Image: CNN-IBN This day last year: Q.123
Jan 31, 2012
Jan 30, 2012
Q.487
What is the acronym?
Jan 29, 2012
Q.486
The film "Chittagong" is directed by Bedabrata Pain and features Manoj Bajpai and Barry John among others. It was ready as far back as 2010, but was not released then. It was alleged that Amitabh Bachchan had a hand in ensuring it did not come out as this film directly clashed with his son's film releasing around the same time. The director said it was merely a pragmatic choice by the distributors.
Finally scheduled to release in February 2012, what is the central theme of this film and which is the Abhishek Bachchan film being referred to?
Image: Wikipedia
Jan 28, 2012
Q.485
The writer P.D.James, perhaps best known for her Adam Dalgliesh books of crime, released her latest book towards the end of 2011 and is called "Death Comes to Pemberley".
The book is a period piece and brings crime to a fictional place, the setting of a classic novel which is reportedly the Baroness James's favourite book. The central characters from the old novel are key figures here too.
Which place or which novel?
Image: Washington Post
Jan 27, 2012
Q.484
What scientific adjustment?
Jan 26, 2012
Q.483
Just as usual will be the appearance of protestors, who unfailingly show up at events like these. People affiliated to the "Occupy" movement will make their debut under the Occupy Davos banner.
What do they plan to build there, as part of their protests? (and this year's Davos weather certainly has been amenable to it)?
Jan 25, 2012
Q.482
Forbes and the design group JESS3 have produced a short graphic novel about a period in the life of this person. Called "The Zen of ___ ___", it explores this person's significant friendship with a Zen priest named Kobun Otogawa.
This image (source: Amazon.com) is a panel from the book.
Who is the person?
This day last year: Q.117Jan 24, 2012
Q.481
This music band re-issued all its (fourteen) studio albums in 2011, via the record label EMI. To mark this, the band and the label recreated something (see the image) which had been first staged in 1976. (The idea was to shoot an image for an album cover).
The location was Battersea Power Station in London and prominently featured a tethered object. In 1976, the object broke loose and wandered off into, appropriately, a field of cattle even before it could be photographed. This time, there was no such problem.
Which band or album or object?
Jan 23, 2012
Q.480
Image: The Royal Mint
The Royal Mint of the United Kingdom has issued this commemorative coin as part of a set issued for the upcoming 2012 London Olympics. This particular design was sent in by sports journalist Neil Wolfson.
Wolfson thought this design might serve as a handy guide to anyone trying to demystify a particular sporting rule. What rule?
This day last year: Q.109Jan 22, 2012
Q.479
- Col. C.K. Nayudu : Ajit Wadekar
- Polly Umrigar : Rahul Dravid
- Madhavrao Scindia : S. Badrinath, Bhargav Bhatt
- M.A. Chidambaram: Vijay Zol, Avi Barot, Suryakumar Yadav, Jhulan Goswami, Mona Meshram
- Dilip Sardesai: Ishant Sharma, R. Ashwin
- Lala Amarnath: Iqbal Abdulla, Sumit Narwal
Jan 21, 2012
Q.478
The film "San Ge Sha Gua" has been one of the big hits in Chinese cities in 2011, especially with young audiences, with whom it seems to have struck a natural chord.
How do we know this film in India?
This day last year: Q.113Jan 20, 2012
Q.477
Click to see a bigger picture This day last year: Q.112
Jan 19, 2012
Jan 18, 2012
Q.475
In keeping with the modern fad, this has been re-released in early 2012 in 3-D form. Which film?
Jan 17, 2012
Q.474
This book was written by a man formerly known as Abhay Charan De and first published in 1968. Reports say that part of the reason behind the attempted ban was to curb the activities of the organization he founded.
What's he better known as?
Jan 16, 2012
Q.473
On the other hand, Danny Boyle has achieved only one nomination for Best Director, but memorably won it for "Slumdog Millionaire".
These two filmmakers are collaborating on something in 2012; Daldry will be a kind of an overall creative producer, while Boyle will direct one specific aspect.
What collaboration?
Other Olympian questions: Q.306, Q.278, Q.264, Q.157, and Q.112
Jan 15, 2012
Q.472
"The Art of ______" is an upcoming book by Chad Harbach (out in January 2012). Such was Harbach's struggle to get the book written and published that his friend Kieth Gessen wrote an article about it in Vanity Fair magazine, later expanded into an e-book whose cover you also see above. This book-about-a-book has already been published (in 2011).
About a baseball player who finds his skills have deserted him, it has already won several favourable reviews, with the likes of Mike Atherton calling it "an outstanding novel about sports". At first glance, this could easily be a novel about cricket and could find place on a shelf with books by Sir Don Bradman and Mike Brearley.
So what's the missing word?
This day last year: Q.107Jan 14, 2012
Q.471
This image shows an artist's rendering of a planet whose discovery was announced by NASA in September 2011. It is the first ever example of a "circumbinary planet" i.e. one that orbits two stars. This has led to it being dubbed "Tattooine" after the fictional circumbinary planet from the Star Wars movie franchise.
Formally, its name is ___-16(AB)-b, where the word in the blank is shared with its binary star, which gets its name from the NASA spacecraft that was used to study it. The spacecraft was named for a famous German astronomer.
Who?
Jan 13, 2012
Q.470
It has now been revived in late 2011 with a new itinerary and refurbishments. What service?
Jan 12, 2012
Q.469
Named after her to mark her stay there; the man in the middle resided there for a long, long time; will it be named after the man on the right? What's going on here?
Jan 11, 2012
Q.468
Guggenheim Fellowship (1991-92)
Fellow of the Royal Society (elected 2003)
Member, National Academy of Sciences, USA (elected 2004)
Datta Medal and Lecture, FEBS annual meeting, (2007)
Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2007)
Heatley Medal, British Biochemical Society (2008)
Foreign Member, Indian National Science Academy (elected 2008)
Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge (elected 2008)
_____________ (2009)
Knight Bachelor for services to Molecular Biology (2012, Queen's New Year Honours List)
Jan 10, 2012
Q.467
States like Orissa, and Tamil Nadu may also come up with their own squads. For what?
Jan 9, 2012
Q.466
If Simpson Miller is successful, Jamaica will join the likes of Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago in making this change. What change?
Jan 8, 2012
Q.465
The parent said it was an "inaccurate introduction to an American ____", and the board agreed, ruling it "age-inappropriate".
What was the parent complaining about?
Jan 7, 2012
Q.464
He eventually quit a full-time academic position in India to take up music and movies. He did dabble in politics, once serving as an independent MLA (in the late 60s) and once losing a Lok Sabha election as a BJP candidate in 2004.
Who?
Jan 6, 2012
Jan 5, 2012
Q.462
Belfast will also see the unveiling of a building (seen in accompanying image) built under a "Signature Project" floated a few years ago. It is slated to open on 31st March. All this is to mark the centenary of what?
Image: Wikipedia
Jan 4, 2012
Q.461
11/22/63 is Stephen King's latest book, about Jake Epping, a time-traveller who travels back in time to 1958 attempting to stop not just JFK's assassination but also change an ordinary person's future.
If the front cover is this, what is on the back cover?
Image: Stephenking.com
This day last year: Q.96Jan 3, 2012
Q.460
First awarded in 2008 as a prize in Mathematics, this prize was extended to four other scientific categories from 2009 (two prizes are awarded under the Social Sciences segment, making it 6 'laureates' per year). It is meant to reward and encourage high quality scientific research by Indians; the prize includes a fifty lakh rupees award.
You see this year's winners above. The name of the prize comes from the corporate entity that has instituted this. Which entity?
Image: The Infosys Prize website.
Jan 2, 2012
Q.459
This train will traverse 4,286 km in about eighty-plus hours. Like the previous holder of this record (the Himsagar Express), one of the train's termini is Kanyakumari. What is the other end-point?
Jan 1, 2012
Q.458
This year, in the end of December, a group of Seventh-day Adventists in the little island country of Samoa were faced with a dilemma around this observance, and eventually most parishes decided to observe it on a Sunday from now on. Why?
Religion was never easy. More here.