TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Passage: On New Year's Eve, Trotty, a poor elderly "ticket-porter" or casual messenger, is filled with gloom at the reports of crime and immorality in the newspapers, and wonders whether the working classes are simply wicked by nature. His daughter Meg and her long-time fiance Richard arrive and announce their decision to marry next day. Trotty hides his misgivings, but their happiness is dispelled by an encounter with the pompous Alderman Cute, plus a political economist and a young gentleman with a nostalgia, all of whom make Trotty, Meg and Richard feel they hardly have a right to exist, let alone marry.
Trotty carries a note for Cute to Sir Joseph Bowley MP, who dispenses charity to the poor in the manner of a paternal dictator. Bowley is ostentatiously settling his debts to ensure a clean start to the new year, and berates Trotty because he owes a little rent and ten or twelve shillings to his local shop which he cannot pay off. Returning home, convinced that he and his fellow poor are naturally ungrateful and have no place in society, Trotty encounters Will Fern, a poor countryman, and his orphaned niece, Lilian. Fern has been accused of vagrancy and wants to visit Cute to set matters straight, but from a conversation overheard at Bowley's house, Trotty is able to warn him that Cute plans to have him arrested and imprisoned. He takes the pair home with him and he and Meg share their meagre food and poor lodging with the visitors. Meg tries to hide her distress, but it seems she has been dissuaded from marrying Richard by her encounter with Cute and the others.

SOLUTION: What is the last name of the man who gives the note to Trotty?

PROBLEM: Passage: One of Greenway's finest works, St James' is listed on the (now defunct) Register of the National Estate. It has been called an "architectural gem" and was featured by Dan Cruickshank in the BBC television series Around the World in 80 Treasures. From 1966 to 1993 the spire of St James' appeared on the Australian Australian ten-dollar note among other Greenway buildings. In 1973, the church appeared on a 50 cent postage stamp, one of four in a series illustrating Australian architecture issued to commemorate the opening of the Sydney Opera House. The Old Supreme Court building, also designed by Greenway with alternations by others, located next to the church is of the same date. Across the square is Greenway's "masterpiece", the UNESCO World Heritage listed-Hyde Park Barracks, designed to align with the church. Beside the barracks stands Sydney's oldest public building, part of the General Hospital built in 1811 and now known as the Mint Building. Separated from the Mint by the present-day Sydney Hospital is Parliament House, Sydney, of which the central section is a further part of the early hospital, and is now home to the New South Wales State Parliament.The church was constructed between 1820 and 1824 with later additions made in 1834 by John Verge who designed the vestries at the eastern end. Apart from these vestries, which retain the established style and proportions, the church externally remains "fine Georgian" much as Greenway conceived it. Relying on the "virtues of simplicity and proportion to achieve his end", Greenway maintained the classical tradition, unaffected by the Revivalist styles that were being promoted in London at the time he arrived in the colony. He planned the church to align with his earlier Hyde Park Barracks, constructed in 181719. The two buildings have similar proportions, pilasters and gables and together constitute an important example of town-planning. Before the advent of high-rise buildings, the 46-metre (150 ft) spire used to "serve as a guide for mariners coming up Port Jackson".St James' originally took the form of a simple rectangular block, without transepts or chancel, with a tower at the western end and a classical portico of the Doric order on either side. To this has been added Verge's vestry framed by two small porticos, and a similar portico as an entrance to the tower. The church is built of local brick, its walls divided by brick pilasters into a series of bays. The walls are pierced by large windows with round arched heads in a colour that separates and defines them against the walls. The roof carries over the end walls with the gable forming triangular pediments of classical proportions carrying a cornice across the eaves line. Thus the architectural treatment on the side walls is continued around the end walls.

SOLUTION: What is the name of that which is called an architectural gem and was featured by Dan Cruickshank in a BBC television series?

PROBLEM: Passage: Sons of Soul bridged the gap between commercial and critical success for Tony! Toni! Tone!, helping them become one of the most popular acts in R&B at the time. Its success exemplified the genre's commercial resurgence during the early 1990s, when hip hop became the predominant African-American music genre in the mainstream. In 1994, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune attributed its resurgence to younger artists' blend of live instrumentation and hip hop production values, and cited Sons of Soul as "the most accomplished merger of hip-hop attitude with a '70s R&B aesthetic." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution hailed it as "a gentle reminder of those glory days" and felt that the group having both vocal and musical talents is most indicative of a return to early R&B's aesthetics. Furthermore, they garnered mainstream attention in a year of several high-profile controversies with R&B and hip hop artists such as Michael Jackson and Snoop Dogg. David W. Brown of The Harvard Crimson wrote that Tony! Toni! Tone! is "known primarily for the quality of its music, not its extracurricular reputation, unlike other groups such as Jodeci who rely on a playa-gangsta-mack image to sell-records."Along with acts such as Mint Condition and R. Kelly, Tony! Toni! Tone! played live instruments that complemented their hip hop sensibilities. Their concerts featured visual elements such as incense smoke and kaleidoscopic stage lighting, the group's eccentric wardrobe, and additional instrumentalists, including another guitarist, two drummers, two keyboardists, a violinist, a trumpeter, and a saxophonist. The Charlotte Observer remarked on the group in 1994: "[T]heir use of live instruments on record and onstage makes them an anomaly in the synthesized and sampled world of modern R&B." With the group's reliance on traditional soul and R&B values of songwriting and instrumentation, Sons of Soul was a precursor to the neo soul movement of the 1990s. Matt Weitz of The Dallas Morning News wrote in 1993 that the group had distinguished themselves from their New jack swing contemporaries with Sons of Soul and found them aesthetically akin to acts such as Prince and P.M. Dawn. Raphael Wiggins said of their success with the album:
"We've been very blessed to be able to be a group that writes our own songs and people have accepted us from both sides, hip hop and the R&B crowd or whatever you might want to say. I feel very fortunate to be able to do that here in 199394, because like you know, it was starting to be a dying thing that was happening. But I guess we were like the bridge between hip hop and soul and R&B, and being a little bit commercial also helped us. A lot of humor, a lot of nice slow songs and being able to play kind of brought us a foundation.".

SOLUTION:
Who garnered mainstream attention in a year of several high-profile controversies with R&B and hip hop artists?