10Q (June 17, 2024)

 

1. Classical authors writing in Latin and Greek referred to popular legends that this city was founded by the mythical hero Ulysses. Its name was written Ulyssippo in Latin by the geographer Pomponius Mela, a native of Hispania. It was later referred to as "Olisippo" by Pliny the Elder and by the Greeks as Olissipo or Olissipona. Between the 8th and the 12th century, it was referred to as Al-Usbuna. What is it called today? Either an international / English name or one in the local language will do.

2. The Grand Jeté is notoriously one of the most difficult of them, as it requires continuous stretching. Other types include the sauté, which involves both feet; the temps levé, which involves just one; the jeté, which is more standard; the assemblé; and the sissonne. If you were doing any of these, what would you be performing or practising?

3. It was the first name of the American journalist and poet who wrote 'The Devil's Dictionary', and of the Union general from whose surname we get the English word 'sideburns'. It's the surname of a West Indian cricketer whose first name is an adverb meaning 'in a terse manner'. What is this name, that derives from the Greek word for 'immortal', from which you also get the Greek name for the food of the gods? 

4. While he was still alive (he died in 2017), Ved Prakash Sharma was a regular confidante of and consultant for Ekta Kapoor, providing regular inputs on Balaji Telefilms' serials. But his real claim to fame was elsewhere. What was he acknowledged as 'the king of", a genre/medium in which he achieved many record-breaking feats?

5.  In classical times, the Latin word for 'sheath' was not used in an anatomical sense. But after it came, intact, into English in the 1680s, it began to be used for a part of the human anatomy. What's the word?

6. Which northern Russian port is depicted in the 18th-century icon below?

 

 

7. As the result of a grisly and as yet unexplained discovery by a forest ranger in 1942, Roopkund in the Himalayas (photo below) is known by what macabre name?

 

 

 

8. Stretching a remarkable 120km in length, it is the longest uninterrupted natural sand beach in the world. It takes its name from the nearest town, which was founded in 1869 at the site of the existing village of Palongkee, some 150km south of Chittagong. The town was named after a former superintendent of the British East India Company, known for his rehabilitation work with Arakanese refugees who came into the region in the late 18th century. What’s the name of the town / beach in the photo below?

 

 

 

9. The Ancient Romans were fond of quincunxes. Tables at large dinners were often arranged in this form, as were beds in crop fields and gardens. It was also the name of a coin whose weight equaled five-twelfths of a libra, a unit of weight similar to the modern-day pound. The name comes from the Latin roots for 'five' and 'one-twelfth'. What is the quincunx pattern? You can describe it using a common example from our pastimes.

10. This ancient structure on Rawdah Island in Cairo is known in English as a stilling well, one of several that you will find along a certain stretch in Egypt. The column in the middle has a name that directly describes its traditional function. What is it called, or what is its function?

Answers
1. Lisbon
2. Ballet – these are all types of ballet jumps
3. Ambrose – the persons referred to are Ambrose Bierce, Ambrose Burnside, and Curtly Ambrose
4. Hindi pulp fiction, having written more than 170 murder mysteries and other novels, including 'Vardi Wala Gunda' that reportedly sold 80 million copies
5. Vagina
6. Arkhangelsk. Also known as Arkhangel, the city is named for the belief that the victory of St Michael over the devil took place near there, and that Michael still stands watch over the city to prevent the Devil's return. This belief is also reflected in the city’s coat of arms, shown below.

7. Skeleton Lake – the skeletal remains of some 500-odd people are strewn around the lake, and no one is sure how exactly they got there. Research shows that the remains do not all date to the same historical period, and don’t even share a common geographic origin. This means that, many centuries apart, different groups of different peoples from different parts of the world somehow all met their demise at this same spot.

8. Cox's Bazar Beach

9. The 5 dots on a die, or the arrangement of symbols on a '5' playing card

10. A nilometer, used as an early warning system for flooding of the Nile

10Q (May 21, 2024)

1. India did not qualify in hockey for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 but Kenneth Pereira, an attacking midfielder of Goan origin (in pic below), was there. Playing for which national team?

2. The land encompassing the village of Ossining in the US state of New York was bought from the Sintsink Native American tribe in 1685 by a Dutch trader. In the 1820s, the facility you see in the picture below was constructed on a part of the land. Derived from the name of the tribe, what is the name by which it is known?

3. When it first appeared in English in the 16th century, it meant the distance bounding the range of ordinary vision at sea – about 30 km. British author John Lyly used that sense in 1580 when he wrote, "They are safely come within a ___ of Dover." Other 16th-century writers used it to mean 'range of vision' ("Out of ___ we were ere the Countesse came from the feast." – Thomas Nashe) or 'sight' ("'Tis double death to drown in ___ of shore." – Shakespeare). Its most famous usage in poetry is perhaps in the lines "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies /
When a new planet swims into his ___", written by Keats in his poem 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer', and often quoted in humourous contexts by PG Wodehouse. Today, however, the word almost always implies a range of comprehension, understanding, or knowledge. What word?

4. Christened Chastity Bono and now named Chaz Bono, this man has been an LGBT activist for most of his adult life. In 2008, he began the gender transition process, which took nearly two years to complete. In the aftermath, Bono made an award-winning documentary about his journey, and continued to fight for the LGBT community as an outspoken contestant on 'Dancing With the Stars'. Who are his largely mononymous parents?

5. 'The Delhi Detectives' Handbook' (cover shown below), published in 2017, is ostensibly written by Delhi detective Vish Puri. Puri is actually a fictional character created by which British journalist and writer?

6. Xs (sometimes also called X eels) are an order of jawless fish-like vertebrates, whose adults are characterised by a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. The common name X is derived from a Latin term meaning 'stone licker'. Long used as food by humans, they were widely eaten by the upper classes throughout medieval Europe, especially during fasting periods, since their taste is much meatier than that of most true fish. King Henry I of England is said to have died from eating "a surfeit of Xs." What is X?

7. Male pogonotrophy is often culturally associated with wisdom and virility. Abraham Lincoln is said to have indulged in it because an 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell wrote to him, suggesting it. What is pogonotrophy? 

8.  You will probably know of the ancient belief that one's health and temperament are the products of a balance or imbalance of four bodily fluids, or humours: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. It was believed that a deficiency of yellow bile, or choler, the humour that governed anger, spirit, and courage, would leave a certain organ colourless or white. Someone with this deficiency would be spiritless and a coward. This is the origin story of the hyphenated 2-word term that connects a typically white flower with the organ in question. What's the term? 

9. Xstan is a mountainous region located near the Karakoram mountain range that borders Gilgit to the west, China's Xinjiang to the north, Ladakh to the south-east, and the Kashmir Valley to the south-west. It takes its name from an indigenous tribe that has inhabited the area since pre-Islamic times, and has nothing to do with a vessel commonly used in Indian households. Name the region. 

10. What 2-word term, literally meaning 'keep to eat' in French, is used for a cool, well-ventilated area in a hotel or large home where savoury cold dishes (such as salads, hors d'œuvres, appetizers, canapés, pâtés, and terrines) are prepared and other foods are stored under refrigeration?

Answers
1. Canada
2. Sing Sing Correctional Facility
3. Ken
4. Sonny (Bono) and Cher

5. Tarquin Hall

6. Lamprey
7. The growing of facial hair, especially beards
8. Lily-livered
9. Baltistan
10. Garde manger

10Q (May 8, 2024)

1. Van Bengalen is a surname that from the 17th century onwards popped up in records in Banda, Batavia, Cape Town and other places. What was the history of the bearers of that name?

2. The city [X] has been known by many names in the past -- Wiryeseong (during the Baekje era), Bukhansangun (during the Goguryeo era), Namcheon (during the Silla era), Hanyang (during the Northern and Southern States period), Namgyeong (during the Goryeo era), Hanseong (during the Joseon era), and Keijō or Gyeongseong (during Japanese rule). What is it called now?

3. Ever since they met as first-year graduate students at Princeton University in 1970, Steven Zucker and David A. Cox wanted to author a scientific paper together. They finally did so, in a 1979 article in 'Inventiones Mathematicae', titled "Intersection numbers of sections of elliptic surfaces". The algorithm described in that paper is known by their names. Why had they been keen to co-author a paper, even before they had any idea what they would be studying or working on?

4. Meaning lacking in adult sophistication or immature, this 6-letter word originally meant 'bald' in Old English. By the 17th century, it had come to mean 'without feathers' and was applied to young birds not yet ready for flight. The term then began to be used for those who hadn't yet spread their wings in a figurative sense. What's the word?

5. It is the most frequently translated literary product of India, and its stories are among the most widely known in the world. There is a version of it in nearly every major language of India, and in addition there are 200 versions in more than 50 languages around the world. The earliest known translation, into a non-Indian language, is in Middle Persian (Pahlavi, 550 CE) by Burzoe. One version reached Europe in the 11th century, and before 1600 it existed in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, English, Old Slavonic, Czech, and perhaps other Slavonic languages. What work, attributed to a teacher and scholar named Vishnu Sharma born somewhere between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE?

6.  The picture below shows workers with the Compagnia Vecchi Sminatori or Company of Old Miners based in Mantua, one of Italy’s 30-odd private companies specialising in a certain activity. These firms together continue to recover some 60,000 items every year, even though it's been close to 80 years since those items stopped being deployed. What are they looking for?

7. Much more than demons or spirits, the race of Xs are described as intelligent, free-willed creatures who live close to nature and are endowed with magical powers. The race is filled with different types – shaitan, nasna, ghul, ifrit and marid. What are Xs?

8. Shown below are a couple of the large number of 'benchmarks' that you will find on the Las Vegas Strip. What purpose do they serve?

 

9. This multi-peaked mountain range near Barcelona takes its name [X] from its saw-toothed appearance. It is the site of the Benedictine abbey, Santa Maria de [X], which hosts the Virgin of [X] idol. In 1493, Christopher Columbus named a Caribbean island after the deity. With a Lusophone spelling, it is also the surname of a Goan politician. What is [X]?

 

10. The current issue of 'Marg' magazine (cover below) features the ‘Risha’, which was accorded the geographical indication (GI) tag in March this year. The Risha is a part of the traditional attire of which Indian state?

 

 

Answers
1. People from Bengal enslaved by the Dutch East India Company and taken to work in their colonies or, in a few cases, back home in the Netherlands – the painting below shows the 10-year-old Filander van Bengalen serving at a party at his masters' home in Dokkum in Friesland

2. Seoul
3. In order to have the punny Cox-Zucker attribution in a serious scientific publication. The algorithm is now referred to as the Cox-Zucker machine, and no doubt elicits giggles whenever it comes up.
4. Callow
5. Panchatantra
6. Unexploded ordnance from World War 2
7. Jinn – marid are usually the ones we find imprisoned in bottles
8. To identify possible dangerous changes caused by the weight of the buildings surrounding them. Besides serving as absolute position markers, these benchmarks also help surveyors determine if the ground under the strip is stable with the weight of all the casinos surrounding it. Every decade or so, the points are measured to see if they have moved. If they have moved, this information is researched and the issue is corrected to ensure the safety of the guests and the buildings that line the strip.
9. Montserrat, meaning 'the serrated mountain'
10. Tripura

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