The IIMA General Quiz Finals

The IIMA General
Quiz
Shobhit Shubhankar

Term I
arbit adjective
short for arbitrary,
meaning nothing in particular and everything in general
Infinite Bounce + Infinite Pounce
+10/-5

1
The phrase originally appeared in French as je pense, donc je suis in the
philosophical treatise Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience
than Latin would have allowed. It appeared in Latin in the later work Principles of
Philosophy. As the author explained, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we
doubt....”
The proposition has become a fundamental element of Western philosophy,
purporting to form a secure foundation for knowledge in the face of radical
doubt. The very act of doubting one's own existence serves—at minimum—as
proof of the reality of one's own mind.
Which phrase?

2
Distressed by the needless deaths of thousands of soldiers from illnesses acquired
in hospitals, a certain ‘ministering angel’ began a campaign for reform, and in order
to communicate facts more powerfully, turned to medical statistics and graphs.
Many of these graphs are drawn in a flower-like shape, and are now described as
coxcombs.
Each month is represented as a twelfth of a circle. Months with more deaths are
shown with longer wedges, so that the area of each wedge represents the number
of deaths in that month from wounds, disease or other causes. These graphs not
only dramatized the extent of needless deaths among soldiers, these were also
used to persuade the government and the medical community that deaths were
preventable if sanitation reforms were implemented in military and civilian
hospitals.
Who?

3
It is said that the instrument was used by ______, after whom it is named, in his
devotions to the Hindu God Shiva. After his defeat, it was brought to north India by
the winning army.
In Rajasthan and Gujarat, it was the first musical instrument to be learned by royal
princes. It is sometimes claimed that Arab traders brought it from India to the Near
East, where it provided the basic model for the Arab rebab, and other early
ancestors of the violin family.
Which instrument?

4
Charles Joseph Minard was a French civil engineer recognized for his significant
contribution in the field of information graphics in civil engineering and statistics.
He is best known for his cartographic depiction of numerical data from a certain
military campaign.
A thick band illustrates the size of the army at specific geographic points during
their advance and retreat. It displays six types of data in two dimensions: the
number of troops; the distance traveled; temperature; latitude and longitude;
direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates.
Which campaign?

A
Napoleon's Russian Campaign 1812-13

5
After committing the act, he remained at the scene, appearing to be reading The
Catcher in the Rye, until the police arrived. In his statement to police three hours
later, he stated, "I’m sure the big part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main
person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil.”
Who? What did he do?

A
Mark David Chapman
Shot dead John Lennon

6
The selection of content was carried out by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan.
Anne Druyan, award-winning American writer and producer, was the Creative
Director of the project. Sagan and his associates assembled 116 images and a
variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals.
To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken
greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages, and printed messages from U.S.
president Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
Which project?

7
Harry Beck was an English technical draughtsman whose pioneering contribution to
map design has inspired generations of contemporary artists and designers. While
drawing an electrical circuit diagram, Beck came up with a new idea for a map that
was based upon the concept of an electrical schematic, rather than a geographic
map, such that locations were more-or-less equally spaced, stripping the network
down to a neat diagram of colored, crisscrossing lines. The result was a sparse,
circuit board-like design that eschewed geographic accuracy for legibility.
Beck first submitted his idea to a certain organization in 1931. Management was
initially skeptical of the radical proposal, but tentatively introduced it to the public
in 1933. It was immediately popular, and the style has been used ever since. It has
also been widely emulated the world over.
What did he design?

8
Several hypotheses have been put forward about the meaning of the highly original
composition, many of them taking the painter's well-documented expertise in
human anatomy as their starting point.
It has been noted that the background figures and shapes portrayed behind the
figure of God appear to be an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain. On
close examination, borders in the painting correlate with major sulci of
the cerebrum in the inner and outer surface of the brain, the brain stem,
the frontal lobe, the basilar artery, the pituitary gland and the optic chiasm.
Alternatively, it has been claimed that the red cloth around God has the shape of a
post-partum human uterus and that the scarf hanging out, colored green, could be
a newly cut umbilical cord. It is argued that the scene is an idealized representation
of the physical birth of man.
Which painting?

9
It is a medieval Latin poem written early in the 13th century, part of the collection
known as the Carmina Burana. It is essentially a complaint against inexorable fate
that rules both gods and men.
It was set to music by German composer Carl Orff, and first stage in 1937. A
performance takes a little over two and a half minutes. Orff's setting of the poem
has become immensely popular, and has been performed by countless classical
music ensembles and popular artists. It can be heard in numerous movies and
television commercials and has become a staple in popular culture, setting the
mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations.
Which piece?

10
While its construction commenced in 1882, Antonio Gaudi became involved only in
1883. Taking over the project, Gaudí transformed it with his architectural and
engineering style, combining Gothic and Art Nouveau forms. He devoted his last
years to the project, and at the time of his death in 1926, less than a quarter of the
project was complete. It is projected to be completed in 2026, the centenary year
of Gaudi’s death. On the subject of the extremely long construction period, Gaudí is
said to have remarked: "My client is not in a hurry.”
Which World Heritage monument?

11
This principle, named after a literary classic for its immortal opening line, was
popularized by Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond uses it
to illustrate why so few wild animals have been successfully domesticated
throughout history, as a deficiency in any one of a great number of factors can
render a species undomesticable.
Therefore all successfully domesticated species are not so because of a particular
positive trait, but because of a lack of any number of possible negative traits.
Which principle?

A
The Anna Karenina Principle
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

12
This 1961 artwork by Italian artist Piero Manzoni consists of 90 tin cans, each filled
with 30 grams of feces, and measuring 4.8 by 6.5 centimeters, with a label in
Italian, English, French, and German stating:
Contents 30 gr net
Freshly preserved
Produced and tinned
in May 1961
What is the artwork called?

13
The War Against Nature and At War with Nature were considered as possible titles,
but the author eventually settled on a title inspired by these lines by Keats: “The
sedge is withered from the lake, / And no birds sing.”
Which book?

A
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

14
It is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal that roams over most of the
southern two-thirds of the African continent, feeding on ants and termite. Unlike
other insectivores, it has a long pig-like snout, which is used to sniff out food. The
name comes from early Afrikaans and means “earth-pig”.
While the name might hold certain lexicographical significance, it was lent more
recently to the latest release of an operating system software. What is this mammal
called?

15
At the time, Joseph Haydn's patron Prince Nikolaus Esterházy was resident,
together with all his musicians and retinue, at his favorite summer palace in rural
Hungary. The stay there had been longer than expected, and most of the musicians
had been forced to leave their wives back at home. Longing to return, the
musicians appealed to Haydn for help. The diplomatic Haydn, instead of making a
direct appeal, put his request into the music of a composition now also known as
the "Farewell" Symphony.
The last movement begins as a characteristic Haydn finale in fast tempo. What
follows is highly unusual. The order is as follows: first oboe and second horn,
bassoon, second oboe and first horn, double bass, cello, orchestral violins, and
finally viola. The ending is a kind of deliberate anticlimax. Esterházy seems to have
understood the message: the court returned the day following the performance.
What happens?

A
The musicians started getting up and leaving

16
Although Shah Jahan’s favored heir, he was defeated in the battle of Samugarh by
his younger brother Aurangzeb, and murdered shortly thereafter. The battle of
Samugarh is often seen as a tipping point in the history of the Mughal empire.
Writing about the conflict, historian Abraham Eraly says, “India was at a crossroads
in the mid-seventeenth century; it had the potential of moving forward with ____
______, or of turning back to medievalism with Aurangzeb.”
Mohsin Hamid’s novel Moth Smoke concludes with these words: "It is perhaps
between hope and memory, in the atomized, atomic lands once Aurangzeb's
empire, that our poets tell us ____ ______, the apostate, called out to God as he
died.”
Who?

17
From Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything:
“Leeuwenhoek was close friends with another Delft notable, the artist ___
_______. In the mid-1660s, _______, who previously had been a competent but not
outstanding artist, suddenly developed the mastery of light and perspective for
which he has been celebrated ever since. Though it has never been proved, it has
long been suspected that he used a camera obscura, a device for projecting images
onto a flat surface through a lens. No such device was listed among _______’s
personal effects after his death, but it happens that the executor of _______’s
estate was none other than Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the most secretive lens-
maker of his day.”
Who?

18
The best-known English pangram is perhaps "The quick brown fox jumps over the
lazy dog”.
It has been used since at least the late 19th century, was utilized by Western
Union to test data communication equipment for accuracy and reliability, and is
now used by a number of computer programs to display computer fonts.
What is a pangram?

A
A sentence containing all the letters of the alphabet

19
In the scorebook of the epic eight-day Melbourne Test of 1928-29, won by Australia
by five wickets, there is a "problem" boundary in the final stages. There are four
runs, attributed to Jack Ryder, that are in the wrong place in both the batting
section of the score and in the bowling section. There is no doubt that a recording
error of some kind has occurred. So where do these runs belong? Perhaps Ryder
scored them at some other point of the innings, perhaps they weren't scored at
all.
What alternative explanation might also hold, and why would it be considered
important?

A
Don Bradman, batting at the other end, could have hit those 4 runs,
thus ending with a batting average of 100.

20
On the obverse is Archimedes and a quote attributed to him which translates into
English as “Rise above oneself and grasp the world”. In the background, there is the
representation of Archimedes' tomb, with the carving illustrating his theorem On
the Sphere and Cylinder, behind a branch.
Where would you find this?

21
Certain species of trees in the genus Pisonia grow on remote islands all across the
Indian and Pacific oceans. Their trick for dispersal is to grow sticky seeds, armed
with tiny barbs, that stick to the feathers of seabirds which inadvertently spread
them as they move between islands. Too many seeds however can weigh the birds
down and prevent them from flying. These birds starve to death on the ground, if
crabs or other predators do not get them first.
What evocative nickname have these trees gained as a result?

22
The story of each film in the trilogy is loosely based on one of the three political
ideals in the motto of the French Republic: liberty, equality, fraternity. The
illustration of these principles is, however, often ambiguous and ironic. As the
director noted in an interview with an Oxford University student newspaper, “If the
money had been of a different nationality we would have titled the films
differently, or they might have had a different cultural connotation. But the films
would probably have been the same.” The trilogy is often interpreted as being
composed of an anti-tragedy, an anti-comedy, and an anti-romance.
Which trilogy?

A
The Three Colors Trilogy, the colors being those of the French flag.

23
The term comes the Sanskrit root for “forest”, and the name of a people in central
India. It was first used with regard to sedimentary rocks found in the region. Fossils
found in these rocks eventually formed the basis for a major hypothesis by Austrian
geologist Dr. Eduard Seuss, establishing this term in modern scientific theory.
What term is this?

24
Perhaps the first celebrity footballer, when once asked what was the nearest to
kick-off that he had made love to a woman, he replied, “Er- I think it was half-time
actually”.
Who?

Term II
Day Zero noun
the day of reckoning for the best; genesis for some, armageddon for many
List down the names of all the paintings and their
painters referenced in the video.
+2

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1485-87)

Caravaggio, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (1608)

Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656)

Hans Holbein, Portrait of Henry VIII, 1534-36

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with A Pearl Earring (c. 1665)

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat (1793)

Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819)

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)

Vincent Van Gogh, Sunflower series (c. 1880s)

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1907-08)

Joseph Chagall, La Mariée (1950)

Rene Magritte. The Son of Man (1964)

Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam (1511)

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930)

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Dora Maar Seated

Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (1967)

School of Fontainebleau, Gabrielle d'Estrees and Her Sister (1594)

Giovanni Cimabue, Madonna and Child with Angels, 1285-86

Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926)

Term III
RG verb
I know what it means, but why should I tell you?
For each pair of questions, you can either bid low OR bid
high.
+5 & +5
OR +10/-5 & +20/-10

1.1
While the use of the term as a metaphor for strict separation goes back at least as
far as the early 19th century, Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address made it enter
the popular imagination in its best known context:
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ”____ _______" has
descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient
states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest,
Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around
them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or
another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing
measure of control from Moscow.”
Which term?

1.2
It was the Cold War political demarcation between the Communist states of East
Asia, particularly the People's Republic of China, and the capitalist and non-
Communist states of the region. Improved relations between China and the United
States during the later years of the Cold War rendered the term more or less
obsolete, except when it referred to the Korean Peninsula and the divide between
allies of the US and allies of the USSR in Southeast Asia.
Which term?

2.1
This area derives its name from Rao Simha or “royal lion”, the title given to jagirdar
Kalda Rao whose estate included Delhi and its surrounding areas in the 18th
century. While large sections have been subsumed into surrounding parts and
subsequently renamed, an elevated portion of land in the area continues to carry
the original name.
Which area?

2.2
Earlier known as Mons Saturnius, this place in ancient Rome received its more
famous name when the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus was built here in 509
BC.
While serving in 1793 as President George Washington's Secretary of State, Thomas
Jefferson named a certain tract of land, earlier identified as “New Troy”, after this
place.
What was the name given by Jefferson?

3.1
Its etymology remains uncertain. According to one version, when the rail links
started on the Indian subcontinent, people from eastern Bengal began importing
them by the railways from the west. Since the smell was overpowering, its
transportation was consigned to the mail train. This association with the mail train
eventually led to the present name.
What?

3.2
Early in his career, he broke Dennis Lillee's world record for the fastest 50 wickets
in ODIs, achieving the feat in only 23 matches. He held the record from 1998 until
2009, when Ajantha Mendis broke it. He continues to hold the Indian record for
scoring the fastest 50 in ODI. Amidst his more dubious distinctions however, is a
record of scoring ducks in seven consecutive innings.
Who?

A
Bombay Duck
Ajit Agarkar, who is nicknamed Bombay Duck

4.1
During Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, all signs of regional nationalism were
forcefully suppressed. The people of Catalonia were prohibited from speaking the
Catalan language, and banned from celebrating local festivals. The Catalan flag too
was banned.
As other aspects of their culture were suppressed, this club came to symbolize the
Catalan people's desire for freedom, coming to be known as Més que un club, or
“More than a club”. The best way for the Catalans to demonstrate their identity was
by joining the club and their stadium became one of the few places where people
could express their dissatisfaction. While it was less risky than joining a clandestine
anti-Franco movement, it still allowed them to express dissidence.
Which club?

4.2
The late Spanish broadcaster Andrés Montes is generally credited with coining and
popularizing the phrase during his television commentary for the 2006 Football
World Cup. Montes used the phrase to describe precise, elegant passing of the ball.
The phrase's origin may be onomatopoeic, alluding either to the quick, short
distance passing between players, or the Spanish name of a juggling toy.
The playing style involves roaming movement and positional interchange
among midfielders, moving the ball in intricate patterns, and sharp, one- or two-
touch passing. It has been described as a "nonsensical phrase that has come to
mean short passing, patience and possession above all else.”
Which phrase?

A
FC Barcelona
Tiki-Taka, which is primarily associated with FC Barcelona

5.1
In the diverse traditions within Hinduism, both the clockwise and counter-clockwise
forms are found. The clockwise form symbolizes the Sun, mirroring its motion in
the northern hemisphere as it appears to enter from the east, goes south, and exits
to the west. The counterclockwise form, less commonly seen, connotes the night,
and in tantric traditions symbolizes goddess Kali.
What is this?

5.2
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1893 short story in which Sherlock Holmes confronts his
greatest enemy Professor Moriarty, was intended to be the last featuring the
detective, with the author having decided to stop writing about him after this.
Michael Chabon’s 2004 novella is a detective story that in many ways pays homage
to the writings of Doyle and other writers of the genre. The story, set in 1944,
revolves around an unnamed 89-year-old long-retired detective, always called just
"the old man", now interested mostly in beekeeping, and his quest to find a missing
parrot, the only friend of a mute Jewish boy. There are two separate mysteries in
the book, only one of which the detective character is able to resolve by the end.
The title of the novella references Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story as well as a certain
infamous euphemism.
What is the novella called?

6.1
One day in 1979, Alun Renshaw, a music teacher at the Islington Green School in
London, took 13- to 14-year-old pupils out of lessons to record at the Britannia Row
Studios nearby. Renshaw had kept the lyrics hidden from the headmistress as the
children practised around a piano in the previous week. When the headmistress
finally heard the recording, she forbade the students from appearing on radio or in
newspapers, as well as any video of them singing it.
What did they sing?

6.2
The picture, commissioned by EMI in 1997 to cleverly advertise the release of a
back catalogue, was taken at a private indoor pool in Putney in London by
photographer Tony May. Essentially, it is a picture of a group of people having a
poolside chat, as they prepare to swim. The individuals involved were Pauline
Swain, Julia Ashbury, Jackie St. Clair, Mandy Lomax, Jo Caine, and Kimberley Cowell,
from left to right. The idea was intended to be for a TV commercial, but EMI
eventually commissioned the photograph for a promotional poster.
Which poster?

A
The chorus in Another Brick in the Wall

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