# Lord of the Rings - Quiz by: Prayag Mohanty (QM Prayag) - Published: 2026-08-12 - Slides: 103 - Event: IIT Bombay - Topics: General - View online: https://prayag-mohanty.github.io/QM/quiz/lord-of-the-rings-qm-prayag-mohanty-general-quiz-august-2026-iit-bombay/ - Download PDF: https://prayag-mohanty.github.io/QM/files/lord-of-the-rings-qm-prayag-mohanty-general-quiz-august-2026-iit-bombay/lord-of-the-rings-qm-prayag-mohanty-general-quiz-august-2026-iit-bombay.pdf - Download PPTX: https://prayag-mohanty.github.io/QM/files/lord-of-the-rings-qm-prayag-mohanty-general-quiz-august-2026-iit-bombay/lord-of-the-rings-qm-prayag-mohanty-general-quiz-august-2026-iit-bombay.pptx The first intra IITB quiz of the year 2025-26. A highly informative yet fun quiz session featuring questions on social cultures, history, science, sports, brands, and pop culture, with interactive rounds and unique scoring methods. Held at IIT Bombay on 12 August 2026. Lord of the Rings | QM: Prayag Mohanty | General Quiz | August 2026 | IIT Bombay ## Slides ### Slide 1 Lord Of The Rings QM: Prayag Mohanty ### Slide 2 Join the groups to receive updates about upcoming quizzes/events ### Slide 3 Clockwise Round 12 questions +10/0 for bounce +10/-5 for pounce Provide the complete answer for full points, on pounce Split scoring applicable, on bounce QM discretion is final Shoutout to Divyanshu & Ishan for GPing ### Slide 4 1. In 1936, psychologist Kurt Lewin divided the world's social cultures into two types. _____ (5) cultures tend to be soft and friendly on the surface, even with strangers, but have a hard protective inner core. _______ (7) cultures present a tough shell to the world, resisting closeness and small talk, but reward patience with a softness within. Both types are named after the fruits whose physical structure mirrors these social architectures exactly. What is the model called? ### Slide 5 safety slide ### Slide 6 Peach and Coconut ### Slide 7 2. At the Miami Art Museum, an interactive installation reimagines an indoor Olympic sport, where it’s net is replaced by a body of water. Players are warned not to reach in to retrieve balls that fall in, and not to continue playing with a wet ball if one does. What is the punny, onomatopoeic title of this installation? ### Slide 8 safety slide ### Slide 9 Ping Pond Table ### Slide 10 3. In 1859, the Lyon chemist François-Emmanuel Verguin patented an aniline dye and named it after a flower [X]. This pendulous flower, discovered in the 1700s in Central and South America, was named after a German botanist, Leonard _____. Later that same year, Napoleon III's French forces beat the Austrians in the Battle of [Y]. Verguin's employer hastily renamed the dye after the town in Lombardy, where the battle was fought. Both names survived. [Y] dominated the 20th century and became a standard printing ink. [X] became trendy around the 2000s. Not to blush, but the dye featured significantly in a recent global event. Give [X] and [Y] essentially the same color. (Pic follows) ### Slide 11 (picture slide) ### Slide 12 safety slide ### Slide 13 Fuchsia Pink, Magenta ### Slide 14 4. When the Germans started using chlorine gas in WW1, the Allied soldiers found themselves in a dire situation. Knowing that ammonia could neutralize chlorine, they resorted to breathing through rags soaked in something, out of desperation. What naturally occurring elixir, did they soak the rags into? Soon, the Allied scientists experimented with materials that could trap poison gases. They discovered that the remnant of a common ingredient, when burnt, created a dense porous structure, which trapped the gas molecules before they reached the lungs. What commercial food item? The resulting product is a popular ingredient in the cosmetic industry. ### Slide 15 safety slide ### Slide 16 Urine; Coconut Shells/ Activated Charcoal ### Slide 17 5. Surendra Mohan Bose was an Indian scientist who was imprisoned during WW1. While in jail, Bose came across accounts of Indian soldiers operating in difficult weather conditions, while imported products of this type remained expensive and largely inaccessible to ordinary Indians. His breakthrough came from an unlikely source, ducks. He observed how water effortlessly rolled off the duck’s feathers because of the natural oils covering them and started a brand on this unique waterproof technique. Name the eponymous brand? (nostalgic to a few) ### Slide 18 safety slide ### Slide 19 Duckback The phrase "like water off a duck's back" inspired the brand name ### Slide 20 6. Through the 1700s, the dominant coin in the Atlantic world was the Spanish silver dollar, written in ledgers as pesos. Clerks abbreviated it "PS". In fast handwriting, the s got written small and raised above the P - Pˢ. Over time, the two letters collapsed into each other and the loop of the P dropped away. This led to current day version of which symbol? ### Slide 21 safety slide ### Slide 22 Dollar Sign $ ### Slide 23 7. This was originally used for visual-spatial measurements while driving. It was also a way to differentiate between different manufacturers. The luxury manufacturers transformed it from a vestigial to an aesthetic accessory, reflective of their brand identity. Despite the advent of sensors and other technology, this feature still remains in demand. In India, the government has repurposed this feature to project its commanding presence. What feature? How has the govt. repurposed it into? ### Slide 24 safety slide ### Slide 25 Hood ornament, Flag/Spike ### Slide 26 8. What is the significance of a Renault Type CB Coupé de Ville owned by William Carter of Pennsylvania? The 36-year-old Carter, wealthy heir to a coal & iron fortune, purchased the Renault while traveling from Europe with his wife and two children. ### Slide 27 safety slide ### Slide 28 The car from RMS Titanic Which also inspired THAT scene ;) ### Slide 29 9. On 22 November 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Minneapolis Lakers 19–18 (the lowest-scoring game in NBA history) by simply holding the ball and refusing to shoot. Attendance was spiraling. Danny Biasone, who owned the Syracuse Nationals (now Philadelphia 76ers), reckoned a watchable game contained about 120 field-goal attempts across 48 minutes. He did the maths and found a number. The league adopted his answer for the 1954–55 season and scoring rose by roughly fourteen points a game in a single year. What did Biasone's number give the sport? ### Slide 30 safety slide ### Slide 31 Shot clock / 24 second clock ### Slide 32 10. According to Aristotle, the brain was merely a cooling radiator for the blood while the true seat of memory & intelligence lay in a different yet more important organ. His theory dominated European thought well into the Middle Ages, which is why medieval students committing texts to memory believed they were filing them in an organ that had nothing to do with it. Which phrase, still used in schools, is a remnant of this misconception? ### Slide 33 safety slide ### Slide 34 Learn by heart ### Slide 35 11. New Zealand sports teams have an interesting naming scheme for their respective sports. Identify the missing ones. Cricket: Black Caps Rugby: All Blacks Basketball: ? (physical trait of most of its players) Badminton: ? (dropped in 2024 due to its NSFW nature) Lawn bowls: ? (also a casino card game) Lawn bowling is a sport in which players try to roll their ball as close as possible to a smaller jackball. The balls follow a curved path when being rolled. ### Slide 36 safety slide ### Slide 37 Tall Blacks; Black Cocks; Black Jacks ### Slide 38 12. Goregaon Sports Club Parsi Dairy Farm Nino's Burger Poornima Restaurant Shalimar Hospitality Aparna Juhu Gymkhana Ajanta Caterers Maroosh Non-exhaustive list of what? Which famous Powai establishment is missing (need specific)? ### Slide 39 safety slide ### Slide 40 Licenses suspended by FDA ### Slide 41 H1 & H3 hostel mess of IITB ### Slide 42 Written Round Identify the songs based on their YT comments 6 Questions +10/0 for each answer ### Slide 43 1. ### Slide 44 2. ### Slide 45 3. ### Slide 46 4. ### Slide 47 5. ### Slide 48 6. ### Slide 49 exchange sheets ### Slide 50 1. ### Slide 51 Wonderwall by Oasis ### Slide 52 2. ### Slide 53 Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day ### Slide 54 3. ### Slide 55 Sunflower by Post Malone, Swae Lee ### Slide 56 4. ### Slide 57 Gaddi Red Challenger by Babbu ### Slide 58 5. ### Slide 59 Why This Kolaveri Di ### Slide 60 6. ### Slide 61 Brown Rang by Yo Yo Honey Singh ### Slide 62 Anti Clockwise Round 12 questions +10/0 for bounce +10/-5 for pounce Provide the complete answer for full points, on pounce Split scoring applicable, on bounce QM discretion is final ### Slide 63 1. A famous tourist spot in India is named for the convergence of four creeks. This spot has become iconic for a kind of street food. What is this place, which is slowly becoming a genericized word for any market thronged with food stalls in other cities in Central and Western India? ### Slide 64 safety slide ### Slide 65 Chowpatty ### Slide 66 2. When you go to [X].com, you are greeted by a prominent image (top pic). This website is currently managed by a company run by AI influencers. If you visit [Y].com, you are redirected to the home page of a learning company that was owned by Pearson until 2020 and if you visit [Z].com you land on a website (bottom pic) owned by a Dallas HQ company. Give X, Y and Z; the three terms are related. All of you have encountered it for at least a few years, at some point in your lives. (Pic follows) ### Slide 67 (picture slide) ### Slide 68 safety slide ### Slide 69 X - Physics, Y - Biology, Z - Chemistry ### Slide 70 3. In 2016, Canadian chef Kelvin Cheung opened a nautically themed seafood restaurant in Mumbai. It became the default Bollywood A-list hotspot almost immediately and later spawned many branches. The name of this restaurant chain is inspired by a talking crab from the 1989 Disney animated film The Little Mermaid. Identify this brand. ### Slide 71 safety slide ### Slide 72 Bastian, from Sebastian ### Slide 73 4. First instance of? ### Slide 74 safety slide ### Slide 75 First-ever instance of CT scan ### Slide 76 5. In August 2026, Hindustan Times ran a column on India's elderly struggling with OTPs and UPI. The headline was a pun on an American metal band's name, which also described how elders are coping with the complexities of automation and digital systems. Give me the headline ### Slide 77 safety slide ### Slide 78 Age against the machine ### Slide 79 6. Introduced in the Victorian era, this physical feature was present in the flagship products of the Big Four, helping people navigate their contents rather than fully peruse them. From the 20th century, as these products moved online, the feature became almost obsolete. In 2025, in its first revision in 22 years, one of the Big 4 (the only American one) insisted on retaining the obsolete physical feature purely out of nostalgia. The only US machine capable of doing them had shut down since it was last needed, so the work had to go to India. What feature? ### Slide 80 safety slide ### Slide 81 Thumb notches on dictionaries ### Slide 82 7. Bhramari, is a form of Shakti who is worshipped beside the Jyotirlinga at Srisailam. Her name is also given to a pranayama performed with a low humming exhalation. Who is she considered the goddess of? ### Slide 83 safety slide ### Slide 84 Bees ### Slide 85 8. Until 1975, this Southeast Asian kingdom flew a red flag bearing a three- headed white elephant beneath a nine-tiered umbrella. Maha Sila Viravong, a scholar of literature and history, was asked in 1945 to produce something distinct from the royal standard. He took his cue from a neighboring country’s tricolor, which had displaced that country's own white-elephant flag. Identify the country [3] Which mythological creature does the former flag represent? [3] What does the blue band in the center of the present flag represent? [4] (Pic follows) ### Slide 86 (picture slide) ### Slide 87 safety slide ### Slide 88 Laos; Airavat; Mekong river ### Slide 89 9. In post-WWII Soviet Russia, Stalin’s government banned Western music, leaving fans desperate for alternatives. With this restriction and vinyl unobtainable, a sound engineer named Ruslan Bogoslovsky built a copy of a recording lathe and started pressing bootlegs onto the flexible plastic sheets available in bulk for free from hospital waste. The results were single-sided, played at 78 rpm, wore out after a few dozen plays, and had their spindle holes burned through with a lit cigarette. They carried jazz, rock and roll, tango and were sold hand to hand at flea markets. Over a million records were circulated. Because of what they were cut on, buyers could see ribs, skulls and shattered pelvises through the grooves, which gave the records their popular name. What were they made from and what were they called? [5+5] ### Slide 90 safety slide ### Slide 91 Discarded X-ray films; known as bone music or "ribs" (rebra) ### Slide 92 10. A blazar is a supermassive black hole shooting out a jet of plasma at almost light speed. One of them, PKS 1424+240, was among the brightest gamma-ray and neutrino sources in the sky, yet its jet seemed to move slowly. After 15 years of research, astronomers at the Max Planck Institute found the jet is aimed almost perfectly at Earth. The slowness is a projection effect and the direct view boosts its apparent brightness. The nickname for this blazar comes from a mid-20th-century work of fiction that features a fiery, dangerous watcher whose gaze can only be turned in one direction at a time. What nickname/ fictional character? (Pic follows) ### Slide 93 (picture slide) ### Slide 94 safety slide ### Slide 95 Eye of Sauron ### Slide 96 11. The €500 is the highest-value euro banknote. It was nicknamed the ___ _____ because everyone knew it existed but nobody ever saw one. The ECB stopped issuing it in 2019 precisely because its main users were criminals. FITB ### Slide 97 safety slide ### Slide 98 Bin Laden ### Slide 99 12. This building is an octagon with no prayer hall. At its center is not a floor but a bare outcrop of exposed bedrock. The mosaics carry some of the earliest dated Quranic inscriptions anywhere in the world. One band, over the inner arcade, is addressed directly to Christians, warning them not to say "Three." The Crusaders turned it into a church, faced the rock in marble and cut Latin texts over the Arabic. Salahuddin stripped all of that out after 1187. What building is this? (Pic follows) ### Slide 100 (picture slide) ### Slide 101 safety slide ### Slide 102 Dome of the Rock (Qubbat al-Sakhra), Jerusalem ### Slide 103 ty!