1) The document summarizes the rules for the SMQ 2019 quiz competition, noting there will be 22 questions worth 1 point each, with 8 teams making it to the finals. 2) Thomas Midgley Jr. is responsible for creating two harmful compounds - leaded gasoline and Freon - and demonstrated the safety of both by inhaling them. 3) Jack Kevorkian gained notoriety for his physician-assisted suicide efforts and was tried and convicted for his activities before being paroled in 2007.

1. SMQ 2019
Govind, Aditya J, Utkarsh

2. Rules
● 22 questions.
● 1 point per question, no negatives.
● 8 teams into the finals, will go up to 10 if ties exist.
● Sudden death if ties still persist.
● Part points wherever applicable.
● QM’s discretion will be exercised wherever necessary.

3. Q1.
Shown is a screenshot of a Tinder
conversation. Tinder is well known for
having a large population of bots, the
recipient in this conversation is most
likely one of them.
Knowing this, what are the sender’s
messages (blue) a reference to, from
the world of fiction?
What is its real world analogue?

4. The Voight-Kampff machine from Blade runner, which is a sort of Turing Test

5. Generation ____ is a term used to characterize the young adults of the 2010s as being
more prone to taking offense and less resilient than previous generations, or as
being too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own.
The term _____ has been used to refer to children raised by their parents in ways that
give them an inflated sense of their own uniqueness. This usage has been reported
to originate from Chuck Palahniuk's novel and movie Fight Club. Both the novel and
the film include the line "You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique
____."
FITB with something whose unique nature is often talked about.
Q2.

6. Snowflake

7. Q3.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony runs over an hour, 74 minutes to be exact. In the era
of LP records, it generally took three sides — and hence had to be coupled with one
of Beethoven's shorter symphonies, like the Eighth, to complete a two-disc set. This
was one of the factors that led to the establishment of a standard in a then-new
technology. What?

8. Compact Disks

9. _ Liquidators were the civil and military personnel
who were called upon to deal with consequences
of the event in question. They are widely credited
with limiting both the immediate and long-term
damage from the disaster. Among other things,
they’re given veteran status in their home country
for their bravery.
Shown on the right is the central insignia of the
medal they were presented. What event?
Q4.

10. Chernobyl

11. Q5.
The two word phrase is used in several contexts. One such context is in distance
running, where a previously exhausted athlete suddenly finds the energy to
continue performing at his best.
In sleep, it is a phenomenon in which a person, after a prolonged period of staying
awake, temporarily ceases to feel drowsy, often making it difficult to fall asleep once
it happens.
If it helps, it’s also the name of a fairly unknown company working in renewable
energy.
ID the phrase

12. Second wind

13. Q6.
FITB

14. Et al.

15. Q7. Prelims
Graph of what?

16. Doomsday clock

17. Q8. Fill in the blanks
Some of the steps in calculating John Baez’s ___ index are listed below.
● A -5 point starting credit.
● 5 points for each mention of "Einstein", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
● 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided.
● 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to a well reputed school.
● 10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws
in your theory.
● 10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.
● 30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory
which he or she publicly supported.
● 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way
towards the ideas you now advocate.

18. Crackpot

19. Q9.

20. The comic subtext is “Also known as the X-Y scale”.
X is a science fiction television series that examines modern society, particularly
with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies.
Y is a science entertainment television programme in which the show's hosts used
elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, movie scenes,
adages, Internet videos, and news stories.

21. X- Black Mirror
Y- Mythbusters

22. Q10.
X’s origins lie in a daylong brainstorming session held by board members of the
podcasting company Odeo, with the idea of an individual using an SMS service to
communicate with a small group.
The original project code name for the service was its present name sans vowels, an
idea inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes.
On choosing the name, the founder says: “…we came across the word X, and it was
just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ ….. .
And that’s exactly what the product was.”

23. Twitter

24. Q11.
The most powerful one ever observed was the first one to be observed was reported
in 1859. This was so powerful that it set telegraph systems on fire.
A paper describes another one as such: “These effects, long buried in the Vietnam
War archives, add credence to the severity of the storm: a nearly instantaneous,
unintended detonation of dozens of sea mines in on 4 August 1972. The U.S. Navy
attributed the dramatic event to magnetic perturbations of the X. In researching
these events we determined that the widespread electric‐ and communication‐grid
disturbances that plagued North America and the disturbances in southeast Asia
late on 4 August likely resulted from an X.”.
What is X?

25. Solar flares

26. Q12.
Clerow Wilson Jr. was an American comedian who hosted his own weekly variety
series, The Flip Wilson Show.
His most popular character, Geraldine Jones’ lines "The devil made me do it" as well
as "____ ___ ___ __ ____ ___ ___" became national catchphrases.
But, now, we know the catchphrase or rather its acronym as a description of a
system in which content can be edited in a form closely resembling its appearance
when displayed as a finished product.
FITB

27. What you see is what you get / WYSIWYG

28. Q13.
Hans Berger, in a training exercise during his service in the cavalry, landed in the
path of a horse-drawn cannon. Berger survived, with no serious injuries. His sister,
at home many kilometres away, had a feeling he was in danger and insisted their
father telegram him. The incident made such an impression on Berger that, years
later in 1940, he wrote: "It was a case of spontaneous telepathy in which at a time of
mortal danger, and as I contemplated certain death, I transmitted my thoughts,
while my sister, who was particularly close to me, acted as the receiver."
On completion of his military service, Berger returned to study medicine with the
goal of discovering the physiological basis of "psychic energy". His central theme
became "the search for the correlation between objective activity in the brain and
subjective psychic phenomena". What did he go on to invent?

29. Electroencephalography (EEG)

30. Q14.
Thomas Midgley, Jr. was single-handedly responsible for creating two of the most
destructive compounds of the 20th century.
First, as a chemical engineer for General Motors, he discovered that the addition of
tetraethyl lead to gasoline solved the problem of engine “knocking.” The discovery
gave Midgley severe lead poisoning, reportedly, after demonstrating it was totally
safe by inhaling leaded gas for 60 seconds.
With the second too, he demonstrated the utility of his invention to the American
Chemical Society as he “inhaled a large amount of the gas, and then blew out a
candle flame, showing it to be non-toxic and non-flammable.”
What was the second compound?

31. Freon

32. Q15. FITB
Copyright law is used by an author to prohibit recipients from reproducing,
adapting, or distributing copies of their work.
In contrast, under ________, an author must give every person who receives a copy of
the work permission to reproduce, adapt, or distribute it, with the accompanying
requirement that any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same
licensing agreement.
Richard Stallman stated that the use of ______ comes from Don Hopkins, who mailed
him a letter in 1984, which had a wordplay on the phrase “Copyright - all rights
reserved”.

33. Copyleft - all rights reversed.

34. Q16.
It all began on a 1978 flight to Europe. Dr. Amar ____ was trying out a new set of
airline-supplied equipment and found that he couldn't really enjoy the experience
with the roar of engines in the background.
Calculations begun on that flight indicated it was possible to improve the technology
used in said equipment. Those calculations led to an entire research group dedicated
to said technology. But it took more than a decade before their first product was a
reality.
The company is now a leader in the industry and is synonymous with said
technology. What Company? What Technology?

35. Bose; Noise Cancellation

36. Q17.
Shown in the next slide is an excerpt from a particular chemical’s safety sheet. ID the
chemical.

40. Water

41. Q18.
A/An X is a collection of musical lead sheets intended to help a performer quickly
learn and perform new songs. Each song in it contains the melody line, basic chords
and sometimes lyrics – the minimal information needed by a musician or small group
to make an impromptu, extemporized arrangement of a song. It is a central part of
the culture of playing music in jazz, where strong improvisation abilities are
expected from "comping" rhythm section players (piano, electric guitar, double bass,
drum kit) and "lead instruments" which play the melody and improvise lengthy solos
over the chord progression.
Recently, “How to delete Y” replaced “How to delete Z” at the top of Google
searches. X and Z differ by one letter.

42. Fakebook, Google, Facebook

43. Q19.
In 1952, Jack Kevorkian graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School
in Ann Arbor. He completed residency training in anatomical and clinical pathology
and briefly conducted research on blood transfusion.
Often portrayed in the media with the name of “Dr. Death”, he was tried four times
between May 1994 and June 1997. He was convicted later in 1999 on another case
and granted parole in 2007 on the condition that he would neither pursue nor
comment about his previous activities.
What was he up to?

44. Euthanasia/Physician-assisted suicide

45. Q20.
A/an X game where the player has the ability to create, modify, or destroy their
environment. The term alludes to a child's X where the child can create and destroy
with no given objective. A pure X game has no objective except to modify the
environment like Minecraft but can be combined with a storyline or a hook to drive
players. This differs from an open world where the player is free to roam and
approach objectives at any time.
Give me X.

46. Sandbox

47. Q21.
X is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study,
experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems.
The term first referred to groups who had reverse engineered the system of tones
used to route long-distance calls. By re-creating these tones, Xs could switch calls
from the handset, allowing free calls to be made around the world.
The term X is a sensational spelling of the word Y with the first letter replaced with
something to reference the environment which they work in.
Oxford defines Y as “A person regarded as strange because of their unusual
appearance or behaviour.” Give me X (not Y).

48. Phreaks

49. Q22.
“The whole thing's a metaphor, he thinks he's got free will but really he's trapped in a
maze, in a system. All he can do is consume, he's pursued by demons that are
probably just in his own head, and even if he does manage to escape by slipping out
one side of the maze, what happens?
He comes right back in the other side.”
What’s being talked about? The excerpt is from a recent entertainment context.

50. Pacman, context being Black Mirror: Bandersnatch