kqa pilferages 2013 popular fiction quiz answers
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A quiz on popular fiction for teams of 2 held on Oct 20, 2013 at the KQA by Venkatesh Srinivasan and Vivek KarthikeyanTRANSCRIPT
PILFERAGES 2013Our Books, Their Books
A Quiz on Popular Fiction by
VENKATESH SRINIVASAN and
VIVEK KARTHIKEYAN
THIS QUIZ IS ABOUT
James Joyce Hadley Chase
Sidney Poitier Sheldon
John Steinbeck Grisham
Harold Pinter Robbins
……….
SOME GROUND RULES
42 questions, all-written, for Teams of 2
*-marked questions to resolve ties
No negatives, please take guesses
Prizes for the Top 3 teams
ANSWERS FOLLOW….
This quiz was held at the KQA on Oct 20, 2013 for
teams of 2
The winning score was 30.5 on 42
1. Paper magazines of the late 19th century, such as
Weird Tales and The Strand, Argosy Magazine and The
Popular Magazine, which featured the work
of authors like H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R.R.
Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, gave rise to which
term?
The Answer is….
Pulp Fiction
2. Why did this 1969 book become familiar to Indian
cinema viewers in 2007?
The Answer is….
Johnny Gaddaar
3. The Pierpont Inn was a hotel built in Ventura,
California back in 1910, by Josephine Pierpont. It soon
became a haunt of the elite crowd, especially
filmmakers who took breaks from their shooting.
In 1933, which lawyer set his first book at the Pierpont
Inn, since it was just down the road from his office?
Name the book as well
The Answer is….
Erle Stanley Gardener
The Case of the Velvet Claws
4. Identify the publishing house from its logo. The
advertising for their second book in 2010 went like this,
“A young woman’s fascination with blue films leads to A
BIZARRE MURDER! A bloodline of debauched ma-
harajas falls prey to AN EVIL CURSE! A beautiful girl uses
karate to retrieve A STOLEN IDOL! 7 THRILL- ING
tales .....from 7 Indian and Singaporean masters of
ACTION, SUSPENSE, and HORROR!”
The Answer is….
Blaft Publications
*5. Identify the creator of this TV series that ran for 5
seasons from 1965-70. The story is about a United States
astronaut finds his life vastly complicated when he
stumbles on to a bottle containing a female genie.The
creator also won an Oscar in 1948 for Best Writing,
Original Screenplay.
The Answer is….
Sidney Sheldon
6. Connect
The Answer is….
Books in Jeffrey Archer’s A Prison Diary series are
named Hell, Purgatory and Heaven
7. Identify the author behind this app
The Answer is….
Ian Rankin
8. An extract from a New York Times article in 2009. Fill
in the blanks with two names
There are certain writers whose prolificacy seems to have little
connection with supply and demand. In this category are people
like _____ _____, the author of 1,500 pulp paperbacks, written in
(an Indian language), and Kathleen Lindsay (aka Mary Faulkner),
who once made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with
904 books written in 45 years. The romance novelist ______
_______seems positively idle by comparison. She wrote, in many
cases dictated, about 700 books, achieving the inconceivable feat of
leaving 160 novels “unpublished” at the time of her death.
The Answer is….
Rajesh Kumar
Barbara Cartland
9. This is TidningarnasTelegrambyrå – the largest news
agency in Scandinavia. Who, after his return from
Eritrea, where he was training a squad of female
Eritrean People's Liberation Front guerrillas, served as
graphic designer in this agency from 1977-1999?
The Answer is….
Stieg Larsson
*10. What do winners of a literary award, sharing its
name with this 1942 film, get on winning it?
The Answer is….
The award, named after the novel The Glass Key by
American crime writer Dashiell Hammett, is a real
glass key given every year by the members of the
Crime Writers of Scandinavia
11. Three books by Jill Walsh, which feature an English
aristocrat detective, created in 1923. Name the character
and the original author
The Answer is….
Lord Peter Wimsey
Dorothy Sayers
12. A 2009 book that won an award for the author.
What is the main plot element in the book?
The Answer is….
A cricket Test match (between India and England) -
the events in the book are set over the five days of
the match and the title refers to the score at the
start of the final day of the match
13. A film slated for release in 2014 film, will be the
fourth of its kind and will star these actors. Name the
2009 book on which it is based and the author
The Answer is….
Two States by Chetan Bhagat
14. Carl Laemmle was a pioneer in American film making
and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood
movie studios – Universal. Which 1949 book, set in the
early 20th century, a "rags-to-riches" story of a penniless
young man who goes to Hollywood and builds a great
film studio, is based on Laemelle? The title of the book is
a colloquial / media term used to describe people in the
film business.
The Answer is….
The Dream Merchants by Harold Robbins
*15. Inspector Virkar has made his debut recently in a
book called Compass Box Killer, by film director Piyush Jha.
His first book had three crime novellas compiled into one,
all set in the same city. It was described as,
“3 fiction stories+ one real city+ one author cum
explorer= A brilliant piece of work.”
Name the book
The Answer is….
Mumbaistan
16. Connect
The Answer is….
Irving Wallace – the movie is based on his book;
David and Amy are his children
17. A pictorial representation of the titles of a series of
crime thrillers featuring which detective by which author?
The Answer is….
Harry Hole
Jo Nesbo
18. Connect with a name
The Answer is….
Elmore Leonard, who wrote westerns before turning
to urban criminals.
19. A biography, and a subject’s letter to the writer. Who is
the subject?
The Answer is….
Hunter S Thompson
*20. A 66-year old author’s response below to an often-
asked question, “Are you still writing?”. The author is
considered the fourth best-selling author of all time and
holds the record for the best-selling author alive. Who?
“What this does is that it immediately puts my writing into the
category as a hobby. As in, are you still taking piano lessons,
doing macrame, have a parrot? I don’t have a huge ego about
my work, but let’s face it, for me it is a job. A job I love, and I
have been doing it since I was 19 years old. I have been in the
Guinness book of world records repeatedly for having a book
on the bestseller list for more weeks consecutively than
whoever. Yes, for Heaven’s sake, I am still writing.”
The Answer is….
Danielle Steele
21. What connects these two books? Just an author will
not do, need a specific connection
The Answer is….
Michael Crichton’s books that were posthumously
published
22. Which character features in the stories in these two
omnibus volumes? This is an exhaustive set of stories
The Answer is….
Ariadne Oliver
23. These are banners for the winning entries in the 2012
Dobby Awards. What are they given for?
The Answer is….
Harry Potter Fan Fiction
24. Founded by Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992,
the Innocence Project is a non-profit legal organization
that uses DNA-evidence to free wrongly convicted
prisoners.
Which author is on its Board of Directors and profiled a
case in one of his non-fiction books? Name the book
The Answer is….
John Grisham
The Innocent Man
*25. Who is the most famous name missing from this list
of people from the late 19th/early 20th century?
• Frederic Dorr Steele
• Richard Gutschmidt
• Josef Friedrich
• Frank Wiles
• W. H. Hyde
• Frederic H. Townsend
• Arthur Twidle
• Gilbert Halliday
• Joseph Simpson
• H. M. Brock
• Alec Ball
• Walter ____
• Alfred Gilbert
• Howard K. Elcock
The Answer is….
Sidney Paget – illustrators for the Sherlock Holmes
canon
26. This character was never referred to by his Christian
name until it was revealed on the last page of the
penultimate book, 'Death is Now My Neighbour' in 1996.
While the publishers insisted the author should reveal the
character's name, the author admitted he didn't have the
faintest idea – a fact which led to intense speculation and
considerable odds at the bookmakers William Hill. It was
the author's wife who came up with the answer, partly
inspired by a famous explorer's ship and finding a list of
names drawn from Christian virtues.
Name the character (full name) and the author
The Answer is….
Endeavour Morse
Colin Dexter
27. Name the character
The Answer is….
Byomkesh Bakshi
28. They are the ancestors to today’s popular paperbacks.
The correct name for them according to some historians
should be just X novels and not Y novels.
This is because the first Y, was opened by F. W.
Woolworth in 1879, but the X (which was unlikely to be
found in a respectable establishment like Woolworth's)
had a long history reaching back well over a generation
before that.
What are X and Y?
The Answer is….
X – Dime
Y – Dimestore
29. Name the series and the author; the first book
(published in1992), of a series of 62 books, is seen below
The Answer is….
Goosebumps
RL Stine
30*. Identify the author from his lesser known works
A historical novel set in
12th century Europe and
the Middle East
A sci-fi novel set in the
ruins of the Anasazi
civilization
A Memoir
The Answer is….
Louis L’Amour
31. Geoffrey Yates was originally a PR person for Qantas
Airlines in Australia, before turning to writing pulp. He wrote
westerns, sci-fi space operas, and romance weepies. His
novels were the Swinging Sixties at their sleaziest. His
success even spawned a French award for ‘The most whiskies
drunk in a single round’ He was truly prolific as ______
_____, writing 322 books. Fill in the blanks
The Answer is….
Carter Brown
32. His book Striptease was made into a movie. The book was ok. The movie was not – It won the Razziefor Worst Picture of 1996.
He is also the author of a book on a corporation that according to him “…is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal”.
Who? What’s this book about?
The Answer is….
Carl Hiaasen
Disney
33. The series has a lot of similarities to the James Bond
novels. Like M, there’s David Hawk as the head of AXE,
Hawk's personal secretary Della Strokes, a character
similar to Moneypenny - flirtatious but serious, and
Poindexter, AXE's equivalent to Q.
This spy series was published from 1964 until 1990.
Either give the author’s name, or the name of the series.
The Answer is….
Nick Carter / KillMaster
34.
I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to
go through ____ than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
God.
- Matthew 19:23-26
What five word phrase will fill the blank to give a 1979
Edgar Award winning novel, that revolved around an Allied
counter-intelligence operation during World War II?
The Answer is….
Eye of the Needle
*35. He looks much like one of the classier hoods in one of his books. He began his career translating James Hadley Chase into Hindi. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyapreportedly grew up wanting to be him.
Who is this grandmaster of Hindi Pulp, who allegedly coined the word ‘company’ that is common in underworld slang today?
The Answer is….
Surender Mohan Pathak
36. Gulshan Nanda apparently copied the story from the Cornell Woolrich book. The movie based on his book got a slew of nominations and won the Filmfare Best Actress Award for Asha Parekh. What was it called?
The Answer is….
Kati Patang
37. A graphic designer has tried to recreate the imagery around the William Irish novel It Had to Be Murder (that was made into a successful movie). What was the name of the film?
The Answer is….
Rear Window
38.
• Dashiell Hammett’s first was "The Road Home",
December 1922 under name Peter Collinson.
• Erle Stanley Gardner's first was "The Shrieking
Skeleton," under the pen name Charles M. Green in the
December 15, 1923 issue
• Raymond Chandler’s first was "Blackmailers Don't
Shoot", published in 1933.
What publication connects?
The Answer is….
Black Mask Magazine
39.
Lester Dent, who wrote most of the adventures,
described his hero as a cross between “Sherlock Holmes
with his deducting ability, Tarzan of the Apes with his
towering physique and muscular ability, Craig Kennedy
with his scientific knowledge, and Abraham Lincoln with
his Christliness.”
Which character, who was created in order to capitalise
on the success of The Shadow?
The Answer is….
Doc Savage
*40.
The picture and text are from a 2005 obituary: Befitting
an author who lived most of his 78 years primarily under
two different identities -- those of ___ _____ and Evan
Hunter -- although neither of those was his real name. He
was born to Italian parents as Salvatore Alberto
Lombino…
Who are we talking about?
The Answer is….
Ed McBain
41.
Once, when T.S. Eliot was asked by an interviewer what
were the two most important changes in his life, he
responded “I prefer Claret to Burgundy and I prefer X to
Y”.
In doing so Eliot had moved on from someone with a
Gallic style and panache, who often did good while
operating on the wrong side of the law, to a Belgian who
was a strong believer in moral justice.
Identify X and Y.
The Answer is….
X – Inspector Maigret
Y – Arsene Lupin
42.
What is this?
The Answer is….
Cartier Diamond Dagger Award
Given to authors who have made an outstanding
lifetime's contribution to the crime genre; past
winners include the likes of Sue Grafton, Elmore
Leonard, and Frederick Forsyth.