Tuesday 30 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 198

An easy one for the day.

who

Identify these two gentlemen whose names commemorate whenever rain threatens to wash away the game.

I made it super easy, didn’t i?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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SEVENTEEN answers! You guys just gave me a HUUUGE boost! And yes, folks! These are indeed Messrs Duckworth and Lewis, whose system we use to determine how many runs the team batting second has to score in a certain number of overs, and some such calculations, in order to win!

Monday 29 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 197

Look at these posters.

1.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

2.

batman begins

3.

casino royale

4.

Karate kid

5.

New Police Story

6.

pink panther

7.

Sherlock holmes

What unique quality connects these films? To make it easier, what makes these films stand out from their predecessors?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: Is my latest post on the opinion blog that bad?

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Looks like kevin and vishesh were almost there, but not quite. Thing is, a different actor had played the karate kid in every film of the franchise, although ‘Miyagi’ remained the same. The other four got this one correct. These films are indeed reboots! And I am waiting to see how James Bond gets Moneypenny and Q!

Sunday 28 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 196

Sorry for the grainy image.

who

Identify this gentleman who had a blast, or two to be exact, during his lifetime, and lived till a ripe age to tell his tale.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: Check out the new post on my opinion blog.

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Eight answers, and even though a couple of them do not contain the name of this gentleman, I think the funda is correct. This is indeed Tsutomu Yamaguchi, reportedly the only person to have survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts!

Saturday 27 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 195

Look carefully.

what

This image was the first of its kind to appear on a website that set off an internet meme. What is the blackened out text? And what is the internet meme I am talking about?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: We crossed 15,000 hits with the last post! Congratulations to us, and thanks for all the support, guys!

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Eleven answers, but some of you have not given me the answers I was looking for. The meme is obviously Lolcats, and the text is I can has cheezburger. Go to www.icanhascheezburger.com, and look at the first cartoon. This is not exactly the ‘happycat’, folks….

Friday 26 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 194

Easy one.

what

Why is this photograph ‘notorious’ on cyberspace for the past few days?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: New post of my column updated on my article blog. And a small new entry is up on my opinion blog.

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Five answers, but better luck next time, Kapinjal and krishnan! The three others are correct! This image, of a women giving birth on the roadside, was apparently captured by the car that goes around clicking pictures for Goolge Street View. It turned out to be a hoax, and the photo has been pulled off its sites by Google.

Thursday 25 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 193

A dry one here. Try not to google this.

Looney Tunes cartoons often seemed to feature outrageously funny, strange and improbable products made by the ACME corporation. Just tell me what ACME stands for!

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: Check out my article blog for further updates.

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Four answers, and only the oncologist got it correct. Look up his answer. However, www.abbreviations.com lists another answer that I would have accepted. ACME can indeed mean American Company Makes Everything! There have been similar answers, but this was exactly what I was looking for.

Wednesday 24 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 192

Simply connect the following films, and think beyond the Hindi film industry.

1.

dev d

2.

apne paraye

3.

parineeta

4. Sorry for the low resolution on this one.

Khushboo

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: The latest post on my opinion blog, on whether or not all religions should be restructured is gathering quite an amount of feedback! Thanks, folks!

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10 answers! And all correct! All four films are based on or inspired by stories/novels written by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. As a Bengali, I can proudly say that I have read these and more of his stories, which have a special quality that can’t be translated onto the screen. Often in his narrative, Sarat babu stops telling the story ad delves into the characters’ psyche. Thus we have Devdas feeling like a part of his body has suddenly acquired a brain of his own and is now acting on its own, when Paru refuses to marry him. Thus we have a beautiful description of how Shekhar is effectively handing over the keys to his entire life to Lolita when he is just handing over the keys to his cupboard, and how she is returning more than the keys towards the end of the story. PS: Parinita is a tragedy in the original Bengali version. Dunno if the translated versions have been faithful to his style.

Tuesday 23 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 191

A dry one for the day.

In the world of literature, why do the following 50 words hold a special place?

a am and anywhere are be boat box car could dark do eat eggs fox goat good green ham here house I if in let like may me mouse not on or rain Sam say see so thank that the them there they train tree try will with would you

I want a very specific answer.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: Check out the new post on my opinion blog. It’s my take on how almost all modern-day religions need to be restructured.

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Just three answers, and they are correct too! These are the 50 words that children’s fiction author Dr Seuss used to write an entire book! The book was called Green Eggs and Ham. He did it on a dare with his publisher, and later collected a certain amount of money for winning the bet!

Monday 22 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 190

Connect these three films.

1.

munnabhai mbbs

2.

mohabbatein

3.

chachi 420

Hint: Think beyond this country.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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10 responses, and one incorrect, while a few incomplete. All three films are remakes of / inspired by English films in which Robin Williams starred. Munnabhai MBBS was inspired somewhat by Patch Adams, Mohabbatein by Dead Poets Society, and Chachi 420 by Mrs Doubtfire.

Sunday 21 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 189

Simple.

who

Identify this famous comedian from the yesteryears.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Given his stoic expression, this should have been easy! It’s Buster Keaton! Oh, I’m sorry that the responses haven’t been published immediately. They will be published by 3-4pm today.

Saturday 20 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 188

A slightly different one today.

what

These geometrical shapes were used as the building blocks for what?

Hint: Blur them a bit, or squint your eyes while looking at them, and you might be a bit closer to the answer!

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Several answers, but this is definitely not a part of the design of Michael Jackson’s anti-gravity boots. These shapes are the initial designs of the characters in Disney’s 1992 film Aladdin.

Here’s the original:

Aladdin_Disney_lg

Friday 19 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 187

This might be slightly difficult.

Connect the following.

1.

sunil gavaskar

2.

prithviraj chauhan

3. Only the first season is important here.

emotional atyachaar

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Cracked! The answer is indeed Angad ‘Gavasinder Singh’ Bedi, son of former Indian bowler Bishen Singh Bedi. He was born when Sunil Gavaskar was decimating the opposition in the 1971 Trinidad test, and so Bishen named him Gavasinder after his colleague! That was later changed. Angad Bedi hosted the first season of Emotional Atyachaar, and also played Prithviraj Chauhan in a  television serial about the king.

Thursday 18 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 186

Simply identify.

who

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Eleven answers, and all correct! This is indeed David Bowie, the singer!

Wednesday 17 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 185

I came across the idea for this question last night, while listening to some music. Hope this one is very easy.

1.

 Subramanya Bharathi

2.

 who

3.

 Nandita Das

I have not changed the filenames of two of these photos. The changed and edited photo is eminently guessable. Tell me what connects them. Try not to google, but you can do so if you can’t help it. And of you like this question, please say so. If not, please state so. I will be highly obliged by the feedback.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: Check out my new post on the opinion blog.

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The connection is indeed the film Kannathil Muthamittal! Great going, people!

Tuesday 16 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 184

Straight one again.

who

Identify the gentleman. Portions of this photograph have been blackened because they contained material that might have been considered offensive by some. You just need to concentrate on the gentleman here.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Just one of the 12 replies say Salman Rushdie, and sorry, this is not him! This, my friends, is indeed Stanley Kubrick, like the other 11 replies said!

Monday 15 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 183

Folks, your replies, and the number of them, have been very heartening.

They have been keeping me going through some really tough times, even physical pain that I am experiencing today!

Thanks for the support!

Here’s a straight one for the day.

who

Just identify this gentleman.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Just five answers, and yes, all correct!

This is indeed Pannalal Ghosh, the gentleman who is single-handedly responsible for giving the flute an identity of its own in the world of Indian classical music. He propagated the concept that ragas, like Bageshri or Bhairavi, could be played on the flute!

Sunday 14 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 182

Here’s a question courtesy Partha Mukhopadhyay, aka Partha – the oncologist with a heart.

This is the last photo of John Lennon.

lennon

He was given a copy of his album, Double Fantasy, by the gentleman whose face is half in the picture, and Lennon gave his autograph on it. Who is this person, who gave him the album for an autograph?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Once again, 14 replies, and all correct! Despite quite a few people who thought they were taking wild guesses!

The other person is indeed Mark David Chapman, the person who assassinated John Lennon!

Saturday 13 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 181

Easily googleable, but I suggest you try without it. Gimme the names of Scooby Doo’s brother, sister and nephew.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Three answers, and none of them are entirely correct!

Brothers: Yabba Doo, Skippy Doo and Howdy Doo.

Sister: Ruby Doo.

Nephew: of course, Scrappy Doo.

Friday 12 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 180

Here’s a loooooooooooong connect.

Connect these personalities. Or, more appropriately, what is common to all these real-life personalities?

1.

Harvey Milk

2.

Idi_Amin

3.

M K Gandhi

4.

Ray Charles

5.

Szpilman

6.

Truman Capote

Filenames have not been changed to help you out. Therefore, please give me a very specific connect.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: Check out this new profile I have created. Currently, it has the links to all my blogs, and also my email address. Just for your future reference.

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FOURTEEN replies! Great! But some of them are incomplete. The answer that I was looking for was that actors who portrayed these characters in films received the Academy Award for Best Actor!

Here’s the list, copied from the oncologist’s reply:

1. Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in Milk (2008).
2. Forest Whittaker as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland (2006)
3. Ben Kingley as M K Gandhi in Gandhi (1982)
4. Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray (2004)
5. Adrien Brody as Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist (2002)
6. Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in Capote (2005).

People who got this entirely correct are sid, partha - the oncologist with a heart, Jagdish, shivajyoti, Karthike Ramesh, Movin, pritfloyd, Srikanth, and Sunny Lyngdoh. I got the 14th answer from Girish, but that was after I had published the replies. So I am not considering it.

Thursday 11 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 179

A visually easy one for the day…

The X Statix was a fictional team of mutant superheroes in Marvel Comics. They were used to make satirical and parodic jibes at comic lovers, and consisted of mostly pop stars and reality TV contestants as characters.

XStatix

However, the unused cover shown above featured someone else, and when news of this leaked out, the creators of the comics had to change the character to a fictional singing star, and this cover was never used. Who is the person featured in this cover?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: I have got three announcements.

  1. This blog is now featured on www.quizblogs.com!
  2. With this post, the number of hits on my blog will officially reach 12,000. So congratulations, folks!
  3. There’s a new post on my opinion blog about the change of guards in Maharashtra. Tell me what you think of it.

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Ten answers again! And all are correct when they say Princess Diana!

Wednesday 10 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 178

Here’s a double connect, the second one courtesy Kamal Rathi.

First, connect these three photographs.

1.

ajay-devgan-73u

2.

bobby-deol-003

3.

oy13

And then connect the answer with this photograph.

trojan-horse

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: The number of responses is very heartening, folks! Makes my work worthwhile, and I am doing it almost singlehandedly here!

PPS: New posts up at my article blog.

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Eight answers, and once again all correct!

The connection for the first three photographs is obviously that all three of these actors played Shaheed Bhagat Singh in films.

The second connect is slightly cryptic, especially if you don’t know about a certain Operation Trojan Horse, a secret British operation that has come to light only in the recent years. A controversial book claims that this was the name given to an operation as part of which Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Batukeshwar Dutt were hanged until they were semi-conscious, then taken out of the barracks and shot by members of Saunders’ family. They were then cremated at an unmarked place, just so that they did not receive a honourable cremation!

Tuesday 9 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 177

An easy and heartwarming one for today.

what

What is depicted here, and what owes its origin to this single cartoon?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: New posts up at my article blog.

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I have immense respect for this quizzer. And his response is too thorough to be relegated to the comments section. Therefore, I am quoting Kamal Rathi’s answer verbatim. It is correct, like the 11 other answers.

“The name Teddy Bear comes from former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, whose nickname was "Teddy". The name originated from an incident on a bear-hunting trip in Mississippi in November 1902, to which Roosevelt was invited by Mississippi Governor Andrew H Longino. There were several other hunters competing, and most of them had already killed an animal. A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American Black Bear to a willow tree after a long exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he should shoot it. He refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike,but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902.While the initial cartoon of an adult black bear lassoed by a white handler and a disgusted Roosevelt had symbolic overtones, later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter.”

Initially, these stuffed toys were called Teddy’s bears. The apostrophe and the ‘s’ were dropped later.

Monday 8 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 176

A three-in-one here.

Identify all three gentlemen shown here!

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: Check out the article blog for new posts today.

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Eight answers, five of them complete, and all five are correct! From left to right, they are Anandhan Sivamani, Bikram Ghosh and Pete Lockette.

Sunday 7 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 175

Try this one, folks!

who

You have to identify both these stalwarts!

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: More articles are up at the article blog. And a new one on its way onto the opinion blog. Visit them and tell me whether you like or hate them!

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All five correct answers!

These are indeed Akira Kurosawa and Francis Ford Coppolla!

Saturday 6 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 174

Here’s a simple and straight one for the day.

who

For what reason did this gentleman from Florida have his profiles expunged from some social networking websites, who, only later, understood their mistake?

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

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Yes, all four of you got this correct! This gentleman’s name is Justin Bieber, and when he registered himself at a few of the websites, they kicked him off, thinking that he was registering a fake profile under the name of a ‘celebrity’! Honestly, I don’t know why or how that Justin Bieber is a celebrity!

Friday 5 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 173

Lets try a connection today!

See if you can find the common thread between these three pictures.

1. This is the film Hirak Rajar Deshe.

1

2. Sorry for the not-so-good resolution of the photograph.

2

3.

3

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: One more article is already up on my article blog, a few more to come.

PPS: Happy Diwali, Kali Puja, and whatever festival you may, to you!

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Just two answers, and both correct! The connect is indeed the Emergency Era!

1. Satyajit Ray’s Hirak Rajar Deshe may be a children’s film up front and the second in the Gupi Bagha trilogy, but it is also a thinly veiled dig at Siddharrtha Shankar Ray, the then chief minister of West Bengal and one of the first people to push Indira Gandhi to get Emrgency declared, and the entire Emergency and its fallouts!

2. Ramnath Goenka’s blank editorial in The Indian Express to protest against the gag order of sorts that had been put on the press during the Emergency era.

3. President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who actually declared the Emergency.

Thursday 4 November 2010

QR – Cure – Quizzing Realms – 172

Here’s another single-photo question.

three

The individuals on the left and right are easily identifiable. Gimme the name of the gentleman in the middle. Oh, and sorry for the positions they are in. But this is an interesting photograph.

Happy quizzing, and have a nice life, folks!

PS: I intend to upload a few more of my articles on the article blog. Check them out when you have the time.

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I’m really heartened by the 12 answers! You people really keep me going! I was quite in the dumps because I could not go home for Diwali!

And while on that topic, Happy Diwali to you and your family!

Oh, and the answer is indeed Andy Warhol!