Karl Landsteiner and Giulio Natta discovered a catalyst used in the synthesis of polymers of 1-alkenes. This catalyst is known as the Ziegler–Natta catalyst.

1. T ECH T RYST Shreyans Jain
Abhimanyu Dubey
FINALS

2. INFINITE POUNCE

3. 1
X are small, furry, animals usually found in or near the Arctic, in
tundra biomes.
In the 1530s, the geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg proposed the
theory that these creatures fell out of the sky during stormy, and
then died suddenly when the grass grew in spring.
X also became the subject of a popular misconception that they
commit mass suicide when they migrate. In reality, it is not a mass
suicide, but the result of their migratory behavior. As a result of this
misconception the term X can figuratively refer to, in the English
language, “any member of a group given to conformity or
groupthink, especially a group poised to follow a leader off a cliff.”

4. 2
X is an award that aims to highlight those obscure studies that have led to major
breakthroughs that have had a significant, and often serendipitous, impact on
humans and the economy, and to honor ideas that ‘hatched unexpectedly’. As
such, the nominees' research must already have led to these significant benefits;
the awards aren't intended to honor current research that may lead to future
breakthroughs.
The award's name alludes to an Aesop fable, and is also a play on the “______
Award," bestowed by the late Sen. William Proxmire, on research he considered
wasteful spending.
The past year’s winners were:
•Charles Townes, the inventor of the maser, the precursor to the laser, whose
research for a long stretch of his career was met with a lukewarm reception.
•Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien, whose research into
luminescence has allowed for the more accurate mapping of proteins and
biological processes.
•Jon Weber, Eugene White, Rodney White and Della Roy, who came together by
chance to discover that coral, which marine biologist Weber was studying in his
lab, was an ideal material for bone grafts.

7. 3
X is a recent trend whose name is a portmanteau of the word
‘food’ and a popular smartphone application. While X has
become popular through social networking, at the same time,
many chefs see it as the curse of modern dining because it can
“disturb the dining experience” or “do their food injustice”. Many
New York City restaurants have as a result banned this altogether.
Give X.

8. 4
The Kraay family of Lacombe, Alberta, Canada has created
cornfield mazes at their farm for years as part of the many
attractions they offer to the public. In 2012, they finished creating
something (let's call it X) that got them into the Guinness Book of
World Records at an official measure of 1.1 square miles or 309,570
square feet.
To verify that X worked, the Kraays had to commission a helicopter
to fly them over their own farm, allowing them to ____ it while
hovering hundreds of feet above.
X's vast expanse, however, constrains its general use, as
photographs of it - all invariably taken at an angle — don't seem
to work particularly well with ____ readers unless the photographer
happens to be a satellite.

11. 5
The phosphors used to make the pixels in the display of a
Cathode Ray Tube would discolor its glass surface when they
would glow at a constant rate for a long period of time. This
discoloration would then be visible as a faint image overlaying
whatever else was displayed on the tube. To prevent this from
happening, the concept of what was brought about? Why was it
named as such?

12. 6
Patent No. 6,469 or X’s patent refers to a patented invention to lift
boats over shoals and obstructions in a river. X conceived the idea of
inventing such a mechanism when on two different occasions the boat
on which he traveled got hung up on obstructions.
The original documentation of this patent, discovered in 1997, starts:
“Be it known that I, X, of Springfield, in the county of Sangamon, in the
state of Illinois, have invented a new and improved manner of
combining adjustable buoyant air chambers with a steam boat or
other vessel for the purpose of enabling their draught of water to be
readily lessened to enable them to pass over bars, or through shallow
water, without discharging their cargoes.”
X’s successful application made him the only ______ to have a United
States patent registered to his name.

13. 7
Fluorescein is a synthetic organic compound that has been around
since the 1870s and is widely used as a dye. Solid fluorescein is
orange, but when dissolved in water it turns into green. In March
every year, large quantities of the dye were introduced into the
Chicago river as part of fifty-year old tradition which arose by
accident when some plumbers used it to trace sources of illegal
pollution discharges. More recently, fluorescein has been replaced
by powdered vegetable dye after it was found harmful to the river
by EPA.
What tradition are we talking about?

16. 8
In 1940, when the Nazis raided the Pasteur Institute in Paris and
tried to open Pasteur's crypt, they were stopped by the caretaker,
Joseph Meister. On being forced, he chose to commit suicide by
shooting himself with his World War I service revolver rather than
allow the Wehrmacht to enter the Pasteur's crypt.
Give funda.

17. 9
In 1 958 a priest named Gerardo Flórez, then 70 years old, was
provided with the world's first X by two Colombians, Alberto
Vejarano Laverde and Jorge Reynolds Pombo. X was used by
Florez for another 1 8 years. It weighed 45kg and was powered by
a 1 2-volt battery that had to be lugged around on a cart and
recharged every 72 hours. What are we talking about?

18. 10
“X’s law” is a law proposed by University of Chicago statistics
professor Stephen X in a 1980 publication which in its simplest and
strongest form says: "No scientific discovery is named after its
original discoverer." The publication was partly derived from his
father’s work who had earlier stated: "If an earlier, valid statement
of a theory falls on deaf ears, and a later restatement is accepted
by the science, this is surely proof that the science accepts ideas
only when they fit into the then-current state of the science“. X
named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of “X's
law", consciously making the law exemplify itself.
Give X.

19. 11
Karl X was a German chemist known for his work involving free-
radicals, many-membered rings, and organometallic compounds.
X won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963, with Italian chemist
Giulio Y, for their work on polymers.
Together, the two give their name to a catalyst used in the
synthesis of polymers of 1-alkenes. What catalyst?

20. 12
“They’ve always been there. Year after year. Since 1768. Every. Single.
Day.
But not forever.
Today we’ve announced that ___________________.
A momentous event? In some ways, yes; the set is, after all, nearly a
quarter of a millennium old. But in a larger sense this is just another
historical data point in the evolution of human knowledge.
For one thing, the __________ will live on—in bigger, more numerous,
and more vibrant digital forms. And just as important, we the
publishers are poised, in the digital era, to serve knowledge and
learning in new ways that go way beyond reference works. In fact, we
already do.”
Who on what?

21. 13
During World War I, aeroplanes were used as fighter and bomber
aircraft by both sides. Air Force pilots in World War I unfortunately
had to face a very unpleasant side effect caused by inhaling fumes
from the lubricant commonly used for the newly developed
internal combustion rotary engines that powered the aircraft.
What was the lubricant used for these engines?
HINT: a common brand of gets its name from it.

22. 14
The following webpage is a tribute to what?

24. 15
Although well known for being a physicist, X was also worked in
other fields, including genetics. In 1944, he wrote What is Life?,
which contains a discussion of negentropy and the concept of a
complex molecule with the genetic code for living organisms.
According to James D. Watson's memoir, DNA, the Secret of Life,
X's book gave Watson the inspiration to research the gene, which
led to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure in 1953.
Similarly, Francis Crick, in his autobiographical book What Mad
Pursuit, described how he was influenced by X's speculations
about how genetic information might be stored in molecules.
X also wrote on philosophy and published three papers on colour
theory.

25. 16
X refers to a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy
after the fact. The expression refers to the apocryphal story of how
Y, having been told that discovering Z was no great
accomplishment, challenged his critics to make a(n) _____ stand on
its tip. After his challengers gave up, Y did it himself by tapping the
______ on the table so as to flatten its tip.
The story is often alluded to when discussing creativity. In popular
culture, the narrator in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
describes the East and West islands saying, "They are not perfect
ovals -- like the X story, they are both crushed flat at the contact
end..."

26. 17
The X theory was a theory in medicine that held that diseases such
as cholera, chlamydia or the Black Death were caused by a X,
literally meaning pollution in ancient Greek. X was considered to
be a poisonous vapor or mist filled with particles from
decomposed matter and was identifiable by its foul smell.
According to the theory, diseases were the product of
environmental factors such as contaminated water, foul air, and
poor hygienic conditions. Such infection was not passed between
individuals but would affect individuals within the locale that gave
rise to such vapors.
The X theory was accepted from ancient times in Europe, India
and China. It was eventually displaced in the 19th century by the
discovery of germs and the germ theory of disease. What theory
are we talking about?

27. 18
X is a stealth-based psychological horror video game released in 2003.
Although it was generally well received by critics, X is more well known
for its high controversy due to the level of graphic violence. Such was
the controversy that the game was banned in several countries, and
also linked to the murder of Stefan Pakeerah (14) by his friend Warren
Leblanc (17) in Leicestershire, England. Initial media reports claimed
that police had found a copy of the game in Leblanc's bedroom.
Stefan's father, Patrick, added "they were playing a game called X. The
way Warren committed the murder this is how the game is set out,
killing people using weapons like hammers and knives. There is some
connection between the game and what he has done." Patrick
continued "The object of X is not just to go out and kill people. It's a
point-scoring game where you increase your score depending on how
violent the killing is. That explains why Stefan's murder was as horrific
as it was."
Shortly after however, the police officially denied any link between the
game and the murder, citing drug-related robbery as the motive and
revealing that the game had been found in Pakeerah's bedroom, not
Leblanc's, as originally reported.

30. Internet
Business Music
Culture
Movies Mythology Literature
Next

31. INTERNET CULTURE
It is believed that the Internet popularity behind this physical
action was originated by Jean-Luc Picard's infamous gesture. Its
usage has increased significantly in the past months on online
forums all across the globe. Incidentally, a group of mandrills at the
Colchester Zoo has adopted a similar gesture to signal the desire
to avoid social interaction or to be left alone. What?
BACK

32. BACK

33. BACK

34. BUSINESS
The following is an artist’s interpretation of an instruction card for
something, as if it were made by a famous MNC.
Give both the thing and the company.
BACK

35. BACK

36. MYTHOLOGY
X is a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his eternal
punishment in Tartarus for revealing the secrets of the gods - he
was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low
branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water
always receding before he could take a drink.
The name "X" is the origin of the English verb "to ________". The
underlying idea is that when someone is ________-ed, that person
goes through the same experience as X.
The chemical element Y is named after the mythological figure; its
lack of reactivity, and the resulting difficulty in isolating the pure
metal from ore, gave the element its name, by analogy; the pure
metal _______-ed chemists.
BACK

37. MUSIC
What law in science is being described in the song?
BACK

38. The 2nd Law: Unsustainable, by Muse

39. MOVIES
X is a 1925 silent fantasy adventure film starring Wallace Beery. It
was the first full-length special effects and science fiction film, the
first 'creature feature', and the first film starring dinosaurs. It was
also the first full-length film to feature animation, with the
animation team led by Willis O'Brien who would later animate King
Kong.
X is an adaptation of Y's 1912 novel of the same name and also
features Y as himself in a frontispiece to the film.
X also partly shares its name with a much more recent sci-fi flick
with a similar theme.
BACK

40. LITERATURE
•The first message is a repeating series of the first 261 prime
numbers.
•The second message is a retransmission of a television signal
broadcast - Adolf Hitler's opening speech at the 1936 Summer
Olympics in Berlin.
•The third message (in cryptic form) consists of over 30,000 pages
describing plans for a machine that appears to be a kind of highly
advanced vehicle, with seats for five human beings.
•The fourth message is a primer hidden in phase modulation that
permits understanding of the third message.
What are we talking about?
BACK

41. INFINITE POUNCE
(REVERSE)

42. 1
Using the internet connection on your phone, there is a higher
probability of coming across the ‘throbber’, than there is when
you’ll use the institute WiFi or the LAN, but the throbber’s
presence does indicate you of the presence of an unwanted
situation, most times being a mechanical fault. What is a throbber?

43. 2
Gaikai is a Japanese company which derives its name from the
Japanese word for ‘open space' or 'open ocean'. On July 2, 2012,
Sony Computer Entertainment announced a formal agreement to
acquire the company Gaikai for $380 million USD, for launching a
particular gaming service of their own. What service is Gaikai
known for?

44. 3
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) is a nonprofit
organization and the largest general farm organization in the
United States. In early January 2011 it was reported that Facebook
paid $8.5 million to the Bureau in order to acquire something.
What?

45. 4
“In the fall of 1967, [I was invited] to a conference … on pulsars. …
In my talk, I argued that we should consider the possibility that the
center of a pulsar is a gravitationally completely collapsed object. I
remarked that one couldn’t keep saying ‘gravitationally completely
collapsed object’ over and over. One needed a shorter descriptive
phrase. ‘How about ______?’ asked someone in the audience. I had
been searching for the right term for months, mulling it over in
bed, in the bathtub, in my car, whenever I had quiet moments.
Suddenly this name seemed exactly right.”
Who on the etymology of what?

46. 5
The first documented use of this in human history dates back to
the 6th century AD, in early medieval China. Modern, commercially
available versions of this product have been invented by Joseph
Gayetty, in the year 1857, available till 1920. These versions were
thin medicated sheets having their inventor’s name watermarked
on each sheet. The average modern-age product is about 10 cm in
width and weighs about 8 ounces per product. What product am I
talking about?

47. 6
The name was inspired by a puzzle question that Vincent Connare
heard within the Microsoft headquarters. The question was, “can
you make an X that could launch a person from a main campus to
a consumer campus a mile away?”
This led to the naming of a popular font as X. ID the font.

48. 7
It is the second most expensive spice after saffron and was
originally cultivated by Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples,
who used it to flavor the chocolate beverage xocoatl. Today it is
used in a variety of sweet foods and beverages. Attempts to
cultivate it outside Central America proved futile because of the
symbiotic relationship between the tlilxochitl vine and the local
species of Melipona bee, until 1841 that is, when a 12-year-old
slave discovered the plant could be hand pollinated, allowing
global cultivation. Madagascar is now its main producer. Which
‘spice’?

49. 8
The X effect, also known as X-ing, occurs when a popular website
links to a smaller site, causing a massive increase in traffic. This
overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even
temporarily become unavailable. The name stems from the huge
influx of web traffic that would result from the news site X linking
to websites, although the name is dated since flash crowds from X
have been reported in 2005 as diminishing beginning in 2004 due
to competition from similar sites. Give X.

50. 9
The website timeblimp.com describes a game created by one of
the websites authors which is a spin-off of the Erdos-Bacon index,
involving a third entity X. Collectively this is known as the Erdos-
Bacon-X number, and connects it to an English rock band, formed
roughly around 1970. The website describes anyone having all
three numbers in a credible limit as a 'Certified Badass'.
Interestingly, the person who comes closest to this is Stephen
Hawking, who having collaborated with Pink Floyd has an EBX no.
of 8. Give X.

51. 109
X was an Austrian, later Swedish, physicist who worked on
radioactivity and nuclear physics. X was part of the team that
discovered nuclear fission, but her work overlooked by the Nobel
committee which chose to award the Nobel Prize to her colleague
Otto Hahn alone. A 1997 Physics Today study concluded that X's
omission was "a rare instance in which personal negative opinions
apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist" from the
Nobel. X was also one of the co-discoverers of stable protactinium.

52. 11
The clip is from the movie Fermat's Room. Which unsolved
problem in number theory is being talked about?
[VID]

54. 12
Jef Raskin, the visionary behind the product Y, wanted to name the
product after his favorite type of X. X was also incidentally the
name of company he worked for. However, the name had to be
changed to the current one for legal reasons as it was too close,
phonetically, to that of an audio equipment manufacturer. Even
this sounded similar, so X was forced to buy off the rights to its
name.
Give X and Y.

55. 13
The red bar symbolizes X as it is today. The green and blue
symbolize stages in the possible terraforming of X should
humanity ever have the will and the ability to undertake such a
task. Kim Stanley Robinson's popular trilogy Red X, Green X, and
Blue X provided the concept for this. What are we talking about?
Give X.

58. 14
Excerpts from an article on The Guardian dated 28 Aug '12.
For four minutes and 24 seconds on Tuesday, X will act as a $2.5bn radio
station. Y's Reach for the Stars will be beamed from the ______ back to Earth,
streamed as part of an educational showcase at Nasa's Jet Propulsion
laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Y will be present at the event, where officials plan to announce a new
partnership between the US space agency, the musician's _______ foundation,
and digital curriculum company Discovery Education. Reach for the Stars is
apparently "a new composition about the singer's passion for science,
technology and space exploration", written last year, when X blasted off toward
______. "#dreambig," wrote Y in his Twitter announcement. "My song is finally
going to be beamed back to earth."
The singer released an excerpt of the song last week – made more poignant
by the death of astronaut Neil Armstrong on Saturday. "Why do they say the
sky is the limit/ When I've seen them footprints on the moon?" the 37-year-old
sings, with strings, choir and heavy Auto-Tune. "I know that _____ might be far/
but baby it ain't really that far."

59. 15
The first X was produced by Harold P Brown and Arthur Kennelly
.
who worked for Y.
X used alternating current (AC), then emerging as a potent rival to
direct current (DC), which was further along in commercial
development. The decision to use AC was partly driven by Y's
claim that AC was more lethal than DC.
To prove this, Brown and Y publicly killed many animals with AC for
the press in hopes of associating alternating current with electrical
death in the midst of _________.

60. 16
Project X is a website created by Colin Hughes which is dedicated
to a series of computational problems intended to be solved with
computer programs. The project attracts adults and students
interested in mathematics and computer programming. It includes
over 400 problems, with a new one added every Saturday.
Problems are of varying difficulty but each is solvable in less than a
minute using an efficient algorithm on a modestly powered
computer.
The project is named after a Swiss mathematician who also
happens to be the only person to have two mathematical
constants named after him.

61. 17
The Western X or simply X, is a passerine bird in the crow family.
Found across Europe, western Asia and North Africa, it is mostly
resident, although northern and eastern populations migrate
south in winter. The common name derives from the word "___",
meaning "small", and "____", the native English name for the bird.
How does X find mention in the world of typography (and
technology)?

64. 18
X was an English cartoonist and illustrator. X's early career involved
writing and illustrating children's books and humorous drawings
for magazines and advertisements. He later moved on to drawing
complex machines.
The machines he drew were frequently powered by steam boilers
or kettles, heated by candles or a spirit lamp and usually kept
running by balding, bespectacled men in overalls. There would be
complex pulley arrangements, threaded by lengths of knotted
string. X's cartoons were so popular that in Britain the term "X" is
used to refer to an improbable, rickety machine barely kept going
by incessant tinkering.
The corresponding term in the US is "Y', which itself derives its
name from another cartoonist and inventor who had an equal
devotion to odd machinery.