2012 KQA Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open Quiz Prelims

XXIII Ganesh Nayak Memorial
Open Quiz 2012
Prelims
Quizmasters
Vivek Karthikeyan and Venkatesh S

1

The Sanskrit words for “age” and “beginning”
combine to give us what familiar term in
Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh?

2

What three word phrase,
familiar to Indian road
travellers is the title of this
quirky travel book about
three people traversing
North India on a SUV?

3
With what seven-letter name, presumably because of
the feather-light ball, was Table Tennis originally
introduced by John Jacques of London, who ran a
famous sporting store?

4

 Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland
 Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka
 Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka
 Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley
 ?
 ?

Give the two missing items from this list

• Mo Yan
• European Union
• 2012 Nobel Prize winners

5*
Balarama is a veteran who has been the star for the last 13
years. His predecessor was Drona, who had been on the job
for 18 years before he died of electrocution.

This year, word has it that Balarama may not be fit and be
replaced by 52-year old Arjuna. Others in contention are
Gajendra and Abhimanyu.

The big day that they are preparing for is on October 24 this
year when they will walk the 5 km route, carrying a rather
heavy load.

Explain

• Elephants who carry the howdah at the
Mysore Dussera procession

6
Infosys announced recently that it is to open a new
delivery centre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The decision to locate the centre in the Midwest was
taken after the company last week won a five-year,
$200 Mn deal with this global, iconic brand to
provide technology services, including taking over
some of the IT personnel of the brand .

Which iconic Milwaukee-based brand?

7

What 10-minute project is this all about?

• The project involving Austrian skydiver
Felix Baumgartner’s free fall from 39 km.

8
Ranked 11th on the Top 500 list of the world's most
powerful supercomputers, and representing NASA's
state-of-the-art technology for meeting
supercomputing requirements, it is located at NASA
Ames Research Center near Mountain View,
California. It is maintained by NASA, and its partners
SGI and Intel.

The supercomputer is named after a star cluster – the
alternate name for which is used in India to describe a
contiguous set of states.

One-word name please

• Pleiades (Seven Sisters)

9
Two of the greatest American novels of the 20th
century are headed for the big screen later this year
(2012), and literary fans are bracing for the worst.

Baz Luhrmann is directing one of the films, starring
Leonardo Di Caprio; the trailer of the film has evoked
the following reaction on Twitter, “___ _____ ______
3D: Borne back ceaselessly into your face.”

The other film is the first ever movie adaptation of this
1951 book and is being directed by Walter Salles who
has retraced a journey across North America and
interviewed scholars and surviving members of the
Beat Generation. Name the books

• The Great Gatsby
The closing line of the book is So we beat on,
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly
into the past.“

• On the Road

10*

Lonesome George was the last known individual of
the subspecies. In his last years, he was known as the
rarest creature in the world. George served as a
potent symbol for conservation efforts in Ecuador
and internationally. Upon his death in June 2012, the
sub-species became extinct.
Which sub-species?

• Pinta Island / Abingdon Island tortoise
(half points for Galapagos tortoise)

11
Which town in Tamil Nadu has a Doordarshan TV
tower standing at 1060 feet, making it India’s tallest
structure ?

12
Since the early 1990s, what object has been used
as a mark of protest by anti-tax protestors and
conservatives in the US?

A custom has developed among some conservative
activists of sending these to legislators and other
officials via postal mail as an act of symbolism. The
informal slogan of these protests is “Taxed Enough
Already”.

13
ID the film
- Video trailer removed

14
Phiroze Edulji Palia was the first one, from Bangalore
in 1932. However, the first “authentic” Kannadiga was
Wing Commander VM Muddiah in 1959. Both of
them did it two times.

The maximum is 164 times.

18 others from Karnataka have done this so far, with
the latest happening in January 2012.

What have these 20 people done?

• Play test cricket for India

15*
“Follow! nay, I’ll go with thee, _____ __ _____. ”

This is one of the earliest instances of this phrase,
found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This often hyphenated phrase is essentially made up of
two different words referring to the same part of the
human anatomy.

What phrase, used mainly in a negative sense
today to refer to living conditions ?

16
 Primary
 Medium
 National Language
 Primer
 Expert
 Well-versed
 Master

Names of exams conducted by which organization in
India that had Mahatma Gandhi as its first president
from 1918-1948?

• Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha

17
The _________ frog is found in Trinidad and Tobago
and the north coast of South America as well as in the
Amazon area. The name comes because the creature is
so small that it hides among bananas and is then
sometimes accidentally exported to other countries.

What’s the name?

18

This is a painting depicting a traditional folk dance of
the tribal community in East India of the same name.
The painter is a Padma Bhushan awardee, who revived
Bengali folk art through his paintings in the 1920s-40s.

Name the tribe or the painter

• Santhals
• Jamini Roy

19

From a minimalist
poster series
celebrating
pioneering women
in science, this is a
tribute to a lady who
has a U.S. Navy
destroyer and a Cray
model named after
her. Who (think
COBOL)?

• Grace Hopper, of the ‘bug in the notebook’
fame.

20*
Commonly known as the Browns, these butterflies
have eye like spots. Large groups of these dull-
coloured butterflies were noticed to flutter through
meadows with a bouncy flight, pausing to drink at
fallen fruit. The males would often chase wildly
after the females.

What name did the Danish biologist Fabricius
give them, after a mythical woodland creature
having features of a goat and a horse and known for
lasciviousness?

Pictures on next slide

• Satyrids after satyrs in Greek myth

21
In 1763 after he got out of the militia, he embarked
on a grand tour of Europe. In his autobiography he
writes of a particular place:

...after a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step the
ruins of the Forum;

…as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol,
while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in
the temple of Jupiter.

Who, and what idea (for a book) did the locale
inspire?

• Edward Gibbon struck upon the idea of
writing The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire

22
In his works Dropsie Avenue, New York – The Big
City, and A Contract With God, Will Eisner shows
us vignettes of daily life and decay.

His stories are set in the sub-standard multi-family
dwellings common in NY at the time (and in many
cities then and now).

What 16th century legal term, originally coined
for any rented accommodation are these
housing projects known by?

Pictures on next slide

23
It has been called a “massive phenomenon” by a top
industry honcho, and is claimed to have spawned
an entire ecosystem. A company, Zipdial, uses it in a
voting system.

Its usefulness also came to the fore when India
against Corruption (IAC) started using it to give
mainstream politicians a run for their money. A
representative of the movement says the IAC's
database has more than 20 million unique entries
at its computers in Mumbai.

What method did IAC employ to gain
supporters?

• Supporters are asked to give a missed call!

24
Middlemarch by George Elliot is considered to be her
finest work. There is a recent resurgence of interest in its
plotline. The story is set in a small, picturesque town,
with a mix of the terribly poor, a bit of the very wealthy,
and a lot of the middle classes, with things like a local
election thrown in.

The causal factor for the interest has been called a
“parody,” with a Guardian reader giving it an alternate title
______, a play on the term for a “non-magical people.”

What is the reason for the renewed interest, and
what did the reader call it?

• The Casual Vacancy
• The reader called it
“Mugglemarch”

25*

This representation from
the Bible is the first
known instance. Today a
‘transfer of authority’ is
termed as ____, having
originated from the name
of the artifact.

What phrase?

• Passing the mantle

• The mantle is a sleeveless coat typically worn by
bishops of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The
pic shows Elijah giving his mantle to Elisha.

26
It began as the Morand plantation. Near the end of the
eighteenth century a Frenchman purchased the land. After
a few decades, the Carondelet Canal was built, splitting
the land.

It soon had a diverse population that included Caucasians,
Haitian Creoles, and free persons of colour. The local
square was the Place des Nègres where slaves gathered on
Sundays to dance.

In the early 1960s a large portion was torn down. The land
stood vacant for a time before Louis Armstrong Park was
created out of the area.

Through which David Simon creation did we come to
know this better?

27
It is most probably Sindora wallichii, a species
belonging to the peanut family. It marked the
eastern approach to the Straits of Johore and was
felled in 1942 to prevent the enemy from using it to
sight their long range artillery.

While many believe it lent its name to the locality,
that name probably comes from another timber-
producing species.

What is being referred to?

• Changi Tree
• The area Changi is
probably named after
another species,
Chengal, a tree
belonging to the
dipterocarp family

28
It is a term used to refer to someone at work who
saves all the good or easy jobs for himself, and also
in sports for players who look for easy shots – like a
person who sits in the back court by the basket
waiting for an outlet pass.

The origin for the term is from a hoist (see pic)
originally designed for use in orchards, that is also
widely used today to service equipment and cables
on utility poles.

What term?

29

It is called Antina Unde in many parts of
Karnataka. Some call it Dinkachi Ladoo. In a
more popular form it is called X.

The difference between X and the others is that
X does not have as many ingredients, has more
dry coconut, dry fruits and edible gum.

What is X?

• Karadantu, as it is popularly called in
Northern Karnataka, or more specifically the
Belgaum-Gokak belt

30*

When King George V travelled to India to be
proclaimed Emperor of India in 1911 at the
Durbar in Delhi, he was only the second English
King to leave Europe in a long time.

Who was the last one to set out before
George?

• Richard ‘Couer de Lion’ or Richard the
Lionheart, on Crusades.

31

Jawaharlal Nehru first visited Pakistan in 1950, 18
days after the Nehru-Liaquat Pact on minorities
was signed. His second visit was in September
1960. The outcome of that visit is something that
perhaps the folks down south could study and
try to emulate.

What was the reason for Nehru’s second
visit?

• To sign the Indus Water Treaty with Ayub
Khan

32
The instrument in Pic A is a wind-driven musical
instrument, the origins of which can be traced back to
ancient Greece. They are typically seen in churches and
concert halls. They were installed in movie theatres
during the silent movie era.

The instrument in Pic B was developed as an affordable
substitute for A, and as a replacement for the piano in
middle-class homes. It also became a huge hit in jazz, and
later with pop groups. The overdriven sound gained a new
image with artists like Gregg Allman, Steve Winwood,
Rick Wright, Keith Emerson and Jon Lord using it
extensively.

Name both.

• A – Pipe Organ
• B – Hammond Organ

33

First introduced in 1985 by Novo Nordisk, these
products have a number of advantages over
conventional methods. They are convenient to
carry around, help administer accurate dosages
and are easier to use with less pain. What are
they used for?

Pictures on next slide.

• Used by diabetes patients to inject
insulin

34

In India, only Andaman and Nicobar Islands,
Delhi and Pondicherry carry on a tradition seen
in other Commonwealth nations. The other
similar regions in India have an IAS officer with
the title “Administrator”.

What tradition?

• Persons holding position of Lt. Governor

35*

The TIME cover features Hitler playing “his hymn of
hate” in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle
on a device while the Nazi hierarchy looks on.

A very cool, or sick device, depending on how you
look at it, it was a product of the middle ages, and
named after a person believed to have been killed
on it during the rule of the Roman Emperor
Maxentius.

What was it called?
(larger pics follow)

• St. Catherine’s Wheel

• Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper was a
Catholic that fled Hitler’s Germany, and the
artist of this disturbing piece. By 1938, Hitler
had firmly seized power in Germany, taken over
Austria and Czechoslovakia, and had been
given a free hand in Eastern Europe by the
English prime minister of the time, Neville
Chamberlain. Time has had to defend this
choice throughout history, and at the time
defended it by stating that the “Man of the
Year” was a title bestowed on the person who
had most influenced events of the previous
year.

36

ID the person talking and the person he is
describing at the beginning of the clip.

• Maurice Sendak on William Blake

2012 KQA Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open Quiz Prelims

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