3. The rituals include turning 3 times,
spitting over one’s left shoulder, swearing,
or reciting “Angels and ministers of grace
defend us” or “If we shadows have
offended” or “Fair thoughts and happy
hours attend on you”. A more elaborate
ritual involves leaving the place, spinning
around and brushing oneself off, and
saying ____ 3 times before entering again.
What rituals?
5. The Macbeth curse or the Scottish
curse—the belief that speaking the name
Macbeth inside a theatre will cause
disaster. The rituals are supposed to ward
off the evil that uttering the play's name
is feared to bring on.
8. Plinian—after Pliny the Elder who
witnessed the intensity of Mount
Vesuvius eruption firsthand.
9. What name is given to this geometry
problem? Given a circle A, find a circle B such
that the area of the intersection of A and B is
equal to the area of the symmetric difference
of A and B (the sum of the area of A − B and
the area of B − A). It derives from A Country
House Visit, one of Jan Struther's newspaper
articles featuring her most famous character:
10. “She saw every relationship as a pair of intersecting
circles. It would seem at first glance that the more
they overlapped the better the relationship; but
this is not so. Beyond a certain point the law of
diminishing returns sets in, and there are not
enough private resources left on either side to
enrich the life that is shared. Probably perfection is
reached when the area of the two outer crescents,
added together, is exactly equal to that of the leaf-
shaped piece in the middle. On paper there must
be some neat mathematical formula for arriving at
this; in life, none.”
13. The Library Hotel is a 60-room
boutique hotel in New York City. Each
of its ten guest floors has a theme. In
2003, the Online Computer Library
Center of Dublin, Ohio sued them.
The Library Hotel got into an
agreement with OCLC so that they
could continue operations. What was
the case about?
16. The hotel’s organization principle is
based on the Dewey Decimal
Classification (the 5th floor, for example,
is the 500s, the Sciences), with each
room as a subcategory or genre, such as
Mathematics (Room 500.001) or Botany
(Room 500.004). The OCLC the
trademark and copyrights associated
with the DDC.
17. The Reverend John Galbraith Graham MBE
is a famous British crossword compiler. His
clue-writing style has made him one of the
best-loved of all setters. He has a fascination
for the monkey-puzzle tree. He uses its Latin
name Araucaria while setting cryptic
crosswords in the Guardian. Then how does
his choice of the pseudonym Cinephile while
setting cryptic crosswords in the Financial
Times become apt?
19. Cinephile is the anagram of ‘Chile Pine’
which is another name for the monkey-
puzzle tree.
20. The 19th century classification has 4
families named after Spanish, German,
Velour/velvety and Louis de ____,
marquis de Nointel. The 20th century
classification replaced the German one
with 2 other families named after
Dutch and tomato. What are we talking
about?
22. Mother sauces in French cuisine.
Antonin Carême’s classification had
Béchamel, Espagnole, Velouté and
Allemande. Auguste Escoffier updated
this classification to Béchamel, Velouté,
Tomate, Espagnole and Hollandaise.
23. Which trader’s greatest contribution to
the 16th century world (and perhaps,
to future history and politics) was the
straightening of the rhumb line?
25. Gerardus Mercator. (Mercator means
‘trader’ or ‘merchant’)
In navigation, a rhumb line is a line
crossing all meridians of longitude at
the same angle–it appears as a straight
line on a Mercator projection map.
26. Mercator’s second best contribution,
came about as a result of encouraging
Abraham Ortelius to compile Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum in 1570. What was it?
28. He was the first to use the word ‘atlas’
to describe a collection of maps.
29. The Nobel banquet is an integral part of the
Nobel Prize award ceremony. Currently, it is
held in Oslo at the Grand Hotel after the
award ceremony. As well as the laureates,
other guests include the President of the
Storting, the Prime Minister and the King
and Queen of Norway. About 250 guests
are treated to a five-course meal. The first
time it was cancelled was in the late 1970s.
What was the reason?
31. In 1979, Mother Teresa refused to attend,
saying the money would be better spent on
the poor—so the banquet was cancelled.
She used the US$7,000 that was to be spent
on the banquet to hold a dinner for 2,000
homeless people on Christmas Day.
32. The Lund-
Browder is the
most accurate
way of measuring
it and is
mandatory for
children. For
normal adults,
the ‘rule of nines’
may be applied.
What about?
34. Total body surface area (TBSA) for
(quick) measure of burns of the skin.
35. Whose
gravestone? He
chose a figure of a
logarithmic spiral
and the motto
Eadem mutata
resurgo (“Changed
and yet the same, I
rise again”), but
what mistake was
made by the
stonemasons?
43. The first translation into English was by
Alexander Tille in 1896 and he used the
term ‘beyond’. Thomas Common’s 1909
translation popularised the current usage
though he may have been inspired by
George Bernard Shaw. Walter Kaufmann
lambasted this in the 1950s for two
reasons: first, its failure to capture the
nuance of the original and the second was
something which Frederic Wertham rallied
against. He preferred the usage of ‘over’.
What about?
48. Death and the Maiden.
String Quartet No. 14 in D minor
(“Death and the Maiden”), D. 810 by
Franz Schubert.
Both derived their titles from a poem
written by Matthias Claudius.
51. A Single Man; Cabaret—both based on
works by Christopher Isherwood.
52. The History of Little ____, a children’s story
published by John Newbery in 1765, popularised
this phrase. It first appeared in Charles Cotton’s
Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque (1670):
Mistress mayoress complained that the pottage
was cold;
‘And all long of your fiddle-faddle,’ quoth she.
‘Why, then, ____, what if it be?
Hold you, if you can, your tittle-tattle,’ quoth he.
What phrase used to describe an excessively
virtuous person?
55. At the age of 29, he negotiated the
marriage of 6-year-old Princess
Marguerite de Valois of France to 5-year-
old King Sebastian of Portugal. He also
compiled one of the first French
dictionaries Thresor de la langue
françoyse tant ancienne que moderne
(Treasure of the French Language,
published in 1606). Who?
59. Thomas Chippendale’s influence on
furniture (especially English furniture)
has been enormous. What change in
furniture style, brought about during
and after his time, do antique furniture
fans point to in illustrating the
significance of his designs?
61. He was the first commoner for whom a
furniture style was named; before him
the names faithfully recalled
monarchies: Tudor, Elizabethan, Louis
XIV, Queen Anne.
62. Outbreaks of ergotism or Saint
Anthony’s Fire traditionally came from
the ingestion of the alkaloids produced
by a fungus which infects rye and other
cereals—people suffered delirium,
seizures, fever, loss of consciousness
and eventually, in many cases, death.
Which phrase is believed to have
origins in the peculiar cough associated
with ergotism?
68. Originally called the Villa Belle Rive, this
manor featured in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel
Haunted. Situated close to Lake Geneva, it
attracts visitors since it is the birthplace of
____. Fill up.
71. It was the summer residence of Lord Byron,
Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, John Polidori
and others in 1816, where the basis for
Frankenstein and The Vampyre were laid.
In the book, Victor Frankenstein’s home is
called ‘Belrive’.
72. Which company’s logo is made
up of controls/buttons
commonly seen on audio/video
equipment—specifically the up,
down and pause/play ones, in
that order?
74. Avid Technology.
They specialize in video and audio
production technology; specifically,
digital non-linear editing (NLE)
systems.
75. About whom did Neil Gaiman write these lines?
There’s a kitten curled up in Kilkenny was given a perfect pot of cream
And a princess asleep in a thornwrapped castle who’s dreaming a perfect
dream
There’s a dog in Alaska who'll dance with delight on a pile of mastodon bones
But I’ve got a copy of ____ (dedicated to me) by ____
There’s an actress who clutches her oscar (and sobs, with proper impromptu
joy),
There’s a machievellian villain who’s hit on a wonderf’lly evil ploy,
There’s wizards in crystal castles and kings on their golden thrones
But I’ve got a copy of ____ -- dedicated -- to me! -- by ____
There’s a fisherman out on the sea today who just caught the perfect fish,
There’s a child in Luton who opened a genie-filled bottle, and got a wish,
There are people who live in glass houses have managed to outlaw stones,
But I’ve got a copy of ____, dedicated to me, by ____
82. Superbowl bets of loaning paintings for
display.
2010 Indianapolis Museum of Art
(J.M.W. Turner’s The Fifth Plague of Egypt)
vs. New Orleans Museum of Art (Claude
Lorrain’s Ideal View of Tivoli)
2011 Carnegie Museum of Art (Auguste
Renoir’s Bathers with a Crab) vs. Milwaukee
Art Museum (Gustave Caillebotte’s Boating
on the Yerres)
83. In most of the Porsche left hand drive
models, the ignition key switch is
located on the left of the steering wheel
rather than the traditional right side.
What is believed, among sports car
aficionados, to be the reason for this
unique design?
86. The Le Mans starting method—this
allowed the driver to use his left hand to
start the engine, and his right hand to
put the transmission into gear, which in
turn shaves off a few tenths of a second.
87. Whose entry in the 1975 edition of the New
Columbia Encyclopedia: “____, Lillian Virginia,
1942-1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio.
Turning from fountain design to photography
in1963, ____ produced her celebrated portraits of
the South Sierra Miwok in 1964. She was awarded
government grants to make a series of photo-essays
of unusual subject matter, including New York City
buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American
mailboxes. The last group was exhibited extensively
abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972). ____
died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for
Combustibles magazine.”?
89. Mountweazel. New Yorker used this
neologism to refer to copyright
traps—it was an old tradition in
encyclopedias to put in a fake entry
to protect your copyright.
90. He was considered the third best player in
the world, behind Alexander Alekhine and
Jose Capablanca, from 1927 to 1931. He
wrote 3 books on chess strategy: Mein
System (My System), 1925, Die Praxis meines
Systems (The Practice of My System), 1929,
commonly known as Chess Praxis, and Die
Blockade (The Blockade), 1925. It is said that
99 out of 100 chess masters have read Mein
System; consequently, most consider it to be
his greatest contribution to chess. Identify
this person with an Indian connection.
93. “By taking from this mournful field the wherewithal to
make a monument to it, its real relief has been taken away,
and history, disconcerted, no longer finds her bearings
there. It has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying it. *…+
Where the great pyramid of earth, surmounted by the lion,
rises to-day, there was a hillock which descended in an
easy slope towards the Nivelles road, but which was almost
an escarpment on the side of the highway to Genappe. The
elevation of this escarpment can still be measured by the
height of the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which
enclose the road from Genappe to Brussels: one, the
English tomb, is on the left; the other, the German tomb, is
on the right. There is no French tomb. The whole of that
plain is a sepulchre for France.”—what is Victor Hugo
referring to in Les Misérables?
95. Lion’s Mound at
Waterloo, erected
on the spot where it
is believed the
Prince of Orange
was wounded.
Wellington, when
he beheld Waterloo
once more, 2 years
later, exclaimed,
“They have altered
my field of battle!”
98. A Little Night Music.
Mozart’s Serenade No. 13 for strings in
G major, Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
99. From Mutual Problem by William Cole:
Said ____ to ____,
‘There’s something, old boy, that I’ve always
abhorred:
When people address me and call me ‘____’,
Are they being standoffish, or too much at
home?’
Said ____, ‘I agree; It’s the same thing with me.’
Fill up with the names of 2 English writers,
both born in the latter half of the 19th
century.
101. Jerome K. Jerome; Ford Madox Ford.
Said Jerome K. Jerome to Ford Madox Ford,
‘There’s something, old boy, that I’ve always
abhorred:
When people address me and call me ‘Jerome’,
Are they being standoffish, or too much at
home?’
Said Ford, ‘I agree; It’s the same thing with me.’
102. His namesake grandfather was a
biologist and the founder of the study of
biosemiotics. In 1980, this journalist and
professional philatelist started
something by selling his collection of
postage stamps for US $ 1 million. Since
then, with the help of private donors, it
has continuously been “working on
behalf of our planet and its people”.
Identify him or what he started.
106. Two of his lesser known contributions came
about during World War II. He was part of the
team that did statistical work at the Division of
War Research at Columbia—they came up with a
sampling technique, known as sequential
sampling, which became the standard analysis of
quality control inspection. He was also a key
member of the team that developed a new
proximity fuse for anti-aircraft projectiles,
preventing bombs from going off unless they are
near the object they are meant to destroy. Which
Nobel Prize winner?
