Quiz by Dinesh Krithivasan

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In the Ramayana, Vishwamitra takes Rama and lakshmana with him to slay the demoness Tataka. During the course of the Journey, they often slept on the banks of Sarayu river. Vishvamitra did something to wake Rama up every morning before dawn so that he can do his rites. what did he do?

He composed and sang the Suprabadam.

"Kausalya Supraja Rama Poorva Sandhya Pravarthathe Uthishta Narasardhoola Karthavyam Thaivamahnigam
Uthishtothishta Govinda Uthishta Garuda dwaja Uthishta Kamalakantha trilokyam mangalam kuru." which translates as
O rama, son of Kausalya, the sun is about to rise in the eastern skies; please arise to offer the early morning oblations.
Arise O Govinda the holder of flag with Garuda emblem; Cast aside your sleep to bestow your protection and solace to the Universe.
A sitter...On being asked time and again about what did Liz Taylor angrily retort once, "what is this? a memory test??"

The names of all her husbands.
Just to prove a point that scientists are not always nerds, the scientists of the CGPM convention which standardises the SI units came up with a SI unit for beauty. They called this new system the troy system. What is the unit and how is it defined?

I millihelen - its the amount of beauty that would motivate a sailor to launch one ship.
From Marlowe's famous lines - "The face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium
The Australian broadcasting corporation which is the national broadcaster has the same postbox number in every state. This was done by them to honour a person who was voted the greatest australian of all times. What is the number and who is the person?

The person is Sir Donald Bradman and the number is 9994 to honour his career test average of 99.94.
This company was started in 1945 by 2 brothers named _____ and a person named Ghulam Mohammed. The company logo was chosen with the names of the brothers and the name of Mohammed in it. After the partition of 1947, Mr.Mohammed left India and went on to become Pakisthan's first finance minister and later its governor general. Since Mohammed was no longer in the company, and worse still was in Pakisthan the company had to come up with an immediate explanation to explain its logo, which contained a reference to Mohammed in order to escape public antagonism. They came up with a new name for the company in 1948 by which name they are still known today. What company are we talking about?

Mahindra & Mahindra. In their logo, M & M, one of the Ms originally referred to Mohammed.
X and Y were 2 of the greatest Britishers ever. Here is an anecdote that demonstrates the typical British arrogance in them. X mailed to Y just prior to the opening of the play Major Barbara, "Have reserved 2 tickets for the first night. Come and bring a friend if you have one." Y mailed back saying, "Impossible to come first night. Will come to second night, if you have one". Identify X and Y.

X is George Bernard Shaw and Y is Sir Winston Churchill.
In the lobby of Cyrix Corp.'s corporate headquarters, there is a mausoleum. What words are inscribed on the mausoleum?

Intel Inside.
This historic first happened at the Barabatti stadium, Cuttack on the last day of the Ranji trophy match between Orissa and Tripura on 20 December 1997. Tripura's Vijay Bhatnagar became the 9th batsman to be dismissed at 10:28 am and Orissa was just one wicket away from winning the match. The Tripura number 11 batsman Hemulal Yadav was due to come in next. At 10:33 am the historic event happened and Orissa were declared winners. what happened in the meantime?

Hemulal Yadav was timed out by the umpires because he made no effort to come to the ground and thus became the only batsman so far in first class cricket to be timed out.
Which English play is traditionally played at 9pm on June 23rd every year?

A Midsummer night's dream
What is the significance of this story in Indian mythology:

A king used to rule in the city of Dharmpur in South India. Once he was attacked and killed by another king. His queen and young princess ran away into forest and being tired, sat beside a tree. Another king and his son were crossing the forest, when the king said, 'I see the footprints of two women, I'll take one and you take the other.' When they reached the place where the two were sitting, the king chose the young princess and the prince took the queen. These couples each had a kid. What is the relationship between the 2 children?

The last story that Vethal asked Vikramadithya. The king did not know the answer and hence the Vethal agreed to come with him. There is a tamil movie by name Aboorva Ragangal (Rajinikanth's first movie) that has a similar story line.
In the August of 1890, a drunk named William Kemmler was tried for the crime of chopping his wife with a hatchet. When he was pronounced guilty and sentenced to death, Edison took it upon himself to design and patent an electric chair on which to execute Kemmler. Infact, Edison paid clandestine visits to the Auburn prison during the course of the trial to design his chair. Though Kemmler was absolutely penniless and was clearly guilty, his case and his appeal for mercy were voluntarily argued by the most famous lawyers of the day, supposedly hired on Kemmler's behalf by the company Westinghouse. Edison and his supporters held many public demonstrations where they electrocuted and killed stray dogs and cats to demonstrate the efficacy of the electric chair. My question, why would a prestigious company like westinghouse and a genius like Edison get themselves involved in a macabre murder case such as this?

This case is the culmination of the bitter fight between Edison and Tesla (who worked for Westinghouse) in the matter of using AC vs DC for power transmission. Edison was for DC and to get the people to his side decided to publicize the dangers of AC. What better
way to do it than to design an electric chair operated on AC? In fact, there was a voltage dip and Kemmler didn't quite die when electrocuted ....well,i will leave the grim details out. People were reasonably impressed and DC won out despite the fact that DC was more dangerous to use than AC. It took some 20 years for Edison to admit his mistake. For a fascinating account of this techno war,check out "Blood and Volts" by Paul D. Dickinson. Its available in the UM library.
World tennis magazine once gave the description of the perfect tennis player - The arms of Navaratilova, the hands of Stefan Edberg, the shoulders of Sabatini, the torso of Ivan Lendl, the legs of Steffi Graf and the mind of whom?

Michael Chang. The 1989 French open win over Lendl with his underhand serve and his stepping forward to take the lendl serve in an attempt to break Lendl's concentration probably prompted the description.
In ancient times, forts were the only haven for people under enemy attack. In the conventional type of a fort, the fall of one of the gates lays the entire fort open to enemy attack. So, ancient engineers came up with this design for the fort that exposed only a quarter of the fort if one of the gates was taken. This led to the blueprint of such forts being called by the sanskrit word meaning "good habitation". Over the course of time, this blueprint lost its importance in fort building but has retained a special mystical significance. How do we know this blueprint?

Swastika from "su vastu" meaning "good habitation". See Image
Connect the 3 pictures.

The Shawshank Redemption. In keeping with tradition, the first visual of the quiz is Rita Hayworth. The guy in the top left is Morgan Freeman who acted in the movie. The guy at the bottom is Stephen king on whose novella, "Rita hayworth and the shawshank redemption", the movie was based. Rita's pinup is one of the 3 used to cover the tunnel that Andy makes.
The picture shows a scene from the old testament. A feast in the palace of king Belshazzar is in progress when the aramaic words "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin" are written by a hand. The words mean "It has been counted, weighed and divided". Daniel interpreted this as meaning, "you have been weighed in the scales as found wanting. Your kingdom shall be divided". True to the prophecy, Belshazzar's kingdom was split in a war that ensued immediately after. This event has given rise to an English phrase. Which one?

Writing on the wall. It is used to denote signs of a coming change (usually change for the worse).
The map shows a town in Germany currently called Kaliningrad. It is situated on rising ground, on both sides of the river Pregel. The river divides the town into 3 parts - Altstadt to the west, Lobenicht to the east and the island Kneiphof. What was this town formerly known as and what is it famous for?
Hint : Note the geography of the town carefully.

Konigsberg. There was an age old problem among the inhabitants that asked if it was possible to go through all 7 bridges in the land exactly once and return to the starting point. Euler proved that this was impossible and in the process created graph theory. See Image
Connect the 3 pictures. This is a vague connect. So here is a clue. The answer is in the visual itself.

Roses. The first visual is Ingrid Bergman who has a strain of roses named after her. The 2nd is Bianco Castafiore from Tintin comics. In the Castafiore emerald, Professor Calculus develops a pure-white rose and presents it to her as his wedding gift. The 3rd is from the movie "American beauty". American beauty is a kind of rose.
This is an artist's depiction of something. Identify what is being shown.
Hint : Mythology

The Chakravyuga.
Connect the 3 visuals to the person on the top right.

The person is Alan Turing. The visuals are that of the German Enigma cipher machine, Kate Winslet and Apple logo. Turing was instrumental in the allies breaking the enigma. Kate Winslet starred in the movie "Enigma" based on this code-breaking. Turing was a homosexual. At the end of WW II, the government,afraid that this might turn him into a liability, forced him into a "conversion" program. The treatment resulted in waves of depression and despair. He committed suicide by biting into a cyanide laced apple. The apple logo is a dedication to this genius.
The person in the visual worked with the British Intelligence during WW II. After the war, he decided to write novels. He was looking for a name for his protagonist which was "simplest, dullest, most plain-sounding name one could think of". In his library, he saw this book and the book's author seemed to be the perfect choice. who is this person and what is the author's name? The Aish picture is a tangential clue at best and was put there for the sole purpose of having her pic in my quiz

The person is James Bond and the author, Ian fleming. Fleming reasoned that anyone who would write a book on such a topic must indeed be dull. There were talks of aish becoming the next bond girl at the time of the quiz. See Image
The painter of these pictures was a bastard son of an Austrian. He tried to gain entry into the Vienna academy of fine arts twice but his test drawings were judged as so poor that he wasn't even allowed to take a formal exam. His friends from that time remember this young painter as a man of great ambition, terrible temper, full of interesting ideas that he never implemented - be it composing his own opera or redesigning the city of Vienna. But most important of them all, he was a man of shocking lack of empathy. This disgruntled painter took to hawking his paintings to gain a living. He had a passion for philosophy. He voraciously read Nietzsche, Hegel and Treitschke and formed half baked theories of his own from ideas of these philosophers. The pencil sketch shown is that of his lady love. Who is he?

Adolf Hitler. Clues all over the place. Hegel, Nietzsche are all german philosophers noted for their anti-semitic point of view. The pencil sketch is that of Eva Braun.
What is the idea behind this website? (i.e why is it the way it is?). This website shot to fame about 2 years back in connection with the Chinese communist congress. What happened then?

It's a Google mirror. A common practice for busy websites is to create a mirror site, which is an exact replica of the original site but on a different server. elgooG is a play on this idea, except instead of an exact replica of the site, it's a mirror image of the site. During the 16th community party congress, when the government had banned many sites including google, elgoog escaped the ban because firewall operators thought it was a joke. This was publicised as "elgoog defies the great firewall of china".
A sitter...The visual shows Grace Hopper who was a gifted mathematician. During WW II, she was working for the Bureau of Ordnance computation project at the Cruft laboratories at Harvard university. The other visual shows her logbook for the Harvard mark II computer which she was working on during the course of the war. This logbook is now carefully preserved at the Smithsonian institute of technology. Why is it famous?

The first use of the word "Bug" to indicate a computer error. As an aside, Hopper was part of the team that developed Flow-Matic, the first English data-processing compiler. When she eventually retired from the Navy at 80 years of age, she was the oldest active duty officer in the US. See Image
Connect the 3 visuals.

The connect is Joe DiMaggio. He is Marilyn Munroe's second husband. The pencil sketch is an illustration of Hemmingway's old man and the sea. The old man, santiago, in the novel is a big fan of DiMaggio. The 2 guys are the musicians Simon and Garfunkel. Their song, Mrs. Robinson is dedicated to Joe DiMaggio. The song goes like :
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you...
These are self-portraits by 2 famous painters. Identify both. There is a detail in the first portrait that is intimately connected with the second painter. What is the detail and how is it connected?

The painters are Paul Gauguin (to the left) and Van Gogh. Gogh and Gaugin were roommates for sometime. Gogh, being a big time eccentric, once threated gaugin with a blade for some reason. Gaugin got angry and left the apartment. Gogh later repented his act and in extreme depression cut off his own ear. The portrait was made in Arles where he was hospitalised. He actually cut off his left ear though the right ear is bandaged.
The visual shows the 3 astronomers from the apollo 15 mission - David R.Scott, James B.Irwin and Alfred M.Worden. In addition to the united states flag that every mission to the moon has planted on the moon, these guys planted another flag as well. Which one?

None other than the flag of U of M. Irwin and Worden are aerospace engineers from U of M.
Whose obituary is this?

The famous Ashes obituary that appeared in "sporting times" following England's failure to win the test chasing 85 in the 4th innings with the likes of W.G.Grace in their team. Aussie fast bowler Fred "Demon" Spofforth took 14 wickets for 90 runs in the test. See Image
Connect the 3 visuals shown. Points only if the first pic is connected.

The connect is Fermat's last theorem. The visuals show liz Hurley in Bedazzled, Fermat and Andrew wiles standing standing next to his proof of Fermat's last theorem. The Hurley connect is as follows : In the movie Bedazzled, Hurley plays the devil and in a scene she is teaching a group of students. She writes down FLT on the board - a nice way of saying the theorem is tough as the devil.

Quizclub

2004

Quiz by Dinesh Krithivasan