Saturday, November 29, 2008

Question - 120

Today's question is courtesy Divya. Connect the visuals.

Answer: The blanked out word in the first visual is anesthesia. The second visual is Oliver Wendell Holmes sr., one of the best regarded American fireside poets and the third is a book by Michael Harrison where he conjectures that Sherlock Holmes was named so partly in tribute to Oliver Wendell Holmes. Oliver Holmes is responsible for coining the word anesthesia. Swapnaa was the only one to get it. Bravo.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Question - 119

What event is being depicted? Apologies for not updating the blog yesterday. Updates might be sporadic during the thanksgiving break. I hope and pray that all your loved ones in Mumbai are safe.

Update: This question has garnered no attempts thus far. So, I shall leave it up for another day with a hint. The event is biblical.

Answer: The event depicted is the battle of Jericho where the Children of Israel circled the city's walls seven times until its walls came tumbling down. QoD was the only one to get it. Bravo.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Question - 118

Obverse and reverse of a coin commemorating what? Some text has been blanked out from them.

Answer: These coins commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock nine crisis when a group of nine African-American students had to be escorted into the racially segregated Little Rock central high school by the national guard under the instruction of President Eisenhower. Harish, Iam, Rahul Trivedi, Raghu, Anshul, Hirak, Rajesh, Keshav, Madu + Swapnaa and Vikrant got it. Well done.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Question - 117

Connect the images.

Answer: The visuals are Frank Drake of the Drake equation fame (you can see the equation on the board), Carl Sagan, Golden Eye, DNA, the solar system and SETI@home. The connect is the Arecibo observatory. A radio message was beamed into space from this observatory in 1974 broadcasting our presence to the universe. The message was designed by Drake and Sagan and contains information about the solar system and the elements that make up the DNA. The SETI@home program gets its data from the observatory and the observatory features in the climax of the Bond movie. There are other ways of connecting the visuals as some comments suggest but I think none of them connect them quite so cohesively. Iam, Adi and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Question - 116

The person in visual 1 spotted a sculpture such as the one shown in visual 2 in a room filled with paintings that looked like visual 4. In particular, the sculpture was adjacent to the painting shown in visual 3. This might have led him to exclaim something which was published in the papers and the name caught on. Identify all visuals and the remark.

Couple of clarifications - (a) the sculpture the person saw wasn't the sculpture shown in visual 2. (b) The name that caught on refers only to paintings like the one shown in visual 4 and not to the one in visual 3.

Answer: The visuals are in order the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, Donatello's David, Henri Rousseau's The hungry lion throws itself on the antelope and Henri Matisse's Woman with a Hat. Vauxcelles commented that seeing a classical sculpture amidst the paintings that used color so boldly and liberally was like seeing Donatello amidst wild beasts (Donatello au milieu des fauves). Thus the new art movement came to be known as fauvism. His comments might have been prompted by Rousseau's painting. Raghu, Hirak, Iam and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Question - 115

This is one of the cards in the tarot deck. This inspired a famous album cover. Identify.

Answer: Led Zeppelin IV is the album. The hermit is the card and is most famously associated with Stairway to heaven such as in this poster. Iam, Keshav, Rahul Trivedi, Divya, Arvind, Swapnaa, Hirak, Piyush, Adi and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Question - 114

Connect the visuals.

Answer: The first visual shows the flight path of Korean air lines flight 007 (dotted line is the supposed path while the solid line is the actual path). The flight strayed into Soviet air space and was shot down by the Soviet union resulting in the death of all 269 people on board. Needless to say, it generated huge controversy around the world. Because access to better navigational equipment might have averted the disaster, Reagan issued a directive that the GPS system which was under development then would be available for free to civilians. Visual 2 shows the logo of Navstar GPS. Iam and Hirak got it. Well done.

Announcement: There will be a quiz this Sunday (November 23) at 1 pm in 1311 EECS. The quiz master is Samrat Sengupta, a Mastermind India finalist. It promises to be lots of fun. Do try and make it.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Question - 113

Thing in visual 1 lives in the place shown in visual 2 whose location is shown in visual 3. Visual 4 is an unexplained phenomenon that occurred in the vicinity of the location in visual 3 and was attributed to the thing in visual 1 by fans. Identify all visuals and connect.

Answer: Visual 1 is Cthulhu, the central character of H.P.Lovecraft's so called Cthulhu mythos. Visual 2 is R'lyeh the fictional place where Cthulhu is supposedly entombed. Its location on the map according to two different authors is shown in visual 3. Visual 4 is an ultra-low frequency underwater sound termed the Bloop recorded several times during the summer of 1997. There is no known animal large enough to produce such a sound and fans of Lovecraft immediately attributed it to Cthulhu. Of course, Metallica made it famous with the incendiary Call of the Ktulu. Iam, Rajesh, Ashwin and Divya got it. Well done.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Question - 112

Identify the three visuals and connect. The year in the bottom visual is irrelevant.

Answer: The first visual is that of Joshua Bell with his Stradivarius violin, the second is the L'enfant Plaza in Washington DC, a subway station and the third is the Pulitzer medal. In an interesting experiment, Gene Weingarten, a journalist with Washington Post had Joshua Bell play in the subway station on a busy Friday morning. The purpose was to find out if people recognize true genius when it is on display in such a quotidian setting. Gene Weingarten won a Pulitzer for his article which can be read here. Divya, Mihir, Mekie, Rajesh, Keshav and Iam got it. Well done.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Question - 111

Connect the three naval scenes with the visual in the bottom right.

Answer: The connect is the number 111 which is called a Nelson in cricket and darts. The name refers to the British naval officer Horatio Nelson and is supposed to stand for his famous naval victories at Copenhagen, Nile and Trafalgar (the visuals). Another theory is that 111 refers to his lost eye,arm and leg and this theory is responsible for the superstition associated with that score in cricket. Another theory for the superstition is that it refers to the stumps without the bails. David Shepherd famously averted the ill effects of the number by raising a leg whenever a team or individual scored 111 (or 222 which is called a double nelson). Vateez and Bala got it. Well done. I tried to get a bit cheeky by posting this as the 111th question but judging by the responses, it probably wasn't that well framed.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Question - 110

Identify the building and its location.

Answer: The Ryugyong hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, one of the biggest white elephants of all time. Iam, Mekie, Divya and Adi got it. Well done.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Question - 109

This question is courtesy Manix. Connect the two visuals.

Answer: The people are Indira Gandhi and Mosiuoa Lekota who respectively split the Indian National Congress and the African National Congress to form Congress (R) and Congress of the people respectively. Mekie was the only one to get it. Bravo.

Question - 108

The three visuals on the left are examples of a certain phenomenon (the two skeletons are from two different species). The visual on the right is connected to the most famous fictional representation of this phenomenon. Identify all visuals and the phenomenon.

Answer: The skeletons are those of the Elephant bird, moa and dodo (all extinct). These birds are classic examples of island gigantism - a phenomenon where species grow to a very large size due to lack of natural predators in a closed island environment. This concept was extended to fanciful lengths in the King Kong movies. The map on the right is that of Skull island where almost all creatures and plants suffer from island gigantism. Mekie, Rajesh, Divya and Iam got it. Well done.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Question - 107

Slightly silly question. Connect the visuals.

Answer: The Renaissance center in Detroit, Rosebud from Citizen Kane, cover of RATM's album Renegades, Renault Radiance truck and F.C.Celtic football club's logo. These are the code names used by the Secret Service to refer to some members of the new administration (the Obama family and Biden). Raghu was the only one who endured the question long enough to come up with the answer. Bravo.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Question - 106

Scene from which play?

Answer: Vladimir and Estragon are Waiting for Godot, the classic post-modern play by Samuel Beckett. Raghu and Hirak got it right. Well done.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Question - 105

Connect the two visuals. What is the significance of the casualties mentioned in the newspaper clipping?

Answer: The visual on the right shows a Japanese balloon bomb which were basically bombs tied to balloons set adrift from a high altitude in Japan in the hope that prevailing winds will take them over United states. The picture on the left are the only known casualties of such a bomb and also the only casualties in the continental U.S during WWII. Mekie, Hirak, Adi, Rajesh, Bala and Rahul Trivedi got it. Well done.

Question - 104

Connect the three visuals.

Answer: The connect is "Bonfire of the vanities". The statue is that of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest who was extremely hostile to the Renaissance and had several books, art and other stuff that he considered vanities burnt in a bonfire. Tom Wolfe wrote a novel of the same name which was made into a movie starring Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis. Iam and Hirak got it. Vikrant came really close. Well done.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Question - 103

Couldn't resist yet another xkcd question. Solve for X,Y and especially Z.

Answer: X - Bertrand Russell, Y - Alfred North Whitehead, Z - Kurt Godel. The pun is this: Russell and Whitehead set out to derive mathematics rigorously from axioms and spent more than 10 years in such an attempt producing the famous Principia Mathematica. Godel came along and proved that any such system of mathematics is necessarily incomplete. Rahul Trivedi, Raghu, Mekie, Adi, Rajesh, 3001, Swapnaa and Rajeev got it. Well done.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Question - 102

Identify the man in the first visual and connect to the second visual.

Answer: This is Evel Knievel who famously tried to jump over the Snake river canyon in Idaho. Rajeev, Hirak, Raghu, Keshav and Iam got it. Well done.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Question - 101

A memorial to what and where is it located?

Answer: The memorial is to the notorious Orson Welles directed radio adaptation of H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds. Welles' production was so realistic that many people thought martians had actually landed in Grover Mills, NJ which is where the memorial is located. Keshav, Iam, Raghu, Mekie, QoD, Hirak, Manix, Vateez and Divya got it. Well done.

Question - 100

Shown is a billboard honouring a native son in his home town. Identify.

Aside: I suppose the 100th question is a milestone of sorts. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the blog. I hope you guys have as much fun answering questions as I have setting them. Let me know if you have any suggestions/ideas/brickbats regarding the blog. Also, if you enjoy the blog, spread the word to anyone you know who enjoys quizzing.

Answer: This is a billboard honouring Gabriel Garcia Marquez found in Aracataca, Colombo. You can see the word Macondo in the lower right. Macondo is the town in which his 100 years of solitude takes place. Rahul Trivedi, Raghu, Mekie, Keshav, Hirak (brownie points for noticing the pun), Rajesh, Vikrant and Adi got it. Well done.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Question - 99

Identify the person and the occasion.

Answer: Harry Truman holding the Chicago tribune's infamous headline "Dewey defeats Truman". I was reminded of this incident yesterday while watching TV stations predicting wins in states when less than 10% of the votes had been counted. Arvind, Mekie, Raghu, RajeshK, Trevor Burnham, Swapnaa, Kr!sh, Vikrant, Rajesh, Hirak, Iam, Divya and QoD got it. Well done.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Question - 98

The visual shows one of the six photographs taken by a photographer when stopping at a countryside in California due to some trouble with the car. Of course, one of the other six photographs is hugely popular and iconic. Identify that photograph.

Answer: The "Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange - an iconic photograph that captured the great depression era in the United states. I think that photo was shot from in front of the right side of the tent. Divya + Bala, Rahul Trivedi, Iam, Mekie, Hirak and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Question - 97

This graph is cited as evidence for what phenomenon? In other words, fill out the blanked portion in the title "Countdown to ???".

Answer: The "technological singularity". The graph plots in logarithmic scale the time between successive paradigm shifts in the history of human evolution versus the absolute time of their occurrence. The negative slope suggests that these shifts are happening at an exponentially faster rate. By extrapolating the trend, one might conceive of a singularity point where these shifts start happening at an ever-accelerating phase resulting in vast leaps in technology and a drastic change in society. The concept was first proposed by Vernor Vinge, a professor at UCSD (and also the author of the excellent sci-fi novel A fire upon the deep). You can read more about it here. Divya, Iam, Mihir, Shash, Mekie, Hirak, Rajesh, Vikrant and Rahul Trivedi got it. Well done.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Question - 96

The gentlemen in the first visual got together and made a deal that is being satirized in the second visual. Identify what they were doing and also the seated person (second from the left) in the first visual.

Answer: The first visual shows the Alaska Purchase between the U.S and Russia. The second visual shows a newspaper caricaturing the purchase of a land fit only for polar bears to live in. The seated person is William Seward, the secretary of state who negotiated the purchase. Alaska was variously derisively known as Seward's folly, Seward's icebox and Andrew Johnson's polar bear garden. Iam, Mekhala, Keshav, Vikrant and Adi got it. Well done.