Wordgasm is the first-ever wordplay quiz to be conducted in India. Hosted by Tamal Dutta at the Jadavpur University in April '19, the quiz saw participation from over twenty open two-member teams. The quiz has been appreciated widely across Kolkata, Pune, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore for the innovative approach it brings to the framing of questions and for bringing back the joy of cracking a question!
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Wordgasm: The Wordplay Quiz
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WORDGASM
THE WRITTEN WORDPLAY QUIZ
By Tamal Dutta
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The Thank You Slide
• Baneswar for proof-reading the questions while keeping
his other works aside.
• Sayantan for being the pundit of the gang who nurtured
our interest in wordplays.
• Quite aptly, Machh Bhat for the prizes.
• Enquiry for the venue arrangements and logistical support.
• All the participants for showing up.
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Rules
• There are 40 questions in the quiz which add up to a total
of 54 points.
• There are 10 starred questions (Q 1 to 10, 15 points) that
will be used to break ties.
• In case there is a tie in starred questions too, the team
with the longer streak will get the better rank.
• The QM is not far-sighted and has not decided what to do
in case the longest streak is also equal for tied teams.
• The questions do not have negatives.
• Half points are the prerogative of the QM.
• In most cases, spellings matter.
• Chocolates for smart wordplays that are better than the
actual answer!
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*Question 1.
X is a 2018 Tamil film written and directed by Santhosh P.
Jayakumar and stars Arya and Sayyeshaa in the lead roles.
The main plot of the film revolves around a youngster
named Rajinikanth. Everything is perfect for him, but the
fact that he has some issues with his memory and mind
diversion problems pulls his prospects down. More often, he
faces a lot of backlashes because of this issue.
Reviews have called it “a forgetful film about a forgetful
man.”
A pun on the name of the lead character, what is X?
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*Question 2.
In the second episode of his extremely controversial and
completely irreverent show, Who is America?, Sacha Baron
Cohen interviews a famous personality while in disguise.
He asks him, “Can I take a X with you?” and proceeds to click
the image on the next slide.
A smart and funny quip on the name of the personality,
what is X which sometimes creeps its way into many
unsuspecting females’ inboxes?
[Image on the next slide]
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*Question 3.
After the infamous 7-1 drubbing of Brazil by Germany in the
2014 FIFA World Cup, Metro Sport carried a headline about the
match, “X-ed”, where X is a two-word term. X might remind of
you of the alphanumeric sequence U96.
What is X?
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*Question 4.
OMG: __ __ _____! {2, 2, 5} is a blogpost by Jennifer Siegel where
she wrote about her travel to a certain city. She mentions that
it is impossible to visit this European city and not hear about
_____ or see his work. _____’s work in the city includes the Casa
Milá, Parc Güell, Palau Güell, and the Casa Batlló.
Fill in the blanks. (1)
__ _______ __________ {2, 7, 10} is a blogpost on TripAdvisor by an
anonymous user about _____’s most famous work in the city.
The title of the post reflects the idea that the work does not
follow the most common conventions and, therefore, is quite
unique to behold.
Fill in the blanks. (1)
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*Question 5.
In their book, X: The All-Consuming Epidemic, authors John De
Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor define the term X as
“a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload,
debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the relentless
pursuit of more.”
X is a portmanteau of a word meaning an “abundance of
money, property, and other material goods” and a common
infectious disease.
What is X?
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*Question 6.
The trailer is for a micro-budget horror comedy film by Richard
Lowry. It’s name is a wordplay on another horror franchise that
started in 1996 and includes live-action and animated films,
video games, and novels. What is this film called?
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*Question 7.
This historical event happened in southern Belgium in 1944
and it involved an unsuccessful attack by the German forces
against the Allies.
The name of the event is also used humorously as a phrase to
signify a struggle or a fight to lose weight by going on a diet.
The phrase was also used by New York Post to refer to the
Anthony Weiner scandal when he was fighting to defend his
innocence in 2011.
Which historical event or what phrase? (1)
In another edition in 2016, New York Post reported on the
reopening of the Weiner case by the FBI. The paper called the
scandal X, a wordplay on a controversial international non-
profit organization that has collected 10 million documents in
the 10 years since its launch. What is X? (1)
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*Question 8.
This is the synopsis of a parody novel whose name can be
derived by reversing the position of two words in the
original title:
“X is young and beautiful. Her scales have an iridescent sheen, her wings arch
proudly, her breath has a tang of sulphur. But when X is drawn into a dark
conspiracy, she will have to rely on more than her beauty and her vicious
claws the size of sabres. As X delves deeper into the history of her species, will
she realize that her kind will do anything to defend their secrets.”
The lead protagonist X’s name can be derived by changing the
surname of the original character with the name of an
amphibian believed to be one of the reasons for the origin of
the mythology surrounding the species of X.
Name the book and identify X. (2)
[Image on the next slide]
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*Question 9.
When the following image surfaced on the featured person’s
social media, Reddit users noted that it is “a picture of a X
standing in front of Xs.” It has been popular on the Internet
with that description ever since.
What is X?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 9 (Contd.)
X
Xs
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*Question 10.
Adult film star Aliana Love plays herself in this autobiographical
drama about an actress who arrives in L.A. to become famous,
but gets swept up in the seedy porn industry. At first it is a
dream come true - she has got all the money a woman could
want - but later, when her lover and on-screen co-star Tom
Powers becomes a drug addict, Aliana finds that rescuing him
from self-destruction and achieving mainstream success will
take every ounce of drive and talent she has got.
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*Question 10 (Contd.)
This 12-page comic tells the story of Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, Tol
Sivron, and Bevel Lemelisk presenting a certain architectural
proposal to Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader and how they
all humorously discuss the fallacies of the proposal. They finally
agree to go-ahead with the proposal along with the fallacies
due to a lack of budget.
If the movie and the comic derive their names by adding a word
to the title of a classic film, name the described movie and
comic. (2)
Additionally, what is the largest online encyclopaedia for Star
Wars called? (1)
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Question 11.
In March 2017, The Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos
Verdes was defaced by activists presumably attempting to send
the president a message about climate change. Five people
entered the facility in dark clothing and quickly got down to
carving large letters into the grass, spelling out:
“NO MORE X, NO MORE Y.”
The activists claimed responsibility for the incident and cited
the humanitarian crisis of global warming and animal welfare
as the group's motive.
What are X and Y, which together form the name of a
sportsperson?
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Question 12.
This scene from Mirzapur has been given a two-word moniker
in Hindi by online reviewers and fans alike.
What moniker?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 13.
India’s first book fair with only women’s books came to being
with X organized by the Women Writers' Association of West
Bengal in May 2005. The second X was held in December 2006
and concentrated on East Indian women literature. After a
hiatus, X returned in 2013 with a three day festival at ICCR. It
has been held annually since then with the latest edition
happening in 2018.
Taking its name from “female friend”, what is X?
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Question 14.
In July 2016, when the price of crops was on a rise, Rahul
Gandhi made a speech taunting Modi about the issue. He said,
“Modiji, you can make false promises about Start-up India, Stand-up India,
Make in India, Digital India, but it is difficult to fool the people on prices.
Everywhere in cities, towns, villages, people are no longer saying, ‘Ghar ghar
Modi, Har har Modi”, they are saying, ‘X Modi, X Modi’.”
If X was a reference specifically to the high price of pulses
across the country, what is X? (1)
After demonetization, Mamata Banerjee took pot-shots at the
Prime Minister during a visit to Patna. Insinuating that Modi has
taken money from corporates to carry out this plan, she said,
“Children these days say the other word for _____ is _____.”
If the first blank in a company that had been in news during
demonetization, fill in the second blank with a wordplay. (1)
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Question 15.
On February 1st 2019, The Sports Daily published an article
called “__ ____ ___ ___” {2, 4, 3, 3} to show that even though the
Eagles were very close to getting back into a second
consecutive Super Bowl, the mathematics of winning the
Super Bowl was against them. There was only a 6% statistical
chance of repeating as Super Bowl winners, and about a 12%
chance of making it to a consecutive Super Bowl at all.
Fill in the blanks for the article, which is a pun on one of the
most-quoted sitcom lines of all time.
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Question 16.
X Volume 1 and 2 form a two-book graphic novel that is an
anthology of stories about the undead with a total of six tales
by writers like Shane McCarthy, El Torres, and Ashley Wood.
The Marvel X is a collection of issues under a single volume
where Marvel’s heroes are transformed into flesh-eating
monsters. After devouring the people on Earth, they set their
sights higher, taking on Galactus, spreading into space, and
breaking into new dimensions.
What is X which is a portmanteau of two words and is a
wordplay?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 17.
Lee Jackson runs The Dictionary of Victorian London and collects
Victorian jokes. In one such joke, Lee mentions that Macbeth
was called the “greatest chicken-killer in Shakespeare”
because he committed ______ ____ ____ {6, 4, 4}.
The blanks form an alliterative phrase which is a wordplay on a
similar famous phrase from Hamlet but is often wrongly
attributed to Macbeth because of the nature of his crime. The
phrase is also the name of a Miss Marple film.
Fill in the blanks.
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Question 18.
Look at the advertisement carefully and fill in the blanks with
a three-word term which might excite many of us here.
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Question 19.
BurJuman, an established destination mall in Dubai, came out
with an advertising campaign for awareness about a certain
two-word ailment. It asked a section of the population to “do
regular self exams, and be aware”.
BurJuman set up billboards with the name of the ailment
written in big fonts and two fingers forming a victory sign to
hide two letters of the first word such that the disease name is
converted into a motivational message.
Decipher the disease and the motivational message.
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Question 20.
Often after eating spicy and hot Indian or Thai cuisine
(among other cuisines), people who are not used to such
spicy food end up having an attack of hot, burning
diarrhoea. After repeated bowel movements, their digestive
system feels vacant and cleaned out.
A ritual where you drink a lot foreign alcohol in a short
period of time so you can vomit everything out of your
system.
What two-word term, that has extreme negative connotations,
does these two digestive rituals share their colloquial name
with?
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Question 21.
Promotional posters for a certain film carried these four words
from different reviews. Look carefully and tell me which film is
this?
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Question 22.
The poster for the eighth season of The Walking Dead was
edited by an online user to look like as given in the next slide.
Which two words (X and Y) have been blanked out from the
warning message below the photo?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 22 (Contd.)
X Y
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Question 23.
A Pokémon singing a song. Give me the two-word name of
the song, a pun on an actual song name. (1)
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Question 23 (Contd.)
Fill in the blanks with the names of two Pokémons. (1)
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Question 24.
In 1856, four years before he was elected president, Abraham
Lincoln addressed the Republican State Convention of Illinois.
In the speech, he reportedly said, “The X is stronger than the Y.“
It turned out to be eerily prophetic and ironic as Lincoln was
shot dead on April 14th 1865, five months after being elected
to a second term.
The first recorded use of Xs was in ancient Greece where
citizens used pieces of broken pottery to scratch in people’s
names in processes of ostracism.
The term Y is derived from the French word for “little ball”.
The quote remains relevant even today, especially in the current
Indian political scenario.
Identify X and Y. (2)
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Question 25.
Which one-word term is defined by Oxford as “a meeting or a
group discussion regarding the assigning of responsibility for
a failure or a mistake”? (1)
Which one-word term is defined by the Financial Dictionary as
“a slang term for an administrative assistant among whose
primary responsibilities is to limit access to his/her boss.
He/she may be hired if the boss is extremely busy, or if he/she
simply does not want unnecessary issues to bother him/her”? (1)
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Question 26.
In 2015, some of Hollywood’s biggest stars were publicly
shamed for the lushness of their lawns, as California’s
worsening drought entered its fourth year.
Among others, Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson were
branded as Xs by online campaigners and politicians for
flouting the state’s tight restrictions on water usage.
Which one-word term (X), a wordplay on a popular slang, was
used to describe such celebrities?
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Question 27.
“Bristly, sensitive, and meat-hungry Pip is a robust young
werewolf, an orphan born under a full moon. Between hunting
escaped convicts alongside zombified soldiers, trying not to
become one of the hunted himself, and hiding his hairy hands
from the supernaturally beautiful and haughty Estella, whose
devilish moods keep him chomping at the bit, Pip is sure he will
die penniless or a convict like the rest of his commonly uncommon
kind.“
This is the plot of a mashup novel by Sherri Browning Erwin.
Name the novel.
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Question 28.
The Frying Game is the 21st episode of the 13th season of The
Simpsons (2002) where Homer Jay Simpson is arrested for the
suspected murder of an elderly woman. At the end it is revealed
that he was actually a participant on a new reality TV show
called “Frame Up”.
In the episode, the local newspaper, Springfield Shopper, carries
a headline about the incident that says, “X trial starts today”
which is a call-back to something that started in 1994 and
spanned for almost a year.
If X is in {2, 1, 7} format, what is X?
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Question 29.
________ _____ _____ {8, 5, 5} is a chain of dessert shops in
Mumbai, Pune, and Kolkata started by entrepreneurs Neha Arya
Sethi and Aakash Sethi. In Kolkata, these shops are located in
Hungerford Street, Forum Courtyard, and Bidhannagar. The
name is a wordplay on the music supergroup from Sweden
consisting of Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso
whose final performance was at Ultra Miami in 2013 before a
short reunion at Ultra Miami in 2018.
_________ {9} is a bar and restaurant at Lake Terrace near
Deshapriya Park whose name is a wordplay on a novel and it
might make you think that their menu has fish items that you
cannot refuse.
Identify both the places. (2)
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Question 30.
Xs are investors that acquire distressed firms in the hopes of
making them more profitable so as to ultimately sell them for a
profit. Due to their aggressive investing nature, and methods
they use to make firms more profitable, Xs are often criticized.
These firms are on the brink of bankruptcy, and hence, Xs can
buy these firms at a much lower price. Then they attempt to
increase efficiency in order to turn the company around. Lastly,
they sell any equity they own, making a profit.
Xs are so called as they wait for firms to approach death and
then prey on these firms for their own profit.
Who are Xs?
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Question 31.
This graffiti painted by the artist HMI of the hip-hop group
CNN can be seen in an European capital city. It aims to utilize
the most recognizable landmark of the city by turning it into
a social message about communal harmony.
What is the two-word name of the graffiti? (1)
You can find t-shirts and other souvenirs in the city with the
line “Everyday I’m __________” written on them along with the
image of a vegetable associated with the place.
Fill in the blanks (1).
[Images follow in the next two slides]
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Question 32.
Name the two parody paintings. (2)
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Question 33.
In 2008, Nicolas Cage was signed in to play an unnamed X in a
Roman Polanski film called The X. The film was based on Robert
Harris’s novel about a X who gets hired to write the memoirs
of the British prime minister, played by Pierce Brosnan, only to
find himself in personal danger after a scandal. The role of the
X eventually went to Ewan McGregor.
When the news of Cage’s involvement in the project came in
the news, Vulture published a news article titled, “Nicholas Cage
is now X and Y” referencing another role that Cage played in a
2007 film and reprised later in another 2012 film.
Identify X and Y. (2)
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Question 34.
During the early days of the rise of social media in India, the
term X was used to describe men who would try to pursue
women they didn’t know with pickup lines like “Will you make
friendship with me?”
Believed to be coined by the actress Gul Panag, X is the
portmanteau of the name of a website and a slang in the
Hindi language.
What is X?
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Question 35.
Cheque De India is a parody film produced by MTV that stars
Ayushmann Khurrana as Fakir Khan, the owner of a domestic
cricket team. After Fakir is charged in a match-fixing scandal,
he looks for redemption. He decides to convert the men’s
cricket team into a women’s hockey team by cross-dressing
the cricketers.
What name does he give to the newly-formed hockey team by
changing one word from the original cricket team name to a
type of clothing?
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Question 36.
Twitterati have suggested that there should be a dating app
specifically designed for Punjabis given their strong and
boisterous nature and because they have unique requirements
and priorities.
Through a hashtag, they have even suggested a possible name
for the app, which is a wordplay on a city in Punjab.
What name?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 37.
“Ben, he blindly belts his briny bubbles,
Bungled buried bumblebees,
Beaky birds eat bread buns, ______ _. {6, 1}
Banned in their bower of bark nests,
Beasts are blandly biting butter beans,
Blinking bursar’s bid’s done, ______ _.
______ _, ______ _. ______ _, ______ _.
Blissful ‘burbs of Brisbane, ______ _.”
These are the opening lyrics of a parody of a Beatles classic.
What is the song called? (1)
In the trailer of Boyle’s Yesterday, we see Ed Sheeran suggest a
change in another classic to make it “sound cooler”. McCartney
wrote that song to comfort John Lennon's son after Lennon
left his wife for Yoko Ono. What would be the new song title? (1)
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Question 38.
___ ______ ____ {3, 6, 4} is a book of collected bathroom jokes
compiled by Dan Reynolds. The book opens with the following
lines:
“You are entering a dementia of both sound and smell,
shadow and substance. Down to the hall to the left, there is
___ ______ ____.”
Give me the name of the book.
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Question 39.
In the film Bhobishyoter Bhoot, when a director is thinking of
ideas for his next film, his assistant suggests that he should make
a film in the vein of the A series by director B. The director
replies,
“Erom idea diley tor upor C chherey debo, D korey ketey debey.”
C is a pun on the director B’s surname.
A and D are homophones.
What are B, C, and A/D?
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Question 40.
Which product or brand once had a print advertisement that
read “Where else can you get points for farting” and the
tagline “Every word counts”?
[Hint: This is a wordplay quiz after all.]
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Repeat
Peechoney Egiye Jaan
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Submit Sheets! Answers Follow.
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*Question 1.
X is a 2018 Tamil film written and directed by Santhosh P.
Jayakumar and stars Arya and Sayyeshaa in the lead roles.
The main plot of the film revolves around a youngster
named Rajinikanth. Everything is perfect for him, but the
fact that he has some issues with his memory and mind
diversion problems pulls his prospects down. More often, he
faces a lot of backlashes because of this issue.
Reviews have called it “a forgetful film about a forgetful
man.”
A pun on the name of the lead character, what is X?
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*Question 2.
In the second episode of his extremely controversial and
completely irreverent show, Who is America?, Sacha Baron
Cohen interviews a famous personality while in disguise.
He asks him, “Can I take a X with you?” and proceeds to click
the image on the next slide.
A smart and funny quip on the name of the personality,
what is X which sometimes creeps its way into many
unsuspecting females’ inboxes?
[Image on the next slide]
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*Question 3.
After the infamous 7-1 drubbing of Brazil by Germany in the
2014 FIFA World Cup, Metro Sport carried a headline about the
match, “X-ed”, where X is a two-word term. X might remind of
you of the alphanumeric sequence U96.
What is X-ed?
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*Question 4.
OMG: __ __ _____! {2, 2, 5} is a blogpost by Jennifer Siegel where
she wrote about her travel to a certain city. She mentions that
it is impossible to visit this European city and not hear about
_____ or see his work. _____’s work in the city includes the Casa
Milá, Parc Güell, Palau Güell, and the Casa Batlló.
Fill in the blanks. (1)
__ _______ __________ {2, 7, 10} is a blogpost on TripAdvisor by an
anonymous user about _____’s most famous work in the city.
The title of the post reflects the idea that the work does not
follow the most common conventions and, therefore, is quite
unique to behold.
Fill in the blanks. (1)
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Oh My Gaudi, La Sagrada Unfamiliar
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*Question 5.
In their book, X: The All-Consuming Epidemic, authors John De
Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor define the term X as
“a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload,
debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the relentless
pursuit of more.”
X is a portmanteau of a word meaning an “abundance of
money, property, and other material goods” and a common
infectious disease.
What is X?
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*Question 6.
The trailer is for a micro-budget horror comedy film by Richard
Lowry. It’s name is a wordplay on another horror franchise that
started in 1996 and includes live-action and animated films,
video games, novels, and an upcoming Netflix series.
What is this film called?
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*Question 7.
This historical event happened in southern Belgium in 1944
and it involved an unsuccessful attack by the German forces
against the Allies.
The name of the event is also used humorously as a phrase to
signify a struggle or a fight to lose weight by going on a diet.
The phrase was also used by New York Post to refer to the
Anthony Weiner scandal when he was fighting to defend his
innocence in 2011.
Which historical event or what phrase? (1)
In another edition in 2016, New York Post reported on the
reopening of the Weiner case by the FBI. The paper called the
scandal X, a wordplay on a controversial international non-
profit organization that has collected 10 million documents in
the 10 years since its launch. What is X? (1)
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Battle of the Bulge; Dickileaks
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*Question 8.
This is the synopsis of a parody novel whose name can be
derived by reversing the position of two words in the
original title:
“X is young and beautiful. Her scales have an iridescent sheen, her wings arch
proudly, her breath has a tang of sulphur. But when X is drawn into a dark
conspiracy, she will have to rely on more than her beauty and her vicious
claws the size of sabres. As X delves deeper into the history of her species, will
she realize that her kind will do anything to defend their secrets.”
The lead protagonist X’s name can be derived by changing the
surname of the original character with the name of an
amphibian believed to be one of the reasons for the origin of
the mythology surrounding the species of X.
Name the book and identify X. (2)
[Image on the next slide]
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The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo; Lisbeth Salamander
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*Question 9.
When the following image surfaced on the featured person’s
social media, Reddit users noted that it is “a picture of a X
standing in front of Xs.” It has been popular on the Internet
with that description ever since.
What is X?
[Image on the next slide]
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*Question 9 (Contd.)
X
Xs
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*Question 10.
Adult film star Aliana Love plays herself in this autobiographical
drama about an actress who arrives in L.A. to become famous,
but gets swept up in the seedy porn industry. At first it is a
dream come true - she has got all the money a woman could
want - but later, when her lover and on-screen co-star Tom
Powers becomes a drug addict, Aliana finds that rescuing him
from self-destruction and achieving mainstream success will
take every ounce of drive and talent she has got.
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*Question 10 (Contd.)
This 12-page comic tells the story of Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, Tol
Sivron, and Bevel Lemelisk presenting a certain architectural
proposal to Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader and how they
all humorously discuss the fallacies of the proposal. They finally
agree to go-ahead with the proposal along with the fallacies
due to a lack of budget.
If the movie and the comic derive their names by adding a word
to the title of a classic film, name the described movie and
comic. (2)
Additionally, what is the largest online encyclopaedia for Star
Wars called? (1)
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A Porn Star is Born; A Death Star is Born;
Wookieepedia
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Question 11.
In March 2017, The Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos
Verdes was defaced by activists presumably attempting to send
the president a message about climate change. Five people
entered the facility in dark clothing and quickly got down to
carving large letters into the grass, spelling out:
“NO MORE X, NO MORE Y.”
The activists claimed responsibility for the incident and cited
the humanitarian crisis of global warming and animal welfare
as the group's motive.
What are X and Y, which together form the name of a
sportsperson?
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No More Tigers, No More Woods
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Question 12.
This scene from Mirzapur has been given a two-word moniker
in Hindi by online reviewers and fans alike.
What moniker?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 13.
India’s first book fair with only women’s books came to being
with X organized by the Women Writers' Association of West
Bengal in May 2005. The second X was held in December 2006
and concentrated on East Indian women literature. After a
hiatus, X returned in 2013 with a three day festival at ICCR. It
has been held annually since then with the latest edition
happening in 2018.
Taking its name from “female friend”, what is X?
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Question 14.
In July 2016, when the price of crops was on a rise, Rahul
Gandhi made a speech taunting Modi about the issue. He said,
“Modiji, you can make false promises about Start-up India, Stand-up India,
Make in India, Digital India, but it is difficult to fool the people on prices.
Everywhere in cities, towns, villages, people are no longer saying, ‘Ghar ghar
Modi, Har har Modi”, they are saying, ‘X Modi, X Modi’.”
If X was a reference specifically to the high price of pulses
across the country, what is X? (1)
After demonetization, Mamata Banerjee took pot-shots at the
Prime Minister during a visit to Patna. Insinuating that Modi has
taken money from corporates to carry out this plan, she said,
“Children these days say the other word for _____ is _____.”
If the first blank in a company that had been in news during
demonetization, fill in the second blank with a wordplay. (1)
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Question 15.
On February 1st 2019, The Sports Daily published an article
called “__ ____ ___ ___” {2, 4, 3, 3} to show that even though the
Philadelphia Eagles were very close to getting back into a
second consecutive Super Bowl, the mathematics of winning
the Super Bowl was against them. There was only a 6%
statistical chance of repeating as Super Bowl winners, and about
a 12% chance of making it to a consecutive Super Bowl at all.
Fill in the blanks for the article, which is a pun on one of the
most-quoted sitcom lines of all time.
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Question 16.
X Volume 1 and 2 form a two-book graphic novel that is an
anthology of stories about the undead with a total of six tales
by writers like Shane McCarthy, El Torres, and Ashley Wood.
The Marvel X is a collection of issues under a single volume
where Marvel’s heroes are transformed into flesh-eating
monsters. After devouring the people on Earth, they set their
sights higher, taking on Galactus, spreading into space, and
breaking into new dimensions.
What is X which is a portmanteau of two words and is a
wordplay?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 17.
Lee Jackson runs The Dictionary of Victorian London and collects
Victorian jokes. In one such joke, Lee mentions that Macbeth
was called the “greatest chicken-killer in Shakespeare”
because he committed ______ ____ ____ {6, 4, 4}.
The blanks form an alliterative phrase which is a wordplay on a
similar famous phrase from Hamlet but is often wrongly
attributed to Macbeth because of the nature of his crime. The
phrase is also the name of a Miss Marple film.
Fill in the blanks.
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Question 18.
Look at the advertisement carefully and fill in the blanks with
a three-word term which might excite many of us here.
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Question 19.
BurJuman, an established destination mall in Dubai, came out
with an advertising campaign for awareness about a certain
two-word ailment. It asked a section of the population to “do
regular self exams, and be aware”.
BurJuman set up billboards with the name of the ailment
written in big fonts and two fingers forming a victory sign to
hide two letters of the first word such that the disease name is
converted into a motivational message.
Decipher the disease and the motivational message.
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Breast Cancer; Beat Cancer
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Question 20.
Often after eating spicy and hot Indian or Thai cuisine
(among other cuisines), people who are not used to such
spicy food end up having an attack of hot, burning
diarrhoea. After repeated bowel movements, their digestive
system feels vacant and cleaned out.
A ritual where you drink a lot foreign alcohol in a short
period of time so you can vomit everything out of your
system.
What two-word term, that has extreme negative connotations,
does these two digestive rituals share their colloquial name
with?
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Question 21.
Promotional posters for a certain film carried these four words
from different reviews. Look carefully and tell me which film is
this?
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Question 22.
The poster for the eighth season of The Walking Dead was
edited by an online user to look like as given in the next slide.
Which two words (X and Y) have been blanked out from the
warning message below the photo?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 22 (Contd.)
X Y
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Question 23.
A Pokémon singing a song. Give me the two-word name of
the song, a pun on an actual song name. (1)
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Question 23 (Contd.)
Fill in the blanks with the names of two Pokémons. (1)
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American Pidgeot; Abra and Kadabra
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Question 24.
In 1856, four years before he was elected president, Abraham
Lincoln addressed the Republican State Convention of Illinois.
In the speech, he reportedly said, “The X is stronger than the Y.“
It turned out to be eerily prophetic and ironic as Lincoln was
shot dead on April 14th 1865, five months after being elected
to a second term.
The first recorded use of Xs was in ancient Greece where
citizens used pieces of broken pottery to scratch in people’s
names in processes of ostracism.
The term Y is derived from the French word for “little ball”.
The quote remains relevant even today, especially in the current
Indian political scenario.
Identify X and Y. (2)
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Question 25.
Which one-word term is defined by Oxford as “a meeting or a
group discussion regarding the assigning of responsibility for
a failure or a mistake”? (1)
Which one-word term is defined by the Financial Dictionary as
“a slang term for an administrative assistant among whose
primary responsibilities is to limit access to his/her boss.
He/she may be hired if the boss is extremely busy, or if he/she
simply does not want unnecessary issues to bother him/her”? (1)
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Blamestorming; Deceptionist
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Question 26.
In 2015, some of Hollywood’s biggest stars were publicly
shamed for the lushness of their lawns, as California’s
worsening drought entered its fourth year.
Among others, Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson were
branded as Xs by online campaigners and politicians for
flouting the state’s tight restrictions on water usage.
Which one-word term (X), a wordplay on a popular slang, was
used to describe such celebrities?
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Question 27.
“Bristly, sensitive, and meat-hungry Pip is a robust young
werewolf, an orphan born under a full moon. Between hunting
escaped convicts alongside zombified soldiers, trying not to
become one of the hunted himself, and hiding his hairy hands
from the supernaturally beautiful and haughty Estella, whose
devilish moods keep him chomping at the bit, Pip is sure he will
die penniless or a convict like the rest of his commonly uncommon
kind.“
This is the plot of a mashup novel by Sherri Browning Erwin.
Name the novel.
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Question 28.
The Frying Game is the 21st episode of the 13th season of The
Simpsons (2002) where Homer Jay Simpson is arrested for the
suspected murder of an elderly woman. At the end it is revealed
that he was actually a participant on a new reality TV show
called “Frame Up”.
In the episode, the local newspaper, Springfield Shopper, carries
a headline about the incident that says, “X trial starts today”
which is a call-back to something that started in 1994 and
spanned for almost a year.
If X is in {2, 1, 7} format, what is X?
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Question 29.
________ _____ _____ {8, 5, 5} is a chain of dessert shops in
Mumbai, Pune, and Kolkata started by entrepreneurs Neha Arya
Sethi and Aakash Sethi. In Kolkata, these shops are located in
Hungerford Street, Forum Courtyard, and Bidhannagar. The
name is a wordplay on the music supergroup from Sweden
consisting of Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso
whose final performance was at Ultra Miami in 2013 before a
short reunion at Ultra Miami in 2018.
_________ {9} is a bar and restaurant at Lake Terrace near
Deshapriya Park whose name is a wordplay on a novel and it
might make you think that their menu has fish items that you
cannot refuse.
Identify both the places. (2)
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Sweetish House Mafia; Codfather
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Question 30.
Xs are investors that acquire distressed firms in the hopes of
making them more profitable so as to ultimately sell them for a
profit. Due to their aggressive investing nature, and methods
they use to make firms more profitable, Xs are often criticized.
These firms are on the brink of bankruptcy, and hence, Xs can
buy these firms at a much lower price. Then they attempt to
increase efficiency in order to turn the company around. Lastly,
they sell any equity they own, making a profit.
Xs are so called as they wait for firms to approach death and
then prey on these firms for their own profit.
Who are Xs?
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Question 31.
This graffiti painted by the artist HMI of the hip-hop group
CNN can be seen in an European capital city. It aims to utilize
the most recognizable landmark of the city by turning it into
a social message about communal harmony.
What is the two-word name of the graffiti? (1)
You can find t-shirts and other souvenirs in the city with the
line “Everyday I’m __________” written on them along with the
image of a vegetable associated with the place.
Fill in the blanks (1).
[Images follow in the next two slides]
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Ice Scream; American Gotham
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Question 33.
In 2008, Nicolas Cage was signed in to play an unnamed X in a
Roman Polanski film called The X. The film was based on Robert
Harris’s novel about a X who gets hired to write the memoirs
of the British prime minister, played by Pierce Brosnan, only to
find himself in personal danger after a scandal. The role of the
X eventually went to Ewan McGregor.
When the news of Cage’s involvement in the project came in
the news, Vulture published a news article titled, “Nicholas Cage
is now X and Y” referencing another role that Cage portrayed in
a 2007 film and reprised later in another 2012 film.
Identify X and Y. (2)
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Ghost Writer; Ghost Rider
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Question 34.
During the early days of the rise of social media in India, the
term X was used to describe men who would try to pursue
women they didn’t know with pickup lines like “Will you make
friendship with me?”
Believed to be coined by the actress Gul Panag, X is the
portmanteau of the name of a website and a slang in the
Hindi language.
What is X?
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Question 35.
Cheque De India is a parody film produced by MTV that stars
Ayushmann Khurrana as Fakir Khan, the owner of a domestic
cricket team. After Fakir is charged in a match-fixing scandal,
he looks for redemption. He decides to convert the men’s
cricket team into a women’s hockey team by cross-dressing
the cricketers.
What name does he give to the newly-formed hockey team by
changing one word from the original cricket team name to a
type of clothing?
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Question 36.
Twitterati have suggested that there should be a dating app
specifically designed for Punjabis given their strong and
boisterous nature and because they have unique requirements
and priorities.
Through a hashtag, they have even suggested a possible name
for the app, which is a wordplay on a city in Punjab.
What name?
[Image on the next slide]
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Question 37.
“Ben, he blindly belts his briny bubbles,
Bungled buried bumblebees,
Beaky birds eat bread buns, ______ _. {6, 1}
Banned in their bower of bark nests,
Beasts are blandly biting butter beans,
Blinking bursar’s bid’s done, ______ _.
______ _, ______ _. ______ _, ______ _.
Blissful ‘burbs of Brisbane, ______ _.”
These are the opening lyrics of a parody of a Beatles classic.
What is the song called? (1)
In the trailer of Boyle’s Yesterday, we see Ed Sheeran suggest a
change in another classic to make it “sound cooler”. McCartney
wrote that song comfort John Lennon's son after Lennon left
his wife for Yoko Ono. What would be the new song title? (1)
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Question 38.
___ ______ ____ {3, 6, 4} is a book of collected bathroom jokes
compiled by Dan Reynolds. The book opens with the following
lines:
“You are entering a dementia of both sound and smell,
shadow and substance. Down to the hall to the left, there is
___ ______ ____.”
Give me the name of the book.
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Question 39.
In the film Bhobishyoter Bhoot, when a director is thinking of
ideas for his next film, his assistant suggests that he should make
a film in the vein of the A series by director B. The director
replies,
“Erom idea diley tor upor C chherey debo, D korey ketey debey.”
C is a pun on the director B’s surname.
A and D are homophones.
What are B, C, and A/D?
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Kill Bill; Tarantino; Tarantula
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Question 40.
Which product or brand once had a print advertisement that
read “Where else can you get points for farting” and the
tagline “Every word counts”?
[Hint: This is a wordplay quiz after all.]