2014 11 KQA Ganesh Nayak Open Quiz prelims

Welcome to
The Ganesh Nayak Memorial
Open Quiz
Prelims
Vivek + Venky

Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open 2014
1
Allan _________ was a Scottish poet in the first half of the 19th
century who among other things, contributed to the London
Magazine. He edited The Works of Robert Burns in 1834, which
contained new preface material drawing from his experiences
when his father was Burns’ neighbour.
His son became an Indian Army Officer and acted as a deputy to
Sir Mark Cubbon, the Chief Commissioner at Bangalore. Here,
apart from playing an active role in developing the Horticultural
Gardens at Lalbagh, the son undertook many constructions
including the one he built for Sir Mark Cubbon in the nearby
Nandi Hills and possibly, a large bungalow in Bangalore, known
as the Balabrooie.
Fill in the blanks with his surname.

Cunningham
The son was Francis Cunningham

2
On February 22, 2002, conductor George Pehlivanian, X's
neighbour and friend from Paris, was scheduled to lead the
Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra as a guest conductor. Deeply
troubled by the news, he was initially reluctant to perform;
however, he decided to go ahead with his concert rather than
give in to the despair wrought by the evil inflicted on X.
In August 2002, in the spirit of X’s love for music, his family
invited people across the globe to dedicate a musical event on
the day he would have turned 39 years old - October 10, 2002.
Thus, the seeds were planted for X World Music Days - now an
entire month of worldwide "Harmony for Humanity" concerts.
The 2014 edition just concluded.
Who is X?

Daniel Pearl

3
Which Indian cricketer completes the list and what is the list
about?

Mohammed Azharuddin
Centuries in first and last Test
The others were Reggie Duff, Bill Ponsford,
Greg Chappell

4
In the current Union Cabinet of Ministers, there are
four former CMs, apart from the Prime Minister. Two
are women.
Who are the two male former-CMs who are current
Cabinet Ministers?

DV Sadananda Gowda, Rajnath Singh
Railways, Home

*5
In this 1997 board game, each player guides a species of
primitive amoeba drifting through the ________ ____. The
player controls whether and how his amoebas move, eat
and procreate using the 10 biological points which she
receives each turn, and can buy “gene” cards to accelerate
progress.
The name of the game references a term proposed by
Soviet biologist Alexander Oparin in 1924, while trying to
explain the origin of life.
What’s the name/term?

5*
A group of lions is called a pride of lions. Similarly, a group
of owls is named after a type of regular meeting where
elected representatives meet and discuss policies and laws.
What is a group of owls called? The picture is a clue.

Primordial Soup

6
Which Asian capital city's name means “city of love”? From
1919 until 1927, the city was renamed Poltoratsk after a
local revolutionary. In 2013, the city was included in the
Guinness Book of Records as the city with the world's
highest concentration of white marble buildings.

Ashgabat
Capital of Turkmenistan

7
There is often confusion on how to pronounce the
name of this Italian brand. According to their website,
there is no correct way of pronouncing the word.
______ is a brand name with undefined national
identity. And that's the way we like it. As a literary
name, it was used by British travel writer Bruce Chatwin
in his book “The Songlines”, referred to the little ____
______ he usually bought from a stationery store in
Paris.
Which brand?

Moleskine

8
What message does this ad convey? Specific two words.

Don’t Spit

9
The Torta della Nonna is a popular Florentine
dessert. It is a double-crust tart filled with a
delicately flavoured pastry cream. It is ideally paired
with sweet strawberries and a glass of dessert wine.
What is the common English name for this dish?

Grandmother’s Cake

*10
Allan Eustace, senior vice president of knowledge at a
global corporation, was recently part of a project by
Paragon Space Development Corp. and its Stratospheric
Explorer team, whose goal is to develop a
self-contained commercial spacesuit. Mr Eustace had
planned it in the utmost secrecy, working for almost
three years with a small group of technologists and
carrying just two GoPro cameras during his effort.
Which company does Allan work for and whose 2012
effort did he eclipse?

Google
Felix Baumgartner

11
This is the red flower called Butea. The local name
for this flower gives its name to a town in India on
the banks of the Bhagirathi river. The town
witnessed a key event in Indian history. Either give
the local or the anglicized name of the town.

Palashi / Plassey

12
The train connecting Dadar and Mysore is named after a
river, which is one of the few rivers that flows westward in
India. The river originates at Ambutheertha, where it is
believed that Rama broke a bow to win the hand of Sita,
and leads to a natural formation that is the third highest of
its kind in India.
Name the train/river.

Sharavathi
Plunges 253m to form the Jog Falls

13
This is the extract of a training/promotional program that
this brand ran in order to train waiters at restaurants on
how not to provide the free glass of tap water that they
would normally give to patrons. After an internal document
outlining the success of this program leaked in 2001, and
went viral, the company withdrew.
Which company tried this program?

13

Coca Cola

14
The word originates from a mid 19th century English dialect
meaning, 'to soak a wooden vessel'. Since World War 1, the
sense of the term has extended to cover a particular
activity, which is the most familiar context.
Used these days also in reference to making a series of
investments or watching a number of TV show episodes
among others, it is a synonym of extremity in an endeavour.
What’s the word?

Binge

*15
One of the most sparsely populated territories in the world
with just 500,000 people across 266,000 sq.km., it was
occupied by Spain from the 19th century till 1975. After
Spain relinquished power, Mauritania and Morocco fought
a war over this region.
Four years later, Mauritania withdrew, but this territory is
still disputed with Morocco and the SADR both claiming
sovereignty. The UN today lists it under a list of 17 “Non
Self-Governing Territories”.
What is the two-word name of this region?

Western Sahara

16
This book details with the
acutely cheap labour in this
country, where women and
children work in impoverished
conditions to create clothes for
brands like Walmart, Benetton
and Gap, and bring in 70% of
the country’s forex. An
example of “poverty
literature”, which country does
this book deal with?

Bangladesh

17
Ben Edwin Perry was a professor of classics at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1924 to
1960. In an attempt to make some sense of the varied
sources of a particular work, Perry published a survey and
created an eponymous index of 725 narratives of an
Ancient Greek personality, after separating the Greek and
Latin pieces. The standard reference of scholars, what does
the Perry Index reference?

Aesop’s Fables

18
This is the 2014 Tamil-film, Pannaiyaarum Padminium. The
story revolves around the obsession and love of an old
landlord. Who or what is the object of his affection?

Fiat PAL Premier Padmini car

19
Though the cocktail is 19th century, the use of this word in
its name is older. It appears to derive from the Persian
gulab. By itself it was originally a syrup used to make
medicine easier to swallow.
It became part of a standard drink, possibly to mask the
flavour of rough whiskey back in the days.
What cocktail which has now become a tradition at Churchill
Downs?

Kentucky Mint Julep

*20
The place has seen several different dynasties rule over it,
starting with the Rashtrakutas, over to the Chalukyas and so
on. It finally came under Kakatiya control and then on to
the rulers from Delhi.
Originally a wealthy place, it was famed for its flower
gardens—which gave it the name X. In the recent set of
place names to be changed, it has been given the official
name Y, meaning ‘stone city’.
What are X and Y?

Gulbarga and Kalaburgi

21
Circa 1939. A retailer Montgomery Ward had been buying
and giving away colouring books every year, and decided
that making his own book would work well. So he
commissioned an artist Robert May to make one in story
form.
May had not seen the creature that he wanted to use in his
story. His story idea was initially rejected because the
character looked like it favoured frequent swigs of alcohol.
May’s friend Denver Glenn then made a cuter bouncy
character using zoo animals as models.
What resulted?

Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
A red nose was closely associated
with alcoholism and drunkards

22
They became a regular ICC member in 1997 and have
proved their competitiveness ever since. Their first test was
against India in 2000.
But in all these years a particular thing has never happened.
This is ironic considering Jagmohan Dalmiya became ICC
president with their help.
What has not taken place, thereby not giving the said ICC
member a chance at improving their current 0-6 record?

No India-Bangladesh Test series in India
In all the 16 years that Bangladesh have been a Test playing
nation they have never been invited for a tour in India!
During this time we have seen eight different board
presidents.

23
One sense of this word is a person in a group who does not
do as much work as the others. In the case of these birds,
they were given the name from a French meaning—to go
by—because they lived in large migratory flocks.
Once the most abundant bird in North America, accounting
for more than a quarter of all birds, it became extinct in
1914.
What two-word name was this creature known by?

Passenger Pigeon

24
The 1964 Honda SuperHawk CB77 is a rather unremarkable
bike, and is Honda’s first sports model. Motorcycle
enthusiasts aside, others remember the model from its role
in a two-month trip from St. Paul, Minnesota to Petaluma,
California, in 1968. The trip resulted in something that saw
121 rejections before seeing light of day.
Either give a person’s name or give the result connected to
all this.

Robert M Pirsig
Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

*25
He was born Harold Herman Brix. He was an athlete first up
in his career. He competed in the 1926 Rose Bowl, and was
a track-and-field star. Two years later he won a silver in
shot-put at the 1928 Amsterdam Games.
In 1931 he broke his shoulder when filming a football film,
Touchdown. This incident was fortuitous for another person
who went on to make the most of it.
Who was the other guy, and what did he do?

Johnny Weissmuller
He starred in the Tarzan movies and
became a big star
Herman Brix also went on to star in Tarzan movies a few
years later.

26
In January 1850, after a trip to Lahore, Lord Dalhousie’s
wife stitched a chamois leather bag with a loop. It went
under Dalhousie’s belt, tucked under his waistband, and
was on his person day and night for an entire month.
When Dalhousie slept, two massive dogs, Baron and Banda,
were chained to his camp bed, bristling at the sight of
anyone approaching the Governor-General.
What was all this about?

Dalhousie was carrying the Kohinoor
After a trip to Lahore on his first visit as conqueror,
Dalhousie forced the eleven-year-old Maharajah Dalip
Singh to part with the diamond

27
Both words relate to law enforcement in the present-day
context, but in days of yore both related to men who took
care of horses.
The first word is from the Germanic elements of ‘horse’ and
‘servant,’ and denoted a high-ranking officer of state in
medieval times.
The second word from Old French denoted a head officer
of the place were horses were tethered and tended to.
What are the two words?

Marshall
Constable

28
This practice dates back to the Middle Ages. People at the
church used a staff—something akin to a bishop’s crozier—
which signified the person’s role as well. By the 17th century
other devices came into use. Rolled up sheets of paper and even
unadorned hands are seen in pictures from this period.
A large staff was responsible for the death of one Jean-Baptiste
Lully, who injured his foot while entertaining a king. The wound
became gangrenous. The man refused amputation, and he died
two months later.
What practice, that has amended a little in terms of how it is
done, which is just as well seeing what happened to Lully?

Using a baton to conduct an orchestra

29
This trophy for the game between Minnesota and
Wisconsin, one of the longest rivalries in NCAA Football was
instituted in 1948. What is it called, after a giant lumberjack
in American folklore?

Bunyan’s Axe

*30
It was always thought that they were suction pads, but
recent nanoscale photos show that they are covered in a
series of ridges. The ridges are tufted with billions of tiny
tubular elastic hairs, and the hairs bear even tinier spatula-shaped
boots. The natural force between atoms and
molecules is enough to stick the spatulas to the surface of
most anything.
What are we looking at?

A gecko’s foot
will also accept ‘a lizard’s foot’

31
These machines revolutionised exercises. In the words of
the inventor, Arthur Jones, the spiral cams that were
developed for the purpose of regulating the variations of
resistance provided by the machines, are unavoidably
appropriate. They closely resemble a type of shell fish with
a smooth, spiral, chambered shell. What are they called?

Nautilus

32
Rubens painted this theme several times. The story begins
at the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis to which all of the
gods were invited, all except Eris, the goddess of discord.
When she appeared at the festivities, she was turned away,
and in her anger cast a golden apple amongst the
assembled goddesses addressed “To the Fairest.” Three
goddesses laid claim to the apple--Aphrodite, Hera and
Athena. What did it lead to?

The Judgment of Paris
The three goddesses appearing before the shepherd prince,
each offering him gifts for favour. He chose Aphrodite,
swayed by her promise to bestow upon him Helen, the
most beautiful woman, for wife. The subsequent abduction
of Helen led directly to the Trojan War.

33
He was the second of the representatives to sign the
Japanese instrument of surrender on behalf of each of the
Allied Powers. ID the man briefing President Roosevelt, a
man who was in a class of his own.

Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz
after whom the Nimitz class of
nuclear-powered super-carriers is named

34
It made a comeback when Donovan released a hit rock
song in 1968. Although the song didn't feature an actual
___ ___ in the mix, the repeated reference in the song's
lyrics sparked a new curiosity. ID the instrument.

Hurdy Gurdy

*35
By what name, evoking memories of the how plates will look
after a sumptuous seafood lunch, are these patterns called?

Herringbone

36
On September 24, 1988, at Pusan, 450 kilometers from
Seoul, in very rough seas, two Singapore sailors were
thrown into the rough water. They were injured and unable
to right their damaged boat. Upon seeing the capsized
crew, another sailor Lawrence Lemieux, who was nearby,
sailed to rescue them.
Such stuff does not normally get a mention in the sports
pages, but in this case it did.
How do we know Lemieux, in conjunction with 22 others,
including Luz Long?

Winners of the Pierre de Coubertin medal
for sportsmanship

2014 11 KQA Ganesh Nayak Open Quiz prelims

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2014 11 KQA Ganesh Nayak Open Quiz prelims