Quizzically Yours

1)The recently passed law in US allowing homosexuals to be part of the army troops is known by this phrase. the phrase has 3 parts. The first part mandates that military or appointed officials will not ask about or require members to reveal their sexual orientation. The second part states that a member may be discharged for claiming to be a homosexual or bisexual or making a statement indicating a tendency towards or intent to engage in homosexual activities. The third part establishes what is minimally required for an investigation to be initiated. A fourth part was was added to the policy later. It ensures that the military will not allow harassment or violence against service members for any reason.

Now only the first 2 parts are used to denote the law. Give the phrase.

2) Kalaga Prabhu, a Goud Saraswat Brahmin merchant from Cochin was the foremost among the Konakani merchants in Cochin. As punishment for conspiring with the Mysorean king Hyder Ali to overthrow the king of Cochin, Kalaga Prabhu and his son Chorda Prabhu were arrested by the Dutch and exiled with their families for life to the Cape of Good Hope in 1771. What is significant about this?

1. The illustration depicts a 16th century Indian ruler's first meeting with a local dancer in his kingdom. Identify the lady.




2. Overlooking the Bay of Bengal, this 19th century fort was built by a Maratha ruler to commemorate what event? It derives its name from the word 'minaret'.







3. This guy, who was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME, has quite a way with words. Name him.






4. Identify the person bowling. (Hint: 'God help us' err... 'God is Great')




See comments for answers

In 1869 new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it, and decided it must be the butchered remains of X. The way her body had been strewn over a wide area presumably encouraged speculation that parts of her had been found at the Royal Navy victualing yard in Deptford, which was a large facility which included stores, a bakery and an abattoir.
"X" became slang for mutton or stew and then for anything worthless — from which comes the current use of "_____ X"  to mean "nothing at all". It can be seen as a euphemism for "fuck all" – which means the same.
This is not the only example of Royal Navy slang relating to unpopular rations: even today, tins of steak and kidney pudding are known as "baby's head". The large tins the mutton was delivered in were reused as mess tins. Mess tins or cooking pots are still known as X.

 X is Fanny Adams. And the phrase, Sweet Fanny Adams.
Mukunth gets it right.

1) Note left by whom?



2) In India _____ are produced mainly in four major cities. These are Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Whenever a ____ is produced out of these cities, they put an identification mark on every ____ .

Identification mark on the _____ is :
Delhi – A dot.
Mumbai – A diamond.
Hyderabad – A star.
Kolkata – No mark.

3)________ is the largest media conglomerate in India. It is headed by brothers Samir and Vineet Jain. The company has

• eleven publishing centers
• fifteen printing centers
• fifty-five sales offices
  
• over 7000 employees
  
• five dailies, including two of the largest in the country with approx 4.3 million copies circulated daily
  
• two lead magazines (Femina and Filmfare)
  
• twenty-nine niche magazines reaching 2468 cities and towns
  
• thirty-two Radio Stations (including Radio Mirchi)
  
• two Television News Channels
  
• one Television Life Style Channel
  
• turnover in excess of USD 700 million.

Which company?

4) In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul
on 26 June
130 children born in X were seduced
By a Y, dressed in all kinds of colours,
and lost at the place of execution near the koppen.

This is the earliest account of a tragic event in the city of X. Rats were later added to the account as it passed on through generations. People believe today the phrase, "pay the ___" arose from this event. To "pay the ___" now means to face the inevitable consequences of one's actions.The phrase is also attributed to meaning to recompense a minstrel or similar musician in the mediaeval period for services rendered. Minstrels were a significant status symbol, hence refusing payment would be great mark on the nobleman's reputation and a noticeable loss in his social standing.

Funda pls.

5) Operation ______ , was the program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of WW-II (1939–45). It was executed in the context of the burgeoning Cold War(1945–91). One purpose of Operation _____ was to deny German scientific knowledge and expertise to the USSR and UK.

President Harry Truman's order expressly excluded anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism.” Said restrictions would have rendered ineligible most of the scientists the JIOA had identified for recruitment, among them rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces”.

Werner Osenberg, the engineer-scientist heading the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft (Military Research Association), recorded the names of the politically-cleared men to the Osenberg List, thus reinstating them to scientific work.

Name the operation.

6)Identify

7) Identify the brand being advertised.

8)Kraken Opus, works to produce definitive publications featuring the finest writers, stunning images displayed on an epic scale and presented in a beautifully-designed, luxury format. So far, Kraken Opus has successfully produced Opus-es for Manchester United, Arsenal, Burj Khalifa and Michael Jackson to name a few.

For the print version of an Opus for a famous sportsperson, they decided to go for a "blood edition". The signature page will be mixed with X's blood – mixed into the paper pulp so it's a red resin. Kraken asked for a sample of his saliva and used this to create his DNA profile, which will be printed on a two-metre gatefold in the book. The book which weighs 37kg, measures half a metre square and stretches to 852 pages edged in gold leaf. It will be out next February.

Which sportsperson?

9) This grisly phrase is the proper name for the death sentence. The sentence was given to others after 1790 but not carried out. It was the punishment for traitors. Women traitors were burned at the stake. The punishment was most often meted out for high treason - acts of betrayal, or actual or attempted murder of the sovereign.

The victims were first hung by the neck but taken from the scaffold while still alive. The entrails and genitals are then removed, the head cut off and the torso was chopped up. A very famous account of such an execution was when the sentence was meted out to conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. (Robert Keyes, Guy Fawkes, etc.)

The above paras have almost everything you need to guess the phrase. Please do the needful.

Nanda, Sparky and Nabarun get it right in parts

1. Christopher McCandless ('Into the Wild' guy)

2. Indian coins

3. The Times Group

4. Pied Piper of Hamelin

5. Operation Paperclip

6. Simo Hayha (The White Death. More here)

7. Winston Cigarettes

8. Sachin Tendulkar

9. Hung, Drawn and Quartered

The country _____ changed their flag, national anthem and their name recently. The changes were outlined in a new constitution proposed in 2008. The government ordered that the old flags be burnt after being lowered by a person born on a Tuesday. The new flags were to be hoisted by a person born on a Wednesday. The pic shows the new flag of _____.

In 1989, the then rulers changed the English translations of many places, including the name of the country itself to _____. This prompted one scholar to coin the term _____ to refer to the top-down programme of political and cultural reform in the context of which the renaming was done.

Fill the blanks. All the blanks need not be the same.

Prasanna gets this one
It's Burma or any variations of the name. The word is 'Myanmarification'. More here.

X coined the term ___ from the Latin for "broken" and is used to refer to "a rough or fragmented shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole". He passed away recently. He had actually built on and popularised the work done by Y under whom he studied early in his life. Y was involved in World War I and lost his nose in the a fight. After unsuccessful attempts to rejoin the nose, he resigned to wearing a mask for the rest of his life.

Identifying X and the word would do .

manish cracks this

The guy is Benoit Mandelbrot and the word is fractal. FYI, Y is Gaston Julia.

This is the story of a company X and a product Y.

X manufactured Y for the first time in 1923, but these weren't very popular then.

In 1944 a ship called the SS Fort Stikine carrying cotton, gold, ammunition and Y caught fire in Bombay Port. One of the few things to survive the resulting explosion was Y.

For India's first Parlimentary Elections in 1951, this company won the tender to supply the government with 1.7 million ballot boxes.
After the elections were done, the government decided it no longer needed these boxes and promptly returned them to the manufacturer.
The manufacturer in turn converted them into Y.

Give X,Y.

No one gets it. The company is Godrej and the product is obviously bureaus.

__________________, (July 9, 1866 – December 16, 1928), also known as the X , was a zamindar of Kalahasti, a Justice Party leader and the Chief Minister or Premier of Madras Presidency from July 11, 1921 to December 3, 1926. Ramarayaningar was born in Kalahasti on July 9, 1866. He did his schooling in Madras and obtained degrees in Sanskrit, law, philosophy and Dravidian languages before plunging into politics. He was one of the founder-members of the Justice Party and served as its President from 1925 to 1928.

From December 17, 1920 to July 11, 1921, Ramarayaningar served as the Minister of Local Self-Government in the first Justice Party government led by A. Subbarayalu Reddiar. He served as the Chief Minister of Madras Presidency from July 11, 1921 to December 3, 1926. He introduced a number of reforms during his tenure.


gfgfdgdfgdfg gets it right.
Its the Raja of Panagal of Panagal park fame.

______________ to have been derived from trilinga, as in  ___________"the country of the three lingas". According to a Hindu legend, Siva as linga descended on three mountains namely, Kaleswara, Srisaila and Bhimeswara, which marked the boundaries of the country.

Surprised no one gets this. Not enough visitors from the gult land.
Its Telugu indeed.

X alias Y was born circa 1725 in the village of Panaiyur, in Rammnad 'country' in a Hindu farming family of the Pillai Vellala caste. Being too restless in his youth, he left his native village, and converted to Islam. During his days at Tanjore, an English Captain named Brunton educated Y, making him a learned man well-versed in several languages.

From Tanjore he moved to Nellore (in present day Andhra Pradesh), to try his hand as a native physician under Mohammed Kamal, in addition to his career in the army. He moved up the ranks as Thandalgar (tax collector), Havildar and finally as a Subedar and that is how he is referred to in the English records ('Nellore Subedar' or just 'Nellore'). While staying in Arcot he fell in love with a 'Portuguese' Christian (a loose term for a person of mixed Indo-European descent) girl named Maasa, and married her.

He aided Chanda sahib in his siege at Rockfort-Tiruchirapalli(forget it...its just a tribute to the coll) against Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah and the British forces, for the throne of Arcot.Robert Clive( a British commander) , impressed by the charges Y led against the battlements of Arcot, recruited him — and Y put his Nellore sepoys and cavalry at the disposal of the English. Under Major Stringer Lawrence, Y was trained in the European method of warfare and his natural talent in military tactics and strategy blossomed to its full potential.

Over the next decade, as the Company fought the French in the Wars of the Carnatic, it was Y guerrilla tactics, repeatedly cutting the French lines of supply, that did the French in, particularly during Lally's siege of Madras in 1758. Lally was to later describe the role of the Nellore Subedar's sepoys in these words: "They were like flies, no sooner beat off from one part, they came from another."

By 1760 Y had reached the zenith of his career as the 'all-conquering' military commandant. (A few years earlier he had been given the rank of 'Commandant of Company's sepoys'). His greatest supporter during this period was George Pigot, the English governor in Madras. Y was held in very high esteem even after his death by the English and in their opinion he was one of the two great military geniuses India had ever produced; the other being Hyder Ali of Mysore. Y was regarded for his strategy and Hyder Ali for his speed. Major General Sir. John Malcolm said of him almost a fifty years later,"Y was by far the bravest and ablest of all the native soldiers ever to serve the English in India".

Who is X/Y ?

PS: plz try not to google the text, the ans is very much guessable.

gfgfdgdfgdfg cracks this one too.



X- Marudhanayagam
Y- Mohammad Yusuf Khan
Do watch this.

X is the short (and better-known) title of X: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, a historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and terms from Indian languages which came into use during the British rule of India.
   
It was written by Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell and first published in 1886. Burnell had died before the work was finished, and most of it was finished by Yule, who however deeply acknowledges Burnell's contributions. A subsequent edition was edited by William Crooke in 1903, with extra quotations and an index added. The first and second editions are collector's items, though otherwise the second edition is widely available in numerous facsimile reprints.

In Anglo-Indian English, the term son X referred to any festival or entertainment, but especially ceremonies of the Mourning of Muharram. In origin the term is a corruption by British soldiers of "Ya hasan! Ya hosain!" which is repeatedly cried by Shia Muslims as they beat their chests throughout the procession of the Muharram. Yule and Burnell were looking for a catchy title for their dictionary and decided upon this since it was a "typical and delightful example" of the type of the highly domesticated words in the dictionary and at the same time conveyed "a veiled intimation of dual authorship".

In modern english X is used to refer to any word or phrase borrowed by one language from another and modified in pronunciation to fit the set of sounds the borrowing language typically uses.

Sparky gets it.
Its Hobson-Jobson.
read here.

X was originally a nymph but became immortal after marrying Agni. In some versions, she is one of the many divine mothers of Karttikeya. She is considered as a Daughter of Daksha. She is taught to preside over burnt offerings. Her body is said to consist of the four Vedas and her six limbs are the six Angas of the Vedas. Sometimes she is represented as a wife of Rudra.

Who is X...??

Kay Chan gets this one

The answer is Svaha

X is a silver coin that was minted in the Spanish Empire after a currency reform in 1497. The US dollar was also based upon this coin until the Coinage Act of 1857 discontinued the practice. As it was widely used in Europe, the Americas and the far-East, it became the first world currency by late 18th century. What is the more famous phrase used for X?



 Raghul and Sparky get it right.
Its piece of eight from peso.

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.'

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

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