Thursday, February 26, 2009

Quiz 12 - Oscars

Hi !

Sorry about the hiatus. Wanted a break after Biz Wizards.
Time for a theme now. This one's from the Oscars - 10 visuals.

1. For the early part of its history, the man in the picture below was associated with the Academy Awards. Identify.


2. What distinction does this woman hold at the Academy Awards ?


3. This was very unique as far as acceptance speeches are concerned. Name the actor.


4. Identify.


5. Roberto Benigni (seen below) was the second person to direct himself to an Academy Award for Best Actor for 'Life is Beautiful'. Who was the first ?

6. What distinction does this actor hold in the history of the Academy Awards ?
7. Identify the person whose face has been edited out of the picture.
8. What is this actor's claim to fame in the history of Academy Awards?

9. Name the missing film.

10. Identify the actor.
(His was the first instance of this happening that took place in this year's ceremony too)
Have fun !
Zed

Friday, February 13, 2009

Biz Wizards - Quark 2009 : Prelims (Non-Visual Answers)

1. The company is 23AndMe (a personal genomics and biotechnology company) and it enables consumers to understand their own genetic information.

2. Starbuck (passage from Moby Dick)


3. Patent Pool

4. 1. Lee (not Levi's)

2. flixter.com

3. Reddy Laboratories

4. UPS


5. Made in Japan (Akio Morita)


6. Volvo

7. The verb "gazump" means to refuse to formalise a property sale agreement at the last minute in order to accept a higher offer.

8. Harley Davidson

9. Samsung

10. Universal Pictures

11. Fictional companies (Tyrell - Blade Runner, Morley Cigarettes - QT films & X-Files, InGen - Jurassic Park, Milliways - the restaurant at the end of the universe in the Hitchhikers' novels, Universal Exports - the company OO7 claims to represent when undercover)


12. id Software

13. Camay

14. Zyklon-B

15. Hang Seng

16. Reva

17. Arthur Charles Nielsen (AC Nielsen)


18. Berkshire Hathaway

Biz Wizards - Quark 2009 : Prelims (Non-Visual)

1. Sergey Brin along with Larry Page started Google Inc. Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki along with Linda Avey founded a company X in which Google has invested 3.9 billion dollars. “If Google wants to really organize world information, it needs to consider what X is purporting to sell” was how a business analyst explained the investment. What product / service does X offer?

2. "I will have no man in my boat," said _______, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
Fill in the blank.

3. Isaac Merritt Singer has been popularly associated with the sewing machine. He didn’t invent it though. By the time he’d perfected a prototype in 1850, it had been invented 4 times. In 1856, manufacturers Grover, Baker, Wheeler, Wilson and Singer, each accusing the other of patent infringement met in New York, to pursue their suits. Something unique came out of this meeting and for the first time too. What was it?

4. Taglines. Give the names of the corporates with whom the following slogans / taglines are associated.

1. The Jeans That Built America –
2. Stop watching bad movies. –
3. Life. Research. Hope. –
4. What can Brown do for you? –

5. This entrepreneur wrote two books. One was 'Never Mind School Records', in which he stressed that school records were not important in one's success or ability to do business. Name the other book.

6. This yacht race founded as the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1972 is held once in three years. The 10th edition of the race is being held between October 4, 2008 and June 27, 2009. Currently, who is the owner and official sponsor of this race?

7. In property sale jargon, what does ‘gazumping’ mean?

8. Which company’s NYSE ticker symbol is HOG?

9. Which company’s engineering and construction wing has to its credit, the Taipei 101, Taipei and the Petronas Towers, Kuala Lampur, and is currently working on the Burj-al-Arab, Dubai?

10. A history of M & As.
· 1912 – Formed when Carl Laemmle’s Independent Motion Picture Company merged with eight other smaller companies.
· Independent until 1946 – It merged with International Pictures.
· 1952 – Purchased by Decca Records.
· 1962 – Decca Records purchased by MCA (Music Corporation of America)
· 1990 – Matsuhita (now Panasonic) acquires MCA.
· 1995 – Seagram buys it from Matsuhita.
· 2000 – Vivendi acquires Seagram.
· 2004 – General Electric acquires it from Vivendi and merges it with NBC.
Which company’s history is being summed up above?

11. What is common to Tyrell Corporation, Morley Cigarettes, InGen, Milliways and Universal Exports?

12. Which company has to its credit the creation of the Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake game franchises?

13. Which of the following is not a Unilever brand?
a) Brut
b) Camay
c) Lipton
d) Dove

14. Bayer is the 3rd largest pharmaceutical company in the world owing entirely to the sales of aspirin, a drug it has patented. For a brief period in its history, it was part of a larger conglomerate called IG Farben, formed from a merger of 6 companies (which included Bayer). What was the most famous (or should we say infamous) product made by IG Farben?

15. If it’s Nikkei for Tokyo and KOSPI for Seoul, what is it for Hong Kong?

16. In the United Kingdom, it is marketed as the ‘G-Wiz I’. How do we know it in India?

17. Of Danish origin, this American founded his eponymous company in 1923. He inaugurated a National Radio Index for broadcasters and advertisers in 1942. He was a member of the Sigma-Phi Society and won the U.S. Father and Son Doubles title in Tennis in 1946 and 1948. He was inducted into the International Hall of Tennis fame in 1971. He was an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to which he later made a donation to create a full-time MBA specializing in marketing research. This happens to be the only full-time marketing research program in the United States. During his lifetime, he was at the forefront of the advance of this field. Who is the person in question?

18. Which company’s annual shareholder’s meetings have been dubbed as ‘Woodstock for Capitalists’?

Zed

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Long Visual Connect

This round had 16 sets of visuals related to the answer in different ways. The sets got easier from the 1st to the 16th visual.
The connect was APPLE.

Gil Amileo & John Sculley - Jobs departure from and return to Apple
Steve Jobs replaced Amileo when he returned to Apple in the 90s. Sculley ousted him in the power struggle of the 80s which caused Jobs to leave and start NeXT.

John Wiley & Sons have been banned from Apple Stores for publishing an unauthorized biography of Jobs called iCon. The Humane Interface was penned by Jef Raskin, the man behind the Macintosh. It discusses topics like Cognetics, Human-Computer Interfaces etc.

Kane Kramer & Tony Fadell - iPod
Kramer invented the digital audio player in 1979 from which the Apple iPod drew a lot. Fadell headed the team that invented the iPod.

Neil Aspinall and The Beatles
Aspinall was the manager of Apple Records, the records company of the Beatles after they split with EMI. There is a yet-to-be-resolved trademark dispute between Apple Inc. & Apple Records.

Ronald Wayne & Paul Rand - logo designers
Wayne is often referred to as the 'third founder' of Apple and designed the original logo featuring Newton. Paul Rand designed the NeXT logo.

Jeff Goldblum, Jerry Seinfeld & Richard Dreyfuss - Apple Ads

Lisa Jobs, Carl Sagan & Charles Darwin - People after whom Apple products are named
Lisa was the first Apple PC. Carl Sagan is the name of one of their processors (Sagan detested this and fought a case in court). Darwin is the name of the iPhone processor.

Eric Schmidt & Al Gore - Apple Board of Directors
Schmidt, in addition to being CEO of Google Inc. is also on the board of Apple. So is Gore.

Big Cats - Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Snow Leopard, Leopard, Cheetah - Codenames of MAC OSes


Ridley Scott & '1984' movie - Apple Ad in 1984
Scott directed the famous 1984 Apple ad based on Orwell's 1984. IBM was supposed to be 'Big Brother' in the ad.


Logos of Apple software - Safari broswer, XSAN (file storage system), Aperture (photo editor)

Nolan Bushnell & Breakout
Bushnell started Atari. Before founding Apple, Jobs & Wozniak used to make games for Atari. Wozniak created 'Breakout' (now Pinball) during the period.
2001 : A Space Odyssey & Mighty Mouse - Sources of Apple product names
iPod comes from the line in the '2001 ...' - "Open the pod bay doors, HAL'. Mighty Mouse (the name of the Apple mouse) is licensed from the popular cartoon character.

Isaac Newton & Alan Turing
The Apple logos make reference to these two. The first one features Newton. The second one has a chunk bitten out in reference to Turing who committed suicide by eating a poisoned Apple.

NeXT & Pixar - The two companies Jobs was CEO of other than Apple Inc.


Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs - the founders

Zed

Biz Wizards - Quark 2009 - Clues Answers

1. Pallonji Mistry
2. Thomas Watson
3. Cecil Rhodes
4. Paul Reuter
5. Shahnaz Hussain
6. Frederick Smith
7. George Eastman

Biz Wizards - Quark 2009 : They Ad-d Up Answers

1. Maggi (ma), Rado (ra), Tide (ti), Seiko (se) - Maserati
2. Davidoff (da), Orbit White (or), Nokia (no), Gillette (gi) - Giordano
3. Lacoste (la), Cox & Kings (co), Colgate (co), Carlsberg (ca) - Coca Cola
4. Liril (li), Animal Planet (an), Rexona (re), Ceat (ce) - Reliance
5. Toyota (to), Dettol (de), Garnier (ga), Ray Ban (ra) - Gatorade
6. Lamborghini (la), Mortein (mo), Rolex (ro), Tommy Hilfiger (to) - Motorola

Biz Wizards - Quark 2009 : Clues Round

This round had 4 clues pointing to a business magnate, in descending order of difficulty and with the appropriate reduction in points (7 if they got the answer with the first clue, second clue - 5, 3rd - 3, 4th - 1)
There were 6 sets and an optional 7th and this was the format :
a. Fact / Snippet / Trivia
b. Pic
c. Anagram
d. Fact / Snippet / Trivia
1.
a. He is the richest Irish citizen in the world and has been nicknamed ‘Phantom of Bombay House’ by his Tata Group colleagues.

b.
c. Paltry lions, Jim
d. His eponymous company owns Eureka Forbes Ltd and was a former chairman of Associated Cement Companies.
2.
a. This entrepreneur was a teacher, a bookkeeper, a traveling salesman and then a sewing machines salesman before he joined National Cash Register. The famous misquote – “There is a world market for maybe five / fifty computers in the world” is attributed to him.
b.
c. Show not a mast
d. He joined the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation in 1914 and renamed it International Business Machines.
3.
a. A Freemason, this man founded an erstwhile state named after him. He once famously said about the British – “I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race”.
b.
c. Delhi soccer
d. He was the founder of the diamond company De Beers.
4.
a. This person’s birth name is Israel Beer Josaphat. His meeting with Carl Gauss early in his life influenced his career.
b.
c. A purer lute
d. The company he founded (named after him) merged with the Thomson Corporation in 2008 forming a newsgroup to rival Bloomberg and CNBC.
5.
a. This person’s father was once Chief Justice of India. Her paternal grandfather was the Chief Justice of the dominion of Hyderabad. Her maternal grandfather was a Commander-in-Chief of the Hyderabad army.
b.
c. Ha ! US has Ash in NZ
d. She is known for the eponymous herbal cosmetics and beauty products company that is now sold at stores across the world. She has over 400 franchises in 138 countries.
6.
a. This person co-owns the Washington Redskins NFL Team. An accomplished aviator, he was friends with both George Bush and John Kerry during his youth but campaigned for the former during the 2004 US Presidential election.
b.
c. Frisk med thrice
d. He founded the logistics service company Fedex.
7.
a. Long after having achieved success with his company, this person committed suicide in 1932 due to declining health and left a note saying ‘To my friends, my work is done. Why wait?’
b.
c. Ego’s great! Amen
d. His fondness for the letter ‘K’ led him to register the trademark ‘Kodak’.
Zed