Question Ably - 30: Answer

The connect is Leander Adrian Paes. He partnered these ladies to win his six mixed doubles titles. For those interested in a little more gyan:

Wimbledon (1999) with Lisa Raymond
Australian Open and Wimbledon (2003) with Martina
US Open (2008), Australian Open (2010) and Wimbledon (2010) with Cara Black

As you may have noticed I'm on first name terms with Martina. 

Question Ably - 30

Lisa Raymond, Martina Navratilova and Cara Black: Please give a very specific connect between these tennis players

Question Ably - 29: Answer

Parle and Parle-G it is.

Question Ably - 29

Back to back questions on business.

This Indian company is family owned. It started operations in 1929. The chairman says they're interested neither in selling off, nor in buying any more businesses, nor in going public. Such 'conservatism' hasn't stopped the company from becoming a Rs.10,000 crore business. The product it makes measures 53 mm and is reputedly the world's largest selling single brand, selling 15 billion units a month.

Brand and product please.

Question Ably - 28: Answer

Skoda Auto and Volkswagen are the two brands. Skoda Auto was hived off from Skoda Works.  I found a nice picture of what look like gun turrets being made at Skoda Works.

Question Ably - 28

For many decades this brand was associated with the largest industrial works in Eastern Europe, mostly manufacturing a wide array of armaments. During the inter-war years when Churchill was impressing upon his government about the impending Hitlerite threat, he specifically mentioned this industrial plant as a key strategic element which the British would give up if they allowed Nazi Germany to acquire the country in which it was situated.

After the Second World War when the Communists took over the country, they nationalized this factory and dismembered into various specialist plants.

Today this brand is associated, at least in India, with something completely different from munitions. Somewhat ironically, another famous brand from what was once the aggressor-country now owns the brand we're talking about.

Which brand?

Question Ably - 27

Abraham Lincoln had engaged their services. Dashiel Hammett was employed with them. They were used to break labour union strikes. They even featured in the iconic movie 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'. At the height of their power, their employees were said to number more than the standing army of the US. Their influence was so pervasive and pernicious that a law was passed prohibiting the federal government from employing them and their ilk. Which organisation?

Question Ably - 26: Answer

(Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Sir Charles van Dyck or van Dyke (1599 - 1641) is the painter. Though a Dutchman, he became the court painter in England. He is known for his paintings of King Charles I, which is why the beard style is also known as 'Charlie'.

van Dyke has other things named after him.

Van Dyke Brown is an early photographic printing process named as such because the brown colour obtained by using the process resembled the brown oil paint used by the painter.

A Van Dyke suit is a velvet suit worn by young men in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (don't ask for further details, Wiki hasn't any). 

Question Ably - 26

A goatee is a tuft of facial hair on the chin, with the cheeks shaven clean. The style is named after the similar growth of chin hair on goats. Of course, the difference is that goats have no choice in the matter.

Sometimes, a related style of facial hair is mistakenly called a goatee. This style differs from the goatee in that it combines a mustache with the typical goatee. The style is named after a celebrated painter of the 17th century. He wore one himself. He also painted a king of England with it and therefore, the style is sometimes nicknamed after the king.

Identify the painter and you have identified the style.

Question Ably - 25: Answer

Who? Antoine Lavoisier. That's who.

Widely regarded as the father of modern chemistry, he is credited with identifying oxygen. Actually, he called it 'oxygen gas' and thought of it as consisting of two elements: oxygen, which is the principle of acidity and caloric, which is the principle of heat. It was left to his great rival Joseph Priestley to set right some problems with this way of understanding oxygen.

Lavoisier's contribution to modern science can be summarized this way:
a) He helped bid goodbye to many un-/semi-/pseudo-scientific notions of modern chemistry's predecessor, alchemy.
b) He established clearly the distinction between elements and compounds.
c) Finally, he attached numbers to chemistry, so that things could be measured and therefore predicted.

(Courtesy: 'On Giants' Shoulders' - Melvyn Bragg)

Question Ably - 25

He was born into the French aristocracy and became a tax collector, a profession much hated by the people. He invited greater scorn by collecting money to build a wall around Paris, a wall which would help in collecting more taxes. Parisians felt their movements at night were restricted and hated the man for it.

When the Revolution came, tax collectors were seen as enemies of the people. He was imprisoned and eventually guillotined, conducting himself with remarkable dignity and poise till the very end.

Posterity knows him not for tax collection but for his contributions to science. It is said that when he heard the sentence, he asked for a few weeks time to complete some experiments. The judge replied, 'The revolution does not need scientists'.

A contemporary said in anguish, 'It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.'

Who?
       

Question Ably - 24: Answer

(Image courtesy: http://www.duncans-tea.com/brands/index.htm)

Runglee Rungliot - or Rangli Rangliot and so on, you get the idea - is the answer.

In this connection, one of the avid readers of this blog wrote, along with his correct answer within minutes of the question going online:

"When my sister and I were growing up, I remember we used to wonder at these tin boxes with a picture of a Tibetan lama blowing one of those Tibetan horns and 'Runglee Rungliot' written on top. There was never any tea in there, as the boxes were used to store some other things. We figured out what those two words meant only after the Google age. Your question this morning brought back fond memories and tears of happiness."

Of course, the last sentence is mine entirely. The mind's tendency to rung liot. I mean run riot.

Question Ably - 24

A Buddhist monk stepped into a tea garden and was so enchanted by the aroma, he said, 'Thus far and no further.' Not in English, Tibetan presumably. The two words he said in his native tongue is now a premium tea brand owned by the Duncan Goenka Group. The name also refers to the tea-garden itself where this tea is grown; the garden is part of the tea garden tourism in the area.

The two words please. 

Question Ably - 23: Answer

(Courtesy: Wikipedia)


The answer is 'Terminus'; terminus and terminal are the noun forms.
  

Question Ably - 23

He lives on in two noun forms, especially in modern transport and computers. But he was once a god, the god of boundaries. Who?

Question Ably - 22: Answer

As some of you correctly answered, X is Simon Wiesenthal. The book is "The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness".

Wiesenthal is of course most well-known as the Nazi hunter who was instrumental in tracking down Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who played an important role in sending hundreds of Jews to their deaths in Poland and Hungary.

Question Ably - 22

A slightly long question. Escuse pliss.

X is a prisoner of the Nazis. While doing hard labour in a makeshift military hospital for wounded German soldiers, he is summoned to the bedside of a man swathed in bandages. The man asks if X is a Jew, and when X says yes, the injured man reveals that he is a member of the dreaded SS. He confesses to taking part in a mass killing in a horrific manner of two hundred Jews. He then asks for forgiveness from X. X listens to the soldier but leaves the room without a reply.

X recounts this incident in a bestselling book and opens up his action (of refusing forgiveness to a dying man) to scrutiny by readers. Many, including the likes of Gunter Grass, Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Miller, reply. The book is still used to discuss the morality of vengeance and forgiveness.

X and the book please.

Question Ably - 21

Many got the answer to this one: Silsila.

Going by the inputs a friend gave me, the question may not have been technically very correct. But since many gave the correct answer, I'll assume that it was OK :)

Question Ably - 21

Over the centuries, formal Islamic education has formed various 'schools'. Every school's pedigree is traced back through a line of successive masters and students and as it gets closer to the time of the Prophet, the authenticity of the school is more firmly established.

In the Indian subcontinent, four such important schools are the Sufi Islamic orders of the Chishtiyya, the Naqshbandiyya, the Suhrawardiyya and the Qadiriyya.

What is the formal name (in Arabic) for this chain of teachers and students?

(Hint: Mr. Bachchan senior should know.)
     

Question Ably - 20: Answer

Christmas pudding or plum pudding is the answer.

The physics connection is J. J. Thomson's 'plum pudding model' of the atom.

More later. Off on a trip across the Vindhyas!