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: After selecting the music by Alexandrov for the national anthem, Stalin needed new lyrics. He thought that the song was short and, because of the Great Patriotic War, that it needed a statement about the impending defeat of Germany by the Red Army. The poets Sergey Mikhalkov and Gabriel El-Registan were called to Moscow by one of Stalin's staffers, and were told to fix the lyrics to Alexandrov's music. They were instructed to keep the verses the same, but to find a way to change the refrains which described "a Country of Soviets". Because of the difficulty of expressing the concepts of the Great Patriotic War in song, that idea was dropped from the version which El-Registan and Mikhalkov completed overnight. After a few minor changes to emphasize the Russian Motherland, Stalin approved the anthem and had it published on 7 November 1943, including a line about Stalin "inspir[ing] us to keep the faith with the people". The revised anthem was announced to all of the USSR on January 1, 1944 and became official on March 15, 1944.After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet government examined his legacy. The government began the de-Stalinization process, which included downplaying the role of Stalin and moving his corpse from Lenin's Mausoleum to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. In addition, the anthem lyrics composed by Mikhalkov and El-Registan were officially scrapped by the Soviet government in 1956. The anthem was still used by the Soviet government, but without any official lyrics. In private, this anthem became known the "Song Without Words". Mikhalkov wrote a new set of lyrics in 1970, but they were not submitted to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet until May 27, 1977. The new lyrics, which eliminated any mention of Stalin, were approved on 1 September, and were made official with the printing of the new Soviet Constitution in October 1977. In the credits for the 1977 lyrics, Mikhalkov was mentioned, but references to El-Registan, who died in 1945, were dropped for unknown reasons.

SOLUTION: What is the name of the person that wanted to add a statement about the impending defeat of Germany?

PROBLEM: Passage: Cable layer Steve Reardon is in a tank at the bottom of the ocean near Hawaii reading an adventure story "The Son of Neptune", written by his girlfriend Edith McNeil who based the stories on Steve's life. After repairing the cable he was sent to fix, Steve returns to San Francisco and asks his boss Willard Stone for a $1000 bonus and two weeks vacation so that he can marry Edith. Later, Steve and Edith have an argument, when he arrives hours late for their date and complains that she is taking too long to get dress. Steve, believing that Edith has been using him to get inspiration for her stories, storms out. At a bar, he meets piano player Eddie Mitchell and gets into a fight with two men who try to steal Steve's money, and is knocked out unconscious. The next day, Steve wakes up in Eddie's apartments. When Steve Learns that Eddie studied engineering in college, he offers help to his new friend to become a real engineer.

SOLUTION: What is the first name of the person who was sent to fix a cable?

PROBLEM: Passage: Boxwood miniatures seemed to have served three original functions: aids to private devotion, luxury objects of status, and novel playthings. Later they became precious family heirlooms passed from generation to generation, but as medieval art fell out of fashion in the early modern period, their provenance was often lost. The earliest record of a collection is the 1598 inventory of the dukes of Bavaria, which contain several boxwood miniatures.Of the surviving works, over one hundred re-emerged in the 19th century Parisian antiquarian market, then the leading market for medieval art. During this period, they were acquired by collectors such as the British collector Richard Wallace (1818–1890), who purchased Count van Nieuwerkerke's (1811–1892) entire collection, including two boxwood prayer nuts, the Vienna-born collector of objets d'art Frédéric Spitzer (1815−1890), and Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898). Spitzer was not a purist and commissioned metalsmiths to produce modern versions, or copies, of a variety of medieval artworks. Today, there are four surviving boxwood carvings he had augmented for the market.When the American financier J. P. Morgan purchased Baron Albert Oppenheim's collection in 1906, he acquired four boxwood miniatures, including a triptych with the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and a prayer nut showing the Carrying of the Cross, all of which are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Canadian publishing magnate Kenneth Thomson was an important collector for over 50 years, and his collection included the world's largest gathering of boxwood miniatures, including two skulls, two triptychs, and six prayer beads. These were bequeathed to the Art Gallery of Ontario, along with three other works collected by his family after his death.

SOLUTION:
What were passed from generation to generation?