Prelims - The Literature Quiz - Quark 2017 at BITS Goa

The Literature Quiz

Carpe Dictum, Quark 2017

Ze Prelim

Author and Emcee

Lucky Kaul

February 4, 2017

ThanksThe Literary and Debating Club – BITS Goa, for asking me to do this in 8 days :P

BITS Goa Quiz Club, for thinking that I have at least an iota of capacity to ensure that this is a quiz where All’s Well that End’s Well

For guinea pigging :

Shubhankar Bahl and Varun Rustagi from Delhi (and for help with wording a few questions)

And…

Harman Singh from Bangalore, for contributing to a major part of the finals.

Literature Quiz – Carpe Dictum Lucky Kaul February 4, 2017

The DealPrelims – 20 Questions, worth 25 points.

Questions 1-15 are 1 point questions , Questions 16-20 are 2 point questions.

Q16-20 are stars and will be resolved for ties. Full star only if all parts right.

With questions having more than one part, the bit (say a) or b) or X,Y ) has been clearly mentioned – so you’re expected to write your answer for that part against that particular letter. If you write an answer without the mention of the part, then what you write first is taken as a) and the next as b) , and so on.

(Eg , if the answer to a) is Hyderabad and b) is Goa , but you write “Goa, Hyderabad”, no points will be given.

Unless mentioned otherwise, all blanks in all questions are indicative of length.

Spelling mistakes are fine. School written as “skul” is okay , but Lucky as “FatQ” is not.

Any incidence of repeats is purely co-incidental.


This is not a niche literature quiz. It is a quiz with questions mostly on known literary works – with its primary motive to entertain and educate.

PS - Let me know how many tomatoes I’ve to receive after the quiz. Otherwise, plis to go soft on me. 1st

time quij.

All the best!


You’ll get some right, and you won’t get some. C’est la vie.

- A random fellow contemplating about life

while listening to French Operas.


And now, the answers…*drumroll*Instructions to correctors :

Accept ONLY what is underlined in the answer slide , and nothing else.

Spelling mistakes are fine. School written as “skul” is okay , but Lucky as “FatQ” is not.

For any clarifications, get back to me.

Also plis to not tell me where to give halves or part points or what not. QM is God.


1The St. Martin’s Theatre is a West End Theatre in London, which was designed by WGR Sprague , along with its sister theatre, the Ambassador Theatre.

This pair of theatres’ claim their fame thanks to a play that started its performance / display in Ambassador Theatre from 1952 to 1974 , after which it got shifted to St. Martin’s , and still runs today. By tradition, the audience is requested not to reveal the identity of the murderer in the play as it could spoil the same for future audiences.

Which play is this , that will finish 65 years of its running in 2017?


Agatha Christie’s The MousetrapThe world’s longest continuous running play.


2X (1330-1418) was a successful French scribe and manuscript seller. After his death, he gained reputation as an alchemist who discovered the Y and thus gained immortality.

He is said to have designed his own tombstone. His will, dated 22 November 1416, indicates that he was generous but that he did not have the extraordinary wealth of later alchemical legend. There is no indication that the real X of history was involved in alchemy, pharmacy or medicine.

His reputation rests on the claims that he made the Y which turns base metals into gold and that using this he and his wife achieved immortality.

Identify X and Y, both of which came to light to youngsters in the late 20th century.

Image follows.


X – Nicolas Flamel, Y – Philosopher’s Stone


3Because one of the first figures to be created into , what we call a Marionette, was Virgin Mary, thus they are called Marionettes – which is the French for ‘Virgin Mary’.

Seeing Marionettes , however , might immediately make you connect them to a very famous book cover.

a) So, essentially, what are Marionettes?

b) On which book’s cover would you have famously seen Marionettes?


a) Puppet Strings (or string-controlled Puppets – Just puppets also is fine)b) The Godfather by Mario Puzo


4The grammar of X has two characteristics:

-> The virtual interchangeability of linguistic function (noun, verb, adverb, adjective, etc.) among the parts of speech

-> The inflectional regularity in the construction and usages of words. In all verbs, the preterite and the past participle constructions are alike, ending in –ed; hence, the preterite of steal is stealed and that of think is thinked.

Because X has no antonyms, the prefix "Un-" is used for negation; thus, the Standard-English word warm becomes "uncold" in X.

"-wise" is a X suffix used to turn another word into an adverb; for example, quickly would be speedwise. Therefore, "He ran very quickly" would become "He runned plus-speedwise."

a) These are some of the principles behind which fictional variation of English (X)?

b) Where would you have most popularly seen X?


a) Newspeak, b) 1984 by Orwell


5A July 8, 2006 article on The Times of India , describes the rant of an author (name not mentioned) against how society at times treated books by Enid Blyton. Laced with references from Blyton’s works, the author also mentions that she had done her dissertation on Blyton. An excerpt from the article includes –

“Since the 1950s, the anti-Blyton lobby has attacked her works for being racist, classist, and xenophobic, as well as for their limited vocabulary and mediocre style. Educationists feel that her books stunt readers' literary growth. Let's face it. Once upon a time, children in England were called Fanny and Dick (the names have been changed in new editions to avoid sexual innuendo),. Some of her most memorable characters are strong-willed, rebellious, young people.”

-And thus the title of the article quite appropriately was “_____ ___, Political Correctness” – her way of telling judgmental people to shoo away their ideology and keep it to themselves.

Which two words finish its title?


Clear Orf!


6Which famous valet’s name , would, in English, to some extent, sound like a wordplay on something that one “would use to go everywhere” , but could also be thought of as an idiom of a “skeleton key” in French?

(It might help if you know what a skeleton key is alternatively called).


Jean Passepartout (From Passport)Skeleton key = master key or a passkey.


7. Hear a part of the lyrics from The Police’s Don’t Stand So Close To Me, and tell me which

work is being referenced in them.


References , in brief, to the plot of Lolita


8In Greek mythology, Prometheus was the deity who was the creator of mankind and its greatest benefactor, who stole fire from Mount Olympus , created man and gave the fire to humanity. This pissed out the Gods who wanted to keep the fire to themselves. Thus, as punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock to have his liver eaten out every day by an eagle. Every night his liver would grow back and the cycle would continue.

It is said that author X borrowed parts from this myth while writing a 19th century novel – in which the central character is shown to have created life and then having repented for doing so, just like Prometheus.

a) Who is X?

b) How did Prometheus get an explicit mention in this 19th century novel? (Need a keyword or two).


Mary Shelley The complete title of Frankenstein is Frankenstein , or the Modern Prometheus

Any mention of Prometheus appearing in the name or the title of the novel will do. A mere mention of the word Frankenstein will not do.


9. Look at the following posters of a 1938 movie and identify it.

This film’s only Oscar victory was in the category of Best Adapted Screenplay. Who was awarded with the same?

Images follow.


10In November 2016, it was big news that ICSE was planning to include Harry Potter, Asterix , etc. in their syllabus so that the children can read what they’re expected to read at their age. On this, as you might have read, Shilpa Shetty went on to make this LOL remark where she said that Animal Farm can teach young kids to love and care animals (really!?)

As usual, Twitterati had a really good field day taking her on, and published a few tweets using her logic. I’ll show you two of them. Put Shetty’s logic, and, for half points each, give me the name of two books, both of which are series (blanks not indicative) : -

a) “____ ____ _____ ____ is an amazing colouring book. Children will love it.”

b) “____ ______ _______ is a great series on Karwa Chauth.”


a) Fifty Shades of Grey b) The Hunger Games


11The story goes that “______________” , a work definitely heard of, isn’t really what its meaning communicates on its first look.

Infact, a few theories conclude that the work (thought to have written in 1744) was actually a complaint against heavy taxes that were then imposed in the late 12th century AD, and also that it was about slave trade. Due to countless wars fought by England in that age, they were short of resources and thus it had to recover from financial hardship.

Apparently, King Edward I, just as today’s governments, saw the solution to these financial problems in raising the taxes – which included taxing the farmers on their production of ____ , so that it is distributed among the King’s treasury, the local village heads and the farmer himself.

Which work was thus probably written as a complaint against taxation / slavery?

(The first blank is not indicative. The last blank is one word, which is indicative.)


Baa, Baa, Black Sheep


12The Ritz-Carlton Mountain Dove Resort is an exotic resort in Alaska, USA.

Interestingly, in December 2015, some of the chefs of the resort decided to do something different there in June, and presented it in December.

To accomplish this dream of theirs, the chefs in June had pre-ordered massive quantities of ingredients including 200 pounds of ______ powder, 400lbs of honey, 50lbs of cinnamon and 10lbs of nutmeg, to make this huge piece of dough, whose result would later be shown in December. While this dream did seem amazing, once it was finished, head chef Daniel Mangionehad to check every day if anything was missing from their 19 foot creation, that they had worked so hard on, at the end of the day.

What was special about this creation (or) How would their accomplished dream fit into this quiz?


(This one is not from Alaska, but explains the funda. ‘twas done in Nov 2016)


They created a whole Gingerbread House (similar to the one in Hansel and Gretel) which catered guests!

And since toddlers loved licking their ‘edible’ walls, Mangione had to regularly check if the house was short of a few peppermints or something.

Either ‘Gingerbread House’ or ‘House in Hansel in Gretel’ will do.


13In late October 2016, Silicon Valley based startup Halo Neuroscience designed a new set of headgear to “supercharge your brain, with real electricity, to boost workouts”.

Created by a soft-spoken Stanford-trained M.D. named Daniel Chao, Halo uses a process called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)—neuroscience-speak for sending a low electric current into a targeted part of the brain and exciting the neurons, thus making them more likely to fire and create new neural pathways.

One of its reviewers , while commenting that such an experiment would cause a prickly sensation in the skull, went on to say that “I’m a little uneasy about it. I’m sitting in a windowless lab, quietly gazing at stark white walls as my head continuously absorbs the tiny electric stabbings.”, thus going on to call it the ___________________ effect. (Blank here is not indicative).

Fill in the blank , which is also the name of a book.

Image follows.


One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest


14Following slides will show a few paintings painted by Robert Smirke in 1796. Observe the paintings, each one with a different character on it, and tell me what from the world of literature do these paintings allude to?


The Seven Ages of Man"All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players.They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.Then, the whining school-boy with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like snailUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,Sighing like furnace, with a woeful balladMade to his mistress' eyebrow. Then, a soldier,Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,Seeking the bubble reputationEven in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice,In fair round belly, with a good capon lined,With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,Full of wise saws, and modern instances,And so he plays his part. The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slippered pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."


15The Lake District National Park is a National Park located in the county of Cumbria in England. Known for its breathtaking views of valleys , including a well known Ullswater, it is also well known for its fells (hills) and lakes.

In September 2016, a few fans of X in Ullswater put together a web app , which includes about 160 locations by scholars in the Lake District area that might have inspired X’s works. The county also became quite famous by X’s name in 1820, thanks to a very well known description of nature given by him – which went on to attract tourists to observe the flora in Lake District.

a) Who is X?

b) What work / well known description of nature?

Images follow.


The image on the right was X’s home.


a) William Wordsworth b) The Daffodils. His home is called the Rydal Mount


Starred Questions Begin


16On the next slide, you’ll see a painting called ____ING, the name of which refers to a well known city. The painting essentially has green coloured looking bottles having gerunds on them, paying tribute to the 4,311 gerunds used in a novel X by author Y.

The second image is an image , showing a river, and if it helps, the Loopline Bridge, which if you know about , might give you an additional clue regarding the name of the painting.

a) Name the painting.

b) Name the novel X and author Y , for half points each.

Images follow.


DublingX – Ulysses , Y – James Joyce


17X had met an Edward Thomas at the beginning of WW1 in 1914

One day, both had confronted a gamekeeper ,with the gamekeeper almost killing Thomas –something which kept him haunted and which caused him to think of going to war.

Six months after that fateful day, Thomas had still to take his fateful decision to enlist. He again thought of it, and told X, “Frankly I do not want to go,” he said of the fighting, “but hardly a day passes without my thinking I should. With no call, the problem is endless.”

The final nail in the coffin was inserted when X went on to send something to Thomas, which on reading, angered Thomas deeply. X insisted that Thomas was overreacting, and told his friend that he had failed to see that “the sigh was really just a mockery, hypocritical for the fun of the thing”.

After which Thomas indeed went to war, and got killed in 1917.

A) Who is X?

B) What exactly did X send to Thomas, that angered Thomas and put him in a situation where in he could not revoke his decision of going to warfare?


a) Robert Frost b) The Road Not Taken!

When Thomas read the final lines of the poem (Then called Two Roads)

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

He did not subscribe to models of self-determination, or the belief that the spirit could triumph over adversity; some things seemed to him ingrained, inevitable. While Frost went on to acclaim much fame after this, Thomas felt that it wasn’t really in him go back from war, and he had already made his inevitable decision – which Frost tried to refute by saying that the “sigh” was just a mockery, and not really intended – which Thomas did not really digest, went to war, and got killed in 1917.


18This company was found by a Mr. James X in 1873 as a sugar cooperage and brokerage in Billingsgate, England. Initially it had the responsibility to supply the Royal Navy with the rum for its daily "rum tot", a tradition under which all sailors were allocated a daily rum ration, which continued until 1970.

By 2000 , the company got into financial services and in 2007 it moved into the investment banking business on the NYSE, between which it made its entry into literature in 2002. Today, this company continues to answer a ‘sexist’ question thanks to its importance in the world of literature.

(As in, if I tell you of something, you might ask a sexist sounding question about it which the company in question answers for you).

a) Name the company(X)

b) Which ‘sexist’ question has this company been answering since 2002?


a) The Man Group. b) Why there is a ‘Man’ in ‘Man Booker Prize’(The Asian Literary Prize was from 2010-12 only)


19On the next picture you’ll see a book titled : __________ : What Excrement Tells Us About Evolution, Ecology, and a Sustainable Society by David-Walter Toews

The four-word name of this book is an appropriate wordplay on another five-word iconic book.

a) Name the original book.

b) Name the wordplay-ed book.

Image follows.


On the Origin of Species The Origin of Feces


20After a lengthy search for a word that a Murray Gell-Mann wanted to use to describe his discovery, he finally got one in 1964, from the following excerpt of James Joyce’s book, Finnegan’s Wake – a word that essentially meant “the cry of the gull”, but Gell-Mann used it in a completely different context. The excerpt being –

Three ______ for Muster Mark!Sure he hasn't got much of a barkAnd sure any he has it's all beside the mark.

On a totally unrelated note, just two years back, a Thomas Kuhn, who was from the same generic field as Gell-Mann, presented his influential book in 1962, where in he uses something called a duck-rabbit optical illusion to demonstrate the way in which a ________ _____ could cause one to see the information in an entirely different way.

a) What word did Murray Gell-Mann find in Finnegan’s Wake?

b) What was Kuhn trying to explain through the duck-rabbit optical illusion? (Fill in the Blanks).

Image follows.


Final follows….


Prelims - The Literature Quiz - Quark 2017 at BITS Goa

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