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.

Friday, September 02, 2005

(1) The First Unveiling

*drumroll* . . . Tada! The answers to the first Quiz:
  • Q1: Rare Hand Axe, got this one right, it is the first documented use of the '=' sign. In his book the The Whetstone of Witte (1557) he says ``to avoid the tediouse repetition of these woordes: is equalle to : I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a pair of paralleles, or Gemowe [ie twin] lines of one lengthe, thus: =, bicause noe 2 thynges, can be maore equalle.''. Apparently there's a memorial in honour of this at the St Mary’s Church in Tenby, Wales.

  • Q2: In spite of an interesting attempt by Rare Hand Axe, the answer is that it's actually the depiction of Penny Lane* as described in a Beatles' song of the same name:
    In penny lane there is a barber showing photographs
    Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know.
    And all the people that come and go
    Stop and say hello.
    .
    .
    .

  • Q3: X is by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the man in charge of the Pearl Harbour attack, and the quote is from Tora! Tora! Tora!(Y). George got kinda close with his guess about the Emperor of Japan. Check out wikipedia for more.

  • Q4: Now for my preciouss I was hoping somebody would get it at least partially. The link is: Snark. The first is an illustration from Lewis Carrol's The Hunting of the Snark, the second is a set of what are called snarks(of Four-Colour Theorem fame), in graph theory, they're basically graphs with three edges per vertex which need at least 4 colours to colour all the edges so that no two intersecting edges have the same colour(they are called so, because of their elusivity a la, Carrol's mysterious creature), the third is the SM-62 Snark, which was a specialised intercontinental missile with a nuclear warhead briefly operated by the US Strategic Air Command from 1958 until 1961. And finally the last one is of course the Websnark.
As for the bonus question, It's a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When Arthur is asked by the Bridge-keeper about the airspeed velocity of a swallow, he retorts by asking African or European?, a question which the bridge-keeper doesn't know the answer to, leading to his swift demise. It's something I've always wanted to do that to QMs,who don't know what they're talking about, I hope nobody does it to any of my questions here.

With you, may the force be,
Shanth
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2 Comments:

Blogger Rare Hand Axe said...

Heheh. I see that you've got your first blogspam. Great first set though :)

17:36  
Blogger Shanth said...

Hoho, not the first instance of blogspam, but the first one that I haven't deleted. What can I say, it's kinda flattering and appeases my ego. :) When is your next set coming up?

04:57  

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