Bay Area Quiz Club 2015 October Quiz

BAQC October General Quiz
October 11, 2015
Vinod Viswanath

Rules
1 written round
4 regular rounds
Infinite bounce*
No pounce unless specified**
2 embedded themes
10 points per question unless specified
*(good old bounce rules: if a question goes
unanswered, next question goes to the next team)
**(“luck of the draw is part of the game”
-- your grizzly old QM)

Rules
1 written round
4 regular rounds
Infinite bounce*
No pounce unless specified**
4 embedded themes
10 points per question unless specified
*(good old bounce rules: if a question goes unanswered,
next question goes to the next team)
**(“luck of the draw is part of the game”
-- your unapologetically old QM)
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

Round 1: Written round
10 Questions
10 points per question
Part points might be available

Q2. Name the scientists
1 point per scientist; 10 points if you name them all

Q3.What are we measuring?
• It was called Hoppus Foot in Britain or a Cord in
the US.
• 1 cord = 100 hoppus feet.
• The metric analog is a stere.
• The name cord comes from using a cord or a string
to measure it.
• Cord is still one of 3 legal standards in Canada.

Q4. What is this the logo of? Why?

Q5. Give the theme of the exhibit
Jitish Kallat is known for his radical paintings and his
Public Notice series of art installations.
Public Notice 1 burnt the words of Nehru’s “Tryst with
Destiny” speech in rubber adhesive on acrylic mirrors to
protest the carnage of Godhra riots.
Public Notice 2 is at Sabarmati Ashram and displays
Gandhi’s 1000-word speech at the start of the Dandi
March – the words made of fiberglass bones set on
shelves.
He made his mark in the US early this decade in Chicago
with his Public Notice 3 – an art installation at the Art
Institute of Chicago, adjacent to the site of the original
address. What two events form the theme of this exhibit?

Q6. Name the original movie
Talvar is Meghna Gulzar’s recent movie starring
Irrfan Khan, Konkana Sen and Neeraj Kabi.
The movie follows a three-part
narrative and is about the 2008
Noida double murder case (aka
Aarushi murder case).
Vishal Bharadwaj, the writer
(among other roles), pays homage
to which classic movie from the
1950s, where the characters
provide alternative, sometimes
contradictory, and usually self-
serving accounts of events?

Q7. What is this image portraying?

Q8. Name the term and its origin
It was used primarily in New England in the late 19th
century and early 20th century, to describe two
women living together independent of the financial
support of a man.
This notion of a formalized romantic friendship
between women came from a particular work of an
author, although he himself did not use that term in
the book (he called them new women). It’s said that
his sister was in one such relationship.
What is the term?
Name the author and the work.

Q9. What is this art form called?
Or just explain what is significant
about these sculptures.

Q10. What is this practice called?
• It is an event showcasing superior mastery of
cognitive capabilities.
• Of observation, memory, multitasking, task
switching, retrieval, reasoning and creativity in
multiple modes of intelligence - literature, poetry,
music, mathematical calculations, puzzle solving etc.
• It requires immense memory power and tests a
person's capability of performing multiple tasks
simultaneously.
• All the tasks are memory intensive and demand an
in-depth knowledge of literature and prosody.
• No external memory aids are allowed while
performing these tasks.
• There are different variants of this event based on
the hardness level (measured in number of people).

Waiting for Answers...
Exchange sheets or just correct it yourself

A1. Metrication attempt in the US

A2. Name the scientists
1 point per scientist; 10 points if you name them all

Q3. What are we measuring?
• It was called Hoppus Foot in Britain or a Cord in
the US.
• 1 cord = 100 hoppus feet.
• The metric analog is a stere.
• The name cord comes from using a cord or a string
to measure it.
• Cord is still one of 3 legal standards in Canada.

A4. Maldives Monetary Authority
Maldivian cowrie shells were the basis of currency
trade in the old world (China, many African countries,
etc.)

A5. Vivekananda’s speech and 9/11

A5. Vivekananda’s speech and 9/11
Swami Vivekananda’s text in LED displays on each of
the 118 risers of the historic Woman’s Board Grand
Staircase of the Art Institute of Chicago, adjacent
to the site of Vivekananda’s original address.
Drawing attention to the great chasm between this
speech of tolerance and the very different events of
September 11, 2001.

Q6. Name the original movie
Talvar is Meghna Gulzar’s recent movie starring
Irrfan Khan, Konkana Sen and Neeraj Kabi.
The movie follows a three-part
narrative and is about the 2008
Noida double murder case (aka
Aarushi murder case).
Vishal Bharadwaj, the writer
(among other roles), pays homage
to which classic movie from the
1950s, where the characters
provide alternative, sometimes
contradictory, and usually self-
serving accounts of events.

A6. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon
Talvar presents three contradictory
accounts of the case, which variously
portray the parents as guilty or
innocent.

A7. Loon for all
Google’s balloon powered internet-for-all project
with high altitude balloons in the stratosphere.
Who said “When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose
you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure
how it’ll help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there
is no website that relieves that.”?

A7. Loon for all
Google’s balloon powered internet-for-all project
with high altitude balloons in the stratosphere.
Who said “When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose
you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure
how it’ll help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there
is no website that relieves that.”?
Bill Gates

A8. Boston Marriage / Henry James
Henry James in his book The Bostonians talks about
new women. His sister Alice’s relationship with
Katherine Loring was said to be his inspiration and
source for this.

A10. Avadhana
#nishastylz
The performer faces multiple questioners at the same time.
It’s called an Ashatavadhana with 8 questioners and Shatavadhana with 100.
There are legends of Sahasravadhana with 1000 questioners.
The tasks vary from making up a poem spontaneously to keeping a count of a
bell ringing at random. There is no limit or restrictions on questions.

Embedded Themes
• In the spirit of the avadhana there are 2 themes
embedded within the rest of the questions,
although, here, you only have two parallel threads
to worry about.
• The actual questions themselves are not part of
the themes.
• Each “Waiting for Answer…” slide has a visual clue
leading up to a theme. There is a no textual
question associated with it. You have to connect
the visual clues over 6 questions and answer the
theme.
• The themes are in Round2 and Round5 only.
• +30/-15 after 1st and 2nd clues
• +20/-10 after 3rd and 4th clues
• +10/-5 after 5th clue
• +5 after 6th clue

Round 2 (Clockwise)
6 questions
+10 for each correct answer
Infinite bounce, no pounce

Q11. What are we talking about?
This custom dates back to at least Emperor Nero.
The French organized and institutionalized this. It
could take multiple forms. There were Commissaires,
Rieurs, Pleureurs (generally women), Chatouilleurs,
and bisseurs (who cried Bis! Bis!).
Wagner opposed the custom, as did Toscanini and
Mahler. While the custom slowly died out in Europe
and America, the Bolshoi Ballet famously continued it.
The custom made a comeback with television series in
the US, starting with I Love Lucy

Waiting for Answer... Theme1 Image1

A11. Claque / Studio-Applause
• Commissaires ("officers/commissioner
") - learned the piece by heart and
called the attention of their
neighbors to its good points between
the acts.
• Rieurs (laughers) laughed loudly at the
jokes.
• Pleureurs (criers), generally women,
feigned tears, by holding their
handkerchiefs to their eyes.
• Chatouilleurs (ticklers) kept the
audience in a good humor.
• Bisseurs (encore-ers) simply clapped
and cried "Bis! Bis!" to
request encores.

Q12. Who? And the work?
He wrote glowing reviews of his own work when he
first published it. In one review he described himself
as “a naïve, masculine, affectionate, contemplative,
sensual, imperious person.”
Although the work was not well received when it first
came out, Emerson wrote "I find it the most
extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has
yet contributed.“ The author promptly included
Emerson’s quotes, in particular, “I Greet You at the
Beginning of a Great Career” and published the next
edition.
The author never really finished this work and kept
tinkering for 33 years until the year of his death,
growing the book from 12 poems in the first
publication to almost 400 when he was finally done.

A12. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Q13. Name the king, the painter, and the
composer
Ctesais the greek historian describes him as an
effeminate debauchee, sunk in luxury and sloth, who
at the last was driven to take up arms, and, after a
prolonged but ineffectual resistance, avoided capture
by suicide
Lord Byron, inspired by the above story, wrote a
tragedy in blank verse and dedicated it to Goethe.
This further inspired the painting below, musical
works by Berlioz and Ravel, and famously an
unfinished opera.
Name the king, the painter,
and the composer.

Q13. Name the king, the painter, and the
composer

A13. Sardanapalus
Byron wrote the play Sardanapalus
Delacroix painted Death of Sardanapalus
Franz Liszt’s unfinished opera Sardanapale

Q14. Poet and work?
Browsing through the poetry section of Printers Inc.
Bookstore and Café in Palo Alto, he found two
translations of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. Both had
maintained the same stanzaic form as the original.
Intrigued by the faithfulness of the translation, soon
he was immersed in them for pleasure, and decided
that this would be the form he would use to tell his
California tales.
"I loved the form, the ability that Pushkin had to run
through a wide range of emotions, from absolute
flippancy to real sorrow and passages that would
make you think, during and after reading it.“
Name the author and the book.

A14. Vikram Seth / The Golden Gate

Q15. What is the phrase?
17th century critic and dramatist John Dennis, wrote
a play Appius and Virginia, and as part of its
production invented something new. The play was not
successful and closed within days.
At a later performance of Macbeth, Dennis, who was
in the audience, came across his invention being used
on stage. He is purported to have said,
“That is my ____, by God; the villains will play my
____, but not my play.”
What phrase is this story the origin of?

A15. Steal my thunder
“That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my
thunder, but not my play.”

Q16. Connect or Id the last one.

A16. Santiago Calatrava
Jerusalem Israel Milwaukee
Redding, over Sacramento RiverSeville

Theme 1: Works of H.W. Longfellow
The Courtship of
Miles Standish
Evangeline The Wreck of Hesperus
A Psalm of Life
(footprints on the
sands of time)
The Song of Hiawatha
Paul Revere’s Ride

Round 3 (Anti-clockwise)
6 questions

Q17. Name the product/company
The original logo for this product was the profile of
an Indian chief.
In 1953, Cheri Brand was the first to model for this
product. In 1965, Jodie Foster debuted as an actress
in a television ad for it. The image was iconic and over
time led to Jim Carrey, Carmen Electra, Kylie
Minogue, among others, to model, mimicking the ad.
At the turn of the 21st century, the company revised
the ads, so it would be less revealing and show no tan
lines. They also brought down all motorized billboards
of this ad.
One last such motorized billboard still survives in
Miami Beach – dog, pigtails, swimsuit, the whole
works.

Ikemesho danshi is a recent business trend in Japan,
where you can hire one of these men below for
certain jobs.
They go under:
- Little brother type
- Showa Era type
- Therapeutic Mr. Tokyo
- Intellectual type
- Bad boy type
- Sweet dentist type

A18. Good looking men who make you cry
and then console

Q19. Who are the protagonists
In a steampunk graphic novel by Matt Fraction and
Steven Sanders, ____, ____, and Bertha von Suttner
use scientific know-how, general trickery and media
manipulation techniques to try to scare world leaders
into following their noble path.
In the company of several allies, the two are soon
confronted by dark forces led by the
dastardly ______, John Pierpont Morgan, Andrew
Carnegie, and Guglielmo Marconi.
[pic: next slide]

A19. The Five Fists of Science
Tesla, Twain, and Edison.

A20. Unilever’s Hg plant in Kodaikanal
Nicki Minaj put up her approval on twitter
Bianca Jagger, Mark Ruffalo and Ashton Kutcher
lauded the rap song and termed it a powerful
message.

Q21. What problem? Who posed it?

A21. Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses

Q22. Sculpture or what it did not
inspire
Unexpectedly, the creator
denies any inspiration from
this class of sculptures, the
most famous of which is in
the Protestant Cemetery in
Rome.
Name either this sculpture
or what it did not inspire.
These are predatory creatures who neither kill nor
directly parasitize their prey. They are called "the only
psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely" because
their victims are otherwise uninjured and may live out
their lifespans in the past. Their creator attributes
their appeal to childhood games such as Grandmother’s
Footsteps.

A22. Angel of Grief / Weeping Angels

Round 4 (Clockwise)
6 questions

Q23. What happened? Why that day?
• On March 8, 1971, a group of burglars broke into
this office in Philadelphia and stole a bunch of
secret documents.
• They were never caught.
• The breaking and entering was supposed to get
evidence so that the public could no longer ignore it.
• Betty Medsger received an anonymous package at
her desk at the Washington Post: containing secret
documents. She published the story.
• 42 years later, in 2014, Bonnie Raines, one of the
activists came out of hiding to explain what they did,
why, and why they chose that day.
What did they steal? Why that day?

A23: Surveillance docs from FBI
They broke into the FBI office in Pennsylvania and
stole files about the bureau's surveillance of anti-war
groups and civil rights organizations.
They chose that day because everyone was following
the network updates about Muhammad Ali going 15
rounds against Joe Frazier!

Q24: Explain the reasoning
• The Archbishop of Canterbury, in the late 15th
century came up with a reasoning that enabled him
to tax everyone, rich and poor.
• Following the same reasoning, in Agatha Christie’s
Death in the Clouds, Poirot sets a trap for the
murderer by asking him to dress in disguise as a
blackmailer.
• Although not exactly this, Odysseus’ affair with
Scylla and Charybdis, does present a similar line of
reasoning, although it is not exactly the same.
What exactly did the Archbishop of Canterbury
reason, to levy high taxes on nobles and peasants? For
full points, what is the logical term (named after the
Archbishop)?

A24: Morton’s Fork
Contradictory arguments lead to the same
(unpleasant) conclusion.
“A man living modestly must be saving money and
could therefore afford taxes, whereas if he was
living extravagantly then he was obviously rich and
could still afford them.”

Q25: What was all the fuss about?
These photographs of Celebes crested Macaques from
Indonesia were the subject of a major copyright lawsuit.
Parallels were drawn to copyrighting digitally edited
images, as part of the argument.
Finally the United
States Copyright
Office clarified its
practices, and
explicitly added this
case study as an
example.

A25: Monkey selfie
• The monkey took the shot
• Photographer’s argument -- "it was artistry and
idea to leave them to play with the camera and it
was all in my eyesight. I knew the monkeys were
very likely to do this and I predicted it. I knew
there was a chance of a photo being taken.“
• US Copyright Office ruled in favor of the monkey,
and clarified that non-humans can’t hold rights, and
declared the images to be in public domain
• Last month, PETA filed a lawsuit to request that
the monkey be assigned copyright.

Q26: What are we talking about?
• The hours are continuous.
• You can take a nap, but the clock keeps ticking.
• If you get to the end of your hours and you're not
done, you can do one of two things:
1. either end it there ("the Gaiman Variation"), or
2. keep going until you're done ("the Eastman Variation").
• Both of these are considered "Noble Failure"
Variants and true to the task in spirit
• But you must sincerely intend to do the task in the
given hours at the outset.

A26: 24-hour comic Scott McCloud
On 24-hour comic day, the challenge is to create a
24-page comic in 24 straight hours

Q27: Name the technique and the film
Katherine Blodgett was the first woman to get a PhD
in Physics from Cambridge, with a dissertation on
electron behavior in ionized mercury vapor.
At General Electric, she worked closely with
Langmuir, who had pioneered a technique for creating
single-molecule thin films on water surfaces. During
this work, she invented something that found great
application in the film industry as well as the military
during WW2.
A popular film (1939) used her technique to achieve
its crystal-clear cinematography. Subsequently,
submarines and spy planes used it in their periscopes
and cameras.
What did she invent? Name the first cinematic
production to use it.

A27: Invisible Glass / Gone with the Wind

Q28: Name Kepler-16’s feature and the
analogous iconic planet
• Kepler-16b is an extrasolar planet. It is a Saturn-
mass planet consisting of half gas and half rock and
ice.
• It orbits the star Kepler-16, and it was the first of
a particular kind of planet identified.
• This makes Kepler-16b akin to an iconic planet in
fiction.
• A related clue is one of the most iconic sunsets
ever on screen
• What is special about Kepler-16? Name the iconic
planet that Kepler-16b is analogous to.

Round 5 (Anti-clockwise)
6 questions

Q29. Who’s statue? What discovery?
He requested this design
be inscribed on his
tombstone. The stonemason
declined saying it would
essentially look like a circle.
They instead went with this
star design in a statue in
his birth place.
The design was based on a
mathematical discovery
that he was so pleased
with, he changed his field
from Philology to Math.
Bigger image next slide

Q29. Who’s statue? What discovery?

A29. Gauss / Regular Polygon
A breakthrough occurred in 1796 when 19 year old
Gauss showed that a regular polygon can be
constructed by compass and straightedge if and only
if the number of sides is the product of distinct
Fermat primes and a power of 2.
The regular heptadecagon is a
constructible polygon (that is, one
that can be constructed using a
compass and unmarked straightedge).

Q30. What term?
• This is a plot device in the form of some goal,
desired object, or other motivator that the
protagonist pursues, often with little or no
narrative explanation.
• The specific nature of this is typically unimportant
to the overall plot.
• The most common type is an object, place, or
person; other, more abstract types include money,
victory, glory, survival, power, love, or some
unexplained driving force.
• The term was popularized by Hitchcock, who
defined it as the object around which the plot
revolves, but as to what the object itself is, the
audience doesn’t care.
• George Lucas on the other hand believed the
audience should care, and this should be powerful,
and suggested R2D2 as an example.

A30. MacGuffin
Hitchcock explained the term "MacGuffin" in a 1939
lecture at Columbia University:
It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story
about two men on a train. One man says, "What's that
package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other
answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin". The first one
asks, "What's a MacGuffin?" "Well," the other man
says, "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the
Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there
are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other
one answers, "Well then, that's no MacGuffin!" So you
see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.

Q31. What did Apley Hall inspire?

A31. Blandings Castle, Shropshire

Q32. Name the paradox
This is a self-referenced paradox that involves a
proposition about an event that may or may not
happen in the future.
The eponymous philosopher’s solution involved
contradicting the principle of bivalence, and implying
a system of three-valued logic in which there are
three truth values – true, false, and some
indeterminate third value.
Socrates wants to cross a river and comes to a bridge guarded by Plato.
Plato: Socrates, if in the first proposition which you utter, you speak
the truth, I will permit you to cross. But surely, if you speak falsely, I
shall throw you into the water.
Socrates: You will throw me into the water

Q32. Name the paradox
Proposed humorous solution
parodying a famous illustration
Name the illustration
for bonus points.

A32. Buridan’s Bridge
to Buridan’s Bridge paradox

A32. Buridan’s Bridge
to Buridan’s Bridge paradox
Parodying Gustav Dore’s Don Quixote

Q33. What is this mnemonic device
• The technique itself dates back to Cicero and is
called the Method of Loci.
• It is a method of memory enhancement which
uses visualization to organize and recall
information.
• Steven Moffat’s Sherlock often talks about this
mnemonic device and going there.

Q34. Who is referred in the ads
Bonus: Where are these ads from / Who composed these ads?

Q34. Who is referred in the ads

A34. Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler

A34. A Study in Emerald / Gaiman

Theme 2: Waiting for Answer...

Theme 2 : Five find outers and dog
FATTY acid
PIP Pirrip LARRY King
Elizabeth BETS Taylor Ms. DAISY James BUSTER Douglas
#litquizprep

Thanks! See y’all at the lit quiz.

Bay Area Quiz Club 2015 October Quiz

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