2005 Chicago Open
Round 1 Tossups
1. The protagonist of this novel spends a farcical weekend in Brighton with a prostitute and her gap-toothed, eight-year-old daughter in order to give his wife grounds for a divorce. Shortly thereafter, he becomes involved with an expedition led by a master of clockwork mice, the incompetent Dr. Messinger. Back home, his wife is growing out of her affair with John Beaver and eventually marries former lover Jock Grant-Menzies. All doesn’t end so well for the protagonist, who is held captive in the Amazon jungle and forced to read aloud from Little Dorrit. FTP, name this Victorian fantasy featuring Tony Last, a novel by Evelyn Waugh.
Answer: A Handful of Dust
2. Robert Schuman was one of only two men to serve multiple times as prime minister during it, and was one of only two members of the MRP party to ascend to the highest office. Its constitution was only accepted on the third referendum and resulted in the Senate’s complete loss of power and a reinstatement of the power of the National Assembly. The Radical Party was in power more than anyone else among its 22 different governments. This instability came to a head with the crisis in Algeria, resulting in a new government after just twelve years. FTP, name this government that effectively ended in 1958 when Charles de Gaulle regained power.
Answer: FrenchFourthRepublic
3. On Chladni plates, sand will accumulate at these locations, thus providing a two-dimensional picture of their location. For a vibrating string fixed at both ends, there are N+1 of these for the Nth resonant mode. They do not exist in traveling waves, and only can be formed in standing waves, for example, by two standing waves traveling in opposite directions and completely cancelling. FTP, what are these points where the displacement is zero at all times?
Answer: nodes
4. One work by this name has a large window at the center-left, showing a reclining copper nude statue in a pond and a woman knitting in a chair. In the room in the foreground a man in a grey suit sits smoking and reading in the bottom left. In this 1917 work, a woman in white sits next to a boy, of whom we can only see a head and who is partaking in the title event. In the more famous work of this name a white pitcher rests on a table on the right and a black and white-tiled floor is occupied by two figures in the background. One of them is a man in black and white facing a girl turned away from us and partaking in the title event. In this circa 1662 work a partial view of a cello can be seen on the floor. FTP, give the common name of these Henri Matisse and Jan Vermeer works, both of which feature people at a piano.
Answer: The Music Lesson (or La lecon de musique)
5. He attempted to explain the true nature of the French Revolution with his anonymous political work Contributions to the Correction of the Public’s Judgment Regarding the French Revolution. He discussed the union of the finite self-consciousness and the infinite ego in his The Way Towards the Blessed Life and set forth his moral philosophy in The Science of Rights. The Enlightenment’s place in history was the subject of The Characteristics of the Present Age, while his lectures on the highest intellectual culture were collected as The Vocation of the Scholar. FTP, name this philosopher who anticipated Hegel with his formulation of the dialectic and whose Critique of All Revelation was often mistakenly attributed to Kant.
Answer: Johann Gottlieb Fichte
6. At one point in this work the tale of Basan and Basil is recited to serve as a warning for caution. The only two women given significant roles are one who changes her name to Juliana and Alde, who dies of grief near the end. Other deaths include those of Jurfaleu the Blond and Aelroth, both of whom are killed by the title character. The climactic scenes occur due to the plotting of Blancandrin, the shrewdest of Marsilla’s vassals. In the resulting violence archbishop Turpin is just one of several victims caught by the Saracen ambush. FTP, name this work that ends with Ganelon’s execution for his betrayal at Roncesvalles, an epic about the titular paladin of Charlemagne’s court.
Answer: The Song of Roland (or La Chanson de Roland)
7. Defenders prepared for their second attack by situating troops at the city of Djahy [duh-ja-hee]. Much of our information on them comes from the Great Harris text and the reliefs at Medinet Habu. They were composed primarily of six tribes, though the Denen, Lukka, and Sherden were the most prominent. Their arrival was more likely the result of a famine than an invasion and occurred during the 5th regnal year of Merneptah, though they came in greatest numbers during the rule of Ramses III. FTP, identify this group that raided the eastern Mediterranean during the Egyptian 19th dynasty, whose generic name derives from their invasion from the water.
Answer: Sea People
8. The experiment to demonstrate this process was done with two K12 strains of a certain organism. It was later learned that a relaxosome was formed which created the so-called ori-T site. Tatum and Lederburg’s initial setup also allowed for the discovery of strains that carry out this process so-often as to be labeled H-f-r and for the use of terminology such as “F plus” and “F minus,” designating the donor and receiver. Usually carried out with the involvement of the plasmid, FTP, name this bacterial genetic transfer through cell-to-cell contact.
Answer: conjugation
9. Its four movements require a gargantuan orchestra and last over 70 minutes in performances, with the opening Allegretto taking nearly half an hour. The central section of that first movement uses a theme from Offenbach, which turns into a massive ostinato that overpowers this work’s C major themes. This work proved so popular that the composer was pictured on the cover of Time in a fireman’s hat. Stokowski, Koussevitsky, and Toscanini fought over the right to first perform it in the West, and the latter won. Perhaps most famous for a series of twelve accumulating repetitions that characterized its 18 bar or “invasion” theme, this work was inspired by a 1941 invasion of the composer’s country. FTP, name this symphony composed by Dmitry Shostakovich while he was besieged in the titular city.
Answer: Leningrad Symphony or Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C Major (or Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony; do not need his name or the word “symphony” after they are mentioned)
10. Some legends claim that these mythical creatures arose out of agate, though Hildegard of Bingen describes their birthing habits differently. Pliny believed that they came from Russia, Aeschylus wrote that they originated in Ethiopia, and Bulfinch gave their home country as India. In Greek myth they belonged to Zeus, were neighbors of the Hyperboreans, and either guarded emeralds or took gold from the stream Arimaspias. Their origin seems to be in Middle Eastern myth, in which they were often depicted flying to heaven. FTP, name these mythical beasts with the body of a lion and the head, beak, and wings of an eagle.
Answer: griffins
11. We first meet him at party after which he discusses the notion of perpetual peace with his good friend and then goes on to visit Anatole and observes some officers playing with a bear. His father dies soon after a sixth stroke but not before legitimizing his inheritance. He travels to another city after separating from his wife and with the help of Willarski gets initiated into the Masonic brotherhood. This happens as a result of his duel with Dolokhov and subsequent parting with his money-hungry wife Helene. Several years later he becomes obsessed with assassinating Napoleon but finally gets healthy and marries his true love Natasha Rostova. FTP, name this central character of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Answer: PierreBezukhov (accept either name)
12. He was an accomplished poet and wrote with the nickname mahla. Many of his poems were paeans to warfare, which led to his eight years on horseback and subsequent death from sirpence, a skin infection picked up on his campaigns. His subjugation of the Dulkadir principality of Elbistan brought him into conflict with a new enemy, whom he decisively defeated at Raydaniyah and Marj Dabiq. Another great victory was at Chaldiran where he turned back Ismail I and his Turkmen followers, the Kizilbash. After he succeeded his father Bayezid II, he brought his empire to leadership of the Muslim world. FTP, name this father of Suleiman, often referred to as “the Grim.”
Answer: Selim I (or Selim Yavuz; accept Selim the Grim before it is mentioned)
13. The Stockmayer equation can be used to describe their interaction with a repelling power, and the strength with it acts with that repeller is known as the Leonard-Jones potential. Lifshitz first showed how they were the microscopic description of the bulk property that is the Casimir effect. They account for the condensation to the liquid state at sufficiently low temperatures of argon and benzene and may arise from a couple of sources. One of those is the presence of permanent dipoles, which may temporarily distort the electron charge in nearby molecules, inducing polarization that could also result in them. FTP, identify these relatively weak intermolecular forces named for their Dutch discoverer.
Answer: Van der Waals forces
14. His later works were intended for the layman, as in What Life Should Mean to You. His theories would be brought to America by his protégé Rudolf Dreikurs. One of those theories claimed that people have an innate desire to work for the common good, a drive that he termed “social interest,” and which he introduced in his work Understanding Human Nature. His major theory concluded by stating that each individual strives for perfection in a unique style of life, part of the overall scheme that he introduced in The Neurotic Constitution as “individual” psychology. FTP, name this psychologist who broke with Freud before developing his notion of the inferiority complex.
Answer: Alfred Adler
15. He serves up such offerings as the short verse “a bunch of words” and misspells the name of the god Poseidon in Blinking with Fists, a recent collection of poetry. His first band, The Marked, lasted about a year, almost as long as his most recent band, which initially featured Matt Sweeney on guitar and David Pajo on bass. They released only one album, Mary Star of the Sea, and he is now working on solo projects and released his first solo effort, Future Embrace, last month. However, he’s best known for teaming up with D’Arcy and James Iha. FTP, name this frontman of the band Zwan, who also sang most of the vocals on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as head of the Smashing Pumpkins.
Answer: Billy Corgan
16. The title of one of its portions refers to some aged deer not the ancestors of Sam Fathers. The penultimate story relates some history in the form of an anecdote repeated by Will Legate, and in the opening story the fates of Sophonisba and the slaves Tennie and Tomey’s Turl are decided by a poker game. The tale most out of place is that of the black man Rider in “Pantaloon in Black.” It is through various pieces of “The Old People,” “Delta Autumn,” and “Was” that we learn of the descendants of Carothers. FTP, name this collection of seven stories, one of which tells of Old Ben, “The Bear,” and all of which relate to the McCaslin family, a work by William Faulkner.
Answer: Go Down, Moses
17. Thomas Chittenden publicly decried it, but helped hide many of those involved in this event. In exchange for amnesty, those who participated were banned from elected office and not allowed to vote for a period of three years. In the end, only Charles Rose and John Bly were hanged, after this event had petered out with a final conflict at Egremont. However, it effectively ended when Luke Day failed to reinforce its leader and namesake at Petersham. Beginning in earnest after fighters invaded the Springfield armory, FTP, name this insurrection led by dissatisfied farmers in 1787 in western Massachusetts.
Answer: Shays’ Rebellion
18. Michael Fredman and Robert Tarjan used amortized analysis in order to show that the Fibonacci version of this can be used to implement Dijkstra’s algorithm in asymptotically better time than any other implementation. The binomial version of this data structure can be used to implement the union operation in big-O of n times log of n time. The standard type of it is structured so that for any node in a binary tree, its children are less than or equal to it. FTP, what is this data structure used to implement priority queues and for a namesake sorting algorithm?
Answer: Heap
19. One poem by this name begins “My swirling wants. Your frozen lips. / The grammar turned and attacked me. / Themes, written under duress.” and was written by Adrienne Rich. The better-known poem of this name alludes to earthquakes in the third stanza, as well as the precession of the equinoxes with the phrase “trepidation of the spheres.” The seventh stanza uses an analogy of a fixed and moving compass, which is completed by the poem’s conclusion, which declares “Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end where I began.” The poem’s comparisons begin with the opening line, “As virtuous men pass mildly away,” and its intent was to soothe the poet’s wife. FTP, name this love poem written just before a trip taken by its author, John Donne.
Answer: “A Valediction: forbidding Mourning”
20. Hostilities in this conflict were fully halted by the preliminary Treaty of Nikolsburg. It included one major naval battle, at Lissa, but the victors there lost the war. The eventual victors began military action by claiming that the Gastein Convention had been nullified, and fought a secondary campaign using their “army of the Main.” The primary battles occurred at Custozza and a later confrontation at Sadowa between General von Benedek and Helmuth von Moltke better known as the Battle of Konniggratz. FTP, name this war between Austria and Prussia fought over almost two months in 1866.
Answer: Seven Weeks’ War (accept Austro-Prussian war before “Austria”)
2005 Chicago Open
Round 1 Bonuses
1. Answer these questions about a Civil War battle, FTP each:
A. What inconclusive April 1862 battle fought near the town of Pittsburgh Landing saw the death of Confederate general A.S. Johnston and the subsequent retreat of the Confederate troops to Corinth?
Answer: Battle of Shiloh
B. The second day of Shiloh saw this Union general reinforce Grant’s forces. He would be relieved of command later that year for his tardy pursuit of Braxton Bragg’s forces after engaging Bragg at Perryville, Kentucky.
Answer: Don Carlos Buell
C. He was a Union commander at Shiloh but became better known for other successes in the western quarter of the war, culminating with his contribution of half the forces that took over Atlanta and his resounding victory at Nashville in December 1864.
Answer: George (Henry) Thomas
2. Name these things about the thyroid gland, FTP each:
A. The parafollicular cells of the thyroid gland secrete this hormone, which is antagonistic to PTH or parathyroid hormone.
Answer: calcitonin
B. About 95 percent of thyroid hormone is thryoxine, while the other five percent is composed of this hormone commonly referred to as T-3.
Answer: triiodothryonine
C. An iodine deficiency can lead to the excess production of TSH or thyroid-stimulating hormone, which results in this condition, an enlargement of the thyroid that is often seen as a bulge on the neck.
Answer: goiter
3. Given the novel in which they first appeared and the author or authors, name these fictional detectives of the early 20th-century, for 5 points each: [Moderator: Prompt for last names on all answers, other than Part F which does not apply]
A. Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Answer: Miss (Jane) Marple
B. Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers
Answer: Lord Peter Wimsey
C. The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham
Answer: Albert Campion
D. The Roman Hat Mystery by Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee
Answer: Ellery Queen
E. The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine
Answer: Philo Vance
F. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Answer: the Continental Op
4. Name these demons from world myth, FTP each:
A. The Islamic hierarchy of demons is headed by this figure, who was also called Shaytan [shy-taan], and eventually became head of the jinn.