Odyssey Open 2007, Chennai - Finals

The final round of the Odyssey Open 2007 was, as I had mentioned earlier in my prelims post, a treat to savour. The questions were great and enjoyable. It lasted for a long, long time leaving the audience and the teams tired and exhausted but trivia-full! A couple of changes in the format were used –

i) Quiz Mountain – A sequence of questions (2,6, 12, 24 points). None of the teams maxed, though.

ii) Relative Grading in Written Round – Score for the Q depends on how many teams answered the same question correctly.

The general format was not infinite bounds(or is it infinite bounce?) but direct-indirect based round with all questions worth the same. I think this makes a lot of sense and is a lot fairer than infinite bounds–

a) Time is of the essence while cracking verbose questions. Infinite bounds disadvantages weaker teams unfairly. More on this later in a separate post.

b) Keeping track of rounds is easier.

Enough commentary, on to my transcript (very long, 4 pages!) of the session. Errors and omissions expected. Please fill in with comments if you were there and would like to add or correct something.

1. Four stories about Buddha – Connect – Four animals on the Sarnath stupa

2. Video clip from Lucky Number Slevin. “The Boss is like Anthony Dawson in From Russia With Love” Why? – Never appears in movie

3. Equal mix by weight of salt and ice – used as 0 by Gabriel Fahrenheit

4. QM

a. Youngest ever to Booker – Ben Okri. Youngest woman – Kiran Desai. Before – Arundhati Roy

b. 1992 Maastricht Treaty – European Union. Father of Euro.

c. Story – clues – worked as assistant in draper’s shop – organization => YMCA

5. Transatlantic flights. When fuel low, no option but to try to continue => “Point of no return”

6. Video – Rajni Kant fight scene from Baasha. Pic of old man. – Old man is Jack Foley. Foley artists are the ones who make “Dishoom dishoom” sounds!

7. International Society of Cryptozoology formed in early 1980s to investigate evidence of unverified species. Animal in emblem – Okapi

8. 4 feet 8 inches = Standard gauge. Used in 60% railways worldwide. Only Indian system to use this – Trams in Calcutta

(AQ) Other cities (used) to have tram systems - Chennai, Mumbai, Nasik

(AQ) MGR institution - to retail alcohol in TN state

9. Audio instrumental. Piece chosen for starting radio program. – Chopin’s Minute Waltz for Just A Minute

10. QM

a. Jackson Pollock (visual)

b. If dad is Boomer, mom is Flyer, kid => Joey (Kangaroos)

c. If H1-B for software, H1-A for => Nurses

11. Chalukyan conquest – relic of Paranjoth commander of Pallavas – Vaathapi Ganapathi (Muthuswami Dikshithar)

12. Visual of person from three angles. (Three musketeers?) Also of statue. Story? – Van Dyke drew all these because king wanted statue made and couldn’t to go to sculptor! King Charles I???

13. QM

a. WICB logo (West Indies Cricket Board)

b. Eclipse – A piece for = original Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon

c. My fair lady clip – Bow Bells – Had to be born within earshot of these bells to be called Cockney

14. Mail order seed catalogues. Used to contain stupid jokes. => Corny jokes

15. Gordon 1849 established store = Peter Orr & Sons (Local shop)

16. Bahama helped by American Prohibition, repealed-> stagnation. Similarly helped by American political event of 60s – Bay of Pigs, alternative to Cuba for tourism

Buzzer round

1. Land of coconuts – Kerala

2. Drink – Italian for gypsies – Zingaro

3. 1/16 of teaspoon – Dash

4. Kerouac described himself after trip as – “beat”

5. Purple people – Phoenicians, Creation of the world

(AQ) Deepika Padukone debut. More famous Padukone earlier – Guru Dutt also Padukone

(AQ) Turn your watch around to know GMT from IST. Mentioned in – Satanic Verses

17. Balloon story – name origin of Winnie the Pooh

18. Jaipal Singh captain of the 1928 Indian Olympic hockey gold team.Later MP. Demand in 1954 to create something rejected – but allowed recently – Jharkhand

19. Visual of birds. What’s missing? – Golf! Bogey, Ostrich – 4 under par, Condor – 5 under par

20. “Candlelight Blues” Jazz legend started radio in country – King Bhumibol Adulyadej

21. Two poems. Visual Thomas Bruce – Elgin Marbles

22. QM

a. Sea to Air To Land – one – US Navy SEALs

b. Finish fabric. French “ Gloves of Sweden” – Suede

c. Character visual – Mortiana from Ali Baba (was cracked by a little girl in audience)

23. Visual Branasi’s “Bird In Flight”. Jonathan Hayes product – Xbox-360

24. Connect. “My money went to Nigeria and all I got was lousy T-shirt!” Video: Pyar hua ikraar hua song clip. – 419 scam, movie Shree 420 – Cheating codes in India, Nigeria!

Buzzer Round 2

1. Mowgli first appeared

2. David Selznick $500 in Damned

3. Latin “waterfall”. Disease. – Cataract

4. Canada’s official entry into Oscar for Foreign – Deepa Mehta’s Water

5. Founding major league football – LA Galaxy (Beckham team)

(AQ) Albania Tehran

(AQ)Shh.. Perfume – Jade Goody

25. Tintin and Alphart – Scene description – villain pouring plastic over him. What happens next? – Nobody knows. Herge left incomplete

26. Paul Newman, Steve McQueen. Towering Inferno. Ego clash => Same number of dialogues etc. Something else also -> Diagonal billing in credits

27. Max von Laue, Jah(something) left Nobel medals with Bohr. Had to reapply for these. Why? – Stored in aqua regia to prevent slipping into Nazi hands, dissolved

28. Invented in NHL in Canada. Later in USA . Story. What? – Mexican wave

29. Florence Balcombe, love of Oscar Wilde married another Irish author. Film adaptation used without permission. Successfully sued. = Nosferatu, Bram Stoker

30. Covering for dish to avoid flies. Snack => Tapas

31. Ad =Baking Powder (visual) => A picture is worth a thousand words

32. QM

a. Checkpoints of Berlin Wall

b. SOWSPODES, US uses OWL-2 – Scrabble

c. Spanish word for chestnut. Ater its shape. Musical instrument – Castanet

Written round (Relative scoring)

1. 50 page pamphlet. Sold lots of copies. Thomas Jefferson. Other clues – Thomas Paine

2. Fil clip – offering money – Lew Wallace, Ben Hur author

3. Karora Singh Dhalliwala deman 2 lac ransom and also 30,000 troops to be garrisoned in Delhi – Tis Hazari

4. Unfurled Vande mataram flag in Stuttgart, German 100 years ago – Madam Bhikaji Cama

5. Identify missing guys – Father son pairs to have won Nobels

6. WH Davies – “What is this life full of care” poem. Autobiography of a _________ . Audio in background – Supertramp

7. Visual – Penguins known as – Groucho Marx penguins

8. Bandra Worli ceiling

33. United Fruit Company introduced bananas. Dirk browne Miss Chiquita character for ad campaign. Audio singing – “Don’t store bananas in refrigerator”, a lot of people were having problems!

34. QM

a. First introduced in 1997. Zimbabwe/England match – Duckworth Lewis

b. Before graduating from apprentice on ship, one had to tie the mast => Learning the ropes

c. Unusual choice for Sports Illustrated subscribers – whether to receive the swimsuit edition or not

35. Mark something millionaire. Clients AP, Reuters – Getty Images Jean Paul Getty’s grandson

36. Connect some visuals of art – All destroyed in WTC bombing

37. Classical Greek comedy. “alazon – “, “bomolochus – buffoon” third? – irony

38. Videos – two film clips. High Noon Fred Zinnemann, Rio Bravo Howard Hawk

39. USSR Svyatoslav Fyodorov developed process in 1970s which made him millionaire. Recently a modern version of his technique – LASIK

40. Visual. Thiruthani temple, Capitol Hill – Both 365 steps.

Buzzer Round 3

1. Uncle who got Eleanor married to FDR – Theodore Roosevelt

2. UN Security council smallest state – England (a team answered France)

3. Largest carnivore in Africa – Nile crocodile

4. 1000 wickets first – Shane Warne

5. Non borderd US states – Alaska, Hawaii

(AQ) Named for love-god disease - Venereal disease

(AQ) First 10 digits of e – Google ad for recruitment

41. QM

a. Momofoku Antu – Top Raman

b. Ted’s father, Mom 200 pounds. Some BS story – Dr. Seuss

42. Back cover of music album blanked out – Hard Rock Café

43. Herbert Baker’s new Grandstand at Lords. “Never has a stand so large held so few people.” – Father Time weathervane (very arbit question)

44. Tabla(visual). Song(audio) – Connection Amir Khusro , penned the lyrics, invented table by bifurcating a mridangam(??)

45. Indy 500 1911 winner Ray Harowcen no riding mechanic. Controversy. Introduced something – Rear view mirror, before mechanic used to tell anybody in back (I wanted to answer knew it but a team guessed!)

46. Hunti in 2002. Story. DNA samples – Sherbet Gul (Afghan girl on NGEO cover)

47. Edible item in India after African country (map shown) – Mozambique and musambi

48. Virgil described recipe for salad in Morefum. Visual of such a salad. Concept -=> E pluribus unum

(post completed 5 Feb,2007)

Odyssey Open 2007, Chennai - Prelims

Here are the Q&A of the elimination round of the open quiz organized by Odyssey in Chennai on 26 January 2007. The QM was Diwakar Pingle. The set of questions for the prelims were very good indeed. The questions were relevant, trivial, informative, useful, endearing, done with a personal touch, all at the same time!

The venue was packed, both floors of it plus a mini hall(!), with participants. Yeah, like a tin of sardines! All hell broke loose just before the prelims stage, with the organizers not having a clue as to how to handle the mad rush of people. Thankfully, things calmed down and things improved by the time the on-stage round began.

The cut-off was around 24, I guess from my friend Sreeram, who had made it to the final rounds. The final round was a trivia-fest; it was Triwiali, with crackers and sparklers of questions. I will try to put up some of the questions here soon. Frankly, there is just too much stuff! A problem of plenty... The quiz lasted for more than 3 hours!

The quiz was won by Swami, VV Ramanan and teammate, who came back strongly from behind to trump the Bangalore teams. It was truly an inspired effort from them and the adrenaline could be smelled from far!

PRELIMS
--------------
1. Rabindranath sang this for the first time @ 1896 session of Congress. Published in Bangabandhu.
- Vande mataram
2. Peoples Action Party hasn't lost a single election since independence from Britain - Singapore
3. Which laboratory crosses an international boundary? - CERN
4. Visual - Rajapalayam dog
5. Video - Film dedicated to? - Steve Irwin (Ice Age 2??)
6. Audio: Bappi Lahiri singing
7. Mix of jazz, blues and gospel ==> Rock&Roll - R&B
8. Jan 25th. Scotland night. Ode To A ____ - Haggis
9. Retired in 1962. All records overhauled by Gavaskar ==> Sachin - Polly Umrigar
X. Visual - UNESCO World Heritage Site
Y. Audio - Theme song of ICC World Cup 2007
Z. Visual - cover of white mughal, william dalrymple - Bahadur Shah Zafar
A. Anand most winningest streak - Corus (Wijk Aan Zee)
B. Finnair recently launched Helsinki-Delhi. Brand ambassador - Santa Claus
C. Purandara mudra etc Thyagaraja mudra what? - Thyagaraja
D. Visual - Red shirt unveiling his own statue - James Brown
E. Audio - Raaga - Punnaraya varal
F. Recent Indian word added to OED Gujarati "without servitude" - Bindaas
G. Examples of - pangrams
H. Who visited which dictator, inspiring reforms - Friedman visited Pinochet
I. Remove two letters from country to get capital, add the same two letters to get capital - Brazil, Tunisia
J. Jefferson popularized. In Europe, was initially used for decorative purposes - Tomato, Potato
K. Visiting quiz in Delhi. Shocked to see people not knowing "mother of Rama" - Kausalya, Amar Chitra Katha Origin, Anant Pai
L. ___, ___, arub etc - Lakh, Crore
M. Original name changed after visiting ruler gave something near canal - Nehru, Orig name: Kaul
N. Story about small letters being more used. What terms? - Upper case, Lower case
O. Australian coat of arms - Kangaroo, Emu
P. Swahili word, Makonde word - Chikangunya, Dengue
Q. Like Moses, river parted for Indian myth - Krishna and Vasudeva
R. Visual: free running game - Parkour
S. (local) cookery book trivia - Samaithu Paar
T. (local) visual - mascot of Harlem Globetrotters (had recently visited Chennai)
U. Why ships' breadth 32.3m ? - Width of locks of Panama canal
(guessed Suez)
V. Duke of ___ story. Replace Amsterdam with ours! - York (New York name origin)

PERSONAL
--------------
I teamed up with a couple of guys from Chennai, Karthik Narayan and his friend Anand. All we actually had going for us was our team name, which I thought was pretty good: The 3 MUST GET BEERS! A play on The Three Musketeers, to make it bleedingly obvious! We made 17 points, I guess, which was definitely not good enough in an open quiz of this scale. Plainly put, I failed to qualify.

But the final round was worth the trip (I had come on the Shatabdi from Bangalore n the morning) just for the infotainment value. It was also good to meet up with some old friends like Sreeram and to make some new friends. All in all, I must say it was an enriching experience.

There was an impoverishing experience also though, in the morning. I got fleeced by an auto-rickshaw driver who dropped me off at the Museum instead of Music Academy (the venue), where I had asked to be dropped. It always happens to me in Chennai!

SciTech Open Quiz KQA Jan 2007

REVIEW
The open science and technology quiz organized by the KQA on Saturday, January the 13th turned out to be a decent affair despite snome technical snafus. The QM was Avinash Thirumalai (of the team Thought Gang). The quiz was entirely written because something nasty had happened to the quiz's slides on the QM's laptop.

The questions were well-researched and very relevant. There were a few controversial and "subjective" questions as well. For a change, the questions were also well-framed - succinct and memorable.

It was question-setting the way it should be. The questions should never be verbose Wikipedia extracts with irrelevant stuff retained and relevant, useful stuff blanked out. Yesterday's was a refreshing change from the "Copy-Paste-From-Wiki-Blank-Out-Stuff-And-Ask" style of questioning that seems to be prevalent amongst QMs of the day. And details, if present in the question should aim to guide and not to obfuscate and mislead.

The highlight of the question-set was a fill-in-the-blanks poem questions which, if original (I think it was), highlights the imagination of the QM and also the effort which went into the framing of the questions.

The quiz was won by Mujib & Praveen, who closely edged out MQ and WALTW.

PERSONAL
I teamed up with E. Gopal, my teammate for technical quizzes from my college days, from San Francisco, who happened to be in Bangalore on the day . We called ourselves the Icons, a harkback to yesteryear which, sadly was not to be relived. Mujib, of the winning team, used to be the quiz-master for some of the technical quizzes that we as a team had participated - so in that way, it was pretty much nostalgic and (strangely) appropriate for us!

---------------------------------------------------------------

TRIVIA TIDBITS
---------------------

0. Identify A-N
(A poetic question!)

B an C found a beautiful spiral
While triplets mad D go the wrong way
K was D's favourite
The lack of which caused L
So, M fed his men cabbage
While sailing to beautiful N
float across H

E discovered the structure of F
Central to which is G
One of the last to be produced in H
Which gives its name to I
Next in abundance only to J
Which was found by A
Whose name graces the place where B and C worked.

(A dependency graph was also given! Work it out! Not giving the answers here. Possibly later, in a comment)

1. Technique perfected by Go Ben Hok in 1958. Voted Japanese invention of the century in a 2000 poll. - Instant Noodles
2.Term coined by physiologist Wilhelm Kuhne from Greek for "in yeast" - Enzyme
3.Established in 1980 by Holger ___, inventor of artificial kidney. Recognition in non-Nobel areas - Crafoord Prize
4.Biggest producer of methane. India, China - Cattle
5.Founded by Madhava in 14th century. Prominent members Parmeshwara, Achyuta Pisharati, Ahyuta Panikar - Kerala School Of Mathematics
6.First working model by Theodore Maiman - LASER
7.Designed to make DOS programmers switch to Win95, built on the concept of Exodus by Kinesoft Development. Set of APIs for games. - DirectX
8.Created by Jorge Cham. BS=BullShit, MS=More of the Same, PhD=Piled Higher and Deeper. - PhD Comics
9.Coined by Ernest Starling. From Greek for "set into motion" Injecting intestinal extracts into dogs -
Hormone
10. See sounds, Hears colours. Neurological condition - Synesthesia
11.Named after first director-general of CSIR. Prestigious award for Indian scientists - Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar
12.____ signed controversial agreement with Microsoft. More clues. - Novell
13.Connect Santorini in Crete, Olmecs in Mexico,Harappan civilisation,Phoenecian city of Gebal, the Minoan palace site of Phaistos, the Elamite civilisation in Iran and the city of Robonc in Hungary - Undeciphered scripts
14.Two elements named after stories of evil spirits (teaser clues) Copper and - Cobalt
15.Musical instruments acoustic superior because of syahi or karnai, a mix of rice flour, ferric oxide and starch - Tabla, Mridangam
16.Last Charles Davis and team successfully placed a parasitic plant in tree of life, problematic before - Rafflesia
17.Term referring to pre-announced software/hardware which fail to materialize. Duke Nukem 3 Forever - Vaporware
18.Scientific test inspired by party game called "The Imitation Game" - Turing Test
19."Physics do not need mysticism ,and Mystics do not need physics, but the world needs both." On John Horgan's list of 10 worst science books. - Tao Of Physics by Fritjof Capra
20.Prehistoric Map. Identify Region - Gondwanaland
(The other part is Laurasia)
21.Budget document per unit shown (around 1000$) - 100$ laptop
22.Half purple, half white. Petunias - RNA interference
23.Visual - Yangtze River dolphin
24. Graph of substance - Carbon-60
25. Visual showing cricket ball dynamics - Contrast Swing
(Not reverse swing!)
26.Tree Of Life. Centre is LUCA - Last Universal Common Ancestor
27.Visual in the news recently- Cisco Iphone
28.Graph - Bose-Einstein condensate
29.Space Odyssey theme in Simpsons clip, IBM documentary actually made by brothers - Powers Of Ten
30.Long video trailer about experiment - Large Hadron Collider Experiment
31.Heated to 446F. Smells emerged- Chocolate
32.___ drive in Arthur C. Clarked. 1975 Peace Prize - Andrei Sakharov
33.Name origin. Become one with lover - Hermaphrodite
34. Letter about DNA Helix - Rosalind Franklin
35.Movie Poster - An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore)
36.Visual of space. Contrast. X-Ray, Optical - Dark Matter exists
37.Visual (Clue: 23) - David Hilbert
38.Visual. Woman asked to write her name, ends up writing husband's - Alzheimer's
39.Visual - Gregory Perelman, mathematician solved Poincare's conjecture, 2006 Fields Medal winner
40. ECG Sudarsan not getting Nobel
41. Connect : Fractals, Icon- Stephen Wolfram
42. Penziers and Wilson (not sure about names)- Cosmic Background Radiation
43. Place in Austria and deVries, Carl Corens, Eric von - Mendel

Vidyasagar Rajan Memorial Quiz 2007

This was an intercollegiate quiz that was conducted on 13 January,2007. Arul Mani was the QM. IIM Bangalore ended up winning the contest, mostly on the strength of written rounds.

The standard of the questions was a tad too high for the teams to tackle. Most of the questions in the finals were unanswered by the teams or the audience. It was way over the top of the head, the quizzing equivalent of bowling bouncers at tailenders, who should be made to play the ball and get out! It was Infinite Bounce, well and truly!

To the QM's credit though, the standards of the prelims was also similar. The cut-off I think was very low indeed! But these questions would have been better played out in one of the KQA Opens, I would say. The Themed rounds and Stage-2s were toned down to appropriate levels of tough, even then there were still not too many takers!

It being an intercollegiate affair, I had gone just to watch the quiz... though nowadays usually it turns out that way in any case, even if I go to participate! ;-) I was the only pure spectator, the rest of the audience (there were only about 3 others) were members from teams that hadn't qualified. It is a shame that more of the teams didn't stay back and watch the quiz. Read Living To Fight Another Day for reasons why to do so. To address this issue, the QM had special audience rounds as well; he had even planned it as dividing the audience into teams! :-(

TRIVIA TIDBITS
---------------------
*Humulus lupulus - Hops, used in beer
*Grand Prix Internation ==> Golden Palm
*Losing finalist at Wimbledon in '54,'56,'70,'74 - Ken Rosewall
*Movie Poster - Garrincha
*Bio - PVR=Priya Village Roadshow
*Shona language, independence in 1980, name-change - Zimbabwe
*Logo, sort of like a spade cavity in a disc - World Heritage Site
*RayBan sold to Italian company in 1999
*Story - L'Oreal
*Brain Contrast Map - London taxidrivers
*Visual, one died recently - Hanna and Barbera
*Audio - You're Pitiful James Blunt parody
*Cartoon. Superman Is It Kryptonite? - Zidane headbutt
*Amelie movie
*Turkenbashi, Miyazo
*Audience Stage 2 - AR Rahman songs
*HarleQuin Great Dane - when a Great Dane has spots
*Unknown author piece extract, identify - My Pet Goat
*Yours Mine and Ours, last film she made - Lucille Ball
*Imegaphone album cover - Anagram of Imogen Heap, the artist
*"Don't let no one beat you no more" - Kosovo
*Philip Pullman's Dark Material Trilogy
*Two audios - Written by Founder of Arlantic Records passed away
*Vir Sanghvi Anthology
*"Flight Of The Brickbats"
*Sting's new album - Songs From The Labyrinth
*Arthur Okun calculate index using unemployment and inflation. Used by Republicans to eject Carter - Misery Index
*Sesame Street character Oscar Grouch ==> inspiration for Artemis Fowl character
*Last appearance in Woman called Golda, Oscars for Gaslight(44) and Anastasia(56) - Ingrid Bergman
*Sea-side structure built all over England for Napoleon attacks - opening sequence of Ulysses
*Viggo Mortensen portraying character created by - (forgot)
*Elly awards shaped like an elephant
*Haruki Murakami - Kafka On The Beach photo
*Once known as Asia Minor. Name comes from Greek for "east" - Anatolia
*Beer, River, City- Amstel
*Road to Wellville about - Kellogg
*Tree-dwelling nymphs, alternative name for King Cobra - Hamadryad
*Waistcoat, African capital, corporal equivalent rank in Israeli Defence - Rabat
*Curse of Capistrano first story - Zorro
*Kazakhstan, Borat
*Statue shown, Ulan Bator = Red Hero
*Eaters Of The Dead - version of Beowulf
*Gulf of Mexico = Sea Of Cortes
*Peter Benchley was speechwriter

KQA January 2007 Open Quizzes

BRIEF REVIEWS
----------------------
Two quizzes were conducted by the KQA at the Daly Memorial Hall, Bangalore on 7 January 2007. One was a general quiz while the other was a speciality quiz (the theme was "Maps")

1) At Las' (The Map Quiz)
QM: Arun Hiregange of WALTW and Arul Mani

2) Open Quiz
QM: Anustup Datta of WALTW

Both the quizzes were extremely intriguing. I would even go so far as to say that a Sunday afternoon could not have been better spent by a trivia-buff!

The map quiz was a written affair comprising of around 50 questions. Arul Mani and Appu shared QM-duty. The questions, expectedly, blended geography with an eclectic mix of topics while still retaining the "map focus". Even so, the unbeliever could justifiably claim that many were just normal trivia questions being passed on as map questions by just displaying a map on screen! Also, the blanking of some areas of text on the maps even in cases where they would only have helped as "workouter helpers" was somewhat dubious. And on some of the maps, more profound and less arbit questions could have been framed. But all in all, it was an excellent set of questions and a good show by the QMs.

The open quiz was conducted by the Derek O'Brien-crowned ;-) "Brain of Bangalore" Anustup Datta. The enthusiasm and diligence shown by the QM was contagious. The selection of questions was judicious; unanswered questions were few and far in between and when they were, were applauded for ingeniousness and uniqueness of perspective by everyone within hearing distance! The questions of the prelims, thankfully, had good correlation with the questions asked in the finals too. The standard of the questions was generally very good and pretty much uniform, though the odd sitter and "too-arbit"ter were also there.

The final round was a marathon by the master quizzer; it lasted for nearly 4 hours. In fact and jest, towards the end, when the QM needn't have said "Anyone in the audience?" for unanswered questions! (There was no "one" left or only one choice of one was possible ;-) Jokes apart, thank you Anustup for your wonderful and sincere effort at both enlightenment and entertainment!

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
-------------------------------
I participated in both the quizzes though my regular partners had backed out because of other commitments.

My partner for the Map Quiz was Dr.Krishnan who came up with more than a few strokes of brilliance during our fate-imposed collaboration. We scored only around 10 points on the entire set but there were more than a few near-misses. I am mostly to blame; I rue the fact that I haven't perused the mammoth geographical encyclopaedia that I purchased in 2005! :-)

For the general quiz, I teamed up with my erstwhile nemeses and rivals(for a brief time) from REC Calicut- Praveen, Vipin and Atul. We called ourselve Oomph, an abbreviation of the Sanskrit verse on Praveen's T-shirt. For a change :-), we managed to qualify and also placed sixth (I think) in the finals.

Excuse-time! None of us had had anything to eat the whole day and an excess of Food-For-Thought in place of Food-For-Body led to momentary blackouts. Any newbies reading this, really, it makes a difference; this has happened to me before also. Quizzing is a mind-sport and we need to be fit both mentally and physically to sustain high levels of focus and concentration. Self-note: Next time onwards, I have to make sure that I am better nourished for the quizzes that I attend...both ways! ( body... eat more! and perhaps more importantly, mind.. read more! ) ;-)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OPEN QUIZ
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PRELIMS
--------------
1.Kajol sequence in KANK Rock & Roll Sonia - inspired by 1950s film Tum Sa Nahin Dekha
(miss,went with a Shammi kapoor film)
2. Barbarians - term comes from Greek, adopted by Romans - unintelligible sounds
(hit, sitter)
3.State animal of Sikkim - Ailures fulgens Why in news- Firefox
(Miss, Inspired attempt: Sleepycat software acquired by Oracle. ailure=>cat, animal is very lethargic)
4. Visual of ISKCON temple Bangalore
(miss)
5.Commissaires (police), pleureurs (criers), bisseurs (encorers), rieuers (laughers) == Claque (Professional applauders)
(miss, featured in Yaake quiz, should have got)
6.Started in '50s. Average 34-25-34 "The girl next door without any clothes on" == Playboy's Playmate of the month
(Went against hunch and missed, attempt Barbie)
7.Visual of Jan 2, 1928 issue of time - Charles Lindbergh, First TMoY
(Hit, another sitter)
8.Author about most famous creation - I have a feeling of having had too much to eat. Conan Doyle about Holmes
(Miss, Went with Disney about Donald)
9.Coptic text discovered by local peasants - Gnostic Gospels or Nag Hammadi library
(miss)
X.Visual of Red Umbrella - Citigroup HQ
(miss,Vipin's input lost in noise)
Y.Anthem composed by Joseph Haydn - used by Austria - Deutschland uber alles
(miss)
Z.Brief bio. Question about Tom Stoppard.
(miss)
A.Audio: Cliff Richards - Theme from a Dream ==> Pal Pal from Lage Raho Munnabhai
(hit, sitter)
B.Artist, son of tailor, brief bio = Auguste Renoir
(miss)
C.Film clip with blue umbrella = Ruskin Bond's Blue Umbrella
(miss)
D.Letter with dashes Dear ____ Swami = Graham Greene to RK Narayanan
(hit)
E.Visual - Dilmom Dilbert's mom
(miss, +I - Dilbert's dad is Dogbert)
F.brief tech/management bio, 8 people left in 1950s- William Shockley
(miss, wrote John Bardeen)
G.Ancient egyptians started, napoleon thought of continuing - Suez Canal
(miss)
H.Visual connect : Dead Man's Chest, KLM logo - Flying Dutchman
(miss, KLM didn't flash)
I.Poem snippet "In memory yet green" etc - Isaac Asimov
(hit, dug deep into recesses of memory!!)
J.When Mecca under fidels, Muslims prayed facing - Solomon temple, Al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem
(hit)
K.Map with 30 spots highlighted - NGEO Biodiversity Hotspots
(miss, went with tourism)
L.Monster hit 2002, now reappear with "Bloody Mary" single - Las Ketchup
(hit)
M.Only Pindar's house spared when rumours of Alexander's death surfaced
(hit)
N.Brief bio and funda about journal - Mc Graw, Hill
(miss, went with Prentice Hall)
O.Military system ==> Braille
(hit, sitter of the quiz)
P.ABCL talent-finds = Arshad Warsi, Chandrachur Singh
(hit)
Q.Song played, identify lyricist - Salman Rushdie, acoustic version of U2 Ground Beneath her Feet
(miss, too acoustic to recognize)
R.Changed name to claim lineage - Benjamin Disraeli
(hit)

FINALS
titled "The Revenge of The Baby SAT"
----------------------------------------------
The first round was a Multigroup Connect -
9 groups of 5 visuals each..
Theme was "...for dummies books"
TJ: Very lame and stupid. Unguessable. I would say this was the worst part of the quiz.
Jezebel, Mel Brooks, Dancer In The Dark - shot entirely digitally

Regular Rounds
*"Saurav's"= restaurant, "Tendulkar's"= restaurant. Lillees's and Thommo's = Beds reserved in Perth hospital
*Hat in Brokeback Mountain. From spanish for "gold" - Ten Galleon Hat
*Description of encounter in store - who met whom? - Eva Braun with Hitler
*85 functions. "No fish in the southern face of Himalayas" - Swiss army knife
*Video of Mediterranean - Tarantella dance, based on bite of Tarantula spider
*Peyton Place
*Chateau de Cheverney ==> Marlinspike Hall. "Search for identity" - Tintin, Herge
*"Killer" name of car in which Godse travelled.
*Peyton Place
*video.Casino royale, car accident scene - in Guinness Book for most number of rolls by a car
*Sporting term called "side" in England. Rest of the world = "English" snooker
*Anecdote about somebody's death. Both sides of the Atlantic mourned = Little Nel
*Audio, singing style why so- Kumar Gandharv, only one lung
*started because "no major sporting events to cover" = Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition
*Pause before continuing good=Zeigarnik effect ==> Cliffhanger plot device
*Asteroid named for its highly irregular orbit - Toutatis, protector of Asterix and compatriots
*First supporter for Salman Rushdie after fatwa - Orhan Parmuk
*Quarantine changed from 30 days to 40 days. Why? - Because Jesus spent 40 days in wilderness
(We scored on this. I didn't know this one but my answer "Because Jesus took 40 days for something" was accepted)
*Glen Burke baseball play, one of the first openly gay - invented the high-five!
*Beetle which fetches a lot of money - named after Hitler
(I tried: Beetle after which Volkswagen's Beetle was named!)
*Isambard Kingdom Brunel
*Description of sequence of spots in Bombay - Shantaram Trail
(Praveen said "Something to do with Shantaram". Accepted! Hazy answers seemed to be our way)
*Visual + description - Rajapalyam dog (Was too easy)
*Risus sardonicus
*Why baker's dozen still 13? - 13 gets the best packing ratio, while baking in rectangular
*Descriptive. last screenwriter hired by etc = Gore Vidal, Ben Hur
*Poem with title Saint _______ - Saint Maudlin
(I answered Saint Lachrymose!)
*Eris (Greek deity lawlessness)new "planet" which caused demotion of Pluto is appropriately named. Why? - Earlier named Xena, acted by Lucy Lawless
*Apple glass box in NY controversial - exact dimension Kaaba
*Impressionists, quakers (few more)... what's common - derogatory references which became their names
*"Turn on, tune in, dropout story - Timothy Leary, Marshall McLuhan
*Description of something starting. Chinese eating carrion. - SARS
*"Anyone who __, ___ or ____ this will " - Bramah safe challenge
*"Half the money I spend on ads is wasted..trouble is I don't know which half" Also associated with PGA - Joe Wanamaker
*Visual of hill in Ogden - Paramount Pictures logo
*Poem __ the butcher ___ the boy who buys beef etc - reference to West Port murders a la Noida
*Writing on the wall from Belshazar's feast, Indian ocean song - Aramaic
*Ripley's Believe it or not for most number educational institutions - Tonse Madhav Anant Pai
*Bob Dylan plagiarism
*PG Wodehouse. Psmith Journalist. Dialogue What followed? - "Elementary my dear Watson"
(I got this one out of the blue. Long evening=> blackout ==> Smoke-break==>Brain cells awoke)

Written round
Toponymous dystopia. places (shown in map) + description of word ==> places, words
5 sets of words and places (Forgot to note down. Can anyone fill me in?)
(Shamefully, we didn't score in this round! :-( I'd been upbeat on hearing the them)

The audio round was cancelled due to lack of time!

The final Theme round Stage 2.
The theme was people who had won Emmy and Oscar for the same role in Broadway and movie
*Tmesis = "abso-blooming-utely" audio from My Fair Lady. Another example, How-heinous-ever from Shakespeare Richard
*"The Subject was roses"
*Yul Brynner
*Fill in the 5 blanks - Thomas More, "A man for all seasons"
*Mel Brooks and Ann Bancroft in "Silent Movie"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAP QUIZ
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Just putting up answers, hope they make sense. Will meaning-ize later. Check this space)
0 Chorinti - spinach leaves, region in Italy
1.Grand Chapo Region - conflict referred to in Tintin & Broken Ear
2.Route of Captain Cook
3.Tombs of Mughal Emperors
4.Jersey and New Jersey
5.India coded map - literacy
6.Regions shaded - Asterix comics camp named after
7.English speaking Central American country - Belize
8.Island - Mount Terror and so on - Ross Island, Antarctica
9.Blanked out region - Munchkin Country, Map Of Oz
X.Connect of leaves - India
Y.Dots - Shankaracharya Mutts
Z.Route of Lief Erikson
A.9th largest country - Kazakhstan
B.Pentecost Island - Origin of bungee jumping
C. Connect Orange Free State, Yellow River China etc - Colours
D.Aerial shot - Istanbul
E.Two lowest - Dead Sea, Sea Of Galilee
F.Route of Vasco da Gama
G.(Two islands) clue: think linear - International Date Line passes through these
H.Chihuahua region of Mexico
I.Routes of Marco Polo & Ibn Batuta
J.Challenger Deep
K.Map of Kashmir, missing dot - Vaishnodevi
L.Connect Hudson Bay and something else - actor - Rock Hudson
M.Sargasso Sea
N.Map of world in - Orwell's 1984
O.Thomas Hardy's Wessex
P.Mulholland Drive
Q.Lake Ujiji - Livingstone
R.Railroute shown identify two stations - Putney and Motley or something
S.Map of Europe imposed on Antarctica
(naughty, naughty question from Arul Mani. Q was "What's happening in this?")
T.European Union shaded. (Also includes French Guyana)
U.Route 66
V.Map, turtle - Cayman Islands
W.Two islands renamed for tourism - Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe
a. Senegal and Cape Verde - named after westmost point of Africa
b. Dominica, Christmas, Easter - named after days on which discovered. Dominica=Sunday
c. Beagle Channel - after HMS Beagle
d. Thomas (can't recall question)
e. Radio, tea, etc connect - Ceylon
f. Peter O'Toole, coffee etc connect - Arabia
g. Bhandarpur - clue was famous temple
h. Sites of Asian Games
i. Prester John (can't recall question)
j. Contrast maps - Tribal and non-tribal regions of Andaman
k. Map with arrows - Spread of Indo-European languages
l. Moses route
(My partner Dr.Krishnan cracked this!)
m. Andorra
n. Lake Chad
o. Kourou
p. Achamenid Empire
q. Limerick

Cover Stories

Facts which I saw printed on the plastic carry-bags in which Landmark book store in Bangalore gives out stuff in!

* At the nearest point, Russia & America are less than 4 km apart.
* 5 piranha fish can chew up a horse and its rider in 7 minutes.
* The syllable OUGH can be pronounced in 9 different ways. `A rough, dough-faced thoughtful ploughman emerged from a slough to walk through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing.'
* A newborn Kangaroo is small enough to fit in a teaspoon.
* Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.
* Half the world's population has seen at least on James Bond movie.
* Earthworms have 5 heads.
* Nine out of every ten living things live in the ocean.
* Goethe could write only if he had an apple rotting on his desk.
* Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address was just 267 words.
* Eskimos use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
* Brazil, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand all have more cattle than people.
* If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
* The colour RED has been found to trigger the hunger reflex in humans. That is why most fast-food restaurants use the colour in their logo and decor.

KQA December 2006 Open Quizzes

KQA dished out their monthly serving of quizzing on December 10, 2006. There were two open quizzes at Daly Hall -
1) Hubbubba - Quiz on Bangalore
QM: Arul Mani
2) The regular Open Quiz
QM: Members of the team "Yaake"

(I am writing this after one month; hence this post might be short on details.)

Hubbubba

The Bangalore quiz was a snorter - would have been really tough for a non-Bangalorean (I, wisely, chose to not participate :-)- was tough even for Bangaloreans. The quiz was quite entertaining all the same - with the usual dose of Arul Mani quips and shockingly relevant pieces of trivia about everyday Bangalore.

The range of the questions was quite astounding; there were 50 questions spanning different areas. The quiz was won by (I think) Thejaswi Udupa and partner with a whopping score of...I forget how much... The name Hubbubba was a take (and spoof) on the Bangalore Hubba (very much derided by the QM) that takes place every year.

Trivia tidbits picked up:
There is a Bangalore Square in the city of Minsk
Prabodh Chandra - Manna De used to stay here(?)
Esplanade, boulevard

Open Quiz
The open quiz by Team Yaake was a disappointment. The set of the questions for the prelims was of a very good standard but the the spread of questions for the finals was a big letdown, I would say. The final round was way too long, boring and somewhat repetitive. The questions were too much based around the QMs's special interests - mainly films and songs.

The hightlight of the quiz was the Stage 2 kinda question in the prelims based on the radio stations in Bangalore. The question drew oohs and aahs from the vast majority of those present. It was uncracked I think. It involved the identification of songs (Red Hot Chili Peppers ==> Radio Mirchi, House Of The Rising Sun ==> Soorya or something and so on. Somebody fill me in you can as I've forgotten)

The proportion of weighty trivia, literature, geography, history, politics, etc was too low in order to sustain interest. Even the onstage participants were taking more than the usual number of breaks in between! And yes... there is such a level as being "too trivial"! Some of the questions were set, as it seemed to me, not to be answered but as if to prove a point regarding superiority of knowledge.

Trivia tidbits picked up (finals only, misplaced my notes of the prelims):
polak - game in X-box ad
Dead Lesbian and the Fibrillating something - Scissor Sisters
Mistress Of Spices - Chitro Banerji
Names 911, Steps --> VH1 Return Of The Boyband
MJ Gopalan Trophy - Madras vs Sri Lanka. MJ Gopalan also bowled the first ball in Ranji trophy.
Holla, Mohalla - some funda about the meanings of these words
Comic strips shown - drawn by ??? - from the movie Unbreakable
Stage2 Connection question of a string of visuals - Satyajit Ray
Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy - old Phonetic alphabet - also names of nurses in MASH
Tudor Hall - residence of John Wilkes Booth - family of actors

Personal Experience
My teammates were Vivek and Pavan. We called ourselves "The Corporate Soldiers". We missed out on qualification (oh no, there he goes again!) by a whisker. But it was a very much improved performance - the misses were few, but there were also wild shots that compensated. I missed out on a question on the naming of Trainspotting but that was made up by an effort on an "I Shot Andy Warhol", a movie I hadn't even heard about but still ended up guessing! There were similar hits-and-misses from my teammates too.

But it was just as well that we did not qualify as we wouldn't have been great shakes onstage for the reasons mentioned above and because there was very little correlation between the prelims and the final round questions.

ITC ClientLogic Open 2006

Report
----------
The ITC ClientLogic Open quiz happened today at the ITC campus in Cox Town, Bangalore. The QM for the day was Sutanu Mukherjee. The top eight teams made it to the final round after a written preliminary round which featured 40 questions and around 20 teams. The quiz was won by QED from Chennai with 102 points while WALTO (We Are Like This Only) finished a very close second on 98, in a near repeat of the Landmark Open.

The questions for the prelims were of very good standard barring three or four absolute sitters, recliners(!) if you may. The prelims did the job of elimination pretty well. My 50% rule for judging the quality of a preliminary round held good, with the standard of the questions in the finals also being on par with that of the questions asked in the finals. The quiz ended with a Stage 2 round, themed with questions about people featuring on the Beatles' Sergeant Peppers album.

The quiz was enjoyable even though it should have been rendered boring by the sheer length of the questions being asked in the final round. They were a wee bit too long and texty, way too long in fact. The questions should have been made crisper; a little bit more of effort should have been invested in the framing of the questions. Perhaps the QM should have taken a cue (a Q? ;-)) from my book, instead of bombarding everybody with insignificant detail after detail ?

I'd like to make a general comment about the carrying over of prelims' scores to the finals, . The points from the prelims were carried over into the finals in this quiz too. I think this is very fair, as it favours a "conquest for the best", and a quiz is very much about who is the best on the day. But, I also think the score is carried over into the finals must be in integral multiples of the value of a question in the final. How about a formula like:

Carried over score = (PrelimScore*ValueQuestionInFinal)/(PrelimsFinalWeightFactor).

(I will be writing more on this soon)

The ITC campus is very good indeed - green and clean. The quiz was held in the cafeteria/food-court, with the questions also being projected on to 4 screens. The atmosphere was very relaxed, and smoke-filled too (it being ITC and all, what else would you expect!)! Almost everybody was smoking a cigarette...the QM included, and that too, on stage! My friend informed me that in any ITC office worldwide, one was allowed to smoke whenever and anywhere. How about that?

Trivia Tidbits
--------------------
Richard Grossman - a minister in the British cabinet used to maintain diaries ==> Yes Minister
Diff readings of a chinese ideogram which entered into diff languages - ti and cha - for tea
Esperanto = Hopeful
Shape of a particular wine-glass after the left breast of Marie Antoinette/Madame Pompadour
Blind something band's album cover shown - two members of that band inspired the name Pink Floyd
Ribengmo - land of mountains or something - Chinese name for - Japan
Yakuza
Visual of city with factory on lake - Nokia
Farlane, member of the Syndicate wrote Ghost of the ____ ____ . == Hardy Boys
Origins of the name Britain and London - Aeneas's son Brutus, city he founded, New Troy or something
Yakuza
NCNS in BPO slang = No Call No Show
Max Yasgur - speaking at Woodstock video (We got this!)
Honoured with Tibetan award in June 2006 - Tintin
Montgomerie martini - 15:1 martin:vermouth
Mojo Priest album by - Steven Seagal
Flemencos - originally from the Americas
mafia
"There is only one ___ ____" - lady - Coco Chanel
Visual of Don Bradman with Babe Ruth


Personal
-------------
We called ourselves Quearthake, a play on "earthquake", this time around. Our team comprised of me, Lloyd Colopilly, Rajesh Mohan and Anoop Bhat. We got Anoop into our team at the venue; he didn't have any partners and we were one person short. Anoop, it turned out, was an old friend of Sutanu's and an erstwhile avid quizzer from Mumbai/IIM Calcutta. He proved to be a valuable addition to our team, coming up with important inputs and answers.

Quearthake didn't manage any great shakes this time either though. We did not cause any earthquakes though we nearly managed a small tremor; we failed to qualify by just a single point (We managed 16, the cutoff was 17 I heard). Does the margin really matter? Is it just binary - on stage/ not on stage? But I still managed to get an audience-prize.... Things are picking up... I hope! :-)

Landmark Open, Bangalore

Report

The Bangalore leg of the Landmark Open Quiz happened yesterday. Derek O'Brien was the quiz-master. The questions were of pretty high quality, unlike what I had thought when I had heard who the QM was. Derek put up an excellent show, involving and entertaining the audience.

The only gripe was that there was no parity between the standards of the questions in the prelims and in the finals. I guess this is always the case in an open quiz, where there should be something for all the participants. Four of the eight teams that qualified did not score any points in the Finals! But the very best teams too qualified, to the credit of the prelims' question-setters.

The team which had topped the prelims Mustafa (Infosys) (with 32 out of 40!), and the only team with a lady member, lasted till the penultimate round of the finals. It was largely because of the points carried over from the prelims, they didn’t answer too many questions in the on-stage round.

QED from Chennai beat "We Are Like This (W)Only" from Bangalore in a nail-bitingly thrilling buzzer-round face-off. They came back from behind and surprised the seasoned and omniscient WALTO. It was a top-notch performance from Swami and friends! Congrats guys! They had won the Chennai leg as well.

Anustup Dutta of WALTO was "crowned" the Brain Of Bangalore though. Derek O'Brien, in a jovial coronation ceremony, crowned him with an "18-carat, fake-gem-studded, aluminium crown [sic]". There was even a maid-of-honor chosen from the audience!

In retrospect (it seemed fair at the time), the only controversial event in the finals was when Derek cancelled a question to which WALTO had given the correct answer after being passed and the next team had given an incorrect attempt. WALTO would have won if it had not been cancelled...and they had not gotten negatives in the buzzer rounds!!! As Sidhu would have said, "If there were no 'ifs' and 'buts', my aunt would have been my uncle!"

Winning the hearts of the quiz-master and the audience, but no points(!) for his wildly creative guesses, Avinash Mudaliar and his team, Memory Blank, got eliminated in the “Brain Of Bangalore” round. Just earlier, he had buzzed his team out from the mire of first stage elimination. He was asked to stop attempting buzzing by Derek because he had accumulated so many negatives!

The prizes were grand; the toppers won Landmark vouchers worth Rs.30, 000 and a trip to Bangkok. As is common fashion now, there were special prizes for best team name, for the best corporate team and for the best school team as well. In an informal audience vote for best team name, “Quizzingunya Symptoms Personified” beat out “Youtube or Metro” and “Know Or Never (thanks RN for reminding me)”. There were lots of audience prizes as well which were given not only for correct answers but for cheeky remarks as well!

Personal

I had also participated in the Landmark Open. My teammates were Lloyd and Rajesh Mohan. As seems to be the case nowadays, we did not qualify. A far cry from our heyday, sadly, but who knows or cares! :-)

The questions for the prelims were pretty simple really. But somehow, we seemed to mostly have lost the "gift" of shooting in the dark and finding the mark. Of course, encouragingly for us, there were quite a few brilliant flashes of clairvoyance as well. :-) If only we had been on stage… :-(

Trivia Tidbits picked up
(please confirm before use)

Lilith, mythological first wife of - Adam
India came fourth in football at the 1956 Olympics
1957 – Decimal coinage introduced
Statues of yakshas at RBI entrance – Guardians of Kubera’s palace
Swiss lake named after – Yash Chopra
Jorge Luis Borges called “Fight between two bald men over a comb” – Falklands War
Word coined in 90s after Clint Eastwood characters meaning “young, good-looking men who lack intelligence or experience – himbo
Canoe race in Andamans unique – Only race on sand (Answered by audience!)
Tapers,votives, pillars, tea lights, floating – types of – candles
Hooke’s law was published as an – anagram
Sushi Sashimi difference – Sushi served with rice, sashimi without
Victor Hugo called “Europe’s richest vagabond” – Alfred Nobel
Vienna anecdote describing Tagore as god, only thousand years older than what Michaelangelo had painted – Sigmund Freud
Skid lid = Helmet
January 1 – common birthday all horses in equestrian events
Finland only country to broadcast news in – Latin
Fastest in days to get to 1000 runs in Tests – Mike Hussey
Longest gap between ODI and test debut – Andrew Symonds Made test debut after 94 ODIs
Represented India for longest period in Davis Cup – Anand Amritraj
First US commemorative coin 1992 on non American – Christopher Columbus
AIR’s first broadcast was in language – Pushtu
Custer’s Last Stand only survivor – Comanche horse
Painting visual – Yusuf Arakkal
Compartment 2949, Feb 12 (no year), Headed to Triveni – Gandhi’s ashes

Queuriest - X

-------------------------------------------------------
QUEURIEST - X
Keep Guessing - Johnnie Guesser
-------------------------------------------------------

1. Let's start at the very beginning, which is a very good place to start . What are Aretinian syllables?
*

2. Cryptic question worth a thousand words! Vietnam : Kim Phuc, Afghanistan: Sherbet Gul , Gujarat Riots : ________ ?
*

3. The name of which highly addictive substance means "acid-former"? Hint: The leader of the Chalcogens!
*

4. Netizens! Expand IAKI. (You'll probably say this after you find the answer! :-)
*

5. Perhaps not absolutely strange, but pretty strange all the same. What is common to the writers John H Watson, Eugene Pota and Kilgore Trout? (list by no means exhaustive)
*

6. Where would you find Guala Caps? No, no clooz!
*

7. Very unambiguous question actually. If aardvark is the first, what is the last?
*

8. Time to get really, really specific. In which video game did Mario make his debut?
*

9. Elementary question again. Which place has four elements named after it?
*

10. Sitter. In Alice In Wonderland, what is the name of Alice's cat?
*

11. Which drink gets its name from Dutch for `burnt wine'? It is, maybe, a label unknown.
*

12. Real scorcher in Santiago. What is measured in scoville units?
*

13. Question for old & young alike? If you underwent a rhytidectomy, what would be removed?
*

14. Hardly an original question. In advertising, what is a 'ripomatic'?
*

15. Matchbox labels: Phillumenist:: Penang lawyers: __________?
*

16. A bit arbit perhaps, but a chance for you to let your imagination run free. Where would you find "Miss Sibyl Thornton in her flowing nightie"?
*

17. Coda was a posthumous release of studio and live recordings of Led Zeppelin compiled by Jimmy Page in 1982. What is a 'coda'?
*

18. If Keralites speak Malayalam and Americans speak English, who speak? Ameslan?
*

19. Which African country gets its name from Greek for, you guessed it, Africa?
*

20. "Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!", whose last words?
*

---------------------------------
Try not. Do or do not.
There is no try - Yoda
--------------------------------

hi everybody!

welcome to the final episode of Queuriest.

20 questions for you to crack - more than the usual ten. Some are discards from previous episodes - stuff that could not be included, because they were similar to the Qs already asked etc. More questions, sitters galore means a chance for you to boost your tally...

not too many people sent in intros in response to the previous episode, do send them in if you haven't already done so...All I'd meant was that the letters should've a personal touch...Sometimes one wonders about the person behind the mail...and sometimes, whether there IS a person! (answers only, terse, no comments)...perhaps you could tell me something about urself - about ur favourite bits of trivia/info, questions u've enjoyed , general comments....anything!

Answers in 10 days time.

What's YOUR score?

luv
thomas


ANSWERS
---------------


hi folks!

21 responses in all = the floccinaucinihilipilification (though redundantly) of an already trivial Queuriest? really, was expecting more responses :-( ...but used that word in context at last! :-)

=> new Q : What do Walter Scott and I have in common?

A lot of you wrote in saying maybe I owe you an intro as well. But I believe most of you know me fairly well by now - as to how my mind works, my interests - evident from the way I frame the questions. (Nothing defines one so well as the questions one asks! - TJ ) There have even been complaints that I was getting too predictable! I am, but an open book! ...and because it is open, some details must be missing! (some things can be judged only from the cover! ;-)

Well, the name is Thomas Jacob and I am a final year student of Computer Engineering from Kerala. My interests are reading (favourite authors: Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut,Garrison Keillor), writing (poems,pieces,stories- humour mostly, any one of you care to get a sample, just write in! ), crossword puzzles (you guessed it!) and rock music(fav artists - Tom Petty, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Pearl Jam, Eagles)

Enough about me. Go read the answers!

This is The End of Queuriest - where quizzing met crosswords.

luv
thomas

-------------------------------------------------------
QUEURIEST - X
Keep Guessing - Johnnie Guesser
-------------------------------------------------------

1. Let's start at the very beginning, which is a very good place to start . What are Aretinian syllables?
* Aretinian syllables are the do, re, mi . . . notes. Let's start at the very beginning is from the Sound Of Music song that goes Doe a deer,... The most widely answered question of the quiz. ( = When you know the words to search, you can find 'most anything? ;-) Almost everybody told me that these referred to Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, used by Guido d'Arezzo in the eleventh century for his system of hexachords AND that ut later became do AND that hexachord means scale of six notes! So that just HAS to be authentic information! ;-)

2. Cryptic question worth a thousand words! Vietnam : Kim Phuc, Afghanistan: Sherbet Gul , Gujarat Riots : ________ ?
* Nasiruddin Ansari
Many of you managed to work out what the question was, only a couple, got the name of the crying man, whose photograph appeared in most of the newspapers, after the riots. Kim Phuc is associated with the Vietnam war and Sherbet Gul was the `Unknown Afghan' girl on National Geographic. These were photographs which defined the crises/situations...Most probably you would have seen these photos.
+I: Nick Ut photographed Kim Phuc
+I: Steve McCurry took Sherbet Gul's
don't know about Ansari's. fill me in, anyone?

3. The name of which highly addictive substance means "acid-former"? Hint: The leader of the Chalcogens!
* Oxygen
Who said nicotine and heroin are the only addictive substances?! ;-)
+I:Chalcogen refers to the group of the periodic table to which oxygen belongs. Just like the Halogens..

4. Netizens! Expand IAKI. (You'll probably say this after you find the answer! :-)
* I Already Know/Knew It
There! You're saying it now... ;-)

5. Perhaps not absolutely strange, but pretty strange all the same. What is common to the writers John H Watson, Eugene Pota and Kilgore Trout? (list by no means exhaustive)
* These are all fictional writers.
John H Watson is our dear Dr. Watson from Doyle
Eugene Pota - created by Joseph Heller
Kilgore Trout - features in Kurt Vonnegut's novels

6. Where would you find Guala Caps? No, no clooz!
* On Liquor bottles
RP: That irritating piece of plastic that restricts the quick flow of booze & hence makes 1 drink slower (5 sec.s downtime!). Supposedly to prevent the adulteration of alcohol.
KSJ: It's the tamper proof, unidirectional valve cap on Booze bottles
7. Very unambiguous question actually. If aardvark is the first, what is the last?
* Zoril, a kind of African weasel, is the last animal in the dictionary. Also called zorilla.
I was not asking for the last word in the dictionary, as `a' is the first word in the dictionary, not 'aardvark'. Some of you mentioned that I could've been asking for the last topic in an encyclopaedia. Again, same arguement holds, plus 'Aachen' comes before `aardvark'. Aardvark is just the first animal in the dictionary. So it was, as I said, unambiguous!
+I: Last word in most dictionaries: Zymurgy
+I: There is an animal called zebu- which is a sort of domesticated ox used chiefly as a draft animal in _India_? and east Asia!

8. Time to get really, really specific. In which video game did Mario make his debut?
* Donkey Kong
Not too many takers on this one.

9. Elementary question again. Which place has four elements named after it?
* Ytterby.
teaser for you: Can you name the four elements? ytterbium and yttrium are the obvious ones but what are the other ones? Clue for starters, they do not start with Y!

10. Sitter. In Alice In Wonderland, what is the name of Alice's cat?
* Dinah
And no, the Cheshire Cat did not belong to Alice - it was a VERY independent sort of cat! ;-)
One of you mentioned that the cat Dinah features only in Through The Looking Glass. But I believe it does appear in the first one also...

11. Which drink gets its name from Dutch for `burnt wine'? It is, maybe, a label unknown.
* Brandy
Could've been worked out from the clue : Brand Y
+I: Dutch word: brandewijn

12. Real scorcher in Santiago. What is measured in scoville units?
* The degree of hotness of chillies
+I: measure of capsaicin (the chemical in hot peppers that is responsible for their heat).

13. Question for old & young alike? If you underwent a rhytidectomy, what would be removed?
* Rhytidectomy is an operation to remove wrinkles and other signs of ageing from your face. Old becoming like the young...

14. Hardly an original question. In advertising, what is a 'ripomatic'?
* When you put together a new version of an ad by piecing together clips of the same ad- for eg, to create a shorter version of the same ad.

15. Matchbox labels: Phillumenist:: Penang lawyers: __________?
* Rabdophilist
The toughie of the quiz. Only a couple or so came anywhere close - cracking the Penang lawyer part. Penang lawyer is a term for a walking stick/canes. A collector of walking sticks is called a rhabdophilist. Yeah, I agree with you, that was a real twisted one! And why were there no clues?!...

16. A bit arbit perhaps, but a chance for you to let your imagination run free. Where would you find "Miss Sibyl Thornton in her flowing nightie"?
* On a Rolls Royce.
It is the Rolls-Royce emblem variously known as the Silver Lady, or the Flying Lady, popularly called "Spirit of Ecstasy". Eleanor Thornton was the model on which the figure was based. Sibyl, I guess, was what Eleanor was called at home - the explanation for the Sibyl part.
Very few takers on this one.

17. Coda was a posthumous release of studio and live recordings of Led Zeppelin compiled by Jimmy Page in 1982. What is a 'coda'?
* Coda is the closing section of a musical composition.

18. If Keralites speak Malayalam and Americans speak English, who speak? Ameslan?
* Ameslan is sign-language used by the deaf/dumb people. That's what the question mark after the word speak was for! ;-) Speak? Ameslan?

19. Which African country gets its name from Greek for, you guessed it, Africa?
* Libya
One of you mentioned that it was actually Latin, but as far as I know it is Greek.

20. "Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!", whose last words?
* Karl Marx
(apocryphal, though famous) He said this, when asked by his housekeeper, eager for her 15 minutes, what his last words would be, when on his death-bed. What else could he have said! ;-)

---------------------------------
Try not. Do or do not.
There is no try - Yoda
--------------------------------

The scores (in chronological order)

1. Debashree Mitra - 8 (How'd ur quiz go?)
2. Rexy Joseph - 5 (King Of Quizzes!)
3. Rahul Pandey - 4 (california was a good guess)
4. Vijay Nidhi - 4.5 (some good tries in there boss)
5. Kunal Malhotra - 11 (nice, solid effort)
6. Rohaan Pereira - 11 (my regards to Cindy! ;-)
7. Ghevarghese Daniel - 7 (zorilla pretty cool ;-)
8. KS Jaishankar - 4.5 (good guessing)
9. Thejaswi Udupa - 12 (rocking hard!)
10. Shom Biswas - 6 (i did!)
11. Vijay Krishnan - 4 (100% hitrate)
12. Bhaskar Singh - 3 (Thornton was a real snorter though)
13. Kartick Suriamoorthy -14 (thanx for the tidbit)
14. Sandeep Unni - 12 (chase to be the Queuriest?)
15. Prasun Ramakrishnan - 7 (nice effort)
16. Sreeram - 7 (It's aardwolf.)
17. Venkateshwar K.R - 4 (Four pennies!)
18. Manish Chiddarwar - 3 (too bad it's not zephyr)
19. Syam Prasad - 7 (good show)
20. Mamatha Balasubramanian - 4 (thanx for tidbits)
21. Prithwiraj Mukherjee - 5 (enjoyable effort!)

--------STATS ------------explained-------------------------

Funnest! -
(well-phrased answers or just plain funny ones.)

I Almost Knew It on IAKI
All the 'dumb' Americans on Ameslan
Burndt Vijn on Brandy
All had professions of creators on Fictional Authors
what??...someone collects lawyers from Penang on Collector
-----------------------------------------

Ridiqulest! -
(answers that deviated from the real one so much, possibly good guesses (no insult intended), misled by clues - sometimes leaving me clueless!)

Female fortune-teller on Rolls Royce
Narendra Modi on Gujarat Riots
The Moon On Guala Caps
The Moon On Spirit Of Ecstasy (QM - what's this moon coming to?)

------------------------------------------
Guessest!-
(nice, educated guesses, good use of the clues, which, though wrong, are laudable)

Beer on Scoville units
Yucky on IAKI
Sun,California on Ytterby
Zymurgy on Zoril
Tunisia, Egypt on Libya
-----------------------------------------

* All questions except 15 were cracked
* TU & SU top the quiz with 12 points
* Average score :
-----------------------------------------------------------------

<<<<<>>>>>>>
Your performance throughout the series...
(in alphabetic order)

Abhinandan LN --- XXX7XXXXXX ==7
Abhishek Hariharan --- XX 2XXXXXXX ==2
Acharya Rajib --- XXXXX7XXXX == 7
Aishwariya V --- XX34XXXXXX ==7
Ajay Sahoo --- XXXX0XXXXX ==0
Amit De---XX5XXXXXXX == 5
Anand Sivashankar--- XXXXXX3XXX ==3
Ananya Deb--- XXX5.5X4XXXX ==9.5
Aniruddha Gupta---XXXXX7XXXX==7
Anish--- XXXX4.5XXXXX ==4.5
Ankur Jain--- 9X7X6.5XXX6X ==28.5
Anoop Radhakrishna--- XXXXXXXX5X ==5
Anshuman Mishra --- XX5XX5XXXX ==10
Arjun Siva --- XXXXXX49.5XX ==13.5
Arun Prashanth --- XXXXXX2XXX ==2
Aseem--- XX4XXXXXXX==4
Asish Koshy---XXXXX7XXXX ==7
Avik Chatterjee---XXXXX2XXXX ==2
Avinash Iyer---XXXXX3XXXX ==3
Avjit Chaudhuri---XXXXX7XXXX ==7
B. Sreeram---X465534427 ==40
Bharat Jayakumar---X042213X1X == 13
Bhaskar Singh---XX22X04.5XX3 ==11.5
Binoj George---7.5XXXXXXXXX ==7.5
Biswabijoy Sen---XX5X3X3X3X ==14
CoolDude9456---XXXXXXX1XX ==1
Debanjan Ghosh---XXX5XXXXXX ==5
Debashree Mitra---XX66.564343X ==32.5
Devilcat---XXXXX4XXXX ==4
Dhananjay Shettigar --- XX3.5XXXXXXX ==3.5
Dhiraj Ramakrishnan --- XX2XXXXXXX ==2
Dinesh Krithivasan --- XXX6.5X5.5XXXX ==12
Gaurav Lochan---XXXXXXXX2.5X ==2.5
Gautham Ravichander--- XX2XXXXXXX==2
Ghevarghese Daniel---XXXXXXXXX7 ==7
Girish Bhat---XXX3XXXXXX ==3
Harish J Prabhu---XX6XXXXXXX ==6
Husain Poonawala---XX40.5X1XXXX ==5.5
I___I 666---XXXXXX2XXX ==2
Ian Anderson---XXXXXX 8XXX ==8
Indraneel Sikdar---XXXXXX21XX ==3
Jaishankar KS---XXXXXXXXX4.5 ==4.5
Kamal---XXXXXX5XXX ==5
Kamal Rathi---65XXXXXXXX ==11
Karthik Ramgopal---XXXXXXXX8X ==8
Kartick Sriamoorthy---XXXXXXXXX14 ==14
Kasthuri---XX6.5XXXXXXX ==6.5
Kensy Joseph---XXXXX3X23X ==8
Kewl Kittein---XXXX2XXXXX ==2
Koushik Vedaraman---XXXXX5XXXX ==5
Krishna T---XX 1.5XXXXXXX ==1.5
KrisSriram---XXXXXX3XXX ==3
Kunal Malhotra---X4.5XX48X6511 ==38.5
Lahar Appaiah---XXXXX5XXXX ==5
Madhu M---XX 2XX2XXXX ==4
Mahesh M Nair---XXX5.57X5XXX ==17.5
Mamatha Balasubramaniam---XXX3 221.5X44 ==16.5
Manish Chiddarwar---XXXXXXXXX3 ==3
Minhaj Alam---XXXXXX2X2X ==4
Mohit Sud---XX 6.5XXXXXXX ==6.5
Naveed Mohammed---9X7XXXXXXX ==16
Navneet Bal---XXXXX5XXXX ==5
Nilesh Sinha---XXXXXXX 1XX ==1
Nithin---XXXXXXXX4X ==4
Parmitaghosh---XXXXXXXX4.5X ==4.5
Partha Sengupta---XXX1X331XX ==8
Paul Ahmitough---XXXXX9XXXX ==9
Pauline Daniel---XX2451X13X ==16
Prakash Pillai---XXXXXX5XXX ==5
Pramod R---XXXXX1XXXX ==1
Prasenjit Sengupta---XXXXXX42XX ==6
Prasun Ramakrishnan---XXXXXXXXX7 ==7
Prasun Ratn---XXXXX1XXXX ==1
Prithwiraj Mukherjee---XXXXX3.51325 ==14.5
Priyambad Pattanayak---XXXXXXXX3X ==3
Quizgeek---XX6XXXXXXX ==6
R. Krishna---XX778.58XXXX ==30.5
Raghav Narayanan---6.5XXXXX3XXX ==9.5
Raghavendra Achar---1X1XXXXXXX ==2
Rahul Chattopadhyay---XXXXXX6XXX ==6
Rahul Guha---XXXXXXXX3.58 ==11.5
Rahul Jayanthi---XXXX8XXXXX ==8
Rahul Pandey---XXXXXXXXX4 ==4
Rajaram Sethuraman---XXX1XXXXXX ==1
Rajesh Malviya--- 1.5X3.5XXXXXXX ==5
Rajiv Rai---XXXX 5XXX3.5X ==8.5
Ramkey---XX3XXXXXXX ==3
Ramkumar Shankar---XXX 3X1XXXX ==4
Ramsu---XX7XXXXXXX ==7
Ranganathan Sairam---XX 4XXXXXXX ==4
Ranjith---XXXXXX4X1X ==5
Ravikiran Rao---XXX3.5XXXXXX ==3.5
Rexy Joseph---XXXXXXXX45 ==9
Rinks S---XXXXXXX3.5XX ==3.5
Rohaan Pereira---XXXXXXXXX11 ==11
Ryan Michigan---XXX8.5XXXXXX ==8.5
Sameer Baxi---XX7XXXXXXX ==7
Samir Bora---XX4.5XXXXXXX ==4.5
Samrat Sengupta---XXXXX2XXXX ==2
Sandeep Unni---XXXXXXX4612 ==22
Sankle Pradesh---XXXXX3XXXX ==3
Santhosh D'Souza--- XXXXX9XXXX ==9
Sathish K---7.56.55X5.5XXXXX ==24.5
Satyajit Chetri---XXXX51XXXX ==6
Sharad Singh---XXXXX4XXXX ==4
Shashi Shekar--- 0X6X8.5X1XXX ==15.5
Shashi Thutupalli---XXXXXX34XX ==7
Shiraz---XX7X997XXX ==32
Shobhana Balakrishnan---XX2XXXX24.5X ==8.5
Shom Biswas---3.5X5XXX2246 ==22.5
Shrijit Plapally---XX2X1XXXXX ==3
Shrinath Nagarajan --- XXXXXXX2XX ==2
Siddharth K---XX2.5XXXXXXX ==2.5
Sivaramakrishnan---XXXXXX3XXX ==3
Sourabh Issar---XX11.5XX1XXX ==3.5
Stephen Mathew---XXXX3XXXXX ==3
Sujith Vijay---XXXX69XXXX ==15
Sukhamaya---7.5XXX6.54XXXX ==18
Suki---XXXXX1.5XXXX==1.5
Sundeep Venkatraman --- XXXXXXXX3X ==3
Suranjan Chakrabarty--- XXXXX6XXXX ==6
Syam Prasad --- XX4.54754X37 ==34.5
Sylvia---XXXX1XXXXX ==1
TalonX the Surreal --- XXXXX22XXX ==4
Thejaswi Udupa---XX8.5X6.57X7.57.512 ==49
U Damodaran---XXXXXX5XXX ==5
Udayan Chakrabarti---XX2.5XXXXXXX ==2.5
Usha Ramaswamy---XXXX1XXX 0.5X ==1.5
Vaidyanathan---XX57XXXXXX ==12
Venkateshwar KR---2.5X20 20X224 ==14.5
Venu Gopal---XXXX6XXXXX ==6
Vijay Anand Menon---6XXXXXXXXX ==6
Vijay Krishnan---XXXXX2XXX4 ==6
Vijay Nidhi---XXXXXXXXX4.5 ==4.5
Vilayannur Viswanathan---XXXX4XXXXX ==4
Vimal Vikrant Vardhan M---XXX2.51XX0.50.5X ==4.5
Vinay Sriganesh---XXXXXX0XXX ==0
Vittal Avinash---XXXXXXX2XX ==2

-----------------------------------------------

The toppers are

1. Thejaswi Udupa - 49
2. Sreeram - 40
3. Kunal Malhotra - 38.5

Thanks for all the support folks!
So, until the next time...

Bye!


--------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming soon!

ORACLIQUE
Are you in yet?

oracle- A shrine where an oracular
god is consulted
clique -1.An exclusive circle of
people with a common
purpose
2.Completely interconnected
graph

This will be my next series. Should
hit quiznet by April or May.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

10 NINE 8 7 SIX

At the start of old British films, the pre-title countdown sequence leading up to the actual start of the film would go: "10 NINE 8 7 SIX 5 4 3" in one-second intervals.

The 6 and 9 were spelt out to avoid confusion in case the film is put in upside-down!

The countdown ends at three so that the countdown isn't shown if the film is put on screen a little earlier than intended.

+I: Countdowns were used for the first time in the context of launching rockets in Fritz Lang's movie Frau im Mond.

Queuriest - IX

-------------------------------------------------------
QUEURIEST - IX
Keep Guessing - Johnnie Guesser
-------------------------------------------------------

1. You might not know it, but you actually have a philtrum. What could it be?
*

2. Which country is divided into administrative units called parishes? Clue: Hush,sh...death!
*

3. Horror in the 20th century! Be warned, this is not for the weak-at-heart. Who said after what, "I am a new Frankstein." ?
*

4. I wonder whether being perfect is the same as being ideal... If a perfect number is a number that is equal to the sum of its factors, what are ideal numbers?
*

5. What is Spanish for Mary Jane? (Try saying it repeatedly in as Spanish a way as you can...even if you don't get the answer, you might get a kick out of it!)
*

6. Which band takes its name from the Bob Dylan song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee And ..."? Cryptic Clue: The traitor preaches about violation of rules!
*

7. Who was the first person* to win the US Open on all three surfaces - clay, grass and hard-court? *to appease feminists! Clue: Say, when edges meet!
*

8. One that will surely make your eyes pop out! (Please don't google on this one, it'll really spoil the joy of guessing!)
Who or what are Peepeye, Poopeye, Pupeye and Pipeye?
*

9. Where would you expect to find Kirkwood gaps? Clue: Earth-grazers?
*

10. A very rough correspondence, maybe. Japanese: Hara-kiri :: Balinese: ___________ ?
*

---------------------------------------------------------------
BONUS QUESTION ;-)
Q: What is a paragodge? Tell me about it. . . :-)
*

----------------------------------------------------------------
Of all the words of mice
and men, the saddest are
"It might have been..."
------------------------------------

From: "SonOfDelphi"
Date: Tue Feb 11, 2003 8:52 pm
Subject: Queuriest - IX

hi everybody!

welcome to episode 9 of Queuriest.

this is the penultimate instalment of Queuriest. The 10th episode will be the last one. I've enjoyed setting these quizzes, especially the framing part - putting in the clues etc... mostly the Qs come from my diaries - stuff that I've noted down over the years from books I've read, quizzes that I've been to etc

when you reply to this, i would appreciate it if you could send in a brief intro of urself (asl+quizistory should do) so that I can put in something about u in the final episode* + maybe a few quizzing tidbits as well...stuff that you've gleaned and which you think suit the Queuriest mould.

Note that you do not need to do this, ONLY if you don't mind...

Answers in a week's time.

trivially yours,

luv
thomas

*will feature a mega-scoreboard of all responses to all episodes and ur rating based on performance.

ANSWERS
---------------

From: "SonOfDelphi"
Date: Tue Feb 18, 2003 7:32 pm
Subject: Answers to Queuriest - IX

hi folks!

31 responses in all.

Lots of half-points this time. May be because some of the questions were a bit arbitrary. . .

Only a few - 4 - got the bonus question right. Congrats! Though none corrected me on the spelling.

Queuriest-X tomorrow.

luv
thomas

-------------------------------------------------------
QUEURIEST - VIII
Keep Guessing - Johnnie Guesser
-------------------------------------------------------

1. You might not know it, but you actually have a philtrum. What could it be?
* Philtrum refers to the groove in the upper lip...that channel below your nose...that depression...yes, you are touching it now...:-)
Most answered question of the quiz. Perhaps the way the question was framed was taken as a direct insult? So it was philtrum with a vengeance! ;-)
Many answers referred to love-potion, as philtre=love-potion, nice guessing there...
+I from RK: in medico language its called the nasolabial fold

2. Which country is divided into administrative units called parishes? Clue: Hush,sh...death!
* Jamaica
Sort of ambiguous question...lots of countries are divided into parishes, I guess. . .that's why I had given the clue. . .
The clue referred to Whispering Death --> Michael Holding who comes from Jamaica...this being World-Cup mania, I thought somebody would crack the clue . . .Also I thought this was an FAQ on the circuit, but seems I was wrong on both counts..
If you answered England and feel 'wrong'ed, in spite of the validity of the clue you didn't use, go ahead and add 1 point to ur score.But before you do that, try this : Is India divided into states or is it divided into districts? England is divided into counties and __counties__ are divided into parishes. Now, read the question again and decide for urself.

3. Horror in the 20th century! Be warned, this is not for the weak-at-heart. Who said after what, "I am a new Frankstein." ?
* Louis Washkansky after the world's successful human heart-transplant by Dr.Christian Barnard.
In the book, Frankenstein is the creator, not the monster, which was nameless.( When will people stop thinking that it's the monster's name?!! )...and should have been said by the doctor actually...:-)

4. I wonder whether being perfect is the same as being ideal... If a perfect number is a number that is equal to the sum of its factors, what are ideal numbers?
* Ideal numbers were a class of numbers invented in order to prove Fermat's last theorem whose factorization in terms of complex numbers is unique.
A bit too technical?

5. What is Spanish for Mary Jane? (Try saying it repeatedly in as Spanish a way as you can...even if you don't get the answer, you might get a kick out of it!)
* Marijuana (Got the kick?)
Some of you came up with some very creative answers on this one...i wonder why...:-)

6. Which band takes its name from the Bob Dylan song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee And ..."? Cryptic Clue: The traitor preaches about violation of rules!
* Judas Priest
Clue made it really obvious. "Breaking The Law" song, Judas = Traitor disciple, Priest preaches ZZZZZZZZ...?

7. Who was the first person* to win the US Open on all three surfaces - clay, grass and hard-court? *to appease feminists! Clue: Say, when edges meet!
*Jimmy Connors
When edges meet, say CORNERS!
...and people take note (feminists esp), men are persons too! :-). . .got a lot of women players as answers...as expected... ;-)

8. One that will surely make your eyes pop out! (Please don't google on this one, it'll really spoil the joy of guessing!)
Who or what are Peepeye, Poopeye, Pupeye and Pipeye?
* They are Popeye the Sailor's nephews.
I've been liberal on this one and given half-points to any answer that they are related to Popeye.

9. Where would you expect to find Kirkwood gaps? Clue: Earth-grazers?
* These are the relatively empty regions in the asteroid-belt.
Earth-grazer=

10. A very rough correspondence, maybe. Japanese: Hara-kiri :: Balinese: ___________ ?
* Puputan
Puputan was collective suicide committed by the Balinese kings and their courtiers because of the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the Dutch...
(and, remember puputan before you google! ;-)
I'd said it was a very rough correspondence. Strictly speaking, very different from hara-kiri. But basically, the idea in both was suicide...so I hope it's acceptable.

---------------------------------------------------------------
BONUS QUESTION ;-)
Q: What is a paragodge? Tell me about it. . . :-)
* There is no such thing as a paragodge! However there is something called paragoge. what couldd it be? adding sounds to words for eg. extra 'd's for effect, like in drownded, often seen in poems. So now you see!...why the smilies...why this was a bonusQ...why it was paragoDge!...;-)

----------------------------------------------------------------
Of all the words of mice
and men, the saddest are
"It might have been..."
----------------------------------------------------------------

The scores (in chronological order)

1. Gaurav Lochan - 2.5 (Still looking for a kick?)
2. Shobhana Balakrishnan - 4.5 (Tell me about it!)
3. Rajiv Rai - 3.5 (very good tries indeed)
4. Rahul Guha - 3.5 (Maria Janelle...dunno)
5. Vimal Vikrant Vardhan - 0.5 (nephews actually)
6. Kensy Joseph - 3 (Who's Juano? ;-)
7. Sundeep Venkatraman - 3 (Outrageous...and correct! Keep guessing is the motto here.)
8. Kunal Malhotra - 5 (good show)
9. Usha Ramaswamy - 0.5 (Very good guessing though, really you deserve more)
10. Biswabijoy Sen - 3 (play-it-safe man?)
11. Parmitaghosh - 4.5 (r u parmita or parmit a. ghosh?)
12. Partha Sengupta - 2.5 (Pop I)
13. Mamatha Balasubramanian - 4 (solid effort)
14. Sreeram - 2 (old man ;-)
15. Karthik Ramgopal - 8 (great show, bonusQ also..)
16. Shom Biswas - 4 (u confuse me with ur many names!)
17. Rexy Joseph - 4 (Jam!!??)
18. Minhaj Alam - 2 (really liked ur answers..)
19. Priyambad Pattanayak - 3 (congrats on BonusQ, but did u get the misspelling?)
20. Bhaskar Singh - 1 (Afghanistan!)
21. Ankur Jain - 6 (good, solid effort)
22. Thejaswi Udupa - 7.5 (good use of the clues after all eh?)
23. Anoop Radhakrishna - 5 (pretty cool)
24. Syam Prasad - 3 (It was not Dr.Barnard)
25. Ranjith Kumar - 1 (nice guesses though)
26. Pauline Daniel - 3 (UK hmm...)
27. Debashree Mitra - 3 (loooong intro! cool.)
28. Prithwiraj Mukherjee - 2 (nice answers)
29. Sandeep Unni - 6 (going great guns!)
30. Venkateswar - 2 (Two pennies! = 1 + 0.5 + 0.5)
31. Nithin - 4 (Ian Wilmut was a superb try)
32. Annanya Deb - 4 (in the nick of time!)

--------STATS ----------------------------------------------

Funnest! -
Area in which Hitler had moustache on Philtrum
Mike Tyson after EarBiting on Frankenstein
Maria Juano on Mary Jane
All Popeyes in different languages on Popeye's nephews
Numbers that "feel" right on ideal numbers
Atma hatya on Puputan

Ridiqulest! -
Numbers with no application on Ideal numbers
Crocodile's mouth on Kirkwood Gaps
Jam on Marijuana
Saddam Hussein on Frankenstein
Barakiri on Puputan

Guessest!- nice guessing
Kevorkian on Frankenstein
Numbers equal to product of factors on Ideal numbers
Ability to love! on Philtrum (how cute!...sentimental)
Ian Wilmut of Dolly fame on Frankenstein
Redundant nicticating eye membrane on Philtrum (Impressive!)
Names Olive Oyl calls Popeye on Nephews

* All questions except 2 and 10 were cracked fully
* Karthik Ramgopal tops the quiz with 8 points
* Average score : 3.5
-----------------------------------------------------------------