1. With the exception of the whale which animal has the biggest mouth?
2. What is the Sanskrit and Pali term for a Buddhist monastery? It originally meant ‘a secluded place in which to walk’, and referred to ‘dwellings’ or ‘refuges’ used by wandering monks during the rainy season. And which State of India gets its name because of the abundance of Buddhist monasteries in that area?
3. What is the name of the typhoon that has killed at least 50 people and displaced more than 1,00,000 others across the Philippines since October 17 2015?
4. What word is the opposite of the word extinct and is used to describe living species?
5. Who is the only cricketer to have played, captained and umpired at Lord’s.
6. In the game of Ludo, the winner has to reach the centre of the board. According to legend what does the centre represent?
7. In what colour is Krishna generally depicted in Tanjore paintings?
8. What is the name of the sculpture of Mother Mary holding the body of Christ in her arms after his body was brought down from the cross? Located at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, it is the only signed work by the artist Michelangelo.
9. The slogan ‘Divide and Quit’ is credited to which figure of the Freedom Struggle?
10. Cariocas are the inhabitants of which city?
11. If you flew due east from Cape Horn where would you cross over land next?
12. Who founded the Mughal dynasty and who was its last emperor?
13. What shape can be converted into a rectangle by cutting a right angled triangle off one end and sliding it to the opposite end?
14. “This is the biggest drink of water after the longest drought of my life.” Which Hollywood director said this about what?
15. What name is used to describe domestic cats with a spotted coat that is predominantly white, with patches of two other colours (often orange tabby and black)? The word used refers to the pattern and comes from a textile that originated from and is named after the city of Kozhikode in Kerala!
Answers
1. Hippopotamus
2. Vihara and Bihar
3. Typhoon Koppu
4. Extant
5. S Venkataraghavan
6. Emperor Akbar’s throne. Akbar supposedly invented the game Ludo, originally called *Parchesi*.
7. White
8. Pieta
9. Mohammed Ali Jinnah
10. Rio de Janerio
11. Cape Horn
12. Babar and Bahadur Shah Zafar respectively.
13. Parallelogram
14. Steven Spielberg when he received his first Oscar for Schindler’s List.
15. Calico cat (the textile calico gets its name from Calicut)