The Shyam Bhatt Open Quiz The Finals

Dry round18 questions10 points per question Infinite bounce

DURING their England tour of 1956, the Australia were playing a match at Scarborough when the news came that the Queen had knighted Len Hutton. Hutton was in the crowd, where one of the first persons to shake his hand was the Australian journalist Arthur Mailey. "Congratulations, Sir Leonard," said Mailey. “But I hope next time it is a bowler. The last bowler to be knighted was X”.

Again, when Richard Hadlee became the first to take 400 Test wickets, he was asked about a possible knighthood. “Who was the last bowler to be knighted? X, wasn't it?”, Hadlee replied.

Identify X. What was the reason for X being the subject of the quotes?

If legend is to be believed, this song has its origins in a conversation between Telugu labourers (who were calling out to a fellow labourer) that was overheard by the lyricist Shailendra while passing though an area of an under-construction building. Another version is that Shankar (of Shankar-Jaikishen), who was born and brought up in Andhra Pradesh had heard a Telugu folk song and made use of the tune of that folk music to create this song. Only 2 words of the song are in Telegu while the rest are in Hindi.

Which 1955 song?

• Unveiled on Sept 18, 2009, this work of art which used green as the base colour was compared to a child’s scrawls. The first installment cost Rs 2.5 lakhs and was digitally embossed on cast polymeric vinyl — a type of film that has good adhesive quality. The final application of the work to the display medium took about 8 days to complete. The colour scheme was based on a part-time painter’s works, who had previously auctioned a number of paintings for several social causes. The work was complemented by multiple works of traditional art, including Madhubani paintings which could be viewed only by entering the display medium.

• What are we talking about/What was the display medium? Also name the painter.

2 territories in the Carribean share the same capital name.

The first one is derived from the name of the island on which it is situated and has a hyphen seperating two words. The name of the island results from French terminology used in the Caribbean in the 17th century. In the Caribbean, the prevailing winds blow from the northeast, thus the western side of the Caribbean islands, the leeward side, protected from the trade winds, was called the by a name meaning “Down Land” or “Low Land”.

The capital of the second territory, again, gets its name again because it is located on the western side of an island (non-eponymous), but is not accompanied by a hyphen.

Name both nations and the capital(s).

“Just when you think tastelessness has reached its nadir, along comes a punk rock group called X, which will play at Mabuhay Gardens on Nov. 22, the 15th anniversary of EVENT Y. Despite mounting protests, the owner of Mabuhay says 'I can't cancel them NOW — there's a contract.' Not, apparently, the kind of contract some people have in mind” – This was how The San Francisco Chronicle described the inaugural gig of a hardcore punk band in 1978.

Featured is their first ever single.

Name the band X, id event Y and tell me what the title of the single alludes to.

Fernando Botero is a Colombian figurative artist, achieving international recognition for his paintings, drawings and sculptures across the world over the past 3 decades. He gained considerable media attention in 2005 for a series of about 200 drawings-paintings inspired by a New Yorker article. Botero spoke thus about this series : “I am increasingly sensitive to injustice, which makes my blood boil, and these paintings were born from the anger provoked by this horror”.

What was the subject of these paintings?

Image in the next slide.

The Kuthodaw Pagoda at the base of the Mandalay hill in Myanmar was built by Burmese King Mindon who wanted to leave a great work of merit for posterity meant to last five millennia after Gautama Buddha who lived around 500 BC. He also made sure that the Theravada Buddhist teachings would live on in the kingdom by inscribing them on 729 marble tablets in the pagoda.

By what description are these tablets better known today?

The World’s Largest Book

In 1901, the man pictured (next slide) invented a string galvanometer that weighed around 600 lb and required 5 people to operate. This device used a very thin filament of conductive wire passing between very strong electromagnets. When a current passed through the filament, the electromagnetic field would cause the string to move. A light shining on the string could be used to cast a shadow of the string on an interpretable medium, thereby enabling one to study the movement of the string.

Who is this guy? How do we better know this machine?

These are the 2 bomb detecting robots at the Athens International airport. One is an action-packed robot which does the important job of securing , safe collection, entrapment and transportation of explosives. The other one is a mobile robot that travels far and wide and is used in hardly accessible areas such as toilets, buses or aircraft.

Just name them.

A 2001 article titled A star-tling centenarian theory by Japanese researcher Yoshitsugu Kunugiyama stated that the famous cover illustration by X for his most famous work Y published in 1943 (voted the best book of the 20th century in France) deliberately depicted a stellar arrangement chosen to celebrate the centennial of his birth. According to Kunugiyama, the cover art X drew contained the planets Saturn and Jupiter, plus the star Aldebaran, arranged as an isosceles triangle, a celestial configuration which had occurred in the early 1940s, and which X likely knew would next re-occur in 2000, when he would be 100 years old.

Name X and Y.

Where would one find this sculpture?

What does the sculpture

commemorate?

Bletchley Park.

To pay tribute to Winston Churchill’s statement – “The codebreakers are geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled”.

Excerpt from a Time article dated Oct 30, 2008 marking the platinum jubilee (not the South Asian variant) of an event :

“A Sunday night. About 8 p.m. You're sitting in your living room. Possibly in an easy chair. Maybe the lights are off and there's a cup of tea on the table by your side. The radio dial casts a dim glow. You're relaxed, listening to the immensely popular Chase and Sanborn Hour, starring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. It's weird, listening to a ventriloquist and his dummy on the radio — how can you be sure Bergen's not cheating? — but the two of them are funny enough. A few minutes pass before some joker of a singer comes on. Time to switch the dial. All you want's the dummy”

What happened once the dial was switched?

Excerpt from an article on www.littledesignbook.in, popular online journal of design, visual culture and material culture

“A survey of these items as seen during various public occasions begins to reveal a surprising pattern. The Chanderis and Maheshwaris from Madhya Pradesh are favoured for official occasions; Khadi cottons from Ponduru, Andhra Pradesh, or Tant handlooms from Bengal and Assam for Parliament and other political appearances; and just once in a while, one gets a glimpse of a fine ikat from Sambhalpur, Pochampally or Puttapakkam; from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Each one represents a state that has a separatist movement, and/or an ongoing violent conflict with Maoist groups. On a map of India, these economically impoverished regions form a neat pattern of strife that is often referred to as the “Red Corridor”

What is the article about?

This world-famous hotel has a tradition of keeping a cat who has the run of the house (except in dining areas and the kitchen). The practice dates back to the 1930s, when the first owner-manager Frank Case took in a stray cat. Actor John Barrymore suggested the cat needed a theatrical name, so he was christened Hamlet. At present, whenever the hotel has a male, he carries on the name Hamlet, while females are named Matilda.

Identify the hotel, the subject of the 1987 Academy award winner for the best documentary feature The Ten-Year Lunch.

Image in the next slide.

What important purpose is served by this location?

The Indian Standard Time is based on this Clock Tower in Mirzapur.

A list with 12 points was published by the student organization, the Deutsche Studentenschaft, sometime in 1933. With this list as the backbone, historian Wolfgang Herrmann compiled another list with the purpose of establishing a “new order”.

What were the contents of this new list?

Image in the next slide.

The team pictured, in 1905, challenged the Ottawa Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup. They travelled to Ottawa by dog sled, ship, and train, and went on to lose the most lopsided series in Stanley Cup history, losing two games by the combined score of 32 to 4. The team had only one bonafide hockey player, ex-Ottawa star Weldy Young, who couldn’t make it to the match.

Who made up the rest of the team? OR Which city did the team hail from? (a movie based on events that made the city famous won the best short film Palme d’Or at the 1957 Cannes).

2 mathematicians George Marsaglia and Wai Wan Tsang developed an algorithm for pseudo-random number sampling in the 1980s and published their findings in a 2000 paper. The method was based on covering the probability distribution with rectangular segments stacked in decreasing order of size.

By what name is this algorithm known?

Theme Round 8 questions Non-exhaustive Answers to be written down 5 points for individual answers Points for the theme - +25/+20/+15/+10

for 1-2/ 3-4/ 5-6/7-8 Uniform negative of -5 throughout for

wrong attempts at the theme Links to the theme could be in the

question/answer

Still from a 1902 movie based on a famous fairy tale by Charles Perrault. The movie was directed by someone who also happens to an important character in one of the nominees for Best Picture at this year’s academy awards.

Name the 1902 movie and the director.

Name this musical instrument that plays itself, by means of a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates via pre-programmed music perforated paper or metallic rolls.

They are a group of 15 passerine birds,the smallest one being the Warbler and the largest one the Vegetarian. All but one are found exclusively in a particular region.

By what collective name do we know these birds? Also identify the geographical area.

Identify this percussion instrument.What genre of entertainment gets its name from

the historical usage of this instrument to produce the indended

effect?

One theory regarding the origin of term X was given by John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1694. He suggested that it is a parody of the consecration of the Catholic Mass: “In all probability those common juggling words of X are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation”. The Oxford English Dictionary cites an alternate origin from hax pax max Deus adimax, a pseudo-Latin phrase used by conjurors.

What term?

1933 marked the first year an iconic brand made its foray into the field of sports. The brand’s contract for sponsorship of the broadcasts of Minneapolis Millers games on WCCO radio included a large advertising signboard at the Nicollet park. Knox Reeves, an advertising executive at a Minneapolis-based agency, was asked what should be printed on the sign. He took out a pad and pencil, sketched out a box of the brand, thought for a moment, and then wrote down the now famous slogan one associates with the brand.

The brand and the slogan please.

The most famous images of an event that happened between 13 and 15 February 1945 almost always feature August Schreitmuller ‘The Goodness’ on top of the City Hall Tower in the foreground.

What is/was the subject of these photographs?

This was a large climbable and interactive sculpture, in the form of two giant hands and a globe installed during the 2006 Burning Man festival. In-between the three objects, participants were invited to dance and weave a web of white yarn, using the hands to connect the yarn. The action of webbing will be initiated by the dancers each sundown, and participants will join in weaving the inner space. A minimal ambient hypnotic sound-design will accompany the process as they weave their own paths through the space between the hands and inspire people to gradually start to dance in relation to the mesh.

What was this sculpture titled? Image in the next slide.

EXCHANGE

Still from a 1902 movie based on a famous fairy tale by Charles Perrault. The movie was directed by someone who also happens to an important character in one of the nominees for Best Picture at this year’s academy awards.

Name the 1902 movie and the director.

Name this musical instrument that plays itself, by means of a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates via pre-programmed music perforated paper or metallic rolls.

They are a group of 15 passerine birds,the smallest one being the Warbler and the largest one the Vegetarian. All but one are found exclusively in a particular region.

By what collective name do we know these birds? Also identify the geographical area.

Identify this percussion instrument.What genre of entertainment gets its name from

the historical usage of this instrument to produce the indended

effect?

One theory regarding the origin of term X was given by John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1694. He suggested that it is a parody of the consecration of the Catholic Mass: “In all probability those common juggling words of X are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation”. The Oxford English Dictionary cites an alternate origin from hax pax max Deus adimax, a pseudo-Latin phrase used by conjurors.

What term?

1933 marked the first year an iconic brand made its foray into the field of sports. The brand’s contract for sponsorship of the broadcasts of Minneapolis Millers games on WCCO radio included a large advertising signboard at the Nicollet park. Knox Reeves, an advertising executive at a Minneapolis-based agency, was asked what should be printed on the sign. He took out a pad and pencil, sketched out a box of the brand, thought for a moment, and then wrote down the now famous slogan one associates with the brand.

The brand and the slogan please.

The most famous images of an event that happened between 13 and 15 February 1945 almost always feature August Schreitmuller ‘The Goodness’ on top of the City Hall Tower in the foreground.

What is/was the subject of these photographs?

This was a large climbable and interactive sculpture, in the form of two giant hands and a globe installed during the 2006 Burning Man festival. In-between the three objects, participants were invited to dance and weave a web of white yarn, using the hands to connect the yarn. The action of webbing will be initiated by the dancers each sundown, and participants will join in weaving the inner space. A minimal ambient hypnotic sound-design will accompany the process as they weave their own paths through the space between the hands and inspire people to gradually start to dance in relation to the mesh.

What was this scultpure titled?

Differential scoring6 questionsAnswers to be written down1-3 teams +20

4-6 teams +157-8 teams +10

Minus 10 if you get the answer wrong

Produced in 1939 by the British Government, it was the third (and the most famous) in a series of three. The previous two read, “Freedom Is In Peril. Defend It With All Your Might” (400,000 printed) and “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory”(800,000 printed). The Economist said that it “taps directly into the country's mythic image of itself: unshowily brave and just a little stiff, brewing tea as the bombs fall”.

What widely parodied item? (Something that was rediscovered by Manchester United fans after the 6-1 defeat to Manchester City).

What name has been blanked out?OR

Who is being referenced here?

Excerpt from a 1996 Playboy interview with X (who really is and should be indebted to Playboy).

X speaking when asked about NASA and Space Travel.

“How come we're looking at our shoes instead of at the great nebula in Orion? Where did we mislay the moon and back off from Mars? The problem is, of course, our politicians, men who have no romance in their hearts or dreams in their heads. JFK, for a brief moment in his last year, challenged us to go to the moon. But even he wasn't motivated by astronomical love. He cried, "Watch my dust!" to the Russians, and we were off. But once we reached the moon, the romance started to fade. Without that, dreams don't last. If NASA's budgeters could be convinced that there are riches on Mars, we would explode overnight to stand on the rim of the Martian abyss”

Id X.

As per the official website of this organisation established in 1965 which administers 1087 sub-units with 49,286 employees (as of Nov 2011), there are only 3 sub-units located outside India which are at:

- Moscow – Established in 1987, Patron - The Ambassador of India to the Russian Federation.- Tehran – Established in 2004, Patron - The Ambassador of India to Iran.- Kathamandu – Established in 1973.

Which organisation?

Hundreds of stone/masonry arch bridges, primarily in Europe, are named for the fact that they are technological marvels representing a superhuman achievement, and would not have achieved completion without help from external sources. Pictured is one such bridge at Ardino, Bulgaria (Next slide).

What are these bridges called? What theory, that forms the basis of master-pieces in certain other fields, is used to explain the formation of these bridges?

‘The Last Question’ is a 1956 Isaac Asimov short story and was his favorite of his own authorship. It is one of his best known works and is part of a series of stories revolving around a fictional computer called Multivac. The story ends with a pronouncement by AC (Multivac’s descendant) symbolizing the godlike growth in its power through the reversal of entropy, creating the universe anew from the ashes of a dead one.

What does AC say?