This 'agreeable' primate, native to Madagascar, combines rodent-like teeth and a special thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. It's the world's largest nocturnal primate, and is characterized by its unusual method of finding food - it taps on trees to find grubs (larvae), then gnaws holes in the wood and inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out. One of the journeys undertaken in 'Last Chance to See' was to see this species. Identify.

Source: Megawhats 2011

ANSWER

The Aye-Aye

COMMENTS

A World Quizzing Championship question on it would show an image and ask the player to identify the world's largest nocturnal primate. Agreeable? Hmm, probably not.Even if you don’t know any trivia about an Aye-aye and have vaguely heard about such an animal somewhere, you can work this out using the one word hint provided - 'agreeable‘. This question was a part of a quiz meant for teams of four, where the probability of someone having heard of such an animal is fairly high.

The Venus Express probe, launched in 2005, entered orbit around Venus and studied its surface and upper atmosphere. Its secondary mission, though, has been to orient its cameras and telescopes towards Earth, for a rather bizarre purpose. From its position and with the resolution of its instruments, Earth appears just as a pixel to Venus Express. But its precisely this fuzziness that is supposed to help Earth's astronomers in one of their most prominent ongoing quests.

What is Venus Express trying to do in its observations of Earth?

Source: QFI Open Quiz 2015 by QED

ANSWER

It's trying to spot signs of life on earth! Earth looks to Venus Express as other exoplanets look to us on Earth. So the Venus Express is helping astronomers figure what to look for.

COMMENTS

It’s one of those questions which get ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ when one hears the answer. It is not easy but is definitely workoutable considering the continued efforts to find exoplanets and life forms elsewhere (light years away). None of the quizzers who were at the venue knew this for a fact and one team worked this out to much applause.

What was the nickname, a word play on a nursery rhyme’s title and the name of a short story penned by Agatha Christie, given by Frank Lloyd Wright to the American architectural giant Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), as he felt their early buildings were indistinguishable from those designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe?

Source: Soliloquiz 2015

ANSWER

The Three Blind Mies

COMMENTS

References to nursery rhymes and Agatha Christie are lateral clues to help you crack the question. You need to take a 30000ft high look at this question and summarize it to figure the answer out in the following way. Three people copying the work of Mies van der Rohe -> Three _ Mies -> Three Blind Mies, which is a play on the nursery rhyme – The Three Blind Mice and is also the title of an Agatha Christie story.I’m yet to meet someone who has in-depth knowledge of Frank Lloyd Wright’s comments on fellow architects.

Also called Gauss’ formula or the surveyor’s formula, it is a mathematical algorithm to determine the area of a simple polygon whose vertices are described by ordered pairs x,y) in the plane by cross-multiplying these pairs..When you list the coordinates in columns and crossmultiply the pairs, the resulting image looks like a daily use object, that involves similar crossing on a repeated basis. As a result, the algorithm is known by what popularname?

Source: SciTech Quiz 2014 by Navin Rajaram

ANSWER

The Shoelace Formula

COMMENTS

‘Object of daily use’, ‘crossing on a repeated basis’ and that image should give you enough clues to work this out. A simple question, at its heart, slightly twisted with attempts at intimidation by throwing complex formulas at you. All you need to do is to ignore them and focus on parts of the question that matter.

The root word is the proto-Indo-European bhel. Out of this spring a host of words (in Spanish, French, Italian, Portugese) and also one English word. The funny thing is, the English word is precisely the opposite of others. The reason, it has been surmised, has to do with fire. The words of the Romance languages refer to the brightness of fire, but the English word refers to its final remains. What are the words?

Source: QFI Open Quiz 2015 by QED

ANSWER

The root for the word 'black' and the words for 'white' (blanco, blanc, bianco, branco) are the same.

COMMENTS

‘Brightness’ and the remains of a fire – referring to burnt, dark leftovers. Significant brainstorming is needed to zero down on the right equivalent of these terms. A beautiful question about commonly used words – something that was hidden in plain sight and something which most of us refused to be curious about.None of the participants got the answer to the question right.

What one word connection?• This Arizona location's shape based name• This theory by Jean-Pierre Faye: "Rather than the

far left and the far right being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, they in fact closely resemble one another.”

Source: Soliloquiz 2014

ANSWER

Horseshoe

COMMENTS

A nice and easy question. Look at the image, think about the wild west, cowboys, horses, and see what the location resembles. While doing so, also learn about a theory by Faye – a quite relevant one in the times we live in

Who is the title of this book a reference to?

Source: Chronosynclastic Infundibulum 2016 by Thejaswi Udupa

ANSWER

von Neumann

COMMENTS

The lower case ‘v’ and the upper case ‘N’ are big clues to lead you to thinking names/initials which follow this pattern. The other clue is the bit about machines and machine learning. von Neumann is significant and popular enough to belong to the ‘General Knowledge’ of today. If it were a brute memory affair, one would either list novels of Ashby down or just move on to the next question.

In 1867, the Hougoumont left London for a voyage that would last 89 days. Although one person died on board, the 279 souls who did complete the trip would become the last set to undergo a rehabilitative process. What was the group the last of?

Source: Mahaquizzer 2014

ANSWER

Convicts transported to Australia

COMMENTS

Most people wouldn’t have heard of the ship Hougoumont but by piecing together the origin of the ship, the phrase ‘rehabilitative process’ and the number of days, it’s possible to come up with an educated guess – that of convicts getting shipped to Australia. If it were a brute memory game, I would be corroborating this with the list of ships that went to Australia. No, that isn’t how a good question works. And, a good question needn’t be difficult.

The term first appeared in 1965 on a photo caption in his local newspaper, the Medford Mail-Tribune. He said of the report: “Intuitively I liked the contradiction: a _____ that could be a success. It was descriptive, it was alliterative, and it fit.” However, at the other end of the spectrum, the Los Angeles Times called him “a guy being pushed out of a 30-storey window”. Having never been outside his homeland, when the time came, the first thing he did after reaching the country where he made his mark was to spend a night at some pyramids.

What term are we talking about?

Source: Major Chandrakant Nair’s General Quiz 2015

ANSWER

Fosbury Flop

COMMENTS

I recommend you to read the question again. What a lovely way to frame a question! Look at the choice of phrases – ‘contradiction to success’, ‘alliterative phrase’, ‘a guy being pushed out’ indicating an awkward jump of some kind, ‘made his mark’, ‘pyramids’ – to sufficiently confuse you if it might be about Egypt when it actually is about Mexico and the Olympics held there in 1968 when Dick Fosbury won the Gold in High Jump.

This particular subspecies of a bird that can famously drop into a steep, swift dive that tops 200 mph was light sighted in this archipelago in the 1980s. However, a few months back, three mating pairs of the bird were confirmed to have returned. It has been wryly noted that this could need be the stuff an ornithologist's reams are made of. Name the subspecies.

Source: Mahaquizzer 2015 (Hrishikesh Varma)

ANSWER

Maltese Falcon

COMMENTS

What reads like a comment – ‘wryly noted that this could need be the stuff an ornithologist's dreams are made of’ is an intelligent way to clue in the famous dialogue from film ‘The Maltese Falcon’ starring Humphrey Bogart. A bird known to travel really fast might lead you to Falcon while the ‘archipelago’ in the question is a loose clue to indicate Malta. The comment is the clincher, irrespective of your knowledge of Maltese Falcons.