Under The Peepal Tree 2007 Open(s)

RVCE organized two open quizzes today, at the Chinnaswamy Stadium's pavilion hall as part of their annual quiz fest, Under The Peepal Tree.

1) Audi Vidi Vici
QM: RV QuizCorp girl (don't know her name)
Audio Video Quiz open to all

2) Corporate Quiz (don't recall title)
QM: Avinash Mudaliar
General quiz, mixed corporates allowed

The prelims for the audio video quiz was pretty good but the final round devolved into a Simpsons quiz - there were way too many questions based on the Simpsons (especially), South Park and the like, mainly cartoons. And to top that, it was an insipid affair as well. The presentation skills of the QM left a lot to be desired. Thoroughly disappointed with the show, and feeling a bit hungry, I left in search of food, body-nourishment because neither soul nor mind were getting with the fare being served! Hence, don't know who won it.

Perhaps the organizers should have made better arrangements - there was no food available in the vicinity, finally managed a few bites only after sneaking in to the club area. (Coffee-biscuits were available, thanks for that but no real food, should have been thought of when holding an all-day event) And never forget basic things like the introduction of the QM and so on. And general note to QMs all over, do not assume that everybody knows you (somebody must do an intro) and everybody knows what you're talking about (don't skim/skip answers). Otherwise you alienate the audience, might as well do it over the net or something!

The corporate quiz was much better than the morning-debacle. The prelims set was well-rounded, though there were way too many sitters and did not really set the tone for the final round. The final round was of a different level than the prelims and many teams found the going really tough.

The final round saw an absent QM - Avinash Mudaliar hadn't turned up and was...as the organizers put it...on the way! One of the QuizCorp members (don't know his name) did substitute duty and did a fair job of it. The questions, as Avinash later said after he turned up, was made by the QuizCorp team and perhaps that was the explanation for the confident show by the youngster. It was a hard-core trivia quiz; it was evident that the question-setters had taken pains to not tread the biz-quiz path! (...biz-quiz..that's an oxymoron, isn't it?) The rounds were called For the Peepal, By The Peepal, From the Peepal and so on.

Avinash Mudaliar,dressed for the occasion, turned up half-way through the quiz and took over from the volunteer QM. He livened up the proceedings with his maverick touch - smart-ass comments and quips, haphazardly courting and baiting the audience with prizes and so on. There were a few incidents of arbitrariness and injustices - an on-the-fly conversion of a normal round into a buzzer round, arguments with one of the participants et cetera. But hey, it's all in the game.

SuMo Yet So Far (Swaminathan and team from Chennai) walked away with top honours and the winner's cheque.They tied for first-place and clinched the issue on the tie-breaker deservedly (they had suffered a lot of negatives in the buzzer round). There has not been a single quiz that I have been to and Swaminathan was present, that he has not ended up winning! The list now reads Landmark Bangalore (my awakening), ITC Bangalore, Odyssey Chennai.... should I be his fan or am I his lucky charm?...just kidding about the lucky charm part, serious about the fan part... ;-)


PERSONAL
---------------
For the A/V quiz, I had teamed up with Vivek, called ourselves "Our Duo, We Duo". Prasanth and Lloyd formed another team. (We had thought it was teams of 4) As it turned out, together we might have, but separately we didn't... qualify! We managed 7 or so, they managed 8 or so, and that too fairly disjoint sets. Throw in a few genuine misses and you've got an unbeatable DNQer's Whine! (DNQ=Did Not Qualify). Cut off was 12, I think.

Vivek abandoned ship for the afternoon quiz, as he wanted to attend the Crucible quiz which was also happening today - ditching us in favour of audience prizes and nostalgic kicks (he had won the 2006 edition). Team PASS's was very much a sinking ship today; Vivek made a wise choice. (Intended to self-deprecate ;-) I was hugely disappointed that we did not qualify for this one; the morning's failure did not qualify as a disappointment at all. Cut off was 16 or so, we managed only 12 out of 25.

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

(waiting for Prasanth to send in the transcripts, was so crestfallen and depressed that I could
not bring myself to take things down!)

RVCE QUIZ QUESTIONS :

(from Prasanth)

I am not including the AUDI VIDI VICI QUESTIONS.

1. Sequential connect : Visuals of DDLJ, KKHH, KHNH, ADITYA CHOPRA,KARAN JOHAR and NIKHIL ADVANI.

Ans. ADITYA CHOPRA( director of DDLJ, asst.director : KARAN JOHAR)

KARAN JOHAR(director of KKHH, asst . director: NIKHIL ADVANI)

NIKHIL ADVANI(director of KHNH)

2. Connect a movie clip and a pic of Russell Crowe.

Ans.The movie is THX 1138(as in the number plate of the car in the clip), the person standing beside the clar in the clip is Ron Howard and he directed ‘The Gladiator’ starring Russell Crowe. THX 1138 is the first movie of George Lucas.

3. Actor born in Jaunpur, U.P. Popular Bhojpuri actor. But earned nation wide fame for something else.

Ans. Ravi Kissen (Big Boss contestant)

4.Visual Connect : samosas, a pic of Lord Ganesha and a pic showing Arjun and Lord Krishna.

Ans.Things that were carried to space by Sunita Lynn Williams – Bhagwad Gita,samosas and a picture of Lord Ganesha

5.Id the voice featured in the audio clip.

Ans. Bianca Castafiore ( of Tin Tin fame) singing the ‘The Jewel Song’.

6. Some description which actually turned out to be J agdish Chandra Bose describing the electromagnetic wave.

7.some ads whose connection turned out to be Maggi

8.Who comes next in the series: Amitabh Bachan, pic of Eklavya(the real one), a pic of Dronacharya teaching the Pandavas,_______: Abhishek Bachan( whose upcoming movie is ‘Drona’).

9.Connect: One picture of EP-101 and Bruce Dickinson song.

Ans.EPSON( named after ‘son of EP-101’ later became Epson).Mascot of Bruce Dickinson’s band was called Epson.

10.Id the pic.(clue: connected to a style of music)

Ans. Calypso( greek myth)

11. ID the singers in the audio clip.

Ans.Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love

12. First seen in a movie with Tom Hanks in 2000.A short biopic was sold along with the movie’s DVD titled “ The life and death of a Hollywood extra “.

Ans.Wilson the volleyball

13.Connect visual pics of two ships.

Ans. They are “Black Pearl “ of Pirates in the Caribbean and “African Queen” of the movie of the same name. The connection is they are the movies named after attractions in Disney Land rides.

14.Identify the musical instrument.

Ans. Jalra

15. A question on Black dogs( something that takes u on a “high” )whisky: basically the funda is that ‘black dog ‘ is an euphemism for hallucination due to sleep deprivation caused in truckers.Stems from the fact that black dogs dart in front of the trucks causing a wreck.

16.Visual connect : A map showing Poland, an athlete in black and white and Santhi soundararajan.

Ans. Ewa Klobukowska is the Polish athlete in B&W. The only athlete known to have failed a femininity. She was ruled ineligible for the European Cup women's track and field competition in 1967.

And the same fate happened to Santhi.

17.ID the actor in the movie clip.

Ans. David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla.

18.ID the monument in the movie clip.

Ans. St. Mary’s Virus Memorial which is dedicated to the game of Ring –a –Roses(from the movie “V for Vendetta”).

19.Connect the two pics.

Ans. 1^ST pic : Mary Queen of Scots who loved the game of golf and is seen along with her “caddies”(origin of the term)

Second pic : King Henry VIII – He loved the sport of tennis and he had ball boys who used to pick up the ball and serve it to him.Thus arose the term “service” in tennis .

The connect: terms in modern day sports that were derived from royalties.

20.Some long passage about the drawing of lines: that was Cyril Radcliffe being responsible for drawing the actual lines of Partition.

21 the actor who comes next in the video clip( features some persons about to take a draw)

Ans. R.D.BURMAN who makes his first appearance in movies in Guru Dutt’s “Bhoot Bungla”.

22. Connect the “kuku kuku “ song from the movie Khal Nayak, a south Indian temple and a pic of Tipu Sultan.

Ans. The term “choli” takes its name from the Chola Dynasty who built that temple.(don’t know wat Tipu Sultan is doing here)

23.What is Steve Buscemi in Con Air referring to when he says this(music playing in the background) : "Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash."?

Ans. Lynyrd Skynyrd who met with a plane crash in1977.

24.Showed some pics of old Indian trains(including “FAIRY QUEEN”).

Ans.The term ‘express’ came into being.

25.Visual of a flower. In areas where the ground does not freeze, it can be a spectacular member of the summer garden. They like good drainage and grow well in a soil rich with organic matter. Some species are known as Spider Lilies.ID it and describe the funda behind it.

Ans.The flower is Hymenocallis and it is the foundation of the design for the Burj Dubai, U.A.E.

26. A visual coonect showing the Watergate Hotel and a the grid design of a car.

Ans. Computer Aided Designing – first building that used CAD in designing it.

27.Visuals of some tourist spots.What is the connection?

Ans. Sites that are included in the ” Ramayana trail “ tourism in Sri Lanka.

28.Connect the two comic pics of Asterix and Obelix.

Ans. The first pic pays tribute to GE and the second to Michelin.

29.Connect and ID the pics.

Ans. Naomi Watts, Sophie Loren, Lou Dhillon, Hillary Swank and Penelope Cruz. The connect is Pirelli Calendar – 2007.

30. Connect the visuals of two mountains.

Ans. Brands inspired by mountains. The Thumbs Up logo inspired by the first mountain and the design of Toblerone chocolate inspired by Mt.Matterhorn.

31.Connect the video and Sonic the HedgeHog.

Ans.The first video to be played on MTV and Sonic the HedgeHog is the mascot of Sega.The connect is VIACOM which owns these.(also Paramount).

32. Connect the pics and ID them.

Ans. A lightning bolt, a thunderbird , Electra ( greek myth) , sten gun, canon , and an emblem of lion capital criss-crossed by swords.The connect is Royal Enfield.

33.Some persons’ names along with certain names that they gave.

Ans. It was a contest to name the AsianPaints mascot which finally ended in the name Gattu.

34.Connect brands and footballers.

Ans. Cristiano Ronaldo- Pepe Jeans ; Ronaldinho-Lenovo ThinkPad ; Freddie Ljunberg – Calvin Klein

35.What was the 2006 “Brand of the year”?

Ans. The headbutt involving Zidane and Matterazzi.Zidane was wearing a jersey with adidas logo.

36Whatz the funda behind the company Hamburg Maxheimer and the FIFA WC 2006?

Ans.It is the insurance company that had insured the FIFA WC trophy.

Solus Rex 2007 & KQA Annual Movie Quiz 2007

KQA organized two quizzes at the Daly Memorial Hall today -

1) Solus Rex finals
QM: Arul Mani

2) Annual Movie Quiz
QM: Madhav Nair

Did not attend as we had decided to go for RVCE's Under The Peepal Tree. Would be grateful to anyone who could fill me in with some random stuff like who won etc. Sound-bites of the questions would also be appreciated!

(From Sai, thank you!)

Th movie quiz was one of the best Ent quizzes I’ve ever seen. (It’s so easy to have fan-boy quiz when it’s a ent quiz) Either the Simpsons crap like we saw in the morning , or some comics ( like what me n my team would do ;) ) , or some death metal… but if there was ever a quiz which had the perfect mix of the kind of questions / type of films being questioned on , this was it. I’ve been unfortunately missing the movie quizzes conducted by Madhav Nair past two yrs.

Prelims were a bunch of excellent questions, ranging from all types of films starting with > a question on Metropolis being chosen for some UN archive > mandatory question on Hitchcock. > A movie called Westworld, which became the first feature film to use of computer digitized images. Actor & Dircteor – Ans:Yule Brynner & Michael Crichton!!!( Yule plays the role of robot which is spoof on his role in Magnificent seven)
> X & Y , two famed directors engaged in a public argument in 1960’s – Ans:Mrinal Sen & Satyajit Ray. >Dialogues from which film?: “The Godfather is the answer to any question. You're at war. " It's not personal it's business." Recite that to yourself every time you feel you're losing your nerve. What day of the week is it? "Maunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday." And the answer to your question is "Go to the mattresses." Ans: You ve got mail.> Indian actor acting as Zia Ul Haq in new film w/ Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts Ans: Om Puri .> An easy audio of Tarantino talking about dancing. > One of the songs of Kaala Pathhar , became the title of the next action flick of the same film-house, which was made 25 yrs later. Ans: Dhoom >Last scene of The Apartment. (Sitter). > Opening scene of Rashomon

Me n santosh missed the cutoff by few questions, but I don’t remember sitting in the audience and enjoying a quiz this much. (Plus we knocked off few coupons , so ended with the same rewards as that of most finalists. Muahahaha! !!)

Qualifiers : Mustafa , Watwo , Arul Mani (Lone Wolf!) , Dibyendu & Sohan, and couple of other teams ( whose names i m not aware of). What was very interesting was that there were many participants who I ve never seen at KQA( so called 'non-quizzers' , whatever that means ) . Shows the interest that a movie quiz generates ;). Won by Watwo ( Arun Hiregange & Anustup Duttta ).

-- Sai Ganesh

KQA Music Open & Ladies' Open 2007

Two open quizzes were held today at Daly Memorial Hall by the KQA -

1) Annual Ladies' Open
QM: Arun Hiregange
(by "popular remand"[sic], as Arul Mani had put it in the announcement)

2) Annual Music Quiz
QM: Rajesh Meher & Arul Mani
(titled "Muzak to my ears")

The ladies' quiz was a slow starter, with not too many teams turning up. In the end, the organizers decided to start off with the four teams that were present - a couple of student-teams from RVCE, a team of older ladies, and another team. There was no elimination round. The QM Arun Hiregange's choice of questions was rather good I must say, most of them being workoutable, none smacking of chauvinistic trivalization and highly enjoyable. The girls were no match for the team of ladies, who emerged convincing victors by a long way. I think the RVCE team featuring Aditi finished second; they made some good, fun guesses.

The inside joke for the day was: Kiran Vijayakumar scored in the ladies' quiz! ;-)

The annual music quiz did not draw too many participants either. Perhaps one of the reasons for this was that it was a Saturday and many companies were working (many declaring it a compensatory working day because of the Karnataka bandh on Monday). The QMs decided to start off the finals with the teams that were present (that was the order of the day!). Latecomers had to sit it out in the audience. I teamed up with Arun Hiregange for this one; both of us were casual floaters with no plans to participate actually! We still performed creditably though, finishing second-last I think.

One of the twists in the format was a round where the teams were paired up with each other (based on their standings at the beginning of that round, top with bottom and so on). Teams had to "buzz" (shout) for the question if they thought their partner team knew the answer. Signalling was allowed. If the team then answered correctly, both teams would get points otherwise both teams would get negatives. This is a cool idea (for casual quizzes at least) to ensure less variance in scores. I would call this concept "Tag Along"; I forget what the QMs had named it.

Due to mis-signalling, our partner team (the two guys with thick specs, one really tall, one normal height,don't know their names, somebody please fill in) tagged us for a connect Q. Inner Circle's Games People Play and Kula Shaker's Hush had been played. My nod of recognition was mistaken for knowledge of the answer! But in an epiphanic rush, I don't know from where, the correct answer - Joe South - just rolled off my tongue!

After Rajesh Meher handed over proceedings to Arul, there was (as expected?) a long stretch of unanswered questions. When a team finally broke the ice, all of us (including the audience) clapped!

The quiz ended off with a mammoth A-to-Z (well, nearly!) substitute-for question. We based our attempt on Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album (what with Roger Waters coming and all you see) but were utterly wrong. It turned out to be the flavour of the season, the Beatles' Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band!!! Arul Mani has the last laugh on Sergeant Pepper! We scored a creditable '0' on that one, having been thrown off track by a clue about a song based on noises in a barn (==>Animals). Sai & partner won the quiz, pipping Thejaswi Udupa's team and our dear "partner-team" at the post with a superlative crack of the A-to-Z Q.

To paraphrase and misquote Jack Sparrow: "Today will be remembered as the day that Arul Mani almost killed [the] Sergeant Pepper [meme]!". Thank god and Arul!

TRIVIA TIDBITS
(mainly from the Ladies' Open,
the Music Quiz question were largely un'note'able)
-----------------------------------------

(will be filled in soon)

Banana Endianness TBD

At which end of the banana should we peel?

Mulky Memorial Open 2007

The second edition of the quiz held in memory of KQA's founder and longtime President, Wing Commander G.R. Mulky, who passed away in February 2006, was conducted by the newly-christened Das brothers (Dibyendu and Vinay) at the Canara Union hall yesterday.

The quiz was more fact-based and direct than most. The quiz was themed on India – every question had an India connection. All this added up to being a refreshing change for the quizzing populace. This does not mean, however, that there was a shortage of banal (and sometimes boring) trivia here either. (Please note that arcana is also an anagram of “canara”, the venue!) All in all, it was good fun and enjoyable, although the spread was not exactly delectable.

Almost all the teams found the going mostly tough both in the prelims (the cut-off was just 12/32) and in the final round. The end-scores of all the teams were between 50 and 100 (I think). The quiz was won by Thejaswi Udupa and team. A highlight was someone in the audience shouting Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers for one Q! :-)

The trivia-bites section of this report is somewhat sparse and especially error-filled because many questions had only anecdotal and contextual relevance and meaning, but also because the answers were not projected on-screen. (This is true even of the Unmaad 07 quiz) QMs have a moral (make that legal!) obligation to inform also. ;-)

PERSONAL

I teamed up with Prashanth, Lloyd and Sai for this one. The team-name we chose was….PASS! We managed to qualify this time…eighth and tied for seventh place with 54 points. It was a good team effort even though we were mostly, justifying our name, passing! Creative guesses include Ninyankodi while destructive guesses were “The Das Brothers band” and Shivalingam for crocodile.

I had a minor row with the QMs about a question in the prelims to which we had answered “Big Brother” instead of “Big Boss” even though the connection could have logically been worked out both ways. But as always the QM’s decision prevailed and because of that we only just about managed to scrape through.

PRELIMS

1. Audio (song) – Brett Lee w/Asha Bhosle
2. On Saraswati temple in South India – in news – site of proposed IIT
3. Ravindra Jain, if he could see, wished to see – KJ Yesudas
4. Visual – woman – maker of Ravana effigies
5. Dakshina Kashi, Kumbh Mela organised – T.Narsipur
6. Left at her peak in 1966 to London to study medicine – Rita Faria
7. Ferry across the river ______-- - Zuari
8. Climb films. Indian animator – Bhim Sen (drew boos!)
9. Description of struggle of actor. Extra in Hema Malini debut – Naseeruddin Shah
10. Book cover blanked out – Upamanyu Chatterji, Weight-Loss
11. Cadres ANSAR(under 30), IKHWAN(over 30) – SIMI
12. Princely state 1891 – British restored to same status. MK Priyambada premier – Manipur
13. Visual. Painting features – Vaikkom Muhammad Bashir
14. “A Dangerous Game Is About to begin” tagline. Launched a game also with audio CD, guiding robbers in bank robbery – Aankhein
15. Set up in 1935, Hilton-Young commission. First private, then state-owned – RBI
16. Racquet-sport couple – Chetan Baboor and Jwala Khubta
17. List of nonsensical, fun invention – Prof Shonku (Satyajit Ray character)
18. Tenth day of Muharram – Ashura (Hail Prashanth!)
19. Visual. Common. Dilip Kumar, Morarji Desai – Nishaan-e-Imtiaz
20. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay compete in Madras Provincial seat. First woman to do so. Where from? – Mangalore
21. Sanctuary mentioned by Kipling – Kanha National Park
22. ___’s Odoru Maharaj, Dancing Maharaja key in Indo-Japanese relations. Manmohan Singh address to Diet – Rajni Kant
23. Mahesh L Kunshwar - famous playwright, Holi (drew jovial booing)
24. Visual. Coach of Sriram Singh, finalist 800m in 76 Montreal Olympics – Illyas Bapwar
25. Route description. Guessable. World heritage site. Have to visit by day and return - Valley Of Flowers
26. Bangalore landmark. Lease ran out. Modified from 6000 to 6 lac per month – Windsor Manor
27. First work in Hindi, about king – Prithviraja Raso
28. Sport banned in Tamil Nadu – Jallikattu (Lloyd)
29. Sanjeev Bhaskar (CanNot Recall Question)
30. CNRQ
31. Video. Syriana starting sequence.
32. Movie clip. Bemisal

FINALS

Plain vanilla visuals (written)
1. Sarla Devi
2. CNRQ
3. Nimbus chief
4. Some CEO
5. CNRQ
6. CNRQ

Theme Guess: Scams
Urea (Uric cycle shown with formulae!), St.Kitts map, Bicycles, Sugar (looked like diamonds) and so on
(Pretty Creative)

Infinite Bounds

Only comet named after Indian. Wilson - ______ effect –
Harbhajan Singh & other sportspersons – DSPs in Punjab Police
Hussein-_____ correspondence – Macmahon
One less than a crore. Place – Punalkodi
Margadarshi. Modern-day Carnatic kutcheri format – Araikudy Ramanujam Iyengar
“Hole In The Wall” – computers for all
Robert Pirsig – came to BHU for Eastern Philosophy, Metaphysics of quality
Connect – Coru, Anand, band – British Steel (Missed Judas Priest band!)
Agarkar, fish-dishes – Bombay Duck (Missed declared sitter. So pressure :-) also because there were two dishes)
Hindu Kush = Slayer of Indians
Al Beruni – crater on the moon named after 10^th century Indian chronicler

Stage 2
Socotra – Dioskoriorou
Only four kinds listed. One believed extinct now - River dolphin
Yanam
Ghatam player – Sukanya Ramagopal
Manifestation of Egyptian god “Rock worms” – Crocodile
Saif in Arabic etc. English use same word as locals for this- Talwar
Fast fast slow slow – Foxtrot (we answered cha cha cha)

Theme: Classes of Indian Navy vessels (We cracked this, though we thought it was Indian navy ships. We vaguified well enough! ;-)

IIM-B Unmaad Open 2007

IIM-B, as part of their annual cultural festival Unmaad, organized an open quiz contest at their campus today. The QMs were Thejaswi Udupa and his college team-mates. The prelims set was pretty cool but the final round was a major letdown. This was despite the prelims being tuned as a sneak pre-taste of the finals (42 questions , Beatles trivia, Escher etc) . There were cushions and not chairs for the qualifiers on stage: perhaps signifying that there were supposed to be no sitters! (Bad PJ TJ!)

It turned out to be, as my friend Sai puts it, a “fan-boy quiz” with not much trivia of lasting value and worth, peppered with some fun questions (all the same) fashioned from arcana about the quiz-masters’ cultural infatuations and hobbies. For example, many questions were themed around France, where one of the QMs, as he kept periodically reminding us, had “spent three months of his life”! It must be said also that some of these questions had the fun-factor.

It must be remembered that, to rephrase an adage, the formula of “all fun and no beef” makes the audience a dull one! It was clear that the QMs were having a lot of fun, enjoying themselves – sharing inside jokes (the Das brothers and the current “in-thing” in Bangalore quizzing circles, cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper) with the on-stage teams and introducing everybody to their idols and other objects of their adoration. All this left the audience in the lurch, I felt.I am basing this judgment on what I saw of the quiz (I left around halfway through), so it might be a little unfair but this is what I felt.

Perhaps because there was another inter-collegiate quiz (IMS, big money) no college-teams made it to the final round. Because I left halfway through, I don’t know who won the quiz or about the final standings. Somebody please fill me in.

PERSONAL

My teammates were Lloyd, Rajesh Mohan and Sai Ganesh (who decided to team up with me at the venue). We called ourselves “Oraclique”! But we did not clear the prelims this time. We came real close though, earning ourselves an “honourable mention” from the QM. We lost out on the tie-breakers; we had only 0.5 on the starred questions in the prelims.

We might have sneaked through had I not made a last-minute, ill-advised change on my response “Fermat’s last theorem” to “Murphy’s Law” on a question about an equation. It was my partner Sai’s gut feeling(he couldn’t justify) against my gut feeling(with some justification). But such is life! It has happened to me before; when will I ever learn. Advice: always go with what can be justified better on a prelims Q! Lloyd said that he considered Biafra to be a miss.

(Self-note: The trip to IIM-B. Home to Marathahalli to campus! Taxi advice!)

PRELIMS

1. Word meaning master of own self. Also husband in Bengali – Swami

2. First used in 1910s for a baseball pitch – Jazz

3. Visual – map – non-fictional country – Biafra

4. 3 equations shown, what’s missing – Fermat’s last theorem

5. Video – Pat Boone covering Little Richard

6. Comic strip – about chick-picking Nash. – Richard Feynman

7. Visual. Comic characters from – Raj comics

8. Missing blank: _________, Magnum force etc – Dirty Harry

9. Visual: Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata (wild guess: wrote Zapatista)

10. Audio – singer died recently – Moksha (Forever never)

11. “No yacht was harmed in the making of the movie. It is the movie that is the shipwreck!” about - Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away

12. Posters: Jamaica Inn, Rebecca – Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne du Maurier (Cracked!)

13. Map – Identify city. American punk rocker – Gothenburg

14. Wives of Muruga (One is name of a Tamil Actress) – Valli & Devayani (Rajesh got Valli)

15. Ad campaign – acclaimed internationally not in India. Clues- Incredible India (miss)

16. Poem missing blanks – Kazakhstan, Borat

17. Connect Perfume, Miss England etc – Shilpa Shetty, Big Brother. (Big bother now! When will the BB mania stop???)

18. List 9 items. FR Spofforth etc – Laker, best bowling figures in Test innings

19. Visual: paintings Connect – Absinthe (Sai!)

20. Story named after another city. Chestnut. – Venezuela, Venice

21. Visuals connect – Gibraltar, London, Paris, Southampton – Ballad Of John & Yoko

22. St. Gobain order supplied 357 of them. Important events have happened here – Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles (QM blooper)

23. First suggested by Thomas Jefferson for Parisians to wake up earlier. Color coded map –Daylight Saving Time

24. Laxmikant Pyarelal not inspired. Decide to leave studio. Chat inspired son – Accha To Hum Chalthe Hai (Rajesh magic!)

25. Visual. Subject of controversy between two countries when lease expired. 1971. – Jim Morrison’s grave

26. Long silences of Parisian beauty => Dumb blonde (Should have worked out :()

27. Listing. Sudden drop in 1939 – Lou Gehrig’s batting averages

28. Average age:45, 16% outsiders (or reverse?), 47% from neighbor, official language also lone neighbour’s – Monaco

29. Visual sitter – Kiran Desai

30. Visual – Hugo Chavez

31. Still from movie – Ghost Rider

32. Visual connect – James Joyce, grave – Black Dahlia

33. Visual – Akbar and – Matt Groening (Sai. Would have banged my head!)

34. Visuals- house , “This is where the original soil…” – Joan Of Arc

35. Velasquez painter

36. Visual – self-portrait of artist from – Art Spiegelman

37. Tulus Dothrek??

38. Location. Story. What? - Jaipur litfest

39. Visual – MC Escher

40. Word origin story. Word first, acronym later – Backronym

41. Audio – Van Morrison Astel week

42. Crimean war connect. (We wrote Last Samurai)

FINALS

Lateral round of 5 visuals – Theme Old names of bands

1. Tradewinds – Styx

2. Soft White Underbelly – Blue Oyster Cult

3. Roundabout – Deep Purple

4. The Mega death – Pink Floyd

5. Earth – Black Sabbath

6. Quarrymen – Beatles

Infinite bounds

1. Sculpture in Perth Triangle – Penrose triangle

2. Michael Steele bassist of band inspired from Elvis grave – Eternal Flame, Bangles

3. East side gallery. World’s largest open air art gallery on – Berlin Wall

4. Rodgers & Hammerstein concentrated on King & I for 1956 Oscars. Also Carousel and Oklahoma in that year, neglected. But Carousel runaway hit song – “You Will Never Walk Alone”, theme song of many football teams

5. Missing picture in series – Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor – Richard Burton

6. A-B 1968 “wasn’t dead and that he hadn’t gone anywhere” 1999 saying at A’s death – Joe Di Maggio, Paul Simon, Mrs. Robinson

7. Visuals. Cerberus, Orpheus charmed – Tribute in literature – Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s stone

8. Oct 14, 1937. Caswell “ Do I have to watch this ___ grow”. Overheard and Stanley Woodward coined => Ivy League

9. Words if used, no ads in gmail – Forms of die, dead etc

10. Visuals. Indian gurujis. Who was missing? Sergeant Pepper cover – Mahatma Gandhi

11. Robocop movie still of car with licence plate “6000 SUX” – Anti-ad by Ford against Pontiac 6000 their competitor

12. Audio. Genre of jazz – Prasnna, Raagabop

13. Website entitled “ The ___ ___ simulator” experiment. Best result “Flavius. Hence: home you idle” – Million monkeys with typewriter to produce Shakespeare

14. List of places and date, starting with Brest and ending in Brest, France – Clemencau ship places

15. Maps. Champagne, Cognac, Bourbon, Port => all give names to liquor only if grown there

16. Space captain poem – Lonely Planet

17. Visuals. Chandigarh, works of art – Le Corbusier connect

18. Monty Python clip. Only person other than 6 to be co-credited. Later influenced – bureaucraticness of Vogons in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

19. Character in South Park – “Token Black”, introduced for the sake of having a black

20. Hell’s Angels, Howard Hughes

21. Connect. Supreme, Robbie Williams video. Inspired by ____. Roman Polanski – directed . Visuals of all of them

22. Connect. Jules Verne pic. Back To The Future guy – sons named Jules and Verne

23. Audio: Norwegian wood covered by Cornershop

24. Bar in Switzerland – Geiger bars by HR Geiger

25. Dexter’s lab. Car Mock-5 based on – Mach 5

26. Poison song audio. Visual of two musicians. => Eagles Of Death Metal (a band!)

27. Baranna, Kannada movie

28. Visuals. Lego-theme parks.

(This is where I got out!)

Proof By Quotation

"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire

"Bullshit! Witty sayings are the very essence of wisdom, and I should know."
- Oscar Wilde

"People will take anything you say seriously if you put a famous name next to it."
- Albert Einstein

-From a discussion on Slashdot