2011 Ganesh Nayak OpenPrelims Answers

A picture of the proposed Star Centre mall, a stone’s throw from Trinity Circle, Bangalore.What name does the mall have, reflecting its enviable address?

1*

• #1, MG Road

2

• MW Travers, AG Bourne and MO Forster were the first three.

• Who was the fourth, from 1933-1937 and what list is this?

• Sir CV Raman• Directors of IISc

Till 1890, the _________ came only till Jolarpet, before it was extended to a point in Bangalore. This helped the British officers fulfill their requirements for various kinds of helpers, workers and administrative staff.

Fill in the blanks. What demographic in Bangalore is this a probable explanation for?

3

• Railway line from Chennai• Tamilians in Bangalore, specifically

around the Cantonment area

A new launch proposed by Richard Branson...What is the company called?

4

• Virgin Oceanic

What name was given to the Indian team’s tour of England in 1974, possibly inspired either by the movie on top and/or by India’s performance in the Test shown? (bigger pics follow)

5*

• Summer of ‘42

What is the message in this BMW ad?

6

• Use Original Spares

• Harihareshwar in Konkan• Nanjangud in Karnataka• Janardana Swamy temple town, Varkala• Vemulawada temple town of Karimnagar

district

• What common sobriquet do they have?

7

• Dakshin Kashi

The Islamic Republic of Kamistan was the Middle Eastern nation led by Omar Hassan, and then his widow Dalia Hassan following his assassination, during Day 8. Despite a strong domestic opposition, the Hassans pledged cooperation with the United Nations and the United States to give up its nuclear arms programs and terrorist affiliations.

Why do we know Omar Hassan?

8

• Role played by Anil Kapoor in the TV series ‘24’

It was originally invented by Johnson & Johnson’s Permacel division and first came out in green during WWII, and was named for its ability to shed water. Soldiers returning home brought it back with them. A manufacturer then got the bright idea to start selling it for a specific use relating to air-conditioning and heating in many of the new homes being built, giving it a new name and silver color. What?

9

• Duck Tape• Duct Tape

American Paul Siple and his fellow explorer Charles Passel, while on an expedition in the Antarctic in 1940, suspended bottles of water outside a hut at their base station and measured how long it took the water to freeze under various conditions. The idea of expressing as an equivalent temperature—the language we hear on the news—didn’t start until the 1970s. The coldest recorded till now is -150 in Antarctica. What?

10*

• Wind Chill – the felt air temperature on exposed skin due to wind

The inside of the fruit Garcinia Indica looks like this. Popular in an Indian region, an average tree bears hundreds of fruits; Green when tender, they get beautiful purple as they ripen. Dried separately, the skin is as a souring agent, and the seeds are used to make oil/butter. The most popular variant is the juice. Identify the fruit and the region

11

• Kokum • Konkan Region

When Petra Kvitova won the 2011 Wimbledon Championships, she was the first left handed player to win the title since Martina Navratilova since 1990 and the first Czech player to win a Grand Slam since Jana Novotna in 1998.What other unique claim to fame did she achieve, one that is the first for any Grand Slam winner of either gender?

12

•First Grand Slam winner to be born in the 1990s

German playwright Benjamin Frank Wedekind’s most well known play set Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) &  Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box) tells the story of an enticing dancer who rises in society through her relationships with powerful and wealthy men but eventually falls into poverty and prostitution. The collective name by which these plays are known inspired what musical collaboration? (Name collaborators and their work)

13

•The plays were called the Lulu set. Metallica & Lou Reed’s album Lulu is

inspired by the plays

• A refugee from Nazi Europe named Leslie Buck created it in the 1960s and it is an icon in NY City. It was first designed by Mr. Buck for the Sherri Company, adopting the colors of the Greek flag.

• It was blue, with a white meander ringing the top and bottom; down each side was a drawing of the Greek vase known as an _____.

• The original had simple lettering on it which said “We Are Happy To Serve You”. 200 million of these were sold in 2005 – now it’s made only on request.

• What is it called, a distortion of the name of the Greek vase?

14

• Anthora coffee cups, named after Amphora

In 1974, Roger Penrose produced a periodic tiling in 2 dimensions using tiles of just two irregular shapes , popularly called the Penrose tiles. Dan Schectman, who first identified similar shapes in 3 dimensions in 1984, was ridiculed by Linus Pauling who stated : “There is no such thing as a ______- _____, only _______-scientists.”Fill in the first 2 blanks.

15*

•Quasi-Crystals for which Schectman won the 2011 Nobel in Chemistry. Pauling called Schectman a quasi-

scientist.

In medieval music, the Guidonian hand was a mnemonic used to assist singers to learn how to sing by viewing notes, in which each portion of the hand represented a specific note within the hexachord system.The lowest note in this scale was represented by the Greek letter γ followed by ut and would span 3 octaves.This notation gave rise to a word that was initially used in music to represent the entire musical scale but has gone on to be used beyond music as well. What word?

16

•Gamut – that came from “Gamma+ut”

It is the term used to describe international policy that openly uses economic aid and investment between countries to carry diplomatic favor. The term was prominent during Gulf War I when both Germans and Japanese were unable to commit troops to the war effort due to restrictions placed into their constitutions post WW II. Instead they volunteered large amounts of financing of war effort. In recent times, Gaddafi had used the same in Africa to bring many African nations to the Arabic/Muslim nation fold. What 2 word term?

17

•Checkbook Diplomacy

One of the more humorous explanations given for this word/name origin is as follows….

“..many of them had married Indian women and settled down here…after 1947, they had pangs to go back to their native countries…some went to Australia, some went to England, some to Canada and the others ______”

Explain

18

• Dingos for Anglo Indians• The blank is …”didn’t go”

This annual auction event used to be a huge revenue generator for middle men, as a result of which the trust board decided to make it an e-auction to rake in the money itself, a decision that resulted in a 30 crore revenue jump over last year.Auctioned items are graded into five varieties, each of which is then graded for color, texture and length.The primary bidders are from the fashion and style industry in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, USA and Western Europe.What auction and who/what conducts it?

19

•Hair auctions by the Thirumala Thirupathi Devasthanam

He rode side by side with the Soviet Red Army and would be called the “Red Hero” as a result. What capital city does he give his name to?

20*

•Ulanbataar (meaning Red Hero) , from the name Damdin Sukhbataar

On October 4th this year, the man apparently took down all his websites, deleted online code repositories he owned, killed his Twitter & Google+ account and disabled various addresses.More intriguingly, he set his servers to respond to incoming browser requests with an enigmatic status code number 410 – a status code that indicates permanent expiry, or “gone” .Concerned well wishers raised an alarm online, which sent police scampering to the man’s home, only to find him hale and healthy and a tad annoyed at the invasion of privacy. Who be this open source god?

21

21

•Mark Pilgrim, free software advocate and Python guide guru

The popular legend goes that this meat dish made from finely chopped or minced raw beef was named after a nomadic Central Asian tribe who ate raw meat because they rode their horses continuously and hence did not have time to stop and cook.A variation of this story goes that the meat was kept under the horse’s saddles to be tenderized by a day’s riding.Name this dish that involves marinating slices of meat in wine, spicing them and serving with onions, capers and seasoning, sometimes with a raw egg yolk.

22

•Steak Tartare •(from the Tatar people)

In 1966, when Alexander Courage was first asked to compose the music for this, he entered into a deal with X, who said he’d write the lyrics. The lyrics were never used, but they went as follows:Beyond the rim of the starlight,My love is wandring in star flight.I know he'll findIn star clustered reachesLove, strange loveA starwoman teaches.

I konw his journey ends never.His ____ _____ will go on forever.But tell him whileHe wanders his starry sea,Remember,Remember me.

Name X and what were these the supposed lyrics to?

23

•Gene Rodenberry •Star Trek

Located 29 km from Honnavar in current day Uttar Kannada district, this small town was the capital of the Saluva dynasty between the 13th and 17th century. The town was closest to where the British had a bungalow under the Bombay Presidency and hence a tourist attraction near the town was initially named after the town itself, later changed to what we know it by.In recent times, the name of the town has come into international focus in relation to a serendipitous discovery that has unearthed close to  £155 Mn of sunken treasure.Name the town

24

•Gairsoppa, after which SS Gairsoppa was named. Gairsoppa Falls was the

old name for Jog Falls.

In the 90s, Russian readers were able to buy tantalising offerings as “We call her Scarlett”, “The last love of Scarlett”, … all written by Yuliya Hipatrick, a consortium of 30 Russian and Belarussian writers in Minsk who jointly cranked out story after story. According to NYT, “American readers might not immediately recognize Mitchell's devilishly debonair hero…”

What were the Belarussians writing?

25

• Sequels to Gone with the Wind

Typically it would take more than 45 runs and four wickets in a school Twenty20 match to get a 13-year-old cricketer into the international press. But last week, cricket fanatics were purring over an all-round performance in the match between Dhirubhai Ambani International School and Chaturbhuj Narsing Memorial School in a district tournament in Mumbai.

Why?

26

• The player in question was Arjun Tendulkar

He carries a rickshaw puller's hand bell in his pocket at all times. It belonged to Hasari Pal. For him it is a potent reminder of what he calls “the voice” of India. For the last 26 years, this Padma Bhushan recipient, has been using his royalties to support 14 charities in rural Bengal. His charities recently celebrated a milestone – the 75,000th tuberculosis patient cured at his medical centre in the Sunderbans in West Bengal.

Who?

27

• Dominique Lapierre

What eight-letter word would be used to describe a creature that has such a system?

28

• Ruminant

During the Puja holidays the CTC rolled out the fully refurbished Balaka and Banalata, as a treat for the common people.

While the former borrows its name from Tagore’s collection of poems, Banalata references what?

29

• The iconic poem Banalata Sen by the poet Jibanananda Das, who was killed by a speeding tram near

Deshapriya Park in 1954.

Like it’s exotic origins, the X has been a rare beast in cricket. But it has a double meaning in the book’s context. In Sinhalese, the term ‘konde bandapu cheena’ or ‘pony-tailed X’ means someone who is gullible.

– from a review of which book, subtitled ‘the legend of Pradeep Mathew’

30

ID the cover

31

The family traces its descent from the Sheikh Ovais i-Quarani of Medina. They were next to the Paigahs in hierarchy. The first in line, Mir Turab Ali Khan Bahadur gained a repute for his far reaching social reforms. His son was a brilliant statesman. The third in line held the office of PM for only two years before retiring to a life of travelling the world, purchasing extraordinary objets d’art.

Which family?

32

• The Salar Jungs

Its ideology is "Social Transformation and Economic Emancipation" of the people who have been the victims of the "Manuwadi" system for thousands of years.It created a record of sorts when it fielded candidates in all the 234 constituencies for the 2011 Tamil Nadu elections. Which party?

33

• Bahujan Samaj Party

“______ ____ makes a cheeky comeback” went headlines a few weeks ago, reliving a 1978 pop culture super seller. Just fill in the blanks.

34

• Athena’s famous Tennis Girl poster

One of this product’s most famous ads with a one word headline appeared to disparage the product itself. On closer read, you learn that the company’s inspection techniques are so stringent that one in “50” pieces is discarded by engineers as a _____.Name the product, and give the good word.

35

VolksWagen

36

Four decades later, this is now being cited as a key source of inspiration for what?

• Mad Men

37

Who lives here? And how would you associate this with a premium liquid made in the suburb of Żyrardów?

• The Polish President

38

Its historical moniker was “Helen of the West”, because the island, populated primarily by people of African origin, changed hands between the British and French empires 14 times. In a stunning defiance of statistical probability, the island has produced two Nobel laureates– Derek Walcott for literature, and the late Sir Arthur Lewis for economics. Castries, the capital city, is hot, congested but still charming. In the Central Market, vendors chatter in Kweyol, a French patois. Which place?

• St Lucia

Where is this shot?

(Video removed – Sadaa Haq from Rockstar)

39

•Dharamsala - during the process of shooting when the locals heard the song, they all ganged up to convince Imtiaz to convert this into a live song

40 - SVC• 7 Visuals

• No maximizers• Show theme in writing to QMs

• Set 1: +3, -2 • Set 2: +2, -1

• Set 3: +1, 0 (Only 1 attempt allowed in Set 3)

•SVC ANSWERS

• (+3, -2)

• ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERRY

• (+3, -2)

• AMBROSE BIERCE

• (+2, -1)

• LIONEL BUSTER CRABB

• (+2, -1)

• JIMMY HOFFA

• (+2, -1)

• MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER

• (+1, 0)

• AMELIA EARHARDT

• (+1, 0)

• NETAJI BOSE

THEME: Disappearances/Not found dead/Legally declared dead etc…

• Antoine De Saint-Exupery – Disappeared in 1944 after an air shootout, body never found

• Ambrose Bierce – Last heard from in Mexico, disappeared or executed by fighting squad

• Lionel Buster Crabb – after a botched mine detonation near a Russian ship, various theories but none conclusive about how he died, if he is alive

• Jimmy Hoffa – from a parking lot in Detroit• Michael Rockefeller – disappeared in New

Guinea, presumed dead• Amelia Earhart – Last heard from near

Howland Island• Netaji Bose – Alleged plane crash en route to

Tokyo