fresher's general quiz 2017
TRANSCRIPT
Fresher’s General Quiz
Rules● +20/-10 on Pounce, +10/0 on Bounce.
● No one really bothers with these anyways, so moving on.
Question 1 Built on a series of hills, X is the site of a grand Hapsburg
palace and has a detached, imperial air of settled wealth.
In contrast, populous Y -- as flat as a prairie -- is busy,
buzzing and bourgeois, with an assortment of bars, cafés
and gourmet restaurants. The result of an 1873 merger
between these two distinct cities resulted in the
formation of “XY”, the capital of Z. Name X, Y, Z.
AnswerX - Buda
Y - Pest
Z - Hungary
Question 2“I walked into the House, and signed the attendance
register, just as the obituary announcements were being
made. Just as the Speaker concluded the list, I got up and
said ‘Sir, I have a point of order. In this intercession
period, democracy has died. So please include that in
your obituary’.”
Who said these lines and in what context?
AnswerSubramanian Swamy
During the emergency.
Question 3The X twins are American rowers and Internet
entrepreneurs. They are now venture capitalists
and in April 2013, the brothers claimed they owned
nearly 1% of all bitcoin in existence at the time.
Who are they?
AnswerWinklevoss Twins
Question 4 X's fatal duel took place on 30 May, 1832. What is known is
that five days before his death, he wrote a letter to Auguste
Chevalier which clearly alludes to a broken love affair. X was
so convinced of his impending death that he stayed up all
night writing letters to his Republican friends and composing
what would become his mathematical testament, the famous
letter to Chevalier outlining his ideas, and three attached
manuscripts. Who is X?
AnswerGalois
Question 5They're touted as handheld, bring-anywhere gadgets that can
eliminate anxiety and even help focus kids and adults with ADHD.
Dr. Mark Stein, director of ADHD and related disorders at the Seattle
Children's Hospital and professor at the University of
Washington,however, says X should not overtake proven methods of
treating the condition. “My worry is that they’re very much a
distraction, not only to the child, but it distracts people from doing
something that we know works,” Stein says.
What is X?
AnswerFidget Spinner
Question 6X was one of the co-authors (with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and
Terry Winograd) of an influential early paper on the PageRank
algorithm. He also co-authored another seminal search paper What
Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket with those same
authors.PageRank was the basis for search techniques of Google
(founded by Page and Brin), and X advised or taught many of
Google's developers and researchers.
Who is X?
AnswerRajeev Motwani
Question 7It was developed in the mid 90s in Colombia,
inspired by various Latin American styles. The name
itself has no meaning, and was chosen arbitrarily as
a brand name. However, an explosive rise in its
popularity over the recent past has led to concerns
that it might become a generic word. Which brand?
AnswerZumba
Question 8The word X was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book
The Selfish Gene, as an attempt to explain the way cultural
information spreads. Internet Xs are a subset of this general X
concept specific to the culture and environment of the
Internet.
AnswerMeme
Question 9The quote “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” is a quote
from the autobiography of the French philosopher
Jean Jacques Rousseau written around 1767, and
attributes this quote to a “great princess”.
What is it in English, and who is the quote often
misattributed to?
Answer“Let them eat cake”
Marie Antoinette.
Question 10They call themselves ‘A Chronicle of Enterprising
Demises’ with the motto “Honoring those who
improve the species...by accidentally removing
themselves from it!” Who?
AnswerThe Darwin Awards.
Question 11Identify the blanked part.
Answer
Question 12X was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his
eternal punishment in Tartarus. He was made to stand in a
pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the
fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding
before he could take a drink. This is considered to be the
origin of the word Y. When something is Y, it's desirable and
always just out of reach.
What are X and Y?
AnswerX - Tantalus
Y - Tantalise
Question 13In Italy, money dealers worked from tables, or
benches. When a money dealer ran out of money,
his table (or bench) would be broken, and he could
no longer deal money.
This describes the etymology of which word?
AnswerBanca (Broken) + Rotta (Bench)
Bankrupt
Question 14Around the year 1500. X made its appearance as a
fictional island, blessed with an abundance of gold
and populated by black, Amazon-like women,
whose trained griffins dined on surplus males.
What is X?
AnswerCalifornia
Question 15The pie chart depicts the
proportion of a certain activity
that these banks partake in
Hong Kong.
Hint: This activity is something
children think banks do.
AnswerPrint currency notes.
Question 16The phrase seems to have been brought back to
England by military men traveling to India in the
mid 18th century. An X was an Indian coin of little
value. The phrase indicated that people would be
unwilling to give even an X for that item.
What is the phrase?
AnswerI don’t give a dam(n).
Question 17X piloted the first plane that left Palam Airport at Delhi on 27
October 1947 at dawn and landed at Srinagar Airport in the early
morning. This was instrumental in saving Kashmir. X and his wife flew
to Java and brought Sultan Sjahrir out on a Dakota reaching India via
Singapore on 24 July 1947. For this act of bravery, X was given
honorary citizenship in Indonesia and awarded the 'Bhoomi
Putra',the highest Indonesian award, rarely granted to a foreigner. In
1996, when Indonesia was celebrating its 50th Independence Day, X
was awarded the highest national award, the 'Bintang Jasa Utama'.
AnswerBiju Patnaik
Question 18It is said the Hindi name of this fruit is a corruption
of the country of origin of this fruit, as Indians were
not able to pronounce its complicated name. Give
me the fruit and/or country.
AnswerMosambi / Mozambique
Question 19Whose Filmography on Imdb?
AnswerRaghuram Rajan
Question 20J M Barrie gave all the rights to X to Great Ormond
Street Hospital, a hospital dedicated towards the
intensive care for children, in 1929, and this was
later confirmed when he died in 1937. While the
copyright of the X has expired in the United
Kingdom, it was granted a special exception.
What is X?
AnswerPeter Pan
Question 21Secret Garden, by Johanna Basford has sold more
than 3 million copies worldwide and its popularity has
to led to it being translated to 14 different languages,
which is very unusual for a book of this nature. Many
have credited Johanna with sparking a new cultural
revolution, with the publication of Secret Garden.
What revolution?
AnswerAdult Coloring Books
Question 22X, (in)famous in another field, was also a painter. He
produced hundreds of works and sold his paintings and
postcards to try to earn a living for some time. A number
of his paintings were recovered after World War II and
have been sold at auctions for tens of thousands of
dollars. Others were seized by the U.S. Army and are still
held by the U.S. government
AnswerAdolf Hitler
Question 23In the decades since the publication of X, there have been numerous
comparisons to the novel Y, which had been published 17 years
earlier, in 1932. While members of the ruling class of X use brutal
force, torture and mind control to keep individuals in line, but rulers
in Y keep the citizens in line by addictive drugs and pleasurable
distractions. In October 1949, after reading X, the author Y sent a
letter to his counterpart and wrote that it would be more efficient for
rulers to stay in power by the softer touch by allowing citizens to
self-seek pleasure to control them rather than brute force and to
allow a false sense of freedom: Identify the novels.
AnswerX - 1984
Y - A Brave New World
Question 24The name of which gemstone comes from the name
of a transcontinental country?
AnswerTurquoise
Question 25Poor Richard's Almanack was a book written by Richard Saunders. It
is the origin of many well known phrases in English such as:
● “A friend in need is a friend indeed!”
● “Speak little, do much.”
Richard Saunders however was a pseudonym for a famous person.
Name him
AnswerBenjamin Franklin
Question 26This city is the trade centre for an area in which cotton, millet, wheat,
coriander and oilseeds are grown; industries include cotton and
oilseed milling, textile weaving, distilling, dairying, and the
manufacture of metal handcrafts. X also has an extensive industry of
stone-polishing of a stone called X Stone, used for the floor and walls
of residential and business buildings.
Vinod Kumar Bansal, an engineer at JK Synthetics, a chemicals
company, however, is the reason why the city is famous.
Name the city.
AnswerKota
Question 27
Answer
Question 28The derivation as a traditional term from octo- (“eight”) and thorpe
(“field, hamlet or small village”) lacks any evidence, but there is near
universal agreement that the first element refers to the number
eight. Eight is derived from the number of ends of the lines. Thorpe
could be reference to Jim Thorpe, as one proponent was a fan of the
athlete.
This is the wikipedia entry on the eytomology octothorpe. What is an
octothorpe?
Answer
#
Question 29X s a generic trademark owned by Sealed Air Corporation. In 1957
two inventors named Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes were
attempting to create a three-dimensional plastic wallpaper. Although
the idea was a failure, they found that what they did make could be
used as packing material. Sealed Air Corp. was co-founded by Alfred
Fielding in 1960.
What is X?
AnswerBubble Wrap
Question 30Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn;
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east,
And one flew west,
____________________________________
FITB, also the name of a Ken Kesey Novel.
AnswerAnd one flew over,
The cuckoo's nest.