Question 763 : Trump card

Latin ___ meant ‘______’ (a possible lihk with Old High German gehan‘say’ and Sanskrit yācati ‘ he implores’ suggests that its underlying meaning was ‘word-play’). It passed into old French as jeu, which lies behind english __ probably also jewel.  connected with fun and ‘humour’, among them ____ (17^th c.) and --- (17^th c.), both from Latin derivatives of ______(the superficially similar_____incidentally, is etymologically unrelated), and ____ itself, which was originally introduced in the form __ or __(‘coming off with so many dry ____ and biting repartees’, Bishop Kennett’s translation of Erasmus’s Encomium Moriae 1683). 




Word?




Which common word?

Question 762 : Countdown time

Cartography from the 1450s.

 I wouldn't recommend your imaginations going wild, but try and guess what this map represents.

Question 761: Winning's in their blood

Borrowed from the world of gambling, __X__ is a term used to describe stocks of a company with a national reputation for quality, reliability and the ability to operate profitably in good times and bad.

Based on the idea that different tokens dictate different values ranging from lowest to highest, the phrase was coined by Oliver Gingold of Dow Jones sometime in 1923 or 1924. Company folklore recounts that the term apparently got its start when Gingold was standing by the stock ticker at the brokerage firm that later became Merrill Lynch. Noticing several trades at USD$200 or USD$250 a share or more, he said to Lucien Hooper of W.E. Hutton & Co. that he intended to return to the office to "write about these __X__ stocks." Thus the phrase was born. It has been in use ever since, originally in reference to high-priced stocks, more commonly used today to refer to high-quality stocks.

Yenu?
Give original funda behind __X__ with reference to gambling.

Question 760: Happens to you?

"Today, this girl who has been stalking me for almost 7 months sent me a 12 page text comparing her love for me with her passion for cheese. ___"




"Today, my stepbrother found my diary and read it. He then told my boyfriend how I had a crush on another guy, and no longer liked him, causing my boyfriend to break up with me. That diary was from the third grade. ___"




"Today, I took my Catholic girlfriend home to meet my family for the first time. My brother thought it would be civil to spend over an hour insulting her religion and explaining in detail the many ways in which "the Force" is superior. ___"




"Today, my car was broken into, and they stole all my CDs, but left my daughter's Black Eyed Peas CD behind. I'm pretty pissed about the theft, but almost glad to see that the delinquents in my town have a decent taste in music. ___"




"Today, I spent $500 buying my lost cat back from a jerk who thought it was his. I get home and my mom tells me that she'd sold it to the same guy for $10 because she thought the cat was ruining my love life. ___"




"Today, I walked in on my mom ranting on about what a useless bitch I am. She was talking to my cat. It's not the first time this has happened, either. ___"




"Today, my cats found my box of condoms. This is the third one they've chewed up. The worst part? They've gotten more use out of them in the last two months than I have. ___"




"Today, I forgot to do my French homework, but since it was an online worksheet, I told my teacher my internet wasn't working. I told her with an e-mail. ___"

Fill in ze blank.

Question 759: No Fear

__X__ was launched by four Harvard students on January 7, 1999. Most of its users were high school and college-going students. It was acquired by Barnes and Noble in 2001 for approx. $3,555,000.

Many teachers accused __X__ of being a cheating tool but __X__ condemns the idea of cheating.

"When your books and teachers don't make sense, we do." is their slogan.

Identify X and explain the title.

Question 758: Worst thing's to Rush!

WHAT?

Following the fatwa,________________ was put under police protection by the British Govt.. Despite a conciliatory statement by Iran in 1998, and ____________ declaration that he would stop living in hiding, the Iranian state news agency reported in 2006 that the fatwa would remain in place permanently since fatwas can only be rescinded by the person who first issued them, and Khomeini had since died.

As of mid-2011, ________ has not been physically harmed, but others connected with the book have suffered violent attacks. ___, its Jap translator, was stabbed to death on 11 July 1991; _____, the Italian translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month; Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, barely survived an attempted assassination in Oslo in October 1993, and Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator, was the intended target in the events that led to the Sivas massacre on 2 July 1993 in Turkey, which resulted in the deaths of 37 people. Individual purchasers of the book have not been harmed. However, the only nation with a predominantly Muslim population where the novel remains legal is Turkey.

Question 757: Bad Hair Day

The __X__ generator was developed, starting in 1929, by physicist ___X___ at Princeton University. The first model was demonstrated in October 1929. The first machine used a silk ribbon bought at a five-and-dime store as the charge transport belt. In 1931 a version able to produce 1,000,000 volts was described in a patent disclosure. This version had two 60 cm diameter charge accumulation spheres mounted on borosilicate glass columns 180 cm high; the apparatus cost only $90 in 1931.

So ID X

May you have many more!

Here's wishing Nihar a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY! 

Woo.

Question 756: You Said Who?

__X__ was quite a mute wikipedia entry when it was first made in 2006. It was tended by just two opinion-holders on the subject, commonly referred to as "The Stratfordian" and "The Oxfordian". The entry discussed an idea that had developed into a sort of literary blasphemy over the years. It erupted into a full flame war on the wikipedia moderator boards in 2009, and still made the coveted "featured article" six months later.

The idea has garnered several powerful advocated over the years, including Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Freud, Hellen Keller and Malcolm X.

Give me the name of the wikipedia entry __X__ that discusses this much-disputed idea.

Question 755: Quite serious aren't they?

ID the famous brother pais upon the deutschmark.