Quizmaster’s Choice
Mayukh Nair, Class of 2018
This is a weekly column summarizing the 5 best questions from the quiz held by the Quizzing Society of Ashoka University
Q1. Jagjit Singh is remembered for many classics, but a song called Kya Khoya Kya Paaya is not one of them. It is exceptional for the talent that came together for this one song. Amitabh Bachchan narrated the intro, while Shahrukh Khan plays the lead in the video. But what defined it was the source Singh chose for the song. Whose work was adapted into this ghazal?
Answer: Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Q2. In 2007, villagers from the Antioquia region near Bogota began calling up officials in the Environment Ministry to report hippos, creatures which have no biological origin in that region. It was the lack of oversight by the local police in a previous criminal operation that ensured that some hippos escaped into the wild and multiplied. How did the hippos end up in this unlikely region?
Answer: Pablo Escobar smuggled them into his resort, Hacienda Napoles
Q3. Every year around this time in India, a major annual event is a huge cause of pollution — owing to the main activity that marks its culmination. An NGO called Sprouts Environment Trust tackled this problem with a unique creation which covers something that “would be looked forward to” by the annual victims of this event. What did they create?
Answer: Ganpati idols that dissolve into fish food
Q4. This word was taken from the name of Walter Santesso’s character in the 1960 Italian film La Dolce Vita. The word sounds similar to a word in the Sicilian dialect for “an annoying mosquito”, which lent well to Santesso’s character in the film. What word, which also means “puppy squad” in Chinese?
Answer: Paparazzi
Q5. The Food Network is very popular for shows in the US like Hell’s Kitchen, but they were an ordinary cookery channel until something caused viewership to go so high they found it “unreal”. They restructured completely for general audiences. What had happened?
Answer: 9/11 happened, and so many distressed Americans tuned in to watch comfort food being cooked that they reinvented the channel.
Q6. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel banned the Palestinian flag, including any artwork with its four colours. Palestinian supporters resolved this using something very common to the region, which Israel could not control. How?
Answer: They sliced watermelons, which had their national flag’s colours.
This was the first quiz hosted by the Quizzing Society as part of their ongoing 2nd edition of Ashoka Quizzing League. The Quizmaster was Mayukh Nair, who was the champion of the 1st edition of the League last year.
