Question:
Passage: Charismatic roving peddler Hank Martin falls in love at first sight with schoolteacher Verity Wade and soon marries her. On their wedding day, he rents a ramshackle home from his upper class lawyer friend Jules Bolduc. Hank rounds up some of his many friends to fix up the place, but Verity begins to realize that he is not as nice as he appears to be; while they do the work, he sees nothing wrong in going inside to read a law book. He confides to her that it is all a matter of manipulating people the right way.
Jules invites the couple to dine with him that night, but Hank soon quarrels with another guest, Robert L. Castleberry IV. He accuses Castleberry, the owner of the company that buys cotton, of shortchanging the poor farmers.
When Hank goes about his business, Verity accompanies him to the bayou. A young woman named Flamingo leaps into his arms, but when she learns that he is now married, she tries to arrange for an alligator to rid her of her rival. Verity is only injured.  However, Flamingo does not give up on the man she has loved since she was a teen. After Hank sends Verity home to recover, Flamingo tracks Hank down on the road. She overcomes his resistance, and they start an affair.
Hank sets out to prove that Castleberry is cheating. When Hank proves that the weights used are seriously inaccurate, one of Castleberry's men aims a rifle at one of Hank's followers, and is killed by farmer Jeb Brown.

Passage: Small-town church organist Marion Cullen falls in love with traveling salesman Jimmy Decker. When she learns that the couple who raised her are not really her parents, and that she is actually the illegitimate daughter of a showgirl, she sets out for New York City in search of Jimmy. However, she discovers that he is engaged to Enid Hollister, his boss' daughter. Dr. Travers, who is in love with Marion, offers to help her, but she decides to try to make it on her own.
Jobs are scarce, however. She ends up with other hopeful showgirls, among them Dixie Dare, hoping to audition for a part in Ford Humphries' new production. The philandering Humphries likes what he sees in Marion and hires her as a piano accompanist. Dixie gets a job as well, and she and Marion become friends and roommates.
Travers sees Humphries and Marion together, and knowing the former's reputation, brings Jimmy to Humphries' party. Jimmy tells Marion that he loves her, but she refuses to break up his marriage. When she also refuses Humphries' advances, he fires her. He then decides to use one of the songs she had composed for his production, claiming he wrote it. When she learns of this, she confronts him, although he denies everything. Jimmy goes to Humphries' suite to convince him to do the right thing. During their argument, Humphries stumbles and falls onto the balcony below and lapses into a coma from his injuries. Jimmy flees the scene; however, the police have a description of him and suspect him of attempted murder. To shield Jimmy, Marion confesses to the non-existent crime. Desperate, Travers operates for hours on Humphries, who regains consciousness and explains what really happened in front of witnesses before dying. Marion is released and becomes engaged to Travers, as Jimmy wishes them well.

Passage: Paul is a young womanizer living in a small Southern town, where he earns a living fixing cars for his uncle. Paul still lives with his mother, Elvira, who works as a clown cheering up children at the local hospital. He spends most of his time hanging out with his best friend and self-proclaimed partner-in-crime, Tip, and their friends Bo and Bust-Ass. Among his friends, Paul has a reputation as a ladies' man, but he is not at all known for being involved with long-term relationships; most of Paul's romances last only a few weeks, and he's slept with nearly every girl in town. Paul is beginning to reach a point where he would like to lead a different life, and that feeling becomes all the more clear when he meets Noel, Tip's teenage sister who returns home after attending a boarding school. Noel is more thoughtful and mature than the girls Paul is used to. Paul and Noel soon fall in love, but for Paul this is a different sort of relationship than he's accustomed to — Noel is still a virgin, and her contemplative nature gives him a desire to be a better, stronger person, but Tip does not approve of Paul dating his younger sister, which leads to a rift between these longtime friends.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Three species of mangrove trees exist in the region: red (Rhizophora mangle), black (Avicennia germinans), and white (Laguncularia racemosa), although all are from different families. All have the same characteristics: they are tolerant of salt, brackish, and fresh water; they grow in oxygen-poor soil; and they can survive drastic water-level changes. Black and white mangroves excrete salt from under their leaves, and red mangroves filter the salinity of sea water. All species are integral to coastline protection during severe storms. Red mangroves, for example, have far-reaching roots that trap sediments. The trees not only stabilize coastlines, but add land as more sand and decaying vegetation is trapped in the root systems. All three mangroves also absorb the energy of waves and storm surges.
The estuaries act as fisheries for fry and nurseries for crustaceans. Shrimp, oysters, crabs, whelks, cockles, and snails thrive in these waters, as do primordial horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus). The region supports a $59 million-a-year Tortugas pink shrimp (Farfantepenaeus duorarum) industry, and a $22 million-a-year stone crab (Menippe mercenaria) industry.  Between 80 and 90 percent of species that are harvested commercially in Florida are born or spend time in the shallow waters near the Everglades. Oysters and mangroves work in tandem to build up the coastline. The sand around the coastline has minute white particles of quartz and fine shells. When currents are right, oysters grow in colonies or beds, and deposit their shells, reinforcing the bed. Mangrove seeds, called propagules, are full embryos and float in water until they reach a favorable location and take root, often on oyster beds. They shed skin and litter, ensuring other trees will not compete for space and nutrients.Mangroves also serve as excellent rookeries for birds. Wading birds, such as roseate spoonbills (Platalea ajaja), egrets, and tricolored herons (Egretta tricolor) use the mangroves as a nursery, due to the proximity of food sources and the protection offered from most prey. Thousands of birds can nest in the mangroves at once, making a noisy and messy colony, but their droppings fertilize the mangrove trees. Shorebirds like rails, terns and gulls; diving birds such as pelicans and grebes; and birds of prey such as ospreys, hawks and vultures are among the more than 100 species of birds that use Everglades mangrove trees to raise their young.

Passage: The state has three principal geographical zones:
The coastal region of Karavali
The hilly Malenadu region comprising the Western Ghats
The Bayaluseeme region comprising the plains of the Deccan plateauThe bulk of the state is in the Bayaluseeme region, the northern part of which is the second-largest arid region in India. The highest point in Karnataka is the Mullayanagiri hills in Chickmagalur district which has an altitude of 1,929 metres (6,329 ft). Some of the important rivers in Karnataka are Kaveri, Tungabhadra, Krishna, Malaprabha and the Sharavathi. A large number of dams and reservoirs are constructed across these rivers which richly add to the irrigation and hydel power generation capacities of the state.
Karnataka consists of four main types of geological formations — the Archean complex made up of Dharwad schists and granitic gneisses, the Proterozoic non-fossiliferous sedimentary formations of the Kaladgi and Bhima series, the Deccan trappean and intertrappean deposits and the tertiary and recent laterites and alluvial deposits. Significantly, about 60% of the state is composed of the Archean complex which consist of gneisses, granites and charnockite rocks. Laterite cappings that are found in many districts over the Deccan Traps were formed after the cessation of volcanic activity in the early tertiary period. Eleven groups of soil orders are found in Karnataka, viz. Entisols, Inceptisols, Mollisols, Spodosols, Alfisols, Ultisols, Oxisols, Aridisols, Vertisols, Andisols and Histosols. Depending on the agricultural capability of the soil, the soil types are divided into six types, viz. red, lateritic, black, alluvio-colluvial, forest and coastal soils.
Karnataka experiences four seasons. The winter in January and February is followed by summer between March and May, the monsoon season between June and September and the post-monsoon season from October till December. Meteorologically, Karnataka is divided into three zones — coastal, north interior and south interior. Of these, the coastal zone receives the heaviest rainfall with an average rainfall of about 3,638.5 mm (143 in) per annum, far in excess of the state average of 1,139 mm (45 in). Amagaon in Khanapur received 10,068 mm of rainfall in the year 2010 followed by Cherrapunji in Meghalaya received 13,472 mm of rainfall.In the year 2014 Kokalli in Sirsi taluk received 8,746 mm of rainfall was the wettest region in the state whereas Cherrapunji received 10,235 mm of rainfall in that year. Agumbe and Hulikal were considered as rain city or rain capital of Karnataka ,being considered as one of the wettest region in the world. The highest recorded temperature was 45.6 °C (114 °F) at Raichur and the lowest recorded temperature was 2.8 °C (37 °F) at Bidar.
The following table shows the places with  recorded coldest temperature in Karnataka [Year:2019]  Source: KSNDMC.

Passage: The geography and ecology of the Everglades involve the complex elements affecting the natural environment throughout the southern region of the U.S. state of Florida. Before drainage, the Everglades were an interwoven mesh of marshes and prairies covering 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2). The Everglades is simultaneously a vast watershed that has historically extended from Lake Okeechobee 100 miles (160 km) south to Florida Bay (around one-third of the southern Florida peninsula), and many interconnected ecosystems within a geographic boundary. It is such a unique meeting of water, land, and climate that the use of either singular or plural to refer to the Everglades is appropriate. When Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote her definitive description of the region in 1947, she used the metaphor "River of Grass" to explain the blending of water and plant life.
Although sawgrass and sloughs are the enduring geographical icons of the Everglades, other ecosystems are just as vital, and the borders marking them are subtle or nonexistent. Pinelands and tropical hardwood hammocks are located throughout the sloughs; the trees, rooted in soil inches above the peat, marl, or water, support a variety of wildlife. The oldest and tallest trees are cypresses, whose roots are specially adapted to grow underwater for months at a time. The Big Cypress Swamp is well known for its 500-year-old cypresses, though cypress domes can appear throughout the Everglades. As the fresh water from Lake Okeechobee makes its way to Florida Bay, it meets salt water from the Gulf of Mexico; mangrove forests grow in this transitional zone, providing nursery and nesting conditions for many species of birds, fish, and invertebrates. The marine environment of Florida Bay is also considered part of the Everglades because its sea grasses and aquatic life are attracted to the constant discharge of fresh water.
These ecological systems are always changing due to environmental factors. Geographic features such as the Western Flatwoods, Eastern Flatwoods, and the Atlantic Coastal Ridge affect drainage patterns. Geologic elements, climate, and the frequency of storms and fire are formative processes for the Everglades. They help to sustain and transform the ecosystems in the Shark River Valley, Big Cypress Swamp, coastal areas and mangrove forests. Ecosystems have been described as both fragile and resilient. Minor fluctuations in water levels have far-reaching consequences for many plant and animal species, and the system cycles and pulses with each change.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: In 2003, The Greencards recorded and self-released Movin' On, their debut album, which sold 10,000 copies at shows and online, and entered the top five on the Americana radio charts. Pat Flynn, one of the band members of the New Grass Revival, guested on the recording of Movin' On as a session guitarist, and would return to do so again on Weather and Water. The album was said to break past traditional rules of bluegrass music by integrating a jam-band mindset while blending classical folk balladry and rock 'n' roll into the sound. Contrasting with that appraisal, the album was also cited as a traditional and successful "lo-fi" approach to bluegrass music. Critics noted the virtuoso solos on mandolin, fiddle, and guitar on Movin' On.The Greencards gained more fans and became known by name quickly after the release of Movin' On. The band was credited with performing the most energetic sets during the course of the 2004 Austin City Limits Music Festival, were said to bring a global sound to bluegrass, and—by drawing on influences such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles—were pushing the genre's boundaries. Their live show during this period was ranked by the Houston Chronicle in the top five nights of live music for the year in 2004.Movin' On earned The Greencards the 2004 Austin Music Award for Best New Band. Several months after the awards, the band was signed by Dualtone Records and began work on their next album, Weather and Water. The label re-released Movin' On at the beginning of 2005, generating still more airplay and sales.

Passage: The Greencards are an American progressive bluegrass band that formed in 2003 in Austin, Texas, and relocated in 2005 to Nashville, Tennessee. The band was founded by Englishman Eamon McLoughlin and Australians Kym Warner and Carol Young. The musicians originally performed in local Austin bars, and soon found increasing acclaim. They have released one independent album, Movin' On, in 2003, and two albums, Weather and Water and Viridian, on the Dualtone record label. Their fourth album, Fascination, was released on Sugar Hill in 2009. Their fifth album, The Brick Album (2011), was self-produced with the direct support of their fans. Pre-production donors were recognized with their names inscribed on the "bricks" that make up the cover art.
Their debut album, Movin' On, was the recipient of local Texas awards and charted on Americana radio stations. Country Music Television named their follow-up Weather and Water as one of the ten best bluegrass albums of 2005, and The Greencards were invited to tour with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson in the same year. Viridian would go on to take the number one position on Billboard magazine's Bluegrass Music Chart, making the Greencards the first international band to do so. Viridian was a critically praised album, and was nominated for Best Country Album by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The track "Mucky the Duck" from Viridian was nominated as the Best Country Instrumental Performance at the 50th Grammy Awards.
The Greencards are noted for their incorporation of other genres of music within an American bluegrass sound. Often labeled as part of, and said to be representative of, the "newgrass" movement, they draw from Irish folk music, gypsy music, rock 'n' roll, folk balladry, and Latin American musical sources. The Greencards' sound has been compared to progressive American folk rock, and they have been credited with helping to expand bluegrass music.
Eamon McLoughlin left the band in December 2009, and resides in Nashville. Carl Miner, originally from Oregon, joined the group in May 2010, playing acoustic guitar. Miner won the 1999 National Flatpicking Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival, and he resides in Nashville.

Passage: In early 1969, Quaife told the band he was leaving. The other members did not take his statement seriously, until an article appeared in New Musical Express on 4 April featuring Quaife's new band, Maple Oak, which he had formed without telling the rest of the Kinks. Ray Davies pleaded with him to return for the sessions for their upcoming album, but Quaife refused. Davies immediately called up John Dalton, who had filled in for Quaife in the past, as a replacement. Dalton remained with the group until 1977, when the album Sleepwalker was released.Ray Davies travelled to Los Angeles in April 1969 to help negotiate an end to the American Federation of Musicians' ban on the group, opening up an opportunity for them to return to touring in the US. The group's management quickly made plans for a North American tour, to help restore their standing in the US pop music scene. Before their return to the US, the Kinks recorded another album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire). As with the previous two albums, Arthur was grounded in characteristically English lyrical and musical hooks. A modest commercial success, it was well received by American music critics. Conceived as the score for a proposed but unrealised television drama, much of the album revolved around themes from the Davies brothers' childhood; their sister Rosie, who had migrated to Australia in the early 1960s with her husband, Arthur Anning, the album's namesake; and life growing up during the Second World War. The Kinks embarked on their tour of the US in October 1969. The tour was generally unsuccessful, as the group struggled to find cooperative promoters and interested audiences; many of the scheduled concert dates were cancelled. The band did, however, manage to play a few major venues such as the Fillmore East and Whisky a Go Go.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: In post-World War II Italy, Malvina is on her deathbed at her ancestral home. She tells Jakob, her adolescent son, that another woman will come, a woman who will love him, and that the next words he speaks will call Malvina back to him.
Seven months later a British nurse specializing in children's care, Verena, arrives. Jakob hasn't spoken since his mother died and Verena is the latest English-speaking (per Malvina's wishes) nurse recruited by Klaus, Jakob's father. Verena meets estate keeper Alessio and retired house maid Lilia. Though polite, Jakob is cold and distant.
Verena learns that Malvina's family owned the estate and surrounding quarries for 1,200 years. Malvina was the first descendant not to run the quarry, instead becoming a world famous pianist. Since most of the men who worked there died during the second world war, she allowed the quarry to flood, though Alessio still lights a flame for long-dead quarrymen, proclaiming "Life. Death. Love. The stone was everything."
When Verena looks in on Jakob one night, she finds him with his ear to the stone wall in his room, listening. Klaus fears that Jakob believes he can hear Malvina in the stone. Verena worries that she is inadequate and that Jakob's condition requires a mental health specialist.
When Verena sees Jakob on the ledge of a tall tower, she endangers herself to rescue him – making her (and Jakob) realize that she cares for him and must stay to help him.  She caringly explains that the voice he hears is real, but that it is just his mind playing tricks on him. The next day Verena sees him listening to Malvina's tombstone in the family mausoleum. Alessio informs her that 40 generations are buried there "in the stone". Verena, who was orphaned around Jakob's age, tells the boy that she already knows that wishing to hear dead loved ones does not make it happen.

Passage: After losing her son Oliver in a car accident in India, Maria has not recovered from the tragedy. During the accident, Maria chose to save her youngest daughter, Lucy instead of Oliver and the guilt devastated her. One night, her husband Michael finds Maria unconscious after a suicide attempt. In the hospital, Maria is comforted by her housekeeper Piki. Piki asks Maria if she wants one final chance to say goodbye to Oliver. She explains that in her village, there is an abandoned temple where the line between the living and the dead is very thin. Maria must scatter her son's ashes at the temple steps and lock herself in. Oliver will speak to her once night falls. However, no matter what Oliver says, Maria must not open the temple door for him. Maria agrees and the pair have Oliver's body exhumed and burned. Maria notices some strange men covered in ash. Piki explains that they are shamans who consume the flesh of the dead and coat themselves in ash to strengthen their bonds between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Passage: A recently widowed Englishwoman, Mary Panton, is staying at the villa of some wealthy friends outside of Florence, Italy in 1938. After meeting her old friend Sir Edgar Swift at a party celebrating the Munich Agreement, she is surprised when he proposes marriage to her the next day. She asks for a few days to think the proposal over, and he agrees to meet with her on his return from Rome.
That evening, at a party hosted by her friend, the Princess San Ferdinando, she meets a married American man named Rowley Flint, who has a reputation for being a rogue. A violinist arrives to entertain the guests but is so terrible that the Princess has him removed. Out of sympathy Mary leaves him a large tip. Rowley drives Mary home, but on the way stops at a small church, where she confesses that her husband was an abusive alcoholic who died in a car crash, leaving her destitute. Rowley tries to kiss her but Mary slaps him and drives away. She is so flustered that she almost collides with a young man in the road, who turns out to be the violinist from the restaurant. Seeing that he is poor and hungry, she invites him up to the house for a meal. He tells her that his name is Karl Richter and that he is a refugee from Austria, where he was persecuted for resisting the Nazi government. When the young man declares how beautiful Mary is, she has sex with him out of sympathy. He leaves the next morning.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Gabe Ryan is released from reform school and it taken to a new house by his sister Joy to start a new life where no one knows of his past.  However, Gabe immediately joins a local gang, the Beale Street Termites,  where he meets up with William Kroner, a local gangster.  William accuses him of starting a fire at one of his properties, and Alfred Martino, the actual arsonist, uses this opportunity to frame Gabe for any fire.  He decides to torch one of his apartment complexes so that he can collect the insurance money.  Unfortunately, one of the kids, Sleepy is killed in the fire.
Patrick Remson, the Assistant District Attorney, tries to prove Gabe's innocence.  His motives are not only to prove Gabe's innocence, but also to get closer to his sister.  Joy has devoted her life to helping Gabe and neglects her other interests, which was rallying against city government corruption, which pleases Martino.  However, it is all for naught as Gabe is found guilty and sentenced to prison.
The other boys, led by Billy, decide to do something to help Gabe.  Billy runs for "boy mayor" and wins.  He has Kroner arrested for a small infraction and sends him to jail.  While there, Billy and the rest of the gang interrogate him and try to make him admit that Gabe is innocent.  He does not cave in, that is until he is shown proof that his accomplices, Martino and the fire chief, are planning to skip the country.  He confesses and Martino and the chief are arrested and sent to prison.

Passage: Nathalie Stein, an embittered and exhausted young woman, is currently going through a bitter divorce from her husband Tim. A qualified attorney, she is doing her best to ensure that her two children, Jeremy and Elisabeth, never see their father again. Tim arrives to pick the children up for what is believed to be one last time. He fails to return with the children.
Nathalie's dog disappears under mysterious circumstances and she then discovers a piece of paper with the word "Dard" (the Persian word for "to inflict pain") written in blood in her house. Panicked, she calls the police, who cannot help without more evidence of a crime. She decides to meet Tim and the children in Chinatown, but they do not show up.
In the evening, Tim suddenly appears at the house, apparently badly injured. Before dying, he tells Nathalie that the children have been abducted. She immediately informs the police, but when the detective, James Gates, arrives, the body is gone and the site has been cleaned up leaving no evidence that Nathalie is telling the truth. Later a police officer, Phil Warren arrives to question Nathalie. Warren is revealed to be corrupt and overpowers Nathalie. Graphically depicted in flashback, he tells Nathalie that Tim had been hired by the Persian Mafioso Maho and had burst in on a drug deal organised by Maho, killing those present before running off with a million dollars in cash and the cocaine. Convinced that the drugs are hidden in the house, he tells her he has killed her son Jeremy with a chainsaw and will kill Elisabeth as well if he is not told where drugs and money are, Warren then tortures Nathalie in an attempt to get the information out of her, cutting off a finger and a toe with pruning shears. Nathalie eventually manages to break free and kills Warren with a broken bottle.

Passage: Delinquent gang members Tom, Pig, Ape, and String are trying to break out from the reformatory their confined to, but they are caught and brought to the parole officer Cathy Crookshank. All of the gang members are sons of gangsters, which makes it even harder for them to get paroled. They tell their superintendent this, and that they have no sponsor.  To remedy this, Miss Crookshank asks the leader of the boys fathers' gang, Valentine, to come to her office. Valentine is barely released from prison. He is reluctant to help the boys, arguing that he is a reformed man and is now living on a farm with his wife Molly and their daughter Pat. He has also decided to take a new name, "Ryan."
Miss Crookshank explains the boys' predicament, however, and Valentine agrees to take them in under his wings. One of the younger members of the gang, Pesky, is also taken in by the ex-gangster. The would-be mobsters in reformatory are quite disappointed when they are sent away to the horse-breeding farm in the country instead of out into the city streets. When the boys are transported out to the farm, a gangster named Spike the Butcher, who had killed Valentine's men ten years earlier, follows Valentine to his farm in hopes of finishing the job and kill Valentine too. Spike brings his two henchmen, Creeper and Dingbat, to ambush Valentine/Ryan in his new home. District attorney Paul Revere Smith, who is Pat's boyfriend, arrives at the farm at the same time. Later that day the delinquent boys try to steal Valentine's station wagon, but the car has a flat tire and an old hunting dog gets in the way of the car, spoiling the boys' plan to escape.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: In ancient times, the Amazons, a proud and fierce race of warrior women, led by their Queen, Hippolyta, battled Ares, the god of war, and his army. During the battle, Hippolyta specifically targeted and beheaded her son Thrax, whom Ares forcibly conceived with her and who is fighting for his father. Hippolyta then defeated Ares, but Zeus stopped her from delivering the death strike. Instead, Hera bound his powers with magic bracers so that he was deprived of his ability to draw power from the psychic aura of violence and death he could instigate, and only another god could release him. In compensation, the Amazons were granted the island of Themyscira, where they would remain eternally youthful and isolated from Man in the course of their duty of holding Ares prisoner for all eternity. Later, Hippolyta was granted a daughter, Princess Diana, whom she shaped from the sand of the Themyscirian seashore and gave life with her own blood.
Over a millennium later, an American fighter pilot, USAF Colonel Steve Trevor, is shot down in a dogfight and crash-lands his YF-23 on the island, where he soon runs afoul of the Amazon population, including the combative Artemis. Steve and Diana meet and fight, and Diana defeats him, taking him to the Amazons. After interrogating him with the use of the Amazons' golden lasso, Hippolyta decides he is not an enemy of the Amazons and as such, tradition dictates that an emissary be tasked to ensure his safe return to his own country. Diana volunteers, but is assigned to guard Ares's cell instead since her mother argues that she has not enough experience in dealing with the dangers of the outside world. Diana defies her mother and, her face hidden by a helmet and her guard duty covered by her bookish but kind-hearted Amazon sister Alexa, participates in contests of strength and wins the right to take Trevor back to his home.

Passage: Amyntas III was forced to flee his kingdom in either 393 or 383 BC (based on conflicting accounts), owing to a massive invasion by the Illyrian Dardani led by Bardylis. The pretender to the throne Argaeus ruled in his absence, yet Amyntas III eventually returned to his kingdom with the aid of Thessalian allies. Amyntas III was also nearly overthrown by the forces of the Chalcidian city of Olynthos, but with the aid of Teleutias, brother of the Spartan king Agesilaus II, the Macedonians forced Olynthos to surrender and dissolve their Chalcidian League in 379 BC.Alexander II (r. 370 – 368 BC), son of Eurydice I and Amyntas III, succeeded his father and immediately invaded Thessaly to wage war against the tagus (supreme Thessalian military leader) Alexander of Pherae, capturing the city of Larissa. The Thessalians, desiring to remove both Alexander II and Alexander of Pherae as their overlords, appealed to Pelopidas of Thebes for aid; he succeeded in recapturing Larissa and, in the peace agreement arranged with Macedonia, received aristocratic hostages including Alexander II's brother and future king Philip II (r. 359–336 BC– ). When Alexander was assassinated by his brother-in-law Ptolemy of Aloros, the latter acted as an overbearing regent for Perdiccas III (r. 368 – 359 BC), younger brother of Alexander II, who eventually had Ptolemy executed when reaching the age of majority in 365 BC. The remainder of Perdiccas III's reign was marked by political stability and financial recovery. However, an Athenian invasion led by Timotheus, son of Conon, managed to capture Methone and Pydna, and an Illyrian invasion led by Bardylis succeeded in killing Perdiccas III and 4,000 Macedonian troops in battle.

Passage: Scene: A Ruined Temple on the Summit of Mount Olympus
On Mount Olympus, the elderly deities complain of feeling old and lament their waning influence on Earth.  Mercury complains that the older gods are lazy and leave all their duties to him, while he gets no credit for all his drudgery.  Jupiter says that matters have reached a crisis, but he is unsure what can be done about it.  Just then, the gods see a swarm of mortals ascending the mountain and withdraw to observe them from a distance.
Thespis's acting company enters for a picnic celebrating the marriage of two of its members, Sparkeion and Nicemis.  The actors, being cheap, have failed to contribute substantial food items to the picnic.  Sparkeion flirts with his former fiancée, Daphne, which annoys Nicemis.  In retaliation, Nicemis flirts with her old suitor, Thespis, but he declines to flirt back.  Thespis explains to his troupe that a successful manager must be aloof from those he manages, or he will lose his authority.
Jupiter, Mars and Apollo enter.  All of the actors flee in terror, except for Thespis.  Jupiter asks Thespis whether he is impressed with the father of the gods.  Thespis replies that the gods are unimpressive and suggests that they go down to earth in disguise to "mingle" and judge for themselves what people think of them.  They agree to invest the actors with their powers, as they take a merry holiday below on Earth.  Thespis agrees that he and his company will keep things running on Mount Olympus during the gods' absence.  Each actor takes the place of one of the gods, with Thespis himself replacing Jupiter.  Mercury stays behind to offer any advice the actors may need.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Tiruchirappalli is situated in central south-eastern India, almost at the geographic centre of the state of Tamil Nadu. The Cauvery Delta begins to form 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of the city where the river divides into two streams—the Kaveri and the Kollidam—to form the island of Srirangam. By road it is 912 kilometres (567 mi) south of Hyderabad, 322 kilometres (200 mi) south-west of Chennai and 331 kilometres (206 mi) south-east of Bangalore. The topology of Tiruchirappalli is almost flat, with an average elevation of 88 metres (289 ft). A few isolated hillocks rise above the surface, the highest of which is the Rockfort; its estimated age of 3,800 million years makes it one of the oldest rocks in the world. Other prominent hillocks include the Golden Rock, Khajamalai, and one each at Uyyakondan Thirumalai and Thiruverumbur.The two major rivers draining Tiruchirappalli are the Kaveri and its tributary the Kollidam, but the city is also drained by the Uyyakondan Channel, Koraiyar and Kudamuritti river channels. The land immediately surrounding the Kaveri River—which crosses Tiruchirappalli from west to east—consists of deposits of fertile alluvial soil on which crops such as finger millet and maize are cultivated. Further south, the surface is covered by poor-quality black soil. A belt of Cretaceous rock known as the Trichinopoly Group runs to the north-east of the city, and to the south-east there are layers of archaean rocks, granite and gneiss covered by a thin bed of conglomeratic laterite. The region falls under Seismic Zone III, which is moderately vulnerable to earthquakes.

Passage: Tiruchirappalli (pronunciation ) (formerly Trichinopoly in English), also called Trichy, is a major tier II city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Tiruchirappalli District. Trichy is the fourth largest city as well as the fourth largest urban agglomeration in the state. Located 322 kilometres (200 mi) south of Chennai and 374 kilometres (232 mi) north of Kanyakumari, Tiruchirappalli sits almost at the geographic centre of the state. The Cauvery Delta begins 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of the city where the Kaveri river splits into two, forming the island of Srirangam, which is now incorporated into the Tiruchirappalli City Municipal Corporation. Occupying 167.23 square kilometres (64.57 sq mi), the city was home to 916,857 people in 2011.Tiruchirappalli's recorded history begins in the 3rd century BC, when it was under the rule of the Cholas. The city has also been ruled by the Mutharaiyars, Pandyas, Pallavas, Vijayanagar Empire, Nayak Dynasty, the Carnatic state and the British. The most prominent historical monuments in Tiruchirappalli include the Rockfort, the Ranganathaswamy temple at Srirangam and the Jambukeswarar temple at Thiruvanaikaval. The archaeologically important town of Uraiyur, capital of the Early Cholas, is now a suburb of Tiruchirappalli. The city played a critical role in the Carnatic Wars (1746–1763) between the British and the French East India companies.
The city is an important educational centre in the state of Tamil Nadu and houses nationally recognised institutions such as Indian Institute of Management (IIMT), Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) and National Institute of Technology (NITT). Industrial units such as Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Golden Rock Railway Workshop, Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli (OFT) and Heavy Alloy Penetrator Project (HAPP) have their factories in the city. The presence of a large number of energy equipment manufacturing units in and around the city has earned it the title of "Energy Equipment and Fabrication Capital of India". Tiruchirappalli is internationally known for a brand of cheroot known as the Trichinopoly cigar, which was exported in large quantities to the United Kingdom during the 19th century.
A major road and railway hub in the state, the city is served by the Tiruchirappalli International Airport (TRZ) which operates flights to the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Passage: A resident of Tiruchirappalli is generally referred to as a Tiruchiite. Situated at the edge of the Kaveri Delta, the culture of Tiruchirappalli is predominantly Brahminical, prevalent elsewhere in the delta. With a substantial population of students and migrant industrial workers from different parts of India, Tiruchirappalli has a more cosmopolitan outlook than the surrounding countryside. The main festival celebrated in Tiruchirappalli is Pongal, a regional harvest festival celebrated during January. As part of the Pongal celebrations, Jallikattu, a bull-taming village sport played on the last day of the festival, is occasionally held on the outskirts of the city. Aadi Perukku, Samayapuram flower festival, Vaikunta Ekadasi, Srirangam car festival, and the Teppakulam float festival are some of the prominent festivals that are held locally. Bakrid and Eid al-Fitr are also widely celebrated, owing to the substantial number of Muslims in the city. Nationwide festivals such as the Gregorian New Year, Christmas, Deepavali and Holi are also celebrated in Tiruchirappalli.
The 12th century Tamil epic Kambaramayanam was first recited at the Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam. In 1771, Rama Natakam, a musical drama written Arunachala Kavi and based on the Ramayana,  was also performed there. Tiruchirappalli was home to some of the prominent Carnatic musicians—including Lalgudi Jayaraman, Srirangam Kannan and A. K. C. Natarajan—and scholars such as T. S. Murugesan Pillai, Kundalam Rangachariar and K. A. P. Viswanatham. Composers, poets and vocalists such as G. Ramanathan, T. K. Ramamoorthy, Vaali and P. Madhuri, who have made significant contributions to Tamil film music hail from the city.Textile weaving, leather-work and gem cutting are some of the important crafts practised in Tiruchirappalli. Wooden idols of Hindu gods and goddesses are sold at Poompuhar, the crafts emporium run by the Government of Tamil Nadu. The Trichy Travel Federation (TTF) was formed on 5 May 2009 to promote Tiruchirappalli as a favourable tourist destination. The federation organises an annual food festival called Suvai. Lack of infrastructure has been a major deterrent to the city's tourism industry.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Conversely, another rock genre, Britpop, emerged in part as a reaction against the dominance of grunge in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the dourness of grunge, Britpop was defined by "youthful exuberance and desire for recognition". The leading Britpop bands, "Blur and Oasis[,] exist[ed] as reactionary forces to [grunge's] eternal downcast glare."  Britpop artists' new approach was inspired by Blur's tour of the United States in the spring of 1992. Justine Frischmann, formerly of Suede and leader of Elastica (and at the time in a relationship with Damon Albarn) explained, "Damon and I felt like we were in the thick of it at that point ... it occurred to us that Nirvana were out there, and people were very interested in American music, and there should be some sort of manifesto for the return of Britishness."Britpop artists were vocal about their disdain for grunge. In a 1993 NME interview, Damon Albarn of Britpop band Blur agreed with interviewer John Harris' assertion that Blur was an "anti-grunge band", and said, "Well, that's good. If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge" (ironically Kurt Cobain once cited Blur as his favorite band). Noel Gallagher of Oasis, while a fan of Nirvana, wrote music that refuted the pessimistic nature of grunge. Gallagher noted in 2006 that the 1994 Oasis single "Live Forever" "was written in the middle of grunge and all that, and I remember Nirvana had a tune called 'I Hate Myself and I Want to Die,' and I was like ... 'Well, I'm not fucking having that.' As much as I fucking like him [Cobain] and all that shit, I'm not having that. I can't have people like that coming over here, on smack [heroin], fucking saying that they hate themselves and they wanna die. That's fucking rubbish.".

Passage: Stereolab have been called one of the most "influential" and "fiercely independent and original groups of the Nineties" by writers Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Pierre Perrone respectively; as well as one of "the decade's most innovative British bands." by Mark Jenkins. Simon Reynolds commented in Rolling Stone that the group's earlier records form "an endlessly seductive body of work that sounds always the same, always different." In a review for the 1992 single "John Cage Bubblegum", Jason Ankeny said that "No other artist of its generation fused the high-minded daring of the avant-garde and the lowbrow infectiousness of pop with as much invention, skill, and appeal." In The Wire, Peter Shapiro compared the band to Britpop bands Oasis and Blur, and defended their music against the charge that it is "nothing but the sum total of its arcane reference points." They were one of the first groups to be termed post-rock—in a 1996 article, journalist Angela Lewis applied the "new term" to Stereolab and three other bands who have connections to the group. Stylistically, music journalist J. D. Considine credits the band for anticipating and driving the late 1990s revival of vintage analogue instruments among indie rock bands.The group have also received negative press. Barney Hoskyns questioned the longevity of their music in a 1996 Mojo review, saying that their records "sound more like arid experiments than music born of emotional need." In Guardian, Dave Simpson stated: "With their borrowings from early, obscure Kraftwerk and hip obtuse sources, [Stereolab] sound like a band of rock critics rather than musicians." Lætitia Sadier's vocals were cited by author Stuart Shea as often being "indecipherable".A variety of artists, musical and otherwise, have collaborated with Stereolab. In 1995 the group teamed up with sculptor Charles Long for an interactive art show in New York City, for which Long provided the exhibits and Stereolab the music. They have released tracks by and toured with post-rock band Tortoise, while John McEntire of Tortoise has in turn worked on several Stereolab albums. In the 1990s, the group collaborated with the industrial band Nurse With Wound and released two albums together, Crumb Duck (1993) and Simple Headphone Mind (1998), and Stereolab also released "Calimero" (1998) with French avant-garde singer and poet Brigitte Fontaine. The band worked with Herbie Mann on the song "One Note Samba/Surfboard" for the 1998 AIDS-Benefit album, Red Hot + Rio, produced by the Red Hot Organization.

Passage: In the late 1970s the genre failed to help the economy, with punk music being anti-conformity and anti-mainstream they failed to get into the commercial music. By the 1990s, punk rock was sufficiently ingrained in Western culture that punk trappings were often used to market highly commercial bands as "rebels". Marketers capitalized on the style and hipness of punk rock to such an extent that a 1993 ad campaign for an automobile, the Subaru Impreza, claimed that the car was "like punk rock".In 1993, California's Green Day and Bad Religion were both signed to major labels. The next year, Green Day put out Dookie, which became a huge hit, selling nine million albums in the United States in just over two years. Bad Religion's Stranger Than Fiction was certified gold. Other California punk bands on the independent label Epitaph, run by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, also began achieving mainstream popularity. In 1994, Epitaph released Let's Go by Rancid, Punk in Drublic by NOFX, and Smash by the Offspring, each eventually certified gold or better. That June, Green Day's "Longview" reached number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart and became a top forty airplay hit, arguably the first ever American punk song to do so; just one month later, the Offspring's "Come Out and Play" followed suit. MTV and radio stations such as Los Angeles' KROQ-FM played a major role in these bands' crossover success, though NOFX refused to let MTV air its videos.
The Offspring's 1998 album Americana, released by the major Columbia label, debuted at number two on the album chart. A bootleg MP3 of Americana's first single, "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)", made it onto the Internet and was downloaded a record 22 million times—illegally. The following year, Enema of the State, the first major-label release by pop punk band Blink-182, reached the top ten and sold four million copies in under twelve months. On February 19, 2000, the album's second single, "All the Small Things", peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. While they were viewed as Green Day "acolytes", critics also found teen pop acts such as Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, and 'N Sync suitable points of comparison for Blink-182's sound and market niche. The band's Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (2001) and Blink-182 (2003) respectively rose to numbers one and three on the album chart. In November 2003, The New Yorker described how the "giddily puerile" act had "become massively popular with the mainstream audience, a demographic formerly considered untouchable by punk-rock purists.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: After receiving a distress signal, a team of elite commandos are dispatched to extract a scientific team in a secret military base. The team is instructed to shoot on sight any prisoners that they see. When they arrive, the commandos split into three teams. However, team leader Romeo disobeys orders when he recognizes one of the prisoners, Eve, as his dead wife. Confused, Romeo asks how this is possible, but Eve claims to be suffering from amnesia and can only remember bits and pieces of her life. The others dispute this and want to kill her, but Romeo is adamant that she accompany them.  After an encounter with a mutant gorilla, Elvis is killed and tensions begin to rise; the team begin to wonder what kind of experiments could have been performed at the base.
When the commandos find lead scientist Caesar, they angrily demand answers, but he tells them only that Eve is a dangerous and important weapon. Matthews, after being threatened, reveals that the prisoners have been used in brain experiments. Eve is distressed by this, and the team remains hostile to the scientists; however, they agree to allow the scientists to accompany them. A friendly team opens fire on them, and a prisoner nearly forces Romeo to open fire on his own team. Fourpack saves Romeo by killing the prisoner. Caesar explains that the prisoners have psychic powers, enhanced through experimentation. Disgusted, the team abandons the scientists and decides to escort Eve to the surface. Wiki hallucinates a dog attack and accidentally kills herself, and the third team opens fire on the remaining soldiers. In the confusion, Eve and the soldiers split up.

Passage: Scrat is once again trying to bury his acorn but accidentally activates an abandoned alien ship that takes him into deep space, where he unwittingly sends several asteroids en route to a collision with Earth. Meanwhile, Manny and Ellie are preparing upcoming marriage between Peaches and her fiancé, Julian. Diego and his wife Shira want to start a family, but their fierce appearance tends to scare kids. Sid is dumped by his girlfriend, Francine, just as he is about to propose to her, and he laments his solitude. During Manny and Ellie's wedding anniversary party, some of the asteroids strike the place and The Herd barely escape. Meanwhile, at the underground lost world, Buck returns a dinosaur egg back to its rightful owner after it was stolen by a trio of flying dromaeosaurs named Gavin, Gertie, and Roger. Buck discovers an ancient stone pillar and takes it to the surface, where he meets Manny and the others.
Buck explains to The Herd that according to the pillar, the asteroids had caused several extinctions in the past and with a massive one still incoming, he believes that the only place they could find a clue to stop it is on the site of the impact of the previous ones, as according to its engravings, they always fall at the same place. However, the three dromaeosaurs overhear their conversation, and Gavin and Gertie decide to stop them, believing that they could easily avoid the impact, thus not only getting their revenge on Buck, but also killing all mammals and securing domination over Earth for their species. Roger is reluctant, but Gavin and Gertie strong-arm him into cooperating.

Passage: Ash Mattley, a doctor in a small village deep in the jungles of Borneo, is approached by another scientist, Carl Wessinger regarding his studies of an enzyme found in a rare beetle. With the aid of Mattley and a group of natives, Wessinger secures several of the beetles, but then betrays his team and leaves them behind in a cave. Later, Wessinger uncovers a fossil in the jungle, but the natives in his new team fall in fear and worship before the deceased creature, which they call "Balakai."
Two years later, Mattley's clinic is beset by a series of gruesome murders in the jungle. The natives attribute the killings to Balakai, who is an ancient myth in the area. Mattley is enlisted by Claire Sommers, a CIA agent, to find Wessinger. The government had been monitoring Wessinger's activities in the jungle after he began working for them, but the doctor had recently fallen off radar, and Sommers reveals she has been sent to track him down. Together with Matzu, a boy whose sister was one of the victims, they set out into the jungle. Mattley does not initially believe that Balakai is real, but Sommers eventually tells him that the CIA was funding Wessinger's research into the fossil, leading him to change his mind.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: In the United States, Good Girl Gone Bad debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 162,000 copies in its first week. It became Rihanna's then-best start album entry. The next week, it fell to number seven with 81,000 copies sold. The re-issue sold 63,000 copies in the first week and helped Good Girl Gone Bad jump from number 124 to number seven on the US Billboard 200 in its 55th week. It was certified six-time platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); by November 2013, both Good Girl Gone Bad and the reissue had sold 2,800,000 copies in the United States alone. To date, it is her best-selling album in the country. The album debuted atop of the Canadian Albums Chart and became Rihanna's second number-one album in the country. It was certified quintuple platinum by Music Canada, denoting shipments of more than 500,000 copies.Good Girl Gone Bad debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart with sales of 54,000 copies in its first week. It became her first album to top the chart, and stayed on the chart for 177 weeks. In 2011, the album peaked at number 16 on the UK R&B Albums Chart. It was certified sextuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and sold over 1,904,347 copies in the country. It ended at number 10 on the UK 2007 year-end list and number six on the 2008 year-end list. As of March 2015, Good Girl Gone Bad is the 46th best-selling album of the millennium in the United Kingdom. In Ireland, Good Girl Gone Bad debuted at number three on the Irish Singles Chart on June 7, 2007. After four weeks on the chart, it reached the top. The album peaked at number one on the Swiss Hitparade chart and stayed on the chart for 91 weeks. In Australia, it peaked at number two and was certified triple platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), denoting shipments of over 210,000 copies. The album had sold 9 million copies worldwide.Before its physical release, "Umbrella" achieved the biggest debut in the six-year history of the iTunes Store in the United States, breaking a record previously held by Shakira's 2006 single "Hips Don't Lie". Following its digital release, the song debuted atop the Hot Digital Songs chart, with first-week sales of more than 277,000 units. The single became the highest digital debut in the United States since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking downloads in 2003, surpassing Timberlake's "SexyBack" 250,000 sales record in 2006.

Passage: In the US, "Diamonds" debuted at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold 133,000 copies in its first week. In its fourth week, it climbed to number eight on the chart and became Rihanna's twenty-third top-ten single. For the week ending December 1, 2012, the song became Rihanna's twelfth number-one on the chart, which ended the nine-week reign of Maroon 5's "One More Night". With the feat, Rihanna tied Madonna and Supremes as the artists with the fifth-most number ones in the chart's history. Rihanna also passed Mariah Carey as the female artist to mark 12 number-one songs the fastest on the chart by achieving the feat in six years and seven months, which bested Carey's stretch of seven years, one month, and two weeks. "Diamonds" charted for a second consecutive week atop the Hot 100, while her album Unapologetic topped the Billboard 200. As a result, Rihanna became only the second artist of 2012 to top both the Billboard singles and albums charts simultaneously; the first to do so was English singer Adele.On the Radio Songs chart, "Diamonds" debuted at number 28. In its fourth week, it climbed to number ten, becoming Rihanna's 19th top ten, breaking a tie with Lil Wayne for the second-best sum in the list's 22-year history; only Mariah Carey (23) has more. For the issue dated December 15, the song topped the chart, becoming Rihanna's tenth number one and placing second for female artists with the most chart toppers, only behind Mariah Carey (11). On the Pop Songs chart, "Diamonds" debuted at number 29, extending Rihanna's lead as the artist with the most appearances on the chart. On October 11, 2012, Billboard unveiled new methodology for the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, newly factoring digital download sales and streaming data into the 50-position rankings, along with existing radio airplay data monitored by Nielsen BDS. Due to this, "Diamonds" saw a huge leap from number 66 to number one, marking Rihanna's second single as a lead artist to top the chart; it topped the chart for fourteen consecutive weeks. "Diamonds" topped the Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Rihanna's nineteenth number one, tying her with Janet Jackson for the second-most number ones in the chart's 36-year history. Only Madonna has more (43). "Diamonds" was certified sextuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
In Canada, the song debuted at number nine on the Canadian Hot 100 for the issue dated October 13, 2012. The song peaked at number one on the issue dated November 24, 2012, becoming Rihanna's sixth single to reach number one on the chart. It remained atop of it for four consecutive weeks. It was certified platinum by Music Canada denoting sales of over 80,000 copies.

Passage: Good Girl Gone Bad received generally favorable reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 72 based on 17 reviews. Uncut called it a "shiny, trans-atlantic blend of Europop vim, R&B grit and Caribbean bounce." Andy Kellman of AllMusic deemed it quintessential pop music and said each of its tracks was a potential hit. Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters praised the album, describing it as "more raw, perhaps edgier and more risqué" than Rihanna's previous material. Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times wrote that the album "sounds as if it were scientifically engineered to deliver hits". Peter Robinson of The Observer commended her collaborators for "masking her own shortcomings" and commented that, "While Rihanna lacks her peers' charisma, she's a great vessel for exhilarating mainstream pop." Pitchfork Media's Tom Breihan found the album varied and satisfying. Neil Drumming of Entertainment Weekly felt that, although it "goes bad when Rihanna tries her hand at treacly ballads and glum sentiment", at times Good Girl Gone Bad is a "thrilling throwback to more than a decade ago, when upstart producers haphazardly mashed R&B with hip-hop to create chunky jeep anthems such as Mary J. Blige's 'Real Love'."In a mixed review, Rodney Dugue of The Village Voice felt that the album "never settles on a sound" and only cited its three Timbaland-produced songs as highlights. Although he found the ballads to be improvements from Rihanna's previous albums, Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani criticized the lyrics, particularly those written by Justin Timberlake, as an "Achilles' high heel for Rihanna". Alex Macpherson of The Guardian found Rihanna to be "ill-suited" for its dance-pop songs and stated, "The gimmicky samples and pounding beats bury her personality, and the summery reggae of her first two albums is sorely missed." Robert Christgau of MSN Music cited "Umbrella" as a "choice cut", indicating "a good song on an album that isn't worth your time or money".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: During the 1913 Ballets Russes season in Paris, Monteux conducted two more premieres. The first was Jeux, with music by Debussy and choreography by Nijinsky. The choreography was not liked; Monteux thought it "asinine", while Debussy felt that "Nijinsky's cruel and barbarous choreography ... trampled over my poor rhythms like so many weeds". The second new work was Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring given under the French title, Le sacre du printemps. Monteux had been appalled when Stravinsky first played the score at the piano:
I decided then and there that the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms were the only music for me, not the music of this crazy Russian. ... My one desire was to flee that room and find a quiet corner in which to rest my aching head. Then [Diaghilev] turned to me and with a smile said, "This is a masterpiece, Monteux, which will completely revolutionize music and make you famous, because you are going to conduct it." And, of course, I did.
Despite his initial reaction, Monteux worked with Stravinsky, giving practical advice to help the composer to achieve the orchestral balance and effects he sought. Together they worked on the score from March to May 1913, and to get the orchestra of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to cope with the unfamiliar and difficult music Monteux held seventeen rehearsals, an unusually large number. Monteux's real attitude to the score is unclear. In his old age he told a biographer, "I did not like Le Sacre then. I have conducted it fifty times since. I do not like it now." However, he told his wife in 1963 that the Rite was "now fifty years old, and I do not think it has aged at all. I had pleasure in conducting the fiftieth anniversary of Le Sacre this spring".

Passage: Before the first gramophone disc recordings of The Rite were issued in 1929, Stravinsky had helped to produce a pianola version of the work for the London branch of the Aeolian Company. He also created a much more comprehensive arrangement for the Pleyela, manufactured by the French piano company Pleyel, with whom he signed two contracts in April and May 1921, under which many of his early works were reproduced on this medium. The Pleyela version of The Rite of Spring was issued in 1921; the British pianolist Rex Lawson first recorded the work in this form in 1990.In 1929 Stravinsky and Monteux vied with each other to conduct the first orchestral gramophone recording of The Rite. While Stravinsky led L'Orchestre des Concerts Straram in a recording for the Columbia label, at the same time Monteux was recording it for the HMV label. Stokowski's version followed in 1930. Stravinsky made two more recordings, in 1940 and 1960. According to the critic Edward Greenfield, Stravinsky was not technically a great conductor but, Greenfield says, in the 1960 recording with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra the composer inspired a performance with "extraordinary thrust and resilience". In conversations with Robert Craft, Stravinsky reviewed several recordings of The Rite made in the 1960s. He thought Herbert von Karajan's 1963 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, was good, but "the performance is ... too polished, a pet savage rather than a real one". Stravinsky thought that Pierre Boulez, with the Orchestre National de France (1963), was "less good than I had hoped ... very bad tempi and some tasteless alterations". He praised a 1962 recording by The Moscow State Symphony Orchestra   for making the music sound Russian, "which is just right", but Stravinsky's concluding judgement was that none of these three performances was worth preserving.As of 2013 there were well over 100 different recordings of The Rite commercially available, and many more held in library sound archives. It has become one of the most recorded of all 20th century musical works.

Passage: The opening melody is played by a solo bassoon in a very high register, which renders the instrument almost unidentifiable; gradually other woodwind instruments are sounded and are eventually joined by strings. The sound builds up before stopping suddenly, Hill says, "just as it is bursting ecstatically into bloom". There is then a reiteration of the opening bassoon solo, now played a semitone lower.
The first dance, "Augurs of Spring", is characterised by a repetitive stamping chord in the horns and strings, based on E♭ dominant 7 superimposed on a triad of E, G♯ and B. White suggests that this bitonal combination, which Stravinsky considered the focal point of the entire work, was devised on the piano, since the constituent chords are comfortable fits for the hands on a keyboard. The rhythm of the stamping is disturbed by Stravinsky's constant shifting of the accent, on and off the beat, before the dance ends in a collapse, as if from exhaustion. Alex Ross has summed up the pattern as follows:
According to Roger Nichols (1978, p7) “At first sight there seems no pattern in the distribution of accents to the stamping chords.  Taking the initial quaver of bar 1 as a natural accent we have for the first outburst the following groups of quavers: 9, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5, 3. However, these apparently random numbers make sense when split into two groups:
Clearly the top line is decreasing, the bottom line increasing, and by respectively decreasing and increasing amounts …Whether Stravinsky worked them out like this we shall probably never know.  But the way two different rhythmic ‘orders’ interfere with each other to produced apparent chaos is… a typically Stravinskyan notion." The "Ritual of Abduction" which follows is described by Hill as "the most terrifying of musical hunts". It concludes in a series of flute trills that usher in the "Spring Rounds", in which a slow and laborious theme gradually rises to a dissonant fortissimo, a "ghastly caricature" of the episode's main tune.
Brass and percussion predominate as the "Ritual of the Rival Tribes" begins. A tune emerges on tenor and bass tubas, leading after much repetition to the entry of the Sage's procession. The music then comes to a virtual halt, "bleached free of colour" (Hill), as the Sage blesses the earth. The "Dance of the Earth" then begins, bringing Part I to a close in a series of phrases of the utmost vigour which are abruptly terminated in what Hill describes as a "blunt, brutal amputation".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Bristol has two major institutions of higher education: the University of Bristol, a redbrick chartered in 1909, and the University of the West of England, opened as Bristol Polytechnic in 1969, which became a university in 1992. The University of Law also has a campus in the city. Bristol has two further education institutions (City of Bristol College and South Gloucestershire and Stroud College) and two theological colleges: Trinity College, and Bristol Baptist College. The city has 129 infant, junior and primary schools,17 secondary schools, and three learning centres. After a section of north London, Bristol has England's second-highest number of independent school places. Independent schools in the city include Clifton College, Clifton High School, Badminton School, Bristol Grammar School, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital (the only all-boys school) and the Redmaids' School (founded in 1634 by John Whitson, which claims to be England's oldest girls' school).
In 2005 Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown named Bristol one of six English "science cities",
and a £300 million science park was planned at Emersons Green. Research is conducted at the two universities, the Bristol Royal Infirmary and Southmead Hospital, and science outreach is practiced at We The Curious, the Bristol Zoo, the Bristol Festival of Nature and the Create Centre.The city has produced a number of scientists, including 19th-century chemist Humphry Davy (who worked in Hotwells). Physicist Paul Dirac (from Bishopston) received the 1933 Nobel Prize for his contributions to quantum mechanics. Cecil Frank Powell was the Melvill Wills Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol when he received the 1950 Nobel Prize for, among other discoveries, his photographic method of studying nuclear processes. Colin Pillinger was the planetary scientist behind the Beagle 2 project, and neuropsychologist Richard Gregory founded the Exploratory (a hands-on science centre which was the predecessor of At-Bristol/We The Curious).Initiatives such as the Flying Start Challenge encourage an interest in science and engineering in Bristol secondary-school pupils; links with aerospace companies impart technical information and advance student understanding of design.
The Bloodhound SSC project to break the land speed record is based at the Bloodhound Technology Centre on the city's harbourside.

Passage: Bristol is home to the regional headquarters of BBC West and the BBC Natural History Unit based at Broadcasting House, which produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. These include nature documentaries, including The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. The city has a long association with David Attenborough's authored documentaries, including Life on Earth.Bristol has two daily newspapers, the Western Daily Press and the Bristol Post, (both owned by Reach plc); and a Bristol edition of the free Metro newspaper (owned by DMGT).
Aardman Animations is an Oscar-winning animation studio founded and still based in Bristol. They created famous characters such as Wallace and Gromit and Morph. Its films include Chicken Run (2000), Early Man (2018), shorts such as Creature Comforts and Adam and TV series like Shaun the Sheep and Angry Kid.
The city has several radio stations, including BBC Radio Bristol. Bristol's television productions include Points West for BBC West, Endemol productions such as Deal or No Deal, The Crystal Maze, and ITV News West Country for ITV West Country. The hospital drama Casualty, formerly filmed in Bristol, moved to Cardiff in 2012. In October 2018, Channel 4 announced that Bristol would be home to one of its 'Creative Hubs', as part of their move to produce more content outside of London.Publishers in the city have included 18th-century Bristolian Joseph Cottle, who helped introduce Romanticism by publishing the works of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. During the 19th century, J.W. Arrowsmith published the Victorian comedies Three Men in a Boat (by Jerome K. Jerome) and The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. The contemporary Redcliffe Press has published over 200 books covering all aspects of the city. Bristol is home to YouTube video developers and stylists The Yogscast, with founders Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley moving their operations from Reading to Bristol in 2012.

Passage: Public transport in the city consists primarily of a First West of England bus network. Other providers are Abus, Stagecoach West, Stagecoach South West and Wessex Bus. Bristol's bus service has been criticised as unreliable and expensive, and in 2005 FirstGroup was fined for delays and safety violations.Although the city council has included a light rail system in its local transport plan since 2000, it has not yet funded the project; Bristol was offered European Union funding for the system, but the Department for Transport did not provide the required additional funding. The most recent light rail proposal was put forward as part of a consultation produced by the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership in November 2016, outlining potential light rail/tram routes from the city centre to Bristol Airport, the eastern and north west fringes of the city, and a route along the A4 road to Bath. In 2017, a further feasibility study will be undertaken into the possibility of an underground light rail system.A new bus rapid transit system (BRT) called MetroBus, is currently under construction across Bristol, as of 2018, to provide a faster and more reliable service than buses, improve transport infrastructure and reduce congestion. The MetroBus rapid transit scheme will run on both bus lanes and segregated guided busways on three routes; North Fringe to Hengrove (route m1), Ashton Vale to Bristol Temple Meads (route m2), and Emersons Green to The Centre (route m3). MetroBus services started in 2018.Three park and ride sites serve Bristol.
The city centre has water transport operated by Bristol Ferry Boats, Bristol Packet Boat Trips and Number Seven Boat Trips, providing leisure and commuter service in the harbour.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Like other Spanish liberals, Goya was left in a difficult position after the French invasion. He had supported the initial aims of the French Revolution, and hoped its ideals would help liberate Spain from feudalism to become a secular, democratic political system. There were two conflicts being fought in Spain: the resistance against the French threat, and a domestic struggle between the ideals of liberal modernisation and the pre-political incumbent ruling class. The latter divide became more pronounced—and the differences far more entrenched—following the eventual withdrawal of the French.Several of Goya's friends, including the poets Juan Meléndez Valdés and Leandro Fernández de Moratín, were overt afrancesados: the supporters (or collaborators, in the view of many) of Joseph Bonaparte. He maintained his position as court painter, for which an oath of loyalty to Joseph was necessary. However, Goya had an instinctive dislike of authority, and witnessed first-hand the subjugation of his countrymen by French troops. During these years he painted little aside from portraits of figures from all parties, including an allegorical painting of Joseph Bonaparte in 1810, Wellington from 1812 to 1814, and French and Spanish generals. Meanwhile, Goya was working on drawings that would form the basis for The Disasters of War. He visited many battle sites around Madrid to witness the Spanish resistance. The final plates are testament to what he described as "el desmembramiento d'España"—the dismemberment of Spain.

Passage: Charles II, who promoted a number of Roman Catholics at court, granted Wright a measure of royal art patronage. In 1661, soon after the coronation, he painted a formalised portrait of the monarch, seated in front of a tapestry representing the Judgement of Solomon, wearing St. Edward's Crown, the robes of the Garter, and carrying the orb and sceptre. Wright was also commissioned to paint an allegorical ceiling for the King's bedchamber at Whitehall Palace, and he was further appointed in 1673 to the office of "picture drawer in ordinary", allowing him to exercise his right to sign his pictures "Pictor Regis". However, to his disappointment, he did not receive the coveted office of King's Painter, which was held in the 1660s by Sir Peter Lely alone. In contrast to Wright's sympathetic realism, and carefully observed landscape backgrounds, Lely had a more glamorous style, favoured by the court, and based on Van Dyck's pre-Civil War style. This prompted the diarist Samuel Pepys to remark, after an enjoyable visit to Lely's studio, "thence to Wright's the painters: but Lord, the difference that is between their two works".Unlike Lely, who was knighted, Wright never received significant recognition from King Charles. However, at least one admirer thought he did deserve it. In 1669, Wright and the miniaturist Samuel Cooper had met Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Cosimo later called at Wright's studio where he commissioned a portrait of the Duke of Albemarle from Wright. On 3 March 1673, perhaps some time after Wright had painted his state picture of Charles II (now in the Royal Collection), a strange letter was sent from an obscure "Mairie Lady Hermistan" (evidently a fellow Roman Catholic) to Cosimo, asking him to intercede with the King to grant Wright a baronetcy. However, nothing came of the request.

Passage: Given the standings of the two men, the painting was received in both social and political terms. A number of writers mentioned Bertin's eventful career, in tones that were, according to art historian Andrew Carrington Shelton, either "bitingly sarcastic [or] fawningly reverential". There were many satirical reproductions and pointed editorials in the following years. Aware of Bertin's support of the July Monarchy, writers at the La Gazette de France viewed the portrait as the epitome of the "opportunism and cynicism" of the new regime. Their anonymous critic excitedly wondered "what bitter irony it expresses, what hardened skepticism, sarcasm and ... pronounced cynicism".Several critics mentioned Bertin's hands. Twentieth-century art historian Albert Boime described them as "powerful, vulturine ... grasping his thighs in a gesture ... projecting ... enormous strength controlled". Some contemporary critics were not so kind. The photographer and critic Félix Tournachon was harshly critical, and disparaged what he saw as a "fantastical bundle of flesh ... under which, instead of bones and muscles, there can only be intestines – this flatulent hand, the rumbling of which I can hear!" Bertin's hands made a different impression on the critic F. de Lagenevais, who remarked: "A mediocre artist would have modified them, he would have replaced those swollen joints with the cylindrical fingers of the first handy model; but by this single alteration he would have changed the expression of the whole personality ... the energetic and mighty nature".The work's realism attracted a large amount of commentary when it was first exhibited. Some saw it as an affront to Romanticism, others said that its small details not only showed an acute likeness, but built a psychological profile of the sitter. Art historian Geraldine Pelles sees Bertin as "at once intense, suspicious, and aggressive". She notes that there is a certain amount of projection of the artist's personality and recalls Théophile Silvestre's description of Ingres; "There he was squarely seated in an armchair, motionless as an Egyptian god carved of granite, his hands stretched wide over parallel knees, his torso stiff, his head haughty". Some compared it to Balthasar Denner, a German realist painter influenced by Jan van Eyck. Denner, in the words of Ingres scholar Robert Rosenblum, "specialised in recording every last line on the faces of aged men and women, and even reflections of windows in their eyes." The comparison was made by Ingres' admirers and detractors alike. In 1833, Louis de Maynard of the Collège-lycée Ampère, writing in the influential L'Europe littéraire, dismissed Denner as a weak painter concerned with hyperrealistic "curiosities", and said that both he and Ingres fell short of the "sublime productions of Ingres' self-proclaimed hero, Raphael."The following year Ingres sought to capitalise on the success of his Bertin portrait. He showed his ambitious history painting The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian at the 1834 Salon, but it was harshly criticised; even Ingres' admirers offered only faint praise. Offended and frustrated, Ingres declared he would disown the Salon, abandon his residence in Paris for Rome, and relinquish all current positions, ending his role in public life. This petulance was not to last.Bertin bequeathed the portrait to his daughter Louise (1805–1877) on his death. She passed it to her niece Marie-Louise-Sophie Bertin (1836–1893) wife of Jules Bapst, a later director of the Journal des débats. They bequeathed it to their niece Cécile Bapst, its last private owner. In 1897 Cécile sold it to the Musée du Louvre for 80,000 francs.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: In February 2015, Gaga became engaged to Taylor Kinney. After Artpop's lukewarm response, Gaga began to redo her image and style. According to Billboard, this shift started with the release of Cheek to Cheek and the attention she received for her performance at the 87th Academy Awards, where she sang a medley of songs from The Sound of Music in a tribute to Julie Andrews. Considered one of her best performances by Billboard, it triggered more than 214,000 interactions per minute globally on Facebook. She and Diane Warren co-wrote the song "Til It Happens to You" for the documentary The Hunting Ground, which earned them the Satellite Award for Best Original Song and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. Gaga won Billboard Woman of the Year and Contemporary Icon Award at the 2015 Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.Gaga had spent much of her early life wanting to be an actress, and achieved her goal when she starred in American Horror Story: Hotel. Running from October 2015 to January 2016, Hotel is the fifth season of the television anthology horror series, American Horror Story, in which Gaga played a hotel owner named Elizabeth. At the 73rd Golden Globe Awards, Gaga received the Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film award for her work on the season. She appeared in Nick Knight's 2015 fashion film for Tom Ford's 2016 spring campaign and was guest editor for V fashion magazine's 99th issue in January 2016, which featured 16 different covers. She received Editor of the Year award at the Fashion Los Angeles Awards.

Passage: In 2009, Gaga spent a record 150 weeks on the UK Singles Chart and became the most downloaded female act in a year in the US, with 11.1 million downloads sold, earning an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. The Fame and The Fame Monster together have since sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. This success allowed Gaga to start her second worldwide concert tour, The Monster Ball Tour, and release The Remix, her final record with Cherrytree Records and among the best-selling remix albums of all time. The Monster Ball Tour ran from November 2009 to May 2011 and grossed $227.4 million, making it the highest-grossing concert tour for a debut headlining artist. Concerts performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City were filmed for an HBO television special, Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden. Gaga also performed songs from her albums at the 2009 Royal Variety Performance, the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, and the 2010 BRIT Awards. Before Michael Jackson's death, Gaga was set to take part in his canceled This Is It concert series at the O2 Arena in the UK.During this era, Gaga ventured into business, collaborating with consumer electronics company Monster Cable Products to create in-ear, jewel-encrusted headphones called Heartbeats by Lady Gaga. She also partnered with Polaroid in January 2010 as their creative director and announced a suite of photo-capture products called Grey Label. Her collaboration with her past record producer and ex-boyfriend Rob Fusari led to a lawsuit against her production team, Mermaid Music LLC. At this time, Gaga was tested borderline positive for lupus, but claimed not to be affected by the symptoms and hoped to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Passage: By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles to work extensively with her record label to complete her debut album, The Fame, and to set up her own creative team called the Haus of Gaga, modeled on Andy Warhol's Factory. The Fame was released on August 19, 2008, reached number one in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK, and the top five in Australia and the US. Its first two singles, "Just Dance" and "Poker Face", reached number one in the United States, Australia, Canada and the UK. The latter was also the world's best-selling single of 2009, with 9.8 million copies sold that year, and spent a record 83 weeks on Billboard magazine's Digital Songs chart. Three other singles, "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)", "LoveGame" and "Paparazzi", were released from the album; the last one reached number one in Germany. Remixed versions of the singles from The Fame, except "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)", were included on Hitmixes in August 2009. At the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, The Fame and "Poker Face" won Best Dance/Electronica Album and Best Dance Recording, respectively.Following her opening act on The Pussycat Dolls' 2009 Doll Domination Tour in Europe and Oceania, Gaga headlined her worldwide The Fame Ball Tour, which ran from March to September 2009. While traveling the globe, she wrote eight songs for The Fame Monster, a reissue of The Fame. Those new songs were also released as a standalone EP on November 18, 2009. Its first single, "Bad Romance", was released one month earlier and went number one in Canada and the UK, and number two in the US, Australia and New Zealand. "Telephone", with Beyoncé, followed as the second single from the EP and became Gaga's fourth UK number one. Its third single was "Alejandro", which reached number one in Finland and attracted controversy when its music video was deemed blasphemous by the Catholic League. Both tracks reached the top five in the US. The video for "Bad Romance" became the most watched on YouTube in April 2010, and that October, Gaga became the first person with more than one billion combined views. At the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, she won eight awards from 13 nominations, including Video of the Year for "Bad Romance". She was the most nominated artist for a single year, and the first female to receive two nominations for Video of the Year at the same ceremony. The Fame Monster won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album, and "Bad Romance" won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Short Form Music Video at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Tulsa has two universities that compete at the NCAA Division I level: the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane, and the Oral Roberts University Golden Eagles. The University of Tulsa's men's basketball program has reached the Sweet Sixteen three times, made an appearance in the Elite Eight in 2000, won the NIT championship in 1981 and 2001, and won the inaugural College Basketball Invitational in 2008. The Tulsa football team has played in 16 bowl games, including the Sugar Bowl (twice) and the Orange Bowl. Oral Roberts University's men's basketball team reached the Elite Eight in 1974 and won the Mid-Continent Conference title three straight years, from 2005 to 2007.The University of Tulsa also boasts one of the nation's top tennis facilities, the Michael D. Case Tennis Center, which was host to the 2004 and 2008 NCAA tennis championships.The Golden Hurricane Tennis program has string of success, including men's Missouri Valley championships in 1995 and 1996, men's Conference USA championships in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011 and women's Conference USA championships in 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. In 2007, Tulsa's top-ranked player Arnau Brugués-Davi ranked as high as #1 in the nation and a four time All-American, advanced to the quarterfinals of the singles competition at the NCAA Men's Tennis Championship, improving on his 2006 round of sixteen appearance.

Passage: The first institute of higher education was established in Tulsa when Kendall College, a Presbyterian school, moved from Muskogee to Tulsa in 1907. In 1920, the school merged with a proposed McFarlin College to become the University of Tulsa (abbreviated as TU). The McFarlin library of TU was named for the principal donor of the proposed college, oilman Robert M. McFarlin.
Tulsa has 15 institutions of higher education, including two private universities: the University of Tulsa, a school founded in 1894, and Oral Roberts University, a school founded by evangelist Oral Roberts in 1963.
The University of Tulsa has an enrollment of 4,192 undergraduate and graduate students and is ranked 83rd among national doctoral universities in U.S. News and World Report's 2009 edition of America's Best Colleges and among the best 123 Western Colleges by the Princeton Review in 2007, which also ranks it in the top ten schools nationally for quality of life, overall happiness of students, and relationship with the community.  In addition to doctoral and masters programs, TU is home to the University of Tulsa College of Law and the Collins College of Business. TU also manages the famous Gilcrease Museum in northwest Tulsa and hosts the Alexandre Hogue Gallery on its main campus.
Oral Roberts University, a charismatic Christian institution with an enrollment of 5,109 undergraduate and graduate students, was rated in 2007 by the Princeton Review one of the 123 best in the Western United States and among the West's top 50 Master's Universities by U.S. News and World Report in 2005. Prominent ORU alumni include Kathie Lee Gifford, Joel Osteen and Ryan Tedder.
Both of the state's flagship research universities have campuses in Tulsa:
Oklahoma State University houses three campuses in the city, the OSU Center for Health Sciences, the OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, and OSU – Tulsa, accommodating upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses. OSU-Tulsa has an advanced materials research facility and is home to the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers.

Passage: The city's zoo, the Tulsa Zoo, was voted "America's Favorite Zoo" in 2005 by Microsoft Game Studios in connection with a national promotion of its Zoo Tycoon 2 computer game. The zoo encompasses a total of 84 acres (34 ha) with over 2,600 animals representing 400 species. The zoo is located in 2,820-acre (1,140 ha) Mohawk Park (the third largest municipal park in the United States) which also contains the 745-acre (301 ha) Oxley Nature Center.
The Tulsa State Fair, operating in late September and early October, attracts over one million people during its 10-day run, and the city's Oktoberfest celebration was named one of the top 10 in the world by USA Today and one of the top German food festivals in the nation by Bon Appetit magazine. A number of other cultural heritage festivals are held in the city throughout the year, including the Intertribal Indian Club Powwow of Champions in August; Scotfest, India Fest, Greek Festival, and Festival Viva Mexico in September; ShalomFest in October; Dia de Los Muertos Art Festival in November; and the Asian-American Festival in May. The annual Mayfest arts and crafts festival held downtown was estimated to have drawn more than 365,000 people in its four-day run in 2012. On a smaller scale, the city hosts block parties during a citywide "Block Party Day" each year, with festivals varying in size throughout city neighborhoods. Tulsa has one major amusement park attraction, Safari Joe's H2O Water Park (formerly Big Splash Water Park), featuring multi-story water slides, large wave pools, and a reptile exhibit. Until 2006, the city also hosted Bell's Amusement Park, which closed after Tulsa County officials declined to renew its lease agreement.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.