Saarang 2014 SpEnt Prelims with answers

Saarang SpEnt Quiz
Prelims with answers

Aravindabharathi R, Sahil
Mathur, Shivamshu
Prabhakar

1
He was born John Clayton III, and would have inherited his father’s title of “Lord Greystoke”, had fate not intervened. However,
since he was presumed dead, the title instead passed to his cousin
William Cecil Clayton.
As a child, he accidentally put his inky fingers on his father’s journal. Much later, this helped prove his identity as the son of the
former Lord Greystoke by a comparison of fingerprints.
He and his cousin William shared the same love interest. William
proposed to her first, and after she had accepted, X decided to
suppress his identity, since while “it would take away his title and
his lands and his castles”, it would take them away from her also.
Who are we talking about?

2

Identify the voice of this legendary commentator.
Audio

3
The release of Ender’s Game earlier this year was met with protests
from gay-rights groups. They called a boycott of the ﬁlm due to Orson Scott Card’s history of anti-gay rights activism.
In the original book, the aliens Ender is being trained to ﬁght against
are referred to as the “Buggers”, referring to their insect-like appearance. However, since it was also slang for gay men, a different
term was used in the movie to prevent controversy.
What alternate term, meaning “ant-like” and derived from the Latin
word for ant, was used instead?

4. Complete the list.
1. Donald Bradman
2. Bill Ponsford
3. Wally Hammond
4. W. G. Grace
5. Graeme Hick
6. Brian Lara
7. Mike Hussey
8. Ravindra Jadeja
9. ?

5
His real name is Svlad Cjelli, and the name he calls himself by is
an Anglicised version of it. He is a pudgy man who normally wears
a heavy old light brown suit, red checked shirt with a green striped
tie, long leather coat, red hat and thick metal-rimmed spectacles.
Although he is psychic, he refuses to believe in such things. Identify
this “holistic detective” created by Douglas Adams, who might give
you a bill for a vacation in the Bahamas for three weeks as part of
an investigation, due to the “fundamental interconnectedness of all
things”.

6. What sport is being played here?

Video

7
“Ut queant laxis” are a set of verses about John the Baptist, written
by a historian named Paulus Diaconus. It goes something like this:
Ut queant laxis
resonare ﬁbris,
Mira gestorum
famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes.
What were the ﬁrst syllables of each half-line of verse used to
name? “Ut”, being a closed syllable, was later replaced with an
open syllable in 1600. About a century later, the last syllable was
renamed so that every syllable began with a different letter.

The notes of Western music

Ut queant laxis
resonare ﬁbris,
Mira gestorum
famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes.

8
X are very popular in the world of sports today. However, they were
only introduced in the twentieth century.
The word X was introduced into English through a translation of a
comic operetta by the French composer Edmond Audran. It originates from a provincial French word meaning “sorcerer’s charm,
faerie friend, or good luck piece”. In Provence and Gascony, the
word was used to refer to anything which brought good luck to a
household.
What’s the good word?

9. Identify the instrument and the raaga being
played.

Video

10. What is being celebrated here?

Nepal’s qualiﬁcation for the 2014 ICC World
Twenty20

11*

This company is the world’s largest manufacturer of tyres. It began
tyre production in 1962, with the lauch of its ﬁrst product which had
movable tyres. In 2011, it produced 381 million tyres, more than
twice the production of tyre manufacturers such as Bridgestone,
Michelin, and Goodyear. However, none of those three consider
the company in question to be competition.
Which company are we talking about?

12.* Identify these three sporting stalwarts.

Haile Gebrselassie, Mo Farah, Kenenisa Bekele

Venues for the US Open

13.* What novel is this parodying?

Also name the 2010 cinematic adaptation it inspired, which is set in a high
school.

14*

The Tour de France is one of the three ‘Grand Tours’ in cycling.
Name the other two.

Giro d’Italia, Vuelta a España

15*

Actor

Film

Awards

Dustin Hoffman
Tom Hanks
Peter Sellers
Sean Penn

Rain Man
Forrest Gump
Being There
I am Sam

Won, Best Actor
Won, Best Actor
Nominated, Best Actor
-

Sean Penn’s brilliant performance did not gain him many admirers
in the awards circuit. This is the “reasoning” behind someone’s
pithy piece of advice for other actors. What advice?

16*

Shiva Keshavan has carried the Indian ﬂag in the opening ceremonies at Nagano 1998, Salt Lake 2002 and Vancouver 2010. But
in February at Sochi, assuming he leads the contingent, he will not
be able to do so.
Why not?

Answer

Since the Indian Olympic Association is currently suspended by
the International Olympic Council, the athletes are participating as
Independent Olympic Athletes under the Olympic Flag

17*
Among other things, it has been described as the “television equivalent of ritual seppuku”. The term reﬂects a widely-held belief that
since people would rather be out socialising at bars or watching
newly-released movies at certain times during the week, those periods are not at all lucrative for television advertisers, who indirectly
fund the shows in question. However, this is limited to the US, and
in European countries, the very best programming is often scheduled for this time. Shows scheduled for this time often end up getting cancelled due to low viewership ratings. Victims of this include
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Prison Break, Fireﬂy,
Dark Angel, and Dollhouse.
What four-word phrase do we use to refer to this phenomenon?

19*
X is 99.1% chemically pure.
X is made from the reductive amination of phenyl-2-propanone with
CH3 NH2 .
The reductive amination method described above is not a stereospeciﬁc one, and trying it out in the lab will result in a product
which is half-decongestant.
However, since many have vouched for the quality and purity of X,
its manufacturer must be doing something we don’t know to make
the reaction chirally selective. It is perhaps this step that makes X’s
creator extremely proud of the formula he uses to make X.
What is X? Be very, very speciﬁc. (no chemical names.)

20*
The X was originally performed by the singer and fans of a Welshlanguage punk group called U Thant. U Thant’s singer said he was
inspired by the footage of attendants at the funeral of a controversial leader (which was broadcast live on British television), doing
the movement to express their grief at his death. It quickly became
very popular with the fans of Cardiff City and is performed by its
supporters at every match. The X is performed by having both
hands ﬂat pointing towards each other, raised above one’s head,
and repeatedly moving them up and down in a patting motion.
What is X?
Animated GIF

21
“Jambo bwana” is a Kenyan pop song written in Swahili and released in 1982 by the band Them Mushrooms. It has since been
covered by many artists. The chorus roughly translates as follows:
Hi
Hi sir
How are you?
Very ﬁne
Visitors are welcome
In our Kenya
there are no worries

This song is credited with popularising the less-popular variant of a
certain phrase. Which phrase are we talking about?

22. Which infamous match is this 2006 ﬁlm about?

23
In the 1920s, telephone directories such as the Yellow Pages became very widespread, and were the easiest way of locating businesses. These listed many companies in alphabetical order, categorised based on what they sold.
In order to get to the top of the list and be seen by more potential
customers, many businesses began re-branding themselves. Due
to this, when Chuck Jones was looking for a company name, this
was the obvious choice. In his own words:
“Whenever we played a game where we had a grocery store or something
we called it the ___. Why? Because in the yellow pages if you looked,
say, under drugstores, you’d ﬁnd the ﬁrst one would be __ Drugs. Why?
Because "__" was about as high as you could go; it means the best; the
superlative.”

Fill in the blanks.

24

Hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, he was an athletic child with a
passion for basketball, despite being only ﬁve feet tall. In spite of
being coerced to take up cross-country running, he maintained his
love for basketball, eventually playing for his university.
After an amputation in 1977, he embarked on something monumental, which has since led to annual event in over 60 countries.
Name him or the annual event.

25

Scene from the 1984 film Repo Man. In a later review of this film in
the Daily Telegraph, Nick Cowen and Hari Patience suggest that a
certain MacGuffin owes a “debt of inspiration” to something found
in this scene. What MacGuffin, and from which movie?
Video

The Briefcase from Pulp Fiction

26. FITB
Boxing at the Olympics:
Rank

Country

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Total

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

USA
___
Great Britain
Italy
Soviet Union
Hungary
Russia

49
34
17
15
14
10
9

23
19
12
15
19
2
5

38
14
24
17
18
8
12

110
67
53
47
51
20
26

27

Selections from whose oeuvre?
• Upon the Tracing of Footsteps
• Upon the Inﬂuence of a Trade Upon the Form of the Hand
• On the Surface Anatomy of the Human Ear
• On the Typewriter and Its Relation to Crime
• Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, With Some Observations

Upon the Segregation of the Queen

28

This is a practice whereby an employee who is leaving a job is
instructed to stay away from work during the notice period, while
still remaining on the payroll. It is often used to prevent employees
from taking with them up-to-date (and perhaps sensitive) information when they leave their current employer, especially when they
are leaving to join a competitor. This term/practice is often used in
English football circles.
What term?

29

It was a large, Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur which lived in North
Africa around 85 million years ago. Only one fossil of the dinosaur
has been found, consisting of a part of the upper skull, including
a large eye socket. This being its only known physical feature reminded one of its discoverers of a certain fierce-eyed fictional entity,
which this dinosaur is named after.
Which fictional entity?

30

Before Andy Roddick was called A-Rod, which New York Yankee,
who recently confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs,
was christened with the nickname?

31. Fill in the ﬁrst blank.

“People always ask me why "___" sounds exactly like "Taurus",
which was released two years earlier. I know ___ also played "___"
in their live set. They opened up for us on their ﬁrst American tour.”
Audio

32. What completes the list?

• Newport Casino, Newport, Rhode Island
• West Side Club, Forest Hills, New York
• Germantown Cricket Club, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• ?

USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center,
Flushing Meadows, New York

33

The following are excerpts from an interview with Rajiv Chilaka.
What is he talking about?
“I do believe ____ is for kids what Salman Khan is for young guys.
You expect Salman to take his shirt off and ﬁght, and children expect ____ to ﬁght. He is already not wearing a shirt, so that makes
it easier. Even the girls are huge fans of ___.”

34. Put funda.

1.41.161.2146146166.6.61..666661.1441
1664124161221

Corey Anderson’s 36-ball 100

35

___ is a dance move which has been described as a “combination
movement involving a deep squat and a pelvic tilt”. It has been
compared to various traditional African dances such as the Mapuka, which is banned from television broadcasts in Cote d’Ivoire
due to its suggestive nature.
Fill in the blanks with something which originated in the hip-hop
culture of New Orleans.

36

Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have won this tournament together ﬁve times (1997, 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2011). Paes partnered Janko Tipsarevi´ to win in 2012, while Bhupathi ﬁnished
c
runner-up partnering Jonas Björkman in 2005. However, circumstances were such that both Paes and Bhupathi did not play a single match this year.
Which event?

37
This game was created as a female-friendly alternative to the violent video-games which used to dominate arcades. In many interviews, the game’s creator has said that he wanted to make gaming
parlours “desirable places to go on a date” by having games which
“appeal to women and thus to couples”.
The non-violent design of the game was also inﬂuenced by the
fact that its creator wanted his own kids to play his games. When
thought about what women enjoyed, he claimed that the ﬁrst idea
he had was about them eating cakes and desserts, which he incorporated into the game.
Name this game.

38. Which annual sporting event?

The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race

39

The following video is a clip from a recent Channel 4 ad. Which
director’s PoV do we see? Also identify the ﬁlm being shot.
Video

40
In 1993–1994, Nike ran a series of commercials pairing Michael
Jordan with Warner Brothers-owned Bugs Bunny. As a tie-in, Nike
created a line of merchandise which featured a spoof of these two,
combined with a caption.
What was the caption?

Saarang 2014 SpEnt Prelims with answers

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