Mega-Whats 2012

Mega-Whats 2012
The 4th National Open Quizzing Championships

Conducted by
The Karnataka Quiz Association
Est. 1983

Set by
Arun Hiregange and Kiran Vijayakumar

Be Careful!

These Are the Answer Slides

In association with
Quiz Foundation of India, Chennai
Bombay Quiz Club, Mumbai
Boat Club Quiz Club, Pune
Kutub Quizzers, New Delhi
Sunday Evening Quiz Club, Goa
Hyderabad Quiz Club and K-Circle, Hyderabad
Grey Cells, Kerala
Coimbatore Quiz Circle

And the quizzing communities in Bhubaneshwar,
Chandigarh, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur,
Kolkata and Guwahati

The Rules

1. No negatives.
2. No part points.
3. Last names will suffice.
4. Write legibly.
5. Use of electronic devices prohibited.

The Design

Three sections leading to 100 points:
Section 1  40 x 1 = 40
Section 2  25 x (1 + 1) = 50
Section 3  5 x (1 + 1) = 10

 indicates that the question continues
on the next slide.

Section 1

40 questions – 1 point for each

1 Variants of this contraption have
been used for centuries. One version,
built in 1818 by English civil engineer
Sir William Cubitt, was used in prisons
to crush grains. This form of hard
labour was discontinued in the late
19th century, but the name survived
thanks to a health fad in the 1960s.
What 9-letter term are we talking
about?


2 This practice was started to counter
the anti-India propaganda following the
War of 1965. It gained prominence in 1973
when the Indian government discouraged
sea travel and began providing the
difference between sea and air fares. It cost
the government in excess of 900 crores
(covering about 125,000 people) last year.
The Supreme Court has ordered the practice
to be stopped saying that the original
purpose has changed with the passage of
time. What are we talking about?

3 What is special about this test
match – the only time in test match
history this has happened?



3 All the players, except for the
wicket-keepers, on each team bowled!

4 In a rare, retrospective critique in the 11
August 2011 edition of Nature, written by Emma
Marris upon the 40th anniversary of the
publication of this work, it was described as "a
kind of Silent Spring for the playground set". The
article described its central character to be "a
parody of a misanthropic ecologist: 'He was
shortish. And oldish. And brownish. And mossy.
And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and
bossy.'" The work was adapted into a movie this
year and grossed nearly $350 million. Identify the
work.

5 These radio-controlled, electric
mini-Mini Coopers were used at the
London 2012 Olympics to save valuable
time during competition. Roughly a
quarter scale of the full-sized car with
sunroof, these battery-powered cars
can carry up to about 18 pounds each.
They were used as replacements for
what task done by humans earlier in
track and field events?


5 To carry javelin/discus/shot/
hammer back to the athletes.

6 The first public apology came in
2012 during the unveiling of this
bronze statue in the west German city
of Stolberg. Harald Stock said, "We ask
for forgiveness that for nearly 50 years
we didn't find a way of reaching out to
you from human being to human
being. We ask that you regard our long
silence as a sign of the shock that your
fate caused in us." What are we talking
about? 

7 According to legend, this phrase stems from
a meeting in 1680 between the powerful French
finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a
group of businessmen led by a certain M. Le
Gendre. When the eager mercantilist minister
asked how the state could be of service to the
merchants and help promote their commerce, Le
Gendre replied simply to the effect of "Leave us
be". The incident was related in a 1751 article in
the Journal Oeconomique by the French minister
and champion of free trade, René de Voyer,
Marquis d'Argenson — which happens to be the
phrase's first known appearance in print. Identify.

8 The first known attestation of this
phrase/usage is in a letter from the
Admiral of the Fleet Lord John Fisher to
Winston Churchill. It makes frequent
appearances in social media and other
modern day communication. Also the
title of a critically and commercially
successful 2012 Bollywood movie. What
is blanked out here?



9 Considered a key Hellenic social institution, these
drinking parties were held by men of good family to
debate, plot, boast, or simply to revel with others. They
were frequently held to celebrate the introduction of
young men into aristocratic society. Usually held in the
andrōn, the men's quarters of the household, poetry and
music were central to these events. They frequently
featured a game called kottabos, in which players swirled
the dregs of their wine in a kylix, a platter-like stemmed
drinking vessel, and flung them at a target. Rhetorical
contests were sometimes a part of them and thus the
word for these events passed on to the English language.
Identify.

9 Symposia/Symposium (meaning
"drink together").

10 There are in excess of 1500 of these
according to the gazetteer which maintains this
list. Most of these result from high velocity
impacts, natural or manmade. They are generally
named after deceased scientists, scholars, artists
and explorers who have made outstanding or
fundamental contributions to their field. Indians
who have been accorded the honour include
Homi J. Bhabha, J.C. Bose, Amil Kumar Das, Sisir
Kumar Mitra, C.V. Raman, Meghnad Saha and
Vikram Sarabhai. What are we talking about?

10 Lunar craters or Impact craters on
Moon.

11 It started off with the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) announcing that it would
finance a test case challenging the
constitutionality of the Butler Act. A bunch of
businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, led by
engineer and geologist George Rappleyea, saw
this as an opportunity to get publicity for their
town and approached the Rhea County High
School's football coach who occasionally filled in
as substitute teacher when regular members of
staff were off work. George William Hunter's 1914
work A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems was
used. What 1925 event are we talking about?

11 Scopes Trial or Scopes Monkey Trial
where John T. Scopes was accused of
teaching evolution.

12 Which landmark work begins thus: "Dr.
P. was a musician of distinction, well-known
for many years as a singer, and then, at the
local School of Music, as a teacher. It was
here, in relation to his students, that certain
strange problems were first observed.
Sometimes a student would present himself,
and Dr. P. would not recognise him; or,
specifically, would not recognise his face.
The moment the student spoke, he would
be recognised by his voice."?

12 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a
Hat by Oliver Sacks.

13 A bit of 19th century sentimentalism is
attached to the decision of "the first Tuesday after
the first Monday in November" which seems to
make no sense now. Monday was out because
people would have to travel in their buggies on
Sunday, the Sabbath (this is where the buggies
come in). In a mostly farming society, Wednesday
wouldn't work because that was often market day.
So, Tuesday was the day, and that seemed to
work great—there was a lot of hoopla, there were
parades. Whole families would come on wagons
from the farms, people would get dressed up for
the occasion. What are we talking about?

13 The voting day for the US federal
elections.

14 If 2 Roman Gods, 2 Roman
Goddesses, the Estrucan god of death,
the numbers 7 to 10 and 'other' make
up the original list, which 2 later
additions (also related to each other)
would complete it?

14 Julius Caesar and Augustus who
lend their names to months (July and
August). The remaining are Janus
(January), Februus (February), Mars
(March), Other (April), Maia Maiestas
(May), Juno (June), 7 – septem
(September), 8 – octo (October), 9 –
novem (November), 10 – decem
(December). Give points for July and
August also.

15 This tree is cultivated in Spain,
Portugal, Algeria, Morocco, France, Italy
and Tunisia and can be harvested every
9 to 12 years. Harvesting starts once a
tree reaches about 25 years of age and
a tree can be harvested about twelve
times in its lifetime. Identify.



16 The design of this complex was
inspired by "War of the Sons of Light
Against the Sons of Darkness". Its
construction was funded by the family
of David Samuel Gottesman to house
his most famous gift to a country. What
gift are we talking about?



17 Given that the name of a famous
geographical entity's name translates to
"sulphur island" in Japanese, what is the
Japanese word for "sulphur"?

18 It is the term for a salmon fillet which
has been cured. In fact, it comes from the
German/Yiddish words for "salmon".
Typically served as shown below. Name it.

19 If one kind are composed of these
(three pictures below), then what are
the other kind composed of?

19 Sugar and Spice and all things Nice.

"What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails
And puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what little boys are made of.

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of."

20 General Sheridan, who later
became the general-in-chief of the US
Army, camped at a particular location in
1882 along with his troops. They
experimented with a novel way of
getting their laundry done. They found
that linen and cotton garments were
cleaned without any harm. However
woolen fabrics got shredded. What
specific location?

20 Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone
National Park.

21 Take a look at the next slide and
tell us the area whose name is blanked
out. You could say that it has a closer
relation to its namesake in New York
than to the one in London.



22 If you take a look at Cricinfo's list of
the 20 players with the highest run
aggregates in Test matches, you will
find an extra annotation for a few
players: Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid,
Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, Brian
Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq. Simple: what 3-
letter annotation?

23 He served in the army in 1965 to fulfill the
one year compulsory military service required at
that time for all 18-year-old males in his country.
He went AWOL during basic training so that he
could take part in an all-Europe competition at
the junior level. This earned him a week in military
prison, but it helped that he had won the title. In
a couple of years he became the world's youngest
ever title winner at the senior level. Now, many
years later, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame. Name him.

24 How Democratic is the American
Constitution is a book by political scientist
Robert A. Dahl. In it he lists 23 countries as
being steadily democratic since at least
1950. A large number of European
countries plus USA, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand make the list. No country in
Africa or South America is represented. The
only Latin American country in the list is
Costa Rica. Only three countries from Asia:
India, Japan and one more, which you have
to name.

25 The term refers to a type of
organism whose cells don't have a
nucleus or any other organelles with a
membrane. So all of the matter in the
cell is just enclosed by the cell
membrane. Most current theories hold
that the first living organisms were this
type of organism. What is the term?

25 Prokaryote (meaning "before
kernel" i.e. before nucleus).

26 This family of birds breeds in
south-eastern Siberia and Northern
China, wintering in Southern Africa.
About 120,000 to 140,000 of them are
killed in Nagaland during an annual
two-week hunt every fall, during their
passage between breeding and
wintering grounds. Identify this species
which shares a part of its name with a
river bordering Russia and China.


27 In 1978, this brand was launched
with 16 generic items in black and
yellow packaging. This packaging had
only text with a basic product
description and name, such as "freshly
ground coffee" or "fabric softener," on a
solid background. By the mid '80s, it
had become the largest selling brand in
Canada. Now there are more than 2900
different products under this brand
name. Name it. 

28 Its scientific name, Procyon lotor,
means "before-dog washer" or "dog-
like washer". Carl Linnaeus had placed it
in the genus Ursus, calling it Ursus lotor
("washer bear"). Its English name has
similar origins and comes from a native
Indian word, incidentally also recorded
by Captain John Smith of Pocahontas
fame, meaning "one who rubs, scrubs
and scratches with its hands". Which
animal?

29 The whole shoreline of Namibia
used to be known by this name, which
comes from the remains of whales and
seals on its beaches. The large number
of rusted hulls of wrecked ships only
adds to the name. The Bushmen called
this area "The Land God Made in
Anger" and the Portuguese knew it as
"The Gates of Hell". But what has been
blanked out in the tourism ad here?


30 These Oxidation Paintings were
created by Andy Warhol spreading
metallic copper paint on canvases and
then oxidizing the metal. What did he
use to cause the oxidation?



31 This logo consists of twenty dots or
circles. Eight of them form a line at 45o
to the horizontal. From the third dot
from the top, four dots each form two
lines at 45o to the first line. So as you
can guess, these sets of four form a
right angle. Similarly, starting from the
bottom dot, but with two dots each. All
this forms a simple representation of
the contraption which the company
uses. Name the company.

32 This is a set of numbers which goes
from 100 to 1599 in nine categories.
Numbers 100-199 are allotted to
colours, 700-799 to antibiotics and so
on. What categorization is this? You
can give either the specific name or the
purpose.

32 E Numbers or Food Additives.
Numbers 200-299 are for
preservatives and 600-699 for flavour
enhancers.

33 The documented story of the birth of a physics unit. All
blanks are the same – fill up.
"Some time in December of 1942, the authors, being hungry and
deprived temporarily of domestic cooking, were eating dinner in
the cafeteria of the Union Building of Purdue University… In the
course of the conversation it was lamented that there was no
name for the unit of cross sections of 10-24 cm2… The tradition of
naming a unit after some great man closely associated with the
field ran into difficulties… The "Oppenheimer" was discarded
because of its length… The "Bethe" was thought to lend itself to
confusion because of the widespread use of the Greek letter... The
"John" was considered, but was discarded because of the use of
the term for purposes other than as the name of a person. The
rural background of one of the authors then led to the bridging of
the gap between the "John" and the "_____." This immediately
seemed good, and further it was pointed out that a cross section
of 10-24 cm2 for nuclear processes was really as big as a _____. Such
was the birth of the _____."

33 Barn.
The story that it was chosen because
someone said "you couldn't hit the
broad side of a barn" is apocryphal
but made the unit popular, given the
difficulty of hitting a nucleus with a
neutron.

34 The Schiehallion experiment was a famous
experiment to determine the mean density of the
Earth. Funded by the Royal Society, it involved
measuring the tiny deflection of a pendulum due
to the gravitational attraction of a nearby
mountain. It was conducted in 1774 around the
Scottish mountain of Schiehallion, which was
suggested by one of a pair of people as the ideal
location after a search for candidate mountains,
thanks to its isolation and almost symmetrical
shape. Identify the pair who had noticed some
anomalies, that were one trigger for this
experiment, during their famous survey about 10
years earlier.

34 Charles Mason and Jeremiah
Dixon of the Mason-Dixon Line fame.

35 Ram Dass Katari was the first Indian to
hold the office of the Chief of the Naval Staff.
He also led the Indian Navy in the conflict
during the liberation of Goa against the
Portuguese Navy. At the behest of the then
The Hindu editor Gopalan Kasturi, he started
on a quest on 15 February, 1971 which he
single-handedly continued almost till the end
of the decade without any public recognition.
Some of the by-products of his creativity are
on display at the Katari Memorial Hall in
Sainikpuri near Secunderabad. What is his
lesser known claim to fame?

35 The first Indian cryptic crossword
setter (for an English newspaper).
Newspapers used to run only re-prints
of British crosswords till then.

36 His first book was The Philosophy of
Rabindranath Tagore (1918) and he believed
Tagore's philosophy to be the "genuine
manifestation of the Indian spirit". In 1929, he
delivered the prestigious Hibbert Lecture,
subsequently published in book form as An
Idealist View of Life. Tagore himself would deliver
it the next year. He was nominated for the Nobel
Prize in Literature by Hjalmar Hammarskjöld
(Dag's father) continuously from 1933 to 1937. He
is perhaps best known among the current
generation for suggesting a humble way to
celebrate his birthday in 1962. Who?

36 Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. His
birthday is celebrated as Teacher's
day.

37 This work, which the author probably
hesitated to publish until he was in his deathbed,
contains the warning "Let no one untrained in
geometry enter here" (inspired by the inscription
above Plato's Academy entrance) on the title
page. Historians long believed that, at its first
publication, it had not been widely read. Owen
Gingerich spent 35 years examining every
surviving copy of the first two editions to
disprove this. Due largely to Gingerich's
scholarship, it is believed to be researched and
catalogued better than any other first-edition
historic text except for the original Gutenberg
Bible. Identify the author.

37 Nicolaus Copernicus. The work was
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
(On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres).

38 His first names were Sidney Luxton,
and he wrote a number of texts
including some on statics and
dynamics. His name is quite well-
known in certain circles in India, and
one Indian in particular found his life
changed forever in the late 1890s
because of this scholar. Just give us the
author's surname.

38 Loney. The Indian was of course
Srinivasa Ramanujan, who came
across a trigonometry textbook by S.L.
Loney.

39 Some time back The Guardian ran a competition
to find a replacement name for what they termed
"the most wince-inducing nickname" in physics. One
person suggested "Your Mother", as in "Your Mother
is so fat, she has a mass greater than 114.4 GeV at
95% confidence level." Another went all Prince on
them with "The particle formerly known as the God
particle". Rockon, Mastodon, Esperon, Non-existon
were some of the less exciting entries. The winner
was chosen because "the bottom of a _______ is in the
shape of the Higgs potential, and is often used as an
illustration in physics lectures. So it's not an
embarrassingly grandiose name, it is memorable and
it has a physics connection."


39 One can only imagine that this "physics
connection" is in the celebration following the
discovery of a new particle. Fill up. (Pictures of the
Higgs potential below.)

40 Italian Fosco Mariani argues that
while it owes its name to chance and
probably because it is not visible from
the nearest villages to the north and
the south, it is appropriate: "... just the
bare bones of a name, all rock and ice
and storm and abyss. It makes no
attempt to sound human. It is atoms
and stars. It has the nakedness of the
world before the first man – or of the
cindered planet after the last." What?

Section 2

25 questions with 2 parts – 1 point for each
part

1 Shown here is a scene from 17 July
1717 as painted by Edouard Jean
Conrad Hamman.
(a) Identify the occasion.
(b) Identify the gentleman (in the
centre) holding the hat in his arms. The
other gentleman is King George I in
case it helps.



1
(a) Premiere of the Water Music.
(b) George Frideric Handel.

2 Its classical name (also the name of the
species) was coined by Greek botanist
Theophrastus, and means "divine flower". Some
scholars believe that the common name comes
from the Greek for "flower garlands" as it was one
of the flowers used in ceremonial crowns. Others
think the name stems from the Latin for "flesh",
which refers to the original colour of the flower or
the 'divine embodiment' of flesh. In a split form, it
could even be a tongue-in-cheek sobriquet
applied to the USA for its over-dependence on
privately-owned automobiles. (a) Identify the
common name of the flower and (b) the species.


2
(a) Carnation.
(b) Dianthus.

3 Indologist Professor Philip Lutgendorf draws parallels
between these 2 movies: "Both concern orphans of uncertain
background who come to Mumbai and initially take demeaning
jobs, from which they gradually advance into more lucrative but
illegal pursuits. Each falls in love with an innocent middle-class
young woman named 'Vidya' (knowledge), who is struggling to
make ends meet as the sole support of her family. Each Vidya
has a wheelchair-bound father to whom she is devoted, and
each awakens in the hero the hope for a better life. Each man,
at one point, takes his Vidya out to see Diwali illuminations and
for a meal in a streetside restaurant. Each becomes involved
with a corrupt politician who spouts Hindu nationalist rhetoric,
and rises to a position of great power and influence, before
ultimately falling. Each then has a final opportunity to flee the
country before the police close in on him. Each one returns, in
one way or another, to Vidya in the end." Identify both movies,
each a classic in its own way.

3
(a) Shree 420 (1955).
(b) Satya (1998).

Answers can be in any order.

4 This anthropometric scale of proportions was
developed as a visual bridge between two
incompatible scales, the Imperial system and the
Metric system. Based on human measurements (the
height of an English man with his arm raised
because "in English detective novels, the good-
looking men, such as policemen, are always six feet
tall!"), the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and
the golden ratio, its creator described it as a "range
of harmonious measurements to suit the human
scale, universally applicable to architecture and to
mechanical things". Codified in 2 volumes published
in 1948 and 1955, it can be seen here on 2 currency
specimens. (a) Identify the scale and (b) its creator.


4
(a) Modulor.
(b) Le Corbusier.

5 One of the earliest appearances of this
phrase was in a 1926 book regarding the Middle
East by Basil Mathews, Young Islam on Trek: A
Study in ____. The theory associated with the
phrase was originally formulated in a 1992 lecture
at the American Enterprise Institute, which was
then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article of
the same name in response to Francis Fukuyama's
1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man.
The proponent expanded his thesis in a landmark
1996 book. (a) Identify him and (b) the work. The
following visual may help you in identifying both.



5
(a) Samuel P. Huntington.
(b) The Clash of Civilizations.

6 (a) Who wrote this sonnet with this
accompanying illustration? (b) What is he
complaining about?

"I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den–
As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
Or in what other land they hap to be–
Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.


6
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
My feet unguided wander to and fro;
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow:
Whence false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
Come then, Giovanni, try
To succour my dead pictures and my fame;
Since foul I fare and painting is my shame. "



6
(a) Michelangelo.
(b) About painting the Sistine Chapel
ceiling.

7 An 1806 invention by Ralph
Wedgewood lead to it being used in many
professional transactions till the last few
decades of the 20th century. Its
manufacture was formerly the largest
consumer of montan wax or lignite wax. Its
usage has almost come to an end these
days, but the name of the associated
practice has survived and is an integral part
of a form of modern-day communications.
(a) Identify the invention. (b) How does it
survive now?

7
(a) Carbon paper.
(b) Cc or Bcc in e-mails.

8 We know this class of creatures by
a shortened form of a Latin word
which means "cut into" because their
body is divided into parts. We may not
know it, but we all know the Greek
word for these creatures quite well, in
the answer to a quiz question. Either
the Latin and Greek words please, or
the two English words.

8
(a) Insectum OR Insect.
(b) Entomon OR Entomology.

9 Metal works company (a) was started in 1942 as a
joint venture between the Nizam's Hyderabad
government and Alladin & Company while company (b)
was the first Indian company to have manufactured a
safe, in 1902. Parliamentary records note that "During
the general elections held in 1962, it was noticed that the
__(a)__ type of ballot boxes had a mechanical defect
which permitted the box being opened without breaking
the paper seal by banging it in a special way. Since the
defect could not be removed by the manufacturers, all
boxes of this type which were in use in the States of
Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Madras were
discarded and replaced by the __(b)__ type of ballot
boxes procured from other States having surplus stock."
Name both companies.

9
(a) Hyderabad Allwyn.
(b) Godrej.

10 Irish-American writer Leonard
Wibberley wrote a novel satirizing the Cold
War about an imaginary country in Europe
which takes action when the United States
stops buying its Pinot Grand Fenwick and
starts producing a counterfeit of its own. It
was later made into a movie with Peter
Sellers playing three roles. (a) Name the
novel. (b) Also provide the title of its British
edition that used the author's original
intended title, a play on the title of a John
Steinbeck novel.

10
(a) The Mouse That Roared.
(b) The Wrath of Grapes.

11

The 'A' in the football club's name is the
same as the pattern on the right. (a) What is
it? Note the object in the club's logo and (b)
work out the club's nickname.

11
(a) Argyle.
(b) "Pilgrims".
The club is Plymouth Argyle and the
object in the logo is the Mayflower
which set off from Plymouth with the
pilgrims bound for America.

12 This is an exhaustive list of people who have
held a certain post in a movement – fill up.
1. __(a)__, from 1920 till his death in 1941
2. Arthur Somers-Cocks, 6th Baron Somers, from
1942
3. Thomas Corbett, 2nd Baron Rowallan, from 1945
4. Sir Charles Maclean, later Lord Maclean, from
1959
5. Sir William Gladstone, from 1972
6. Major-General Michael J. H. Walsh, from 1982
7. Sir Garth Morrison, from 1988
8. George Purdy, from 1996
9. Peter Duncan, from 2004
10.__(b)__, from 2009


12 The post was specifically created for (a)
(who started the movement), while (b) is the
youngest ever to hold it. The extremely apt
nickname everyone knows (b) by was given to
him by his sister when he was just a week old.
Get (a) and (b).

12
(a) Lord Baden-Powell.
(b) Bear Grylls.
This is the list of Chief Scouts of the
scout movement.

13 There are fourteen of them, each
being a portrayal of someone. Most
have names like C.A.E., H.D.S.-P., R.B.T.,
W.M.B. and so on, usually but not
always representing the initials of the
person portrayed. You have to name (a)
the ninth one and (b) who the
fourteenth one (E.D.U.) is named for.

13
(a) Nimrod.
(b) Edward Elgar himself.
These are the Enigma Variations.

14 To most of the world, Keirin was largely
an unknown type of sport but was very
popular in Japan for gambling. It became
well-known when it was introduced in the
2000 Olympics. In Japan, all the contraptions
used in Keirin are required to have been
made in Japan to promote the local industry.
Keirin involves the use of a "derny", now used
as a generic name, though originally a
product made by Roger Derny et fils of Paris.
(a) Name the sport. (b) What is a derny, that
makes Keirin rather unique within this sport?

14
(a) Cycling.
(b) A pace bike.

15 Michael Chabon's The Yiddish
Policeman's Union and Philip Roth's The
Plot Against America are two of the
novels that have won an award that has
been given since 1995. The award gets
its evocative name from a 1934 short
story by Murray Leinster. (a) Name the
award. (b) What kind of fiction is it
given for?

15
(a) Sidewise award.
(b) Alternate History fiction.

16 A type of two-colour (usually
black and white) pattern using pointed
shapes instead of squares, said to be
named for what the basic shape
resembles. People of a particular
occupation quite often have trousers
and cuffs of this design, because it
apparently hides stains well. (a)
Identify the pattern and (b) the
occupation.


16
(a) Houndstooth OR dogstooth
pattern.
(b) Cooks OR chefs.

17 Excerpt from a 1967 letter:
"March 22, 1967 Dear WW:

Goodie Ace told some unemployed friend of
mine that you were disappointed or annoyed or
happy or drunk that I hadn't answered the letter
you wrote me some years ago. You know, of
course, there is no money in answering letters --
unless they're letters of credit from Switzerland or
the Mafia. I write you reluctantly, for I know you
are doing six things simultaneously -- five
including sex. I don't know where you get the
time to correspond.


17 Your play, I trust, will still be running when I
arrive in New York the first or second week in
April. This must be terribly annoying to the critics
who, if I remember correctly, said it wouldn't go
because it was too funny. Since it's still running,
they must be even more annoyed. ... The moral is:
don't write a comedy that makes an audience
laugh."

When the person who wrote this died 10
years later, the recipient admonished TIME
magazine for their all too short obit. Identify
both.

17
(a) Groucho Marx.
(b) Woody Allen.


18 This is the cross-section of a 2000
year old building. As shown here, it is
designed so that a sphere can fit
exactly under its large dome. (a)
Identify the building. (b) Also name
the Roman emperor, whom we know
for other constructions, who re-built it
in its current form.



18
(a) Pantheon.
(b) Emperor Hadrian.

19 This is a Punch cartoon from 1894
depicting the little guy as a giant-killer.
(a) What two entities do the two people
in the cartoon represent? (b) What had
they gone to battle over?



19
(a) Japan and China.
(b) Possession of Korea. (Japan
wrested Korea from China in this war.)

20 In 1855 a scholar asked someone whom he
used to know from childhood as chacha, to
write a taqriz (a laudatory foreword) for his
revision of Ain-e-Akbari. The venerable chacha
instead wrote a Persian poem in which he took
the writer to task for worshipping a dead
empire and their obsolete institutions. It was
perhaps this jolt coming from an intellectually
honest giant that forced the writer to undergo
a metamorphosis from a conservative to a
rationalist reformer. Identify (a) the scholar and
(b) the chacha.

20
(a) Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.
(b) Mirza Ghalib.

21 2nd October is celebrated as Gandhi
Jayanti in India. Many other interesting
people share the same birthday, like
Groucho Marx, Yokozuna and Graham
Greene. It doesn't seem to be well
known that another famous Indian
statesman was born on 2nd October, but
in the year 1904. (a) Who? (b) This
person also holds a distinction as far as
the Bharat Ratna is concerned. What
distinction?

21
(a) Lal Bahadur Shastri
(b) First person to be awarded the
Bharat Ratna posthumously.

22 In ancient times the Greeks fed the
one on the left (a) to their horses before a
race, believing it would help them to run
faster. They also ate it to reduce the effects
of eating a part of a plant whose flower is
shown here on the right (b). In fact even
now in the West, dishes and spreads which
include (b) tend to include the leaf (a) for
the same reason the ancient Greeks did,
though the effect is only temporary. Just
name both plants.


22 Want a clue? Both have been used in
different ways as deterrents, one in fiction
and one in comics.

22
(a) Parsley.
(b) Garlic.
Parsley was used by Cacofonix's
Roman captors to avoid hearing his
singing. Garlic was used by van
Helsing to protect Lucy from the
vampire Count by placing it in her
room and around her neck.

23 A bacteriologist was studying staining, a
procedure that is used in many microscopic
studies to make fine biological structures visible
using chemical dyes. When he injected some of
these dyes (notably the aniline dyes that were
then widely-used), the dye would stain all of the
organs of some kinds of animals except for one
organ. At that time, he attributed this lack of
staining to that organ's simply not picking up as
much of the dye. (a) This was actually the first
evidence of what alliterative phenomenon? (b)
Who was the bacteriologist?

23
(a) Blood Brain Barrier.
(b) Paul Ehrlich.

24 Nowadays it is a tourist resort and
part of the Arcipelago Toscano National
Park. Its flag, featuring 3 or 4 golden
bees on a diagonal stripe, dates from
the early 1800s when it was adopted by
the person who was granted
sovereignty over this place. The flag
and a map of sorts are on the following
slide. (a) Name the place. (b) Who was
its sovereign who adopted this flag?


25 Complete this list with two place
names from India: Childhood, ____,
Forest, ____, Beauty, War. Some people
might want to call this list exhaustive,
but some might prefer adding 'Last' to
the end of the list to make it
exhaustive.

25
(a) Ayodhya.
(b) Kishkindha.

These are the kandas (books) in Ramayana
– Bala kanda, Ayodhya kanda, Aranya
kanda, Kishkindha kanda, Sundara kanda
and Yudha kanda. Some versions have
Uttara kanda as well.


Section 3

5 pairs of questions – each pair of answers
are anagrams – 1 point per answer

1 (a) Jared Diamond argues in Guns,
Germs and Steel that this African animal,
seemingly an obvious choice for
domestication, has remained wild because
of its bad temper. He said they "have the
unpleasant habit of biting a person and not
letting go". Which animal?

(b) To ______ is to use heat to join metallic
objects by applying nonferrous solders to
keep the parts together. The picture shows
a bad example of it. Fill up.


2 (a) The spot price of this Rajasthani
crop crashed 40% over six weeks in
September-October 2012, on concern of
high output and a drastic decline in import
orders from USA, the Gulf and Europe, the
three biggest destinations. The crop is
exported either as a gum or as seeds. What?

(b) A sauce of meat, poultry, or a
combination of the two and finely diced
vegetables seasoned and simmered for a
long time in liquids, such as water, milk,
cream, wine, broth or stock. Name it.

3 (a) The ____ languages are related
languages derived from Vulgar Latin
and forming a subgroup of the Italic
languages within the Indo-European
language family. The five most widely
spoken of these are Spanish,
Portuguese, French, Italian and
Romanian. Fill up.

(b) In which European city can you find
this statue of a master craftsman? 

3
(a) Romance.
(b) Cremona. (The statue is
Stradivarius'.)

4 (a) In ancient times, an obolus or
danake was used as a fee for services
rendered during a "journey". Who was
the intended recipient?

(b) Mushroom, Danforth, grapnel, Hall,
Northill, Admirality, Stockless, Bruce,
Union, Spek, Pool, Kedge and plough
are types of what?

5 (a) A chemist named Eugene
Rimmel developed a variety of this
using petroleum jelly. It became
popular and the name Rimmel became
synonymous with the substance and
still translates to it in the Italian,
Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Turkish,
Romanian, and Persian languages
today. The company founded by him
1834 still exists with the tag line "Get
the London look". What product?

5 (b) They are usually played in pairs.
Often one is pitched high, and the
other is pitched low. They used to be
made with dried calabash or gourd
shell or coconut shell filled with seeds
or dried beans, but these days are
made of leather, wood or plastic. What
are they called?



Mega-Whats 2012

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