General Quiz Meet Mains

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The French Connection.
• Maurice X was the chief structural
engineer of the Eiffel Tower, for
which Gustave Eiffel is often
erroneously given credit. One of his
descendants later found fame in
India. Give me the name of the
descendant.

Reelin in the years
• Rolling Stone called them the perfect musical anti-heroes of
the 70s. The band's music is characterized by complex jazz-
influenced structures and harmonies played by X and Y
along with a revolving cast of rock and pop studio
musicians. They toured from 1972 to 1974, but in 1975
became a purely studio-based act. The late 1970s saw the
group release a series of moderately successful singles and
albums. They disbanded in 1981, and throughout most of
the next decade X and Y remained largely inactive in the
music world. n 1993, the group resumed playing live
concerts; later it released two albums of new material.
They have sold more than 30 million albums worldwide and
were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March
2001. Name the band.

An Urban Legend?
• The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram, and Max, invented and developed the
first automobile air-conditioner. On July 17, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97 degrees.
The four brothers walked into old man Henry Ford's office and sweet-talked his secretary into
telling him that four gentlemen were there with the most exciting innovation in the auto
industry since the electric starter.

Henry was curious and invited them into his office. They refused and instead asked that he
come out to the parking lot to their car. They persuaded him to get into the car, which was
about 130 degrees, turned on the air conditioner, and cooled the car off immediately. The old
man got very excited and invited them back to the office, where he offered them $3 million
for the patent.

The brothers refused, saying they would settle for $2 million, but they wanted the
recognition by having a label, 'The Goldberg Air-Conditioner,' on the dashboard of each car in
which it was installed. Now old man Ford was more than just a little anti-Semitic, and there
was no way he was going to put the Goldberg's name on two million Fords.

They haggled back and forth for about two hours and finally agreed on something. What was
their agreement?

• The controls Hi, Lo, Max, Norm on the ACs in
Ford Cars

The Expendables
• There is a recurring phenomenon amongst
henchmen in many movies and has been
dubbed X. No matter how notoriously
dangerous an antagonistic group may be, they
cannot seem to injure/kill anyone who may be
vital to the plot. We have seen this in Kill Bill,
Crouching Tiger, James Bond and many other
movies. What is this effect called?

The Man from Earth
• This is a 2007 science fiction film about a retiring
University Professor who claims to be a cro-magnon
who has survived for 14,000 years. The entire film is
set in the professor's house during his farewell party,
with the plot advancing through intellectual arguments
between Oldman and his fellow faculty members.
The film was made on a budget of $200,000, and was
screened at many film festivals. However something
related to the distribution of the film is unique, with
the producers actually thanking a particular
community/group. What is unique?

Who said it?
I am not attracted to straight angles or to the
straight line, hard and inflexible, created by
man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual
curves. The curves that I find in the mountains
of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in
the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the
beloved woman. Curves make up the entire
Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein.

The Cold War
•
X's book The Cold War brought the phrase to common
currency to describe the political situation post World War
II. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize(1958 and 1962)
for his syndicated newspaper column, Today and
Tomorrow.
X was an informal adviser to several presidents, and was
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on September
14, 1964 by President Lyndon B, Johnson. He however later
had a feud with the President over his handling of the
Vietnam War. X's reputation was so high that a Democrat
senator from Idaho who voted against Johnson(a Democrat
President) reasoned that he agreed with X.
Who is X?

Sahi me? Ye sab?

• The End of the Affair is a novel by British writer
Graham Greene, published in 1951. The novelist
whose works explore the ambivalent moral and
political issues of the modern world, loosely
based the book on his affair with Lady Catherine
Walston, and is set during and just after World
War II.
The book recently gained attention in India,
because of something many speculate is loosely
based on the novel. What?

• Jab Tak Hai Jaan is supposed to be based on
this.

Seriously Black
• X was a 1979 seven-part drama spy miniseries for the
BBC. It is the television adaption of the 1974 novel of
the same name by Y.
Starring Alec Guinness in the lead role, the main
credits feature a matryoshka doll progressively
revealing a doll looking more irate than the previous,
with the final doll being faceless, an allusion to
Winston Churchill's describing Russia as "A riddle,
wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."
The miniseries was remade into a film in 2011, and
earned Z his first Oscar nomination, before which he
was widely described as "the best actor not to have
been nominated for an Oscar." Give X, Y and Z

• Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, John Le Carre, Gary
Oldman

The Sopranos is Epic
• Bugsy Siegel was an American gangster associated with the Genovese
Crime Family. Siegel with associates Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and
Frank Costello formed Murder, Inc.; credited with carrying out many
contract killings across US.
His desire to be a legitimate businessman led him to gain ownership over
the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. He spent extravagantly on his new 93-
room Hotel, thereby incurring the displeasure of mob bosses.
On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot in the head, twice. Although there is a
general misconception that he was shot through the eye, in fact his left
eye was blown out of its socket by the overpressure created by the bullet's
striking and passing through Siegel's skull.
The misconception was propagated by the murder of a film character
based on Siegel, in a Gangster Classic. Name the Character and the film.

Loose Ends
• Born in 1959, this poet has published four poetry
collections. Gemini(1992), Apocalypso(1997),
English(2004) and These Errors are Correct(2008).
In 2006 he told The Hindu that he had been an
alcoholic and an addict for almost two decades:
"I spent most of that time sitting in bars, getting
very drunk, talking about writers and writing. And
never writing. It was a colossal waste. I feel very
fortunate that I got a second chance."
Who am I talking about? And why has he recently
become famous?

Yep, he is the man
• X is a British mathematician and a Royal Society Research
Professor at Oxford University, specializing in Number
Theory. X discovered ______ when he found a book about
it at 10 years of age. He was puzzled by the fact that the
statement was so simple that he, a ten-year old could
understand it. He started working on the statement since
1986, in relative secrecy, and came out with a final solution
in 1993. It turned out, however, that this solution had a
fundamental gap, to circumvent which took X another year.
He announced the final solution in 1995, and the solution
has withstood the scrutiny of mathematicians for over 17
years now. Simon Singh wrote a book, titled _____, which
chronicled attempts to find solutions to _____ since the
time it was first stated. Give X and the blank.

• Andrew Wiles, Fermat’s Last Theorem

Greed is good
• X is an American business magnate and head of the high-
yield bond department of Drexel Burnham Lambert, till his
indictment in 1989 on 98 counts of racketeering and
securities fraud, and was convicted on 6 counts of
securities violations. At Drexel, his compensation exceeded
$ 1 billion over a four year period, and as of 2010 he had a
net worth of $ 2 billion, making him the 488th richest man
in the world. Drexel went bankrupt in 1990.
Critics cite X as the epitome of wall street greed in the
1980s, and nicknamed him Junk Bond King. The character
of Gordon Gekko is acknowledged to be partly inspired by
X.

Them Italians
• This is an Italian neo-realist film, co-written and
directed by Federico Fellini. The film portrays the
journey of the two main characters, the brutish
strong man Zampano (played by Anthony Quinn)
and a naive young woman Gelsomina (played by
Giulietta Massina) whom he buys from her
mother and takes to see the world as part of his
travelling show. The film won the inaugural
academy award for best foreign film in 1956. Bob
Dylan has cited the influence of the film on his
song Mr. Tambourine Man.

One dreadful movie.
• This lake is an endorheic lake in the Himalayas
situated at a height of 4,350 m. Its
circumference is 134 km, and its maximum
width is 5km. The lake passes through the
India-China border and requires an inner line
Permit for travel from Leh, which is a five-hour
drive. The lake entered into popular culture
when it was the site for the final scene in the
Bollywood blockbuster Three Idiots. Name the
lake.

3. Connect
• Silkwood Mulholland Drive
• Gia Brokeback Mountain
• Monster's Ball Eyes Wide Shut
• The Wrestle On the Road
• Monster The Sessions
• Lawless The Accused
• Boys Don't Cry Vanilla Sky
• Heavenly Creatures Jude
• Hamlet Titanic
• Iris Little Children
• The Reader

4.
• In 533 AD, a gentleman called Mercurius did
something because he felt that his name was
inappropriate for his profession. His actions
were also followed by a number of others who
came after him (and is a tradition that is
followed to this day). What did he do?

5. ID X.
• The ________ is an oil painting by Thomas
Gainsborough. An outfit of a character in the movie X
was chosen based on the outfit worn by the person in
the painting.
• German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's debut
movie was called Der Knabe in Blau, which was
inspired by the painting. Murnau innovated a
technique to get shots from cameras in motion
enabling them to use pan shots, tracking shots, tilts,
crane shots etc.
• This technique was called the 'Y' technique, which has
partly inspired the name for X.

7.
• What innovative technique was used for the
first time in the following dialogue ?

• Video link :
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjeRCsouf
II

8.
A song and video in which various high profile musicians are
mocked for endorsing brands such as Pepsi and Michelob -
MTV placed a station-wide ban on the video due to "problems
with trademark infringement." In response, X offered to re-shoot
the video; however, MTV claimed the lyrics were just as
problematic.

Furious, he wrote the following open letter to the station's
executives.

6th July, 1988

MTV, you spineless twerps. You refuse to play “Y" because you're
afraid to offend your sponsors. What does the "M" in MTV stand
for: music or money? Long live rock and roll.

X and Y?

9.

What is special about this picture?

10.
• Penthouse founder and publisher Bob Guccione
agreed to finance the project on two conditions: that
the film would be transformed into a flamboyant,
luxurious spectacle akin to Hollywood's sword-and-
sandal epics of the 1950s and 1960s, and that extra sex
and nudity would be added to the script in order to
promote Guccione's magazine.
• Roger Ebert gave it a rare zero stars rating, calling it
"sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.“ It is one
of only three films Ebert ever walked out of ("two
hours into its 170 minute length"), the other two
being Tru Loved and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

11.
• A painting by Raja
Ravi Verma
depicting
characters/event
which marks the
begginning of the
epic mahabharata.
• Who are they ?

12.
• The name “Amiya Productions” was based on
names of X and Y as production partners.
• It came into existence when Z was in financial
crisis and both X and Y supported it by
becoming producers. The credits though
featured Pawan Kumar (X’s then Secretary) &
Sushila Kamath
(Hrishida’s Chief Assistant Director, assisted in
Z too) as producers.

13.
• Y won the national award for best female
singer for the film Abosheshe in year 2012.
• Y became popular after playing X in the hit
television series.
• Y is among the Panch-Kanyas (five virgins) of
ancient indian texts. Ahalya, Tara, Mandodari,
Kunti, X

14.
• X was the grandson ofAbhimanyu and the great-
grandson of Arjuna, the valiant warrior hero of
the Mahabharata.
• According to legend, his father Parikshit, the lone
descendant of the House of Pandu, had died of
snakebite. He had been cursed by a sage to die so.
• X bore a deep grudge against the serpents for this act,
and thus decided to wipe them out altogether. He
attempted this by performing a great Sarpa satra - a
sacrifice that would destroy all living serpents.
• Who is X?

15.
• Born Harikrishna Giri Goswami, As a youth, admired Dilip
Kumar, and decided to name himself X after Dilip's
character in Shabnam (1949).
• X once told :

In my childhood days, I went to watch a movie with my
mother, in which the hero dies at the end. The next movie I
watched had the same hero. When I asked my mother that
how could a dead person come back in movie again she
told me that the hero never dies and that day I decided to
become a hero.

15. ID X and Y.
• X’s book (a political fable) Y is based on Marxian
philosophy. A Pink Floyd album, written by
Walters is loosely based on Y. Whereas the
novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a
critique of capitalism. The album was developed
from a collection of unrelated songs into a
concept which, in the words of author Glenn
Povey, "described the apparent social and moral
decay of society, likening the human condition to
that of mere animals”.

The Taste of India

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