IIMA LSD Open MELA Quiz Prelims by Aman Bafna. 8th July, 2017.

1. M.E.L.A. Quiz
PRELIMS
Mostly entertainment , literature, arts quiz
QM: Aman Bafna

2. GIVE FUNDA
1

3. ________ books are printed books that are no longer selling well and whose remaining
unsold copies are liquidated by the publisher at greatly reduced prices. While the
publisher may take a loss on the sales of these books, they are able to make some
money off the sale and clear out space in the warehouses.
Which American rock and roll band formed in 1992 by exponents of the written word
used this term to name themselves in a self-mocking manner.
2

5. GIVE FUNDA
3,4

7. He was offered this role by the director who said, 'I always hire theatre actors,' he said,
'because I have a very strong sixth sense about these things.‘
He was then asked to fly to London to get six suits stitched. After all, the character he
was playing was one of the best dressed men during the British regime in India.
The only trouble he faced during the shoot was that he had to wear a monocle which
was very difficult to hold in the eye. There was a British actor on the set who taught him
how to do it. It took a bit of practice.
Who and what role?
5

8. Bhakta Vidur is a 1921 silent Indian film directed by Kanjibhai Rathod. In this film, the
Hindu mythological character Vidura was moulded on the personality of Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi.
The film was released just after the Rowlatt Act was passed in India and showed many of
the contemporary issues happening across the country at that point in time.
What dubious first is attributed to Bhakta Vidur?
6

9. ‘Do not write letter ; without order refreshment. Do not comb hair; is spoiling floor. Do
not make mischiefs in cabin; our waiter is reporting. Come again, all are welcome
whatever caste; if not satisfied tell us, otherwise tell others God is Great.’
This verse was put together from signs above the wash areas of Irani restaurants in
Mumbai. Who ‘composed’ this poem?
7

10. To create the image Fitzpatrick made a paper negative on a piece of equipment called a
grant. They were then printed in one color black and one color red, and he handpainted
the star in yellow.
Fitzpatrick "wanted the image to breed like rabbits" and hand printed thousands of
images to give away to anyone for free in London, in addition to getting friends to pass
them out while encouraging others to make their own versions. He printed about a
hundred copies at a time to fulfill the demand of political groups in Ireland, France, and
the Netherlands who began requesting the image.
Fitzpatrick never copyrighted the image because he wanted it to be mass produced.
What image?
8

11. This xkcd comics references 3 movies/
fictional works. Two of them are quite
straightforward, what’s the third?
9

12. During the Second World War, X remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city.
X's artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this time. He
was often harassed by the Gestapo. During one search of his apartment, an officer saw a
photograph of the painting Y. "Did you do that?" the German asked X. "No," he replied,
"You did".
Give X and Y.
10

13. This painting ‘Lady with an Ermine’ by Leonardo
da Vinci, when exhibited in The Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston, was described as "signaling a
breakthrough in the art of psychological
portraiture".
It was one of the visual inspirations for Philip
Pullman's concept of Y, appearing in the X series
of novels.
Identify X and Y.
11

14. Following is an abstract of a recent research paper. Who is the author?
Neural Style Transfer is a striking, recently-developed technique that uses neural
networks to artistically redraw an image in the style of a source style image. This paper
explores the use of this technique in a production setting, applying Neural Style
to redraw key scenes in Come Swim in the style of the impressionistic painting that
inspired the film. We document how the technique can be driven within the framework
of an iterative creative process to achieve a desired look, and propose a mapping of
broad parameter space to a key set of creative controls. We hope that this mapping
provide insights into priorities for future research.
12

15. X led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such
behavior was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill
several pages.
On 29 May 1606, he killed, possibly unintentionally, a young man from Terni (Umbria). The
circumstances of the brawl and the death of remain mysterious but it is said that X in an inebriated
state challenged the young man to a duel and killed him.
Ultimately, a death warrant was issued for him by the Pope but X managed to successfully flee to
Palermo.
Three years later, in an attempt to get back to his homeland, X painted a self-portrait and was
granted a pardon for his sins.
However, X died on the way in Naples (or murdered).
What did X paint ?
13

16. For 25 years, I.R.S. agents had branded X a commercial enterprise and refused to give it the tax
exemption granted to ______. The refusals had been upheld in every court. But that night the
crowd learned of an astonishing turnaround. The I.R.S. had granted tax exemptions to every X
entity in the United States.
The landmark reversal shocked tax experts and saved X tens of millions of dollars in taxes.
More significantly, the decision was an invaluable public relations tool in X’s worldwide
campaign for acceptance as a mainstream _____. On the basis of the I.R.S. ruling, the State
Department formally criticized Germany for discriminating against X. The German Government
regards the organization as a business, the very position maintained for 25 years by the
American Government.
The full story of the turnabout by the I.R.S. has remained hidden behind taxpayer privacy laws
for nearly four years. But an examination by The New York Times found that the exemption
followed a series of unusual internal I.R.S. actions that came after an extraordinary campaign
orchestrated by X against the agency and people who work there. X's lawyers hired private
investigators to dig into the private lives of I.R.S. officials and to conduct surveillance
operations to uncover potential vulnerabilities, according to interviews and documents. One
investigator said he had interviewed tenants in buildings owned by three I.R.S. officials, looking
for housing code violations. X also financed an organization of I.R.S. whistle-blowers that
attacked the agency publicly.
The decision to negotiate with X came after Fred T. Goldberg Jr., the Commissioner of the
Internal Revenue Service at the time, had an unusual meeting with the leader of X in 1991, who
14

17. Luchas de Apuestas are professional wrestling matches where both wrestlers wager
something specific (the mask or hair) on the outcome. The loser of the match then loses
the item, being forced to take off the mask or be shaven bald. One such match
happened at Wrestlemania 23 when X and Y had their hair on the line. They did not
wrestle each other. Instead, Bobby Lashley represented X while Umaga represented Y
with Stone Cold Steve Austin as the special guest referee. Lashley won the match, and so
Y was shaven bald. ID X and Y
15

18. WHO TALKING ABOUT HIS TRAVELS
I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and
spending some days with the head Llama. You may have read of the remarkable
explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you
that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at
Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of
which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France I spent some
months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at
Montpelier, in the South of France.
16

19. While the first part of this movie trilogy is inspired from Hamlet, the second part of this
trilogy is based on Romeo and Juliet. The standalone movie in the franchise released
between the first 2 parts is said to be somewhat influenced by a play named
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".
Which movie series?
17

20. The relationship between these two Latin American legends makes for compelling
reading. X said he never understood how Y managed to find the time to read so much
and so thoroughly. One day, discussing X’s book The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, Y
said that there was a miscalculation in the speed of a boat. Y’s eye for detail led to X
asking Y to read his manuscripts before submitting them – and there were several
instances where Y’s observations led to factual corrections in X’s books. X even said that
he wouldn’t publish a book anymore without having had Y proofread it.
18

21. X is a young adult fantasy novel series written by the american author Y in 1968. Set in a
fictional archipelago, X tells the story of a boy wizard, Ged, who joins a school of
wizardry to hone his craft but is driven into conflicts with one of his fellow students.
Y has mentioned in an interview that J K Rowling ripped her off while creating Harry
Potter, as there are too many similarities to her own series.
19

22. ID THE SONG
20

23. WHICH CLUB?
The name of the club was the ”_______," which is a culturally insensitive pun. And a
mistake, since the two explorers who came up with it thought the name meant "Heaven
help us," which was something the team would need to say a lot. That's not what
”________" actually means, but, hey, they did manage to get X's name in there.
When it came to picking teams, X favoured personality over play: "With regard to the
married men, it was because I liked their wives, with the regard to the single men, it was
for the oddity of their personal appearance.”
X was relentlessly positive about the team and their opponents. He dedicated his book
on the team with "To Our Dear Enemy Mary de Navarro," an American actress who had
bowled him out. He was also aware of his own shortcomings as a bowler, repeatedly
writing about how slow he was. Eventually he fell back on an excuse that so many of us
have used: the more accomplished a man was at writing, the worse he played.
21

24. X temporarily took over as lead singer for Y as longtime member ______ was suddenly
sidelined by a hearing issue in 2016, ultimately playing 23 concerts on the troubled Rock
or Bust tour. X was frank about the expectations when he joined Y. “I know how hard it
is,” he said. “Lots of bands do not want to open for Z; they just don’t want to. They don’t
want to deal with our fans. It’s kind of the same with Y fans. They’re very serious about
their band. ID X, Y and Z
22,
23

25. An English Art scholar had these to say about this painting ‘…Families are important and
even though the painter was perfectly aware that his mother was a hideous old bat who
looked like she had a cactus lodged up her backside he stuck with her and even took the
time to paint this amazing picture of her. It's not just a painting, It's a picture of a mad
old cow who he thought the world of and that's marvellous….’ Which Painting is being
described
24

26. 25,
26
A. ID the painting it’s inspired from.
B. ID the personalities

28. ANSWERS

29. GIVE FUNDA
1

30. OCEAN’S 8

31. ________ books are printed books that are no longer selling well and whose remaining
unsold copies are liquidated by the publisher at greatly reduced prices. While the
publisher may take a loss on the sales of these books, they are able to make some
money off the sale and clear out space in the warehouses.
Which American rock and roll band formed in 1992 by exponents of the written word
used this term to name themselves in a self-mocking manner.
2

33. THE BAND'S MEMBERS HAVE INCLUDED DAVE BARRY, STEPHEN KING, AMY T AN,
CYNTHIA HEIMEL, SAM BARRY, RIDLEY PEARSON, SCOTT TUROW, JOEL SELVIN, JAMES
MCBRIDE, MITCH ALBOM, ROY BLOUNT, JR., BARBARA KINGSOLVER, ROBERT FULGHUM,
MATT GROENING, TAD BARTIMUS, GREG ILES, ARON RALSTON AND HONORARY
MEMBER MAYA ANGELOU

34. GIVE FUNDA
3,4

36. OPENING SEQUENCES OF GOT AND
STAR WARS

37. He was offered this role by the director who said, 'I always hire theatre actors,' he said,
'because I have a very strong sixth sense about these things.‘
He was then asked to fly to London to get six suits stitched. After all, the character he
was playing was one of the best dressed men during the British regime in India.
The only trouble he faced during the shoot was that he had to wear a monocle which
was very difficult to hold in the eye. There was a British actor on the set who taught him
how to do it. It took a bit of practice.
Who and what role?
5

38. ALYQUE PADAMSEE, JINNAH

39. Bhakta Vidur is a 1921 silent Indian film directed by Kanjibhai Rathod. In this film, the
Hindu mythological character Vidura was moulded on the personality of Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi.
The film was released just after the Rowlatt Act was passed in India and showed many of
the contemporary issues happening across the country at that point in time.
What dubious first is attributed to Bhakta Vidur?
6

40. FIRST BANNED INDIAN MOVIE

41. ‘Do not write letter ; without order refreshment. Do not comb hair; is spoiling floor. Do
not make mischiefs in cabin; our waiter is reporting. Come again, all are welcome
whatever caste; if not satisfied tell us, otherwise tell others God is Great.’
This verse was put together from signs above the wash areas of Irani restaurants in
Mumbai. Who ‘composed’ this poem?
7

42. NISSIM EZEKIEL

43. To create the image Fitzpatrick made a paper negative on a piece of equipment called a
grant. They were then printed in one color black and one color red, and he handpainted
the star in yellow.
Fitzpatrick "wanted the image to breed like rabbits" and hand printed thousands of
images to give away to anyone for free in London, in addition to getting friends to pass
them out while encouraging others to make their own versions. He printed about a
hundred copies at a time to fulfill the demand of political groups in Ireland, France, and
the Netherlands who began requesting the image.
Fitzpatrick never copyrighted the image because he wanted it to be mass produced.
What image?
8

45. This xkcd comics references 3 movies/
fictional works. Two of them are quite
straightforward, what’s the third?
9

46. CITIZEN KANE

47. During the Second World War, X remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city.
X's artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this time. He
was often harassed by the Gestapo. During one search of his apartment, an officer saw a
photograph of the painting Y. "Did you do that?" the German asked X. "No," he replied,
"You did".
Give X and Y.
10

48. PABLO PICASSO, GUERNICA

49. This painting ‘Lady with an Ermine’ by Leonardo
da Vinci, when exhibited in The Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston, was described as "signaling a
breakthrough in the art of psychological
portraiture".
It was one of the visual inspirations for Philip
Pullman's concept of Y, appearing in the X series
of novels.
Identify X and Y.
11

50. HIS DARK MATERIALS, DAEMON

51. Following is an abstract of a recent research paper. Who is the author?
Neural Style Transfer is a striking, recently-developed technique that uses neural
networks to artistically redraw an image in the style of a source style image. This paper
explores the use of this technique in a production setting, applying Neural Style
to redraw key scenes in Come Swim in the style of the impressionistic painting that
inspired the film. We document how the technique can be driven within the framework
of an iterative creative process to achieve a desired look, and propose a mapping of
broad parameter space to a key set of creative controls. We hope that this mapping
provide insights into priorities for future research.
12

52. KRISTEN STEWART

53. X led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such
behavior was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill
several pages.
On 29 May 1606, he killed, possibly unintentionally, a young man from Terni (Umbria). The
circumstances of the brawl and the death of remain mysterious but it is said that X in an inebriated
state challenged the young man to a duel and killed him.
Ultimately, a death warrant was issued for him by the Pope but X managed to successfully flee to
Palermo.
Three years later, in an attempt to get back to his homeland, X painted a self-portrait and was
granted a pardon for his sins.
However, X died on the way in Naples (or murdered).
What did X paint ?
13

54. Caravaggio painted David with the head
of Goliath, with his own face as goliath’s

55. For 25 years, I.R.S. agents had branded X a commercial enterprise and refused to give it the tax
exemption granted to ______. The refusals had been upheld in every court. But that night the
crowd learned of an astonishing turnaround. The I.R.S. had granted tax exemptions to every X
entity in the United States.
The landmark reversal shocked tax experts and saved X tens of millions of dollars in taxes.
More significantly, the decision was an invaluable public relations tool in X’s worldwide
campaign for acceptance as a mainstream _____. On the basis of the I.R.S. ruling, the State
Department formally criticized Germany for discriminating against X. The German Government
regards the organization as a business, the very position maintained for 25 years by the
American Government.
The full story of the turnabout by the I.R.S. has remained hidden behind taxpayer privacy laws
for nearly four years. But an examination by The New York Times found that the exemption
followed a series of unusual internal I.R.S. actions that came after an extraordinary campaign
orchestrated by X against the agency and people who work there. X's lawyers hired private
investigators to dig into the private lives of I.R.S. officials and to conduct surveillance
operations to uncover potential vulnerabilities, according to interviews and documents. One
investigator said he had interviewed tenants in buildings owned by three I.R.S. officials, looking
for housing code violations. X also financed an organization of I.R.S. whistle-blowers that
attacked the agency publicly.
The decision to negotiate with X came after Fred T. Goldberg Jr., the Commissioner of the
Internal Revenue Service at the time, had an unusual meeting with the leader of X in 1991, who
14

57. Luchas de Apuestas are professional wrestling matches where both wrestlers wager
something specific (the mask or hair) on the outcome. The loser of the match then loses
the item, being forced to take off the mask or be shaven bald. One such match
happened at Wrestlemania 23 when X and Y had their hair on the line. They did not
wrestle each other. Instead, Bobby Lashley represented X while Umaga represented Y
with Stone Cold Steve Austin as the special guest referee. Lashley won the match, and so
Y was shaven bald. ID X and Y
15

58. DONALD TRUMP AND VINCE
MCMAHON

59. WHO TALKING ABOUT HIS TRAVELS
I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and
spending some days with the head Llama. You may have read of the remarkable
explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you
that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at
Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of
which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France I spent some
months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at
Montpelier, in the South of France.
16

60. SHERLOCK HOLMES

61. While the first part of this movie trilogy is inspired from Hamlet, the second part of this
trilogy is based on Romeo and Juliet. The standalone movie in the franchise released
between the first 2 parts is said to be somewhat influenced by a play named
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".
Which movie series?
17

62. THE LION KING

63. The relationship between these two Latin American legends makes for compelling
reading. X said he never understood how Y managed to find the time to read so much
and so thoroughly. One day, discussing X’s book The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, Y
said that there was a miscalculation in the speed of a boat. Y’s eye for detail led to X
asking Y to read his manuscripts before submitting them – and there were several
instances where Y’s observations led to factual corrections in X’s books. X even said that
he wouldn’t publish a book anymore without having had Y proofread it.
18

64. GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ AND
FIDEL CASTRO

65. X is a young adult fantasy novel series written by the american author Y in 1968. Set in a
fictional archipelago, X tells the story of a boy wizard, Ged, who joins a school of
wizardry to hone his craft but is driven into conflicts with one of his fellow students.
Y has mentioned in an interview that J K Rowling ripped her off while creating Harry
Potter, as there are too many similarities to her own series.
19

66. THE WIZARD OF EARTH SEA, URSULA
K LE GUIN

67. ID THE SONG
20

68. THE IMMIGRANT SONG, LED ZEPPELIN

69. WHICH CLUB?
The name of the club was the ”_______," which is a culturally insensitive pun. And a
mistake, since the two explorers who came up with it thought the name meant "Heaven
help us," which was something the team would need to say a lot. That's not what
”________" actually means, but, hey, they did manage to get X's name in there.
When it came to picking teams, X favoured personality over play: "With regard to the
married men, it was because I liked their wives, with the regard to the single men, it was
for the oddity of their personal appearance.”
X was relentlessly positive about the team and their opponents. He dedicated his book
on the team with "To Our Dear Enemy Mary de Navarro," an American actress who had
bowled him out. He was also aware of his own shortcomings as a bowler, repeatedly
writing about how slow he was. Eventually he fell back on an excuse that so many of us
have used: the more accomplished a man was at writing, the worse he played.
21

70. ALLAHAKBARRIES

71. X temporarily took over as lead singer for Y as longtime member ______ was suddenly
sidelined by a hearing issue in 2016, ultimately playing 23 concerts on the troubled Rock
or Bust tour. X was frank about the expectations when he joined Y. “I know how hard it
is,” he said. “Lots of bands do not want to open for Z; they just don’t want to. They don’t
want to deal with our fans. It’s kind of the same with Y fans. They’re very serious about
their band. ID X, Y and Z
22,
23

72. AXL ROSE, AC/DC, GUNS N ROSES

73. An English Art scholar had these to say about this painting ‘…Families are important and
even though the painter was perfectly aware that his mother was a hideous old bat who
looked like she had a cactus lodged up her backside he stuck with her and even took the
time to paint this amazing picture of her. It's not just a painting, It's a picture of a mad
old cow who he thought the world of and that's marvellous….’ Which Painting is being
described
24

74. WHISTLER’S MOTHER

75. 25,
26
A. ID the painting it’s inspired from.
B. ID the personalities

77. NIGHTHAWK
• Marilyn Monroe
• James Dean
• Elvis Presley
• Humphrey Bogart