1. What was inspired by this 1757 painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and gained prominence in the early 19th century as a form of support for the erstwhile Spanish monarchy, which Napoleon Bonaparte deposed?
2. Which British television programme forms an integral part of David Nicholls’ 2003 novel Starter for Ten, in which the protagonist falls in love with a fellow contestant on the programme?
A still from RRR.
3. What was the name of the Manchester-based band Venom’s 1982 album, which dealt with themes of occultism, witchcraft, horrors, and violence and would become so influential that a whole genre of music was named after it?
4. Who is the current occupant of the building seen in this still from the 2022 film RRR?
5. When Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered a new element and named it gallium in honour of France, he was accused of trying to name it after himself. A similar reason also explains the use of a symbol by the French Football Federation. What was this reason?
A bottle of Yakult. | Photo Credit: PRASHANTH VISHWANATHAN/Bloomberg
6. On the basis of the Stable Diffusion AI, Seth Forsgren and Hayk Martiros developed an artificial intelligence model that generates music from text prompts. What is this model called; the name combines a concept in music with the original name of the AI?
7. If one were visiting the US Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and were viewing the collection of Otto Vollbehr, what landmark would the staff most commonly use to provide directions to the women’s restroom?
8. What is common to the evolution of the terms “love” in tennis and “duck” in cricket, both of which represent scores of zero?
9. What is common to the following: Suzuki Baleno, Yakult, Mirinda, and Movado?
10. What is the term used to describe the structures seen in the front of locomotive engines, originally meant to prevent certain occurrences that have been in the Indian news in recent months?
Sumant Srivathsan has a day job as a digital marketer, but his true calling is disambiguating football and soccer on the Internet.
Answers:
1. The blue and white colours of Argentina
2. University Challenge, the intercollegiate quiz show
3. Black Metal
4. Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
5. Gallus and Lecoq both mean rooster, in Latin and French, respectively
6. Riffusion
7. “Right behind the Gutenberg Bible”
8. Both are derived from eggs: l’oeuf, French for egg, and a contraction of “duck’s egg”
9. Brand names derived from Esperanto
10. Cowcatchers, meant to protect machine and cattle from collisions