Cornell Tournament 2004 Packet 2
Questions by Cornell (Scott Francis, Matt Reece, Peter Onyisi, Jordan Gremli, Dan
Passeser) and Sudheer Potru
Tossups
1) First studied in the laboratory by Darley and Latane in 1968, factors explaining this
occurrence include social loafing, pluralistic ignorance, and diffusion of responsibility.
Exemplified in the cases of Deletha Ward and James Bulger, the most famous incident
surrounding involves the 19-year-old Kitty Genovese, murdered in cold blood while 37
people looked on. For ten points, name this phenomenon dictating that an individual's
tendency to help those in trouble decreases when more people are nearby.
ANSWER: Bystander effect
2) Typically very nucleophilic, they are non-polar and insoluble in water and can form
nitriles when combined with ammonia. The disubstituted variety of these compounds is
termed “internal”, while monosubstituted ones are dubbed “terminal”. They obey
Markovnikov’s rule, and often undergo reactions in which their two pi bonds are changed
to sigma bonds, an effect of Lindlar’s catalyst. For ten points, name these organic
compounds with form “C-sub-n H-sub-2n-minus-2”, whose simplest example is
acetylene.
ANSWER: Alkynes
3) Joseph seeks the fortune Maria is heir to, and to this end joins in the plot to break up
her relationship with his brother Charles. This plot is carried out by the forger, Snake.
Returned from Australia, and in disguise, Sir Oliver Surface buys family portraits from
his nephew Charles. One famous scene has Sir Peter Teazle hiding in a closet while Lady
Teazle hides behind a screen. For ten points, what is this Richard Brinsley Sheridan play
featuring Lady Sneerwell?
ANSWER: The School for Scandal
4) People referred to his rather active wife, Sarah Childress, as “The Presidentress.” He
served as Speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839 and became governor of Tennessee in
1839, going on to lose the gubernatorial elections in 1841 and 1843. However, later in
his career he was nominated for president on the 9th ballot in the Democratic Convention
and won the presidential nomination for the party, going on to use such slogans as “54-40
or fight” to defeat his opponent, Henry Clay, in the 1844 election. Nicknamed “The
Napoleon of the Stump,” for ten points, this 11th president, the first so-called “Dark Horse
candidate,” was in office during the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War.
ANSWER: James Knox Polk
5) Locals refer to it as “rakshasa.” It comes in three species: the small Raksi-Bombo, the
medium-sized Rimi, and the huge Nyalmot. Two theories as to its origin are that it is
either a descendant of the gigantophitecus or of the A-o-re people. Its scalp, actually that
of a goat, is kept in the Khumjung Gompa monastery. For ten points, on his trip up
Everest, Edmund Hillary did not find this Nepalese abominable snowman.
ANSWER: Yeti (prompt on “abominable snowman” before it is mentioned)
6) His five-movement Violin Concerto, first performed by Saschko Gawriloff, makes use
of ocarinas and recorders. Two of his major influences are Bartók and Conlon
Nancarrow; he also has claimed a fascination with computer images of fractals as an
influence. Among his works are “Lux Aeterna” for unaccompanied voices, and the opera
Le Grand Macabre. For ten points, who is this Hungarian Jewish composer whose works
were used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey?
ANSWER: György Ligeti
7) Similarly to von Hoffmanstahl, this poet believed that although nothing exists beyond
reality, essences of perfect forms do, and it is the poet’s job to crystallize these essences,
thus making him “l’absent de tous bouquets,” an idea which he developed in his poem
with a double entendre for a title, Le Cygne (SEE-nyeuh). He died in 1898 while trying
to complete the vast compendium to which he simply referred as the “Great Work” or
“The Book.” Other works include “Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe,” Hérodiade, and a poem
about the thoughts of the titular animal. For ten points, name this French symbolist poet
of The Afternoon of a Faun.
ANSWER: Stéphane Mallarmé
8) In the fourth verse, the speaker tells the addressee to “Gimme what you got for a pork
chop” and says that “She threw it at me like I was a shortstop.” In the second verse, the
speaker admits that he “Gave her three hundred to strip, like buyin’ a throwback,” and
says that the girl shops at Frontenac and reminds him of Pocahontas. In the first verse, he
is more straightforward, saying “I know you grown a little bit, twenty years old, you legal
/ Don't trip off my people, just hop in the Regal.” For ten points, “Switch your hips when
you’re walkin’, let down your hurr,” and complete the following phrase from a Chingy
song off of Jackpot: “I like the way you do that…”
ANSWER: Right thurr
9) When this is implemented by copying, it can have the added benefit of compacting the
heap, improving a program's locality. Algorithms for it include treadmill, mark-sweep,
and reference counting. Some implementations include the concept of “weak pointers,”
which do not count as memory references to the algorithms. The Ada specification
allows but does not require it, it can be retrofitted very painfully into C, and Java
demands it. For ten points, name this process, in which out-of-use blocks of memory in a
program are reclaimed automatically without programmer intervention.
ANSWER: Garbage collection
10) His book American Policy in Nicaragua was published following his mediation of a
civil dispute, after which he served as governor-general of the Philippines. Secretary of
War under Harding and Roosevelt, he advised Truman to use atomic force on Japan. He
led the U.S. delegation to the London Naval Conference, and, after Japan invaded
Manchuria in 1932, he stated that the U.S. would not recognize any of its agreements.
FTP, name this secretary of state under Hoover who thus enunciated his namesake
doctrine.
ANSWER: Henry Louis Stimson, Jr.
11) It is dedicated to “Jack Chase, Englishman, Wherever that great heart may now be /
Here on Earth or harbored in Paradise.” The narrator sets the tone by describing the
suppression of a recent mutiny at the Nore, and tells how the title character is impressed
away from the Rights-of-Man. The title character, described as “welkin-eyed” and as the
perfect exemplar of the “Handsome Sailor,” nevertheless manages to fall afoul of the
master-at-arms of the H.M.S. Bellipotent. For ten points, the title character kills Claggart
and is sentenced to hanging by Captain Vere in this Melville short novel.
ANSWER: Billy Budd, Foretopman (or Billy Budd, Sailor)
12) Alfred Stock was the first to establish the naming of these compounds, and William
Lipscomb won his Nobel Prize for research into their structure. They involve abnormal
bonding for both elements involved. With normal covalent bonds, they would be
electron deficient; they get around this by having various types of three-center bonds,
where one electron pair is used to bond three atoms together. This involves “bridge”
hydrogens being bonded to two other atoms, as well as the direct sharing of electrons by
the other atomic species, which in isolation has three valence electrons. For ten points,
identify these compounds of hydrogen with boron.
ANSWER: Boranes (“boron hydrides” should earn a smirk and nothing else)
13) The flag of this nation consists of red, yellow, and blue sections, with a picture of an
eagle in the middle of the yellow part. The Nistru River flows through the eastern part of
this landlocked Eastern European nation, separating the regions of Bessarabia and
Transnistria. It is landlocked by the Ukraine, Romania, and Russia. This country was
formerly ruled by Romania, and became part of the USSR after World War II, finally
gaining its independence in 1992. It is the second-smallest former Soviet republic, the
most densely populated, and became the first to elect a Communist as president in 2001.
For ten points, name this nation, whose capital is Chisinau.
ANSWER: Moldova
14) In his poem, “On Nature,” he lays out his philosophy, beginning by describing how
he was driving his chariot around, surrounded by hot young girls, when he arrives before
the portals of Night and Day. This philosopher goes on to describe how the goddess Dike
sets him on the right path, namely that of Peitho, or persuasion, which states that “being
is, and non-being is not.” Therefore, all claims of non-being are illogical, as are claims of
change, since this man also believed that “all is one.” For ten points, name this preSocratic philosopher, the mentor of Zeno at the Eleatic school.
ANSWER: Parmenides of Elea
15) He attempts to use a logical sorites to discredit negritude and declares that “the tiger
does not shout its tigritude” in his essay collection, Myth, Literature and the African
World. He has written two novels, namely 1965’s The Interpreters and 1974’s Season of
Anomy. He is better known for plays, however, and in one of them, the character Olunde
resembles this author, as both men return from an English university education to their
Yoruba homeland. For ten points, the plays A Dance of the Forests, Death and the
King’s Horseman, and The Lion and the Jewel were written by this Nigerian playwright.
ANSWER: Akinwande Oluwole (Wole) Soyinka
16) Referenced in Rushdie's Midnight's Children as "endless mercurochrome", it resulted
in nearly 400 dead and 1200 wounded and arose originally from a protest of the Rowlatt
Acts. A precursor to the so-called "Non-Cooperation Movement", it took place at the
town square of Jallianwala Bagh, and its end saw public floggings in addition to the
shootings ordered by General Reginald Dyer. FTP, name this April 1919 event in the
Punjab, which takes its name from the Indian city housing the Sikh Golden Temple.
ANSWER: Amritsar Massacre
17) Most of the action occurs near Boston's Green line. The title refers to the fifth and
last in a series. Early on, a Canadian and an American on a cliff outside of Tuscon
discuss “the Entertainment.” The calendar has been put up for “subsidization,” resulting
in dates in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. The lives of ex-burglar Don
Gately, wheelchair-bound Québecois assassin Rémy Marathe, and tennis prodigy Hal
Incandenza are linked by the Entertainment, one of the experimental films created by
Hal's father. For ten points, identify this novel whose titular object is a movie that people
will die rather than stop watching, written by David Foster Wallace.
ANSWER: Infinite Jest
18) The most recent direct discovery of one was in the DONUT experiment. The 1988
Nobel Prize in Physics went to Lederman, Schwartz, and Steinberger for discovering the
second one. They come in doublets with the charged leptons. We only see one third of the
number that we expect from the sun, which in recent years has been the foundation for
evidence that they have mass. They respond to neither electromagnetism nor the strong
force, but they do have weak interactions. For ten points, what are these light neutral
particles first postulated to explain the continuous spectrum of beta decay by Wolfgang
Pauli?
ANSWER: Neutrino
19) When the protagonist is denounced by Cleisthenes, his cousin distracts the garbling
Scythian guard with the dancer Artemisia. In preparation for his task, the protagonist is
shaved and singed, and borrows an outfit from the tragic poet Agathon. Mnesilochus is
suspected by the titular chorus when he says that his cousin has not revealed one
thousandth of the faults of women, whereupon his cousin tries to intervene with failed
rescue scenes from Helen and Andromeda. For ten points, Euripides is put on trial for
defaming women during the namesake festival of this Aristophanes play.
ANSWER: Thesmophoriazusae (accept Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria or
equivalents)
20) An influence by Grünewald’s Heavenly Host above the Virgin and Child in the
Isenheim Altarpiece is suggested, as the sun breaks through the dark clouds over the
mountains in the upper right corner of this painting. The hero of this painting, also its
central focal point, appears as a knight clad in gold armor, leading a charge after the
chariot of his defeated foe. Though it is set in an Alpine landscape, and the soldiers are
clearly dressed in 16th-century garb, the depicted event, which is identified by a banner
painted above the central scene, took place in Asia Minor in 333 BC. For ten points,
name this painting depicting the victory of Alexander the Great over Darius III by
Albrecht Altdorfer.
ANSWER: The Battle of Alexander at Issus
21) He established his reputation in Rome with his marble statue of St. Bruno in the
Santa Maria degli Angeli, and cemented it with his anatomical study of a standing man,
Écorché. In 1785, he hurried across the Atlantic, commissioned to sculpt a marble statue
of Washington, and his most famous mythological work is his 1777 Diana. He is better
known, however, for busts of such famous personages as Mirabeau, Necker, Lafayette,
and Benjamin Franklin. For ten points, name this sculptor of four busts of Voltaire.
ANSWER: Jean-Antoine Houdon
Bonus
1) Given lines, name the Robert Burns poem for ten points each.
[10] “Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie, / O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!”
ANSWER: To a Mouse On Turning Her up in Her Nest with the Plough, November,
1785
[10] “We twa hae run about the braes / And pou’d the gowans fine; / But we’ve wandered
many a weary fitt […]”
ANSWER: Auld Lang Syne
[10] “But for a koontrie cunt like mine, / In sooth we’re not sae gentle; / We’ll take tway
thumb-bread to the nine, / And that is a sonsy pintle.”
ANSWER: Nine Inch Will Please a Lady
2) Identify the following North American lakes for ten points each.
[10] This lake was formed from the collapse of the volcano of Mount Mazama and is the
deepest lake in the United States.
ANSWER: Crater Lake
[10] This Louisiana lake measures about 40 miles by 25 miles. A series of locks created
in the 1920s allows boats to travel from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi through
this body of water, and New Orleans was built on its south shore.
ANSWER: Lake Pontchartrain
[10] This lake is the largest in the Canadian Northwest Territories with a surface area of
12,275 sq miles. The only town located on this lake is Deline.
ANSWER: Great Bear Lake or Sahtu
3) Name the following Popes from the given clues, 5-10-15
The Pope who launched the first Crusade
ANSWER: Pope Urban II
The Pope during the Holocaust
ANSWER: Pope Pius XII
The Pope who declined granting Henry VIII a divorce
ANSWER: Pope Clement VII
4) For ten points each, identify the following laws of physics.
[10] This law states that the quantum of energy, E, associated with an electromagnetic
field is given by E = the namesake constant times the frequency of the electromagnetic
radiation.
ANSWER: Planck’s Law
[10] This law states that the intensity of energy radiated from a blackbody increases
according to the fourth power of its absolute temperature.
ANSWER: Stefan-Boltzmann Law
[10] This law tells is used to find the wavelength of peak emission by dividing a constant
(about 2900) by the temperature.
ANSWER: Wien’s Law
5) Since nobody other than Frankel would get points on a bonus concerning
inthevip.com, here’s another bonus on random literary devices. Name them for ten points
each.
[10] Its name comes from the Greek for transport. An example of it is: “John was a lion
in battle.”
ANSWER: Metaphor
[10] As opposed to a tautology, this form of redundancy features the use of a superfluous
adjective for the sake of clarity or force, such as a “false lie.”
ANSWER: Pleonasm
[10] A Playboy article on “How to Date Smart Girls” advised that if you date a literarilyminded smart girl, you should pretend to be reading Master and Margarita when she
arrives, then be prepared to have a five-hour long discussion of this poetic technique in
the epic poetry of Homer. This Greek term denotes poetry concerning the visual arts,
artistic objects, or highly visual scenes, such as Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
ANSWER: Ekphrasis
6) Answer the following about operas by Meyerbeer for ten points each.
[10] The librettos to Meyerbeer’s most famous operas were written by this French
playwright and father of the well-made play.
ANSWER: Eugène Scribe
[10] This 1831 opera is about the son of Norman duke who is born in response to a prayer
made to Satan, but who eventually becomes a Christian.
ANSWER: Robert the Devil (Robert le diable)
[10] This 1836 opera details the love of Raoul de Nangis for Valentine, the daughter of
the Comte de St. Bris. At the end, Raoul overhears plans for the impending St.
Bartholemew’s Day Massacre and goes off to warn his comrades.
ANSWER: The (Les) Huguenots
7) Name these eponymous rules from organic chemistry for ten points each.
[10] This rule-of-thumb for recognizing aromatic hydrocarbons says the number of pi
electrons in a cyclic ring should be 4 n + 2.
ANSWER: Huckel's rule
[10] It says that in elimination reactions, the alkene with the more substituted double
bond is the major product.
ANSWER: Zaitsev's rule
[10] It says that bridgehead carbons are too constrained to have double bonds.
ANSWER: Bredt's rule
8) For ten points each, answer the following about a recently deceased Cornell grad
whose name provides the answer to the question “What’s the opposite of Christopher
Walken?”
[10] In an episode of South Park, this star of the Superman movies grows stronger by
sucking the stem cells out of dead fetuses.
ANSWER: Christopher Reeve
[10] In this 1980 movie, Christopher Reeve portrays Richard Collier, a Chicago
playwright who uses hypnosis to go back in time and pursue a woman, portrayed by Jane
Seymour, whose portrait he sees in a hotel.
ANSWER: Somewhere in Time
[10] Reeve portrays the titular corrupt priest who seduces a nun and leads the Vatican
into shady dealings in this unintentionally funny 1982 flick.
ANSWER: Monsignor
9) Name these Luigi Pirandello plays, none of which is Six Characters in Search of an
Author, for ten points each.
[10] A bunch of busybodies, led by Commendatore Agazzi, try to sort out the mystery
revolving around Signora Ponza, about whom her husband and her mother, Signora
Frola, tell conflicting stories. Lamberto Laudisi explains that it’s all relative.
ANSWER: It Is So! (If You Think So) or Right You Are! (If You Think So) (Così è,
se vi pare!)
[10] The title character, who fell from a horse during a traumatic fancy dress ball,
constructs an environment in which he and his acquaintances are the characters they
came as, thereby dragging in the “Marchioness” Matilda Spina and Baron Tito Belcredi.
ANSWER: Henry IV (Enrico IV)
[10] In this “country comedy,” the title character impregnates Tuzza, who, encouraged by
Aunt Croce Azzara, convinces the rich, impotent Uncle Simone Palumbo to leave his
wife Mita for her and an heir. The title character then impregnates Mita, and Simone
goes back to her, preferring a “legitimate” heir.
ANSWER: Liolà
10) Identify the architect from the first clue for 15, or from the second clue for ten.
[15] His church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp, France, can appear to represent a
bull's horn or a nun's wimple.
[10] He put his famous five points of architecture into practice in his Unite d'Habitation
in Marseilles, a 1,600-person apartment building.
ANSWER: Le Corbusier, aka Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris
[15] Le Corbusier's urban planning work inspired this man to become an architect. He
put into practice his ideas on urban design when he was placed in charge of rebuilding
Hiroshima.
[10] The spiritual father of post-World War II Japanese architecture, he has designed
such buildings as the National Gymnasium for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the Tokyo
City Hall complex.
ANSWER: Kenzo Tange
11) Given a description of a star, give its spectral class for ten points each.
[10] A star with a surface temperature of 5800 kelvin, rather like the Sun.
ANSWER: G
[10] A main-sequence red dwarf of 0.1 solar masses.
ANSWER: M
[10] A red giant showing significant amounts zirconium and other elements like yttrium
and barium in its photosphere.
ANSWER: S
12) Identify these works of J.S. Bach for ten points each.
[10] Bach wrote a series of six suites for this instrument; they have been notably recorded
by Rostropovich.
ANSWER: Cello
[10] This collection is in two parts, each including one prelude and one fugue in each of
the 12 major and minor keys. They demonstrate the capabilities of the new tuning system.
ANSWER: The Well-Tempered Clavier
[10] These 6 works were written for the Margrave of the title location. The fifth features
a harpsichord solo.
ANSWER: The Brandenburg Concertos
13) For ten points each, name these poetesses who, for some reason or another, make the
phrase “8th Street” come to mind.
[10] She wrote the poetry volumes Bad Boys and My Wicked, Wicked Ways, but is better
known for the prose-poem collection The House on Mango Street.
ANSWER: Sandra Cisneros
[10] This Chilean poetess, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature,
debuted with three “Sonnets of Death,” and also wrote Tenderness, Destruction, and The
Wine Press.
ANSWER: Gabriela Mistral (Lucila Godoy Alcayaga)
[10] She collected her poetry in the volume Poesía no eres tú, but is better known for the
novels The Nine Guardians and The Book of Lamentations.
ANSWER: Rosario Castellanos
14) Answer the following about Charles “Chinese” Gordon for ten points each.
[10] Gordon earned his nickname leading this group of 3,500 peasants in the defense of
Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion.
ANSWER: Ever-Victorious Army
[10] Later sent to the Sudan, Gordon perished during the rebellion of this religious figure.
ANSWER: Muhammad Ahmad Ibn As-sayyid abd’ allah, al-Mahdi
[10] In this, his magnum opus, Lytton Strachey suggested that Gordon deliberately
disobeyed orders to evacuate Khartoum during the Mahdist Rebellion.
ANSWER: Eminent Victorians
15) Identify the neurotransmitter from clues for ten points each.
[10] In the basal forebrain it plays a role in inducing REM sleep. Its receptors come in
nicotinic and muscarinic varieties.
ANSWER: Acetylcholine
[10] This is the major neurotransmitter which is usually inhibitory. Drugs that block its
action can cause seizures.
ANSWER: GABA (or Gamma-aminobutyric acid)
[10] Also known as 5-hydroxytryptophan, it plays a role in sleep. Inhibiting its reuptake
is the function of drugs like Prozac.
ANSWER: Serotonin
16) Answer these questions about a British author for ten points each.
[10] He is known for novels like When We Were Orphans and An Artist of the Floating
World that center on aging characters re-evaluating their lives.
ANSWER: Kazuo Ishiguro
[10] This best-known Ishiguro novel is the story of the butler Stevens looking back on his
service at Darlington Hall and questioning Darligton's dealings with Germany.
ANSWER: The Remains of the Day
[10] This first Ishiguro novel is the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in England
whose daughter committed suicide.
ANSWER: A Pale View of Hills
17) For ten points each, name the following Chief Supreme Court Justices who presided
over the given case:
[10] Marbury v. Madison
ANSWER: John Marshall
[10] Plessy v. Fergusen
ANSWER Morrison Remick Waite
[10] Roe v. Wade
ANSWER: Warren Earl Burger
18) Answer these questions on the early history of Uruguay, FTSNOP.
[10] The core of Uruguay was formed from this colonial region of Argentina, named for
its position relative to the Uruguay river.
ANSWER: Banda Oriental
[5/5] For five points each, name the two factions, loyal to the first and second presidents
of Uruguay, who battled each other in the “Great War.”
ANSWER: Blanco and Colorado
[10] In 1865, the Colorados, aided by Brazil, ousted the Blancos from power; Paraguay's
consequent intervention touched off this four-way war.
ANSWER: War of the Triple Alliance (prompt on Paraguayan war)
19) Answer the following about a linguistic phenomenon for ten points each. If you
happen to be a linguist, please take a few moments to clean up the nut you just busted.
[10] This is the union of two vowels, one sonantal and one consonantal, in one syllable.
ANSWER: Diphthong
[10] This is the contraction of two vowels into a diphthong or a simple vowel, as in
“diamond” (dye-mund).
ANSWER: Syneresis
[10] This is the separation of one syllable into two, especially the separation of a
diphthong into two simple vowels, as in “diary” (dye-uh-ree). This term also denotes the
two small dots above a letter marked by such division, as in Noël (no-elle).
ANSWER: Dieresis
[Note: if anyone tries to give “umlaut” for an answer, don’t accept it, and don’t listen to
them when they bitch, because according to the OED, an umlaut is “A change in the
sound of a vowel produced by partial assimilation to an adjacent sound (usually that of a
vowel or semivowel in the following syllable.”]
20) I positively refuse to write a “Raargh raargh metal” bonus, so I’ll write the next best
thing. Answer the following about Finno-Ugric myth for the stated number of points.
[5/5/5] For five points apiece, name the three central heroes of the Kalevala.
ANSWER: Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, Leminkainen
[5] This is the Finnish land of the dead, ruled by Tuoni and Tuonetar.
ANSWER: Tuonela
[10] This monstrous beast, the Finnish equivalent of Cerberos, guards both Tuonela and
the house of the death-goddes Kalma.
ANSWER: Surma