Queuriest - II

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUEURIEST - II
Keep Guessing! --- Johnnie Guesser
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. A pricky question (piquant?) that could leave you in stitches? Tell me, what you would do with Buffon's needle?
*

2. Name the Sherlock Holmes stories in which Holmes himself is the narrator? Points only if you get all of them.
*

3. Calling all Purpleheads...What was peculiar ( queuerious? ;-) about the way in which Deep Purple's mid-70s lead singer David Coverdale used to sing Deep Purple's all-time classic and possibly their most famous song "Smoke On The Water"? Why? (If you know the lyrics to the song, this is very much workoutable.)
*

4. Chess. Who or what is known as a patzer? (Cryptic clue: A Remus would be a good option for them! )
*

5. Was grass ever for Indian cows? Who was the first Indian to be seeded at Wimbledon?
*

6. Art Spiegelman's Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 . What's the distinction?
*

7. The absolute sitter of this quiz possibly. You've heard about telegrams and anagrams. But what is a pangram?
*

8. Rama, Shiva, Sugriva. What's the connection? (apart from the fact that they are mythological characters etc). Unleash your imagination! I'm waiting to learn more . . .
*

9. Who is a picaninny? You should never call them this!
*

10. How do we better know Mosi-o-Tunya? Cryptic clue: Smoke that thunders rises when a monarch capitulates?
*

hi folks!

here's the next installment of Queuriest.

the questions are fairly straightforward. there are no deliberate misspellings or hazification of questions in order to prevent you from googling. do justify the trust placed in you. there are lots of clues in the questions! tell me if they helped you work out the answers.

hope u enjoy cracking the Qs as much as I did setting them!

luv
thomas

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
`Curiouser and curiouser!'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANSWERS

1. * You could try to find the value of pi.
Sathish: Buffons needle is experimental method used to calculate the value of pi. one of the method is like this, say you got a needle of length 'x',draw parallel lines of distance 's' apart. if you drop the needle 'n' timesand it touche the lines 'y' times then the value of pi can be calculates as app (2*n*x)/(y*s).
Kamal:Buffon's Needle is one of the oldest problems in the field of geometrical probability. It was first stated in 1777. It involves dropping a needle on a lined sheet of paper and determining the probability of the needle crossing one of the lines on the page. The remarkable result is that the probability is directly related to the value of pi.

2. *Only two - The Adventure of The Blanched Soldier and The Adventure Of The Lion's Mane. Only Sreeram gets both.

3. * The song goes `We all came out to Montreux. . .', it was about an fire episode during a Frank Zappa concert that the members attended. Those days Ian Gillan was their lead-singer. After David Coverdale replaced Gillan in the band, at concerts/shows whent the band played the song, DC sang the song with 'We' replaced by `They', since he was not involved in the episode. (`They all came out to Montreux' etc). He sure was a sentimental guy!

4. * A patzer is a poor(moderate to inferior in quality) chess player. Of course, patzers are bound to be poor as well! :-) About the clue - Remus is German for draw, patzers would be very happy if they manage to draw the game?
Sathish: Patzer is a term for novice in chess. the persons elo rating is around 1400.

5. * Dilip Bose was seeded 15 in 1950. He could reach only the 2nd round. He had reached the 4th round in 1948.

6. * First cartoon/graphic book to win the Prize. In fact a whole new category was created for it,it seems.

7. * A sentence or poem which contains all the letters of the alphabet. eg. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

8. *The key word was pithecus.All have hominids named after them, Ramapithecus, Shivapithecus etc.
Cracked only by Sreeram.
Bharat says: RSS. (The party's alternate expansion!!)
Sreeram asks: Are there parts of Niagra which are named after them?
QM: I know there's some such trivia Q about Niagara but forget what exactly it was. Or was it about Colorado? HELP!!!

9. * It's a derogatory term for a Black child.
SK: Dominant racial carricature of Black children. They are described with bulging eyes, unkempt hair and wide mouths. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin explains better.

10. * Victoria Falls. That's its local name. Literally means 'smoke that thunders'. So, the clue was not so cryptic after all, huh?

-------------------------------------------
hi everybody!

Here are the answers to Queuriest -II.

Why were there only so many responses? Just 5! Was this because of my criticism of googlaholics (ref: DISCLAIMER in the prev Answers post)? Is this the size of the nongooglaholic population within Quiznet? ;-) But really, was expecting more... :-(

anyways. . .

luv
thomas

The scores (in chronological order):

Sathish.K - 6.5 (some answers were not specific enough)
Kamal Rathi - 5 (Computer opponent was a good try)
Sreeram - 4 ( <=4 prediction ---> =4 = 4 ! )
Kunal Malhotra - 4.5 (patzer answer vague)
Bharat Jayakumar - (:-)) Keep ur creativity going though!!!


* The only unanswered question was the one about Smoke On The Water

No disclaimer needed this time around!!!