You Say -nomy, I Say -logy

Answers I encountered correcting exam papers.

What is the main cause of erosion on Moon?
Earth's tidal force.

Why is Mars red?
It is closer to the sun.

#1 What causes a star to twinkle?
Objects in space such as asteroids passing in front of stars.

Why does Triton have a less dense atmosphere than Titan?
Because Triton was to not to have an atmosphere.

Which nature of light does diffraction demonstrate?
The practical nature.

What causes a meteor shower?
Earth orbiting through the asteroid belt.

Why are Mars' seasons more extreme than Earth's?
Mars has no living organisms.

#2 What causes a star to twinkle?

The vibration of the earth.

#1 How long does it take for the Earth to orbit the Sun?
1 month

What are two phenomena that occur more frequently during an active Sun?

Full moons, stars dying off.

#1 Why does Mars appear fainter than Venus?

Venus is brighter than Mars.

What is 'hot Jupiter'?

A large star close to Jupiter.

#3 What causes a star to twinkle?

Binary stars: when one star passes in front of another.

Why do astronomers think Mercury has a large iron core?

Because its moons have iron.

#2 How long does it take for the Earth to orbit the Sun?

364 days.

#1 What is the main cause of erosion on Mars?

Time.

How far across the sky does a star move in two hours?

Half-way across the galaxy.

#4 What causes a star to twinkle?

Interference of celestial winds.

The Sun's size is not changing. What does this say about the Sun?

That the sun is not affected by the atmosphere.

#2 Why does Mars appear fainter than Venus?

Venus is on fire.

#3 How long does it take for the Earth to orbit the Sun?

Months, not years.

#5 What causes a star to twinkle?

Its emission spectrum.

Mention one method that astronomers use to find objects in the celestial sphere.

Looking up at the stars... not sure where you're going with this.

#2 What is the main cause of erosion on Mars?

Erosion.

#4 How long does it take for the Earth to orbit the Sun?

24 hours.

#5 How long does it take for the Earth to orbit the Sun?

23 hours, 56 minutes.

#6 What causes a star to twinkle?

The hydrogen being converted to helium.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember these two answers, and then I don't feel so bad:

(1)


(2)
The diameter of the Sun is approximately how many times larger than the diameter of Earth?

3 x 10⁸ m/s

The αβγ's of Greek Mythology

If you haven't seen Troy aren't in the know of ancient Grecian myths (and Roman history), kindly don't leave the old joke 'It was all Greek and Latin to me' as a comment!
[I picked up the theme for this post from Saucerer's hilarious Greek for Dummies (=> Egyptian for Mummies?)]


Paris: Capital of France. The erection of his Eiffel Tower came about after meeting Helen, who went on to become his fond Louvre. He was known to be in-Seine, especially when passing comments in striptease sessions.

Helen: Initially she did not mind living with her aging husband, Menepaus, consoling herself with the words, "Sadness -- it' Sparta life". But when she went sight-seeing Paris, she got tempted and a-troy-ciously ran away. She was soon found missing, and her spouse and suitors broke into a barrage of expletives: Greece entered a phase that launched a thousand 'Shit!'s.

Idi-pus: Dictator of Greece-annexed-Uganda and a sore to the kingdom. He later on had a complex relationship with an Austrian shrink. A silent killer, Idi-pus was, who finally broke his silence when someone told him he was keeping mum.

Heckor: The etymology of his name is rather straightforward.
(1) 'Heck!' -- upon completing a fighting match with Ajax that lasted the entire day but ended in a draw.
(1) 'Brother, I've smuggled Helen. She's on the boat.'
'HECK!'
(3) 'Brother, Achilles is outside the fort. He wants to duel with you.'
'HECK!'

Homer: Star of a TV show that has travelled a long odyssey of 20 seasons and 434 epic's-odes till date; the Oxford Dictionary has officially recognized a phrase from among his popular memorabilia: 'D'oh!'

Trojan Horse: A p(h)ony that made an ass out of everyone at Troy.

Penelope: A rough anagram of 'No, people!', which is what she repeated to her wooers during the 20-year absence of her other half, Uselessis. She would literally spin a yarn everyday to keep them off her house; eventually they gave up, crying in the streets, 'I went as a suitor and met a tailor!'

Uselessis: Leader of a boring single-mate life who ended up in the title of a half-understood 20th century novel. To his credit, unlike one of his fellow mythological heros, when he was re-united with his wife he spared her of fidelity litmus tests such as walking in fire.

A Polo: His standard pick-up line: 'I'm a mint with a hole -- and so are you, baby!' With that did he net a harem of a diversity of such breadth matched only by Zeus'.

S.U.E.Z: A canal letting in several ships.
Z.E.U.S: Evidently, the reverse of S.U.E.Z -- a ship penetrating several canals.

Achilles: He grew up into one with an abnormal killer instinct, since, as a boy, his mother used to beat him up thoroughly with heavy styx. Pitt-ed against a vast Trojan army, he sliced his way through them with ease, until he received a wire from mom that read 'CAREFUL WHERABOUTS, HE'LL KILL YOU HE'LL KILL YOU' and got stranded in confusion. Which was unfortunate, because the Morse-typist got her spelling wrong when Achille's mother dictated the telegram: 'CAREFUL, WEAR YOUR BOOTS, HEEL KILL YOU, HEEL KILL YOU.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's sign off with some characters from (and, in C's case, to) Rome.

Mark Antony: Famous for his rhetoric speech that goes 'Friends, Heroes and Desperate Housewives...'. He faithfully dogs Caesar and goes wherever Caesar goes, wherever (see next entry). Two millennia later, he takes rebirth in Chennai and commands an auto-driver 'Take me to Rome', who dutifully roams all over the city, and gets his brother to shoot him when he doesn't pay up.

Cleopatra: First, Caesar marks her, then, Mark sees her. She dies when too many wars and the deaths of her lovers give her a huge headache for which she takes an overdose of asp-irin.

Neuro: A crazy emperor diagnosed with the rare disease matricidic extravagancosis. He took great care about his figure -- it is widely reported that when he saw Rome was burning (calories), he wanted to (be fit as a) fiddle.

Julius Caesar: A fictional character co-created by Shakespeare and Plutarch.
When being stabbed by his conspirators, he spots a bystander with a handicam. In order to get his assassination captured on video as criminal evidence and in the hope that it will be viewed all over the Internet, he diverts the cameraman's attention with these famous last words: 'YouTube, route us!'

Conundra

Saturday morning. There was a knock on the door. It was a sophomore hostelmate.

'Fete is coming up.'
'Yes.'
'Chocolate?' he handed me a bar.
'Thank you.'
'Can you set us riddles?'
'On?'
'Some colours. And the ten digits.'
'What kind of riddles?'
'A hunter chases a bear and runs south whichever direction the bear goes, what colour is the bear? That kind of riddle.'
'Oh ah, h'm.'
'Basically we have different coloured wires to defuse a bomb and your riddles will give the right combination. And we have a number lock which can be opened only after cracking your clues.'
'Oh. When is the event?'
'Tomorrow evening.'
'H'm... Well, thanks for picking me to do it, but I'm afraid -- '
'The chocolate you just munched?'
'Yes?'
'The poison we put in it will take effect at night. If you can get us the riddles by evening I'll give you the antidote.'
'What? You had better be kidding or I'm going to kill you!'
'Black, red, blue, green and yellow. Take care.'
With that, he popped off.

And thus did I, clutching on to dear life, spend that forenoon and evening framing the puzzles that follow with a time bomb ticking inside me.


The colours

Q1:
Why would this color put me off when it is
The shade of the tooth that doesn't pale --
Even when I never brush,
The complexion of the moon when we meet so less often,
The heart of blazing enlightenment
And the hue of a heartbroken baby?

Q2:
Glory to the color of the king and the free man! Of the rice we eat, of our ray of hope that sings the heart out, of our will that is our greatest charm. What more can we say of this magnificent color? Bravo!

Q3:
If you have to tell a girl from a boy,
Give them both a colour of variant shade.
'That's simply violet' would be the boy's call,
'It's halfway between mauve and lilac, angel',
Would she condescend. Males have way to go,
The outer edge of things must their eyes follow...

Q4:
Look at me. Look how I’ve lost all that I once was, how I’ve turned into this giant. I vividly remember the time I ate up my first child. O the pain! The anguish! The cries! Oh the abuses my second child, the hottest of them all, threw at me! How I had to eat him too... But I knew the toughest part was yet to come. I wished I were dead and gone vanished like my colleagues, when the time came to consume my third child, the most beautiful of my eight offspring. I stopped swelling after that. For I couldn’t bring myself to eat my fourth one – I was of his color, and I couldn’t bear the thought of swallowing a mini-me.

Q5:
What’s in a colour? Why do we assign a degree, not to mention a quality, of emotion to each colour? Colours are meagre entities of the electromagnetic spectrum. You may disagree, nonetheless it is the truth. We humans have always resorted to disgusting re-engagements of objective facts to fit our frightfully restricted view of Nature. Sometimes answers to its mysteries lie hidden right in front of us, not once, but twice, thrice, even four times, yet we as narrow-minded homo sapiens have to miss it!

A1:
Blue
Explanation:
Bluetooth, blue moon (‘once in a blue moon’), heart of blazing enlightenment = centre of a flame = blue colour, heartbroken baby = baby with heart defect = blue baby.

A2:
Black.
Explanation:
Names appearing in the passage: (Martin Luther) King, (Morgan) Freeman, (Condoleezza) Rice, Ray (Charles) – ‘that sings the heart out’, Will (Smith) -- 'our greatest charm', (Dwayne) Bravo.

A3:
Yellow.
Explanation:
An acrostic. The last line hints at what must be done to get the answer. 'The outer edge of things must their eyes follow' -- follow the rightmost edge of the verse -- the letters Y, E, L, L, O, W are one below the other.

A4:
Red.
Explanation:
The entire passage describes what is going to happen after the sun turns into a red giant. The first three planets are gonna be consumed, but not Mars, the Red Planet.

A5:
Green.
Explanation:
The word ‘green’ is hidden in the passage four times, as hinted in its last line. (1) …degree, not… (2) …meagre entities… (3) …disagree, nonetheless… (4) … disgusting re-engagements…


The digits

Q: Answer me, my Lord, what be my identity? What be my strength? What be the merit of an ace?
A: 1
Explanation:
1 is the most common identity element. Unity is strength. Unity = 1. The value of an ace in a deck of cards is 1.

Q:
Just give me a second, I’ll get back to you with a clue for this.
A: 2
Explanation:
Here 'second' refers to the ordinal number of 2.

Q:
The color orange is a great temptation, yes, but be the one to resist it!
A: 3
Explanation:
Orange = number 3 in the colour code of a resistor.

Q:
Off with the third and you are against against it,
Off with the second and you are a protector from the elements,
Off with the first and you are a part of us.
A: 4
Explanation:
Remove the third letter from FOUR, you get FOR = against against; remove the second letter, you get FUR; remove the first letter, you get OUR.

Q:
‘This valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.’
A: 5
Explanation:
The key to the answer is the letter V, roman numeral for 5. (Quote: V for Vendetta.)

Q:
Nobody is perfect. And just because I call her a nobody doesn’t mean I’m an MCP*. Who is she?
A: 6
Explanation:
6 is a perfect number.

Q:
Never mind the frigging slots, just tell me how many notes you have.
A: 7
Explanation:
Seven notes of music. (Either {do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti} or {sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, da, ni})

Q:
You need to reduce weight. I know you can’t reduce height too, but this time you got to!
A: 8
Explanation:
Reducing the words ‘weight’ and ‘height’ gives ‘eight’.

Q:
The number of times you are allowed to write CAT, perhaps?
A: 9
Explanation:
A cat has nine lives.

Q:
It is impossible.
The decibel level of the vessel is highest when the vessel contains it.
And as regards the dark matter of the universe, you know it!
A: 0.
Explanation†:
Nothing is impossible.
The decibel level of the vessel is highest when the vessel contains nothing. (Empty vessels make the most noise)
And as regards the dark matter of the universe, you know nothing!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* This is a slight variation of a quote from the series House MD.
† A mutant of a puzzle that would have landed in your mailbox as a forward.

The End of Khirma

Imaginative Answer Received (IAR) vs Expected Answer (EA) in events NDK and I conducted:

Rule: Replace one letter in each word to get a proverb.
Q: Emery Don, he's hit Dad!
EA: Every dog has his day.
IAR: Every son has his dad.

Rule: The two meanings in the clue refer to one word.
Q: Make light for failure to go straight. (3 letters)
EA: Arc.
IAR: Gay.

Rule: The pairs enclosed in () are related in a particular way. How?
Q: (astride, brushed), (selected, rejected), (amounts, contour), (lips, kiss)
EA: T9 pairs.
IAR: The number of letters in either word of a pair is the same.

Rule: The word must contain the letters L, M, N in reverse order.
Q: Generator that uses natural resource.
EA: Windmill.
IAR: Animals.

Rule: Synonym.
Q: Love without marriage.
EA: Adultery.
IAR: Committed.

Rule: Standard crossword clue.
Q: Fantastic figure totally the same however you look at it (5, 6)
EA: Magic square.
IAR: Lotus Temple.

Rule: Get two words the clue refers to. Replacing a repeated letter in one word gives the other word.
Q: Flies interchanged position before getting killed.
EA: Swapped, swatted.
IAR: Zippers, rippers.

---------------------------------------------------------

Tragic relief

Meanwhile in a bachelors' flat somewhere in Pakiland...

Basak: Hundred. One double-O. Can you believe it? One..hund..red.

Rumafrash (looking up from a monthly): What on earth?

Basak: It's been a hundred days since our brethren left us on the mission to transfer Hindustanis and Cross-revering Occidents from the Taj to their respective Hells.

Amosa (from the kitchen): Yes, it's been. So?

Basak: So we've done nothing in the interim. I'm getting bored!

Amosa: Why don't you turn on the TV?

Rumafrash: What's on?

Amosa: Cricket match. Motherland versus Some Infidel.

Rumafrash: Sri Lanka, I believe. Today's sports page had a file photo of their captain in an indigo T-shirt. That's Lanka's colour, right?

Basak (switching the box on): Test or ODI?

When the telly flickers up, a T20 India-NZ match comes live.
Basak: Blooming bayonets! Indigo is no longer for Sri Lanka, but for India! Even as we speak their sinful feet are trodding our chaste land.

Rumafrash: Whoa. Let's watch all the overs.

Basak: What the fatwa! Son of a gun, don't you understand what this means? Our parliament has extended its kiss-up courtesy so wide as to let badsmen and wicked keepers and foulers from across the border to come piss on our sacred soil. Switch off the TV, it's time to trigger a few consequences.

Rumafrash: Wait a second, what are those chaps in black caps doing on the field?

Basak (turning the box off): Lock your muzzle, will you? Where's the next match?

Amosa (coming in with a sack of grenades): Lahore. We should be there by night. We got to lie in wait in the a.m. and get them on their way to the ground. Where did I keep my magazines?

Rumafrash (handing over the periodical in his hand): Here, take mine.

Both men give him a long look. Amosa proceeds to pick up a bunch of cartridges from a table drawer.

Rumafrash: Shall I get one of those rocket launchers Sam Chacha* gifted us last year?

Basak: Pack all the toys you can. Amosa, alert our other stations. We may need backup.

Amosa: One of us has to stay behind and look after him.

Amosa points to a middle-aged Danish journalist tied to a pillar with his dead daughter's teddy bear stuffed in his mouth.

Rumafrash: O come on, we don't have to.

Amosa doesn't heed R; he takes a barrel-cleaning rod, places it on a table and gives it a calculated spin. It points at Rumafrash.

Rumafrash: Aw. Let's do it again.

Basak: You're begging to get your butt kicked, I tell you. Take it like a man and bite the bullet.

Amosa: All right, let's go pumping. God is great.

'The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.'
- G K Chesterton

* Uncle Sam
--------------------------------------------------------

A few rounds I set for LitSoc What's The Good Word:

Haunted Typewriter
A mischievous devil has taken shelter in our typewriter, and every time we typed a proverb, he perpetrated a special and irritating variety of typo. He substituted one letter in each word of the proverb with some other. What's more, he took every kind of liberty with punctuation too. For instance, when we tried to key in 'Finders keepers', he interfered and it resulted in 'Fingers -- beepers!'. Could you get us the right proverbs from the following?

(1) Brood it, thinker, then waver
(2) Tie earls, bind matches: toe worn
(3) I'll chat, glistens as now good
(4) I switch on tile, sage's nice
(5) Wet sweeping does lip
(6) Caste maces paste
(7) Emery Don, he's hit Dad!
(8) Belter same, thin worry.
(9) Do 'ear us, He-man! So forgave in divide.
(10) Done site, thy hard teat feels 'IOU'

From the Finals:
(i) Dent out ale, sour ego’s an ole’ basset
(ii) Wetter lane, Thai fever
(iii) Lake bather Mike: ‘S.O.S.!’
(iv) Lever budge… I boot my ID’s coder
(v) I, tolling, atone Father’s, do mops
(vi) Male gay? Whine. She sin swines.
(vii) Stall eaters rue deer
(viii) It is aunt, bloke, font fit in


Writer's Block
Sometimes a name can be divided into two blocks. Like church + ill. Or arm + strong. The names of ten writers (including poets) have been split into two such blocks each, with each block a valid word. Use the direct clues below to get the 20 blocks. Join the right pairs and get the 10 writers' surnames.

Six letter block
* Member of learned society

Five letter blocks
* Having a specified value
* Long raised strip
* Sentence components

Four letter blocks
* Desire
* Shaft dug in earth
* A kind of cabbage
* Fence
* Food fish in Greenland
* Turn
* Haste
* Flood-averting barrier

Three letter blocks
* Conveyance
* Tier
* Curve
* Perish
* Of a female

Two letter block
* Awake
* Gate


Curtailment
Delete the last letter of some words and you still get a valid word. Eg: ASPIRING and ASPIRIN. Fill in the blanks with such pairs. Eg.: Batman resented it when ______ peeked into the dressing room while he was ______ (6 minus 1): ROBIN, ROBING.

1. The musician was heard playing his ______ in his ______ throughout his life sentence. (5 minus 1)

2. In the ______ of ontology, nothing is ______ (5 minus 1)

3. ______ people needn't necessarily be _______; all villagers aren't blunt and unrefined either. (6 minus 1)

4. The _____ chose from among the _______ on the basis of man-eating capacity. (6 minus 1)

5. When the enemy's massive _______ came into sight, we decided to _______ from the shore. (5 minus 1)


NDK's atrociously punny question:

Fill in the blank with a three-word phrase.

Tanay: If it’s an oral test, I’m going to flunk tomorrow!
Tanvi: Don’t worry, you’ll ace it. _______________.

[The format of Haunted Typewriter is not mine -- I had seen such a puzzle in an old issue of Reader's Digest. The q's are, as must befit a LitSoc event, original.]

Answers, some

Writer's Block
The blocks: Fellow, worth, ridge, words, long, well, cole, wall, ling, roll, rush, dike, car, row, arc, die, her, ace, up, or.
The writers: Longfellow, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Orwell, Wallace, Rowling, Rushdie, Updike, Carroll, Archer.

Curtailment
1. cello, cell.
2. realm, real.
3. Urban, urbane.
4. ogress, ogres.
5. fleet, flee.

Nikhil's atrociously punny answer:

It is written.

(Tanay and Tanvi are the tween actors who played Jamal and Latika.)


Focus pulled this out out of nowhere during the last round of LitSoc Crossie Finale:

E-tète-à-tète

Symmetry

Chir: ATB for GATE
Nir: Thanks
C: Thanks
N: ATB for GATE
C: :)
N: (:
C: \m/
N: lol


Opinion

Flea: i mean, there was this fellow who said "a.r.rahman the mozart of india" won the golden globes and i said to myself...."crazy ***"
N: LOL!
F: mozart is mozart... tansen is tansen
if you do a hybrid you get a mule


Sarcasm

N: Meet at Guru at 10?
Fishy: why?
N: I want to discuss my latest ideas on whether proton accelerators can be applied for solving open problems in cubic anisotropy, in particular the Bardeen XY Sigma model†.


Typos

Saudi: it's stuck nowhere. its to damn hot to think.
N: Okay.. Dissertation = thesis, right?
S: too*
yeah.
we call it individuall supervised essay.
individually*
. . .
S: but i'm not too happy with the posts to notify my old readers.
At 3 of them.
all*
N: Three posts or three readers?
S: i can't believei made that typo!!
N: LOL!
S: Meant readers in a feable attempt at humour
N: And you appended the 'i' to 'believe'
S: feeble*
me: Typo Queen
S: i am going now I shold really get peg or two to regain balance.
N: Hehe
S: should* bleagh!!!
N: I'm laughing my eyeballs out here
:D :D
S: tata!! (glare glare)
N: 'bye
As you'd put it, 'tale car'
(Take care)
. . .
S: i can't typo
i mean type
N: You can't typo?
S: peroid
period


Beep

(This one is not from my computer, and I don't want to reveal the names of the duo. Risqué words have been replaced with a beep.)

X: and how long has it been since we chatted, at least pretended to while suppressing the homo impulse behind the conversation
Z: ah....umm....the length of my beep
X: tell me not that you shall refrain from requiting my love, my precious
for my heart and beep shall then break into a million pieces
Z: i will throw you down mordor's vent even if it means my gollum hits the bend
X: golly, i comprehend not what thou speaketh, nevertheless it thrilleth me so
. . .
X: my arrive is all over the floor
Z: oh, come my butterfly, come come my butterfly become a winged fairy... a queer princess and the twink in the twinkle


Epunyms

KVM: how goeth intern?
N: It nietzs some research, otherwise peaceful and nice
. . .
K: sorry I need to be rushing out already, but it's antibiotics time and amma is raising cain
N: No problemo
I'm sure you'll be Abel to handle it


Brevity

Nikhil: Ok then.. Good Night...
Nirmal: GN
SD
Nik: SYT
MPIBT
TTFTO
Nir: WYS
(Whatever You Say)
SYT - See You Then
MPIBT - Most Probably In Bio Tech
Nik: Bingo!
Nir: TTFTO - Till Then... FTO?
Nik: Try To Figure These Out
Nir: OMG
Nik: GYT


† I've no idea where I came up with that!

Adverbly Adjectivous Gerundings

I had the pleasure of hosting What's The Good Word this Saarang along with NDK. And I took particular delight in setting these questions for the preliminaries (Answers are at the end):


Paraphrase
Look at the statements and clauses below. A few idioms and quotes have been paraphrased. Get the exact wording.

(1) A noble with a healthy number of photons bouncing off his defensive gear.

(2) The appellation of a reproductive organ of a species of the flora, when replaced, hardly has an effect on the modality of olfaction.

(3) Swayed and rocked, perhaps, while negative to moving through the medium with an implement.

(4) The atmosphere and outer space holding a baked item of nourishment.

(5) It is hoped that the momentum rate finds domicile in your system.

(6) Make a scan of the location surrounded by circles of infinite radii.

(7) Effect progress and construct an interval of solar illumination for yours truly.

(8) Permit the beast to make a getaway from the receptacle.

(9) The most proximal sphere of extreme fusion goes to sea level in the realm of the European islanders at t = ∞

(10) The male of the mammal species achieves the culmination of its deceleration at the present co-ordinates in spacetime.


Hardcore WTGW
There's something common to the five phrases given below. One of (a), (b), (c), (d) shares this too. Which one? Justify.

(1) Squids overproduce liquors

(2) Blameable. Exculpate!

(3) Aminic phytotoxin

(4) Ancestor allays Soviets

(5) Juvenile lividity: larvicide

(a) Unintelligent design (b) Blacksmith brings cotton (c) Debonair confidence (d) Bridge golden city

[Hint: Use not the brain, but the heart]


Jumble
Unscramble each word and write the letters in the boxes. Use the underlined letters to make a phrase.

C E N O T H = |_| | |_| | |

R U F L A T = | |_| | |_| |

F R O G L E = | | |_| |_| |

O F T U S E = |_| | | |_| |

R O B B A S = | | | |_| |_|

B A L D A M = | | |_| | | |

Clue for the phrase:

In the kingdom of digits, the administration was simple and intuitive because it was a ____________


Eye rhymes
An eye rhyme is a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently and hence, not an auditory rhyme. Standard pairs: Height and weight; slaughter and laughter; womb and bomb. Now guess these eye rhyme triplets from the context:

1. When Hayden _____, nobody was seen to _____, but the ball didn’t reach the boundary since it hit a _____. (5, 4, 4)

2. She finally ____ words to her feelings, saying she knew him inside ____ and wouldn’t marry a _____. (3, 3, 3)

3. When the rancher gifted me a ____, his kindness filled me with ____; I now ____ him so much. (3, 3, 3)

4. _____ stayed back, leaving him the _____ man in town. Soon, he was also ______. (4, 4,4)

And here's a quadruplet:

5. ‘Show me the _____,’ said the first guard. When I did, he took some and said ‘OK, You are _____’. When I was about to enter, another fellow appeared. ‘We need more,’ he said, with a polite _____. ‘The times are _____’. (5, 7, 5, 5)


Answers

Paraphrase
(1) A knight in shining armour
(2) A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
(3) Shaken, not stirred.
(4) Pie in the sky.
(5) May the Force be with you.
(6) Read between the lines.
(7) Go ahead, make my day.
(8) Let the cat out of the bag.
(9) The sun never sets on the British Empire.
(10) The buck stops here.

Hardcore WTGW
Look at the core/heart of each word (ie., the central letters) in every phrase. Doing so would yield
(1) Quid pro quo
(2) Mea culpa
(3) In toto
(4) Cest la vie
(5) Veni vidi vici
The answer is hence (c), for the cores of the words in 'Debonair confidence' give 'bona fide'.

Jumble
TECHNO
ARTFUL
GOLFER
FOETUS
ABSORB
LAMBDA
The phrase:
In the kingdom of digits, the administration was simple and intuitive because it was a rule of thumb [here digits = fingers]

Eye rhymes
(1) drove, move, dove
(2) put, out, nut
(3) ewe, awe, owe
(4) None/One, lone, gone
(5) dough, through, cough, tough/rough.

To the Very Good Wife of that Great Briton, B B Roy

Below are two case studies.

The first one is about a citizen of a military-ruled nation called Genghistan. He is a coup-designer, someone you could hire for a contract to mastermind a coup.

[Note: The word 'junta' is not to be taken in the sense of the IIT lingo.]

(1) Mahroof spurned democratic ideas for he knew that his fellow men would always elect wrong ones. He also deemed it his duty to rid the despots. "To my people peace shall I return," vowed he, and made coup-design his very vocation. He orchestrated elegant and swift takeovers, often with just one machine gun and two automatics. He was easily on top of logical problems involved in the matter of putsches. He'd first make amphibious* trips (*via road and river) to the Army HQ for a recce or two. And then he would incline bottles of petrol against, and blast, the compound walls, and even before the alarm bells had rung their last note, the junta would flee in dilemma, rendering the anarch hirers of Mahroof the new leaders and himself their follower. It'd be a year before he'd come down upon the new regime and its aftermath, modelling a perfect coup in his mind to the very last straw.

And the second one is about a nerdy student from IIT Madras:

(2) Her perennial dream of discovering something new pinned Cinderella hours on end to electron guns, spectrometers, bubble chambers, radioscopes, even tea pots! Encounters of failure at every turn ultimately led to the revocation of her funds, and that is when her universe and portfolio changed to Mathematics. She was always seen working on topological problems, involved in the Math. Her specialization in Mobius strips later turned out to be the primary key to her research in Klein bottles. And hence, while her peers became Vols for free grub's sake and binged at Saarang, jotting down ideas alone occupied Cindy -- lemma, theorem, corollary, converse and proof furiously scribbled and scored off all over the back sides of every food coupon she had earned for a Math Modelling Co-ordinatorship the previous Shaastra!

{Thanks to AJ for suggesting spectrometers.}

Now then, the Saarang Online Creative Writing Contest, having given 'Klein Bottles, Guns, Food Coupons' as a topic, demands this: 'Connect these three not-so-obvious ideas/themes into one single piece'. So let us rewrite the two passages above without changing a word, except that we will intersperse one into another, and maintain a colour code to keep track of either person. Also, let's make it a poem. Although we are not going to read it one line after another (in other words, the brown lines and the pink lines are independent of each other and are not be read sequentially), let us pretend it is verse for structure's sake. And voila! What do we see? Their life stories sound the same! Since Mahroof resists his government and Cindy resists peer pressure, we shall name our twin ode a

Diode to a Couple of Resistors... In Parallel

Mahroof spurned democratic ideas fo' he knew
Her perennial dream of discovering something new
That his fello' men would always elect wrong 'uns
Pinned Cinderella hours on end to electron guns,
He also deemed it his duty to rid the despots:
Spectrometers, bubble chambers, radioscopes, even tea pots!
"To my people peace shall I return,"
Encounters of failure at every turn
Vowed he, and made coup-design his very vocation.
Ultimately led to the revocation
He orchestrated elegant and swift takeovers,
Of her funds, and that is when her universe
Often with just one machine gun and two automatics.
And portfolio changed to Mathematics.
He was easily on top o' logical
She was always seen working on topological
Problems involved in the matter
Problems, involved in the Math. Her
O' putsches. He'd first make amphibious* trips
Specialization in Mobius strips
(*via road and river) to the Army HQ fo' a recce
Later turned out to be the primary key
Or two. And then he would incline bottles
To her research in Klein bottles.
O' petrol against, and blast, the compound walls,
And hence, while her peers became Vols
And even before the alarm bells had rung
For free grub's sake and binged at Saarang,
Their last note, the junta would flee in dilemma,
Jotting down ideas alone occupied Cindy -- lemma,
Rendering the anarch hirers of Mahroof
Theorem, corollary, converse and proof
The new leaders and himself their follower.
Furiously scribbled and scored off all over
It'd be a year before he'd come down upon
The back sides of every food coupon
The current regime and its aftermath, modelling
She had earned for a Math Modelling
A perfect coup in his mind to the very last straw.
Co-ordinatorship the previous Shaastra!

'December Ain't a Cruise,' said Tom Narcissistically

And so, after a gruelling fortnight of checking signal stabilities, outputting C fragments, spotting unpainted surfaces on broken cubes, pointing out the liar among Amit, Balu and Chandru, measuring angles between clock hands, witnessing pairs of trains meet and counting the ones who played hockey AND football but NOT cricket, they bundled me off with an offer to work for the last place I wanted, a bank. Relief was the chief emotion as I packed my bags. For with every passing day I was feeling more and more like the nubile maiden who gets rejected by prospective groom after prospective groom visiting the house for 'girl-looking'. My interview was a smooth speed-dating session except for two moments of alarm -- one, when the two-membered panel asked me if I would like to have a cup of tea and I froze in indecision, and two, when I stretched my legs under the table and touched one of theirs. Even now I haven't the foggiest idea why both of them looked down.

Time at home was a ten day-long siesta ending in a school chums' reunion at Satyam in the course of which I was handed three back-to-back embarrassments. It is a habit of mine to pretend to open elevator doors using my bare strength (picture feet spread, face contorted, etc). I did the same at Satyam from outside the lift, only that at the exact moment I put my hands in the middle of the metal doors and simulated pulling them apart, the lift opened. Eight people inside stared at me in blank astonishment, the words 'Are you OK, son?' written all over their eyebrows. I turned and laughed with my pals, and walked toward the lift with my back to it, only to bump into the doors which had closed by then. And when I finally managed to enter, I asked a man, 'Is it going up?' His reply: 'This is the top floor'.

I began Semester Eight on the wrong foot, contracting as I did a conflicting combination of ailments -- fever and dysentery. [And why should the two be conflicting? 1) When the fever was on the rise and I had coffee to counter it, my stomach was raked and the diarrhoea peaked. 2) I couldn't suppress the latter with juices or lassi or curd rice thanks to the fever. 3) Since I frequented the loo round the clock, I was in constant touch with tap water, which didn't help my temperature.] It was an expected outcome of my deed the night before re-opening day, namely, ordering everything that perfect strangers munched in front of my eyes at a restaurant and packing my tum to twice its capacity. Hence my twin resolution for 2009: (i) Drive away when the tank gets full. (ii) Chew each bite 32 times before swallowing. (ii) leads to (i).

Some Tom Swifties [Examples from Net: “I’ve been waiting to see the doctor,” said Tom patiently; “Damn it, look at the camera!” Tom snapped; “I’m going window shopping,” said Tom listlessly; “Absolutely, totally, completely,” Tom uttered; "Who discovered radium?" asked Marie curiously] that I came up with today:

~ 'There's a li'l bulb in my pacemaker, you know,' Tom said lightheartedly.

~ 'WHAT. COMES. BET. WEEN. KAY. AND. EM?' Tom yelled.

~ 'I'll fix a quick coffee for you,' Tom replied instantly.

~ 'I was brought up like a guy,' she told Tom boyishly. (tomboyishly)

~ 'I'm tired of travelling back and forth,' Tom replied. [courtesy: Sriram, EP]

~ 'Our bid was rejected,' they said tenderly.

~ 'This time the taxes are gonna be heavy,' we were told.

~ 'I'll do the grading myself,' said an irate Tom.

~ 'I shall now announce every word thrice,' Tom tom-tommed.

~ 'Let's put them into bat now and bowl them out,' Tom declared.

~ 'I ought to make a new friend,' said Tom formally.

~ 'You mean, Harper Lee can't kill a bird?' said Tom mockingly.

~ 'I had taken pi as 3.14,' Tom rationalised. 'That is how I got a round total,' he added.

~ 'It's that time of the month,' she whispered.