Visuals - Quiz 9

Hi !

Here's the next set. One more of this kind. The next one will be based on visuals but with a difference.

1. Connect. Name the central figure whose photo is missing and forms the link to the other four.

2. Identify this international border.




3. Identify this entrepreneur.




4. The stick figure seen below is the motif / sign of a British fictional character. Name the character.




5. This is the cover of a path-breaking album in the annals of rock. Strangely, it did not feature the lead singer of the band (owing to his having been fired recently) but included Ronnie James Dio who collaborated with this band from time to time. Name the album in question.




6. Name the group whose adopted logo is seen below.




7. This is a historic site in Israel. A derivative of its name has passed into the the English language as a specialized word for catastrophe. Name the word.




8. What is common to the two cricketers shown below ?




9. Connect the three images

(Points for consideration :
The 2nd pic shows something that the lady was instrumental in ushering in. The gentleman (exceedingly famous) has nothing to do with the painting but is connected to the lady in a different way)

10. Identify the animal seen below

Have fun !

Zed

Answers for Visuals - Quiz 8

Hi !

Fortnight's up. Here are the answers.


1. Guernica


It's a work by Pablo Picasso and depicts the aerial bombing of Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The raid involved planes of the Italian Aviazione Legionaria assisted by the German Luftwaffe. The painting is displayed on the wall of the United Nations at the entrance to the Security Council room.


The painting style is not purely Cubist but shows definite traces of it.

2. Financial Times

http://advertisingadvice.blogspot.com/2008/05/72-of-worlds-most-creative.html
Came across the ads in this blog. Not the 72 funniest print ads as touted on the page but the url is aptly named.


3. Schengen Zone after the Schengen Agreement


4. Resusci Anne / Rescue Anne / CPR Annie. It's used in CPR trainings.


5. Buzkashi / Kok-boru / Ulak Tartysh.
It evolved as a Central Asian sport played on the Steppes. The goal of a player is to grab the carcass of a headless goat or calf and then get it clear of the other players and pitch it across a goal line or into a target circle or vat. Features in Rambo III and Khuda Gawah.


6. Hergé and Chang Chong Chen (The Blue Lotus and Tintin in Tibet)
The man with the sailor's cap is Zhang Chongren, a friend of Hergé. The logo featured is that of a private airline operator in Nepal called Yeti Airlines.


7. Zakir Hussain and Shakti.
Shakti was a world fusion band that played in the 70s. It features Zakir (1st from left), guitarist John McLaughlin (2nd from left, nicknamed Mahavishnu), Ghatam exponent 'Vikku' Vinayakram (3rd), violinist L Shankar (4th) and R Raghavan on the Mridangam.
In the late 90s, McLaughlin and Zakir formed another band called Remember Shakti, and now included V Selvaganesh (Vinayakram's son), Mandolin Srinivas and Shankar Mahadevan.


8. Wrath of God
The first pic is taken from the sets of a 1972 Werner Herzog (featured in the pic) film - 'Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes' which translates as Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
The diva is Rita Hayworth whose last film was called 'The Wrath of God' in 1972.
The 3rd pic shows Steven Spielberg with actors Daniel Craig and Eric Bana on the sets of 'Munich'. The movie shows the covert Mossad operation to assassinate individuals involved in the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972 by Black September was called 'Operation Wrath of God'.


9. The places are (in clockwise) -
New York City (The United States), Nimes (France), Mosul (Iraq), Genoa (Italy), Osnabrück (Germany), Damascus (Syria), London (England), Calicut and Madras (India).
The connection is that these are places which have lent themselves to fabric names.
NYC & London - Nylon
Nimes - Denim
Mosul - Muslin
Genoa - Jeans
Osnabrück - Osnaburg
Damascus - Damask
Calicut - Calico
Madras - Madras Cloth


10. Blank editorial in The Indian Express on June 28, 1975 as a protest against press censorship imposed during the Emergency. The man in question was Ramnath Goenka.


Scores
Venkatesh - 3
Prithvi - 6
Vasanth - 1.5


Zed

Visuals - Quiz 8

Hi !

Here's the next set.

1. Identify the painting.

(The style of painting is very patent)

2. With which company would you associate these three print ads ?

(The catch-phrases on the top-right corners have been blanked out. Pretty recent and they've won great acclaim in the advertising world)

3. Traveling in the 'dark blue zone' doesn't require separate visas or entry permits. In fact, there are no border checkposts. The countries in the 'lighter blue zone' are to be included in this scheme soon. The yellow spots and the green zones are as indicated in the visual. What name does this "dark blue zone" go by ?

4. Give the name of this mannequin.

5. Identify the sport.

6. The man to the left based one of his fictional characters on the man to the right (the one with the cap). Identify the creator and the creation. The visual below, a company logo hints at who these two might be.

7. These are four members of a famous music band of the 70s. It was revived recently by the person to the extreme left with a name that evoked the nostalgia of the 70s band. Name this person and the original band.

8. Which three-word phrase connects the three visuals ?

(The woman in the picture was a Hollywood screen Goddess. The other two pictures were taken during the shooting of two films, one from the 70s and the other from the 2000s)

9. What commonality is shared by these cities / towns / villages ?

10. This is a landmark event in Indian history and probably in the history of journalism itself. Someone obviously wanted to show dissent. Name the dissenter and the casus belli.

Have fun !

Zed

Answers for Visuals 7

Hi !

The answers -

1. Bárány chair named after Robert Bárány, an Austrian physiologist. It's been used to great effect in motion sickness therapy.

2. They're both Padukones in the film industry. The gal's Deepika Padukone. The man is Guru Dutt who was born Vasanth Kumar Shivshankar Padukone.

3. The four of them are (in clockwise) Edwin Hubble, Subrahmanyam Chandrashekar , Arthur Compton and Lyman Spitzer. NASA has four satellites under the Great Observatories Program. They are the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope named after the four physicists shown.

4. The person is Johann Strauss II (Waltz King) and the place is StadtPark, Vienna.

5. Richard Branson's Virgin Group has a subsidiary - Virgin Comics. The father-son duo are Deepak and Gotham Chopra (Goutham styled as Gotham from Gotham City). They launched Virgin Comics along with Branson to promote South Asian themes and culture through comic books. Some of their comics were Ramayan 3392 AD, The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma, The Asura Analogues, Project Kalki and The Sadhu (from which the 3rd pic is taken).
Virgin Comics will be continued under the name of Liquid Comics after a recent management buyout.

6. Ponzi Scheme after Charles Ponzi. It's an investment scheme that promises high short-term returns to investors. Ponzi was an Italian immigrant to the US in the 30s.

7. The missing person is Mahatma Gandhi. The other people are (in clockwise) - Charlie Chaplin, Archibald Belaney (aka Grey Owl, Canada's famous conservationist), Sir Winston Churchill, C S Lewis and Steve Biko (founder of the Black Consciousness movement during the days of Apartheid in South Africa).

Richard Attenborough made six biopics on the six people shown in the collage. The most famous of them all was Gandhi. The movies are Chaplin (Robert Downey Jr. as Chaplin), Gandhi, Shadowlands (Anthony Hopkins as C S Lewis), Young Winston (Simon Ward as Churchill), Grey Owl (Pierce Brosnan as Grey Owl) and Cry Freedom (Denzel Washington as Steve Biko).

He also made 'In Love and War' featuring Chris O'Donnell as a young Ernest Hemingway during his days as an ambulance driver during WW I.

8. The Warsaw Ghetto.

9. The TIME Cover shown features the Hungarian Freedom Fighter as the Man of the Year 1956. This was during the Hungarian Revolution of the same year against the Stalinist Government of Hungary and the policies it imposed.

The other pic shows Ervin Zádor who represented Hungary in Water Polo in the '56 Melbourne Olympics. Soviet Union and Hungary met in the semifinals and the game was fraught with physical skirmishes between the two teams and Zádor was struck below his right eye. This match came to be known as 'Blood in the Water game'. Hungary won 4-0 though and took the gold in the finals.

10. Capybara - the world's largest rodent.


Scores
Venkatesh - 6
Saravanan - 1
Prithvi - 1

Zed

Hints for Visuals 7

Hi !

Some clues ...

1. It's used primarily to train student pilots.

2. What's in a name ?

3. The man with the pipe is Edwin Hubble.

4. One would find it in Vienna.

5. The duo shown above Richard Branson are a father-son pair. The son styled his (very common Indian) name after an entity in the Batman comics.

6. It's along the lines of bogus affair, pyramid racket etc. Paul Krugman uses this term a lot.

7. Think Movies. Two of them are Chaplin and Churchill, of course. The person in the middle is C S Lewis.

8. Features a lot in the movie 'The Pianist'.

9. The TIME cover shown isn't just any TIME issue. It features the Man of the Year (it was 'Man' back then). As with 1982 when 'The Computer' was chosen as the Man of the Year, this was another year where the choice was not a particular individual.

10. This rodent is found extensively in South America. It's also one of the few coprophagous animals on the planet.

Zed

Visuals - Quiz 7

Hi !

Here's the next ten.

1. A person is blindfolded, placed on this device and spun rapidly. He / She may then be asked to identify the direction of rotation or locate an object after rotation has ceased. It has uses in therapy as well. Identify this device.

2. What is common to the two persons shown below ?

3. Identify the commonality.

4. Identify the place and the person this monument commemorates.

5. Connect.

6. What is this man's contribution to world jargon ? (Hint - Never trust a shady deal)

7. Who is the missing figure ?

8. This was a photograph taken in 1945. What are we looking at ?

9. The 2nd pic is taken from an infamous sports event of the 20th century. The 1st pic illustrates the backdrop for the infamy of the sports event. Name both.

10. Identify the animal.

Have fun !

Zed

Answers to Visuals - Quiz 6

1. Wiki. Ward Cunningham (Pic 1) who remembered a Honolulu International Airport (Hawaii) employee telling him to take the WikiWiki Shuttle (Pic 2) that runs between terminals. He chose the word 'wiki' as an alternative for quick.

2. Dodi Al-Fayed and Princess Diana at Harrod's

3. Mohan Bhargava (played by Shah Rukh Khan) in Swades (The guy is Ravi Kuchimanchi who founded the Association for India's Development (AID). He also forged a collaboration with the NBA (Narmada Bachao Andolan) and other groups like People's School of Energy. Together, they electrified 12 hamlets of the tribal village Bilgaon (marked on the Maharashtra map))

Note - More surfing revealed that Gowariker may have also based the character on Vikram Akula, (shown below) the founder of SKS Microfinance which offers microloans and insurance to poor women in impoverished areas of India.

4. Kill Bill. The four snakes shown are (in clockwise) - Black Mamba, Water Moccasin / Black Moccasin aka Cottonmouth, California Kingsnake aka California Mountain Snake and Death Adder aka Copperhead.

The names in red are the codenames of the four assassins played by Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah and Vivica Fox of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in the movie Kill Bill. The codename of Bill (played by David Carradine) is Snake Charmer (shown in the collage).

The last pic is the poster of a '73 Jap film 'Lady Snowblood' based on a manga. This film is the major inspiration for Tarantino's Kill Bill. Added it in order for the thought process to be in terms of movies. Otherwise this could've turned out to be a generic connect (bunch of snakes with a snake charmer)

5. Thomas L Friedman. McDonald's. Dell

In his 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree', he stated the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention - "No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's".

In his 'The World is Flat', he stated the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention - "No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain"

6. The fixing of the prices of Gold and Silver.

As mentioned, it doesn't happen here anymore. They've dropped out of the affair and it is now under the chairmanship of the Bank of Nova Scotia. It was the official bank of the 2007 Cricket World Cup and is also the official team sponsor of the Canadian cricket team.

7. Ellis Achong. He was the first cricketer of Chinese descent to play test cricket. He was a left-arm orthodox spin bowler (finger spin) but one of his variations was the left-arm unorthodox (or left-arm leg-spin). During a West Indies vs England test at Old Trafford in 1933, he got Walter Robins stumped. The latter is said to have remarked to the umpire - "fancy being done by a bloody chinaman". Learie Constantine is said to have replied - "Do you mean the bowler or the ball" and thus the term Chinaman was born.

8. Yakshagana (It's actually more like an Opera than a dance form)

9. The women are (in clockwise) Audrey Hepburn, Donna Karan, Uma Thurman and Gisele Bundchen.

Audrey Hepburn (the still is from Breakfast at Tiffany's) wore Givenchy costumes for the film (which became a rage) and she was also brand ambassdor for Givenchy.

Donna Karan founded her own brand DKNY - Donna Karan New York

Uma Thurman is a brand ambassdor for TAG Heuer.

Gisele Bundchen (supermodel) is the face of Louis Vuitton.

These brands are under the ownership of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy.

10. Sandro Botticelli. The painting is Adoration of the Magi by Sandro Botticelli (alleged to be one of the grandmasters of the Priory of Sion)

Scores : Saravanan - 4, Prithvi - 4

Zed

Landmark '08 - Bangalore Edition

Hi !

Last year, eleventh hour antics ensured that we were in the Chowdiah Memorial Hall with seats to boot. This year though, owing to an impulse of mine I can't quite slot now, the hours leading up to the event were laden with ennui. As is customary with us, we hadn't thought of a team name beforehand. After considerable deliberation, we came up with 'We don't believe in Bengalooru (Bangalore sounds better)' and it seemed like the three of us were finally happy with a team name after ages. From there, it was roses all the way, to borrow a cliché.

To begin with, Naveen Jayakumar was the quizmaster for the evening and that in itself augured well for the quiz. It also gave me something to look forward to for I hadn't been to his quiz before. He didn't disappoint and hit all the right notes, to the delight of a rapturous audience. He also managed the quizmaster's boomerang, where a question passes all and sundry (including the collective might of the audience) and the answer is revealed by the quizmaster quite palpably gung-ho.

As events unfurled, 'We are like this only' won it by the meagre margin of 3 points. The unfortunate team in question was 'Obama Satyabhama' whose rare blunder on a buzzer that pulled them back by 5 might have made the difference. QED, whose presence on stage nearly everyone present takes for granted, weren't far behind either tailing OS by 2 points. 'We ...' and 'OS' get to participate in the Grand Finals at Chennai on the 15h of August next year.

There was a round involving 20 visuals connected by one word. The degree of connection would get more direct and simpler as the visuals progressed from the 1st to the 20th. Points were allotted based on the number of visuals remaining when the connection was worked out by a particular team. Can't remember the order of the visuals and there are about 16 of them here.

Zed