IIT Madras Open Quiz 2021 | Finals

Shamanth Rao
Anshumani Ruddra
Siddhartha Banerjee
Karthik Shashidhar
Bharathwaj
Hosts of the Inaugural
IITM Open Quiz
(April 18th 2004)
THANKS

Meenakshi
Govind
Sathvik
Dhruv
pH
Pranav Kamesh
CF
Keshav
Pilnath
pranavcondur4
SET
SHAMANTH

● 3 special rounds.
● 3 rounds of 10 dries.
● +10/-5 on Pounce
● +10/0 on Bounce
● CAMS ON FULL TIME!
● Malpractice B A D 🥀
RULES

APPETIZERS
OnlyPounce
6 Qs; +5/0

1.
What are the Chinese & Japanese words
for ‘a round object’?

2.
First used in the late 1800s, this term comes from
an amalgamation of the French word for “love”
and the Greek word for “that which is tax-free”.

3.
All 3 playing
their 100th test
match at which
venue?
Who is the
gentleman on
the right?

Centurion. Shaun Pollock.
SuperSport Park, South Africa.

4.
The story goes that this project came about partially due to the creator’s
annoyance with one aspect of a printer. More speciﬁcally, he was annoyed at
not being able to customize the printer to work according to his needs.
Who? What did he start?

Richard Stallman. GNU.
GNU is a free software, mass collaboration project whose goal is to
give computer users freedom and control in their use of their
computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing
and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run
the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it. GNU
software grants these rights in its license.

5.
An X is something that is irregularly observed because geological and climatic
events aﬀect one aspect of the Earth. Usually this is applied in a positive sense,
in that it adds to something.
However, adding to the list of anomalies of 2020, scientists are now
considering a negative X for the ﬁrst time. This would, naturally, subtract
instead of adding up.
What is X?

6. X please?
It is believed that Baluswamy Dikshitar is the ﬁrst known X ‘vidwan’
(scholar) in Carnatic Music, who popularized the use of this
instrument in Carnatic Music.
One anecdote goes that his brother, Muthuswamy Dikshitar,
composed the “nottuswarams” in Sankarabharanam ragam to help
him practice Carnatic Music on X.

1. #WGCinﬁltrate
Gyles Brandreth is a former Conservative MP who wears many hats - he’s the
President of both the Oscar Wilde Society and the Association of British
Scrabble Players. He founded a teddy bear museum with his wife. He also
wrote a biography of Prince Philip, published a few days ago.
The title of one of his books on word games is a play of words on the title of a
seminal early-1970s guidebook of sorts.
Change one letter from the four-word title of the early 1970s work to arrive at
the name of this book. If it helps, the word whose letter is changed is 3 letters
long and would score 10 points in Scrabble either way.

2.
The reason why this very weird interlude in an early 2000s piece of media was
included is unclear, in spite of the number of sources consulted for this
question by the setter. There is no connection whatsoever between the sci-ﬁ
futuristic mid-21st century context of the video, set on a diﬀerent planet
altogether, and the early 20th-century period when the interlude was set. It
doesn’t even mention the context of the interlude by name.
A certain person who broke a personal streak in 2016 (and, needless to say, is
inextricably linked to the context of the interlude) had initially agreed to
appear in this scene - however, his schedule did not allow it, and Max Martin
lent his voice to this particular bit instead.
What early 2000s piece of media? What was the interlude based on?

3.
A photographer with the Dallas Times Herald in the mid-20th century, Bob
Jackson may have won the Pulitzer Prize for this photograph, but at the time
he was more depressed about not capturing the incident that subsequently
led to this scene, two days prior. He was one of the few people to see the _____
in the sixth-ﬂoor window of the Texas Book Repository, but his camera had no
ﬁlm.
On Sunday, two days later, he was sent to the police station to get more
photographs and was nearly reassigned to a press conference instead, but he
refused to go - leading to the circumstances that were captured in the
photograph.
What was happening in this photograph?

Jack Ruby
shooting
Lee Harvey
Oswald

4.
After the culmination of a project towards the end of the ‘80s, part of its
proceeds was used to establish a non-proﬁt NGO to help a group of people
involved in the project. These people were employed to increase the project's
realism. The NGO has since expanded and now works with thousands of
individuals each year, operating in Delhi and Bhubaneswar apart from its
initial location in Mumbai.
What group of people does this NGO help?

Street children
The Salaam Baalak Trust, established with funds
from Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay

5.
The object in the image is placed between a serving dish or bowl, and a dining
table, usually to protect the table from heat damage. The word for these
objects is derived from their original structure, although most variants you’ll
see these days don’t have the structural features from which they got their
name.
A diﬀerent object has the same etymology as the above object, except that it’s
name is derived from Hindi/Urdu rather than Latin. Most variants of these
objects also do not strictly obey their etymology.
What’s the latter object?

6.
In 1834, John Marck patented a self-lighting cigar which he named by
combining a Latin prefix meaning “from a place” (though it was often
misinterpreted to mean “self”) with a corruption of the Italian word for fire.
This word was soon genericized to refer to all self-lighting matches. The word
came to be used for a faction within New York’s Democratic Party who
opposed the Democratic establishment. They are said to have used these
matches to light candles after the party tried to break up their meetings by
turning off the gaslights.
The Whigs used this word to refer to the entire Democratic Party in derision.
They interpreted the prefix as being derived from the Spanish for “mad” and
the second part of the word from Latin. In this interpretation, the Democrats
were the “focus of folly”. The two parts of this word rhyme. WTGW?
Marck used this prefix because it had very recently entered the common
lexicon as part of a different word. WTGW?

7.
Simeon Stylites was a 4th-century Syrian Christian ascetic who did penance on
a small platform atop a pillar near Aleppo for 37 years until his death. He was
considered an icon of Christian asceticism and inspired several others to
perform similar penances.
A 19th-century work of literature likens people who are assigned a certain job
to Simeon Stylites. These people, like Simeon, spend many months (though in
shorter batches) in an isolated location with no comforts whatsoever. What
job are these people doing?

Lookouts on mastheads
From Moby Dick

8.
In his book "Colonizing the Body", the historian David Arnold writes about an
interesting discrepancy between something that happened in Bombay in 1896
and previous instances when similar things had taken place in India. He
hypothesizes that this could be because the people's ﬁrst experience of the
1896 happening came in the form of swift, panicked, draconian actions taken
by the colonial government. So, people placed most of the blame for their
suﬀering on the government rather than on a supernatural force.
What was this discrepancy?

No new deity
for the bubonic
plague
Unlike Sitala for smallpox and
Oladevi/Olabibi for cholera

9.
Theriac was an ancient Greek concoction that was believed to be a panacea.
An English word derived from theriac was used synonymously with panacea in
Middle English. This is why the word is used in the name of a structure in the
village of Binsey near Oxford, whose contents supposedly had healing powers.
The name of this structure made its way into a work by a resident of Oxford in
the mid-19th century. In that work, however, the Modern English meaning of
the word (which is very far from its original meaning) is assumed, causing a
great deal of confusion.
What is this structure called?

Treacle well
From the Dormouse’s tale
in Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland

10.
On August 18, 1976 a group of North Korean soldiers killed two US army
oﬃcers who were trimming the branches of a poplar tree in the DMZ. In
response, the US sent in a task force consisting of 813 people with guns and
chainsaws. Simultaneously, as a show of strength, 27 helicopters and multiple
bombers were mobilized and an aircraft carrier was stationed just oﬀ-shore.
The task force cut down the tree in 42 minutes and left.
This operation was given an appropriate name considering its objective and
that it was intended to be a display of American strength. What was this
name?

Operation
Paul Bunyan
Named after the giant
lumberjack from American
folk tales

PHILATELY
ROUND
WRITTEN
5 Qs; +10/0

1. What were they called? FITB & put Country.
The ______ _____ postage stamps were the
ﬁrst stamps issued by a certain country in
the mid 1800s, having face values of 30, 60,
and 90 réis.
It was the second country in the world,
after the United Kingdom, to issue postage
stamps valid within the entire country (as
opposed to a local issue).
The unusual name derives from the
ornamental value ﬁgures inside the oval
settings, and the arrangement of the
stamps in the sheet shown in this image.

2.
In 1993, the US postal service decided to release a commemorative stamp
honouring Elvis Presley on what would have been his 58th birthday. While this
stamp is otherwise considered normal, certain letters with this stamp are
considered collector’s items and are auctioned at fairly high prices.
The high price of these letters is due to something unusual that his fans did
while mailing them. The fans resorted to this to try and obtain letters that
contained both the stamp and a certain 3 word phrase that would honour
Presley, albeit in a diﬀerent way.
What did they do? What was the 3 word phrase?

3.
The ﬁrst series of postage stamps in Belgium depicted King Leopold I
and were colloquially known as _________. The name is derived from
something that the king was known to sport, very regularly, to
showcase his high rank in the pecking order.
The _________ shark is a longtailed carpet shark that shares its name
with the stamp due to a certain reason.
FITB and give me the reason for the shared name

4. 3 parts
“29 cents is all it costs to ship
something to the <->”
FITB. It’s named after a Dutch
scientist who was a professor at
the University of Chicago. Who
was arguably his most well
known doctoral student?
What would you ﬁnd this stamp
stuck to?

5.
Why is this sheet so rare?
What is the common name
of the entity in the stamp?
It is derived from slang for
its oﬃcial name.
You’d also know the word
from the name of the
Japanese version of an
American “fashion ﬁgure”.

Bull’s Eyes. Brazil.
The ﬁrst oﬃcial currency of Brazil was the real (pronounced
[ʁeˈaw]; pl. réis). Its sign was Rs$. As the currency of the
Portuguese empire, it was in use in Brazil from the earliest days of
the colonial period, and remained in use until 1942, when it was
replaced by the cruzeiro.

RETURN TO SENDER
They sent them to ﬁctitious addresses to have ‘RETURN TO SENDER’
stamped on the letter.

Epaulettes.
Black spots on the shark resemble epaulettes.

Kuiper Belt.
Carl Sagan.
New Horizons.

1.
There’s an artform found across South Asia, but has diﬀerent characteristics in
diﬀerent countries. In Pakistan, it’s more intricate and uses a wider range of
colors. In Nepal, it tends to feature more lettering. In India, it often includes
patriotic elements due to a belief that these elements make the authorities
look more favourably upon the people purchasing these artworks.
In 2019, a gallery was set up for this artwork in Mumbai. The image is from
this gallery.
What is this artform?

Truck art
The gallery is housed
within a truck

● Often touted to be NYC’s answer to the one from Philadelphia, this
item has its origins from the Spanish part of Harlem.
● Sold at places whose etymology is derived from the Latin word
‘apotheca’ which means a storehouse or sometimes a wine cellar
● Was featured in the Late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown as
well, but it’s origins is disputed between Yemeni employees
working at the ﬁrst place to sell this and a Hispanic gentleman
named Carlos who was a long time employee at the same place
who came up with this on his own.
2.

3. What special type of “communication” is this?
● This term has its origins from the users of Bulletin Board Systems
(precursor to modern web, peer-peer) in the 80s and those who used this
way of communication were considered “elite”
● Creative misspelling of words were also a way to attempt to indicate one
was more knowledgeable about the culture of computer users.
● This “language” system has contributed a lot to the current vocabulary of
online communities especially among gamers.

Leetspeak
‘1337’
Leet == eLeet == elite
(Pwned - n00b)

4. What hypothesis was this research trying to test?
● This research from the Animal Husbandry Division of Japan used 6 Black
Japanese cows to test their hypothesis inspired from another animal
● The results of this research if employed by cattle owners could potentially
lead to a lot of savings in terms of chemicals used to ‘treat’ this
● This problem associated with cattle reduce their grazing, feeding, and
bedding down time and increase behaviors like head throwing, foot
stamping, skin twitching, and tail ﬂicking) and bunching - which increases
heat stress and risk of injury as animals jostle for a better position to
avoid this
● Some of the other often used explanations to this ‘phenomenon’ were
camouﬂage, confusion of predators, signaling to its own species,
thermoregulation
Finals

Stripes on a zebra are
for preventing ﬂy
bites on it’s body

5. Which infamous incident was this? What
historic ﬁrst?
According to retired photojournalist Sivaraman of the Indian Express, he lists
three unforgettable events from his career.
First being covering MGR’s death in 1987,
Second covering Rajiv Gandhi’s assasination in 1991
But it was his third event which had the most impact in both TN and
Indian politics which took place on March 25th 1989 - the day was supposed
to mark a historic ﬁrst in TN politics but was marred by an infamous incident
which Sivaraman captured and went on to make front page news that
changed the course of Dravidian Politics.

J Jayalalitha being
assaulted in the
legislative assembly
First woman Leader
of Opposition

6.
Shown in this 17th century painting is a
man tied to a rope who’s being
dropped into water. What is being
done here?
This was seen as a sort of punishment,
or rather torture. The natural
expectation would be that it was
related to drowning, however the
‘torture’ aspect of it was not related to
this. What?

Keelhauling.
Ships would often have sharp barnacles growing on
their underside, which would tear up the person.

7.
Shown is a particular kind of shape that
is peculiar in the sense that it has exactly
two points where it can rest, of which
only one is stable. Pictured is the stable
way it can rest.
Described in another way, this is a shape
that regardless of how it’s placed, will
almost always become “upright”. This
shape also occurs commonly in nature.
Where?

On the backs of shelled
animals like Tortoises or
Beetles.

8. FITB.
This “___ ______ optimization” is a set of techniques to solve
computational problems that were inspired by its namesake. Here
is one example of applying this probabilistic technique to solve the
travelling salesman problem, where you need to ﬁnd the shortest
journey covering all cities. Breadcrumbs is just a placeholder, it is
unrelated to the blanks.
● Have several independent agents that all start from one city
and chooses the next city randomly.
● A distant city has a smaller probability of being chosen next.
● Each agent leaves a trail of breadcrumbs along the roads
through which she moved.
● The more breadcrumbs a road has, the more chance it has of
being used by another agent.
● After the journey, the agent traces back her steps.

9.
This two-word term is used to refer to a particular set of mass graves that
were made during the Cambodian Civil War. A critically acclaimed movie
about the same also has the this “The”+ two-word term as its title.
Conversely, it can also be used to refer to the mathematical object of an
n-dimensional space where each point is assigned a vector. Here, it got its
name from the mathematician Wilhelm ______.

10.
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a very talented / popular German conductor in the
mid-19th century. Much of his adoration fell upon a single fellow composer,
the lasting impact of which resulted in many of his compositions recorded
being solely dedicated to pieces by that composer. In an unrelated context,
some other people in the late 1970s also really liked the composer, and ended
up using one of Furtwängler’s recordings as reference because it was the
longest recording of that piece.
What did they use it as a reference to create?
How long was the recording that ended up being used?

Length of a C.D. being 74
minutes
(longest recording of
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
Sony could ﬁnd)

ARCHITECTURE
ROUND
WRITTEN
6 Qs; +10/0

1.
The Pombaline style was developed by Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the
first Marquês de Pombal, in the mid-18th century. A large section of
downtown Lisbon is built in this style. It was the first (Western) architectural
style to incorporate a certain feature.
Pombaline buildings have upto 4 floors and are laid out in a wide grid-like
pattern. The structures are supported by wood and portions of the building
are prefabricated. The exteriors are somewhat plain in a Neoclassical fashion.
Why did this style arise?

2.
The ________ Revival is an architectural style that rapidly grew in popularity in
parts of Western Europe around the beginning of the 19th century. Its
popularity was driven by an increase in knowledge and renewed public
interest regarding the source of its inspiration, primarily as a result of an
event that took place a few years before buildings in this style started being
constructed.
What event?

3.
The Jengki style developed in Indonesia in the 1950s and ‘60s. It was seen as a
movement away from the architecture of the Dutch colonial government and
a welcoming of inﬂuences from the rest of the world.
What was its name derived from?

4.
The __________ ______ style developed in the United States in the early 20th
century. It’s an adaptation of a style from several centuries ago. It was
primarily used in particular locations in the US and was meant to evoke the
antiquity and grandeur associated with similar locations in Europe.
It’s name is derived from the locations in which it was used and the style that
it imitates. What is it called?

5.
Georges-Eugène Haussmann was a French officer hired by Napoleon III to
renovate Paris in the mid-19th century. Haussmann’s vision of the city still
dominates central Paris. Apart from the beautification that was undertaken, a
major achievement of Haussmann’s plan was the construction of a massive
sanitation system connected to the Vanne, the Ourq, and the Seine.
In 1857, Napoleon III offered to grant Haussmann an aristocratic title. When
asked which one he wanted, Haussmann asked to be made a baron. In his
memoirs, however, he joked that he’d like to be given a different
(non-existent) title, a play on one of the structures that was built as part of the
project described above.
What title?

6.
Old Law Tenements are residential complexes built in New York City in the
late 19th century. These complexes were very common and were built in large
numbers to accommodate European immigrants. The Tenement Housing Act
of 1879 required that every habitable room have a window opening to plain
air, and builders met this requirement by including a narrow airshaft between
adjacent buildings.
What nickname was given to Old Law Tenements based on their shape?

To reconstruct Lisbon
after the 1755
earthquake
Buildings are earthquake-resistant

Napoleon’s invasion of
Egypt
Egyptian Revival style

Yankee
Inspired by American suburban architecture

Collegiate Gothic
In the style of buildings in Oxford and Cambridge

Aqueduc
Duc is the French for duke

1.
An Italian born in the 16th century is the reason behind the naming of a
certain body part, whose function causes a lot of pain to Scuba divers, notably,
along with being the most receptive part from that region to infections. From
a quizzing perspective, it’s most interesting use is facilitating the clever
assassination of a famous king whose news of death spread at the turn
between the 16th and 17th century, with the murder method looking
otherwise nonsensical to a normal person.
Which body part?
Which person assassinated the king referred to here?

Eustachian Tube
Claudius killing King Hamlet by
pouring poison down his ear

2.
These are the pieces in a certain chess variant, that pits this setup versus
normal chess pieces, and is exceedingly balanced. What stands out here, is
that every piece can move like a knight in addition to their normal function, as
a way of simulating something. Given that fact, along with the design of the
king/queen pieces and the color of the pieces, what is this chess variant
modelled after from history?

The Golden Horde / Orda Chess (Mongolia)

3.
Nicknamed ‘The Big O’, which North
American city’s stadium is this from
the 70s, whose high costs to build
made people call it The Big Owe?
Looking at the visual, what inherent
problem speciﬁc to the broad event,
caused by this design was remedied
at some point by a quick thinking
worksman using an item from his
pocket?

Montreal at the ‘76 Olympics
He lit the Olympic torch when it went out using a lighter from his pocket,
because the open roof caused rain/wind to put it out.

4.
While made for a purpose that allowed children to read it freely, and with
good intentions, this adaptation was received quite badly, because it removed
key ﬁgures of speeches just because of them being double entendres, like a
line about an “old black ram tupping a white ewe”. What work from the early
1800s was this, whose author’s name is used to mock censorship in general?
What adapted work was only a page long in the original draft,
understandably?

5.
_________ is a system of central heating
in a building that produces and
circulates hot air below the ﬂoor of a
room, and may also warm the walls with
a series of pipes through which the hot
air passes. This air is also used to heat
the upper ﬂoors. The word derives from
the Ancient Greek for which way the air
comes up and how it is heated.
You might also know the word from the Twitter handle of an
English cricket blogger whose Twitter Display Picture is shown here.

6.
In 1967, the DMK leader C. N. Annadurai
became chief minister of Tamil Nadu. His
government conducted the second World
Tamil Conference in 1968, in Chennai.
As part of the conference, the statues of ten
tamil icons who were associated with the
history of Tamil literature were erected on
the Marina Beach.
Which Anglican missionary’s statue is the
one shown in this image? What is his
contribution to Tamil literature?

George Uglow Pope
The ﬁrst complete English translation of the Tirukkural was the one
by the Christian missionary George Uglow Pope in 1886, which
introduced the complete Kural to the western world.

7. Term & Group?
A __term__ is a wealthy man deriving his fortune from the east, especially in India
during the 18th & 19th centuries with the East India Company. It is an Anglo-Indian
term that borrowed into English from Urdu during British colonial rule in India.
In late 19th century San Francisco, rapid urbanization led to an exclusive enclave of
the rich and famous on the west coast who built large mansions in the Nob Hill
neighborhood. This included prominent tycoons such as Leland Stanford, founder
of Stanford University and other members of <group> who were known as
__term___, which when shortened gave the area its eventual name.

Nabob. The Big 4.
from Urdu/Hindustani nawāb/navāb

8.
Shown here is a plant endemic to
one particular former British
colony. Bearing tiny white ﬂowers,
it is a tangle branched, extremely
thorny shrub that can grow up to
four metres tall.
For what speciﬁc purpose did early
settlers in that country use the
plant?

New Zealand.
Maori settlers used them as tattooing needles.

9. Group name & music type?
<-> is the world's ﬁrst South Asian group that exclusively performs a type of
music which in Italian translates to 'in the style of the place of worship'.
Formed in the late 1990s by students of the University of _____________ . Their
music has been inﬂuenced by a combination of the Eastern and Western
cultures that represent the group’s membership.

Penn Masala. Acapella.
University of Pennsylvania.

10. What device is this?
● This is the operating principle of the device - It uses Rapid Pressure Swing
Adsorption technique where the input material is passed at high pressure
through Zeolite minerals that eﬀectively “scrubs” the input material of
something (to a large extent but not completely) to produce the required
end product.
● For larger use cases cryogenic separation instead of zeolite/adsorption
based devices are recommended
● The device was initially developed by the Union Carbide and Benedix
Corporation in the 70s
● It’s end product is the “most commonly used hospital treatment in the
developed world” and features in WHO’s list of essential medicines

OXYGEN CONCENTRATORS
Please consider donating to the following
initiatives who are trying to procure O2
concentrators-
India Needs O2 NOW! (indiao2.org)
hemkuntfoundation13@okhdfcbank
Donate to ACT Grants | Oxygen For Everyone |
ACT Grants - https://actgrants.in/donate/

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