Tuesday 18 May 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms - 59

A much simpler one for the day.

X was a famous scientist, and a prankster and a witty genius as well!

I. He once got one of his school seniors to faint when he answered a riddle even before she had completed asking it! Apparently, this was at the school ball, where he had answered every riddle she had asked. It was at the last riddle that she fainted.

II. His wit was so legendary, that he was reputed to have fixed radios ‘just by thinking’! Actually, all he did on this one instance was change the order of the valves or electrodes, because they were being heated up in the reverse order.

III. On another instance, he fooled a Chinese guy by speaking Chinese even though he didn’t know a word of Chinese! Apparently, the original Chinese spoke Cantonese, and assumed that our friend, the scientist, spoke Mandarin!

IV. He was once asked at Prince ton University if he would have his tea with cream or lemon. He replied, '”Both.” The polite yet sarcastic response of the hostess to this answer became the name of one of his non-scientific books.

Simple. Identify X.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Cracked by all five here, and Neil on Facebook.

The answer is Nobel prize winning scientist Richard Feynman!

A pic of him:

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And in response to Aditya: I happened to read the book in my second year of college, which was six years ago. However, by some miracle, I managed to retain some of the info more than half a decade later! Meanwhile, if you are really interested in reading the book, try here. It’s a pretty engaging read!

6 comments:

  1. Hello..
    It's Richard Feynman..
    I got it from the last clue..The hostess reply was "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello..
    When you post the answer tomorrow can you please give a link to the webpage where you found all these incidents about him..

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are surely talking about Richard Feynman and the non scientific book in question is "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!".

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mr. Richard Feynman

    and I guess the response of the lady must have been 'Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman!'

    ReplyDelete

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