1. Identify the Movie:

2. Identify the machine:

3. Identify the dude's and Connect:

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People who got #18 right:

Tutu.

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Answers for #18:

1.  Ronald Reagan + Brandenburg gate on the 50 Cent Euro = Reagan's historic "Mr. Gorbachev tear down thsi wall" was given at the Brandenburg gate.

2. Vyacheslav Molotov was the dude who planned the berlin wall. Quoting directly from wikipedia: "On April 1, 1952, East German leaders met the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow; during the discussions Stalin's foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov proposed that the East Germans should "introduce a system of passes for visits of West Berlin residents to the territory of East Berlin [so as to stop] free movement of Western agents" in the GDR. Stalin agreed, calling the situation "intolerable". He advised the East Germans to build up their border defenses, telling them that "The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border – and not just any border, but a dangerous one ... The Germans will guard the line of defense with their lives."

3. Checkpoint Charlie. Wall street is actually Mauerstrasse and Fredrick St is FreidrichStrasse. Charlie is nothing more than the NATO phonetic aplphabet for C, most often used in radio communications.

Stage 2: Berlin Wall.

So there ye go...

Easy one this is:

1. Connect:

2. When the Soviet Union attacked Finland in 1939 the Finns began to use a weapon invented by the Franco's Nationalists to repulse the soviet tanks. Often remarking that "Here's the drink to go with the food" a referance to the fact that the soviet comissar for foreign affairs was claiming that they were dropping food and not bombs on Finland. What weapon am i talking about?

3. Ok this is a little twisted. When translated to english the names of two streets come out to be Wall Street and Fredrick Street. Located at the intersection of Wall Street and Fredrick Street was a small hut/shed like structure which was simply named C. What am i talking about and what is its importance in history?

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Number of people who got #17: Zero, Zilch Nada.

Yep Tutu set a tough one.

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Answers to #17:

Stage 2: Rachmaninoff

1.  Dagny Taggart from Atlas Shrugged. The refernce being that she loved Rachmaninoff the second fictional composer in the book.

2. David Helfgott, in the movie Shine he went nuts after playing Rachmaninoff No. 3. He also has Marfan Syndrome.

3. The woman is Martha Argerich and her rendering of Rachmaninoff is most famously known for it's technical skill and .. speed. Speed also being synonym for Meth.

So there ye go...

1. Connect

         

(Disclaimer: The bunny is only representative; the writing on the picture nor the type/species/breed of the bunny has anything to do with the question)

2. Connect:

a. 

b.

c.

3.  When Virgin America launched their Virgin Brand of airline service in the USA they began naming their planes in a strange fashion. The second one was called "My other ride is a spaceship"; and obvious reference to their "exchange program" that lets their airline pilots fly the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip 2. Their third plane was named "California Dreams". But for their first plane they held a contest to name the plane; What was the name of the plane? (I personally think this name was awesome and appropriate. Yeah !!! I hear the cries from the non-aviation ppl, go ahead and google this one if you need to)

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People who got #15:

Ria good job and Welcome!!!

Guldubani, DS, Tho as usual gets the Stage 2 without answering all the stage 1's.

I've heard that a certain combination of fish curry, roshogulla,  a certain Sunny Leone and pain from a shoulder dislocation will induce hallucinations that can lead to the supreme answer without taking the path that needs to be trodden. We shall never know the answer, we never will. Only tho remains the supreme master of this untested method. :P

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Answers to #15:

1. Scott Muller is the guy in white. Cameraman Joe is the guy with the headset. Warne all of you know. Joe muttered the phrase "Can't bowl, Can't throw" w.r.t. Muller's misfield. This was caught by his camera mic. However the umpire's thought it was Warne as picked up by the stump mic. Muller then sued Warne for defamation and this action was considered unsporstmanly by many. Muller was then rarely picked to play. However Joe later confessed to saying that. This was the "Can't bowl, Can't throw" incident.

2. Six and Out

3. Brett Lee. (Damn I knew this one was easy shouldn't have put up the second song with Asha; made it so easy.)

Stage 2: Six and Out (Brett Lee's band). Can't bowl, Can't throw was the single from their album Six and Out and their most famous single to date.

Oh and the title refers to the various names that the band tried out before settling on Six and Out.

So there ye go...

1. These two gentleman and one smartass were involved in an incident that put one of the men into cricketing oblivion. The smartass' comment was the cause of it all. What incident and what comment?

2. Most commonly used in galli cricket(Indian subcontinent) or backyard circket(other commonwealth nations). This galli/bachyard cricket rule commonly states that:

hitting the ball over the fence (or into the water, into the big hedge, or some other area where the ball may be difficult to retrieve) counts as six runs and out

What is the common internationally accpeted term/phrase for this rule?

3. Identify the voice (both are the same):

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People who got the #14:

Me (yes i didnt post that DS did so yes i got it), Tho,

Tutu & Ria both got it but seem doubtful of themselves :P

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Answers to #14

1. The Day of the Jackal

a.Yigal Amir - the bugger who assasinated Yitzahk Rabin

b.Carlos the Jackal

c. Vladimir Arutyunian - the guy who tried ot assasinate Bush

2. The Fourth Protocol

3. The Odessa File

4. ICON ; All those are ICON players in their respective IPL teams i.e. bugger who are never traded. (Oh and yeah DS sorry mate, Mea Culpa)

Stage 2: Forsyth

So there ye go...

Id n connect

1.

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People who answered #13:

DS, Tho, Tutu, Ani.

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Answers to #13:

1. Bill Waterson

2. Thomas Hobbes

3. John Calvin

Stage 2: If you can't figure this out even with the answers here I suggest you go hide your head in the sand in shame

So there ye go...

1. Identify this dude:

2. and this English political philsopher dude:

Hrrmmmppphhh looks like the last two were hard got no one answering. This one is easy but kinda 6bit, but hey!! thats how stage2's are supposed to be:

1. This car company was created to market cars to women and produced cars that were intended be a family's second car or the wife's car. Since they assumed that men returning from the war would resume their responsibility of driving in a family, thus leaving women with no fun (of driving). (Remember all this was in 1947). The company didnt last long (only four years from 1947 to 1951) and only produced 97 cars. But it left behind a lasting legacy,what?

2. Connect (yeah go ahead and use help from the omnipresent one if you need to on this one, unless you are plane mad) :

• NC18603
• June 24, 1939 and  February 22, 1943
• First Scheduled transatlantic mail service

3. In the mid-1930s, radio-controlled model airplanes became the basis for the U.S. Army Air Corps' development of the aerial targets for antiaircraft gunnery training. Starting in 1935, X in California developed several variations of an original design by former movie star and modeler Reginald Denny. Identify X.

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Number of people who got #11 right: Zilch, nada, nothing, nil.

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Answers for #11:

1. That is the lady of justice the symbol for justice or Dharma. Dharma also = Yudishtra

2. The brand is Airavat. Airavat was also the vehicle of Lord Indra the father of Arjuna

3. The plant is nutmeg(seed) or mace(skin). The mace was Bhima's Weapon of Choice.

4. The Ashwini Kumara's were the twin gods of medicine and the Gods of Ayurveda they also represent sunrise and sunset. Also according to some legends they are known to have horse's heads in place of their normal human heads. In other legends  they are very learned in Ayurveda, and all forms of medical practice. Once they used this talent to receive knowledge from the sage Dadhici , who was learned in material and spiritual knowledge. Indra warned Dadhici not to teach the Kumars Brahma-Vidya since their occupation placed them outside that realm. He promised to cut off Dadhici's head should he not heed the warning. Dadhici relayed this to the Kumar's. With their great medical abilities however they removed Dadhici's head and replaced it with a horse head. Dadhici then spoke to them through the horses mouth. They were then able to replace the original human head of Dadhici after Indra cut off the horse head. In this way they received Brahma-Vidya, or spiritual knowledge.

Also the Ashvini Kumara's were the fathers of the Twin's Nakula and Sahadeva.

Stage 2. The Pandavas

P.S. the Dolby Prologic II was actually meant to be a subtle hint. Dolby Prologic II was the first system/codec to introduce 5.1 surround sound. So 5.1 and Pandavas need i say more...

So there ye go...

Ladies and Gentlemen this one is gonna be a little hard since its a little 6bit, also if you are not thinking on the right lines the title may throw you off rather than aid you.

1. Identify (the metaphor or the symbol, not the statue itself):

2. Yeah its a K.S.R.T.C. Volvo bus but identify the KSRTC brand it falls under:

3. Connect

4. Connect

P.S. The inscription on the horse's pic has nothing to do with the question. The horse is merely symbolic

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People who got #10:

Tho

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Answers for #10:

1. Scott E Fahlman

2. a. 58 in ASCII is :

b. That is Claude Johnson also known as the hypehn or - in Rolls-Royce.

c.  ) or parenthe comes from greek for fingernail and fingernail is also the word for parenthe in printing.

Stage 2 is :-) (same as the title) Scott Fahlman was the inventor of the emoticons

Ladies and Gentlemen this one is from DS, and a good one at that.

Ye be warned the Omnipresent one is useless in the matters pertaining to ye question.

1. Identify:

2. Identify and Connect:

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People who got #9 right:

DS (solved subconciously without any effort)

Shobith 

Tho bugger as usual got the stage2 without solving the stage 1.

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Answers to #9:

1. The Dancing Men

2. The Blue Carbuncle

3. The Scandal in Bohemia

4. Five Orange Pips

5. 7% Solution (Holmes' does of cocaine was always in his words in a 7% Solution)

6. The Reichenbach falls where Moriarity pushes Holmes to his death

Stage 2: Elementry my dear, its Sherlock Holmes

So there ye go...

Easy one this one

1. Identify

(Image copyright of CafePress)

3. Connect:

View Larger Map

4. Simple one Connect:

5. Connect:

• 7%

• and  

6. Identify the Place at the center of the map  (forget the flag/marker A):

View Larger Map

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People Who got #8:

Ha looks like this one was easy; Ani, DS, Diwi and Abhinav all seem to have cracked it without considerable effort.

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Answers of #8.

1.  Coat of Arms of Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe was known as Rhodesia before named after its founder Cecil Rhodes

2. All recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship instituted by Cecil Rhodes

3.  The chronology is the order for the Titles of the Bond Films and their OST - Artists. _____ = Shirley Bassey who sang Diamonds are Forever.
Diamonds are Forever is a modified version(for copyright reasons) of the slogan of the Diamond giant DeBeers - "A Diamond is forever" created by Frances Gerety for the N.W. Ayers Ad agency in 1947. DeBeers was founded by Cecil Rhodes

Stage 2: Cecil Rhodes

BTW the title "Gentlemen prefer Blondes" refers to the movie where Marilyn Monroe sang the famous Carol Channing song "Diamonds are a girls best friend"

So there ye go...

1. Identify the coat of arms:

2. The following were recipients of something (not and exhaustive list):

• Montek Singh Ahluwalia
• Virendra Dayal
• Deepak Nayyar
• Sanjeev Sanyal
• Piyush "Bobby" Jindal
• Rachel Maddow
• Bill Clinton
• George Patton
• Strobe Talbott

3. Fill in the missing blank

• Tom Jones
• Nancy Sinatra
• The John Barry Orchestra
• __________________
• Paul McCartney & Wings
• Lulu
• Carly Simon

These names are in chronological order and the timeline is important to the stage 2.

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People who got #7 right:

Diwi and Abhinav. That was one tough cookie to crack but, You guys made it look so easy

DS and Tho get back up to game man the kiddo's are giving you guys the run.

Ani good job getting all the connect was the one you could have also made.

Sagar was close this time he got Ness Wadia but didnt make the whole connect.

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Answers for #7:

1.Priety Zinta

2. Muhammad Ali Jinnah

3.

a. HMS Minden : It was the ship aboard which the american national anthem " The Star Spangled Banner" was written by Francis Scott Key

b. HMS Cornwallis : It was the ship aboard which the "Treaty of Nanking" cedeing Hong Kong to Britain from China was signed.

c. HMS Trincomalee.

4. Britannia as the romans called it or Britain as we know it

Stage 2: The Wadia's or the Wadia family

Preity is the ambassador of GO Air and gilrfriend of Go Air MD  Ness Wadia. Go Air is the Airline bussiness of the Wadia's.  Jinnah's daughter Dina is the mother of Nusli Wadia; the current head of the Wadia Group. All the ships in 3 were built by the Wadia's Ship Building. Britannia Foods is Wadia owned.

So there ye go...

1. Simple one to start with. Identify the pretty lady below:

2. Identify the gentleman:

3.  Connect:

a. The Star Spangled Banner

b. Treaty of Nanking

c. The worlds second oldest ship still afloat was named after an anglicized version of the name of the Sri Lankan town of Tirukonamalai. I am looking for the ship in particular, the name is secondary.

4.  The ancient greeks called the people of this island as the pryteni. Later the romans used a word derived from the greek pryteni to refer to this island. Use the roman word for this island for the stage 2.

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People who got #6

Guldubani and the Omnipotent one again.

Abhinav was close. (P.S. Abhinav welcome aboard and thnx Ameya)

Ani got a few

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Answers to #6

Stage 2: The X prize. 

1.  Lead Guitarist of "Grown Men" is Paul Allen cofounder of Microsoft he also went on to fund the development of Burt Rutan(gentleman in pic)'s Space Ship One, the winner of the X prize and the first privately built spacecraft.

2. Tesla Motors and Paypal : Elon Musk is the man behind the success of both. He founded paypal and made it a success before selling it to ebay. He also bankrolled Martin Eberhard while he founded Tesla Motors. Musk now owns most of Tesla. Musk aslo founded SpaceX to participate in the X prize.

3. Id, Ego and Superego the 3 parts of the psyche according to Freud. Id Software is the company that makes Quake, Doom and Wolfenstein. John Carmack co-founded Id software and then went on to found Armadillo Aerospace a participant in the X prize.

4. X is Charles Lindbergh the first man to fly across the atlantic non stop. He was also the first Time - Man of the Year in 1927. He flew across the atlantic to win the Orteig Prize. The prize based on which the X prize was modeled.

P.S. The 3 above X prize contestants were the only ones who had complete spacecraft built to compete in the X prize.

1. Connect:

The lead guitarist of the band "Grown Men" and the gentleman pictured below:

2. Connect:

3. This software company takes its name form the first part of the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's model of the psyche.  Which company am i talking about?

4. Time started a tradition with X, Obama was the last one to recieve that title. Stalin has recieved this title twice once in 1939 and then in 42, Hitler recived it in 1938, Gandhi in 1930, The computer got it in 1982 and you got it in 2006 (yes you did get it) among others. But who was the one who started this tradition?

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Those who answered #5:

DS got 1,3,4 and the Stage 2

Ramya got em as well

Sagar and the omnipotent one have conquered this one too

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Answers to #5

1.  Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji and later changed his name to Ben Kinglsey

2.  Gemma Arterton - played the role of Agent Strawberry Fields(Song from the Beatles = Strwaberry Fields forever) in Quantum of Solace (Theme was Another Way to Die by Alicia Keys)

3.  Prince of Persia

4.  All are Jerry Bruckheimer productions

Stage 2: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - the movie. Ben Kinglsey plays the Nizam and Gemma Arterton the princess Tamina. It is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer

So there ye go...