WIT XIV 2006: Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"
Extra tossups and bonuses for use as tiebreakers and/or replacements
Tossups
[Chicago B]
The initial stage direction at the beginning of this play indicates a "square arch shape" in the middle of the
stage, to indicate the physical absence of a previous wall and the metaphorical absence of Jessie, whose
husband claims that he had “never had a whore under this roof before. Ever since your mother died.” That
character's contempt for his wife is given credence at the end of the play, when Sam reveals in his dying
breath that “Macgregor had Jessie in the back of my cab.” By that point, the dual voids of mother-figure
and prostitute have been filled by Ruth, who agrees to leave her husband and instead turn tricks for his
brother, Lenny, and father, Max. FTP, name this Harold Pinter play concerning the return of Teddy from
America to his childhood London house.
ANSWER: The Homecoming
[Berkeley A]
The original program that the composer had written for this work revolved around the disillusion, self-pity,
and anguish of lost love which was appropriate when it was originally meant to be a one-movement
symphonic poem. The composer lengthened it into a 5 movement work before the second movement,
Blumine, was discarded in the end. With a third movement that conveys the composer's loss of innocence
through a grim funeral march set to a minor-key transposition of "Frere Jacques," FTP, name this
symphony, Mahler's first.
ANSWER: Titan (accept Mahler's Symphony No. 1 before it's mentioned)
[Berkeley B]
Stints with the AJHL’s Red Deer Rustlers and the WCJHL/WHL’s Lethbridge Broncos preceded NHL AllStar Game appearances in 1982, 1983, and 1985, Stanley Cup championships with the 1980, 1981, 1982,
and 1983 New York Islanders, captaincies of the New York Islanders, Chicago Blackhawks, St. Louis
Blues and Philadelphia Flyers, the 1991 Jack Adams award, and a combined 1,320 goals, 1,615 assists and
7,224 penalty minutes in the NHL, collectively, for these Viking, Alberta natives. No single game ever
featured more than four, but for twenty-five consecutive years, at least one of the six was playing in the
NHL. FTP, to what prominent hockey family do brothers Brent, Brian, Darryl, Duane, Rich and Ron
belong?
ANSWER: Sutter (Accept “Sutter brothers” or clear-knowledge equivalents. Prompt on any specific Sutter
brother before “Stanley Cup” is read; accept only the collective answer after “Stanley Cup” is read.)
[Harvard]
For any two general modules M and N, it is defined by the universal property that any linear map from the
product of M and N to another module factors uniquely through it. For two vector spaces V and W, it can
be viewed as the quotient space of the vector space with basis formed by the product of V and W and the
subspaces generated by bilinear relations on V and W. It distributes over the direct sum of vector spaces,
and its dual space is naturally isomorphic to the space of bilinear functionals. FTP, name this operation
that, given two vector spaces, gives a vector space with dimension equal to the product of the two previous
dimensions and is the most general representation of a bilinear operation.
ANSWER: tensor product
[Brown B]
The actual text of this address was only printed in 1989, over thirty years after its delivery to the 20th Party
Congress in a closed session. Initial reports of it were brought to the western world by a Reuters journalist,
and its occurrence was well known only a few weeks afterwards. Its actual title is “On the Personality Cult
and its Consequences,” but its more common name is something of a misnomer as a copy was printed in a
major American newspaper later in 1956, the year of its delivery, where it declared that “we must abolish
the cult of the individual decisively.” For ten points, give the usual name of this address, given by Nikita
Khrushchev and denouncing Stalinism.
ANSWER: “Secret Speech” (Accept “On the Personality Cult and its Consequences” before
mentioned)
[Chicago B]
This figure's name is given to a asteroid that some predict will strike the Earth in 2029. In some legends, his
head was made of flint, and his name translates as "he who was spat out", a reference to his spawning by
Nieth. Out of fear that he could draw power from artistic representation, he was never depicted without
another figure to subdue him. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, he was replaced in his role by Seth, who
in some stories kills him with a spear, but previously wax effigies of him were destroyed at Karnak during
solar eclipses, which were seen as this figure's attempts to destroy the sun. Ra typically took the form of a
cat when killing this figure by decapitation, but this figure would always be reborn and attack the solar
barge every night as it traveled through the underworld. The slithering representation of evil, chaos, and
darkness, for ten points, name this giant serpent from Egyptian mythology.
ANSWER: Apophis or Apep or Apepi or Apoph
[Harvard]
In the beginning, she was known as the wife of Ptah, the mother of Mihos, and a daughter of the sun god
Ra. Her early links to the sun are demonstrated in the title she shared with her fellow war-goddess
Sekhmet. Often depicted clutching a sistrum rattle, this “eye of Ra” became linked with the moon after the
ancient Greeks associated her with Artemis. FTP, name this ancient Egyptian deity, the protector of Lower
Egypt, whose lioness war-form is not quite as famous as the cat-headed one she assumed as patroness of
felines.
ANSWER: Bast
[Brown A]
In one of this man's novels, a main character is confined to an insane asylum where he pretends that he is
Napoleon III, while the titular animal dies alone in the street. He authored an 1875 poetry collection
entitled Americanas, and the jealous love of the title character Bento for Capitolina provides the plot for
one of his more famous novels, Dom Casmurro. More famously, this man wrote a novel narrated by the
dead acquaintance of Quincas Borba, a character who reappears in another of his novels, Philosopher or
Dog? The first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, for ten points, identify this Brazilian writer
most famous for such novels as The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.
ANSWER: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
[Berkeley A]
A band named for this object first appeared on Western television in 2002, captivating audiences with
driving bass lines and lyrics such as "You give me all your love, you give me all your kisses/ and then you
touch my BLANK, and don't know who it is." More extreme than its relatives the Hijab, Jilbab, and
Niquab, which vary from covering the head all the way to obscuring everything except the wearer's eyes,
this garment actually imposes a screen across the wearer's visual field. FTP, name this garment worn by
Muslim women, most famously associated with the Taliban, and recently banned by the parliament of the
Netherlands.
ANSWER: Burka
[Harvard]
In 1066, Anglo-Saxon monk Eilmer of Malmesbury said of it, “You’ve come, haven’t you? I see you
brandishing the downfall of my country.” Giotto’s Arena Chapel cycle may contain a reference to it; more
recently, sensational rumors that part of it contained cyanide were proven false on May 18, 1910.
According to one famous story, in 1456 it was thought to herald the downfall of the Christian defenders of
Belgrade, so Pope Callixtus III excommunicated it. Mark Twain was born during one of its appearances
and died during another, and its most recent perihelion, in 1986, was underwhelming, partially due to light
pollution. FTP, name this heavenly body which returns every 75 to 76 years, the most famous of all comets.
ANSWER: Halley’s Comet
WIT XIV 2006: Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"
Extra tossups and bonuses for use as tiebreakers and/or replacements
Bonuses
[Berkeley A]
Identify the American poet, given quotes, 30-20-10.
[30] "It's terrible...to think that all I've suffered and all the suffering I've caused might have arisen from the
lack of a little salt in my brain."
[20] "Nautilus island's hermit/still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;/ her sheep still graze above
the sea."
[10] "The old South Boston Aquarium stands/ in a Sierra of snow now. Its broken windows are
boarded./The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales."
ANSWER: Robert Lowell
[Chicago A]
This artist’s paintings include his Portrait of Ambroise Vollard and Still Life with Chair Caning. FTPE:
[10] Name this artist who portrayed himself as Harlequin in Family of Saltimbanques.
ANSWER: Pablo Ruiz y Picasso
[10] The masklike faces of the two figures on the right in this Picasso painting were inspired by his study of
African art. In all, there are 5 nude women in this painting whose name refers to a street in a seedy part of
Barcelona.
ANSWER: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or The Young Ladies of Avignon
[10] Picasso painted a cubist portrait of this man, his dealer, who also promoted the art of Braque, Leger,
and Gris, and wrote The Way of Cubism.
ANSWER: Daniel Henry Kahnweiler
[Stanford B]
Name these Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States FTPE:
[10] Appointed by Wilson, he was the first Jewish Justice. He developed a namesake brief.
ANSWER: Louis Brandeis
[10] Elevated by Taft to Chief Justice, he is best known for the “rule of reason” standard in anti-trust law.
ANSWER: Edward Douglass White
[10] Nominated by Calvin Coolidge, he described the Nuremberg court as “a high-grade lynching party.”
ANSWER: Harlan Fiske Stone
[Chicago B]
Identify the following World War II tanks, FTPE.
[10] Used by every major Allied power, this American-produced tank, designated M4 and named for a civil
war general, was inferior to German tanks by 1944 in combat potential, but superior in numbers, reliability,
ease of modification and ease of repair.
ANSWER: Sherman
[10] When first introduced in 1941, this most numerous Soviet tank was immensely superior to the German
competition. Up-gunned with an 85 mm gun at the end of the war, it was still in service with twenty-six
countries in 1996.
ANSWER: T-34
[10] Though fairly conventional in layout, and technically inferior to the T-34, this German heavy tank
with its 88 mm gun and heavy armor was a formidable opponent. An improved or “King” version was,
however, mechanically unreliable.
ANSWER: Tiger I tank (Accept Panzerkampfwagen VI or Pzkw VI)
[Chicago B]
Identify the following related computer games, FTPE.
[10] This series of games by Sid Meier is now on its fourth installment, for which an expansion called
“Warlords” was recently released.
ANSWER: Civilization
[10] Between Civilization II and Civilization III, Sid Meier released this very similar game, about the
progress of humanity’s first extrasolar colony and featuring factions such as the University of Planet and
Gaia’s Stepdaughters.
ANSWER: Alpha Centauri
[10] Between the original Civilization and Civilization II, Meier released this similar game, where the
player leads a European country’s New World settlements until strong enough to successfully fight a war of
independence against the mother country.
ANSWER: Colonization
[UCLA]
Two in parallel form a SQUID used to detect small magnetic fields. Its oscillation frequency is related to
voltage via electron charge over Planck's constant. FTPE.
[10] Name this device consisting of two superconductors separated by an insulating layer, in which Cooper
pairs of electrons can tunnel through in its namesake effect.
ANSWER: Josephson junction
[10] Nakamura, Pashkin, and Tsai used a Josephson junction between superconductors in a Cooper pair box
to simulate this theoretical device, with one pair as one qubit.
ANSWER: quantum computer
[10] When Brian Josephson wasn't working on superconductivity, he was editing the journal Consciousness
and the Physical World with this Indian-American neurologist at UCSD, who wrote Phantoms in the Brain
and A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.
ANSWER: Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
[Berkeley A]
FTPE, identify the following regarding a famous anthropological hoax.
[10] Between 1911 and 1915, hominid fossils were unearthed by Charles Dawson at this site in Sussex
County, England.
ANSWER: Piltdown
[10] The Piltdown man hoax was successful for decades because it supported the popular contemporary
theory that enlarged brain size evolved in humans before this trait.
ANSWER: Bipedalism (also accept reduced dentition size)
[10] In 1953, the hoax was uncovered when a careful analysis revealed that the recovered skull actually
consisted of the cranium of a modern human and the jawbone of one of these great apes.
ANSWER: (Sarawak) orangutan
[Berkeley A]
FTPE name the capitals of the following African nations.
[10] Liberia
ANSWER: Monrovia
[10] Eritrea
ANSWER: Asmara
[10] Burundi
ANSWER: Bujumbura