Question - 69

Identify.

Answer: This is Winnipeg the bear who was the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh. Standing alongside is Christopher Robin who was the inspiration for uh...Christopher Robin. Swapnaa and Iam got the bear, not the guy. Well done.

Question - 68

Today's question is courtesy Manix. Connect the visuals. It is not an exhaustive list (but only a couple of visuals are missing). There is also an ordering of the different images(top row from L to R followed by bottom row L to R).

Answer: These are the animals after which the different releases of Ubuntu are named. In order from top left, they are the warty warthog, hoary hedgehog, dapper drake, edgy eft, feisty fawn and the intrepid ibex. I left out some of the other releases. QoD and Iam got it. Well done.

Question - 67

Today's question is courtesy Ashwin Parthasarathy. Identify and connect.

Answer: The images are (clockwise from top left) Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jim Croce, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Aaliyah and Randy Rhoads. The connect is that these are all musicians who died in plane crashes. Iam, Rajeev and Keshav got it. Well done.

Question - 66

Identify all visuals and connect.

Answer: The satellite picture is that of Mt. Erebus, an active volcano in Antarctica. In 1979, a sightseeing plane operating out of New Zealand crashed into the slopes of this mountain in white-out conditions killing all 257 people aboard. Edmund Hillary (third pic) was supposed to be the guide for the fatal trip but pulled out at the last minute and sent his friend Peter Mulgrew in his stead. Mekhala and Hirak got it right. Well done.

Question - 65

The top two visuals show the front and back of a coin. Identify the person being commemorated and connect with the bottom visual.

I was at a conference the last couple of days and couldn't update the blog regularly. I am now back in A2 and updates should be regular from now.

Answer: The person in the coin is Jorge Luis Borges and the bottom visual is the character Jorge of Burgos in the movie Name of the Rose. The character is similar in a lot of ways to Borges and is Umberto Eco's homage to him. If you like short stories, you should definitely give Borges a try. His "The House of Asterion" is one of my all-time favorites. Hirak, Raghu, Mekhala, Iam and Divya got it. Well done.

Question - 64

Today's question is courtesy Rajeev. What caused the anomalous downward spike?

Answer: The visual shows the stock of United airlines plummeting on Sept 8th, 2008 within just a few minutes. The reason was that Google news picked up an old news from 2002 about the airline (a bankruptcy article the airline had filed) and ran it as though the news were current. A Bloomburg analyst saw this and ran it as headline news without checking it out causing massive selling of UA stocks. Trade was briefly halted to restore order and UA lost about $300 million dollars in market value. Adi and Raghu got it. Well done.

I simply have to mention Iam's excellent guess. His answer (which he told me in person) was that the stock markets halted when they turned on the LHC to see if it created any black holes which might make trading a moot point. It doesn't explain the spike but still...

Question - 63

Identify the visuals and connect.

Answer: The connect is the chronophage (literally "time eater"), a sculptural clock in Cambridge. The clock pays homage to John Harrison (top right), a legendary clock maker who solved the longitude problem by making the first accurate clocks. His major invention was the grasshopper escapement (bottom right), a low friction mechanism for moving the clock's gears. The chronophage features a large grasshopper at the top as a reference to this. More details can be found here. Vateez, Iam, Adi, Mekhala, Manix and Hirak got it. Well done.

Question - 62

Shown are several examples of a certain phenomenon. What is the phenomenon (be as precise as possible) and what is its historical significance?
Update: I refuse to believe there is no one out there who is as geeky as me. So, I am running the question again with a clue.

Answer: The answer I was looking for was "Einstein Rings", multiple images of stars/galaxies formed due to gravitational lensing. This phenomenon served as one of the first experimental verifications of Einstein's general theory of relativity. A schematic of Arthur Eddington's experiment verifying this effect is shown in the second visual. Adi, Rajeev, capt. p j Vogon, Vikrant and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 61

Connect the visuals.

Answer: The connect is George Carlin, the legendary stand-up comedian. The pictures clockwise from the top left are (a) George Carlin getting arrested for his "Seven dirty words" routine, (b) the Mark Twain award that Carlin was given posthumously this year, (c) his arrest warrant on obscenity charges and (d) the character Fillmore from the movie Cars who was voiced by Carlin. Arvind, Rajeev, Mekhala, Iam, Keshav, Adi, Rajesh, Vateez and Swapnaa got it. Well done. If you haven't watched Carlin's routines, check them about in youtube. They are absolutely great.

Question - 60

Connect the two visuals with the guy in the bottom right.

Answer: The comic strip is the graphic version of the series Artemis Fowl written by Eoin Colfer whose picture is at the bottom right. The top left picture is Simon Jones' famous BBC portrayal of Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy. The connect is that Colfer has been roped in to write the sixth installment of what was till now a trilogy in five parts. Vateez, Rajeev, Mekhala, Iam and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 59

Connect the three visuals.

Answer: The connect is Lehman Brothers. The first visual shows the brothers who founded the company, the second one is their share value dropping after the company declared bankruptcy on Monday, the third is the logo of Barclays who are acquiring a portion of the company. Bala, Vijay, Rajeev, Mekhala, Hirak, Adi, Vikrant and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 58

Today's question is courtesy Raghu. Connect the visuals.

Answer: The girl with the crown of candles is participating in St. Lucia's festival in Sweden. The medallion on the right is the Nobel prize. The connect Raghu had in mind is that the Lucy brides bring Lussekatt to all the Nobel laureates on the morning of the ceremony. Rajesh was the only one to get this. However, Iam, Vikrant+Keshav, Hirak and A new thought all had different legitimate connects as well. Great job all around.

Question - 57

Connect the two visuals. Apologies about missing yesterday's update.

Answer: The picture on the left is the "Hungarian patriot" - Time person of the year in 1956. The one on the right is the famous "Blood in the water" water polo match between USSR and Hungary played in the backdrop of the Hungarian revolution. There was no love lost between the countries and it reflected in the game. The player with the bloodied face is Ervin Zador. Mekhala, Raghu, Hirak, Divya, Iam, Rajeev, Vj, Rajeshk, Manix, Rajesh, Vikrant and Keshav got it right. Well done.

Question - 56

Identify the two characters and the event being portrayed.

Answer: The weaving contest between Athena and Arachne. Arachne was a great weaver who dared challenge Athena, the goddess of fine arts, to a contest. During the contest, Arachne weaved a tapestry depicting the Gods in a less than flattering manner. Enraged, Athena changes her to a spider which is why spiders are forever weaving webs and the class of spiders is termed Arachnids, the fear of spiders is Arachnophobia etc. Raghu, Rajesh, Divya, Hirak and Iam got it. Well done and apologies for the late update.

Question - 55

Connect all the visuals. Question courtesy Iam.

Answer: The connect is Snipers. The map is that of the Battle of Stalingrad where Soviet snipers fought against German troops (made famous in the movie "Enemy at the gates"), a map of JFK's parade route on the day of his assassination, the bird snipe which is supposedly very difficult to hunt and from which the term sniper came to refer to sharpshooters and finally the clock tower at UT Austin from where Charles Whitman sniped down 14 people. Ashwin, Raghu+Mekhala, Vikrant+Keshav and Divya got it. Well done.

Question - 54

Today's question is courtesy Hirak. The banner holders were planning to do something to the Xs but the police wouldn't let them. So they settled for throwing the Xs, mops, girdles, pots, pans and playboy magazines which were "instruments of female torture" according to them into garbage bins. Identify X, what they were planning to do to X and connect with the picture.

Answer: X is Bra and they were planning to burn it prompting the press to name these protesters "Bra Burners". Sica, Mekhala, Manix, Iam, Adi, Rajeev, Keshav, Rajesh and Ashwin got it. Well done.

Question - 53

Today's question is courtesy Manix. Identify all the visuals and a common theme that connects them.

Answer: The connect is Jimmy Johnson. Clockwise from left to right: (a) Janis Joplin, a classmate of JJ, (b) Jerry Jones, the cowboys owner under whom JJ coached, (c) Barry Switzer, the OU coach who is the only other man to have won a national championship and a super bowl, (d) Doug Flutie after throwing the legendary Hail Mary against JJ's Hurricanes and (e) Dan Marino who played for JJ towards the end of his career. Raghu and Ashwin got it right. Well done.

Question - 52

Depiction of what event?

Answer: Queen Victoria at the opening ceremony of crystal palace, London. It was considered a great engineering achievement and all subsequent world fairs (like the ones in New York) were inspired by this. Iam and Mekhala got it. Well done. Mekhala gives some more info in the comments.

Question - 51

I have blanked out two words labeled X & Y. Identify the words and also for brownie points, identify the comics.

Answer: X is the Large Hadron Collider, Y - Higgs Boson. They are running the first proton beams around the accelerator tonight. A whooping 15 correct responses including one with a rap song celebrating the occasion. Well done.

Question - 50

Identify these three ladies and the collective name they are given.

Answer: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas - three great primatologists who all studied with Louis Leakey and hence were dubbed Leakey's angels. As Rajesh points out, they were also known as the "Trimates". Arvind, Raghu, Mekhala, Hirak, Manix, Swapnaa, Rajesh and Rajeev got it. Well done.

I think the 50 question mark is a good time to take stock. So, let me know any suggestions/brickbats you might have regarding the blog.

Question - 49

Identify the person shown and also the event being reenacted. Update: Since this question has garnered exactly 0 tries so far, I will let it stay up for another day with a clue. The person is an author and he was in the news recently.

Answer: Alexander Solzhenitsyn - the Russian author who passed away last month. His famous work "The Gulag Archipelago" is based on the time he spent in a Russian labour camp. Here, he gives a re-enactment of him getting frisked at the Gulag. Hirak and Manix got it right. Well done.

Question - 48

Today's question is courtesy Mekhala. Identify the significance of the photo on the right and if possible the individuals as well. The visual on the left is a clue towards identifying them.

Answer: The people on the right were the so called "Traitorous Eight". They left Shockley semiconductors to form Fairchild semiconductors whose spinoff companies eventually created the Silicon valley (shown in the first visual). Rajeev, QoD, Ramji, Ashwin, Adi and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 47

Identify both and connect.

Answer: Verghese Kurian and M.S. Swaminathan, the fathers of India's white and green revolution respectively. Arvind, Mekhala, Raghu, QoD, Rajesh and Vatheez + Shyam + Iam got it. Well done.

Question - 46

Identify the shaded region in the map and connect with the second visual. Be warned that the connect is rather facetious.

Answer: The map shows the pacific ring of fire - an area of active volcanic activity. The rather lame finding nemo connect that I had in mind is that there is a "ring of fire" in the aquarium atop Mt. Wannahockaloogie. However, Swapnaa offers a much better connect namely the NeMO project that is designed to explore biodiversity in the ring of fire. Iam and Swapnaa got it. Well done and apologies if the finding nemo bit misled you.

Question - 45

Connect the visuals.

Update: I will be on the road for a couple of days. New posts in this time will depend on enthu level and availability of high speed internet. Guaranteed updates shall resume on Monday September 1st.

Answer: The flying Dutchman. The painting is that of the ghost ship, the baseball card is that of Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh pirates whose nickname it was (incidentally, the card shown is among the rarest of baseball cards and extant copies are easily worth millions of dollars), the sketch is that of a roller coaster of the same name and finally Dennis Bergkamp is called the non-flying Dutchman due to his fear of flying. Arvind, Mihir+Shashank, Divya, Hirak, Raghu and an anon got it. Well done. Starting tonight, there will be updates as usual every night.

Question - 44

Connect the three women (order of the visuals goes from the viewer's left to right and the connect goes in the same direction).

Answer: The women are Anna Wintour, Meryl Streep playing Miranda Priestly in the Devil wears Prada and Megan Ward playing Kate Howard in General hospital. The character Kate Howard is inspired by Meryl Streep's character in the movie which in turn is inspired by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. Hirak and Vateez got it. Well done.

Question - 43

Who is being caricatured and what event is being depicted?

Answer: Cecil Rhodes (of Rhodes scholarship fame) and his plan to lay telegraph lines across Africa. Manix, Ashwin and Divya got both parts right while Arvind, Iam, Rajesh and an anon got the person right. Well done.

Question - 42

Little known cover of which famous book?

Answer: What can the answer to the 42nd question be but Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. Helpfully, the cover has 42 globes based on a puzzle invented by Douglas Adams. Cracked by Vateez, Arvind, Iam, Trevor, Rajesh, Manix and Raghu. Well done.

Question - 41

Identify the artist.

Answer: Bill Waterson. The guy with the bagpipers is a spitting image of Calvin's dad who in turn is modeled on Waterson himself. Iam and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 40

Identify the person who made these sketches.

Answer: Vladimir Nabakov. He taught in Cornell, Ithaca and was a great lepidopterist in addition to being a great writer. Mihir, Ramji, Iam (in the style of Clare Quilty), Divya, Hirak, Sankalp, Ashwin and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 39

Today's question is courtesy Iam. Identify A & B (they share a common theme). Image A is a bit cropped to remove the legend in the map. The disappearance of Antarctica and New Zealand are not important.

Answer: Visual A shows the spread of Avian influenza across the world with the red dots showing countries where the flu spread to humans. The second visual is cheekily termed B and shows the spread of killer bees across United states. Swapnaa got the first one but could not crack the second visual.

Question - 38

Today's question is courtesy Manix. Connect the movies. Be advised that it is a non-movie connect. Update: The pairing of the visuals isn't important. One needs to connect all 6 visuals.

Answer: Songs by Dire Straits. The movies and the associated songs are Blade (six blade knife), The Kingdom (kingdom come), Once upon a time in the west (once upon a time in the west), Romeo and Juliet (romeo and juliet), Far and away (so far away) and four brothers (brothers in arms). Divya and Iam got it. Well done.

Question - 37

Seal of which movement?

Answer: The Spanish inquisition. Iam, Divya, Ashwin and Rajesh got it right. Well done. I was a bit under the weather yesterday and didn't get around to posting the question. Regular updates will resume tonight.

Question - 36

A feminist take on which famous painting?

Clarification: Not a super famous painting per se but definitely a favorite subject with many many painters.

Answer: "Judgement of Paris" - a story in Greek mythology that was a favorite of many painters. This particular one is by Mary Ellen Croteau. Cracked by Raghu and Divya+Iam+Vatheez. Well done.

Question - 35

What is the gloved hand pointing to?

Answer: The K-T boundary (Cretaceous-Tertiary period) associated with a major mass extinction. This layer has higher than normal iridium concentration which suggests a meteor impact which is widely believed to have caused the extinction of dinosaurs. Hirak, Divya, Ashwin and a very inventive Iam got it. Well done.

Question - 34

Connect the visuals. It is not an exhaustive list. In the B&W pic, only one person is relevant.

Answer: The people are Goliath, Hannibal Lecter, Anne Boleyn, Count Rugen (from the movie "The princess bride"), Little Tich and Gary Sobers. They are all polydactyl - they have more than 5 fingers/toes. Vatheez, Sankalp, QoD, Divya, Rajesh and Iam got it. Well done.

Question - 33

They belonged to an exclusive club a while back. Not anymore. Identify them.

Answer: Paavo Nurmi, Larissa Latynina, Carl Lewis and Mark Lewis. These guys led the Olympic gold medals tally at 9 till Phelps broke the record. Imitator, Divya, Raghu, Iam, Ashwin, QoD, Swapnaa, Rajesh, Samrat, Hirak, Arvind and Sumedha got it. Well done.

Question - 32

Advertisement for what?

Answer: The Pony Express - a transcontinental postal system between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California. Cracked by Mekhala, Divya, QoD, Hirak, Ashwin, Rajesh, Iam and Suchi. Well done.

Question - 31

Identify and connect.

Answer: These are all brand names that feature frequently in Quentin Tarantino's movies. They are in order the Fruit Brute cereal (this one is not fictional but is no longer in production), G.O. Juice, Big Kahuna burger (perhaps the most famous of the five featuring prominently in a pivotal scene in pulp fiction), Red Apple cigarettes and Teriyaki donuts. Samrat, Ramji, Divya and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 30

Connect the visuals.

Answer: The connect is "Heart of darkness" by Joseph Conrad. The first visual is the Roi des Belges, the raft in which Conrad went up the Congo river. The second is the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe who wrote a wonderfully thoughtful piece on the racist views expressed in the novel. The third is T.S.Eliot whose "Hollow Men" ends with a reference to the novel. The fourth is the poster of "Apocalypse now", a movie based on the novel. In fact, Marlon Brando quotes from "Hollow Men" in the movie. Mekhala and Rajesh cracked it as did the team Iam, imitator and manix. Well done.

Question - 29

Publicity poster for what event?

Answer: The famous "Battle of the sexes" between Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King that contributed a lot to the popularity of Tennis in America. Anand, Arvind, Ramji, Raghu and Iam got it. Well done.

Question - 28

Identify both visuals and connect.

Answer: Antikythera mechanism - supposedly the world's oldest analog computer at over 2200 years old. There is no consensus as to its purpose but was probably used to predict eclipses and such. The right visual is the British science historian Derek J. de Solla Price who built and studied a model based on the Antikythera mechanism. Mekhala was the only one to get this. Well done.

Question - 27

Today's question is courtesy Hirak.

MC, an artist made this for her graduation project. However, she kept the location a secret. This was for two reasons:
a) It's the way the game is played.
b) A particular process that is key to this project of MC is dependent on a secret schedule maintained by 'X'.

What is X and what exactly did MC do? (MC is the initials of the artist).

Answer: Melanie Coles painted a giant image of Waldo the clown from "Where is Waldo" series of children's books on a rooftop in Vancouver and invited people to find him using Google Earth. This would also give an idea of the schedule employed by Google for taking the satellite pictures. Cracked by Divya, Iam, QoD and Rajesh. Well done.

Question - 26

Identify the kid and as many of the gentlemen as you can.

Answer: The kid is a very young Tiger Woods appearing in the Mike Douglas show. The other two gentlemen are Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart. There is a youtube video of his appearance here. QoD, Raghu, Samrat and an anon got it. Well done.

Question - 25

Blogger isn't letting me upload any images. So, today's question is dry. I have obfuscated it as much as I could to make it not too easy. If blogger lets me upload the visual, I will put a new question.

Question: In a 2002 poll, 61% believed the answer is no, 9% believed the answer is yes, 22% were undecided and 8% that it is undecidable. Some think analyzing minesweeper would give some insight into the question. What am I talking about?

Answer: The P vs. NP problem. The minesweeper connection is here. Divya and Raghu got it right. Well done.

Question - 24

This car and countless others like this have been scouring the streets of the US, France and Italy since May 2007. Identify their purpose.

Answer: The vehicles are Google-operated for taking pictures for Google streetview. Pablo, QoD, Hirak, Mekhala, Raghu, Iam, Trevor Burnham, Divya, Mihir, Rajeev and an anon got it. Well done. Good to see some veteran members of Quizclub who have graduated making an appearance here.

Question - 23

What is this? Question courtesy of Iam.

Answer: Ekranoplan, a Russian GEV (ground effect vehicle). Indiandreamer is the only one to get this. Well done.

Question - 22

Before today's question, I apologize for the delay in posting. I had to move out of my apartment and was up all night shifting. Also, I will be traveling over the weekend. To make amends, I am posting three questions now the answers to which shall be posted Sunday night. Regular updates will start on Monday. Onto the questions...


3-D depiction of what? Question courtesy of QoD.

Answer: Rembrandt's Night watch. Hirak, Anand, Raghu, Mekhala, Iam and an anon got it. Well done.