Mahaquizzer 2008

The KQA's annual solo quizzing championship Mahaquizzer will also be held in Pune, along with 8 other cities. The Pune details can be seen here, while click here for the official homepage.

Boiled Beans - Beware of Geeks bearing gifts

If you haven't already heard of Boiled Beans, I recommend it highly. It's a quizzing site (Indian) that features questions on science and technology, and the content is such that even non-geeks should find it interesting.

May Open Morning Quiz - "Dekho Magar Pyaar Se"

Date: May 4, 2008
Set and Conducted by Niranjan Pedanekar

Results (elims scores in bracket):
1st: Harish + Ramanand (D): 215 [25.5]
2nd: Akhil + Apurva (C) : 210 [20.5]
Jt. 3rd: Salil + Yasho (B) : 160 [24]
Jt. 4rd: Aditya Gadre + Kaustubh (E) :160 [21]
5th: Abhishek + S. Ashwin (F) : 145 [19.5]
6th: Aniket + Manish Manke (A): 105 [20]

Best school team: Pushkar Pandit and Kunal Kalkundri; Best college team not in final: Rohan and Gaurav Singh, Best newbies: Harshal Modi and Mahip Vyas

Scorer: Aadinath Harihar

Report

This report is easy to describe: the quiz was brilliant :-). After having inflicted brain-churning quizzes in the last couple of years, Niranjan chose to rebel against the monsters he had unleashed, as well as the verbose laziness of the rest of us. He presented a quiz whose underlying theme was 'pithiness' which showed that questions can be set with an economy of expression by exploiting the proverbial '1 pic == 1000 words. In doing so, he has again pushed the boundaries of what we can do in setting a quiz. At the same time he was also able to show us what we can do 'at a quiz' - in presentation, in building atmosphere, in panache and chutzpah (Yiddish for ... :-))

The quiz began with a Larry Lessig/Dick Hardt style presentation which so caught everyone's fancy that there was actually an encore demanded and had. The elims set the standard with some excellent questions.

Most felt that the finals were a lot less mentally taxing than previous quizzes, which seemed to naturally flow from the theme of the quiz. There were 4 regular rounds and 4 'special rounds'. Though interesting, I felt some of them had too many questions. Another observation was that since we spent less time in parsing each question, we had a little more time to ponder the possible answers.

As ever, Niranjan's choosing of question elements was almost always excellent. While setting a question, there are several different ways of presenting it. This is especially so in a visuals only quiz, where one would have been faced with questions such as what to show, whether there are enough hints within the images (remember: want to have as few words in the question as possible), whether this is a good enough question, and so on. For me, observing these possible choices was the best part of the quiz. For instance, the question about the index from a particular book - I don't know if other pages would have been as revealing as that particular page.

Lest I wax too eloquent, here are some minor flaws: the quiz was at least 30 minutes too long. There were quite a few Rosa Park-ers (perhaps our new term for 'sitters' ;-)) which, much to the chagrin of Teams F & E, kept coming to us. (Team F were perhaps so distraught that when presented with their own sitter, they chose to slip rather inconveniently :-).)

Further on the plus side, the proceedings on stage were very peaceful and conducive to quiet contemplation of quizzes. We had a large turnout of school quizzers this time. Harish and I finally won (together, that is) a quiz of Niranjan's, having come close twice before. Akhil and Apurva, fine but underrated quizzers, gave us a good fright with their late surge.

It was an enjoyable way to spend a Sunday morning.

Brain Damage - May Open Quiz

Set and Conducted by Abhishek Nagaraj and Aditya Gadre

Results:

1st: J Ramanand , BV Harish Kumar , Kaustubh Bhat :100 pts
2nd: Niran Pedanekar , Yasho Tamaskar and Vasu Ramanujan : 75
Jt 3rd: Meghashyam Shirodkar , Samrat Sengupta , Aniket Khasgiwale :70
Jt 3rd: Salil Bijur , Nndan Gokhale and Manish Manke :70
5th: Apoorva , Akhil and Sanyukta : 50
6th: Kapeesh Saraf , Venkat S , Maitreyi Gupta : 35

Some thoughts about the quiz:

-Turnout was rather disappointing. Only 25 teams showed up.
-This quiz was not a junta-friendly quiz. While we agree the elims were very difficult, they were workable and not obscure.The low cut off was expected.
-The newbie quiz was particularly added with the intention that not-so-experienced quizzers also have some fun.
-We tried to cover new topics in the finals and also to rediscover some of the old facts in new ways.
-We paid no attention whatsoever to the balance of the quiz and did not make question with any topic in mind. We just concentrated on framing good questions which screwed up the balance and it turned out to be a very Brit-heavy quiz.
-In retrospect , we should have had some questions on music given the theme of the quiz.Maybe next time.
-Experimented with a new prize structure .Do let us know your thought about it(in the comments section).
-Also experimented with a different version of Infinite rebounds , IR-beta if you may.
-Tried out another new thing ie the draft system for the finals. This was done with the intention of making the elims more meaningful since they were tough and it was a creditable job to crack them.

As to the quiz itself. Team A did brilliantly to win the quiz comfortably. Team F were a tad unlucky to lose out on some questions to team A. There was some great answering from the teams given the difficulty of the finals questions.

So to sum up , we tried a lot of new things in this quiz.
Please post your opinions in the comments section.

Note: We plan to do this quiz elsewhere. So please do not refer to any details of the questions and do not mention any names.

BCQC May Open Quizzing

We're pleased to announce the next set of open quizzes in May. The details:

Date: 4 May, 2008 (Sunday)
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Limited

Quiz 1: "dekho magar pyaar se" - a Visuals-only quiz
Theme: General, Visuals
Quizmaster: Niranjan Pedanekar
Reporting Time: 9:30 am
Quiz Time: 9:45 am to 12:30 pm
Teams of 2, 6 team finals, no prior registrations needed
Prizes for all finalists, best school/college/newbie teams, audience

Quiz 2: "Brain Damage"
Theme: General
Quizmasters: Abhishek Nagarak, Aditya Gadre
Reporting Time: 2:15 pm
Quiz Time: 2:30 pm to 6:00 pm
Teams of 2, 6 team finals, no prior registrations needed
Prizes:
Winners: Rs. 1500 Landmark GVs
2nd Place : Rs 900 Landmark GVs
3rd Place : Rs 300 Landmark GVs
Prizes for all other finalists as well

Prizes for the Best school/college/all-ladies teams, Best team name prize, and audience goodies.

In addition, there will be a special audience-only quiz (top 3 places get 1 GB pen drives).

Visit http://bcqc.org/may08 for updates

Rotaract Pune Open Quiz 2008

Set and Conducted by Rohan and Karan Jain, Rouhaan, and others.

Results:
1st: B.V.Harish Kumar + J Ramanand (B) : 120 pts
2nd: Pradeep Ramaratnam + Amit Pandeya (D): 110 pts
3rd: Salil Bijur + Venkat S (E): 80 pts
Jt. 4th: Niranjan Pedanekar + Yash Tamaskar : 70 pts
Jt. 4th: Amit Garde + Samrat Sengupta : 70 pts
6th: Akhil + Apoorva : 60 pts

Report (also see comments)

The Rotaract Club of Poona organised the second edition of their Open quiz, once again at the Ladies Club. The weather was a little inhospitable for quizzing, in contrast to the nicely organised event. Participants were well looked after (except for some chip-less munks), which made up for any shortcomings in the actual quiz.

The finals were led by Salil and the Hoosier Cat but they hit a brickwall exactly after the half-way stage. This is when the visitors from Bombay picked up steam to remain in the lead right upto the last five questions. They lost the lead exactly once and unfortunately for them, the quiz ended soon after. There were several imaginative guesses from all the teams, which coupled with some bonhomous banter, meant that no one received any "bhajji" points for noxious behaviour.

The quiz was slightly blighted by a few 'sitters' (like identifying Hitler and Mussolini) and 'chestnuts' (A.G.Bell's attempt at inventing a metal detector). There were more than a few 'identify two people' questions which got a little tiring.

On the positive side, many of the answers were quite audience-friendly. I liked the mostly assured style of the quizmaster (Rohan) who managed to avoid a a major pitfall that many newbie QMs fall into: that of not knowing what to do with partially correct answers. He did this by clearly specifying what he expected as the answers to such questions. (Though, forgetting some of the answers midway took the sheen off his performance :-)). There seemed to be a genuine attempt to ask topics across genres (rock vs hindi films vs india vs geo), which was fairly successful. Finally, there weren't too many complications in the quiz, which helped on the hottest day of the season when energy was at a premium.

BBC Sport Mastermind

Several of my fellow quizzers are massive sports fans with a 'citius altius fortius' complex, so I'm sure they would have wished they could participate in BBC's new "Sport Mastermind". Perhaps we should do a home-made Sport Mastermind at, well, home, just to make them feel better. Though going by precedent, we'll have topics such as World Cup football and World Cup cricket and the racing career of a part-time footballer :-).

IIPM Management Quiz 2008 - Report

Date: 02 April, 2008
Venue: IIPM Tower, ICC Tower
Set by: Students of IIPM, Pune
Conducted by: Meghashyam Shirodkar
Theme: Business and General, College quiz

Quiz Final Results
1st: SIBM
2nd: Symbiosis Law School
3rd: AISSMS
Other Finalists: SIBM-2, ICTM, SCOE

Link: Report in the Indian Express.

Abhimanyu Update

Aditya Bhedasgaonkar blogs charmingly about Abhimanyu. He has a picture there too for you to put faces to names. Here you go.