstrels, jugglers etc.
• What?

• 34. X was nominated for the Best Screenplay Oscar in
1969 but lost out to Mel Brooks for his screenplay for
The Producers.
•
• It is said that upto to the time he died, The Simpsons
contained more references to X and his works than any
other pop culture phenomenon. When he got the
Lifetime Achievement award from the Director’s Guild
in 2000, one of the clips played was a montage of all
references to him and his works from The Simpsons.
• Who?

• 35. Which club was founded in 1913 as the
"Verdi football club" in honour of the birth
centenary of the composer and has played its
homes games at a stadium knows as "IL
Tardini" since 1923?

• 36. It was designed during WWI as an unmanned aerial
torpedo, precursor to cruise missiles. Launched from a
dolly that rolled along a track, it was packed with
explosives – based on wind speed, direction and
distance to target, operators calculated the number of
engine revolutions needed to reach the target – once
this was reached, the engine was shut down and the
flying machine began a ballistic trajectory to the target.
• It was designed by X and mass produced by Ford.
• What was it called or who designed it?

• 36A. Charles Kettering / Kettering Bug / Liberty Eagle.

• Written (5 questions)
• Clockwise (20 questions)
• Anticlockwise 20 Questions

Written round
• 5 questions
• Each has two parts, so 5x2=10
points per question
• No negatives

• 1. One Baldev Pathak owned a tailoring shop
called "Shriman" at Apollo Bunder at the
Gateway of India in Mumbai around 1960s-
70s. Even though he counted many movie
stars among his customers, he was most
prominently associated with a particular actor.
What was the reason for this strong
association with the said actor?
• His wife, Dina Pathak’s second coming in the
film industry as a character actress was in the
year 1969. She acted in three major
productions that year
– Hrishikesh Mukherjee's classic Satyakam,
– Saat Hindustani, starring Amitabh Bachchan in his
debut role
– and the Merchant Ivory Production’s, X.
• X?.

2. Below are a few paintings by a certain Charles
Augustus Henry _______ (1829-1915), an infantry
and artillery officer and later a sculptor and painter.
He was close friends with another painter/sculptor,
who was also Godfather to Augustus Henry's more
illustrious son. name the Godfather, Godson pair.

• 3. X's poetry, as well as his life (quit writing at 21,
became a successful arms dealer at 26, died at the
age of 37), has influenced many an artist - from
Picasso to Henry Miller, from Bob Dylan to Henri
Cartier-Bresson.
• But the unlikeliest of influences has to be on the
former French footballer Eric Cantona. As an oft
repeated story goes, being unaware of Cantona's
intellectual leanings and the nuances of French
pronunciation, the British press mocked him when he
named X as one of his influences, assuming he was
talking about the mumbling murderous Vietnam war
veteran Y instead
• X and Y?

4. a. It was coined by one Frederick Stanley
Mockford in 1923 who was a senior radio officer at
Croydon Airport in London. Since much of the traffic
at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget
Airport in Paris, he proposed the word in question,
derived from the French phrase "venez m'aider“, so
even the French could understand it without any
confusion. It was then accepted internationally in
1927.
What word?
b. This 1886 engraving is the most widely
reproduced image of the 1886 Haymarket affair of
Chicago, an incident that saw its after-effects in
many countries. How is this incident remembered
every year in many countries, but ironically not in
the US?

• 5. X is a 1979 Bollywood horror film with a large starcast
including Sunil Dutt, Rekha, Shatrughan Sinha, Sanjeev
Kumar, Neetu Singh, Jeetendra, Reena Roy etc , directed by
Rajkumar Kohli. The movie is about a ghost that possesses
the body of a person until that person is killed, at which
point it goes on to possess the killer himself. So in a way
the ghost is always looking to possess its arch enemy. The
film was a runaway hit at the box office.
• X was actually made with the same cast as another of the
director’s hit films released in 1976 called Nagin. This
movie too had a predictable plotline, but somehow turned
out to be a blockbuster. Recently, Ekta Kapoor bought the
remake rights to Nagin and is said to be giving the film a
contemporary twist. This in spite of the fact that the
original director has already achieved this feat by remaking
Nagin in 2002 as Y, adding a lot of “contemporariness” to
the story and special effects
• X, Y?

• 1. One Baldev Pathak owned a tailoring shop
called "Shriman" at Apollo Bunder at the Gateway
of India in Mumbai around 1960s-70s. Even
though he counted many movie stars among his
customers, he was most prominently associated
with a particular actor. What was the reason for
this strong association with the said actor?
• His wife, Dina Pathak’s second coming in the film
industry, this time as a character actress, was in
the year 1969. She acted in three major
productions that year
– Hrishikesh Mukherjee's classic Satyakam,
– Saat Hindustani, starring Amitabh Bachchan in his
debut role
– and the Merchant Ivory Production’s, X.
• X?.

• Guru kurta, Rajesh Khanna’s signature
style, to hide his posterior which the
actor was very conscious about, was
courtesy Baldev Pathak
• X – The Guru,

2. Below are a few paintings by a certain Charles
Augustus Henry _______ (1829-1915), an infantry
and artillery officer and later a sculptor and painter.
He was close friends with another painter/sculptor,
who was also Godfather to Augustus Henry's more
illustrious son. Name the Godfather, Godson pair.

• Sir Edwin Henry Landseer and Sir
Edwin Landseer Lutyens.
• Latter named after the former

• X- (Arthur) Rimbaud
• Y – (John) Rambo
• Rimbaud is pronounced the same way as Rambo

4. a. It was coined by one Frederick Stanley
Mockford in 1923 who was a senior radio officer at
Croydon Airport in London. Since much of the traffic
at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget
Airport in Paris, he proposed the word in question,
derived from the French phrase "venez m'aider“, so
even the French could understand it without any
confusion. It was then accepted internationally in
1927.
What word?
b. This 1886 engraving (pic in next slide) is the
most widely reproduced image of the 1886
Haymarket affair of Chicago, an incident that saw
its after-effects in many countries. How is this
incident remembered every year in many countries,
but ironically not in the US?

• a. Mayday
• b. International Labour Day –
Mayday
• Ironically not observed in the US.
Labour day in the US is the first
Monday of September

• 5. X is a 1979 Bollywood horror film with a large starcast
including Sunil Dutt, Rekha, Shatrughan Sinha, Sanjeev
Kumar, Neetu Singh, Jeetendra, Reena Roy etc , directed by
Rajkumar Kohli. The movie is about a ghost that possesses
the body of a person until that person is killed, at which
point it goes on to possess the killer himself. So in a way
the ghost is always looking to possess its arch enemy. It
was a runaway hit at the box office.
• X was actually made with the same cast as another of the
director’s hit films released in 1976 called Nagin. This
movie too had a predictable plotline, but somehow turned
out to be a blockbuster. Recently, Ekta Kapoor bought the
remake rights to Nagin and is said to be giving the film a
contemporary twist. This in spite of the fact that the
original director has already achieved this feat by remaking
the movie in 2002 as Y, adding a lot of contemporariness to
the story and special effects
• X, Y?

• X- Jaani Dushman
• Y – Jaani Dushman , Ek Anokhi Kahani

Clockwise
• 20 questions
• 10 points each
• Pounce, partial pounce allowed
• 4 strikes
• No negatives

• 1 . " I am loath to close. We are not enemies,
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained it must not break
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of
memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot grave to every living heart and
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet
swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the ______
______ __ ___ ______."
• Closing words of Lincoln’s first inaugural
address. The phrase that completes the
sentence is also the title of a 2011 book where
the writer argues that mankind has become
less violent with time. The title is a metaphor
for the reasons or motivations that the writer
believes drives humanity away from violence
and towards co-operation and altruism. Name
the book and the writer

2. Mikey McCleary is a Chennai born, New
Zealand raised music composer who
specializes in remastering old Hindi songs.
Although he has composed plenty of original
scores, he found fame on his remixing works
in Bollywood – Shaitan, Nautanki Saala etc.
The work that caught film industry people's
attention and eventually led to his being
offered film works was an ad released in
2010. What ad?
His pre-Bollywood fame original compositions,
while tremendously popular, never brought
him any recognition. But it helped launch the
career of a singer. Which singer? Mikey
composed and produced almost all of the
singer’s music albums

• Coke ad – Tum Jo Mil Gaye Ho
• Lucky Ali – He met Mikey through his wife and
Mikey’s sister Meghan. Meghan is also the model
in the music video for O Sanam.

3. Although technically, flamenco and
classical guitars are not the same – one is
used to play folk music, while the other
classical music - the distinction is hardly
noticeable. You can play either kind of
music with either guitar.
The distinction was actually in the wood
used to make them. White Cypress wood
for Flamenco vs Rosewood for Classical
What was the necessity then for the two
varieties if they both were similar in every
other aspect?

• The main difference is actually who
bought the guitar.
– White cypress wood- less expensive.
Bought by everyday people who played
popular folk music. Hence cheaper guitars
came to be known as Flamenco guitars
– Rosewood – more expensive. Bought by
affluent people who played classical and
other forms of refined music, and used in
professional performances. Therefore, the
more expensive guitar was called a
classical guitar.

4. At age 5, Gerard Darrow (pic) was being
written about in newspapers. At age 7 he was
already an orinthology expert. (Apart from having
command on a variety of other subjects)
At age 9, he was a celebrity (seen in pic with Bing
Crosby) and was lecturing to schools across the
nation.
But, as fate would have it, in 1980, at the age of
47, he died of alcoholism. It is said he died a
pauper and that he was on welfare most of his
life. He complained that what brought him such
fame and recognition as a kid was also the main
culprit in exploiting and misguiding him
What was Gerard Darrow's claim to fame?

• He was the first 'Quiz Kid' to be recruited for the
radio program

• 5. The fact that a certain tradition was even
accepted in the U.S, let alone become
popular, is attributed to a number of
reasons ranging from an earlier use of X in
an old radio/television commercial, thus
inducing a sense of nostalgia, to X’s
blending in well with the fireworks on the
particular day.
• Another plausible explanation is the fact
that X’s banal title, that belies the complete
history about its origins, leads the
Americans to associate it with an event
from their own history that, among other
things, gave rise to their national anthem.
What tradition?

• Playing 1812 Overture on 4th of July in the
US (made famous by the Boston Pops in the
mid 70s)
• Tchaikovsky’s composition is of course
about Napoleon's invasion of Russia and
subsequently being turned back. Perhaps
the only famous classical piece that makes
use of real cannons.
• Star Spangled Banner’s lyrics come from
‘Defence of Fort M’Henry’ by Francis Scott
Key, an event that was part of the War of
1812

6. He once had this to say about Physics graduates
convocation ceremonies
"I have long argued that degree-granting programs should
employ "fire-walking" as a last exam. The chairperson of
the program should wait on the far side of a bed of red-
hot coals while a degree candidate is forced to walk over
the coals. If the candidate's belief in physics is strong
enough that the feet are left undamaged, the chairperson
hands the candidate a graduation certificate. The test
would be more revealing than traditional final exams“
He is popular for having appeared several times on The
Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson where he would
stick his hand in molten lead, lay on a bed of nails, and
pour freezing-cold liquid nitrogen in his mouth to
demonstrate various principles of physics. But in India
though he is popular as part of a famous trio.
Who?

• Jearl Walker of Resnick, Halliday and
Walker fame

• 7. In the year 1324, the Egyptian
currency devalued drastically
devastating the economy of the region.
The prices of goods and wares super
inflated and precious metals were on the
verge of becoming worthless. Some of
the after effects took Egypt more than a
decade to recover from. What or who
was the reason for this sudden
development (or regression, strictly
speaking)?
• This event also helped build the early
legend about a place/region. What

• Musa I of Mali, on his way to Mecca,
brought along with him insane
amounts of gold, and gave large
quantities away to anyone he met.
• The region is Timbuktu. He developed
the city after his return from Mecca.
People had absurd misconceptions
about the city, the roads being lined
with gold and silk etc. And had
remained a sought after and at the
same time, hard to reach destination

• 8. Goldbeater’s skin, a parchment made from cattle intestine and used
traditionally by goldsmiths to help them beat down the metal into
extremely thin foils, had other useful characteristics as well. They were
extremely airtight, highly cohesive and stretchable.
• All of these properties made it a perfect candidate for a particular use by
the Germans in the early 20th century What did the Germans use it for?
• This use by the Germans led to a culinary ban throughout the German
occupied Europe.
• What culinary ban?

• Used to make gasbags for Zeppelin
aircrafts
• Cow’s intestines were also used to
make sausage wraps.
• Nearly a quarter of a million cows
went into making one Zeppelin
aircraft

• Father singing a song composed by
son
• Gran Torino – Clint Eastwood, Kyle
Eastwood (technically, Kyle is
credited as co-composer along with
Jaime Cullum)
• Doli Mein – S.D Burman, R.D.
Burman
• Amma Endrale – Ilayaraja, Yuvan
Shankar Raja

• 10 Professional Chess Association, the parallel
governing body in chess was started in 1993 by
Kasparov and Nigel Short as a protest against
FIDE. The 1993 World Chess Championship was
held under its aegis and was a success. But its
success was short-lived and in 1996, three years
after its birth, PCA collapsed. There were many
reincarnations of the parallel governing body
before it remerged with FIDE in 2006.
• What decision by Garry Kasparov is widely seen
as the reason that led to the demise of PCA, a
body that he himself had co-founded? How did
his decision lead to its downfall?

• Kasparov's decision to play
against IBM's deep blue.
• Intel was the biggest sponsor of
PCA and their decision to
withdraw sponsorship in 1996 is
seen as a retaliation for this

• 11 The vocoder (a voice modulation
technique better known to us as the
robotic voice effect in music) aided
secure speech system, used by the
Allied forces during WW2 was known
as SIGSALY. But it also had another
nickname thanks to the buzzing noise
it generated to mask the speech from
anyone trying to eavesdrop that was
reminiscent of a Theremin aided
theme song of a popular radio show of
the time.
• What was its nickname?

• 12. Another technology quite similar to
the vocoder is the "auto tune" used
specifically for pitch correction, i.e. if
there are portions in the song that are
not in the right pitch it should be at, it
will correct it.
• Auto-Tune was initially created by Andy
Hildebrand, an engineer working for X.
Hildebrand developed methods for
interpreting sound waves, which is vital
for X's business and subsequently
realized that the technology could be
used to detect, analyze, and modify the
pitch in audio files. What did the
company X use the technology for or
what business is X into?

• For oil exploration by detecting
underground sound waves
• X- Exxon

13. Businessmen X and Y have some spooky parallels
between their lives. They were both from Illinois, born one
year apart. Both men lied about their age at their first job
where they happened to be put in the same training team.
Later, when X's fledgling business was looking to establish
itself in 1954, he sought Y's help, who was already a rich man
by then. X wanted to put his "first store" on Y's property, as
this would definitely ensure his business a grand opening. Y
was willing to help but his company executives weren’t
interested.
Much later when Y's empire (after Y's death) was going
through a tough time with attacks from corporate raiders,
they wrote to X for his help. Here too X wanted to help (read:
didn't want to let go an opportunity at one-upmanship) but his
board of directors rejected the proposition.
Who are X and Y?

• Ray Kroc and Walt Disney
In a strangely appropriate way,
McDonald's is often shortened to
"Mickey D's"

14. Anne Teresa Adams was a Canadian cell biologist turned painter,
whose paintings would always have a recurring theme. (She had
once drawn 35 different paintings of strawberries.) Later, this
fondness for repetitiveness was diagnosed as a symptom of
frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Within a decade of being diagnosed,
she died of complications from the disease.
Shown here is one of her paintings which is a visual representation
of a famous musical piece. The musical piece itself is highly
repetitive in nature and so it shouldn’t be surprising then that Adams
took a liking to it.
The painting is named Unraveling _______. FITB?
For what other reason does Anne Adams’s painting get some
attention when talking about the composer, apart from the fact that
he inspired a painting of hers?

• Unraveling Bolero.
• There is a strong belief that Ravel too
suffered from FTD from as early as 1928.
His compositions since then, including
Bolero and Concerto for left hand, were
extremely repetitive.
• Anne Adams’s painting, inspired by Bolero
and drawn when she herself suffered from
FTD, is seen as a reaffirmation of that
belief

15. Below is an epigram by Plato about
a poet. Fill in both the blanks.
Some say the Muses are nine: how
careless!
Look, there's ______ too, from
______ , the tenth.

• Sappho from (the island of) Lesbos

• 16. Lamia is an 1819 poem written by John
Keats. It tells the story of a daemon in the
form of a serpent who is turned into a
woman by Hermes. She then seeks a youth
from Corinth to marry her. At their wedding
feast, however, sage Apollonius reveals her
true identity and their marriage is
destroyed.
• In a particular passage in the poem, Keats
compares this incident of unnecessary
meddling by Apollonius to another famous
revelation which according to him destroyed
the beauty and the poetry of something
forever. What revelation or whose beauty
was destroyed? Who was Keats’s accusation
aimed at?

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in
heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is
given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed
mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a

• This is Keats' sly dig at Newton who is said
to have revealed the rainbow to be the
components of the white light, thus
'reducing' it to just prismatic colours and
destroying its poetry.
• Truth be told, it was one Theodoric of
Freiberg who discovered rainbows were
prismatic. Newton's famous discovery with
prisms was recombination of a spectrum
back into white light.
• This light hearted accusation from Keats
also forms the basis for Richard Dawkins’s
book “Unweaving the Rainbow”

• 17. Comic book fans have long been trying to correctly
identify the exact make of this car. They’re are convinced that
it is based on an actual car, since it was the norm back then
for artists to use photographic references in a deadline driven
environment.
• But what makes identification difficult is that every American
brand of the time made cars that seemed alike - bulbous
fenders, suicide doors, large, scarab-ish shape, tall grilles etc.
• Therefore one can only guess and thus the strongest
contenders are the 1937 DeSoto and the 1937 Plymouth

• The car Superman is trashing on the
Action Comics No.1 cover

• 18. In his heyday, he was a celebrity, the type of person
everyone wanted to know. He once dated Jackie Kennedy.
Director Alfred Hitchcock once made a pilgrimage to his
front door, just to catch a glimpse of him in his natural
habitat, where he used a Civil War-era embalming table as
coffee table and a young girl’s tombstone as a perch for his
cocktails.
• Interestingly, his first job before he became well known in
his chosen field, was retouching grisly crime scene photos
for True Detective magazine. It was his job to clean up the
blood and gore from photographs of corpses, something
that he didn't particularly like. "A lot of those corpses were
more interesting the way they were" is what he is supposed
to have remarked. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it allowed
him to hone and craft his style and lay the foundations for
his other famous works.
• Who?

• 19. Reed Erickson (1917-1992) was a trans man (born Rita Erickson) best
known for his philanthropy and funding researches that were responsible for
“almost every aspect of work being done in the 1960s and 1970s in the field
of transsexualism in the US and, to a lesser degree, in other countries.”
• But like most early female-to-male transsexual persons, Erickson has
remained largely invisible in popular accounts of transsexuality.
• The book Transgender History by Susan Stryker, sheds some light about his
colourful life. In a particular passage she mentions, “In addition to being a
successful businessman (Schuylkill Products Co., Inc. and Schuylkill Lead
Corp.), Reed Erickson was a nudist, New Age spiritualist, and recreational
drug user, maintained a gated residential compound in Mazatlán, Mexico,
that he named the Love Joy Palace where he kept a pet leopard. He flew his
own planes, once sold his private yacht to X, believed in extrasensory
perception and interspecies communication.
Who be this X? The incident, though a mere footnote in Erickson’s life, was
momentous for X.

• Fidel Castro
• The yacht was Granma that was used by
Castro and his men to sail to Cuba from
Mexico

• 20. This American idiom meaning roughly "the
true information; the full story" probably comes
from the stimulant drugs, once given to
racehorses to improve their performance.
Knowing that a certain horse had been drugged
would, of course, be invaluable information for
any bettor, and the term for the drug eventually
came to mean the information itself.
• What idiom?

Audience Question
What is the name of Mel Blanc's
autobiography?
The autobiography probably was not
all about his work and career.

Anticlockwise
• 20 questions

• 1. It was a gift to the city by the
International Herald Tribune in
1989 to mark its 100th anniversary
of publishing an English
newspaper there. It later became
an unofficial memorial for the victim
of an accident in the tunnel under
square where it is located.
• What is it called or what is it a
replica of?

• 1A. Flame of Liberty, a replica of the new flame from the
hand of the Statue of Liberty.

•2. Debussy had a copy of X in his study and partly inspired
his orchestral masterpiece La Mer. A portion of it infact
adorned the cover of the work's score. Rainer Maria RIlke
in his Der Berg (the mountain) talked about the hundred
and thirty six times Y tried to capture Z precidely, one of
which resulted in X. Mandelbrot cites X as an example of
self similarity. X and Y?

•2A. Hokusai’s Great Wave of Kanagawa painting

•3. While a number of earlier interpretations exist(ed?), including
one in 1955 called "Optima", Carol Twombly's X in 1989 was the
first literal translation of the inspiration into a typeface. X is
based on something called capitalis monumentalis / square
capitals. Being faithful to the inspiration, the typeface only has
capitals (instead using small caps for lower case). Popular in
American movie posters and TV shows like West Wing, it is the
official font (really wiki?) of many universities and was used in
the original logo of PIXAR. What was the inspiration for X?.

•4. X Y is a term popularised in a 1894 play Z which takes
its title from the opening line of Virgil's Aeneid - "Arma
Virumque Cano". XY refers to a person who would be good
looking but useless as a warrior. It comes from the play Z
when the hero says he does not carry a pistol cartridges
but X. Musicals and films based on Z have been called X Y.
XY and Z?

•4A. XY = Chocolate Soldier; Z = Arms and the Man

•5. This country was haunted by X Y - it traditionally refered
to a thief who wore only underwear and covered the body
in the X or oil to make it hard to catch. But in the last few
years it is used for night time prowlers terrorised people.
The Secretary of Defence joked it was the ghost of Z but
the government was eventually forced to clarify that "The X
Y is not real". The panic is supposed to point to anxieties in
the post-war times in the country. XY, Z and country?

•5A. XY = Grease Devil / Grease Bootham, Z = V
Prabhakaran, Country = Sri Lanka

•6. X originally refered to an unexpected delay between of
a fire arm and ignition of the propellant/gun powder. This is
rare in modern weapons but was common in early fire arms
like muzzleloaded guns and flintlocks. It would lead to the
target moving and being missed. The phrase is in modern
usage means a delay in something expected to happen or
something existing in a state of inaction. Part of a common
American legal term Y also has a similar origin. X and Y?

•6A. X = Hang Fire; Y = Hung Jury

• 7. One story of the origin of the phrase XY has
it being coined by Warren G Harding while
accepting the 1920 Republican nomination for
presidency, he said "it was the intent of the XY
to give to this Republic a dependable and
enduring popular government”. Bartleby quote
site has a different origin for the phrase - from
a speech Warren Harding gave to the
Daughters of the American Revolution in 1918.
• What is XY?

• 8. From a recent MEA event. What does the
event commemorate?

• 8A. Commemorates 180th anniversary of
transport of indentured labourers from India to
Apravasi Ghat in Mauritius before being sent to
plantations across the British Empire.

• 9. Pictures from an “erotic cookbook” called
Les Diner Des Gala published in 1973. Who is
the author?

• 10. What tradition supposedly started when a
Colorado Springs Sears Roebuck printed a
newspaper ad below with a typo in the phone
number?

• 10A. NORAD “tracking” Santa Claus.

• 11. An ad for the 100th anniversary of Which
company in the form of a map?

• 12. Multiple versions of what ancient structure?

• 13. The painting shown below is called “The
Immortal Light of Genius”. Its painter (X) was
born in Germany in 1840 and moved to the US
as a child. Not known as a painter, he painted
this during a foreign visit after being
commissioned by a Henry Irving.
• The works of the subject of the painting (Y)
were frequently referenced in the most well
known works of X.
• X and Y?

• 13A. X is Thomas Nast, the cartoonist.
• The subject of the painting (Y) is William
Shakespeare

• 14. France issued the stamp
below in 1985 as an apology for
a 300 year event. The message
in the stamp translates to
“France is the home of --- ----”.
What is the 300 year old event?.
Who is being apologised to by
France through this stamp?

• 14A. The 300 year old event is
the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes – this took away the
freedom of Huguenots to
practice their religion.

• 15. Door knockers in Morocco and in
many places in the middle east have the
design shown in the images. It is said to
bring good luck to the house and ward off
evil.
• One name comes from the arabic for 5
and alludes to the 5 pillars of islam (or the
5 books of Torah for Jewish people) and
not a villain from Hindu mythology.
• Another name for it comes from the
name of the Prophet’s daughter.
• Give both names.

• 15A. Hamsa / Chamsa / Khamsa (from Hamsa, arabic
for
• 5)
• Also called Hand of Fatima.

• 16. X and Y share a surname but they are not related.
They were friends and had a physical resemblence. X
composed music for Moses, Ten Commandments,
Magnificent Seven, Ghostbusters, Animal House. X was
once called before the HUAC to name communists.
• Y is considered the first great American born music
conductor. He came to prominence through his Young
People’s Concerts for CBS. A 1970 dinner party he
organised to collect funds for a legal defense brought
him infamy and a mocking phrase. X and Y (full
names)?

• 16A. X = Elmer Bernstein and Y = Leonard
Bernstein.

• 17. Audio + video. The composer (X) of the
movie theme from 1967 was an inspiration for
Mike Myers to create the Austin Powers series.
He infact made a cameo appearance in 2 of
the movies.
• Identify the composer (X) of the theme in the
audio clip. The theme was performed by Y and
is in Y’s distinctive style, which was popular at
the time the movie was released. Id the artist
performing the theme (Y) in their style.

• 17A. X = Burt Bacharach;
• Y = Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

• 18. This novel from 1967 was one of the first to be
marketed as young adult fiction. Written when its author
was 16 as a response to the her dis-satisfaction at the
way teens were portrayed in the books she read. Set in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, it featured rival groups Greasers and
Socs. The many from the young cast of the 1983 movie
adaptation became stars. The movie is considered the
spark for the Brat Pack genre of films in the 1980s.
What novel or movie?

• 18A. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

• 19. One of the notable
landmarks in the capital of the
country, this monument with 600
tubes in a wave like pattern
represents the essence of the
person’s works. It is also said to
represent a birch forest or
Northern Lights (per the artist).
The abstract art caused a lot of
controversy and the artist had to
add a steel cast of the subject’s
face. What is it called?

• 20. Balls used in cricket bowling machines are different
from regular cricket balls in 2 ways. How and why?
(2differences and 2 reasons – 2.5 points per part).

• 20A.
• 1. They are made of plastic – normal balls aren’t
perfectly round to begin with and lose shape further
when used in bowling machines. This causes loss of
accuracy.
• 2. The plastic balls are covered with dimples – to help
with swinging the ball.

2014 KQA December Open Prelims and Final

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2014 KQA December Open Prelims and Final