10Q (October 7, 2024)

1. The city [X] was founded in 1703 by the man in the image below, and named for the apostle whom he was named after. In 1914, it was renamed [Y] to remove the German aspect of the original name, and give it a more local suffix. The religious element was also dropped, with the specific intention of renaming the city after its founder. In 1924, after the death of a popular leader, the name was changed to [Z] in his honour. On 6 September 1991, the original name [X] was restored by citywide referendum. What are [X], [Y], and [Z]?

2. In 2012, this Goan-American (pic below) released the conspiracist political film '2016: Obama's America', an anti-Barack Obama polemic based on his 2010 book 'The Roots of Obama's Rage'. It earned $33 million, making it the highest-grossing political film of all time. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making an illegal campaign contribution to a Senate candidate, and was sentenced to eight months' incarceration, five years' probation, and a $30,000 fine. In 2018, he was issued a pardon by President Donald Trump. Name him.

3. In 1924, a wealthy Massachusetts Prohibitionist named Delcevare King sponsored a contest in which he asked participants to coin a word for a violator of Prohibition rules. Two respondents, Henry Dale and Kate Butler, came up independently with the winning 8-letter word, using for the main part a 5-letter verb meaning 'to jeer at'. They split King’s $200 prize. The word surprisingly managed to pick up steam in English and expand to a meaning that went beyond its Prohibition roots, referring to one who flagrantly violates any rules, not just those related to drinking. What word?

4. This paired term made popular by a path-breaking 1999 Hollywood movie has been used in many contexts since. In the cybersecurity world, it is used to refer to a special type of malware that can take over a CPU in a way that allows it to execute any type of operation, while the operating system "believes" itself to be running directly on physical hardware. The two parts of the terms refer respectively to the concept of infecting the machine on one hand, and helping the operating system to detect the presence of such a hypervisor on the other. What's the 4-word term?

5. Popping up online in the wake of a historic sports double from a fortnight ago, what is this (image below) a state-wise breakdown of?

6. The name of an unscrupulous seducer of women in "The Impertinent Curiosity", a story-within-the-story in 'Don Quixote', has become a word in English for a womaniser. What name/word?

7. 'Clitic' is not baby talk for 'critic'. It's a word for a common element of grammatical usage – the letters that follow what punctuation mark?

8. Adopted in 1954, the state emblem of country [X] has four components – a crescent and star crest above a shield, which is surrounded by a wreath, below which is a scroll. The quartered shield in the centre shows cotton, wheat, tea and jute. The floral wreath, surrounding the shield, is Jasminum officinale (the national flower). The scroll supporting the shield contains the national motto in the national language, consisting of three words translated as 'Faith, Unity, Discipline'. Which country is this?

9. [X] is a tea blend with a distinctive flavour and aroma derived from the addition of oil extracted from the rind of the bergamot orange, a fragrant citrus fruit. Traditionally the term [X] was applied only to black tea; however, today the term is used for other teas that contain oil of bergamot. The blend is named after the 2nd [X], seen in the photo below, who was British Prime Minister in the 1830s. According to his family, the tea was specially blended by a Chinese mandarin for him, to suit the water at Howick Hall, his family seat in Northumberland, using bergamot in particular to offset the preponderance of lime in the local water. Who / what is [X]?

10. The first simple classification of this natural phenomenon was devised by Domenico Pignataro in the 1780s. However, the first recognisable scale in the modern sense of the word was drawn up by P.N.G. Egen in 1828. The first one that was widely adopted was the Rossi-Forel scale, introduced in the late 19th century. Since then numerous scales have been developed and are in use in different parts of the world: the scale currently used in the United States is the Modified [X] scale (MM), while the EMS-98 is used in Europe, the Shindo scale in Japan, the MSK-64 in India, Israel, Russia and throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union, and the Liedu scale in mainland China. Most of these scales contain 12 degrees of differentiation. What do all these scales measure (2-word answer required), and what is [X], the best known of them?

 

Answers
1. X: Saint Petersburg; Y: Petrograd; Z: Leningrad
2. Dinesh D'Souza
3. Scofflaw
4. Blue pill / Red pill malware

5. Indian chess grandmasters
6. Lothario
7. An apostrophe (for example, the 's' in 'what's' or the 'll' in 'I'll', or the 're' in 'you're')
8. Pakistan

9. Earl Grey
10. Earthquake intensity; Mercalli (the Richter scale measures earthquake magnitude)