Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Third Time Lucky

So folks we are back after a long time.Database has expanded and we welcome Sayantani Das and Ananya Ganguli to the Database team.This quiz has been put together by our regular members Tania and Debleena together with Sayantani and Ananya.So put on your thinking caps and get ready to get "Third Time Lucky" cos' ANYBODY who answers ALL 33 QUESTIONS gets a prize money (The amount depends on our resources but trust me it will be quite a bit).Send in your answers with your address and phone number to quolkata@gmail.com

1) Connect

a)
b) A was a present in1886. It stands as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants.The copper patina-clad A commemorates the centennial of its nation and is a gesture of friendship.What is A?


c)

d) Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction novel published in 1870. It is about a fictional genius and his invention as seen by one of his passengers.Who is the author?

e)

f) The B is an Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at 319 metres (1,047 ft),[1] it was briefly surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931?What is B?.

2)
This is a still from the film "Enter the Dragon".Explain its significance.

3) If triangles CAY,CBX and ABZ are equilateral,then MLN is an
equilateral triangle where M,L and N are centroids of the 3 triangles
respectively.Who proposed this theorem and what is it called?

4)
Identify.

5) The Headquarters of the company X is located in Mountain View, California.The company has 19,156 full-time employees (as of March 31, 2008).It is the largest American company (by market capitalization) that is not part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average .X was co-founded by students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998.What is the company X ?

6) The Incas had no form of writing. Instead relay runners conveyed messages by carrying, what they called, ' quipus'.What were 'Quipus' ?

7) In Bulgaria, what do children 'buy' when they want to miss school ?

8) Why is Paris called the 'City of lights' ?

9) How was the village built in 1982 in New Delhi different from the other villages in the
country ?

10) On Dec20, 1994 who succeeded Iftikar Mustafa Hasan Kadri in Mumbai ?

11) What in Kolkata is exactly 16.45 kilometers long ?

12) Why is House 54 on University Avenue, in Yangin, a big tourist attraction ?

13) Gillian Baverstack's mother's books are the sixth most borrowed from British libraries. Name her mother.

14) Why was Dattatraya Apte hanged and with whom ?

15) The Ashes are a traditional cricket tournament held between Australia and England. What was burnt to produce the ashes?

16) What has a resistance of 100 ohms in moist conditions and 50,000 ohms when dry?

17) Name the only animal with a movable upper jaw.

18) Halitosis is da disease of what ?

19) What would you do wid a 'mitt' ?

20) Who was reputedly the shortest knight ever to attend the court of king Aurthur?

21) Which is the most filmed Children's story?

22) In India, what would the following letters and numbers best apply to :
Z+, Z, Y, X and X2 ?

23) "The saint has left our shores. I hope forever", wrote a statesman named Smuts. Who was the 'saint'?

24) Name the literary character whose smile lingered after the character had vanished.

25) In lawn bowling what is the single small white ball called?

26) In the now defunct morse code, which letter of the English alphabet was represented by a single dot, '.' ?

27) In the movie Hero the 4 assistants of Jackie Shroff were nicknamed as?

28) Name the band whose name is a short version of 'Eta devushka lyubit tu devushku' It is is a Russian Grammy-winning duo formed in Moscow, Russia in 1999 by Ivan Shapovalov. The group consists of Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova.

29) Connect





30) Connect



31) Connect




32)



33)
Identify the movie.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Take Two

1) A popular anecdote (although one contradicted by historical evidence) recounts that the 11th-century Hoysala king Veera Ballala II, while on a hunting expedition, lost his way in the forest. Tired and hungry, he came across a poor old woman who served him boiled beans. The grateful king named the place "benda kaal-ooru" (literally, "town of boiled beans"), which was eventually colloquialised to ?

2) There is a well-known but untrue story which says that in 1791 a Dublin theater owner named James Daly made a bet that he could introduce a word into the language within twenty-four hours. He then went out and hired a group of street urchins to write the word,which says thatwhich was a nonsense word, on walls around the city of Dublin. Within a day, the word was common currency and had acquired a meaning (since no one knew what it meant, everyone thought it was some sort of test) and Daly had some extra cash in his pocket.What word?

3) A special edition of Playboy has been published since 1970.This version includes all the written words in the normal magazine, but no pictorial representations. Congress cut off funding for this translation in 1985, but U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan reversed the decision on First Amendment grounds.What is so special about this edition?

4) An epitome of beauty, she is full of grace, radiates warmth and keeps you comfortable in every way. She is indeed X Y _______ - which distinguishes her from her counterparts in other jobs. A typical X Y _______ is warm with a pleasing personality. A keen interest in people and places along with being dedicated and conscientious is what makes her unique. She is intelligent, committed, enthusiastic and creative. Her traditional welcome is like no other's and for her it is a pleasure more than a duty to serve you as a special guest aboard X Y. What is X Y?

5) According to an October 10, 2006 Wall Street Journal article,Chad Hurley worked in eBay's X division -- one of his tasks involved designing the original X logo before starting Y with fellow X colleagues Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.What is X and Y?

6) A 47 year old journalist, a 44 year old actress/writer, a 23 year old former beauty queen, a 61 year old actor, a 22 year old rock singer, a 29 year old singer/actor, a 19 year old football agent, a 25 year old reality TV star and her mom, Michael Jackson's brother, a 27 year old singer, a 79 year old film director, a 58 year old Singer/Songwriter and X.What are we talking about and who is X?

7) Name the company that recently launched this device.


8) The picture shows the calender of the year 1752. Strangely, September has 11 days missing. Explain why and name the concept which resulted from this.




9) This is also known as crooked cross,fylfot,gammadion,sun wheel,Thor's hammer,etc. How do we know it better?
10) Name this best selling author.




Sunday, December 16, 2007

First Cut

1. Connect the following and explain the connection.







ANSWER: The connect is the American singer and actress Madonna.
The first picture is that of the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah Centre of which Madonna is a devotee.
The second picture is that of Sean Penn who is Madonna's ex-husband.
The third picture is that of the Madonna lily
The fourth picture is that of the painting Black Madonna of Czestochowa,Poland
The last picture is that of Eva Peron,the former first lady of Argentina who is referred to as Evita.Madonna played the lead role in the movie of the same name based on her.

2. Identify the people in this picture. A 2005 film was made on them whose poster is shown alongside.



This might help!


ANSWER: The Brothers Grimm

3. The Six Sigma quality system was developed at this company even though it became best known through its use by General Electric. This company was generally known as Ma Batwings to the radio industry, a not-necessarily-complimentary reference to the Ma Bell moniker of the Bell System. Which company?

ANSWER: Motorola

4.The English name of this country is derived from an Arabic word which in turn is derived via Persian from the Turkic word "tobad" meaning "the heights". The localites call their Fatherland "bod" in their native language.Name the country.Flag of the country attached.


ANSWER: Tibet

5.Not in favour of brand or product placement in his movies, this film maker would invent and design brand signs in his movies - he has his own brand of cigarettes, fruit loops, coffee beans, etc which make regular appearances across his films. The only brands that are regularly featured are Zippo, Coca-Cola and assorted makes of cars including a Honda and a Harley chopper. Name the film maker.

ANSWER: Quentin Tarantino

6.Identify and connect these 3 people. The third person is E.E.Cummings.




ANSWER: Somerset Maugham and Ernest Hemingway.They are three of the "Literary Ambulance Drivers", a group of some 23 well-known writers who were ambulance drivers for the Red Cross during World War I.


7.Identify the woman with Roger Federer who said the following about Maria Sharapova.
"We [Sharapova and herself] are quite similar. Being famous sportswomen is not easy and her parents also sacrificed everything for her. And, like her, the idea of being glamorous is very important to me. I always want to look like a girl. I don't agree that you are either a sportswoman or a girl. It's important that there are women who bring glamour to sport."


ANSWER: Yelena Isinbayeva

8.Identify him.This is probably the only known photograph taken of him.


ANSWER: Bahadur Shah Zafar II

9.Identify him.


ANSWER: Gordon Brown,the present Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

10.Identify this best selling author.


ANSWER: Khaled Hosseini,the author of the bestselling The Kite Runner

RESULTS

Preyoshi Ganguli gets 6.5 (loses half a point for not explaining the Madonna connect properly)
Rishabh Kaul gets 5 (no points for not explaining the Madonna connect)
Dj Spartacus gets 5.5( loses half a point for not explaining the Madonna connect properly)
Deva Dasgupta gets 5

Great work guys.Keep it up!