A list of puzzling questions
Editor’s note: We’ve kicked off a new thing to delight all of you who adore quizzes. Every Tuesday, we feature three questions from our quiz master Shantanu Sharma—who is a researcher-writer and has a side hustle as a professional quiz guru. He’d love to hear from you—so send your feedback/suggestions or just say ‘hi’ over at sharmashantanu312@gmail.com or @shantorasbox on Twitter.
How this works: Every correct answer is worth 10 points. If a question has multiple parts, each is worth 5 points. You have until Friday 12 pm to send in your answers to talktous@splainer.in or via DMs on Insta or Twitter. The correct answers will be published every Tuesday—as will the monthly leaderboard. The grand prize for the winner at the end of the month: a quarterly subscription for anyone of your choice—including the option of adding three months to your sub. That’s Rs 899 in value—so it’s pretty darn good:) Rule to note: this is all about who sends in the correct answers first.
The answers: to the previous week’s quiz are at the bottom.
One: The building (in image below) has overtaken another building of national importance—located in the US—to become the largest in its category. There are two parts to this question (5 points each):
- In which Indian city—known for cutting around 90% of a form of carbon globally—would you come across this building?
- Which building was surpassed to achieve this milestone? Note: It derives its name from a shape.
Two: Give a one-word connection between a symbol of purity in a popular fictional universe that has magical blood and the land of bagpipes and kilts.
Three: Jatin (in the photo below) had already tried his hand at publishing and television before he decided to embark on what started as a passion project. It has now evolved into a multi-city mega pop culture celebration. What did Jatin introduce to Indian fans for the first time in 2011? Arguably, the most popular and attended version of this takes place in California.
About last week’s quiz…
Here are the answers to the third edition of the splainer quiz:
One: Abdul Kareem (in the pic below) was the last registered owner of this cultural icon.
It is synonymous with a certain city—and is celebrated for its unique look (see below). Which two—coloured entity—though uncomfortable and noisy at times—has faithfully served its customers for decades?
Answer: Premier Padmini Taxis or Kaali-Peeli taxis of Mumbai.
The iconic ‘Premier Padmini’ taxis in Mumbai went off-road from October 30. Abdul Kareem Karsekar—a resident of Prabhadevi—was the owner of Mumbai's last registered Premier Padmini taxi. He called it: "Mumbai ki shaan hai aur hamari jaan hai.” The non-Premier Padmini taxis will continue to run in the city. Just a month earlier, the legendary red double-decker diesel buses from BEST were also retired in September.
Two: This is an image of an ancient fort in central India. Its great claim to fame is a 876 AD temple with a fascinating connection to the ancient history of mathematics. Hint: the royal scion from this region is in the news these days—for reasons that have to do with a very different kind of maths.
Answer: Gwalior Fort.
The Chaturbhuj Temple, carved out of a rock face in the Gwalior Fort has an inscription of the oldest known representation of the circular symbol for nothing, i.e. the oldest image of a modern zero.
Three: Think laterally and connect these four seemingly unrelated elements below to a long list of ‘sweet’ releases rolled out by a human-shaped robot.
Answer: Android mobile OS versions
The images represent Android Marshmallow, Honeycomb, KitKat, and Froyo (Frozen Yogurt) in clockwise order. An android is a mobile robot usually with a human form. The first official public codename was Cupcake for version 1.5. Since then, the credit for naming Android versions after desserts has traditionally gone to project manager Ryan Gibson. The ninth version—Android Pie was the last official confectionary based name. From Android 10 onwards, Google has gone back to using the version number.
And the winners are…
Here are the top five scorers for the fourth week. Congratulations!
