Prelims of the North by NorthEast: General quiz, conducted by Conquiztadors.

2. Q1.* Which empire? Who led to its downfall?
A country’s present-day culture has been borrowed heavily from the
12th century empire that ruled the region.
One of the alleged reasons for the empire’s downfall was them mistaking
X (a popular entity closer home) for Quetzalcoatl- a long lost God who
had promised to return on a certain date. The timing of X’s arrival,
coupled with X’s “weird appearance” and weapons resulted in this
confusion, leading to the empire’s eventual demise.

3. A1. Aztec Empire, Conquistadors

4. Q2. FITB.
During the 1920 US presidential election, in which the main
candidates were Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox,
newspapers used the following line to enquire popular
consensus and encourage people to vote:
"Cox or Harding, Harding or Cox? / You tell us, ______, you
got the ___."

5. A2. Vox Populi, Vox Dei
Cox or Harding, Harding or Cox? / You tell us, populi, you
got the vox.

6. Q3. What genuine app is this?
In 2020 a former employee of GoPro Alexis Barreyat, and Kevin Perreau
launched an app based on the idea of genuity, naming it as a pun on a
term for supplemental footage used in film and television. While initially
the the response to the app was lukewarm, its popularity increased in
2022 with it being compared to Wordle due to its daily cycle of
engagement.

7. A3. BeReal

8. Q4. What advantage do the Dolphins get?
Pictured here is the Hard Rock stadium located in Miami which serves as
the home stadium for the Miami Dolphins. When it comes to home
stadium advantages, the Dolphins enjoy a huge advantage thanks to an
intentional change made during the 2015 renovations keeping in mind
Miami’s climate. The advantage is so significant that during the season
following the renovations, channels ensured that the considerable
difference for the home and away teams be portrayed during coverage.

10. A4. The Dolphins’ sideline always has shade which leads to a
considerably lower temperature for the Dolphins’ players

11. Q5*. What was the cocktail named?
The Art Institute of Chicago hosted a culinary-themed event to pay
homage to a prominent artist from the last century. The attendees of
the event were offered several beverages and courses inspired by the
artist’s works and motifs, including the cocktail pictured here which
combined cotton-candy clouds with tequila, agave, and lime-kaffir salt.
The cocktail was named as a pun on a popular cocktail.

14. A5. Magritte-Ahh (Magritte, Margerita)

15. Q6. Given the context, which designer was roped in for
designing the uniform?
For the 2022 IPL, which was hosted across four venues in Maharashtra,
Cadbury decided to sponsor the ground staff and workers of the Mumbai
Cricket Association. The goal behind the sponsorship was to give due
recognition to the people working behind the scenes to make IPL happen
successfully. The scope of this partnership included 5-star
accommodation for the ground staff, proper nutrition and comfortable
travel. The partnership also led to new designer uniforms for the ground
staff to make them feel like they are also a part of a team.

17. A6. Masaba Gupta

18. Q7. What sweet name was attributed to this lake?
Sangestar Tso is a scenic lake situated near Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh.
This lake sees an influx of movie buffs, because of the new name which
it got towards the end of the previous century. The new name came into
being because of a 1997 work, which showcased the beauty of this lake
to the world.

20. A7. Madhuri (Dixit) lake

21. Q8. Identify this iconic restaurant chain.
After moving to Delhi post partition, a bodybuilding enthusiast set up a
food establishment in Karol Bagh and named it after Calcutta. Due to his
physique and interest in bodybuilding, he was given a nickname which
is a term colloquially used for a sleeveless undershirt. After his death in
1993, his son took over the business and named the establishment after
his father, which has stuck till date.

22. A8. Sandoz Restaurant

23. Q9. FITB.
Since his entry into the league, Steph Curry has changed the sport of
basketball by revolutionizing three point shooting and pushing people
further beyond the three point arc.
With more players making attempts beyond the three point line, a new
shot has become popular and has been named after the location from
where the shot is attempted. One player who has become known for
successfully making these shots is Damian Lillard, giving him the
alliterative nickname ____ Lillard.

25. A9. Logo Lillard

26. Q10*. What model by Renault? Who is this “critic”?
Named after the portmanteau of the words twist, swing and tango,
pictured here is a four-seater vehicle manufactured by Renault since
1992. Marketed as a city car, the model has won several accolades
for being the best in category and is immensely popular in various
countries, but recently a “critic” compared it with a Ferrari and
announced that they prefer Ferrari over the model in question,
which led to a 600% increase it searches for the car.

29. A10. Twingo, Shakira’s diss track for Pique

30. Q11. ID X.
X is an assortment of life forms one must have come across while
accessing a certain “online collaborative software”. X has a wide
array of life forms under it ranging from a viral meme from 2011
featuring a pixelated flying feline with a Pop-Tart for a body, to a
giant, squid-like sea monster from Scandinavian legends.

31. A11. Anonymous Animals

32. In 1830s, the British government in India was searching for a headquarter in
North-East India and decided to go ahead with Sohra, a seemingly calm and
cool hamlet. But this decision turned out to be disastrous and the soldiers
had to be recalled within 3 years. 'Books getting disintegrated, Medications
getting spoiled, problems with food storage, growing alcoholism and related
suicides due to depression among soldiers' were some of the problems that
were reported.
The current name by which we know Sohra is said to have arisen from the
inability of the British to pronounce 'Sohra' and an addition by some Bengali
bureaucrats, who added a term which means ‘savings’.
Q12. What was the reason behind all this? How do we know
Sohra now?

33. A12. Excessive rains, Cherrapunji

34. Q13. What is the dish called, due to its resemblance with
something?
Pictured here is a potato dish that gained a
lot of popularity on social media because of
its unique and eye-catching look.
The key is to make crosswise cuts in each
potato of about 1/8 inch apart and stopping
at about 1/4 inch from the bottom, which
gives it the signature shape resembling
something from the world of music.

35. A13. Accordion Potatoes

36. Q14. What is being talked about?
The epigrammist Antipater of Sidon, who lived around or before 100
BC, wrote:
“I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon along which
chariots may race, and on the Zeus by the banks of the Alpheus, I have
seen the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Helios, the great
man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic tomb of
Mausolus; but when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to
the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself
has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus.”

37. A14. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

38. Q15*. Who stars as Bow Wizzle?
Pictured here is a children's show on YouTube featuring a colourful cast
to educate and entertain children through the power of singing and
dancing, aimed at social emotional development as well as age related
cognitive development.
The show is centered on a group of small creatures led by a mentor
named Bow Wizzle, with every character of a different color and shape
to help promote diversity and inclusion.

40. A15*. Snoop Dogg

41. Q16. ID X and FITB.
ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool that can create
content, images and even code on demand via conversations with a
chatbot. The AI-driven tool is built on OpenAI's GPT-3 family of
large language models.
Recently, Reddit users cracked OpenAI’s ChatGPT code, and made
an unofficial, jailbroken, version which can answer queries in a
much more confident way and they are calling it X or __ ________
___. The name is a phrase for performing an action promptly.

42. A16. X - DAN; Do Anything Now

43. Q17. Who’s X?
Saudi Arabia's education minister apologised for the production of a
school textbook in which X is seen superimposed on a photograph of the
late King Faisal.
The image, which shows X sitting beside King Faisal as he signs the UN
Charter in 1945, was created by the Saudi artist Shaweesh. He said he
included X in the photo of King Faisal because they were both "wise,
strong and always calm".
He said it was not clear how it had ended up in the textbook. However,
he stressed that he had meant no offence to the king.

44. A17. Yoda

45. Q18. What is the word? What phrase?
Māori is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the
indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. In Māori, IWI roughly
means "people" or "nation", and is often translated as "tribe", or "a
confederation of tribes". The word is both singular and plural in the Māori
language, and is typically pluralised as such in English. Iwi groups trace
their ancestry to the original Polynesian migrants who, according to
tradition, arrived from Hawaiki. This language however gained
recognition recently for their word for France derived from a very
common French phrase.

46. A18. WiWi derived from Oui-Oui(Yes-Yes)

47. Q19. ID the place.
This pilgrimage site with marvellous rock carvings, murals with their primitive
beauty and waterfalls in Tripura famously known as the ‘Angkor Wat of the
North-East’ is vying for a UNESCO World Heritage Site recognition.
According to Hindu mythology, when Lord Shiva was going to Kashi along with
one crore gods and goddesses, he made a night halt at this location. He asked
all his fellow gods and goddesses to wake up before sunrise and proceed for
Kashi. It is believed that in the morning, except Shiva, none of them could wake
up so he set out for Kashi alone, cursing others to become stone images. As a
result of this curse, ninety-nine lakh ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine stone images and carvings continue to be present here.

48. A19. Unakoti

49. Q20*. Identify the two fests.
When the plans of having an extension of the NYC music festival New
Music Seminar in Austin did not materialize, a few employees of The
Austin Chronicle decided to take the matter in their own hands and
established an independent music festival in 1987. They named it after a
famous spy thriller movie from the last century, with some tweaks to
indicate the general location of the festival.
The company which owns the festival also co-runs another similarly
named festival which is held annually in Toronto.

51. A20*. South by Southwest, North by Northeast