By Indrashish and Arup.
Georgie remembered things. Big things and little things. From thick quiz books and thin pamphlets. From movie synopses read on the second page of the Telegraph or gleamed from the long reads in Outlook magazine. For those of us who grew up with him, we know we remember him. Sitting in the back benches and talking about everything under the sun for hours. Walking through the front field in Xavier's over to the college canteen to share a roll. Georgie laughing in that Georgie way. The laugh started as a smirk, widened into a smile and grew into a laugh that took over his whole being.
Soon after Georgie's passing, we decided that he would have liked for Xavier's to have an Inter-House Quiz again. We really have many people to thank for getting 'The Georgie Thomas Memorial Inter-House Quiz' off the ground. Thanks to Swastik for getting the effort kick-started last year. Thank you to Father Principal, Mr. Anindya Mazumdar, Mr. Melvin D'Souza, Ms. Anurita Chakraborty, and Ms. Mini Joseph for helping us remember Georgie in this way. A big thank you to Mr. Brett Fernandes for not only organizing the quiz, figuring out logistics but also conducting it! Last but not the least, the quiz could not have happened without one person - Ms. Sudeshna Sengupta. Georgie was one of her boys. She taught us all the word 'quizzard.' She worked tirelessly to make this happen. Cannot thank her enough. It gave us great pleasure to know that someone who started most of us on our quizzing journeys was so deeply involved.
We were glad that Georgie's mother and Srideep were able to attend the quiz this year and hope more of us (Jonu and some of us) are able to attend it in the coming years.
P.S. With the help of Mr. Fernandes and Ms. Sengupta we worked in some of Georgie's own questions into the quiz. See if you can crack them.
Q 1. A millihelen is a humorous and impractical unit of measurement. In his 1992 collection of jokes and limericks, Isaac Asimov claimed to have invented the term 'helen' in the 1940s as a graduate student. In a 1958 letter to the New Scientist, R.C. Winton proposes the millihelen as one thousandth of a helen. What does a millihelen measure?
Q2. Harriet Rebecca Lane Johnston served as First Lady of the United States for James Buchanan, but what distinguishes her from all other first ladies?
(Answers mentioned below these images)
Anwer 1: A millihelen is the amount of beauty required to launch a single ship.
Answer 2: Buchanan was a lifelong bachelor and Harriet acted as the first lady for her uncle.
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