The Rules

Welcome to Exquizite Quizine, a quizzing blog, whose weird set of questions and irregularity of updation are but a reflection of similar qualities in it's creator. Welcome to this blog an good luck in answering the questions which feature here, and you're welcome to post answers as comments. Just make sure that if you're answering questions then encrypt them in any ingenious fashion which ensures that others don't end up accidentally reading them. One suggestion is ROT13[W]

Cheerio and as the notice on some other less well known place says, Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

[5] The Last Supper

This is probably my last post before the midsems(except maybe, the answers of The first post which I think I'll post tommorow or the day after), lest I end up flunking my exams or something (gotta start mugging, or at least make myself believe tha I am). (As for the title of this post I noticed that it's just been 13 questions on this blog + there's going to be a hiatus in between). Some fairly easy ones this time, [Note: A hint for Q4 of The First Course, guvax Pneebyy, seeing as no one has cracked it yet]. On to today's Quiz:

  • Q1: Described as "a kind of Lost World", where archaic animals, elsewhere long extinct, had evolved into giant and dwarf forms, the island had dwarf elephants and giant monitor lizards akin to the Komodo dragon, as well as X, which can be considered a species of diminutive human. The discoverers called members of this species "Y", after Z's race of roughly the same height. In the island's mythology there were common references to Ebu Gogo, a small furry man, even into modern times. What am I talking about?

    A pic of the X:


  • Q2: A very easy one, ``If this is going to be your attitude we will close all the courts and you do whatever you want. You do your duty, then we will do our duty." Who said it and why?

  • Q3: A fairly simple one. What is common to the following words/phrases: tea, Paper tiger, lose face, ketchup, silk? [Obviously this is a non-exhaustive list]


[4] This quiz brought to you Samizdat

It seems that I have automatically fallen into a three questions a day kind of format. I'm wondering if I should switch to a proper 10 questions a week kind of format or not, but I somehow like it the way it is (it reminds me of a kabalistic English teacher I had in school once, who told us that the line ``And he stoppeth one of three'' was significant because Three is a very mystical number with occult properties), anyway: Another day, another Quiz . . .

  • Q1: X is an interjection, used commonly in α,β,γ . . . (the Greek letters are names of countries)It can be used to call someone's attention or as an expression of surprise, and also be used to mean friend, when used in a vocative sense. It loosely corresponds to the English "eh!", "hey!", or "wow!". It basically lends a degree of informality and familiarity to a coversation (similar to the English "pal", or "dude"). There is a soccer team known as The X. However, the way most of us know of the word X is in an altogether different context. Since I've left it a bit vague I'll give two hints,
    [Hint 1: Guvax Crefbanyvgl]
    [Hint 2: orjjey Orgesbay oatré avé aughtšaj oariçté lustratingiway aþay oosyaj offé aþay urdwé X invé eçiphikspé atinlej Amerykanvé auntextəké]


  • Q2: I am considered a god by the Z religion. I have a son named Adam. Who am I? . . . Ok, before you say יהוה or Adonai or something, let me say that Z is not Jewism or any other Semitic religion. So, lets give a few more clues: Born to a Russian father and Jewish mother, my native languages were Russian and Yiddish, but I also spoke Polish and German fluently. Later I learnt French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and English, and also had an interest in Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian. For two years I tried to raise funds to publish a book on a my creation. Finally in 1887, with my future father-in-law's financial help I published the book under the psedonym: Doctoro Y. Among my many works I also translated the Old Testament. My second daughter who was also interested in my work, later joined the Bahá'í Faith. Mainly because the Bahá'í Faith believes that representatives of all the world's countries must select X(this is a phrase, not a single word).

    Still clueless? Here's a fotograf to help you:



  • Q3: This one's going to be really arbit, because the book from which I'm taking this is not with me right now. I couldn't find this anecdote on the net. I apologise in advance for the lack of hard facts and dates. Anyway, here goes: It is remarkable that in spite of his great and varied contributions to Physics this famous physicist is hardly known outside the community. This is probably because, he was by nature, an extremely shy and reclusive person. In fact his abhorrence of human contact was so great that in college he even switched his schedule, staying awake at night and sleeping in the day to avoid interacting with other students. As a result he didn't attend most of his classes anyway. However this was more than made up for by his genius, and he did pretty well acaedemically. However he did fail a certain chemistry course once when in the exam he was presented with such vague questions as:
    Prove that dε = dη + dμ

    And these were not common symbols used in the subject either. This was the instructers way of making sure that students who didn't attend his classes flunked the course. Interestingly, a few years(? not sure about the time period maybe less) the young man gave a lecture in the institute and he was so good that the whole auditorium was full, and in order to accommodate all the people who wanted to attend the lecture, a second date had to be announced when the lecture would be give again. When the chemistry Prof. asked a colleague who this extremely popular speaker was, the gentleman replied ``You should know, being the only one to flunk him''(obviously I'm not quoting verbatim, but something similar). Who is the famous young man? [Yikes! that was so vague that I feel like Parnab]


Ta',
Shanth

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

[3] Curiouser and Curiouser

The third set, in this series of quizzes: (OT: By the way I just found out that one of Blogger's nifty services is that it automatically publishes an RSS feed at http://exquizite-quizine.blogspot.com/atom.xml, so you can subscribe for updates easily.



  • Q1: On 26 June 1963 in West Berlin, he made a speech containing the sentence:
    ``Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was `civis Romanus sum'. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' . . . as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' ''
    Who said this?


  • Q2: A fairly easy one: This movie was based partially on parts of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and derives it's name from the the same source. However the filmmaker probably didn't realise how scathing a satirist Swift could be and the fact that he(Swift) meant
    this tale to be alegoric of certain contemporary happenings. As a result the movie's name had to be slightly modified slightly(they actually replaced the movie with just it's tagline) before release in some countries, viz. France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. What is the funda?


  • Q3: A visual. How many(Edit.) which of these languages can you identify in this chevron ad?



That's all for now folks,
Shanth

Monday, August 29, 2005

[2] An in-between Snack

I haven't decided on a schedule for updating this site or a timeframe for posting answers. I think I'll adopt a wait and watch stance for now. I've tentatively decided to let the answers lag behind the Questions by around a week. A short quick post for today:


  • Q1: Who Said this and in what context?
    We were listening to somebody lecturing on map-reading, or camp-hygeine, or the art of sticking a fellow through without (in defiance of Kipling) bothering who God sent the bill to; rather we were trying to avoid listening, though the Guards' English, and voice, is penetrating. The man next to me said suddenly in a dreamy voice: 'Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!'


  • Q2: These people are a traditionally nomadic people who originated in northern India. Most of them speak some form of a language closely related to Punjabi and Pothohari spoken in northern India and Pakistan, but they usually speak the dominant language of a region they live in as well.
    Because of their nomadic lifestyle and unwillingness to be integrated, there has always been a great deal of mutual distrust between them and their more settled neighbours. They were, and frequently still are, popularly believed to be beggars, thieves and kidnappers, unfit for sedentary labour, resulting in a great deal of persecution. This belief is often cited as the etymological source of the English term ___, meaning "cheat", as in "I got ___ed by a con man." However, this etymology is difficult to verify; the Oxford English Dictionary lists this as simply a possible derivation. What is the term and whom am I talking about?


  • Q3 This group of people were buried in the _____ temple, as per their request, near their master's tomb. The forty-seventh of their group was pardoned because of his young age, and lived till the ripe age of 78, following which he too was buried with his comrades. Their clothes and weapons are still preserved in the temple, along with their whistle & drum. The man who had insulted the leader of this group earlier, realising his mistake begged for forgiveness at their grave and then overcome by guilt, committed suicide. He too is buried along with them. Whom am I talking about and what did they do. I apologise in advance for this extremely obscure/arbit question, but I really like the story and am sure, dear reader, so will you, once you find out. Besides, how else can I live up to this blog's claim of being the weirdest Quizzing blog around??




Spread the word,
Happy Quizzing.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

[1] The First Course

Thus begins the first Quiz on this site:

  • Q1: This 16th Century gentleman coined the term Zenzizenzizenzic to denote the eighth power of a number. That is, the Zenzizenzizenzic of three is 6561. In the picture shown below, is a page from a document of his.

    What is the significance of this page?


  • Q2: Now for a really arbit question. A visual Connect:
    What gives? [Plagiarised from here ]

  • Q3: X is widely believed to have said "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." However, this quote is most probably just a legend, and the first place it was mentioned was in the film Y. What are X and Y and what is the quote about?

  • Q4: An interesting albeit arbit visual connect:







I guess that's it for now, a bonus question: What's the funda behind the title of this blog?

Happy Quizzing,
Shanth