Mega whats 2011 answer key

MEGA-WHATS 2011
The 3rd National Open Quizzing
Championships

Conducted by
The Karnataka Quiz Association
Est. 1983

MEGA-WHATS 2011
in association with
QFI Chennai
Bombay Quiz Club, Mumbai
Boat Club Quiz Club, Pune
Kutub Quizzers, New Delhi
SEQC, Goa
Hyderabad Quiz Club and K-Circle
Grey Cells, Kerala
Coimbatore Quiz Circle
And the quizzing communities in
Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram, Kolkata and Guwahati.

The Design

Four sections leading to 100 points
1. Section 1 (40 x 1 = 40)
2. Section 2 (20 x 2 = 40)
3. Section 3 (5 x 2 = 10)
4. Section 4 (5 x 2 = 10)

Rules
1. 40 questions, 1 point each.
2. No negatives or half points anywhere in
the quiz.

1
According to one theory, the phrase
originated at fire departments or volunteer
hose companies who gave exhibitions of
their prowess at carnivals or similar events.
As per another theory, it refers to the
reconnoitering by bootleggers of the route
they plan to use before transporting their
illicit goods along it. What phrase, now
commonly seen in engineering contexts?

2
This ‘agreeable’ primate, native to
Madagascar, combines rodent-like teeth and a
special thin middle finger to fill the same
ecological niche as a woodpecker. It is the
world’s largest nocturnal primate, and is
characterized by its unusual method of finding
food—it taps on trees to find grubs (larvae), then
gnaws holes in the wood and inserts its narrow
middle finger to pull the grubs out. One of the
journeys undertaken in Last Chance to See was to
see this species. Identify. (Visual follows.)

3
There are plenty of interesting hypotheses
about the quirk associated with him. Critic
Edmund Wilson commented that it was a “a
symptom of his immaturity as an artist”.
Another school of thought believes that he
may have intended it as a gesture of
humility. Whatever be the case, seen here is
a self-portrait by him. Who? (Visual
follows.)

4
The tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa) is a
perennial plant related to the
agaves, extracts of which are used as a
middle note in perfumery. Its common
name in Hindi means “fragrant at
night” and was used as the title of an
acclaimed 1974 movie. Identify its
Hindi name. (Visual follows.)

5
What you see in the background is an
example of the system devised by him
in 1928. It continues to be used today
(with some refinements) by
actors, athletes, dancers, physical and
occupational therapists. Identify this
Hungarian or tell us what he created.

5
Rudolf Laban, who devised
Labanotation.

6
What evocative name was used to represent the
group which included Yusuf Akçura, Ayetullah
Bey, Nuri Bey, Osman Hamdi Bey, Refik Bey,
Emmanuel Carasso Efendi, Mehmet Cavit Bey,
Abdullah Cevdet, Agah Efendi, Ziya Gökalp,
Ahmed Riza, Talaat Pasha, Lewis Daly and Tekin
Alp? It caught public attention in the early part of
the twentieth century. The name was never used
officially by them, rather they worked under an
umbrella organisation called Committee of
Union and Progress.

7
In an interview, Wendy Northcutt said that ‘a
recent heat wave gave her the idea to air-
condition her sweltering home: She pried up an
oubliette floor grate in her hallway, intending to
install a fan to suck up the basement’s cooler air.
But she left to answer the phone, and hours later
she strode back down the hall and obliviously
stepped into the gaping hole. In the milliseconds
as her body swooshed down, she thought “Oh
nooooooooooo! I’m gonna win my own ____.”’ Fill
up the blank or tell us her claim to fame.

7
The Darwin Awards—Wendy
Northcutt instituted the awards.

8
Red Star Football Club 93
(commonly referred to as
Red Star) is a French
association football club
based in Paris. The club
was founded in 1897 and
currently play in the
Championnat
National, the third level of
French football. Who was
its founder?

9
Subbaraya Sastri (1803-1862) was a
gifted musician and composed under
the mudra (signature) of ‘Kumara’.
Though his compositions are few, they
are said to possess great raga bhava
and present the intricate depths of
music. Why is he considered to be one
of the luckiest persons in the field of
Carnatic music?

9
He got a chance to learn music from all
3 of the Trinity of Carnatic music (his
father Shyama Sastri, Tyagaraja and
Muttuswami Dikshitar).

10
Which art form, tracing its origins to wandering
minstrels and stroytellers, has three major
schools: Benares, Jaipur and Lucknow? A less
prominent school, Raigarh, combines techniques
from the major schools. Originally, these
performers entertained audiences in village
squares and temple courtyards, by recounting
mythological and moral tales from the
scriptures, and embellishing their recitals with
hand gestures and facial expressions.

11
Odobenus, the genus name of this
carnivore, comes from the Greek for “one
who walks with his teeth”. It has 3
subspecies: O. rosmarus rosmarus which
lives in the Atlantic Ocean, O. rosmarus
divergens which lives in the Pacific
Ocean, and O. rosmarus laptevi, which lives
in the Laptev Sea. A member of the species
featured as an unpleasant character in a
whimsical work of fiction published in

12
The original purpose of this scientific
discipline was data to be used by
governmental and administrative bodies.
The term, in the current sense, was
introduced in German by Gottfried
Achenwall in 1749. It was introduced into
English in 1791 by Sir John Sinclair when
he published the first of 21 volumes titled
_____ Account of Scotland. What?

12
Statistics (signifying the “science of
state”).

13
In Latin, it means “image” or
“apparition”. The word was strictly
used to designate a ghostly optical
afterimage by Goethe in his Theory of
Colours and Schopenhauer in On Vision
and Colours. From 17th century
optics, it started getting used in other
contexts also. Identify this much-
maligned term.

14
After whom are such pieces of
machinery named? A good example
can be seen at the Station Square in
Pittsburgh. (Visual follows.)

14
Henry Bessemer, inventor of
Bessemer Process, one of the first
inexpensive industrial processes for
the mass-production of steel from
molten pig iron.
(The device is a Bessemer converter.)

15
What’s common to the following: Dal
Lake (Kashmir), Gaube Lake (the
French Pyrenees), Lake Chad
(Chad), Lake Nyassa
(Malawi/Mozambique), Lake Tahoe
(Nevada/California) and Lake Hayq
(Ethiopia)?

15
Tautological names—all of them
essentially mean “lake” (or rather “lake
lake”).

16
Who comes next in the list?

16
Ravichandran Ashwin. (The third
Indian player to score a hundred and
take a five-for in the same Test, after
Vinoo Mankad and Polly Umrigar.)

17
Pictures from Montevideo. What are
these or where do these come from?
(Visuals follow.)

17
Parts of Admiral Graf Spee, which was
scuttled in Montevideo in 1939.

18
Mount Sodom is a hill along the Dead
Sea in Israel. It is made almost entirely
of halite, or rock salt. What name is
given to the portion shown here by the
locals? (Visual follows.)

18
Lot’s Wife (who turned into a pillar of
salt for failing to heed the orders of the
angels of deliverance while fleeing
from the city of Sodom).

19
According to an apocryphal story, it owes
its existence to a section of tightly packed
seats behind the home plate at Fenway
Park in Boston. These seats were so close
together that whenever a fan had to stand
up to get a beer, it caused annoyance to
people nearby. In caught worldwide
attention in 1986. What phenomenon are
we talking about?

19
The Wave or the Mexican wave.
(According to the story, when someone
stood up, everyone else in the row also
had to stand. The fans in the next
row, frustrated that they couldn’t see
the game anymore, also got up. This
created a domino effect of the wave.)

20
Most birds have a ‘furcula’ whose
function is to strengthen the thoracic
skeleton to withstand the rigours of
flight. Its common names derive from a
playful tradition involving two people
(usually). In the USA, it is also
associated with a particular holiday.
What common 8-lettered term are we
looking for?

21
This Canadian stamp effectively evokes
the main event in a famous poem from a
1907 collection titled Songs of a
Sourdough. Which poem does this
stamp pay tribute to? (Visual follows.)

21
The Cremation of Sam McGee
(by Robert Service).

22
His political beliefs—part Quaker, part Socialist—are distilled
into one of the famous statements attributed to him: “People who
have to rely on experts, will be subjugated”. His best-known book
has its genesis in a spot of illness. While confined to hospital with
a persistent throat infection, he turned a series of lectures into a
650-page introduction to a subject that lay persons shy away
from. His politics is reflected in the title, and in the structure of
the book, which he described thus: “This book is written to show
you how each step follows historically from the step before and
what use it will be to you or someone else if it is taken”. Chapter
titles within the book include The Grammar of Size, Order, and
Shape, The Rise and Decline of the Alexandrian Culture and The
Dawn of Nothing. Name either the author or the book.

22
Mathematics for the Million
by Lancelot Hogben.

23
According to some online biography of the
man, Glynn Christian “is best known in the
UK as a BBC-TV chef-traveller and food
journalist, and has been cooking on British
television since 1982”. He wrote a book
titled Fragile Paradise after a Royal-
Geographical Society-supported sailing
expedition which tries to set the record
straight on a famous ancestor. Either name
the ancestor or the location to which the
author travelled.

23
Fletcher Christian
or
Pitcairn Island.

24
Apart from the family, there are two
other primary sources through whom a
reliable body of work associated with
this creative personality has been
assembled. These include the 175-year-
old Mullamoodu Bhagavathar
tradition, and the Nadaswaram vidwans
at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple.
What body of work are we talking
about?

25
There are two primary contexts from which
this 9-letter word may have arisen. One if
that of the courtier, and the other is that of
the soldier. Either way, the word may have
come from the term for small instruction-
cards. Such things were given at different
times to people being presented at royal
courts. They were also given to soldiers
billeted with ordinary citizens in various
parts of Europe. What word is this?

26
The Oxford English Dictionary records
the use of this term as a suffix attached
to anything to indicate ‘scandal
involving’ since 1973. What term?

26

‘-gate’.
No other answer is
acceptable.

27
The speed glue effect changed the nature of a particular sport
drastically. According to legend, the effect was discovered by
accident. A player found his equipment falling apart (erm) and
was advised to stop at the nearby bicycle repair shop where the
glue used for setting punctures right was found to have a
magical effect on his game. Dragutin Surbek of Yugoslavia is
given the major credit for popularizing this practice from 1979
to 1983. Many coaches and world-class players attribute the
dominance of the European players in the World
Championships from 1989 to 1993, when Sweden won three
World Team Titles, to the discovery of the speed glue effect. All
this led to changes in the rules of the game to slow things
down, and eventually to the banning of the speed-gluing
practice. In which sport?

28
This brand name, once owned by Mead
Johnson, is derived from the Latin for ‘food
or foodstuff’. It was a combination of
wheat, oatmeal and corn meal, with various
vitamins included. It was apparently very
effective in preventing rickets. The name
however suffered some sort of demotion
when it came to denote anything that is
either worthless, without challenge, or
bland. What brand-name/word is this?

29
The pseudonym used by these collaborators
combines both their first names, thus offering a
Sanskrit-Persian blend which they
translate, rather liberally, as ‘the pleasures of the
imagination’. They have been in collaboration for
fifteen years now, and their output includes six
books for adults, including a health
compendium, a history of Mumbai’s epidemics
and a thriller novella, as well as 10 titles in
Puffin’s Panchatantra series. What pseudonym
are we looking for?

30
What we see here is a stringed
instrument which takes its name from a
musically-inclined mythical character. It
is a two-string stick fiddle from
Northwest India used by bhopa singers
to accompany the epic tales of Pabuji, a
fourteenth century hero. Either identify
the instrument or the character after
whom it is named. (Visual follows.)

31
The meat dish ćevapčići or cevapi is
served all over the former
Yugoslavia, as also in several other
Central European countries. This name
is derived from a rough and ready
culinary invention created by Persian
soldiers who had nothing but
meat, sword and fire. What is the
familiar name?

32
The origins of this term go back to agriculture. It
probably comes from the Greek word for
“threshing floor”, and eventually came to mean
“circle” or “ring” because cattle would leave hoof-
marks in a circle as they moved across the
threshing floor. It travelled thus into
astronomy, into art and even into the social
sciences where it occurs in a phrase used for
fallacious beliefs of the sort that clever people are
knowledgeable about everything, or that
implicitly nice people have uniformly ‘nice’
attributes. Give either word or phrase.

32

Halo
or
Halo Effect.

33
He wrote a book titled Suicide and the
Meaning of Civilisation where he advances
the claim that suicide rates can reflect the
inner spiritual character of a culture. He
thus traces the increase in suicide rates in
Europe to the decline of Catholicism. He
also went on to serve as the first President
of his newly independent country between
1918 and 1935. Name this researcher and
politician or the country.

33
Tomas Masaryk
of
Czechoslovakia.

34
This term in anthropology is derived
from the Ojibwe language and describes
any emblem which either stands for an
entire community or for their ancestry.
We might also run into a phrase based
on this term in reference to the ways in
which indigenous communities of North
America put Western Red Cedar trees to
use. Give either the term or the phrase.

35
The Head of State nominates six
members and the Parliament
nominates the other six. The
requirement is that six must be
theologians while the others must be
jurists. This body has veto powers over
parliament decisions. Either identify
this unelected body, or the country
where it wields power.

35
Council of Guardians/Guardian Council
or
Iran.

36
These sites, in Burundi and Tanzania
respectively, claim to be the exact spot
where a famous October 1871 event
occurred. Historians prefer the
Tanzanian claim, and believe that the
Burundian memorial is for a later
event. What event? (Visuals follow.)

36
Stanley’s meeting with Livingstone.

37
Tony Malkin’s property goes back to 1931
and recently went through a 13 million
dollar facelift which will pay for itself in
three years in the sense that these changes
will lead to a 38% reduction in annual
energy consumption. This also makes
Malkin’s property the tallest LEED-certified
(Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design) building in the United States. What
are we talking about?

38
When Bruce Metzger oversaw the
1989 New Revised Standard Version
of the Bible in American English, he
was careful about making sure that a
certain Biblical punishment was
referred to using the ‘–ing’ form
rather than the ‘–ed’ form. What did
he change so carefully?

38

‘Stoned’/‘Stoned to
death’ was modified to
‘Stoning’.

39
The bad press it has received goes back to
Shakespeare, who uses the adjective ‘vexed’ for
this place, and cutely misspells the name. He also
erroneously supposed it to be Caribbean, a region
which is a good one thousand miles away. The
territory has the world's northernmost coral
reefs. It has received much more bad press in the
twentieth century by association, due to several
sensationalist books and the resulting media
coverage. Which British territory?

40
This 14-part quiz show in
1995, produced by Siddharta
Basu, featured Members Of Parliament
and served as a curtain raiser to the
next year’s general elections. It also
shares it name with a controversial
movie of the 1970s. Identify.

Rules
1. 20 questions, each with 2 parts.
2. Each part carries 1 point.

1
He set out on this climb in June 1802 and came
very close to completing it. The peak inspired
these lines: “It detaches itself from the
neighbouring summits and towers over the
whole chain of the Andes like the majestic dome
produced by the genius Michelangelo…”. He also
produced two very different representations of
the peak—one a watercolour, and the other a
scientific diagram. (a) Name this person and (b)
the mountain peak. (Visuals follow.)

1
(a) Alexander Humboldt.
(b) Chimborazo.

2
The first Earl of Avon ended his political career
in disgrace after a military misadventure 55
years ago, code-named Operation Musketeer. He
went on a vacation to a famous location in
Oracabessa, Jamaica following the fiasco. The
Thatcherite historian Norman Stone saw this
coincidence as ironically appropriate and
described it “as one imperial fantasy meeting
another”. (a) Either identify this Earl of Avon or
the misadventure. (b) Where did he go on
vacation?

2
(a) Sir Anthony Eden/Suez Crisis.
(b) Vacationed at Goldeneye with Ian
Fleming.

3
This term is derived from the Latin words for
‘many’ and ‘writing’. Originally used for authors
who could write on many different topics. The
term was applied in the 19th century to a
machine that duplicated writing—one owned by
Thomas Jefferson is shown in the visual. The
same term is used nowadays for a device which
records several physiological indices at the same
time. (a) What term? (b) What melodramatic
synonym is now used for this device? (Visual
follows.)

3
(a) Polygraph.
(b) Lie-Detector.

4
This 1982 single is a collaboration
between a Black American musician
and a pop-star from Britain. Its title is
an elaborate play on words which
accommodates a plea for racial
harmony, as also the now-proscribed
materials traditionally used for piano
key-boards . (a) Name both the
musicians. (b) Name the single.

4
(a) Stevie Wonder & Paul McCartney.
(b) “Ebony and Ivory”.

5
The Aldabra group of islands in Seychelles
is home to Aldabrachelys gigantea, a species
which rejoices in the same common name
as another species, Chelonoidis nigra, found
in another territory that is half in the
Northern Hemisphere, and half in the
Southern Hemisphere. Give us (a) the
common name that these distinct species
share, and (b) name the other territory.

5
(a) Giant Tortoise.
(b) Galapagos.

6
Ab ____ was a barn-burning sharecropper and
former horse-thief and fathered the characters
who dominate a trilogy comprising The
Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion. In the
fictional landscape created by a Nobel
laureate, they represent the lowest strata.
Internet users are likely to have heard of this
family as a result of a service run by Barbara and
David Mikkelson. (a) Give the missing surname.
(b) Name the Nobel laureate.

6
(a) Snopes (after which Snopes.com is
named).
(b) William Faulkner.

7
Two sound devices associated with the high
end and the low end may be arrived at if you
run your eyes over this pair carefully.
Generic images. Name both.

8
In 1965, a woman researcher created this
substance X while trying to find a replacement for
the heavy steel cords used in tyres. Herb Blades
devised a process that made its manufacture
commercially viable. The first commercial
release, in 1971, was titled X 29. The second
generation, released in 1988, was named X 129. In
1995, X Correctional, which apparently provided
‘puncture resistant technology’, was introduced.
There is also an X Protera, a name chosen because
it reflects the greater protection this version
offers. (a) Name the company and (b) the brand.

9
The third value, if you limit the system
to a finite class of objects, is the norm
and is therefore computed as 1.0. The
first and second values are respectively
0.39 and 0.723 while the penultimate
value is 19.18 and the eighth value is
30.06. (a) What is this finite set? (b) On
what basic computation are these
values based?

9
(a) Planets of the Solar system.
(b) AUs or Astronomical Units are
calculated using the distance
between Earth and the Sun as the
norm.

10
The Catholic theologian Peter Bungus published
Numerorum Mysteria, or the Mystery of
Numbers, in 1584. He decided that the numbers
1-10 correspond to the letters A-I, that 10-90
somehow correspond to the letters K-S, and that
T-Z carried values ranging from 100-500.
Despite these manoeuvers, he was unable to get
the two sets of six letters in X’s name to add up in
the desired way. He then added the letter A to
achieve this result. (a) Who was the target of this
fine effort? (b) What result was Bungus hoping
for?

10
(a) Martin Luther.
(b) The letters making up 666
(Number of the Beast).

11
The picture on the left is a stylised
representation of a natural
phenomenon, while the one on the right is a
more mathematically accurate version of
the same. This sort of arrangement is one in
a class of several named in tribute to the
man who first discussed the possibility in
1636, riffing on an idea provided by
Archimedes. (a) What natural
phenomenon? (b) Also name the terminally
famous lawyer who lends this sort of figure

11
(a) Arrangement of seeds/florets in
Sunflower.
(b) Fermat (Fermat Spiral).

12
According to Neil MacGregor, this 1830s
work, printed on mulberry paper and about A3 in
size, is “a hybrid work, a fusion of European
materials with native sensibility. No wonder it is
so loved in Europe; it is an exotic relative, not a
complete stranger”. He makes this argument on
the basis that though the work has “many subtle
shades of yellow, pink and grey, it is the deep rich
blue that dominates, and startles”. This is an
eighteenth-century invention from present-day
Germany, sold by Dutch traders in several parts
of the world. (a) What work? (b) What

12
(a) Hokusai’s Wave.
(b) Prussian Blue.

13
The text, apparently is pretty dull—“mostly bureaucratic jargon
about tax concessions”, to quote an expert. What it actually does
is allow a bunch of priests to congregate in the spiritual capital
every year rather than in the swank new political capital. It was
put up in 196 BC at Sais, and then moved 40 miles to another
town, from which it gets its name. There is text in a fourth
language on this object, and it reads “captured by British soldiers
in 1801 and presented to King George III”. Though a Frenchman’s
name is closely associated with this object, it was a British
polymath, famous for his experiments with light, who made the
first breakthrough in sorting out the mystery around the object.
(a) What is the object? (b) Also name the British polymath.

13
(a) Rosetta Stone.
(b) Thomas Young.

14
French economist Alfred Sauvy used the
terms X, Y and Z in a newspaper article in
1952. He was drawing a parallel between
the world situation, post-war, and the
Estates in France after the Revolution. The
terms X and Y seemed to denote competing
ideological dispensations in his analysis.
We don’t hear the term Y so much any
more, but X and Z are still in use. (a) What
is the term Y? (b) Give either X or Z.

14
(a) Second World.
(b) First World or Third World.

15
These two memorable demonstrations of
people’s power took place in the same year
in the 1960s—one in January, the other in
May. The first, called Pražské jaro
locally, came to a bad end. The other didn’t
fare much better, its most iconic image
being huge heaps of uncleared garbage.
Both have inspired films, novels-turned
films, and much general hoo-ha. Identify
the two events.

14
(a) Prague Spring.
(b) The 1968 Paris student riots.

16
(a) The reference to the fruit is
believed to be a pun for the lead
found in mines in the Mendip
Hills, Somerset. The person
referred is believed to be steward
to Richard Whiting, the last abbot
of Glastonbury before the
dissolution of the monasteries
under Henry VIII. What are we

16
(b) The earliest reference to the
previous answer was in a ballad by
Henry Carey published in 1725.
Either name Carey’s work, a satire
on fellow writer Ambrose
Philips, who had written poems for
the young children of his
aristocratic patrons; or tell us
Philips’ claim to fame.

16
(a) Little Jack Horner. (Plum is
supposed to refer to ‘plumbum’.)
(b) Namby Pamby. The phrase
originates from Carey’s nickname
for Philips.

17
(a) It is a device that allows continuous
linear or rotary motion in only one
direction while preventing motion
in the opposite direction. It is used
in clocks, hoists, roller
coasters, spanners, turnstiles etc.
What 7-letter term are we looking
for? An example is shown in the
following picture.

17
(b) In cars and other similar
vehicles, such a mechanism is
integral for the working of which
part used directly by the drivers?

17
(a) Ratchet.
(b) Hand-brakes.

18
(a) This structure was “being eaten
away” by the marks you see. It has
been restored recently and a
protective glass barrier erected.
Identify the structure.
(b) What was causing the damage to it?

18
(a) Oscar Wilde’s tomb at the Père
Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
(b) Lip marks/lipstick left by adoring
fans.

19
The Tears Dress and the Skeleton
Dress from the Circus Collection of
1938 were the result of collaboration
between which two mavericks? They
also created the Lobster Dress
famously worn by Wallis Simpson in a
series of photographs by Cecil
Beaton, and the Shoe Hat. (Visuals
follow.)

19
(a) Elsa Schiaparelli.
(b) Salvador Dali.

20
(a) What is
this?
(b) The
inscriptio
n recalls
fundamen
tal
principles
laid out
by whom?

20
(a) The Pritzker Prize for Architecture.
(b) Vitruvius
(“firmitas, utilitas, venustas”).

Kangaroo Round
1. 5 questions, each with a pair of
questions where one answer can be
found by removing some letters from
the other answer. (For
example, instructor  instructor =
tutor)
2. The order of letters is not changed.
3. We are not saying whether the first or
the second answer has all the letters.
4. Consider surnames where applicable.

1 (a)
The Japanese language is written with a
combination of three scripts: Chinese
characters called kanji, and two syllabic
scripts made of modified Chinese
characters, hiragana and ____. The third is
primarily used for transcription of foreign
language words into Japanese and the
writing of loan words, as well as to
represent technical/scientific terms, and
the names of plants and animals. What?

1 (b)
It was one of the traditional Japanese
swords worn by the samurai. It is
characterized by its distinctive
appearance: a curved, slender, single
edged blade, circular or squared
guard, and long grip to accommodate
two hands. Identify.

2 (a)
With whom would you connect the following?

2 (a)
Sergei Eisenstein.

(Ivan the Terrible, Alexander
Nevsky, Grigory Potemkin)

2 (b)
He appeared on the cover of TIME
magazine dated 31 December, 1999. The
accompanying article said: “Without
fanfare, he helped scores of Jewish refugees
get into an unwelcoming U.S., including a
young photographer named Philippe
Halsman, who would take the most famous
picture of him (reproduced on the cover of
this issue).” Who?

3 (a)
He was a Greek
historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher
and a contemporary and admirer of
Socrates. He is often cited as being the
original “horse whisperer”, having
advocated sympathetic horsemanship in
his treatise On Horsemanship. His
writings, especially the Anabasis (about the
expedition against the Persians), are often
read by beginning students of the Greek

3 (b)
This element was discovered in the
residue left over from evaporating
components of liquid air by William
Ramsay and Morris Travers in 1898. It
is used in flash lamps and lasers. It is
also used as a general anesthetic and
in treating brain injuries. Identify.

4 (a)
Which 2011 movie was the first
feature animation done by Industrial
Light & Magic, generally a special
effects company? It also marked a
departure for its director who was
associated with large-scale
productions earning billions of dollars
at the box office.

4 (b)
This Andean stringed instrument of
the lute family was traditionally made
with the shell of the back of an
armadillo. It has made appearances in
multiple works by Gustavo Santaolalla.
Identify.

5 (a)
Domenico Modugno’s signature song “Nel
blu dipinto di blu” (“In the blue, painted
blue”) became the first Grammy winner for
the Record of the Year and the Song of the
Year in 1958. It is the only foreign-
language recording to achieve this honor.
Covered more than 100 times and
parodied by football fans, its popular name
is the Italian for “to fly”. Identify.

5 (b)
He adopted a pseudonym in 1718
following his incarceration. It was seen by
many to mark his formal separation from
his family and his past. The name echoed
the syllables of the name of his family
house in reverse order. Some believe that
he would have intended it to also convey
its connotations of speed and daring. It
was also an anagram of the Latinized
spelling of his surname. Who?

5 (b)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet).

Hop, Skip and Jump
1. 5 questions with 3 variables in each—
X, Y, Z
2. Identify the missing variables.
3. While answering please enter the
variables, or whatever is asked for, into
the (a) and (b) slots in order.
4. 1 point for each.

1
X wrote these lines in an introduction to a 1977
book: “Clouds are not spheres, mountains are
not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is
not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
straight line”.
Y was his teacher at the institute Z, famous for
its science courses, and for preparing
technocrats for admission into the civil services.
If Z is the Ecole Polytechnique, France, name X
and Y.
(Visuals follow.)

1
X: Benoit Mandelbrot.
Y: Gaston Julia.

2
The plant species Ceratonia siliqua is better
known by the common name X. It produces
a seed-filled pod. The seeds may be
powdered and blended with another plant
product Y. X’s other claim to fame is that
the seeds were used as a standard of
measurement in ancient times and this
may have led to the name Z for a particular
unit of measurement. If Y is cocoa, give X
and Z. (Visual follows.)

3
X wrote a letter in 1912 to his wife Kathleen
where he said “I had looked forward to helping
you bring the boy up…. Make the boy interested
in natural history if you can. It s better than
games.” The son referred to, Y, was named after
his godfather Z’s most famous literary creation.
Y went on to do many things in natural history
including the idea of Red Data Books which
provided data on endangered species. If X is the
explorer Robert Falcon Scott, identify Y and Z.

3
Y: Peter Scott.
Z: J.M. Barrie, whose Peter Pan
inspired Peter Scott’s name.

4
X was a radical figure who was deported
from the United States. She travelled to
the USSR just in time to capture
Trotsky’s massacre of the protesters at
Kronstadt. Her fiery speeches inspired a
ne’er-do-well named Y to knock off a
man Z whose name lives on in a
mountain peak, albeit shakily. If Y was a
Leon Czolgosz, name X and Z.

4
X: Emma Goldman.
Z: William McKinley.

5
The British researchers X1 and X2 were repeating
the Nobel-winning experiments of the 1904
laureate Y when they discovered a set of bodily
processes. The two decided that they needed a
word for an agent released into the blood stream
that stimulated activity in a different part of the
body. They turned to a classical colleague, W.T.
Vesey (an authority on the Greek poet, Pindar)
and asked him. He offered them Z, based on the
Greek verb for ‘excite’ or ‘arouse’. If X1-X2 are
Starling and Bayliss, who is Y and what is Z?

Research and Contortions

Kiran Vijayakumar
Arul Mani

Mega whats 2011 answer key

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