3. 1.
• This word (slightly corrupted) means “all put
together” in Swahili, and is the official motto of
Kenya.
• The word is also the name of someone/something
famous who was famously killed a day after his
17th birthday.Advocates on social media are
asking for justice for him, with a dedicated hashtag.
• Who/what is this?
4.
5.
6.
7. 2.
• The image shows the flag of a newly formed
‘group’.The colour scheme and design of the flag is
inspired by something that you would associate
with members of this ‘group’.This flag is currently
being used in an event that is scheduled from the
5th to the 21st of August 2016.
• Whose flag is this? What inspired the design?
8.
9.
10.
11. 3.
• In a fictional piece of writing, a certain magazine
talks of ETSPN, an organisation whose
abbreviation can be thought of as an abbreviation
of two other abbreviations.What are those
abbreviations, and what fictional setting is the
magazine discussing?
14. 4.
• This age-old disease was calledY back in the days.
The modern name by which we know it, X, was
coined in 1839 and is derived from a word
meaning “small, swelling bump or pimple.”The
actual bacterium that caused the disease was
discovered in 1905.
• The disease was calledY because it seemed to
_______ the patient’s bodies, and they very swiftly
lost a lot of weight.
18. 5.
• Fans of the movie Suicide Squad have taken to
online forums and social media to support a
movement called ‘Crush the ______’, which talks
about how unfair a certain aggregation-service
portal is to the movie. Which portal?
21. 6.
• The estimated due date is calculated as 40 from the last cycle.
Doctors are wary of, and urge people to not use a certain
smaller unit that people tend to use more often.
• As an example, a certain doctor says that 7 in the not so right
unit could refer to a number between 28 and 32. He then says
• Thus, in the interests of both morale and more accurate medical
care, I have tried to get my patients to divest themselves of _.
• What is the unit that should be used, and what is being spoken
of?
22.
23. • Use weeks and not months when talking about
pregnancy
24. 7.
• In censorship-ridden Soviet Russia, ingenious
people used discarded X-ray plates to store
something.The used a lathe on the discarded
plates salvaged from hospitals and repurposed
them.These modified plates then were the rage in
the Russian black market.What did the law-
breaking Russians doing to the X-ray plates?
28. 8.
• A website called Consumer Reports gives the ‘Black
Hole Award’ to such products.There is legislation in
the USA that is supposed to not allow ‘slack fill’ that
creates an illusion of excess. However, this ‘slack fill’
is allowed if it does double-duty (as a dispenser or
tray, for example) or if it keeps a product from
breaking.
• What are we talking about? Also, one particular
class of products is infamous for ‘slack fill’, and they
can get away with it.Which class of products?
29.
30.
31. 9.
• This company has multiple jobs that are open. From the
description of some of them, identify the company.
• Head of Large Scale Model Design - you are
responsible for the creation of things like a full-size
Batman, or a scaled-down version of the Sphinx.
• Senior Concept Artist - you work with playset
designers and scriptwriters to create new product lines.
• Freeform Designer - you make sure that the artist’s
creations can be manufactured correctly and efficiently,
and digitally design the product to be made.
32.
33. • So, if you were Head of Large Scale Model Design,
you’d make something like this.
34. 10.
• This variety of tea is brewed for use on a certain
something.The reason that a special batch of
teabags was produced was because of the
conditions on this something.What is this certain
something?
35.
36.
37. • For onboard ships, with the blanked out word
being HMS
38. 11.
• In 1967, in the midst of the Cold War, multiple radar
installations of the US went dark in the Arctic.The US
thought that Russia managed to disable its early warning
system and armed itself ready to strike.
• The radar installations actually went out because of a
certain phenomenon, which was intimated to the US just
before they launched their missiles. If those missiles had
been launched, the same phenomenon would have made it
impossible to recall or divert the missiles, which would’ve
made the world a very different place from what it is now.
• What is this phenomenon, which nearly caused catastrophe?
41. 12.
• The new scheme, called the Code of Points, allows
for two separate numbers to be awarded.The first
is the standardised number, and the second is an
entirely subjective number that the judges award
that are based on the difficulty of the task
attempted.
• The introduction of the second number is captured
in the title of the book The End of __, by a certain
Dvora Meyers.The first of these blanks was seen in
1976.What is this scheme designed for, or FITB.
42.
43.
44. 13. FUQ
• The XY Gymnastic Championships is a major
regional biennial gymnastics competition that is
open to countries such as Australia, Canada, China,
Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, USA.
• The wordY was first “Alliance”, but was changed
toY in 2008. XY is also the name of a 2013
movie. Given that the criterion for participating in
these championships is purely geographic, what is
XY?
45.
46.
47. 14.
• It’s a nice example of how our entire skin is a sensing,
guessing, logic-seeking organ of perception, a blanket
with a brain in every micro-inch.
• He goes on to say that any _________ near the
regular area is interpreted as a buzz.A scientist
talking about which modern phenomenon?
50. 15.
• Some people follow carefully engineered, low-calorie diets in
order to mitigate, or at least slow down, the affects of rapid
______.Their belief is that if they live long enough to see major
breakthroughs in this field, a little sacrifice now is worth it.
• They hope to live long enough to reach a situation called
‘_________ escape velocity’, says Dave Gobel, the boss of the
Methuselah Foundation, a charity that does research in this
field.
• What are they hoping to do? Also, given what an escape
velocity is, what ‘escape velocity’ situation do they wish to
attain?
51.
52. • They basically don’t want to age/die
• The escape velocity is when their expected age
increases by more than one year per year of their
life
53. 16.
• There exists in the USA a group of people called the
‘Arlington Ladies’ who believe that nobody should be
______ alone.There are roughly 30 of these that happen at
Arlington everyday, and the ladies make it a point to attend
each and every one.
• The ladies are very familiar with the 624 acre campus of
Arlington, and are always elegantly dressed, often in hats or
gloves.Additionally, they are always standing at a respectful
distance, mindful of history.
• What is the self-proclaimed duty of these ‘Arlington Ladies’,
or what do they believe in?
56. 17.
• France has divided its provinces into ‘zones’, a map
of which is on the next slide.The zones have no
differences over the summer, but over the winter,
the sessions are divided per region to maximise
the time for limited winter sports facilities.
• What is the purpose for dividing the country into
these zones?
57.
58.
59. • To free up resorts in the winter, with the thing
being broken up being school holidays.
60. 18.
• Censorship works, or at least it does most of the
time. Here’s when it doesn’t.
• “doesn’t count as a world record, because it was run with the
help of a too-strong tailwind. Here’s what does matter:
Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and
served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.”
• “It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m
glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”
• What happened here?
63. 19.
• This is a phrase/idiom that refers to the congregation
around something. In modern urban lives however, the
idiom is beginning to not be true in its literal sense.
• In a study conducted by Swiss scientists in Biology
Letters, the propensity of the subjects of the idiom
were seen in two cities, one with high levels of some
pollution, and the other with low levels.This was also
expected from natural selection, because the action of
these subjects in urban areas hasn’t really ever helped
them.What idiom?
64.
65. • Like a moth to the fire
• Moths in urban areas aren’t drawn to lights as
much anymore, because they die.
66. 20.
• An enterprising 19-year old in London Joshua Browder
has created a service called donotpay.co.uk, which
people have said saves them hours of time writing
letters of appeal.The service also studies previously
successful letters and uses the characteristic features of
them, thereby increasing the success rate of the appeal.
• The creator says that town councils issue first and ask
questions later. Many of the recipients don’t have the
time, legal knowledge or energy to appeal.What is the
service used for?
67.
68.
69. • To generate appeal letters to protest against unfair
parking tickets.
70. 21.
• A Wired article called The X and Y2 Problem talks
about making a certain procedure less harmful for
the subjects involved.The X andY Problem is
something that’s been on people’s minds for ages,
and one tongue-in-cheek remark rebuke is that
dinosaurs lived before X’s, and they producedY’s.
• The procedure described in the article talks about
fittingY2 devices to the subjects to monitor their
brain waves.What is the X andY Problem, and
what isY2?
73. 22.
• Birds have recently been found to be similar to dolphins
in a certain aspect.The fact about dolphins has been
known to scientists for over a decade. People have
expected certain species of birds to be doing this too to
manage some astonishing tasks of endurance.
• The researchers attached to each bird a sensor designed
for homing pigeons that detects brain-wave activity using
an EEG test, as well as an accelerometer to measure the
bird's head movements.They then tracked the birds for
10 days.What did they find in the birds?
74.
75. • Birds sleep while migrating, something like how
dolphins sleep with either half of the brain at a
time.
76. 23.
• This method came into popularity in the mid-20th
century, replacing another method called ‘deconstruction’,
where specifically assigned men called ‘barmen’ would go
at it with crowbars and pickaxes.The advantage of the
deconstruction method was that it enabled ready salvage
of materials; however, the process itself took too long. In
the 1960s, due to stricter regulatory processes regarding
dangerous materials being sent into the air as well as the
impact noise, this method went back into ubiquity.
• Googling this method now will give you something from
the world of music.
77.
78.
79. 24.
• Peter Davies, a highly unpopular mayor of the UK, in 2009
ditched the agreements that his town, Lancaster, had with five
entities in China, France, the US, Germany and Poland. He
claimed that he was saving roughly 4000 pounds a year. On a
more serious note, there have been moves across the world
to break off such relationships.There are roughly 4000 of
these around the world, and at worst, they are just seen as an
expensive perk for politicians. Peter Davies himself says,“Only
about a dozen people ever benefited from these trips. I can
see that it arose out of altruistic motives after the war, but it
just became about junkets.”
• What relationships are being talked about?
82. 25.
• In her memoir Just Kids, Patti Smith talks about
Mexico being the land of two of her favourite
things, coffee and X.As a child, Smith was given a
book called The Fabulous Life of X by her mother,
which kickstarted her fascination with X. She
claims that she imagined herself “asY to X, both
muse and maker”.Who is X?
85. 26.
• The answer to the riddle “One day a girl celebrated her
birthday.Two days later, her elder twin brother celebrated
his. How is this possible?” could be one of many answers.
• She lives in Kiritimati and her brother lives in American
Samoa.
• She is the _.
• The second possibility arises due to the fact that the
weather is quite unpredictable in England and it’s a lot
more convenient to hold events in the summer.What is
the other answer to the riddle?
86.
87. • The Queen of England
• She has two birthdays, one is her real one, and she
celebrates her ‘official’ one on June 11.
88. 27.
• This device is used to eliminate any error in a
certain act.What act?
89.
90.
91. • Lets you shoot pokéballs in the right direction in
Pokémon Go
92. 28.
• The de Havilland Comet was the first plane to use a
certain concept which enabled it to fly at greater
heights. It was, however, a failure. Once in 1954, the
plane just crumpled mid-air and fell down, killing all on
board.
• A revised version of the plane was released soon later
which fixed the problem of crumpling in mid-air by
applying scientific principles to the windows.Apparently
aesthetic isn’t as important as fatigue.
• What feature did this plane introduce?
97. 29.
• NASA is using something that looks like what you see in the
next slide.The objective of this mission is to discover more
Earth-like planets. Right now, the Kepler satellite looks for
the dip in starlight as a planet passes in front of its star.That,
however, doesn’t let us deduce much about the chemical
composition of the planet etc. Light from larger planets can
be seen directly, but not from Earth-size planets.
• To counteract this, and to enable better planetspotting,
NASA has developed this appendage to its satellite/
telescope that will ‘unfurl’ and detach in front of the
telescope itself.What is its use?
98.
99.
100.
101. 30.
• A book that talks about why quantum theory is the best theory ever (or
something to that effect), its name is a play on an old, epic piece of
literature.
• On Springer’s (its publisher) website, the blurb reads
• Arguing that quantum theory as it stands is perhaps the most comprehensive,
well-verified, and successful theory in the history of science, the author clears
away the impression that it is an incomplete, philosophically flawed, and
self-contradictory theory. In simple terms accessible to anyone with a little
prior knowledge of science,Wallace examines the numerous “_________”
and "difficulties" claimed for quantum mechanics, and shows that they are
due to excesses of interpretation that have been imposed on the theory.
• What is the two-word name of this book, of which the blank is the first
word?
