Round done by Samya and me in the finals

1. Impending Inferno….
The SS diaries 3.0

2. Rules:
• 24 questions
• Infinite Bounce - +10/0
• Pounce : +10/-10. Write the answers, no
shouting out.
• Pounce open till Quizmaster(s) deem
appropriate
• The force is with the Quizmasters. Better
not challenge them.

3. • 1. One of the modern theories of
turbulence was put forth by the Russian
mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov in
1940s. He depicted the particular
mathematical relationship between the
fluctuations in a flow's speed and the rate
at which it dissipates energy as friction.
We see a classic example of this theory in
which famous item?

5. • Starry Nights by Van Gogh.

6. • 2. The wall shown in the next slide has seen many
restoration attempts till date. The earliest efforts began
back in 1517 while the last attempt was made in 1999.
The image shown is from 1943, showing the extent of
the damage caused on the wall due to bombings by
Allied Forces. Thankfully a greater degree of destruction
was avoided because of the protective structure built in
front of it.
• So my question is why is so much effort being put into
restoring this ailing wall? Or rather what’s so special
about it?

9. .• Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” which is in fact a
wall fresco is painted on the other side of the wall. Hence
all the effort to keep it in tact.

10. • 3. The image in the next slide shows the
view of “ El Golfet from Cap Gros in the
Cap de Creus peninsula” in Spain.
• What did this particular view inspire in the
world of art in the 1930s and subsequently
led to it’s increased popularity among
tourists?

13. The background of “The Persistence of
Memory” by Salvador Dali.

14. • 4. The image in the next slide shows Rrose Sélavy. The
name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est
la vie", which may be translated as "Eros, such is life". It
has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast
to life"). Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of
photographs by Man Ray. She also has a sculpture
accredited to her by the name of “Why Not Sneeze
Rrose Sélavy?” (1921) and is a type of “readymade”.
• So who is this Rrose Selavy or what is her claim to
fame?

17. • Female alter ego of Marcel Duchamp/
Pseudonym of Marcel Duchamp.

18. 5. X is the eleventh studio album by the British-American rock band Y.
After the success of their eponymous 10th
album, the band wanted to
expand their commercial foreground but the recording suffered due to
intra-band relationship hardships and breakups which affected each
and every member in one way or another so much so that the
recording sessions witnessed hedonistic behaviour and serious inter –
personnel strife among the members. “This culminated into influencing
the lyrics of almost all the tracks in the album”. The band did manage to
pull the album through in the end and X remains their biggest
commercially as well as critically successful album till date.
X won the Grammy for the Album of the Year in 1978 and has till date
sold more than 45 million copies worldwide – one of the highest selling
albums of all times. The album has also been ranked among the best
ever by many websites and magazines.
The name X vaguely suggests the atmosphere prevalent in the studio
when the album was in it’s production stage.
Give X and Y.

21. • 6. Started by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell and later joined by Peter
Christopherson , X is a London based art design group. Douglas Adams has
termed them as the best art design group of all times after he saw their work
on the original paperback edition of THHGTTG. X specialised in making
rock albums’ cover art and boasted of having the likes of Led Zep, Genesis,
Deff Leppard, YES, Scorpions, etc. as clients.
• However X’s most notable works have been for the British band Y. The
association of X with Y goes back to their second album, but X were
pummelled into international prominence thanks to their cover art for Y’s
1973 album Z, frequently termed as one of the greatest albums of all times
(Y’s eighth studio album). It arguably remains X’s most famous work till
date.
• The name X was adopted by the creators from a graffiti they found on the
doorway to their apartment.
• Gimme X, the band Y and the album Z.

23. • X – Hipgnosis
• Y – Pink Floyd
• Z - The Dark Side of the Moon

24. • 7. The image on the next slide shows a geothermal spa resort in
Iceland and is amongst the most visited locations in the country.
• Incidentally the spa lends it’s name to the first book of a trilogy, the
second and the third being The Garden of God (1923) and The
Gates of Morning (1925).
• Just give the name of the first book/spa.

28. • 7. A book and record store salesman from Tehran interviewed in
2004 quoted thus , “ It is the first rock album to hit the market legally
and people are surprised and pleased to see it has the lyrics and
not just the music ”.
• The album by a British band with a remote Indian connection, is
among the very few to have been legally allowed to be sold in Iran
wherein western music is strictly censored till date.
• Two Part Question :
• 1. Name the album ( It takes it’s name from a 1935 Marx brothers’
movie – an iconic comedy)
• 2. What was supposedly the most important reason of it being
legalised in Iran?

30. • The album is A Night at the Opera by Queen
• The song Bohemian Rhapsody from the album
contains the word “Bismillah”.

31. • 8. America’s first celebrity designer, she designed
clothes that were sold exclusively through Macy’s in New
York and Marshall Fields in Chicago. Her clothing line
inspired among others Jean Paul Gaultier at Hermes to
parade a specially dedicated line for her. Better known
for her exploits in a completely different field, who is this
lady?

34. •9. We know this woman as "Talisa
Maegyr" from HBO's "Game of Thrones"
series (this character has a significant
presence in the 3rd season aired in 2012-
13). However, she is not the only actor from
her family.
• Who was her more famous (maternal)
grandfather?
• (Hint: She was named "Oona" after her
maternal grandmother Oona O’Neill
___________.)

36. • Charlie Chaplin

37. • 10. X is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in the 11th
January, 1818 issue of The Examiner in London. It is frequently
anthologized and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem.
• The central theme of X is contrasting the inevitable decline of all
leaders and of the empires they build with the lasting power of art,
the only thing that has any permanence.
• X has made numerous appearances in popular culture. It came into
public consciousness again in September 2013.
• Two part Question : 1. Name the poem/sonnet
• 2. Why was it in the news in September 2013?

39. Ozymandias

40. 11. Solve for all variables.
• This stadium X is located in city A of country B.
• X was built in 1959 and was originally known as the A stadium.
• The stadium was renamed in 1974 in honour of X, a former leader
of Y, following a speech he gave at A in favour of B's right to pursue
nuclear weapons.
• In 2011, following the death of X, suggestions were made to change
the name, stating that X’s profile wasn’t inspirational enough to be
linked with the identity of the stadium.
• The stadium, with its fair share of sporting history, made the
headlines for all the wrong reasons following an incident on March
3, 2009.
•

42. • X – Gadaffi
• Y – Libya
• A – Lahore
• B – Pakistan

43. 12.
• The X Cup is a rugby union trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Six
Nations Championship match between England and Scotland.
• On Christmas Day 1872, a game of rugby, between 20 players representing
England on one side and 20 representing Scotland, Ireland and Wales on
the other, was played in the city of X.
• The match was declared a success and led to the formation of the X
(Rugby) Football Club in January 1873.
• The X Club joined the Rugby Football Union (RFU) in 1874. Despite X’s
climate not being suitable for rugby, the club prospered during that first year.
But when other sports gained greater popularity, the members decided to
disband but keen to perpetuate the name of the club, they withdrew the
club's funds from the bank, which were in Silver, had them melted down and
made into a cup which they presented to the RFU in 1878, with the provision
that it should be competed for annually.
• The X Cup was also proposed as rugby’s answer to football’s FA cup, but
was retained as an annual competition between England & Scotland.
• Give me X.

45. X - Calcutta

46. 13.
• They say that "pop-art is not dead, pop-art is now X" X is
an anime-inspired style of art, is used by other artists in
Asia and abroad. The term has been coined by the artist
Takashi Murakami. Combining the flatness of
commercial graphic design and the hyper-sexualised
cartoon characters of Japanese comics with the
aesthetic concerns of fine art. X also stood for “the
shallow emptiness of consumer culture”.
• Give me X. Pictures in the next slide

49. X- Superflat

50. • 14. The book "The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: X vs Y" is
a book about two famous French existential authors,
who were best friends for years and later had a very
public fallout. X's political arguments were those derived
from Marxism and he advocated for a better world in the
distant future at the price of accepting state terror while
Y with his humanist principles refused to sacrifice people
for an ideal. They both were awarded the Nobel Prize for
literature. Y felt overwhelming gratitude when he
accepted his award in 1957. X loftily declined the
designation in 1964 - making sure to underscore that he
was not insulted "because Y had received it before me,"
as he said at the time.
• Identify X and Y.

52. X- Jean Paul Sartre
Y- Albert Camus

53. 15.
• In Latin 'X', means fortunate or lucky, X is fairly common in Italy as a
given name, but not being used until after the Renaissance of the
16th Century. However, the other source of this name X may be
from the German word for fist, and a nickname surname for a strong
willed, rather angry person. X and the adjective derived from it,
imply a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral
integrity in order to achieve power and success for a delimited term.
• Just give me X.

56. • 16 .Give me the name of the fashion/theme that
is depicted in the pictures.

58. Steampunk

59. 17. Fill in the blank/ Name the
play
• "I also told Richardson that if by ____ I had meant God I
would [have] said God, and not _____. "It would be
fatuous of me to pretend that I am not aware of the
meanings attached to the word '______', and the opinion
of many that it means 'God'. But you must remember – I
wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning
in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I
was not overtly aware of it." - Y about his play , in which
two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly
and in vain for the arrival of someone named ____. ___'s
absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play,
have led to many different interpretations since the play's
1953 premiere

61. Godot / Waiting for Godot

62. • 18. Starting scene from which famous
Movie?

65. 19. Give X and Y.
• Blade Runner is a 1982 American neo-
noir dystopian science fiction film directed
by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford,
Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward
James Olmos. The screenplay, written by
Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is a
modified film adaptation of the 1968 novel
X, by Y.

68. • 20. What is the common name given to this sort of
depiction of Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII looking at the
city of Granada after he surrendered it?

71. 21.
• While the name X eventually used for the character was fairly
obvious to most Indians, the rest of the world furiously looked for the
origin of the name.
• The closest they’ve come to identifying a source is this: Rudyard
Kipling’s Jungle Book has a short story called Rikki Tikki Tavi. The
story’s about a valiant young animal, whose name comes from the
sound it makes during battle with its familiar foe in nature.
• This foe in the book is represented by a couple, the lady from which
is supposed to have been the origin for the name X finally chosen
by this famous author for a crucial character.
• We’ve slithered and dithered around enough – give the name we all
found fairly obvious.

73. Nagini

74. 22. The band and their Woh…
• Initially appearing in the band’s 1971 album Sticky
Fingers, this has been repeatedly voted the most popular
“item” in it’s field over the years. In the words of critic
Sean Egan, “Without using the ______ name, it instantly
conjures them, or at least X, as well as a certain
lasciviousness that is the _______ own ... It quickly and
deservedly became the most famous of it’s kind in the
history of popular music.”
• What item am I talking about which is also one of the
most iconic T-shirt imprints across all genres??
• The blanks stand for the band and X is the lead vocalist.

76. The Rolling Stones’ Tongue and Lip logo.

77. • 23. X is a name commonly associated with
the magi (the three wise men). It is also a
central character (a donkey) of the film Y by
Bresson. The story was inspired by Fyodor
Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and each episode in
X's life represents one of the seven deadly
sins. Bresson later stated that the film was
"made up of many lines that intersect one
another" and that Donkey was meant to be a
symbol of Christian faith.
• Give X and Y.

79. X – Balthazar Y – Au Hasard Balthazar

80. 24.
• The Japanese word literally meaning "wave man" or
wanderer. In modern Japanese usage, the term also
describes a salary-man who is "between employers" or a
secondary school graduate who has not yet been
admitted to university. However this word has a different
meaning in popular cultural as well as during ancient
Feudal Japan. The "wave men" are often depicted in the
jidaigeki of Akira Kurosawa, in particular Yojimbo,
Sanjuro and the film Seven Samurai.
• What’s the word?

82. Ronin