Instincts '18 SpEnt Prelims

Instincts ‘18 SpEnt Quiz
prelims
Brought to you by: Q Factorial – The SSN Quiz Club

Rules
• 24 questions, written prelims
• No negatives, feel free to guess
• Part points wherever applicable
• Googling, copying, bit adichchufying, etc. are prohibited
• Top 6 – 8 teams qualify to the finals
• Please write down a contact number on your answer sheet so that we
can call you and let you know if you qualify for the finals

Question 1
• Chris Van Allsburg, who wrote X as a fantasy picture book for children,
was unhappy with the original draft of X’s film adaptation. In an
interview after the release of the film, he said, "The premise of the
book, which is of value to the film story as well, is that there's anarchy
and chaos and something uncontrollable in an environment that we
typically associate with control. It's the surreal contrast of two things
that don’t go together: a large and carefully tended ____, and the
utter chaos that shudders through it".
• What is X?

Question 2
• 'X-ism' is a religion or lifestyle inspired by X, the protagonist of the film Y; its primary
objective is stated to be the promotion of a modern form of Chinese Taoism, blended
with concepts of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. It views individuals such as Laozi,
Epicurus, Heraclitus, Buddha, and the pre-ecclesiastical Jesus Christ as examples of
"Great Xs in History", with modern antecedents including Walt Whitman and Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
• X-ism advocates and encourages the practice of "going with the flow", "being cool
headed", and "taking it easy" in the face of life's difficulties, believing that this is the only
way to live in harmony with our inner nature and the challenges of interacting with other
people. It also aims to assuage feelings of inadequacy that arise in societies which place a
heavy emphasis on achievement and personal fortune.
• Consequently, simple everyday pleasures like bathing, bowling, and hanging out with
friends are seen as far preferable to the accumulation of wealth and the spending of
money as a means to achieve happiness and spiritual fulfilment.
• ID X and Y.

Answer 2
X – Dudeism
Y – The Big Lebowski

Question 3
St. Moritz is a high alpine resort in
the Engadine in Switzerland, at
almost 1800 metres above sea
level. Why was it in the news
recently?

Question 4
Seen in the picture is the Gill-man from the
1954 film 'The Creature from the Black
Lagoon'. It was stated as the inspiration for a
character from a 2017 film. What
character/film?

(*) Question 5
• The name of this team grew out of a conversation between the
founder Walter Brown and Howie McHugh, a member of the publicity
staff of the local arena, which was primarily used for hockey. Both
men suggested several nicknames, including Whirlwinds, Unicorns
and Olympics.
• But it was Brown who suddenly exclaimed, "Wait, I've got it - the Y.
We'll call them the XY!" Brown excitedly went on, "The name has a
great basketball tradition from the old Original X in New York. And, X
is full of Irishmen. We'll put them in green uniforms and call them the
XY!"

Question 6
• In an attempt to bring a television show like X to India, the Times
Network launched "The Vault", with the tagline "Your idea is the key".
The show featured certain affluent individuals called the "vault
keepers“ acting as authority figures to assess the candidates to
applied.
• While a majority of candidates were either graduates or
postgraduates, college dropouts constituted a sizable 20% of the
audience.
• Identify the original show X.

Question 7
• In Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, the character Doc praises the titular
character’s skill behind the wheel in the following manner:
“He’s been boosting cars since he was old enough to see over the dash.
He stole my Mercedes, had a lot of merch in it. I watched him do it too.
I didn’t stop him though because I was just blinded by the balls on that
kid.”
• Why does this excerpt become so comical when viewed in the light of
a scandal that emerged late last year?

Answer 7
Doc was played by Kevin Spacey :P

Question 8
• In 1815, Humphry Davy invented a lamp to be used in coal mines. It
had a mesh screen enclosing a wick lamp to reduce the danger of
explosions due to the presence of methane and other flammable
gases. Outside which stadium would you see one of these lamps,
there as a tribute to the coal mining industry that brought prosperity
to the city?
• <image on next slide>

Answer 8
• Sunderland’s Stadium of Light

Question 9
• In a recent Sheffield Shield match between Victoria and New South
Wales, Will Pucovski was substituted out with a concussion after he
was hit on the head while ducking into a bouncer from X. This
incident marked the second time that Pucovski suffered such an
injury while batting; thanks to the newly introduced concussion
substitute rule, however, he could be replaced by another batsman
this time.
• Name the bowler X.

(*) Question 10
• X was an American artist, politician and businessman remembered for
promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the Bailey Circus.
Although X was also an author, publisher, philanthropist, and for
some time a politician, he said of himself, "I am a ______ by
profession... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me".
• X later collaborated with Ringling Bros., which then purchased the “X
and Bailey circus” brand following Bailey’s death in 1906.
• X’s life story was captured by the musical drama Y, which was released
a few months ago. ID X and Y.

• X – P. T. Barnum
• Y – The Greatest Showman

Question 11
• "Hey, Jimmy Kimmel, what’s in your wallet? Wait, where is my wallet?"
• "Congrats to Shape of Water. Maybe I should date a fish ..."
• "Can't wait to work with Lena Dunham. Wait, did I sign a nudity waiver?”
• These were some of the explanations posted by X on Instagram a few
days back in response to a short clip that went viral on the Internet
last week. Who is X?

Question 12
• The stringent anti-betting rules for football that were introduced in
2014 covers everyone involved in the game, from the players on the
pitch to the managers, match officials, substitutes, and coaching staff
on the bench.
• Under these rules, Wayne Shaw, the reserve goalkeeper of a fifth-tier
English team named Sutton United, was found guilty of indulging in
betting during a landmark FA Cup tie with Arsenal and forced to
resign.
• So what exactly did Shaw do?

• Shaw became something of an internet sensation when he was
pictured eating a pie in the 83rd minute of the game on Monday
evening which was shown live on television. However before the tie a
bookmaker had offered odds of 8-1 that Shaw would eat a pie on
camera during the match and adverts were carried in a newspaper
sponsoring non-league Sutton.

Question 13
• The Sundara kanda of the Ramayana is primarily an account of
Hanuman's adventures in Lanka as Rama's emissary. One iconic
incident in this kanda is Hanuman's encounter with Ravana at the
latter's court.
• In response to the indignity of not being offered a seat by Ravana,
who mocks Hanuman and asks him to sit on his tail, Hanuman
elongates his tail to create a giant seat that places him above even
Ravana. <image on next slide>
• Which famous scene from Tamil cinema did this episode inspire?

Question 14
• Mateja Kezman is a former Serbian footballer who excelled as a striker at
PSV Eindhoven, scoring 105 goals in 4 seasons for the Dutch club. He
gained the nickname "Batman" in his debut season with PSV as the famous
Batman theme song was played at the Phlips Stadion every time he scored,
and his successful partnership with Y at PSV led to the duo being
christened "Batman and Y".
• Kezman and Y both moved to Chelsea in 2004, but their careers then went
in opposite directions. While Y went from strength to strength and is now
regarded as one of the greatest wingers of his generation, Kezman failed to
live up to expectations after failed spells with Chelsea, Atheltico Madrid,
and Paris Saint-Germain and retired in 2012.
• ID the footballer Y.

(*)Question 15
• Pierre Bourne is an up-and-coming rap producer known for his work
with the rapper Playboi Carti, whose hit single Magnolia featured
Bourne's producer tag. The tag itself is derived from an episode of
The Jamie Foxx Show where Foxx is waiting on a blind man at the
hotel and calls out for a fake French chef to come and talk to the man.
• In late January 2018, the producer tag was at the center of an
accidentally leaked video; the owners of the video deleted it after
sometime but admitted their gaffe by re-uploading the same video a
few days later.
• What is Bourne’s producer tag (or) in what avatar did we see the tag
in January?

Answer 15
“Yo Pierre, you wanna come out here?”
#COYG

Question 16
• In an official statement released in January 2018, the cricket board of
X introduced some changes to a competition after a public outcry
over crowd safety. Two key points from the statement were:
1. Dedicated Y zones will be created at all venues, and only those contestants
situated in the Y zones would qualify for the prize.
2. Any unruly behaviour that risks injury to self or others, such as diving, will
disqualify contestants in the event of a successful Y.
• What is the competition being talked about, or give me X and Y.

Question 17
• Courage Under Fire (Gulf War 1 helicopter rescue): $300k
• Saving Private Ryan (WW2 Europe search party): $100k
• Titan AE (Earth evacuation spaceship): $200B
• Syriana (Middle East private security return flight): $50k
• Green Zone (US Army transport from Middle East): $50k
• Elysium (Space station security deployment and damages): $100m
• Interstellar (Interstellar spaceship): $500B
• The Martian (Mars mission): $200B
This is a list compiled by Kynan Eng, a Zurich-based researcher, about
the cumulative cost of something. Put funda.

• Fictional costs spent to save Matt Damon in his movies :p

Question 18
• Pat Venditte is an American baseball pitcher who debuted for the
Oakland Atheltics in the MLB in 2015. He is known for being the only
active professional pitcher who is capable of -------- ---- ---- -----, with
one newspaper hilariously labelling him an “amphibious pitcher” by
mistake. Venditte’s rare ability even forced the MLB to create a
separate rule for other pitchers of his ilk, called the “Pat Venditte
Rule”.
• What is Venditte’s unique ability?

Question 19
• These are some tweets about a recent event:
• @thetanmay : “These Manyavar ads are getting a little too unrealistic #X”
• @wiseindianuncle : “#X is for Manyavar what Demonetization was for PayTm”
• @rameshsrivats: “By the way, why is _(phrase)_ being called #X and not
#Korma?”
• What event, or just give me the hashtag #X.

(*) Question 20
• In 1972, Salvatore Naturale and John Wotjtowicz met at a bar in lower
Manhattan, where Wojtowicz claimed tohave met an executive from a
branch of the Chase Manhattan bank, who had suggested that the banks
could easily be robbed.
• On August 22nd, Naturale and Wojtowic entered the Chase Manhattan
bank in Brooklyn, holding employees hostage for 14 hours, before police
forces shot Naturale to death and captured Wojtowicz. During the
interrogation, Wojtowic revealed that their plans to rob the bank were
inspired by the movie X, which they had both seen at the theatre that
morning.
• This robbery was later dramatized in the 1975 movie 'Dog Day Afternoon',
starring Al Pacino and John Cazale.
• ID X

• The Godfather (Al Pacino and Cazale starred in it, them being casted is
a tribute to this fact)

Question 21
ID X and Y
• While it's not common to find the first citation in a paper to be from
knowyourmeme.com, the introduction of a 2014 paper titled "Going
deeper with convolutions" by Szegedy et. al, reads :
“… In this paper, we will focus on an efficient deep neural network architecture
for computer vision codenamed X, which derives its name from the Network in
network paper by Lin et al [12] in conjunction with the famous Y internet meme
[1]. In our case, the word “deep” is used in two different meanings: first of all, in
the sense that we introduce a new level of organization in the form of the “X
module” and also in the more direct sense of increased network depth.”
References – “[1] Know your meme: Y (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/Y)”

• X-Inception
• Y-We need to go deeper.

Question 22
• "Weight Loss" is the collective name for episodes 1 and 2 of the 5th
season of The Office. The episode is about different branches of
Dunder Mifflin competing to lose weight, where the winning branch
would win a 5-day vacation.
• At the end of the episode, despite losing the competition, Stanley (a
black American who lost the most weight at Scranton) says "I don't
know about anyone else. But it was a good summer for me. I lost
seven pounds. And you know what? I'm just gonna take five days off
anyway." and raises his fist in the air as mark of victory.
• What is this a reference to?

• Black Power salute in Olympics.

Question 23
1. ”The time of our lives” - Il Divo
2. “Waka Waka” - Shakira
3. X - Pitbull
4. Y – Jason Derulo
Give me X and Y in this list of the last 4 FIFA World Cup anthems.

• X - Colors Y- Jason Derulo. These are the last four Official Fifa World
Cup songs.

(*) Question 24
• What is the unique distinction held by this exhaustive list of Australia-
England Test series?
1. 1876-77
2. 1878-79
3. 1880
4. 1881-82
5. 1882
6. 1945
7. 1976-77
8. 1979-80
9. 1980
10. 1987-88

• Only non-Ashes Tests between England and Australia

Instincts '18 SpEnt Prelims

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