Mega Whats 2011

MEGA-WHATS 2011 The 3 rd National Open Quizzing Championships Conducted by The Karnataka Quiz Association Est. 1983

MEGA-WHATS 2011 in association with QFI Chennai Bombay Quiz Club, Mumbai Boat Club Quiz Club, Pune Kutub Quizzers, New Delhi SEQC, Goa Hyderabad Quiz Club and K-Circle Grey Cells, Kerala Coimbatore Quiz Circle And the quizzing communities in Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram, Kolkata and Guwahati.

Four sections leading to 100 points Section 1 (40 x 1 = 40) Section 2 (20 x 2 = 40) Section 3 (5 x 2 = 10) Section 4 (5 x 2 = 10) The Design

Rules 40 questions, 1 point each. No negatives or half points anywhere in the quiz.

1 According to one theory, the phrase originated at fire departments or volunteer hose companies who gave exhibitions of their prowess at carnivals or similar events. As per another theory, it refers to the reconnoitering by bootleggers of the route they plan to use before transporting their illicit goods along it. What phrase , now commonly seen in engineering contexts?

2 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 is 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 . (Visual follows.)

3 There are plenty of interesting hypotheses about the quirk associated with him. Critic Edmund Wilson commented that it was a “a symptom of his immaturity as an artist”. Another school of thought believes that he may have intended it as a gesture of humility. Whatever be the case, seen here is a self-portrait by him. Who ? (Visual follows.)

4 The tuberose ( Polianthes tuberosa ) is a perennial plant related to the agaves, extracts of which are used as a middle note in perfumery. Its common name in Hindi means “fragrant at night” and was used as the title of an acclaimed 1974 movie. Identify its Hindi name . (Visual follows.)

5 What you see in the background is an example of the system devised by him in 1928. It continues to be used today (with some refinements) by actors, athletes, dancers, physical and occupational therapists. Identify this Hungarian or tell us what he created.

5 Rudolf Laban , who devised Labanotation .

6 What evocative name was used to represent the group which included Yusuf Akçura, Ayetullah Bey, Nuri Bey, Osman Hamdi Bey, Refik Bey, Emmanuel Carasso Efendi, Mehmet Cavit Bey, Abdullah Cevdet, Agah Efendi, Ziya Gökalp, Ahmed Riza, Talaat Pasha, Lewis Daly and Tekin Alp? It caught public attention in the early part of the twentieth century. The name was never used officially by them, rather they worked under an umbrella organisation called Committee of Union and Progress.

7 In an interview, Wendy Northcutt said that ‘a recent heat wave gave her the idea to air-condition her sweltering home: She pried up an oubliette floor grate in her hallway, intending to install a fan to suck up the basement’s cooler air. But she left to answer the phone, and hours later she strode back down the hall and obliviously stepped into the gaping hole. In the milliseconds as her body swooshed down, she thought “Oh nooooooooooo! I’m gonna win my own ____.”’ Fill up the blank or tell us her claim to fame .

7 The Darwin Awards—Wendy Northcutt instituted the awards.

8 Red Star Football Club 93 (commonly referred to as Red Star) is a French association football club based in Paris. The club was founded in 1897 and currently play in the Championnat National, the third level of French football. Who was its founder ?

9 Subbaraya Sastri (1803-1862) was a gifted musician and composed under the mudra (signature) of ‘Kumara’. Though his compositions are few, they are said to possess great raga bhava and present the intricate depths of music. Why is he considered to be one of the luckiest persons in the field of Carnatic music?

9 He got a chance to learn music from all 3 of the Trinity of Carnatic music (his father Shyama Sastri, Tyagaraja and Muttuswami Dikshitar).

10 Which art form , tracing its origins to wandering minstrels and stroytellers, has three major schools: Benares, Jaipur and Lucknow? A less prominent school, Raigarh, combines techniques from the major schools. Originally, these performers entertained audiences in village squares and temple courtyards, by recounting mythological and moral tales from the scriptures, and embellishing their recitals with hand gestures and facial expressions.

11 Odobenus , the genus name of this carnivore , comes from the Greek for “one who walks with his teeth”. It has 3 subspecies: O. rosmarus rosmarus which lives in the Atlantic Ocean, O. rosmarus divergens which lives in the Pacific Ocean, and O. rosmarus laptevi , which lives in the Laptev Sea. A member of the species featured as an unpleasant character in a whimsical work of fiction published in 1871. Identify.

12 The original purpose of this scientific discipline was data to be used by governmental and administrative bodies. The term, in the current sense, was introduced in German by Gottfried Achenwall in 1749. It was introduced into English in 1791 by Sir John Sinclair when he published the first of 21 volumes titled _____ Account of Scotland . What?

12 Statistics (signifying the “science of state”).

13 In Latin, it means “image” or “apparition”. The word was strictly used to designate a ghostly optical afterimage by Goethe in his Theory of Colours and Schopenhauer in On Vision and Colours . From 17th century optics, it started getting used in other contexts also. Identify this much-maligned term .

14 After whom are such pieces of machinery named? A good example can be seen at the Station Square in Pittsburgh. (Visual follows.)

14 Henry Bessemer , inventor of Bessemer Process, one of the first inexpensive industrial processes for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. (The device is a Bessemer converter .)

15 What’s common to the following: Dal Lake (Kashmir), Gaube Lake (the French Pyrenees), Lake Chad (Chad), Lake Nyassa (Malawi/Mozambique), Lake Tahoe (Nevada/California) and Lake Hayq (Ethiopia)?

15 Tautological names—all of them essentially mean “lake” (or rather “lake lake”).

16 Who comes next in the list?

16 Ravichandran Ashwin. (The third Indian player to score a hundred and take a five-for in the same Test, after Vinoo Mankad and Polly Umrigar.)

17 Pictures from Montevideo. What are these or where do these come from? (Visuals follow.)

17 Parts of Admiral Graf Spee , which was scuttled in Montevideo in 1939.

18 Mount Sodom is a hill along the Dead Sea in Israel. It is made almost entirely of halite, or rock salt. What name is given to the portion shown here by the locals? (Visual follows.)

18 Lot’s Wife (who turned into a pillar of salt for failing to heed the orders of the angels of deliverance while fleeing from the city of Sodom).

19 According to an apocryphal story, it owes its existence to a section of tightly packed seats behind the home plate at Fenway Park in Boston. These seats were so close together that whenever a fan had to stand up to get a beer, it caused annoyance to people nearby. In caught worldwide attention in 1986. What phenomenon are we talking about?

19 The Wave or the Mexican wave. (According to the story, when someone stood up, everyone else in the row also had to stand. The fans in the next row, frustrated that they couldn’t see the game anymore, also got up. This created a domino effect of the wave.)

20 Most birds have a ‘furcula’ whose function is to strengthen the thoracic skeleton to withstand the rigours of flight. Its common names derive from a playful tradition involving two people (usually). In the USA, it is also associated with a particular holiday. What common 8-lettered term are we looking for?

21 This Canadian stamp effectively evokes the main event in a famous poem from a 1907 collection titled Songs of a Sourdough. Which poem does this stamp pay tribute to? (Visual follows.)

21 The Cremation of Sam McGee (by Robert Service).

22 His political beliefs—part Quaker, part Socialist—are distilled into one of the famous statements attributed to him: “People who have to rely on experts, will be subjugated”. His best-known book has its genesis in a spot of illness. While confined to hospital with a persistent throat infection, he turned a series of lectures into a 650-page introduction to a subject that lay persons shy away from. His politics is reflected in the title, and in the structure of the book, which he described thus: “This book is written to show you how each step follows historically from the step before and what use it will be to you or someone else if it is taken”. Chapter titles within the book include The Grammar of Size , Order, and Shape , The Rise and Decline of the Alexandrian Culture and The Dawn of Nothing . Name either the author or the book .

22 Mathematics for the Million by Lancelot Hogben.

23 According to some online biography of the man, Glynn Christian “is best known in the UK as a BBC-TV chef-traveller and food journalist, and has been cooking on British television since 1982”. He wrote a book titled Fragile Paradise after a Royal-Geographical Society-supported sailing expedition which tries to set the record straight on a famous ancestor. Either name the ancestor or the location to which the author travelled.

23 Fletcher Christian or Pitcairn Island.

24 Apart from the family, there are two other primary sources through whom a reliable body of work associated with this creative personality has been assembled. These include the 175-year-old Mullamoodu Bhagavathar tradition, and the Nadaswaram vidwans at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple. What body of work are we talking about?

25 There are two primary contexts from which this 9-letter word may have arisen. One if that of the courtier, and the other is that of the soldier. Either way, the word may have come from the term for small instruction-cards. Such things were given at different times to people being presented at royal courts. They were also given to soldiers billeted with ordinary citizens in various parts of Europe. What word is this?

26 The Oxford English Dictionary records the use of this term as a suffix attached to anything to indicate ‘scandal involving’ since 1973. What term ?

26 ‘ -gate’. No other answer is acceptable.

27 The speed glue effect changed the nature of a particular sport drastically. According to legend, the effect was discovered by accident. A player found his equipment falling apart (erm) and was advised to stop at the nearby bicycle repair shop where the glue used for setting punctures right was found to have a magical effect on his game. Dragutin Surbek of Yugoslavia is given the major credit for popularizing this practice from 1979 to 1983. Many coaches and world-class players attribute the dominance of the European players in the World Championships from 1989 to 1993, when Sweden won three World Team Titles, to the discovery of the speed glue effect. All this led to changes in the rules of the game to slow things down, and eventually to the banning of the speed-gluing practice. In which sport ?

28 This brand name, once owned by Mead Johnson, is derived from the Latin for ‘food or foodstuff’. It was a combination of wheat, oatmeal and corn meal, with various vitamins included. It was apparently very effective in preventing rickets. The name however suffered some sort of demotion when it came to denote anything that is either worthless, without challenge, or bland. What brand-name/word is this?

29 The pseudonym used by these collaborators combines both their first names, thus offering a Sanskrit-Persian blend which they translate, rather liberally, as ‘the pleasures of the imagination’. They have been in collaboration for fifteen years now, and their output includes six books for adults, including a health compendium, a history of Mumbai’s epidemics and a thriller novella, as well as 10 titles in Puffin’s Panchatantra series. What pseudonym are we looking for?

30 What we see here is a stringed instrument which takes its name from a musically-inclined mythical character. It is a two-string stick fiddle from Northwest India used by bhopa singers to accompany the epic tales of Pabuji, a fourteenth century hero. Either identify the instrument or the character after whom it is named. (Visual follows.)

31 The meat dish ćevapčići or cevapi is served all over the former Yugoslavia, as also in several other Central European countries. This name is derived from a rough and ready culinary invention created by Persian soldiers who had nothing but meat, sword and fire. What is the familiar name ?

32 The origins of this term go back to agriculture. It probably comes from the Greek word for “threshing floor”, and eventually came to mean “circle” or “ring” because cattle would leave hoof-marks in a circle as they moved across the threshing floor. It travelled thus into astronomy, into art and even into the social sciences where it occurs in a phrase used for fallacious beliefs of the sort that clever people are knowledgeable about everything, or that implicitly nice people have uniformly ‘nice’ attributes. Give either word or phrase .

33 He wrote a book titled Suicide and the Meaning of Civilisation where he advances the claim that suicide rates can reflect the inner spiritual character of a culture. He thus traces the increase in suicide rates in Europe to the decline of Catholicism. He also went on to serve as the first President of his newly independent country between 1918 and 1935. Name this researcher and politician or the country .

33 Tomas Masaryk of Czechoslovakia .

34 This term in anthropology is derived from the Ojibwe language and describes any emblem which either stands for an entire community or for their ancestry. We might also run into a phrase based on this term in reference to the ways in which indigenous communities of North America put Western Red Cedar trees to use. Give either the term or the phrase .

35 The Head of State nominates six members and the Parliament nominates the other six. The requirement is that six must be theologians while the others must be jurists. This body has veto powers over parliament decisions. Either identify this unelected body , or the country where it wields power.

35 Council of Guardians/Guardian Council or Iran.

36 These sites, in Burundi and Tanzania respectively, claim to be the exact spot where a famous October 1871 event occurred. Historians prefer the Tanzanian claim, and believe that the Burundian memorial is for a later event. What event ? (Visuals follow.)

36 Stanley’s meeting with Livingstone.

37 Tony Malkin’s property goes back to 1931 and recently went through a 13 million dollar facelift which will pay for itself in three years in the sense that these changes will lead to a 38% reduction in annual energy consumption. This also makes Malkin’s property the tallest LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building in the United States. What are we talking about?

38 When Bruce Metzger oversaw the 1989 New Revised Standard Version of the Bible in American English, he was careful about making sure that a certain Biblical punishment was referred to using the ‘–ing’ form rather than the ‘–ed’ form. What did he change so carefully?

38 ‘ Stoned’/‘Stoned to death’ was modified to ‘Stoning’.

39 The bad press it has received goes back to Shakespeare, who uses the adjective ‘vexed’ for this place, and cutely misspells the name. He also erroneously supposed it to be Caribbean, a region which is a good one thousand miles away. The territory has the world's northernmost coral reefs. It has received much more bad press in the twentieth century by association, due to several sensationalist books and the resulting media coverage. Which British territory ?

40 This 14-part quiz show in 1995, produced by Siddharta Basu, featured Members Of Parliament and served as a curtain raiser to the next year’s general elections. It also shares it name with a controversial movie of the 1970s. Identify.

Rules 20 questions, each with 2 parts. Each part carries 1 point.

He set out on this climb in June 1802 and came very close to completing it. The peak inspired these lines: “It detaches itself from the neighbouring summits and towers over the whole chain of the Andes like the majestic dome produced by the genius Michelangelo…”. He also produced two very different representations of the peak—one a watercolour, and the other a scientific diagram. (a) Name this person and (b) the mountain peak . (Visuals follow.) 1

Alexander Humboldt. Chimborazo. 1

The first Earl of Avon ended his political career in disgrace after a military misadventure 55 years ago, code-named Operation Musketeer. He went on a vacation to a famous location in Oracabessa, Jamaica following the fiasco. The Thatcherite historian Norman Stone saw this coincidence as ironically appropriate and described it “as one imperial fantasy meeting another”. (a) Either identify this Earl of Avon or the misadventure . (b) Where did he go on vacation? 2

Sir Anthony Eden/Suez Crisis. Vacationed at Goldeneye with Ian Fleming. 2

3 This term is derived from the Latin words for ‘many’ and ‘writing’. Originally used for authors who could write on many different topics. The term was applied in the 19th century to a machine that duplicated writing—one owned by Thomas Jefferson is shown in the visual. The same term is used nowadays for a device which records several physiological indices at the same time. (a) What term? (b) What melodramatic synonym is now used for this device? (Visual follows.)

4 This 1982 single is a collaboration between a Black American musician and a pop-star from Britain. Its title is an elaborate play on words which accommodates a plea for racial harmony, as also the now-proscribed materials traditionally used for piano key-boards . (a) Name both the musicians. (b) Name the single.

4 Stevie Wonder & Paul McCartney. “ Ebony and Ivory ”.

5 The Aldabra group of islands in Seychelles is home to Aldabrachelys gigantea , a species which rejoices in the same common name as another species, Chelonoidis nigra , found in another territory that is half in the Northern Hemisphere, and half in the Southern Hemisphere. Give us (a) the common name that these distinct species share, and (b) name the other territory .

6 Ab ____ was a barn-burning sharecropper and former horse-thief and fathered the characters who dominate a trilogy comprising The Hamlet , The Town , and The Mansion . In the fictional landscape created by a Nobel laureate, they represent the lowest strata. Internet users are likely to have heard of this family as a result of a service run by Barbara and David Mikkelson. (a) Give the missing surname . (b) Name the Nobel laureate .

6 Snopes (after which Snopes.com is named). William Faulkner.

7 Two sound devices associated with the high end and the low end may be arrived at if you run your eyes over this pair carefully. Generic images. Name both.

8 In 1965, a woman researcher created this substance X while trying to find a replacement for the heavy steel cords used in tyres. Herb Blades devised a process that made its manufacture commercially viable. The first commercial release, in 1971, was titled X 29. The second generation, released in 1988, was named X 129. In 1995, X Correctional, which apparently provided ‘puncture resistant technology’, was introduced. There is also an X Protera, a name chosen because it reflects the greater protection this version offers. (a) Name the company and (b) the brand .

9 The third value, if you limit the system to a finite class of objects, is the norm and is therefore computed as 1.0. The first and second values are respectively 0.39 and 0.723 while the penultimate value is 19.18 and the eighth value is 30.06. (a) What is this finite set? (b) On what basic computation are these values based?

9 Planets of the Solar system. AUs or Astronomical Units are calculated using the distance between Earth and the Sun as the norm.

10 The Catholic theologian Peter Bungus published Numerorum Mysteria , or the Mystery of Numbers, in 1584. He decided that the numbers 1-10 correspond to the letters A-I, that 10-90 somehow correspond to the letters K-S, and that T-Z carried values ranging from 100-500. Despite these manoeuvers, he was unable to get the two sets of six letters in X’s name to add up in the desired way. He then added the letter A to achieve this result. (a) Who was the target of this fine effort? (b) What result was Bungus hoping for?

10 Martin Luther. The letters making up 666 (Number of the Beast).

11 The picture on the left is a stylised representation of a natural phenomenon, while the one on the right is a more mathematically accurate version of the same. This sort of arrangement is one in a class of several named in tribute to the man who first discussed the possibility in 1636, riffing on an idea provided by Archimedes. (a) What natural phenomenon? (b) Also name the terminally famous lawyer who lends this sort of figure his name.

11 Arrangement of seeds/florets in Sunflower. Fermat (Fermat Spiral).

12 According to Neil MacGregor, this 1830s work, printed on mulberry paper and about A3 in size, is “a hybrid work, a fusion of European materials with native sensibility. No wonder it is so loved in Europe; it is an exotic relative, not a complete stranger”. He makes this argument on the basis that though the work has “many subtle shades of yellow, pink and grey, it is the deep rich blue that dominates, and startles”. This is an eighteenth-century invention from present-day Germany, sold by Dutch traders in several parts of the world. (a) What work ? (b) What ‘ invention ’?

12 Hokusai’s Wave. Prussian Blue.

13 The text, apparently is pretty dull—“mostly bureaucratic jargon about tax concessions”, to quote an expert. What it actually does is allow a bunch of priests to congregate in the spiritual capital every year rather than in the swank new political capital. It was put up in 196 BC at Sais, and then moved 40 miles to another town, from which it gets its name. There is text in a fourth language on this object, and it reads “captured by British soldiers in 1801 and presented to King George III”. Though a Frenchman’s name is closely associated with this object, it was a British polymath, famous for his experiments with light, who made the first breakthrough in sorting out the mystery around the object. (a) What is the object? (b) Also name the British polymath.

13 Rosetta Stone. Thomas Young.

14 French economist Alfred Sauvy used the terms X, Y and Z in a newspaper article in 1952. He was drawing a parallel between the world situation, post-war, and the Estates in France after the Revolution. The terms X and Y seemed to denote competing ideological dispensations in his analysis. We don’t hear the term Y so much any more, but X and Z are still in use. (a) What is the term Y? (b) Give either X or Z.

14 Second World. First World or Third World.

15 These two memorable demonstrations of people’s power took place in the same year in the 1960s—one in January, the other in May. The first, called Pražské jaro locally, came to a bad end. The other didn’t fare much better, its most iconic image being huge heaps of uncleared garbage. Both have inspired films, novels-turned films, and much general hoo-ha. Identify the two events.

14 Prague Spring. The 1968 Paris student riots.

16 The reference to the fruit is believed to be a pun for the lead found in mines in the Mendip Hills, Somerset. The person referred is believed to be steward to Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury before the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. What are we talking about?

16 The earliest reference to the previous answer was in a ballad by Henry Carey published in 1725. Either name Carey’s work, a satire on fellow writer Ambrose Philips, who had written poems for the young children of his aristocratic patrons; or tell us Philips’ claim to fame.

16 Little Jack Horner. (Plum is supposed to refer to ‘plumbum’.) Namby Pamby . The phrase originates from Carey’s nickname for Philips.

17 It is a device that allows continuous linear or rotary motion in only one direction while preventing motion in the opposite direction. It is used in clocks, hoists, roller coasters, spanners, turnstiles etc. What 7-letter term are we looking for? An example is shown in the following picture.

17 In cars and other similar vehicles, such a mechanism is integral for the working of which part used directly by the drivers?

18 This structure was “being eaten away” by the marks you see. It has been restored recently and a protective glass barrier erected. Identify the structure. What was causing the damage to it?

18 Oscar Wilde’s tomb at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Lip marks/lipstick left by adoring fans.

19 The Tears Dress and the Skeleton Dress from the Circus Collection of 1938 were the result of collaboration between which two mavericks ? They also created the Lobster Dress famously worn by Wallis Simpson in a series of photographs by Cecil Beaton, and the Shoe Hat. (Visuals follow.)

19 Elsa Schiaparelli. Salvador Dali.

20 What is this? The inscription recalls fundamental principles laid out by whom?

20 The Pritzker Prize for Architecture. Vitruvius (“firmitas, utilitas, venustas”).

1 (a) The Japanese language is written with a combination of three scripts: Chinese characters called kanji , and two syllabic scripts made of modified Chinese characters, hiragana and ____ . The third is primarily used for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words, as well as to represent technical/scientific terms, and the names of plants and animals. What?

1 (b) It was one of the traditional Japanese swords worn by the samurai. It is characterized by its distinctive appearance: a curved, slender, single edged blade, circular or squared guard, and long grip to accommodate two hands. Identify.

2 (a) With whom would you connect the following?

2 (a) Sergei Eisenstein. (Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Nevsky, Grigory Potemkin)

2 (b) He appeared on the cover of TIME magazine dated 31 December, 1999. The accompanying article said: “Without fanfare, he helped scores of Jewish refugees get into an unwelcoming U.S., including a young photographer named Philippe Halsman, who would take the most famous picture of him (reproduced on the cover of this issue).” Who?

3 (a) He was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates. He is often cited as being the original “horse whisperer”, having advocated sympathetic horsemanship in his treatise On Horsemanship . His writings, especially the Anabasis (about the expedition against the Persians), are often read by beginning students of the Greek language. Who?

3 (b) This element was discovered in the residue left over from evaporating components of liquid air by William Ramsay and Morris Travers in 1898. It is used in flash lamps and lasers. It is also used as a general anesthetic and in treating brain injuries. Identify.

4 (a) Which 2011 movie was the first feature animation done by Industrial Light & Magic, generally a special effects company? It also marked a departure for its director who was associated with large-scale productions earning billions of dollars at the box office.

4 (b) This Andean stringed instrument of the lute family was traditionally made with the shell of the back of an armadillo. It has made appearances in multiple works by Gustavo Santaolalla. Identify.

5 (a) Domenico Modugno’s signature song “ Nel blu dipinto di blu ” (“In the blue, painted blue”) became the first Grammy winner for the Record of the Year and the Song of the Year in 1958. It is the only foreign-language recording to achieve this honor. Covered more than 100 times and parodied by football fans, its popular name is the Italian for “to fly”. Identify.

5 (b) He adopted a pseudonym in 1718 following his incarceration. It was seen by many to mark his formal separation from his family and his past. The name echoed the syllables of the name of his family house in reverse order. Some believe that he would have intended it to also convey its connotations of speed and daring. It was also an anagram of the Latinized spelling of his surname. Who?

5 (b) Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet).

Hop, Skip and Jump 5 questions with 3 variables in each—X, Y, Z Identify the missing variables. While answering please enter the variables, or whatever is asked for, into the (a) and (b) slots in order. 1 point for each.

1 X wrote these lines in an introduction to a 1977 book: “Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line”. Y was his teacher at the institute Z , famous for its science courses, and for preparing technocrats for admission into the civil services. If Z is the Ecole Polytechnique, France, name X and Y . (Visuals follow.)

1 X: Benoit Mandelbrot. Y: Gaston Julia.

2 The plant species Ceratonia siliqua is better known by the common name X . It produces a seed-filled pod. The seeds may be powdered and blended with another plant product Y . X ’s other claim to fame is that the seeds were used as a standard of measurement in ancient times and this may have led to the name Z for a particular unit of measurement. If Y is cocoa, give X and Z . (Visual follows.)

3 X wrote a letter in 1912 to his wife Kathleen where he said “I had looked forward to helping you bring the boy up…. Make the boy interested in natural history if you can. It s better than games.” The son referred to, Y , was named after his godfather Z ’s most famous literary creation. Y went on to do many things in natural history including the idea of Red Data Books which provided data on endangered species. If X is the explorer Robert Falcon Scott, identify Y and Z .

3 Y: Peter Scott. Z: J.M. Barrie, whose Peter Pan inspired Peter Scott’s name.

4 X was a radical figure who was deported from the United States. She travelled to the USSR just in time to capture Trotsky’s massacre of the protesters at Kronstadt. Her fiery speeches inspired a ne’er-do-well named Y to knock off a man Z whose name lives on in a mountain peak, albeit shakily. If Y was a Leon Czolgosz, name X and Z .

4 X: Emma Goldman. Z: William McKinley.

5 The British researchers X1 and X2 were repeating the Nobel-winning experiments of the 1904 laureate Y when they discovered a set of bodily processes. The two decided that they needed a word for an agent released into the blood stream that stimulated activity in a different part of the body. They turned to a classical colleague, W.T. Vesey (an authority on the Greek poet, Pindar) and asked him. He offered them Z , based on the Greek verb for ‘excite’ or ‘arouse’. If X1 - X2 are Starling and Bayliss, who is Y and what is Z ?

Research and Contortions Kiran Vijayakumar Arul Mani

Mega Whats 2011

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to Mega Whats 2011 (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Mega Whats 2011

Editor's Notes