The past few weeks have been marred by violence and catastrophe, first the Paris attacks and now the Chennai floods. When it is glum and grey all over, nothing works better than hope. This quiz is all about hope.

The better morrow

1 Why does the first woman on earth, created from water and earth by the Greek god Hephaestus and who owns a beautiful jar, deserve to be the first question?

2 “How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not ‘the thing with feathers.’ The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.” The quote also inspired the title of a book of writings by which film legend?

3 In 1984, his father named him Michael Mohammed, hoping he would be as famous and light-footed as the two gentlemen in question. Two decades on, the lad figured out that MJ and Ali were not the stellar names they used to be and changed his name to Mahaakshay. Identify his more illustrious father.

4 In July 1923, his Laugh-O-Gram studio based in Kansas had to file for bankruptcy. He had just enough money for a one-way ticket to LA. In October the same year, he founded a company that reported $42 billion in revenue in 2013. Identify this gentleman.

5 One of the thoughts on the origin of this phrase is with the familiar operatic role of Brunhilde in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

6 In 982 AD, Erik the Red convinced more than 1,000 Icelanders to join him in an expedition to settle in a new land, primarily on the basis of the name he had given the place. It might have been an exaggeration given that the average temperature there ranged between minus 8 and 7 °C, and 80 per cent of the land was covered in ice. Identify this place, which still bears the name given in the 10th century?

7 King John II of Portugal named this place the ‘Cape of Good Hope.’ Given the treacherous sea in this area, what far more appropriate name was given by Bartolomeu Dias, the first European to reach there in 1488?

8 Three Africa-born cricketers were referred to as the ‘Great White Hope’ of English cricket. The first two were Robin Smith and Alan Lamb, both of whom made significant contributions. Name the third, whose staggering 136 centuries in first-class cricket never translated into big numbers in Test cricket for England.

9 In the 1991 general elections, Kaka Joginder Singh Dharti Pakad had among the highest security detachments, comparable to Rajiv Gandhi and prime minister Chandrashekhar. What was the reason for his high-security status?

10 In a triumph of hope over experience, who had the words ‘Winona Forever’ tattooed on his arm, and later had to change it to ‘Wino Forever’ after their split in 1993?

Answers

1. She was Pandora, and when she opened the jar (mistranslated as a box later) all the evils of the world flew out, leaving only Hope

2. Woody Allen

3. Mithun Chakraborty

4. Walt Disney

5. It’s Not Over Till the Fat Lady Sings

6. Greenland

7. Cape of Storms

8. Graeme Hick from Zimbabwe

9. He was contesting from 57 Lok Sabha seats; his death would mean a fresh vote in all constituencies

10. Johnny Depp

Joy Bhattacharjyais a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup

Follow Joy on Twitter @joybhattacharj

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