Quizzically Yours

Its a wide known fact that Bangalore is the Silicon valley of India. But there is popular belief that it is Bangalore and not Chennai because of a decision taken by the then Tamil Nadu government regarding the allotment of land to a MNC X. The late Murasoli Maran once said that "if MGR had been more accomodating to X then Chennai and not Bangalore would have been the silicon valley of India".

Id X.

Kay Chan gets it right..
Texas Instruments.

Connect the text and the pic to India.

Tiswas was a Saturday morning children's British television series which ran from 5 January 1974 to 3 April 1982 and was produced for the ITV network by ATV Network Limited.
It was created by ATV continuity announcer Peter Tomlinson (later to become a regular presenter on the show) following a test period in 1973 when he tried out a few competitions and daft stuff between the programmes. It had a fanatical following among students and parents. The word 'tiswas' means a state of confusion or commotion, but the show's name 'officially' stood for "Today Is Saturday, Watch And Smile".

X was born in Calcutta to George Petersen _______ and Helen Maynard _______.

X was the first Indian athlete to participate in the Olympic Games. He was also the first athlete from India and first athlete representing an Asian nation to win an Olympic medal. He won two silver medals in the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. He came second in the 200 meters behind John Tewksbury of the United States and second in the 200 meters hurdles behind the legendary Alvin Kraenzlein of the United States. X set a world record in the second heat of the 100 metre hurdles which was bettered by Kraenzlein in the final. He reached the final of the 110m hurdles where he placed 5th, and participated in 60m and 100m sprint where he failed to qualify for the final.

Research by Olympic historians has shown that X was chosen to represent Great Britain after competing in the British AAA championship in June 1900. The IOC still regard X as having competed for India and his two medals are credited to India.

X won the Bengal province 100 yards sprint title for seven consecutive years from 1894 to 1900 and set a meet record in 1898-99. He also won the 440 yards run and the 120 yards hurdles. He studied at Saint Xaviers College, Calcutta, and is credited with the first hat-trick in an open football tournament in India, for Saint Xavier's against Sovabazar in July 1897.

He served as Secretary of the Indian Football Association from 1900 to 1902. He moved permanently to England in 1905.
He later moved to the United States where he became a silent movie actor under the screen name _______ Trevor. He acted alongside Hollywood legends like Ronald Colman in movies like Beau Geste (1926), Clara Bow's father in Dancing Mothers(1926) and Tonight at Twelve (1929). He also appeared in several Broadway shows.

He died in Los Angeles of a brain malady.

Sparky gets it..

Its Norman Pritchard.

India is one of the largest suppliers of ________ to the world market. First the ________ is procured and then put through an osmosis process where the color pigment is removed. Then over a period of several weeks the color pigment is saturated back into the _________ with over 54 color options. Another class of _______ which is popular is the European type, which is considered to be much softer than the former.

Hair weave. More here.

• Although X's family was Muslim, he was raised by Hindus for most of his life. His father was a freedom activist. His mother Lateef Fatima was the adopted daughter of Major Shah Nawaz Khan who served as a General in Subhash Bose's INA.

• Once, Timur(14th century emperor) was playing his favourite game chess, when he received the news of the birth of his child, whom he named X, which is the Persian name of a chess move called "castling".

Name X. (note: X isn't the same person in both the cases.)

Kay Chan is spot on..
Shah Rukh is the answer

Okhil Babu's letter to the _______________
(early 1900s - Imagine a Bangla accent)

"I am arrive........and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit. I am therefore went to privy. Just I doing the nuisance that guard making........and I am running with 'lotah' in one hand and 'dhoti' in the next when I am fall over and expose all my shocking to man and female women on plateform.

This too much bad, if I go to make dung that dam guard not wait ______ five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honour to make big fine on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big report to papers."

Put funda.

This letter to the Railways purportedly led to the introduction of toilets in Indian trains.

12 Faith
51 Reliablity
57 Generosity
76 Knowledge
78 Asceticism
41 Disobedience
44 Arrogance
49 Vulgarity
52 Theft
58 Lying
62 Drunkenness
69 Debt
84 Anger
92 Greed
95 Pride
73 Murder
99 Lust

Snakes and Ladders... The original one had these 'virtues' at the numbers besides them. The good ones were ladders and the bad ones were snakes

X’s(the guy with the sword) image was used in several pamphlets circulated by various Agorakshanasabh (“cow protection leagues”) and “wandering ascetics” as a protest against the Muslim practice of beef-eating during the British raj. These pamphlets were produced in a time when Hindu-Muslim riots over cow slaughter occurred in several areas of India. They portrayed X raising a sword above the head of a sacred cow, whose body was illustrated to be a microcosmic paradise in which all the Hindu gods resided.

Id X.

The Thinker cracks it.
Its Kali (as in Kali Yuga).

Very easy for the regular newspaper reader.

Answer here

The next few questions are from India quiz-Festember X.



__________ de Albuquerque(the guy in the pic)(1453 – December 16, 1515) was a Portuguese nobleman, a naval general officer whose military and administrative activities as second governor of Portuguese India conquered and established the Portuguese colonial empire in the Indian ocean. He is generally considered a world conquest military genius. He was responsible for building numerous fortresses to defend key points that he was taking and established a net of diplomatic relations. Shortly before his death he was awarded viceroy and "Duke of Goa" by king Manuel I of Portugal, being the first Portuguese duke not from the royal family, and the first Portuguese title landed overseas.

Despite his fame, the city of Albuquerque in New Mexico is not named after him. It was named after a Spanish Viceroy of Mexico named Don Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, who also held the title Duke of Alburquerque. There is, however, a town near the Spanish-Portuguese border named Alburquerque which may be the root of both names.

However he is immortalised in the form of somthing else which he used to bring on his journeys to Goa......what?
or
Id the blank.

Alphonso mangoes it is..

The Thinker gets this too.

When everyone was wondering what the word meant, the producer of the film where this word occurs frequently and which popularised the word, said on his blog that it is a typical Uttar Pradesh word that means fearless and is used to describe people who defy norms and make their own path in life without worrying about the consequences.

Which word??

Satya Saha and Sparky crack this one...

It is Dabangg.

Yup.. Short Quiz is back.

1) Put funda.

Piss Christ. More here

2) Connect

In the sketch, focus on the guy with the stick.

The lady is Gillian Gibbons, a school teacher working in a school in Sudan. She was arrested in the Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case. The guy referred to in the sketch in Theodore Roosevelt during his days as NYPD chief. The connect hence, is teddy bears.

3) In 1984, followers of X, based in the settlement Z had hoped to incapacitate the voting population of the city so that their own candidates would win the County elections. So they, led by Y, contaminated the salad in ten local restaurants with salmonella, resulting in the first and largest bio-terror attack in the US. It led to around 750 people being infected. When the case was being investigated Y formed a group to assassinate the Attorney Charles Turner in 1985, though the attempt failed and all involved when sentenced.

Id X, Y and also give the names by which these incidents are known.

X- 'Osho' Rajneesh.

Y- Anand Sheela

More here and here

4) ______ laws are American state laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars in order to compensate for cars that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance. These cars are called ____.

Fill the blanks.

Lemon laws

5) X consider themselves a family. They have their own slang, idioms etc. X derived their name from a song by The Insane Clown Posse. In fact, X is the name given to a follower of any Psychopathics Records hip hop group. Shaggy 2 Dope (aka Joseph Utsler), one of the mainstays of ICP, clarified that X is a state of mind and that an X need not listen to ICP.
X was in the news when Tila Tequila was attacked in the 2010 Gathering Of X.

Id X

The Juggalos

6) N began its life as two companies: L (or Lak Hui) Chemical Industrial (est. 1947), which made cosmetics and M (est. 1958), a radio manufacturing plant. L became famous in Korea for creating the L Cream, with a container bearing the image of the Hollywood starlet Deanna Durbin. M evolved from manufacturing only radios to making all sorts of electronics and household appliances.

In 1995, LM changed its name to N. Since N was a conglomerate, there was a whole range of companies that also changed their names, such as N Chemicals, N Telecom, and even a baseball team called the N Twins. All these adopted the current tagline of the group, which is rumoured to be a backronym.

Interestingly, N denies that their name now stands for LM… or any other words. They’re just "N."

N- LG L- Lucky M-Goldstar

7) Put funda again.

Here please..

8) Orion III was a spacecraft featured on the cover of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the story, Orion III, a “space clipper”, is a 213-foot-long commercial spacecraft operated by J airlines. When William Anders, took a very famous snap of the earth K(shown in the postage stamp) while orbiting the moon, J’s chief Juan Trippe announced that J will start taking reservations for space travel. J established a waiting list for future flights to the moon. Id J and K. Also what is the significance of the lines on the postage stamp?

K- Earthrise

J- PanAm (Pan American)

The earliest claimed usage of X is a 1790 court record from Sumner County, Tennessee, discovered in 1859 by a Tennessee historian named Albigence Waldo Putnam, in which Andrew Jackson apparently said:

"proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Gasper Mansker, for a Negro man, which was ______."

What is widely regarded as the earliest known example of the modern "X" being set down on paper is a quintessential "we arrived X" notation in the hand-written diary of William Richardson going from Boston to New Orleans in 1815, about a month after the Battle of New Orleans. One entry says "we traveled on to N. York where we arrived all well, at 7 P.M." By most reckonings a later similar entry uses "X" in place of "all well": "Arrived at Princeton, a handsome little village, 15 miles from N Brunswick, ________ & at Trenton, where we dined at 1 P.M."


Id X (the blanks are variations of X)

prasanna cracks it...

Its the word 'Okay' or 'O.K.'

Id the duo and also give their Indian counterpart.

Sparky and Kamal Rathi together get it right.
The duo are Duckworth and Lewis and their Indian counter part is the  Mallu engineer V.Jayadevan whose method is used in the challenger trophy.

Connect and put funda.

Nice one Sparky
Danny Boyle's the answer
He's gonna be the artistic director of the London 2012 Olympic Games

Connect and put funda.

Sparky gets it right

Sir Peter Blake is the connect.

And so the all auspicious 101st post, and that too from a visitor...couldn't get better.

A moderately tough one... Connect again

The connect is the novel Heart of Darkness. The leftmost guy is Joseph Conrad, the author of the novel. The woman is Eleanor Coppola, Francis Coppola's wofe who made a documentary on the novel. Footages from the documentary were used in the movie Apocalypse Now. The middle guy is Orson Welles, who wanted to make a movie on the novel as his first movie. He was also the first choice to play Col.Kurtz in the Apocalypse Now, but ended up making Citizen Kane.

Sri Lankan mothers frightened their children with the X bogeyman, and to this day a particularly cunning person
is referred to as an _______.
The word 'X', meaning 'streetsmart',entered the Tamil language and is widely used in the inner parts of tamilnadu.

X?/funda?

clue: A tamil movie's name is a reference to X.


Answer is Emden and the tamil movie is Emden Magan.
Emden is basically the name of the German ship which attacked the port of Madras during the second world war. From then onwards, its generally associated with "terror" men :)

Connect and gimme a double Grammy winning artist.....

Sparky gets it right.
Its Harold faltermeyer.

The next few questions will be a build up to the India quiz @ Festember X. These are the previous year questions set by myself and my seniors Mohawk and Voidy .

Let the balls roll...

Put Funda.

Bhishma was once looking for wives for the Princes of the Kuru race. He went to the Kingdom of X, whose princess was supposed to be the greatest beauty of the land of Bharata. During the swayamvar however, the princess of X refused to marry the Kuru Prince. Bhishma then attacked the kingdom of X, defeated the King and imprisoned the entire population, giving them one handful of rice to eat a day.The King decreed that the handful of Rice be given to his youngest son, so that the family lineage be continued. One by one, the entire population starved to death, as was expected. As he lay dying, the King called his youngest son and asked him to swear revenge on the entire Kuru Race and be the cause of it's downfall.He then asked him to salvage the bones of his right hand and perform a certain act that was to aid him in his Quest for vengence.

Who? What act? Put full fundaes...

cupidcobra1 gets it right.
Its shakuni who made a dice with his fathers bones.

X  aka Y gave a faked press conference at the White House gates on 29 September 2006, just one day before an official visit of Z's president. The Z government hired two Western public relations firms to counter Y's claims, running a four-page advertisement in The New York Times implicitly rebutting many of the claims made by Y.
Z has since changed their strategy by playing along, going so far as inviting Y to visit Z.

Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Steve Martin, all of whom are huge fans of X, contacted him about having a cameo in the movie. But X refused because it would have ruined some of the gags if they knew what was going on.


Sparky is spot on..

Gimme a song/phrase connecting the three

Put funda.

 Family Plot
In silhouette through the door of the Registrar of
Births and Deaths, 41 minutes into the movie.

Frenzy
In the center of a crowd, wearing a bowler hat, three
minutes into the film; he is the only one not applauding the speaker.

Topaz
Being pushed in a wheelchair in an airport, half an hour in.
Gets up from the chair, shakes hands with a man, and walks off to the right.

Torn Curtain
Early in the film, sitting in the Hotel d’Angleterre
lobby with a blond baby.

Marnie
Entering from the left of the hotel corridor after Tippi
Hedren passes by, five minutes in.

Birds,The
Leaving the pet shop with two white terriers as Tippi
Hedren enters.

Strangers on A Train
Boarding a train with a double bass fiddle as
Farley Granger gets off in his hometown, early in the film.

Stage Fright
Turning to look at Jane Wyman in her disguise as
Marlene Dietrich’s maid.

Under Capricorn
In the town square during a parade, wearing a blue
coat and brown hat, in the first five minutes. Ten minutes later, he is one of three men on the steps of Government House.

Rope
His trademark can be seen briefly on a neon sign in the view from the apartment window, approximately 55 minutes into the movie.

Paradine Case, The
Leaving the train and Cumberland Station,
carrying a cello.

Notorious
At a big party in Claude Rains’s mansion, drinking
champagne and then quickly departing, an hour after the film begins.

Non exhaustive list of what?

Konvict and Sparky get it right.
its Hitchcock cameos.

In printing, a X was a printing plate cast from movable type. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. X came to mean such a ready-made phrase. The French word X comes from the sound made when the matrix is dropped into molten metal to make a printing plate.

What is X?

Cliche
niru gets it

Put funda behind the comic. (forgive the extensive censoring)

Inception it is...

Sparky gets it right

The _________ lasts around 5secs and consists of approximately ten sounds.
The trademarked description of the sound goes....

•     a semi-long sound in the chest register,
•     a short sound up an interval of one octave plus a fifth from the preceding sound,
•     a short sound down a Major 3rd from the preceding sound,
•     a short sound up a Major 3rd from the preceding sound,
•     a long sound down one octave plus a Major 3rd from the preceding sound,
•     a short sound up one octave from the preceding sound,
•     a short sound up a Major 3rd from the preceding sound,
•     a short sound down a Major 3rd from the preceding sound,
•     a short sound up a Major 3rd from the preceding sound,
•     a long sound down an octave plus a fifth from the preceding sound. 

Sparky gets this too..

1. What is the main source of income for this set of pacific islands?



2. X means 'whole burnt sacrificial offering to a god' in Greek. It is substituted to Ha-Shoah in Hebrew and Porajmos or Samudaripen in Romani. Identify X.

3. That’s the pic of the Raffles Hotel in Perth and the Canning highway leading up to it. Because the Hotel is at the bottom of a steep hill, the intersection there has had many accidents and crashes. What did this inspire?

 

3) Highway to Hell

Sparky gets the second alone..

Connect the course to the other two

X is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word for “something imitated". Supporters of the concept regard X as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.
Id X.

Meme

Put funda /connect.

The 'Devil' covers