1 Petrichor, a word first coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, is a phenomenon most of us strongly associate with childhood and growing up. Define it.

2 Sadie Thomson (1928), starring Gloria Swanson, Rain (1932), a Joan Crawford film, and Miss Sadie Thomson (1953), which featured Rita Hayworth in the title role, all tell the story of a prostitute, Sadie Thomson, and a conflicted missionary. These films were based on the same short story Rain. Who wrote it?

3 Cherrapunji is no longer the wettest place in the world. That credit now belongs to Mawsynram, a town about 16km away. In which Indian state would you find both towns?

4 World Cup football and rain, both topical. This particular World Cup football final was played in pouring rain, and the runaway favourites lost to the underdogs. Two reasons were attributed: the first being that the captain of the winning side, a certain Mr Walter, played his best football in these conditions, and the second that the Adidas boots used by the winning side had the option of interchangeable studs, which could be adapted to all conditions. Which year was it? Which were the two teams?

5 Now for the cricket World Cup. In 1992, the eventual champions, Pakistan, were within a hair’s breath of being knocked out of the tournament when they were bowled out for 74. Fortunately for them it started raining soon after the opposition started batting and they shared points and lived to fight another day. Who were their opponents?

6 In the 1930s, a certain Gabriel Pascal introduced two famous phonetic exercises. One was ‘In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen’. The other line has attained cinematic immortality! What is the other line and in which film were you likely to have heard it?

7 In which film do you see Amitabh Bachchan and Moushomi Chatterjee traipsing around in the Mumbai rain to the strains of ‘Rim Jhim Gire Sawan’?

8 Silver iodide, potassium iodide and dry ice are the three most common chemicals used for which specific purpose? The last major occasion they were used was the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

9 This 1984 Prince-starrer is puzzlingly regarded as both a cult classic and one of the worst films ever made, and was nominated for quite a few Razzies. However, the music album of the same name has gone platinum 13 times over and is regarded as a modern classic. Name the film or the album.

10 Which award-winning novel of the ’90s is named after a poem from the Kuruntokai by the Sangam poet Sembula Peyaneerar and was inspired by the autobiography of the Anglo-Indian soldier James Skinner?

Answers

1. It’s the distinctive scent which accompanies the first rain after a warm dry spell. Unmistakable!

2. Somerset Maugham

3. Meghalaya (appropriately!)

4. 1954, Germany and Hungary. The German captain was Fritz Walter

5. England, whom they eventually defeated in the finals.

6. ‘The rain in Spain stays mostly in the plain,’ from the film My Fair Lady. Both these Pascal lines featured in the original GB Shaw play Pygmalion

7. Manzil

8. Cloud seeding, to cause rain (the Chinese used them to clear pollution and to make sure it didn’t rain during the Opening Ceremony)

9. Purple Rain

10. Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra

Joy Bhattacharjyais a quiz master, Director - Kolkata Knight Riders and author of Junior Premier League — The First XI

Follow Joy on Twitter >@joybhattacharj

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