10Q (May 2, 2024)

1. In Middle Persian, it was known as Spahān, but since New Persian did not allow initial consonant clusters such as 'sp', a vowel was added in front of the name. In Ptolemy's 'Geographia', it appears as Aspadana, which translates to 'place of gathering for the army'. It is believed that Spahān derived from spādānām 'the armies', the Old Persian plural of spāda. What is this place called today? Also, what related word came through Persian into Urdu from the same root?

2. Shown below is the patent drawing for a rotoscope, a device/ technique invented by Max Fleischer, a Polish-American animator, inventor, film director and producer, and studio owner. Fleischer used it in his series 'Out of the Inkwell' starting around 1915, using his brother Dave dressed in a clown outfit. What is rotoscoping used for?

3.  The [X] Estate in present-day Kolkata consists of [X] House (in pic below) and the 30-acre grounds surrounding it. The estate originally belonged to Mir Jafar Ali Khan, who became Nawab of Bengal after siding with the British to oust Siraj-d-Daulah in 1757. He gifted the estate to Warren Hastings, then Governor-General of  Bengal, after which it became the seat of the Governors-General of India. After the capital moved from Kolkata to Delhi in 1911, it served various functions until, in 1948, it became the home of the National Library of India. The word [X] comes from a combination of two Italian words that mean 'beautiful' and 'view'. What is [X]?

 

4. The list of first-class cricket scores of 400 or more has 11 items, with two names appearing twice each, one at #s 1 and 11, the others at #s 5 and 6. Name them both. Also, name the latest cricketer to join the list, which he did in July 2022, during a match between Glamorgan and Leicestershire.

5. The flower known as 'viola' and 'violet' in English is also commonly known by a name that is derived from the French word for 'thought', as the flower was regarded as a symbol of remembrance. What is that name, which in the 20th century also went on to become a derogatory slang word for an effeminate man?

6.  Traditionally, an uchiwa is made of bamboo. Today many uchiwa are made of plastic but still keep the shape of the original bamboo item. It's not uncommon to receive plastic uchiwa printed with advertisements, distributed free in the streets. One report suggests that an average of 36,000 uchiwa are produced every day, some 90% of them by craftsmen in Marugame city, in the Kagawa prefecture of Japan. What is an uchiwa?

7. Satras are institutional centres or monasteries associated with the Ekasarana tradition of Vaishnavism, particularly in the Indian state of Assam and neighbouring regions. In what isolated location specifically are Assamese saint Sankardeva and his disciple Madhavdeva said to have set up the first of them, having taken refuge there in the 15th century? The place continues to house 20-odd extant satras, down from a one-time count of 65.

8. The company [X] got its start as Chouinard Equipment, selling the climbing gear that Yvon Chouinard was making for his friends. Its first venture into apparel was equally functional, designed to resist rock: sturdy corduroy trousers, stiff rugby shirts like the ones Yvon brought back from a climbing trip in Scotland. When the clothing started to take off, they decided to separate the garments from the gear; they just needed a good name. As Chouinard explained: “To most people, especially then, [X] was a name like Timbuktu or Shangri-la—far-off, interesting, not quite on the map.” Using a name coined by Magellan in 1520 for an area populated – according to members of his expedition – by giants, what is [X]?

9. A study whose results were published online in the April 2017 journal of JAMA Dermatology, found the following dermatologic characteristics in the subjects studied:
-- Alopecia, or hair loss (30 percent)
-- Dark under-eye circles (30 percent)
-- Wrinkles (20 percent)
-- Facial warts (20 percent)
-- Facial scars (20 percent)
What subjects were they scrutinising, to try and find common patterns among them?

10. Remove one letter from the name of the brand shown at left below, and you will have the name of the language whose alphabet in the Baybayin script is shown alongside. Give me the names of the brand and the language.

 

Answers
1. Isfahan, sipahi
2. Converting live action into animation or compositing real-life and animated characters
3. Belvedere
4. Brian Lara, who neatly brackets this records category with scores of 501* for Warwickshire against Durham in 1994 and 400* in a 2004 Test match versus England, respectively the highest individual first-class and Test scores; and Bill Ponsford, who scored 437 and 429 for his home state of Victoria against Queensland (1927) and Tasmania (1923), respectively. The latest on the list is Englishman Sam Northeast.
5. Pansy, from 'pensée'
6. A Japanese hand fan

7. Majuli Island on the Brahmaputra in Assam
8. Patagonia
9. Hollywood movie villains
10. Tagalong / Tagalog

10Q (Apr 23, 2024)

1. Occurring 12 times in the singing of the Portuguese version of a well-known seasonal song, what does the line "Uma perdiz numa pereira" translate to in English?

2. This question is linked in a way to the previous one. Siphonophorae (from Greek siphōn 'tube' + pherein 'to bear') is an order of marine creatures that appear to be individual organisms. But each specimen of a siphonophore is in fact composed of multiple zooids that have independent but symbiotic functions. Carl Linnaeus described the first siphonophore in 1758,and named it after a type of warship that he felt the visible part above the water resembled. What did he call it?

3.  The visual below shows a chart drawn up in 1930s Germany to categorise the population into Germans, 'mixed blood: first degree', 'mixed blood: second degree', and Jews. Citizens had different rights and duties depending on which of these categories they fell in. The rules were known as the [X] Laws, after the city in which they were decreed in 1935, a city that was the scene of actions of a redeeming nature a decade later. Name the city [X].

4.  Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is a transparent thermoplastic, commonly known as acrylic. The material was developed in 1928 in various laboratories, but was first brought to market in 1933 by the Rohm and Haas Company, under the trademark [X]. It has since been sold under many different names, including Acrylite, Lucite and Perspex. What was the original trade name [X]?

5. Vasco da Gama gave this region the name [X] because he sailed parallel to its coast around Christmas in 1497, while searching for a route from Europe to India. A city established there by Europeans in 1824 was first called Port [X], and later renamed after the man referenced in the pic below, who was the governor of the Cape Colony at the time. That made it one of those unusual place names with an apostrophe in it, but that was dropped later. What was the remaining 6-letter name of the city, which is now the 3rd most populous in its country?

6. Deriving from a corresponding term where two people are involved, what 5-letter neologism refers to such showdowns as the one between Blondie, Angel Eyes and Tuco at the end of 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; the climactic ending to 'Reservoir Dogs' involving the characters Mr. White, Nice Guy Eddie, and Joe Cabot; and the swordfight between Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and James Norrington in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'?

7. At the end of the monsoon months of Septermber and October, especially on moonless and foggy dark evenings, hundreds of disoriented birds descend on this village in Assam, many of them crashing to earth and dying. Until recent efforts at education reduced the practice, those that survived were often beaten to death with bamboo poles by locals who believed the phenomenon to be the harbinger of evil spirits. Name the village.

8. Which 1995 movie that won 5 Academy Awards was based on an epic poem by 15th-century British minstrel Blind Harry, titled “The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace”?

9. This 11-letter French word, which made its way as it is into English in the 19th century,  literally means 'clear-seeing'. Separated into two approximately equal parts, and with an 'e' then added at the end of the first part, it was the name of a medium who became the Black Widow, the first costumed, superpowered female protagonist in comic books, making her first appearance in August 1940 [pic below]. The character is not related to later versions of the Black Widow. What's the word?

10. There is no evidence of any Native Americans actually having used this 3-word phrase in reference to the afterlife. Its earliest appearance is in the last chapter of James Fenimore Cooper's most famous novel, 'The Last of the Mohicans', published in 1826. The title character Chingachgook says (after the death of his son Uncas), "Why do my brothers mourn? why do my daughters weep? that a young man has gone to the _____ _______ _______; that a chief has filled his time with honor?" Fill in the blanks.

 

Answers
1. "A partridge in a pear tree" – the song is the Portuguese version of 'The 12 Days of Christmas'; the name Pereira means 'pear tree'
2. Portuguese man o' war
3. Nuremberg
4. Plexiglas
5. Durban, after Benjamin D'Urban

6. Truel
7. Jatinga
8. 'Braveheart'
9. Clairvoyant – the character's name was Claire Voyant
10. Happy hunting grounds

10Q (Apr 8, 2024)

1. Tune Group Sdn Bhd (Sendirian Berhad, meaning 'private limited') is a corporation founded in 2001 by [A] and Kamarudin Meranun. It has subsidiaries in the telecommunication, financial services, hotel, airlines, sports, media and other creative industries. We know [A] mainly for his involvement in one of those subsidiaries. The son of a Goan doctor and an Asian-Portuguese mother, who is [A]?

2. [B] is credited with the earliest known use of the word 'neologize': “Necessity obliges us to neologize,” he wrote in an 1813 letter to the grammarian John Waldo. “I am a friend to neology,” he told John Adams seven years later. “It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony.” Name this US President, who contributed such words to  the English language as 'belittle', 'Anglophobia', pedicure, and 'odometer'.

3. Having conducted business in much of southern India in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Australian horse breeder Henry Madden bought a mansion in Melbourne in around 1906-7. He named his estate after a region in India with which he had business ties, which is why there is in present-day Melbourne a suburb named for a now non-existent Indian princely state. The pic below shows a few of the streets there (the name of the area is blanked out in one of them). What is the name of the suburb, that has been listed as a heritage site by the Australian Government called the __________ Conservation Area?

4. Shown below is a Persian dish called tah-deeg, which consists of rice that has formed a golden crispy crust but hasn’t burnt – made possible by factoring in the right amount of oil, the right amount of time, the right temperature, the type of rice, etc. A reference to the location in the cooking vessel where it forms, what does the term 'tah-deeg' mean?

5. Considered a form of ancestor worship, this ritual performance, also known as Kaḷiyāṭṭaṁ or Tiṟa, differs from village to village in terms of masks and costumes, movements and chants. Some households have their own specific variants. Studies have documented up to 456 types of performances. What is this ritual art form of nothern Kerala and southern Karnataka?

6. In his groundbreaking essay ‘Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen’ (1906) – conventionally translated into English as ‘On the Psychology of the [X]’ – German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch  made the case that when we regard a thing as creepy, it’s because we are uncertain about what kind of thing it is. Jentsch’s most compelling example turns on uncertainty about whether a thing is animate or inanimate. Jentsch’s theory of creepiness faded into obscurity until Masahiro Mori, then a professor of engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, rediscovered it more than half a century later. Mori wrote a short but immensely influential article entitled ‘Bukimi No Tan’ (1970), which later appeared in English under the title ‘The [XY]’. What phrase [XY], associated with both robotics and animated films, came into existence thus?

7. Smitten by the beauty of tatreez embroidery from the very first time she laid eyes on samples some 20 years ago – as worn by Maali Siam, the wife of the then ___________ ambassador to Japan [in photo below] – Japanese designer Maki Yamamoto started the ___________ Embroidery Obi Project in 2014, a social enterprise in which she collaborates with women from the relevant region of the world to embroider tatreez-inspired obis to be worn with kimonos in Japan. What demonym fills the blanks (both blanks are the same)? Tatreez is the name of the style of embroidery used in the region in question.

8. (a) The first part of the word '____stone' comes from an Old English word which means 'way, journey, course'. What is the full 9-letter word that refers to magnetite, an oxide of iron that forms a natural magnet, but is also used in a more general sense for anything that strongly attracts?
(b) An associated 8-letter word with the same first part originally referred to Polaris, but is used in a metaphorical sense for anything that serves as an inspiration, model, or guide. What is that word?

9. The ______ghosh-class submarines are Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines in active service with the Indian Navy. The individual names of all the subs begin with the part blanked out. The class has been particularly disaster-prone.
-- On January 10, 2008, the class lead ship ______ghosh [pic below] collided with a cargo ship and was out of service for a month.
-- On February 26, 2010, a fire on board INS ______rakshak, caused by a defective battery, killed one sailor and injured two others.
-- On August 14, 2013, an explosion followed by a fire occurred on the ship above (the ______rakshak),which sank in the dock.
-- On January 17, 2014, the ______ghosh ran aground while returning to the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.
-- On February 26, 2014, smoke was detected on board INS ______ratna resulting in 7 sailors being rendered unconscious and 2 killed.
What word – a Sanskrit word for the environment in which the subs operate, but perhaps most familiar to us as the name of a player of racket sports – fills the blank?

10. First published in 1866, "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") by Paul Verlaine is one of the best known poems in the French language. Nearly 8 decades later after it was written, the opening lines from the poem were used to 'forecast' what? The lines were:
"Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne..." (meaning "The long sobs of violins of autumn...")
and
"Blessent mon cœur / D'une langueur / Monotone." (meaning "Wound my heart with a monotonous languor."

Answers
1. Tony Fernandes, the subsidiary in question being AirAsia
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. Travancore
4. Bottom of the pot
5. Theyyam
6. Uncanny Valley
7. Palestinian
8. (a) Lodestone
(b) Lodestar
9. Sindhu
10. D-Day – the lines were broadcast by the Allies over BBC Radio Londres as coded messages to the French Resistance to prepare for the Normandy landings

10Q (Apr 3, 2024)

1. The Portuguese word for 'stolen' is also a Goan surname, and the surname of this Canadian singer born of Portuguese parents [pic below]. Coincidentally, it also forms the name of India's biggest retailer of musical instruments, which has an outlet in Panjim. Name the singer you see below. [Half point if you get only the surname, a full point for the full name.]

2. The word / name in the question above originates from a Latin word for 'thief', which also gives rise to:
(a) an English adjective for someone acting in a secretive or guilty manner; and
(b) the English name for an animal from the family Mustelidae, which includes weasels, stoats, badgers, otters, martens, and wolverines.
What are (a) and (b)?

3. The Venezuelan city of Ciudad Bolivar used, till 1846, to be named [X], which gave its name to the Congress of [X] (1819), the [X] tree, and the House of [X], which is the maker of one of the most famous accompaniments to alcoholic drinks. What is [X]?

4. The title story of the anthology whose cover you see below formed the basis of which 2000 Bollywood movie, that was the debut film of two scions of famous Hindi film families?

5. In its native Swiss German, the word [A] meant 'knock' or 'thrust'. Its use in English grew during the reporting of the tumultuous Kapp [A] of 1920, in which Wolfgang Kapp and his right-wing supporters attempted to overthrow the German Weimar government. What's the word [A], that lends itself to punny headlines such as "When [A] comes to shove" and "One last [A]"? The correct spelling is important.

6. In 2019, Sri Lankan author and illustrator Sybil Wettasinghe enlisted the help of students from all across the country to contribute writings, drawings and poetry to complete the story in her new book, 'Wonder Crystal'. The outcome of that effort resulted in what world record for the novel, recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2020?

7. While performing religious rituals in the Panchganga River in October 1899, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj of the princely state of Kolhapur noticed that the priests were not chanting mantras from the Vedas, but from the Puranas. The explanation given for this by the priests left such a mark on Shahu that it spurred the young Chhatrapati to action in a related aspect, leading to what first in India being introduced in Kolhapur in 1902?

8. This book [cover below] – the result of the authors' travels in the region in 1938 – was a personal recounting of which war, that began on July 7, 1937, with 'the Marco Polo Bridge incident', and was later subsumed into World War 2?

9. Signed by King Kalâkaua under threat of violence (and therefore known as the Bayonet Constitution), the 1887 Constitution adopted in 1877 in which Kingdom stripped the king of much of his authority, and introduced a property qualification for voting, which disenfranchised most locals and immigrant labourers, and favored the wealthier white settler community? It was the first step in the annexation of that Kingdom into its coloniser nation in 1898.

10. This statue [pic below] in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, is of someone born in that city in 1876, whose life saw a sea change at the age of 18, after she answered an advertisement in a Dutch newspaper placed by Dutch Colonial Army Captain Rudolf MacLeod who was living in the then Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and was looking for a wife. Who is it? You can give either her real name or the one we are more familiar with.

 

Answers
1. Nelly Furtado
2. (a) Furtive
(b) Ferret
3. Angostura

4. 'Refugee'

5. Putsch
6. Book with most alternative endings (it has 1,250 possible endings)
7. First caste-based job reservations in India. The priests had explained that only brahmins had the right to perform ‘Vedokta’ rituals and since Marathas were ‘shudras’, they could perform rituals only from the Puranas. The administrative order of 1902, decreed by Shahu, brought in reservations in government jobs for backward castes.
8. Sino-Japanese War
9. Kingdom of Hawaii
10. Mata Hari

10Q (Mar 20, 2024)

1. The right-wing historian P.N. Oak (1917-2007) was well known for his crackpot theories, which the RW world loves to repeat and amplify. From his mind arose such gems as that the Taj Mahal is actually a Shiva temple called Tejo Mahalaya, that the word 'Christianity' came from the Sanskrit words 'Krishna-neeti', and that the name 'Abraham' comes from 'Brahma'. In the same vein, he proposed that this placename comes from the Sanskrit for 'garden' or 'grove', whereas it is actually likely to have originated from the name of a Roman deity thought to endow infants with the capacity for speech, evidenced by their first wail (the technical term for which is rooted in the same deity's name). What place am I referring to?

2. Located in Guildford, Surrey, in the UK, where the book's author spent his last years and is buried, the sculpture shown below – created by local sculptor Edwin Russell in 1984 – depicts the opening scene from which 1865 book?

3. Talking about books, a roman à clef is a novel in which real persons or actual events are presented in a disguised version. The genre gets its name from the fact that early booksof the type sometimes included a list matching fictional characters with their real-life counterparts, that helped readers recognize the players. The term roman à clef accordingly translates to 'novel with a ___'. What small word fills the blank?

4. The clergyman educator in the image below only had a short stint in India, but there are well-known schools named after him in Shimla, Bangalore and Nagpur. Having been put in charge of the diocese at Calcutta, he moved there from Britain in 1858, and established a number of schools that brought British-style education to India. On 6th October, 1866, he had consecrated a cemetery at Kushtia on the Ganges, and was crossing a plank leading from the bank to the steamer when he slipped and fell into the river. He was carried away by the current and never seen again. Name him (a religious title and surname will do).

5. Penateka Comanche chief Tosahwi (c. 1805/10 – c.1878/80, pictured below) engaged in many raids in the American Southwest in the 1860s, but in 1867-68 became the first Comanche leader to surrender to the US military, at Fort Cobb in the Indian Territory. Tosahwi reputedly told General Philip Sheridan, "Me Tosahwi. Me good Indian," to which Sheridan supposedly replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were ____." This led to the coining of a derogatory racist slogan that was resurrected during the Vietnam War as "The only good red is one that's ____". Fill in the blank (single word).

6. This spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, it is the westernmost town of the country, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands. In World War 2, it was the first German city to be captured by the Allies. Its French name is Aix-la-Chapelle; the German name places it at or near the top of alphabetical lists of cities of the world. What's that name?

7. Obviously, this term in the military context has nothing to do with either cricket or superheroes. Instead, it traces its roots back to the Late Latin 'bastum', meaning 'packsaddle', as it originally referred to a soldier in charge of a horse that carried the packsaddle with the officer's kit during a campaign. What 6-letter word is this?

8. The largest air base in Asia, it is an Indian Air Force base under the Western Air Command. It is the home of the C-17 Globemaster, the backbone of Heavy Air Lift division of the IAF. Since the Union Government opened a civil enclave in its space in 2019, allowing commercial flights, it has been under a legal cloud as it violates earlier directives vis-a-vis the operational territory of Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. Named after a river in the vicinity, what airport with the IATA code HDO is this?

9. The Portuguese word for people of mixed European and Amerindian descent in South America derives from an Arabic word for 'slave' which is used for a dynasty that ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1206 to 1290. Give me either word.

10. The sovereignty of nations has been a subject of much chest-beating in recent years. What's a related word for a political status where a region or people constitutes a tributary to a more powerful entity that controls its foreign affairs while allowing the tributary vassal state some limited domestic autonomy? The term was originally used to describe the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its surrounding regions.

Answers
1. Vatican, perhaps from Vagitanus (a baby's first cry is called a vagitus); Oak proposed 'vatika' as the root word
2. 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland'
3. Key
4. Bishop Cotton
5. Dead
6. Aachen
7. Batman
8. Hindon (or Hindan)
9. Mameluco / Mamluk
10. Suzerainty

10Q (Mar 12, 2024)

1. Formed in 2019 by Andre Ventura, a guy who likes to make the Nazi salute, a right-wing populist party named Chega (meaning 'Enough') won 48 out of 230 seats in the legislature of which country in election results declared on March 11, 2024? That was four times the 12 seats they won during the previous elections in 2022!

2. This new plaything (pic below) is starting to gain a lot of ground on social media and in real life. Called Shashibo, its 36 rare earth magnets allow the cube to be taken apart and re-constituted into 70 different forms. Shashibo is an acronym (by syllables, not letters) whose expansion is pretty much a description of the toy. What does Shashibo expand to?

3. The map below gives you the global office distribution of what 'enterprise mobility solutions' company founded and headed by a man of Goan origin, Carl Rodrigues?



4. 1904-1967: Lyttelton Township
1967-1995: Verwoerdburg
1995-present: what name derived from the name of a cricket ground?

5. The End of the Road World Tour, which began on January 31, 2019, in Vancouver, Canada and concluded on December 2, 2023 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, was the final concert tour by the American rock band [X]. It has also been referred to as 'One Last [X]'. Which band? 

6. The event being promoted by the poster below is held annually in the locations and around the times mentioned on it. What is the word blanked out, which refers to a family of creatures called Lampyridae?

7. The word used for the object you see at this Victorian woman's waist – a decorative clasp or hook from which chains holding a watch, purse, keys, etc. were suspended – is a word referring to the lady of the manor (who would generally be in charge of the keys to the household, its petty finances, timetables, etc. What is the 10-letter word, derived directly from the French?



8. Known as the Huntress, this DC Comics character's 'real' name is Helena [X]. In an alternative universe established in the early 1960s and referred to as 'Earth-Two', she is the daughter of a superhero and his enemy-turned-ally lover. What is [X]?

9. A candi (pronounced [tʃandi]) is a Hindu or Buddhist temple in Indonesia. In Thailand a Buddhist stupa is called a chedi. Both these terms are reckoned to have evolved from what Sanskrit term for a hall within a stupa (or the stupa itself) such as the one shown below, which is at Bhaja Caves near Pune?

10. Below are two versions of the flag of Gilead, an autocratic religious nation, that appear in the television adaptation of a famous 1985 novel. The first one is seen while the story is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the second, more fascistic one appears after the narrative shifts to Washington DC. Name the novel.

Answers
1. Portugal
2. Shape Shifting Box
3. SOTI
4. Centurion
5. Kiss
6. Fireflies

7. Chatelaine
8. Wayne (will accept Kyle)

9. Chaitya
10. 'The Handmaid's Tale'

10Q (Mar 7, 2024)

1. What place name with religious connotations – also a surname in some places, including here in Goa – comes from a Hebrew word meaning 'to guard', and is likely cognate with an Arabic / Urdu word related to keeping watch?

2. In 'Little Girl Lost' (1990), a memoir that she wrote when she was just 15 years old, [X] says: “I had my first drink at age nine, began smoking marijuana at 10, and at 12 took up cocaine.” Who is [X]?

3. Deriving from the Italian 'macchietta', meaning 'sketch', and ultimately from Latin 'macula', meaning 'spot', what is a maquette, created by architects and sculptors during the course of their work?

4. Launched by the Kerala government in 1997, this flagship initiative is billed as the largest women’s network in the world, with 4.58 million members across 306,551 neighbourhood groups. What is the name of the programme, whose logo is shown below?

 

5. Whose statue is this?

6. Started as a regional air-charter company called Tradewinds Charters in 1975 and operational until 2021, this was a wholly-owned subsidiary and regional carrier of which airline?

7.  In March 2023, the Bangla Sahitya Sabha (BSS), a newly formed literary body in Assam, organised its first-ever state-level conference in Guwahati. The organisers felicitated their guests and delegates with a unique piece of cloth – stitching together a revered cultural symbol of the Assamese with its Bengali counterpart. Though their intentions were perhaps good, what that led them down was the path to hell. The images from the event set off a storm, with many in Assam terming the attempted fusion an “insult” to Assamese society. Civil society groups paraded effigies of the state’s culture minister. Apart from street protests, high-voltage television debates, and impassioned social media commentary, a flurry of police complaints were regsitered across the state against the BSS. Look at a couple of pix from the event, and give me the name of the Assamese symbol or its Bengali equivalent.

8. Also back in 2023, to mark his company's 50th anniversary, Yvon Chouinard, the man in the photos (today, and many years ago) announced that the company had restructured, with the Chouinards ceding control to two private entities: a trust that owns all voting stock and a non-profit called the Holdfast Collective that owns all non-voting stock and oversees the firm's environmental work, which is set to expand sharply. In other words, the family voluntarily gave away the company, primarily to fight climate change. The company has for years donated 1 percent of its sales to environmental causes, but this shift will increase that figure dramatically. Name the company, whose logo can be seen at the bottom of the composite visual below.

9. The photo on top in the collage below shows a greenhouse in Izmir, Turkey, where they are growing a plant known locally as Ataturk’s Flower (bottom left), because the nation’s founder was very fond of it, and encouraged it to be grown all over the country. What is its more universal name, derived from that of the botanist in the third image, who was incidentally also the first US Minister to Mexico?


10. Asrar Ahmad (1928-1980) was a prolific Pakistani writer of detective fiction in Urdu, who found generations of adoring fans on both sidesof the Indo-Pak border for his Jasoosi Dunya detectives Fareedi and Hameed (125 books), and for Imran of the eponymous Imran Series (120 books). Ahmad wrote his books under a pseudonym that literally means 'Son of Righteousness'. What pseudonym?

 

Answers
1. Nazareth
2. Drew Barrymore

3. A small preliminary model
4. Kudumbashree
5. Dom Pérignon

6. Singapore Airlines
7. Gamosa/gamchha
8. Patagonia

9. Poinsettia
10. Ibne Safi

10Q (Mar 1, 2024)

1. In ancient Rome, voting at legal assemblies was done by group, with the majority in a group determining its vote. The group chosen to vote first on an issue was called the '____________', a term that roughly means 'those asked for an opinion before others'. Because the first vote was considered to be of great importance, Latin speakers also used the noun to mean 'preference' and later 'privilege'. Cognate with another word related to questioning, what is the English word that arose from this background?

2. The screenshot below is from the Website of a digital publication headquartered out of Bangalore, launched by Rohin Dharmakumar, Seema Singh, Sumanth Raghavendra and Ashish Mishra in 2016 as a premium subscriber-only platform. According to their Website, the name is "defined as one's range of knowledge or understanding. Nothing to do with Barbie." What's it called?

3. Its spelling and pronunciation seeming in English to indicate some thievery involved, this traditional German Christmas bread has a rich history that includes a special permission called 'the Butter Letter' to bakers in Saxony from the 15th-century Pope Innocent VIII. Name this food item, supposed to represent the baby Christ in his swaddling clothes.

4. The English parson in the first image below – an enthusiastic fox-hunter and dog breeder, and a founding member of The Kennel Club of Great Britain – shares his 2-word name with the artist in the second pic, who was more famous in a different avatar in the late 1980s and '90s. And they both share that name with something that the former helped develop from a single specimen called, of all things, Trump. What name?

5. This is the Namak Haram Deori or 'Traitor’s Gate' in Murshidabad in West Bengal. Whose estate lay beyond it in the 18th century? It's now split up amongst his descendants.

 

 

6. What's the punny 2-word caption to this cartoon? Spellings are important. Also, name the work parodied in the text, and its author.

 

7. A country, at the time called AB, was given its current name XY on August 4, 1984. The words X and Y stem from different local languages: X comes from Mossi and is meant to show how the people are proud of their integrity, while Y comes from the Dioula language and means 'fatherland' (literally, 'father's house'). A 2-letter suffix is added to X to form the demonym Z. Give me AB, XY, and Z.

8. A story told about the boy in the picture below – to perhaps underline his general acumen – is that he learned typing during the ten days he spent on a Japanese boat while coming back to India in 1918. Who is this, dressed in traditional Japanese attire with his sister Sylla, around 1917?

9. What word in English, also used as the name of an advanced military weapon, comes from a Virginia Algonquian word meaning 'he cuts'?

10. This image from the travelogues of French writer René Augustin Constantin Renneville, published in Amsterdam in 1754, shows a town known as Gimhathiththa before the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century, when it was the main port in the region. It lies on the banks of the evocatively-named Gin Ganga. According to some writers, it was the ancient seaport of Tarshish, from which King Solomon drew ivory, peacocks and other valuables. What is it called today?

 

Answers
1. Prerogative, from 'praerogativa' (the 'questioning' word being 'interrogate')
2. 'The Ken'
3. Stollen
4. Jack Russell – the artist is the former England wicket-keeper of that name; and Trump was the progenitor of the Jack Russell Terrier breed, named after his owner
5. Mir Jafar, the commander-in-chief of Siraj-ud-Daulah's army, who betrayed him to Robert Clive, leading to the fall of Bengal (and eventually all of India) to the East India Company
6. Beet Poet; 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg
7. AB: Upper Volta, XY: Burkina Faso, Z: Burkinabe
8. J.R.D. Tata
9. Tomahawk, from 'tamahaac'
10. Galle