Sunday, May 20, 2007

Report on the quiz on 13th May

[Posting on behalf of Priyambad]

QM: Nitish

Format: Infinite bounce with two special rounds. (A video written round and a fantastic Stage 2)

Thumbs Up:
· Original questions (Read no repeats)
· Very good mix of World / India questions
· Very workoutable questions
· Sensational Stage 2 (With a very neat theme)
· No LVCs (Long Visual Connects)
· No convoluted connects

Thumbs down:
· The initial few questions were very unsettling
· The pinkie hint for the Stage 2 (;))
· Slightly long but none the less very enjoyable

Memorable cracks: JK's Mandakini crack, The Grapes of Wrath Crack, Deva's meme crack, the googly crack and the Stage 2 crack by Srini


1st: Bhargav, Srini and Rahul
2nd: Priyambad, Akshat and Deepak
3rd: Sohail, Rahul Girish Kumar and A Revanth Reddy.


The quiz saw a neck to neck fight between the team comprising Bhargav, Srini and Rahul and team of Priyambad, Akshat and Deepak till the last round (the stage 2). Srini's Stage 2 crack at a very early stage enabled them to win the quiz in the end. The new team comprising of Sohail, Rahul Girish Kumar and A Revanth Reddy came from behind and finished 3rd with some brilliant cracks.
The quiz had some very good questions asked on Bollywood / Hollywood but still it was a very balanced quiz. The quiz though slightly on the tougher witnessed some superb cracks from almost every team.


The next quiz has been scheduled for the 10th of June and will be done by Mihir.

Questions from this quiz will be posted soon.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Quiz on May 13th

The next quiz is on Sunday, the 13th of May. Here are the details:

QM: Nitish Khadiya.

Venue: Vasavi Hall @ #6-1-91, II Floor, vasavi Seva Kendram, Opp Meera Sensation Theatre, Khairtabad.

Directions to the venue: From Khairatabad while going towards Lakdi ka Pul right opposite the Sensation theatre near IIMC

Date and Time: 13th May 2007, 10:00 am

Format: The quiz is open to all members of the general public who are interested. This quiz will follow a format in which participants will be randomly teamed up into teams of 3 at the time of the quiz itself. This is to provide all participants an equal opportunity at participating in a team quiz even if they do not have other team members in Hyderabad or even if they are new to quizzing itself.

Prizes: Gift vouchers from Odyssey Bookstore.

Entry Fee: Rs 25 per person.

Questions from the second quiz!

Here are some questions from the second quiz:


1. He paused to calculate the optimal turbulent laminar transition trajectory before it. The man can carry out a multi-variable physics calculation in his head to compute the exact trajectory required. Almost certainly the flow around the ball must have changed from turbulent to laminar several meters from the target. Mr. ------- was applying some very sophisticated physics."-thus concluded a team of scientists analyzing a scene in 2002. Which movie owes its name due to this?


A: Bend it like Beckham


2. Some 78 kms long situated at an altitude of 5,400 meters above sea level , it is the planet's largest alpine glacier outside the poles, and thus is sometimes referred to as the third pole. What is it called?


A: Siachen (literally the "place of roses')


3. The leading spirit behind the formation of this organisation in 1964 was Swami Chinmayananda and the founding religious leaders included Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Sikh leader Master Tara Singh and Jain Acharya Sushil Kumarji Maharaj. Name this organisation which uses a Banyan tree as its symbol?


A: VHP


4. “Because I was in Prabaker’s house, it was decided that I should take the family name of Kharre. Because Kishan was Prabaker’s father, and my adoptive father, tradition decreed that I should take his first name for my middle name. And because they judged my nature to be blessed with peaceful happiness, Rukhmabai concluded, the women had agreed with her choice for my first name. It was _____________ which means man of peace or man of God’s peace.” Fill in the blanks.


A: Shantaram


5. During the reign of King James II, the Royal Hospital was still under construction, so he introduced a system for distribution of army pensions in 1689. The pension was to be made available to all soldiers who had been injured in service, or who had served for more than 20 years. By the time the Hospital was completed, there were more pensioners than places available in the Hospital. Eligible soldiers who could not be housed in the Hospital were termed out-pensioners, receiving their pension from the Royal Hospital but living outside it. The club which got formed in the locality was hence nicknamed “pensioners”. Which club?


A: Chelsea Football Club


6. Some of the other products available in this genre of "fabric" are Dyneema, Goldflex, Spectra, Twaron and Zylon. Which is the most famous of these genre of “fabrics”?


A: Kevlar


7. The popular Indian lore says that on pilgrimage to Mecca in the 16th century, a revered Muslim holy man from India, came across these. Despite a ban on taking this out of its place of origin, punishable by death, he smuggled 7 of it wrapped around his belly. Today he is revered in one part of the country and actually has a mountain/mountain range named after him. What is his contribution to India?


A: Smuggled Coffee into India


8. This instrument was popularized in the 1930s by radio comedian Bob Burns, who is credited with inventing the instrument some 20 years earlier. It was also played by jazz musicians Noon Johnson and Sanford Kendrick. But today when we talk of it, we talk of it in a different context. What?


A: Bazooka


9. What term was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The term is also generally used in statistics, often applied in relation to wealth distributions or vocabulary use.


A: The Long Tail effect


10. He was already a noted aviator before World War I; in 1913 he gained fame for making the first nonstop flight across the Mediterranean Sea from Frejus in south of France to Bizerte in Tunisia. The next year he joined the French army at the outbreak of the conflict. After several aerial missions he decided that shooting and flying at the same time was too difficult, so he fitted a machine gun to the front of his plane so the tasks became one and the same. In order to protect the propeller from the bullets, he fitted metal wedges to the prop. Starting from April 1, 1915, he soon shot down three German planes and quickly gained an excellent reputation. On April 18, 1915, he was shot down and glided to a landing on the German side of the lines. After examining X’s plane, Dutch aircraft engineer Y and his team designed an improved system known as the interrupter gear. Soon the tables were reversed against the Allies due to Y’s planes shooting down nearly every enemy plane they met, leading to what became known as the Y Scourge. Identify X & Y?


A: Roland Garros & Anthony Fokker