Season 4 - Week 2

Question 1

In the ten years following the end of the military dictatorship in 1985,which countryexperienced hyperinflation that was only ended with the implementation of a set of measures known as thePlano Real? Finance minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected president because of the success of those measures, although his tenure saw a surprise devaluation of this country’s currency known as the “Samba effect”.

Answer 1

Brazil

Question 2

Marking the point at which the sacred begins, a torii is a gate, typically painted in a vermillion shade of red, that is found at the entrance to shrines in which religion?

Answer 2

Shintoism

Question 3

This marine arthropod was among the first creatures in the fossil record to develop the sense of sight and lived for 270 million years until its extinction at the end of the Permian about 252 million years ago.Which extinct creatureis so named because the back of its body was uniquely divided into three distinct sections?

Answer 3

trilobite or Trilobita

Question 4

In 1985, in a boat on the river Moselle, an agreement was signed that abolished border controls between several European countries. The location was near the tri-point* of France, Germany, andwhich much smaller country? The village of Schengen in this country gave the agreement its name.

Answer 4

Luxembourg

Question 5

Le Théâtre et son Double (The Theatre and Its Double) is a collection of essays by Antonin Artaud [AR-TOH] which contains his manifestos for which form of theatre that aimed to shock audiences by assaulting their senses through gesture, image, sound, and lighting?

Answer 5

Theatre of Cruelty

Question 6

In the mid-14th century, Jewish communities were falsely blamed for outbreaks of Black Death in Europe leading to a series of pogroms. Among the most infamous of these massacres occurred on Valentine’s Day, 1349, when hundreds of Jewish people were publicly burnt to death inwhich free imperial cityin Alsace?

Answer 6

Strasbourg

Question 7

Languages that cannot be classified into larger language families because they have no known relationship to any other existing languages are known bywhat name? Ainu in Japan and Haida [hye-da] in North America are commonly given as examples of such languages.

Answer 7

language isolates or isolated languages or orphan languages (but do not accept ‘isolating’ languages)

Question 8

The best known of the geometric shapes known as fractals have a fractional dimension, leading to self-similarity. Perhaps the best-known example of a fractal curve is the boundary of a set named afterwhich man? This Polish-born, Franco-American mathematician coined the term ‘fractal’ and first demonstrated visualisations of this specific fractal in 1980.

Answer 8

Benoit Mandelbrot

Question 9

The Zulu Kingdom was founded in 1816 bywhich powerful kingwho is credited with changing the nature of warfare in Southern Africa with militaristic innovations such as the introduction of the ‘buffalo horns’ formation?

Answer 9

Shaka kaSenzangakhona or Shaka Zulu or Sigidi kaSenzangakhona

Question 10

This donut-shaped region beyond the orbit of Neptune is one of the largest structures in our solar system and contains millions of icy trans-Neptunian objects. Kenneth Edgeworth proposed its existence in 1943, but did so in a little-known journal, meaning this ‘belt’ was instead named afterwhich Dutch-American astronomer?

Answer 10

Gerard Kuiper

Question 11

Which Italian architecthelped shape Brazilian modernism with her Brutalist designs for the São Paulo Museum of Art and Centro de Lazer Fábrica da Pompéia? In 1988, she turned a burnt office building into a performance space for Teatro Oficina, who were an important part of the Tropicalia movement.

Answer 11

Lina Bo Bardi or Achillina Bo

Question 12

What term is used in academic literatureto refer to verses which were once purportedly taken to be a part of the Quran, but which were later denounced by the Prophet Muhammad and removed? This term names a noted Salman Rushdie novel.

Answer 12

Satanic verses

Question 13

Which major workby Mozart was completed after his death by his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr [soos-my-er]? The manuscript shows that Mozart produced detailed drafts of the music up to theDies Iraedee-ez ee-rehsequence, but theSanctusand later movements were completed by Süssmayr based on fragments and earlier works.

Answer 13

Requiem mass in D minor, K. 626

Question 14

One tri-point is shared between Nigeria, Niger, and this country, while another tri-point is shared between Nigeria, Cameroon, and this country. This iswhich countrywhich gives its name to a now mostly dry lake in which both aforementioned tri-points are to be found?

Answer 14

Chad

Question 15

A mathematical set named afterwhich German mathematicianhas the property of self-similarity and is therefore often described as the “prototype” of a fractal? Its so-called “ternary” set can be created by iteratively removing the open middle third from a set of line segments.

Answer 15

Georg Cantor

Question 16

Which two lettersform thename of a well-known scale for measuring acidity and alkalinity that was introduced in 1909 by the Danish chemist S. P. L. Sørensen?

Answer 16

pH (scale)

Question 17

Which African countryhas reorganised its currency four times since gaining independence in 1980? It stopped issuing its own currency in 2009 after hyperinflation hit its peak the year before, and the US dollar and South African rand became the most widely used currencies.

Answer 17

Zimbabwe

Question 18

Which American architectdesigned Brutalist structures in Honolulu such as the IBM Building, Lum House, and annexes in the city’s airport? Born in Russia and educated in Japan, he was renowned for his unique cross-cultural residential homes in Hawaii, with Liljestrand [lilleh-strand] House being the foremost example.

Answer 18

Vladimir Ossipoff

Question 19

Stretching north-eastwards from the Pantanal wetlands is a huge ecoregion of tropical savanna about ten times as big. The Brazilian highlands known asPlanaltomake up a significant portion ofwhich ecoregiondeclared the biologically richest savanna in the world by the WWF?

Answer 19

Cerrado

Question 20

Explorer 1 first detected the existence of these tori of energetic charged particles using a Geiger counter.Which ‘belts’ of intense radiation, composed of energetic charged particles trapped by the earth’s magnetic field, are named after the space scientist who designed the scientific instrumentation for Explorer 1?

Answer 20

Van Allen radiation belts

Question 21

Including fire that is gathered from 16 different sources, such as from lightning, hearths, and cremation pyres,Atash Behram(Fire of Victory) is the highest grade of fire inwhich religion? Only nine of the world’s 167 temples to this religion display this grade of fire which is used in purification rituals.

Answer 21

Zoroastrianism

Question 22

What fish-like invertebrate chordateis the most distantly related ancestor to share the same olfactory receptors with humans? Named after its resemblance to a weapon used by cavalry soldiers*, this primitive filter feeder can be found buried in the sand with only the mouth end projecting.

Answer 22

lancelet or amphioxi

Question 23

Artaud [AR-TOH] co-founded the Theatre Alfred Jarry to stage works that would influence his conception of the Theatre of Cruelty. The theatre was named after a French author best-known forwhich comic play, a bizarre 1896 parody of Shakespearean tragedy that centres on the titular infantile and slovenly antihero?

Answer 23

Ubu Roi (accept King Ubu or Ubu the King or King Turd)

Question 24

During the Black Death, many Jewish people fled to Poland seeking the protection ofwhich Kingwho encouraged Jewish communities to settle in his country, offering them shelter as “People of the King”? Around 70% of the world’s Ashkenazi [ASH-keh-NAH-zee] Jews can trace their ancestry back to Poland as a direct result of this man’s reforms.Regnal name and number (or epithet) required.

Answer 24

Casimir the Great or Casimir III or Kazimierz III or Kazimierz Wielki

Question 25

The Titius-Bode Law, a rough rule that predicts the spacing of the planets in the Solar System, was proposed by Johann Titius in 1766 and formulated as a mathematical expression by Johann Bode in 1778. Though the law is now viewed as a mathematical coincidence, it led to the discovery on 1 January 1801 of which dwarf planet named after the Roman goddess of agriculture?

Answer 25

Ceres

Question 26

The 'H' in pH scale stands for which element that is found in all acids?

Answer 26

hydrogen

Question 27

Which national language is commonly described as a language isolate despite being grouped in a language family with the Jeju [jee-joo] language of the namesake islands? Created by King Sejong [see-jong] the Great in 1443, Hangul is an 'alphabetic syllabary' used to write this language.

Answer 27

Korean

Question 28

Another of Shaka's great military innovations was the introduction of the spear known as an iklwa [eek-wah], a shorter version of which slender African stabbing weapon with a name derived ultimately from the Berber for 'spear'?

Answer 28

assegai

Question 29

It has been suggested that which composer evoked Mozart’s Dies Irae [dee-ez ee-reh] in the Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt (For here have we no continuing city) movement of his 1867 work Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem)? Instead of using the standard Latin text, this composer assembled the libretto from text in the Lutheran Bible.

Answer 29

Johannes Brahms

Question 30

The first creature in the fossil record known to have developed the ability to produce sound was a katydid [kate-ee-did], or bush cricket, insects which to this day generate exceptionally loud sounds by rapidly buckling and unbuckling drum-like structures on their bodies. What scientific name is given to the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts, such as is seen in the katydid?

Answer 30

stridulation

Question 31

Which city gives its name to the German government that lasted from 1918 to 1933? It experienced hyperinflation in the early 1920s, which resulted in the introduction of a new currency backed by land used for agriculture.

Answer 31

Weimar

Question 32

Although it ran for only three years, the Theatre Alfred Jarry attracted many influential artists such as which author who included Jarry as a character in his 1925 novel Les Faux-Monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters)?

Answer 32

André Gide

Question 33

Which Salman Rushdie novel has been judged to be the best Booker Prize winner of all time in polling conducted in 1993 and 2008? In the book, Saleem, the narrator and protagonist, has powers that allow him to connect telepathically with one thousand other kids, born like him, at the very moment of India’s independence.

Answer 33

Midnight’s Children

Question 34

One of the earliest fractal curves to be described, is a ‘snowflake’* built by adding equilateral triangles onto the side of a larger equilateral triangle iteratively? The constructed shape encloses a finite area but has an infinite perimeter and is named after which Swedish mathematician who first described it in a 1904 paper?

Answer 34

Helge von Koch

Question 35

It makes up a large part of north-eastern Argentina, covers most of Paraguay, and stretches into Bolivia and Brazil. Which huge, semi-arid lowland region of the Río de la Plata basin has given variants of its name to provinces in both Bolivia and Argentina?

Answer 35

Chaco or Gran Chaco or dry Chaco

Question 36

A Manastambha [man-a-stam-ba], or column of honour, is a pillar typically constructed in front of temples of which ancient Indian religion? The three main metaphorical pillars of this religion are ahiṃsā (non-violence), anekāntavāda (non-absolutism), and aparigraha (asceticism).

Answer 36

Jainism

Question 37

Which Cambodian architect designed several Brutalist structures in Phnom Penh including the Preah Suramarit [pray soo-ra-marrit] National Theatre and the National Sports Complex? A student of Le Corbusier, he was instrumental in the creation of the New Khmer Architecture movement.

Answer 37

Vann Molyvann

Question 38

Another of the most notable Black Death pogroms occurred on 21 March 1349 when anywhere between 100 and 3,000 Jewish people were massacred in which Thuringian city, home to a significant Jewish community since the 11th century?

Answer 38

Erfurt

Question 39

Stretching north-eastward from the Andes in Colombia towards the coast of Venezuela lies a large grassland plain of about 375,000 sq km. Straddling the Orinoco for a long stretch of its run, what is the Spanish-language name of this region?

Answer 39

Llanos

Question 40

All temples dedicated to which religion are built with nine entrances and display a calligraphic representation known as "The Greatest Name" as the temple's centrepiece, typically at the centre of its dome? This religion's best-known temples include one on the shores of Lake Michigan and another shaped like a lotus flower in New Delhi.

Answer 40

Baháʼí

Question 41

Europe's only surviving language isolate is which language known as euskara to its speakers?

Answer 41

Basque

Question 42

In 2012, Salman Rushdie published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of the turmoil in his life in the wake of the Iranian fatwa issued after the publication of The Satanic Verses. The name Joseph Anton is a tribute to two writers; Anton Chekhov and which author in whose novel The Secret Agent the title character is killed by his wife?

Answer 42

Joseph Conrad or Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski

Question 43

This country has two tri-points within Lake Tanganyika; one in the north shared with DR Congo and Burundi, and one in the south shared with DR Congo and Zambia. This is which country created in 1964 by the merger of a former nation named after Lake Tanganyika and a nearby island?

Answer 43

Tanzania

Question 44

What freshwater vertebrate has helped researchers uncover that early terrestrial animals were able to hear sounds through their breathing organs? Named after an organ that evolved from its swim bladder, this eel-like creature has existed since the Triassic and is the closest living relative of limbed vertebrates.

Answer 44

lungfish or Dipnoi or dipnoans or Ceratodontimorpha (accept salamanderfish)

Question 45

The dramatic and recognisable Dies Irae [dee-ez ee-reh] is the best-known movement in which Italian composer’s Requiem mass? Written in 1875 for the author Alessandro Manzoni, it was criticised by Hans von Bülow as "an opera in ecclesiastical robes" and is the most famous of this composer’s non-operatic works.

Answer 45

Giuseppe Verdi

Question 46

What was the name of Shaka's half nephew who was Zulu king at the time of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879? The Zulu kingdom was eventually disbanded following this man's defeat at the Battle of Ulundi.

Answer 46

Cetshwayo

Question 47

Similar to the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping [dung zhow-ping], the ruling communist party of which country sought to transition to a "socialist-oriented market economy" in the late 1980s with a series of economic reforms known as Đổi Mới [doy MY]? Đổi Mới followed years of economic difficulties – including an inflation rate of over 700% – that this country had experienced following its reunification.

Answer 47

Vietnam

Question 48

One of the most common pH indicators is filter paper impregnated with dyes extracted from various species of lichens. In use since the Middle Ages, and still common in schools, what name is given to this dye that causes paper to display red in the presence of an acid and blue in the presence of a base?

Answer 48

litmus

Question 49

Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty was a major influence on which author whose play Le Balcon (The Balcony) centres on a brothel run by Irma whose "closet dramas" were described by Carol Rosen as "the Artaudian double of their impotent bases in truth"?

Answer 49

Jean Genet

Question 50

Although he was eventually defeated, Cetshwayo [ketsh-wye-oh] inflicted one of the most damaging defeats ever experienced by the British Empire. At which battle of January 1879 did the Zulu army, armed primarily with assegais and cow-hide shields, overwhelm their enemies, killing at least 1,300 British troops?

Answer 50

Isandlwana

Question 51

The title of which 1995 Salman Rushdie novel is taken from the story of Boabdil, the last king of Granada, who is also mentioned frequently in the book? The book draws on Boabdil's surrender of Granada, and key events in India in the 1990s including the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the 1993 Bombay bombings.

Answer 51

The Moor's Last Sigh

Question 52

From a Tupi word meaning 'white forest' or 'white vegetation', which semi-arid ecoregion consisting of thorny shrubs and stunted trees covers nearly 10% of Brazil's territory in the interior portion of the country's northeast? One of the country's six major ecoregions, it is the only exclusively Brazilian biome, with many of its species found nowhere else on Earth.

Answer 52

Caatinga

Question 53

This plane fractal is a generalisation of the Cantor set, and, in a similar manner to the Koch snowflake, can be generated by iteratively subdividing squares to form grids of smaller squares. This is the so-called ‘carpet’ of which Polish mathematician who first described it in 1916?

Answer 53

Wacław Sierpiński

Question 54

Which region that defines the cosmographical boundary of our Solar System is a hypothetical spherical envelope of up to a trillion icy objects? Though first proposed in 1932 by Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik to explain where long-period comets came from, this 'cloud' is now usually named after a Dutch astronomer who independently proposed it in 1950.

Answer 54

Oort Cloud or Öpik-Oort Cloud

Question 55

Which Sri Lankan architect included elements of Brutalism in his designs for the Heritance Kandalama Hotel, Strathspey Estate Bungalow, and his country's Parliament Building? One of the original proponents of Tropical Modernism, his recognisable style has been embraced around the world.

Answer 55

Geoffrey Bawa

Question 56

In a pair of papal bulls issued in 1348, Pope Clement VI had sought to protect Jewish communities from attack but his efforts were undermined by which Holy Roman Emperor incentivising rioting by declaring property of Jewish people killed in riots forfeit? A king of France with the same regnal name and number (this man's uncle) had expelled Jewish communities from France in 1322.

Answer 56

Charles IV or Carolus IV or Charles of Luxembourg

Question 57

On the pH scale, which number indicates neutrality? Solutions with a pH less than this number are acidic, and solutions with a pH greater than this number are basic.

Answer 57

seven

Question 58

Which French composer said that his Requiem mass was dominated by "un sentiment bien humain: la confiance dans le repos éternel" ("the very human feeling of confidence in eternal rest") and as such he completely omitted the Dies Irae [dee-ez ee-reh] movement and instead included an In Paradisum? The requiem, which he revised between 1888 and 1901, is perhaps his most famous work.

Answer 58

Gabriel Fauré

Question 59

A language isolate found in Nicaragua is commonly abbreviated in Spanish to ISN and is of particular interest to linguists because of the ability it affords them to study an entirely new language. Thought to have developed spontaneously in Nicaraguan schools during the 1980s, ISN is what particular form of language?

Answer 59

sign language or signing or signed language

Question 60

With which country does Afghanistan share a 921 km long border running between a tri-point with Turkmenistan at the northern end of this border and a tri-point with Pakistan at the southern end? A 1973 treaty obliges Afghanistan to allow water from the Helmand River to flow into this country, although it has sometimes been withheld, causing water shortages in this country’s province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

Answer 60

Iran