Fresher’s General Quiz

Rules● +20/-10 on Pounce, +10/0 on Bounce.

● No one really bothers with these anyways, so moving on.

Question 1 Built on a series of hills, X is the site of a grand Hapsburg

palace and has a detached, imperial air of settled wealth.

In contrast, populous Y -- as flat as a prairie -- is busy,

buzzing and bourgeois, with an assortment of bars, cafés

and gourmet restaurants. The result of an 1873 merger

between these two distinct cities resulted in the

formation of “XY”, the capital of Z. Name X, Y, Z.

AnswerX - Buda

Y - Pest

Z - Hungary

Question 2“I walked into the House, and signed the attendance

register, just as the obituary announcements were being

made. Just as the Speaker concluded the list, I got up and

said ‘Sir, I have a point of order. In this intercession

period, democracy has died. So please include that in

your obituary’.”

Who said these lines and in what context?

AnswerSubramanian Swamy

During the emergency.

Question 3The X twins are American rowers and Internet

entrepreneurs. They are now venture capitalists

and in April 2013, the brothers claimed they owned

nearly 1% of all bitcoin in existence at the time.

Who are they?

AnswerWinklevoss Twins

Question 4 X's fatal duel took place on 30 May, 1832. What is known is

that five days before his death, he wrote a letter to Auguste

Chevalier which clearly alludes to a broken love affair. X was

so convinced of his impending death that he stayed up all

night writing letters to his Republican friends and composing

what would become his mathematical testament, the famous

letter to Chevalier outlining his ideas, and three attached

manuscripts. Who is X?

AnswerGalois

Question 5They're touted as handheld, bring-anywhere gadgets that can

eliminate anxiety and even help focus kids and adults with ADHD.

Dr. Mark Stein, director of ADHD and related disorders at the Seattle

Children's Hospital and professor at the University of

Washington,however, says X should not overtake proven methods of

treating the condition. “My worry is that they’re very much a

distraction, not only to the child, but it distracts people from doing

something that we know works,” Stein says.

What is X?

AnswerFidget Spinner

Question 6X was one of the co-authors (with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and

Terry Winograd) of an influential early paper on the PageRank

algorithm. He also co-authored another seminal search paper What

Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket with those same

authors.PageRank was the basis for search techniques of Google

(founded by Page and Brin), and X advised or taught many of

Google's developers and researchers.

Who is X?

AnswerRajeev Motwani

Question 7It was developed in the mid 90s in Colombia,

inspired by various Latin American styles. The name

itself has no meaning, and was chosen arbitrarily as

a brand name. However, an explosive rise in its

popularity over the recent past has led to concerns

that it might become a generic word. Which brand?

AnswerZumba

Question 8The word X was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book

The Selfish Gene, as an attempt to explain the way cultural

information spreads. Internet Xs are a subset of this general X

concept specific to the culture and environment of the

Internet.

AnswerMeme

Question 9The quote “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” is a quote

from the autobiography of the French philosopher

Jean Jacques Rousseau written around 1767, and

attributes this quote to a “great princess”.

What is it in English, and who is the quote often

misattributed to?

Answer“Let them eat cake”

Marie Antoinette.

Question 10They call themselves ‘A Chronicle of Enterprising

Demises’ with the motto “Honoring those who

improve the species...by accidentally removing

themselves from it!” Who?

AnswerThe Darwin Awards.

Question 11Identify the blanked part.

Answer

Question 12X was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his

eternal punishment in Tartarus. 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. This is considered to be the

origin of the word Y. When something is Y, it's desirable and

always just out of reach.

What are X and Y?

AnswerX - Tantalus

Y - Tantalise

Question 13In Italy, money dealers worked from tables, or

benches. When a money dealer ran out of money,

his table (or bench) would be broken, and he could

no longer deal money.

This describes the etymology of which word?

AnswerBanca (Broken) + Rotta (Bench)

Bankrupt

Question 14Around the year 1500. X made its appearance as a

fictional island, blessed with an abundance of gold

and populated by black, Amazon-like women,

whose trained griffins dined on surplus males.

What is X?

AnswerCalifornia

Question 15The pie chart depicts the

proportion of a certain activity

that these banks partake in

Hong Kong.

Hint: This activity is something

children think banks do.

AnswerPrint currency notes.

Question 16The phrase seems to have been brought back to

England by military men traveling to India in the

mid 18th century. An X was an Indian coin of little

value. The phrase indicated that people would be

unwilling to give even an X for that item.

What is the phrase?

AnswerI don’t give a dam(n).

Question 17X piloted the first plane that left Palam Airport at Delhi on 27

October 1947 at dawn and landed at Srinagar Airport in the early

morning. This was instrumental in saving Kashmir. X and his wife flew

to Java and brought Sultan Sjahrir out on a Dakota reaching India via

Singapore on 24 July 1947. For this act of bravery, X was given

honorary citizenship in Indonesia and awarded the 'Bhoomi

Putra',the highest Indonesian award, rarely granted to a foreigner. In

1996, when Indonesia was celebrating its 50th Independence Day, X

was awarded the highest national award, the 'Bintang Jasa Utama'.

AnswerBiju Patnaik

Question 18It is said the Hindi name of this fruit is a corruption

of the country of origin of this fruit, as Indians were

not able to pronounce its complicated name. Give

me the fruit and/or country.

AnswerMosambi / Mozambique

Question 19Whose Filmography on Imdb?

AnswerRaghuram Rajan

Question 20J M Barrie gave all the rights to X to Great Ormond

Street Hospital, a hospital dedicated towards the

intensive care for children, in 1929, and this was

later confirmed when he died in 1937. While the

copyright of the X has expired in the United

Kingdom, it was granted a special exception.

What is X?

AnswerPeter Pan

Question 21Secret Garden, by Johanna Basford has sold more

than 3 million copies worldwide and its popularity has

to led to it being translated to 14 different languages,

which is very unusual for a book of this nature. Many

have credited Johanna with sparking a new cultural

revolution, with the publication of Secret Garden.

What revolution?

AnswerAdult Coloring Books

Question 22X, (in)famous in another field, was also a painter. He

produced hundreds of works and sold his paintings and

postcards to try to earn a living for some time. A number

of his paintings were recovered after World War II and

have been sold at auctions for tens of thousands of

dollars. Others were seized by the U.S. Army and are still

held by the U.S. government

AnswerAdolf Hitler

Question 23In the decades since the publication of X, there have been numerous

comparisons to the novel Y, which had been published 17 years

earlier, in 1932. While members of the ruling class of X use brutal

force, torture and mind control to keep individuals in line, but rulers

in Y keep the citizens in line by addictive drugs and pleasurable

distractions. In October 1949, after reading X, the author Y sent a

letter to his counterpart and wrote that it would be more efficient for

rulers to stay in power by the softer touch by allowing citizens to

self-seek pleasure to control them rather than brute force and to

allow a false sense of freedom: Identify the novels.

AnswerX - 1984

Y - A Brave New World

Question 24The name of which gemstone comes from the name

of a transcontinental country?

AnswerTurquoise

Question 25Poor Richard's Almanack was a book written by Richard Saunders. It

is the origin of many well known phrases in English such as:

● “A friend in need is a friend indeed!”

● “Speak little, do much.”

Richard Saunders however was a pseudonym for a famous person.

Name him

AnswerBenjamin Franklin

Question 26This city is the trade centre for an area in which cotton, millet, wheat,

coriander and oilseeds are grown; industries include cotton and

oilseed milling, textile weaving, distilling, dairying, and the

manufacture of metal handcrafts. X also has an extensive industry of

stone-polishing of a stone called X Stone, used for the floor and walls

of residential and business buildings.

Vinod Kumar Bansal, an engineer at JK Synthetics, a chemicals

company, however, is the reason why the city is famous.

Name the city.

AnswerKota

Question 27

Answer

Question 28The derivation as a traditional term from octo- (“eight”) and thorpe

(“field, hamlet or small village”) lacks any evidence, but there is near

universal agreement that the first element refers to the number

eight. Eight is derived from the number of ends of the lines. Thorpe

could be reference to Jim Thorpe, as one proponent was a fan of the

athlete.

This is the wikipedia entry on the eytomology octothorpe. What is an

octothorpe?

Answer

#

Question 29X s a generic trademark owned by Sealed Air Corporation. In 1957

two inventors named Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes were

attempting to create a three-dimensional plastic wallpaper. Although

the idea was a failure, they found that what they did make could be

used as packing material. Sealed Air Corp. was co-founded by Alfred

Fielding in 1960.

What is X?

AnswerBubble Wrap

Question 30Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn;

Wire, briar, limber lock,

Three geese in a flock.

One flew east,

And one flew west,

____________________________________

FITB, also the name of a Ken Kesey Novel.

AnswerAnd one flew over,

The cuckoo's nest.