1. The quiz competition Askqance Just Miss narrowly missed qualifying for the finals in a recent quiz tournament. 2. The document outlines the rules and questions from several rounds of the quiz, covering topics like history, science, literature, and current events. 3. Specific questions touched on subjects like the development of cordite as a propellant, the origins of the Deccan Traps geological formation, tennis ball colors, and the first use of the Doomsday Clock concept.

1. Askqance Just Miss
The Finals
22 July 2023
Arul Mani

2. SJU QUIZZERS
19th August
The SRK Written Quiz
Oikoumene
16th September
Askqance Just Miss II
October
Zbigniew That
Prop-Ah

3. Rules
2 written
2 passing
10 points usually

4. Round One
Written

5. 01
Memorial to X Warriors, Kolkata..
Fill X.

6. 02
The mural is meant to evoke a
historical event at this locale, but
some people have wondered
whether the ensemble is a little too
upbeat. Where?

7. 03
Recent protest around what event?

8. 04
What inspired this recent tweet?

9. 05. Just connect these images.

10. ANSWERS
1. COVID
2. Jallianwalla Bagh Memorial
3. Running of the bulls in Pamplona
4. After Tsitsipas’ victory over Andy Murray at Wimbledon 2023
5. AI generated images that went viral

11. Round Two
Clock

12. 01
In 1888, F. Abel was appointed president of a government committee to
find alternatives to two existing propellants, Poudre B and ballistite
. Both had various defects, most important of which was a tendency to
deteriorate during storage.
Together with Y, Abel introduced the new Z in 1889. This was a mixture of
guncotton and nitroglycerin with camphor and petroleum added as
stabilizers and preservatives.
Name Y and Z.

13. ANSWERS
Cordite
James Dewar

14. 02
The Reunion site was a spectacular volcanic eruption from several million years
ago which managed to leave a West to East scar on another equally spectacular
but slower event.
How do we know the scar today, the longest of its kind, and what was the slower
event?

15. ANSWERS
The volcanic eruption over the Reunion site is said to have caused the Deccan
Traps, the longest known lava flows in the world.
Occurred during the Indian peninsula’s drift towards Asia.

16. 03
Malik Tejani bought the
footwear store where he
worked in 1947, and
renamed it after this iconic
location. Name the
enterprise

17. ANSWERS
Metro Footwear, after Mumbai’s Metro Cinema.

18. 03
This crop takes its name from
an ancient kingdom.
Centres include Gaya,
Nawada and Nalanda, where
the Chaurasia or Barai caste
has cultivated the variety for
many centuries. What crop?
Which kingdom?

19. ANSWERS
Magadha
Maghai betel leaf/paan

20. 04
Historically, X were either black or
white in colour, depending on the
background. In 1972, a variation was
introduced to account for a new
audience. Explain.

21. ANSWERS
Tennis balls were black on red clay and white on grass, and turned to fluorescent
green for TV audiences.

22. 05
What practice was introduced with this June
1947 issue?

23. ANSWERS
The first appearance of the Doomsday Clock

24. 06
Development in a European capital city.
Which city? What are these suburbs called?

25. ANSWERS
Copenhagen.
These suburbs were part of the Finger Plan.

26. 07
Self portrait. What did it inspire in
the world of music?

27. ANSWERS
Marcel Duchamp’s self-portrait
inspired the Milton Glaser poster
that became the cover for Dylan’s
Greatest Hits.

28. 8
X died in 1836, aged 28 – reportedly accelerated by his fondness for sugar buns –
and was buried at the duke’s estate.
A marble headstone was later added, including the lines “God’s humbler
instrument though meaner clay/ Should share the glory of that glorious day”
Y was captured by the Grenadier Guards and brought to England, bought by Lt
Col John Julius Angerstein, and spent a peaceful old age after an unsuccessful
attempt to breed from him. He died in 1831, aged 38.
Name X and Y

29. ANSWERS
X: Copenhagen, Y: Marengo
Horses ridden by the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon at Waterloo.

30. Round Three
AntiClock

31. 01
BOTH words refer to material obtained by digging, but
X has perhaps the older use , before being supplanted
by Y. Agricola’s classic text refers to X but is actually
about Y. A generic phrase used for enablers of
transportation retains the older, broader meaning once
associated with X. Give X, Y and the phrase.

32. ANSWERS
X; Fossil
Y: Mineral
Fossil fuels

33. 02
Zīj as‐Sindhind al‐kabīr is a volume associated with the Caliph Al-
Mansur who got a team to translate it into Arabic. The word
Sindhind is a survivor from the original language. If the content was
a bunch of astronomical tables, then what was this Sindhind?

34. ANSWERS
Siddhanta

35. 03
In 1906, X came into contact with a 51-year-old woman, Auguste Deter, who had
suddenly begun to exhibit irrational behaviour.
He met her in Frankfurt and kept detailed notes of their conversations and examined her
body after her death.
The original case file on Auguste Deter was lost for almost a century, until it was
discovered by Prof. Dr Konrad Maurer in the archives of the Goethe University Hospital in
Frankfurt.
Name X, and tell us what came of all this.

36. ANSWERS
Alois Alzheimer
Auguste Deter’s case led to the identification of Alzheimer’s Disease

37. 04
John Colson became Lucasian professor because the other
candidate, Abraham de Moivre, was decrepit and old, even though
better qualified. Colson did two notable things. One, he translated all
of Newton’s Latin works into English, and the second thing he did was
to try and make calculus interesting and accessible to women.
While on this project, he misread the Italian term averisera from the
Latin vertere, "to turn")as avversiera ("wife of the devil") in his 1801
translation. What offbeat name/phrase resulted from this?

38. ANSWERS
His translation contains the first recorded use of the phrase The Witch of Agnesi.

39. 05
A woman opens her door in a German city and finds a box full of X.
She has never seen so many X before, and inevitably she finds a
mirror , and begins talking to herself about how pretty she is in this
moment, and wishes at some point that Y could see her.
What are we describing, if this is called Air des bijoux in the original
language ?
Name the woman and Y.
Why do we know this moment, even if it is otherwise remote to our
lives?

40. ANSWERS
The Jewel Song in Faust, Margarita sings it to herself and thinks of Faust.
Bianca Castafiore is usually heard singing the last two lines in Tintin comics.

41. 06

42. ANSWERS
Cornish Wrestling, where all throws must be attempted by gripping the opponent’s
jacket.
The referees carried sticks as symbols of authority, and also used them when
necessary. Their being particular about the rules led to the title Stickler becoming
a word for a rules-only person.

43. 07
It relied on a combination of 29,000 unique lines of
code and a database of 180 million opinions known
as CineMatch. What started out with this in the
backend?

44. ANSWERS
The Netflix Algorithm/Netflix

45. 08
It was attempted from 3000 feet away from the third
floor of the hotel he was staying at, and Widener
himself described it as a lucky effort, since he didn’t
really have sophisticated equipment having come away
hurriedly for some other purpose in 1989. What are we
talking about?

46. ANSWERS
Jeff Widener’s Tank Man photograph.

47. Round Four
Postage stamps in tribute to films/TV series

48. 01
If the name of the stamp-ee is
William Hartnell, what is the
stamp paying tribute to?

49. 02
Which cult series does this stamp pay tribute to?

50. 03
Stamp in honour of film of book.

51. 04
Name the director being honoured in this postage stamp.

52. 05
Moldovan tribute to which legend?

53. ANSWERS
1. The first Dr. Who
2. Thunderbirds
3. Paddington Bear
4. John Ford
5. Marlene Dietrich