By Siddhartha Basu of Kaun Banega Crorepati Popular T.V. Show
Competition Success Review had been serialising selected questions
from the book BBC :
The Complete Mastermind. Now we are proud to present different sets of
questions every month from
another book—BBC Mastermind India, edited and compiled by India’s Ace Quiz
Master Siddhartha Basu
and published by Teksons Bookshop, New Delhi, in association with BBC. CSR
hopes that its readers
from all over India will find the series useful not only for various
competitive examinations
but also in widening knowledge base of India and the World, so that
they are able to participate creditably in various Quiz Contests.
1. Which British Member of Parliament drafted the bill for the reform and expansion of the Legislative Councils at the fifth Congress session in 1889 ?
2. What are the first ten amendments to the American constitution collectively known as ?
3. To which tribe of the Turks, named after the second son of Chengiz Khan, did the Mughals belong ?
4. In the game of chess, what is the maximum possible number of different point moves that a player playing with white can start with ?
5. Which catchphrase often used in publishing was coined by chemist Henry Wellcome in 1880s to describe a small new tablet he had invented ?
6. In Hindu myth, who is considered to be the physician of the gods ?
7. In 343 BC which son of Nicomachus, the court physician to Amyntas III of Macedonia, was invited by Philip II to educate his son Alexander ?
8. Which film director and short-story writer wrote India’s longest running weekly political column, Last Page from 1941 to 1986 in the chronicle Blitz ?
9. Which French General was bestowed the title of ‘Nawab’ by the Mughal emperor in 1761 ?
10. Gottfried Leibniz was one of the two mathematicians who developed calculus independently. Who was the other ?
11. Which mystical movement in Islam takes its name from the Arabic tradition of wearing garments of ‘wool’ ?
12. Which word was coined by Lewis Carroll to define words like smog in which two words combine together to make a new word ?
13. Which element, having the atomic number 27, derives its name from the German word for a goblin who allegedly haunts the places where it is mined ?
14. Which Norwegian explorer crossed the Pacific Ocean on a raft in 1947 ?
15. Which well known Indian won a Golden Bear at the 1967 Berlin Film Festival for his documentary Through the Eyes of a Painter ?
16. Which eighteenth century British philosopher and economist is acknowledged as the founder of Utilitarianism ?
17. In the first century BC, Lepidus, Octavius and which other statesman established the second Roman Triumvirate ?
18. Which European capital city is served by the port Piraeus ?
19. Aphrodite Terra and Ishtar Terra are the two major landmasses on which planet ?
20. Which royal sacrifice in ancient India is believed to have ensured the prosperity and fertility of the kingdom ?
Answers
1. Charles Bradlaugh
2. Bill of Rights
3. Chaghtai
4. Twenty
5. Tabloid
6. Dhanwantari
7. Aristotle
8. K. A. Abbas
9. Joseph Dupleix
10. Isaac Newton
11. Sufism
12. Portmanteau
13. Cobalt
14. Thor Heyerdahl
15. M. F. Hussain
16. Jeremy Bentham
17. Mark Anthony
18. Athens
19. Venus
20. Ashwamedha