10Q25 (July 21, 2025)

1. Just as humans have distinct fingerprints, many animals have unique markings by which they are identified. What creature’s most distinguishing feature is what's called its saddle patch, a white marking on a largely black body? Conservationists studying populations can tell individuals apart based on these saddle patches.

2. RZA and Riot, born in 2022 and 2023, respectively are to get a third sibling soon, a fact confirmed by their father on the Met Gala red carpet in May this year. 
(a) Name the famous parents of these kids. If you spell the father's name exactly as he does, an extra point to you.
(b) The first-born RZA is named after the de facto leader of which hip hop group?

3. Though the title of this show (poster above) is a 3-word alliterative phrase with 3 Ps, 2 of which are related to business, none of them expand to the terms used in the 4 Ps of Marketing.
(a) Name the show, based on the Durjoy Datta book 'Now That You're Rich... Let's Fall in Love'.
(b) What unusual connect does the answer (a) of this question have with the answer (a) of the previous question?

4. The man in the collage above is Joshua Haldeman, a Canadian chiropractor, writer and conspiracy theorist who wrote in his book 'The International Conspiracy in Health', published in the mid-1960s: “An ‘Invisible Government,’ working to carry out the objectives of the International Conspiracy, is operating in every country.” In the book, he also said that the conspiracy was pushing for the fluoridation of water supplies, mandatory milk pasteurization and mass vaccination programs. He also wrote in favour of South Africa's apartheid policy. Haldeman thought government was being badly mismanaged and at one point in his career, he embraced the solution proposed by a movement called Technocracy: that government should be run by scientists and engineers, not politicians. The woman is his daughter Maye, who carried forward his philosophy. Cropped out of the second photo are Maye's son and grandson. Name either.

5. One of the walls in the lobby of the headquarters of network services and cybersecurity company Cloudflare is lined with these objects (photo above), with a camera pointing at them.
[A] What are these?
[B] What does Cloudflare use them for?

6. Created in 1502, this [image above] is considered the first-ever bird's-eye view map of a town, how we are used to seeing maps in the modern day.
[A] Who was its creator, who envisioned it using precise measurements on the ground?
[B] Which town is it, at the time home to three great personages – Machiavelli, [A] of course, and his patron Cesare Borgia? What the map obviously doesn't show is the famous sporting venue built in the 1950s that has held annual competitions in a certain sport since 1980. The name of the town (it's now a city) is probably best known because of that annual event. 

7. [X] is touted as having died most often in Hollywood movies, stemming from the fact that he insists in his contracts that if he plays a criminal in the movie (which he usually does), his character must die by the end of the film. He does this to get across the message to kids who watch his movies that crime doesn't pay. Who?

8. The men with the dragon tattoos. Both the men in this photo, who were cousins, had dragon tattoos made on their arms – the one on the left while in Japan with his country's navy in the 1880s; the other while on a official tour of Japan in 1891. Name them both.

9.  The biologist Eugene F. Stoermer is credited with first coining and using the term [A] informally in the 1980s; Paul J. Crutzen re-invented and popularised the term in the 1990s. Geologists have proposed that the start point for the proposed [A] timeline should be the mid-1950s, when the fallout of nuclear explosions first became noticeable in the earth's geological strata. What is [A]?

https://youtube.com/shorts/y202JWY25ak?feature=share
10. [A] The video above shows American designer Chris Costello talking about what font designed by him in 1982 that has gained the moniker of 'the second-most hated font in the world', especially since it was the subject of a 2017 SNL skit making fun of its use for the title of a 2009 movie. 
[B] Which movie?

10Q25 (Feb 2, 2025)

1. In August 2023, a foul ball from baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani – who then played for the Los Angeles Angels – knocked out an LED module in an ad at Citi Field. The result was an image of a signature silver can of [X] beer – with a black box hovering above the brand logo. Where some brands might have seen an embarrassment, [X] and its agency, Rethink, saw opportunity, creating the ‘Lights Out’ campaign, in which all ads for the beer and even a revised can design incorporated the black square into their imagery. Which brand?

2. The herbs [A] and [B] are etymologically entwined. While [B] gets its English name from 'selinon', which was the Medieval Greek name for [A], [A] gets its name from the Greek 'petroselinon', meaning 'rock-[A]'. Confused? So were the Greeks, evidently. What are [A] and [B]? You will need to specify which is which in your answer.

3. Google Translate suggests that the Portuguese surname [X] comes from a simple word that refers to accepted social or religious standards. A bit ironic in the case of the two most famous Indians (father and son, pictured below) who bore the surname [X], who weren't exactly bound by such standards. Given that the father was a newspaperman and the son a poet, what is the surname?

4. The pic below shows the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), so called because of that little tuft under its chin. It is geographically quite widespread, living and breeding on crags in high mountains in southern Europe, East Africa, the Caucasus, Iran, the Indian subcontinent and Tibet. What 11-letter name is it also known by that means 'lamb-vulture' in German, a name that stems from the belief that it attacked young sheep?

5. While the fact that it gives an indication of direction of flow is quite self-evident, its traffic cone-like striped design isn't just decorative or aimed at visibility. It is actually a pretty precise speed indicator. What low-tech but highly effective 'device' am I talking about?

6. The coat pocket edition, measuring roughly 20 x 9 cm, of a certain book was launched by the Lucknow-based Eastern Book Company in 2009. While it was always quite popular among lawyers who found it easy to carry around with them, its popularity surged after it started getting regularly brandished since around May 2024. What book?

7. Founded in 1982 in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which 'Party of God' was led by Hassan Nasrallah from 1992 till his assassination in September last year?

8.  The word [A], which you will find mentioned in coverage of almost any official function, comes from the Greek 'diskos', that referred to the object used in the Olympic throwing event. From that root it moved on to mean 'table' in Medieval Latin, and then 'platform' or 'high table' in Old French. What is [A]?

9. What quintessential component of an Italian food item, that gets its name from an Italian word meaning 'to cut off', owes its origins to a creature with the scientific name Bubalus bubalis? This animal is native to India, and there are records of the Sumerians importing the animals from the people of the Indus Valley civilisation. It most probably reached European shores because of Roman conquests of regions east.

10. In the US of the 1950s, if you were part of the 'cufflink crowd', what 'abnormal' behaviour would you almost certainly exhibit in private?

Answers
1. Coors Light 
[video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5GQvqfqRSU]
2. [A] Parsley [B] Celery
3. Moraes – the father and son being Frank and Dom, respectively
4. Lammergeier
5. Windsock

6. The red leather-bound edition of the Indian Constitution that Rahul Gandhi started displaying in a challenge to the BJP government

7. Hezbollah
8. Dais
9. Mozzarella cheese (Bubalus bubalis is the Indian water buffalo)
10. Homosexuality – the cufflink crowd consisted of gay men and lesbians who would pretend to be straight couples in order to go out in public with their partners, as part of a group