Interrobang

BC Infest - III Updated: 15 Dec, Wed Annual excuse to get BC quizzers together and quiz for fun. Not very formal though. Tentative schedule as below: 18th Dec - Sat - 10:30 am: 1. Quiz by Harish 2. India Quiz by Ramanand 3. Quiz by George 4. Quiz by Salil 5. Words quiz by Manish Mahajan 26th Dec - Sun - 11:00 am: "Headbutting Lone Wolf" quiz by Ramanand 1st Jan - Sat - 12:30 pm 1. Quiz by Samrat 2. Quiz by Shrirang All timings & dates are sadly tentative but we hope to stick to them by and large. Will update this post in case of changes.

A history of the BC quiz club - II The story of the BC quiz club as told by Shrirang Raddi Installment 2. This one covers my FE and SE, the years before the Saturday Quizzes started. COEP Days .. Pre- Saturday Club. The batch that entered COEP in 1991 had a clutch of good quizzers. There was Maya Kamath, the finest lady quizzer I've known. There was Aniruddha Karve, Vishal Dalal (jaundice ensured he passed out a year behind us) and my Loyola quiz partner Nikhil Jakatdar. The last named was more an enthu quizzer than a great one; but to put things in perspective he is more famous today for having sold his startup for something in excess of $100 million. The college quizzing scene was quite competitive. AFMC were the guys to beat - they had some strong teams and had made winning a habit. The other strong colleges were Fergusson and BJMC. COEP was always strong; but the one thing that distinguished us from the rest was the absence of a home quiz. AFMC had 2 - Shya...

A history of the BC quiz club - I The story of the BC quiz club as told by Shrirang Raddi Installment  #1 : While Amalesh and I were being dumped from the BEQ national 'semi-finals' last Saturday (in 2003), there was a familiar figure in the audience. None other than the rotund figure of Vishal Dalal.  (How rotund? Vishal = George Thomas * 2)He was one of the quiz regulars in our time at COEP, and his immortality in quizzing circles is assured by the fact that he was one of the two fathers of the first Saturday Quiz in 1993, the small thing that has grown into the BCQC. Set me thinking about the days gone by. Dont know how many quizzers would be interested in knowing about the Quiz scene as it was back then, but I'd certainly love to write about it. Starting with my pre-COEP days - my first brush with quizzing was also my first brush with COEP quizzers. This was back in 1986/87 when I was in...

Apologies. This purpose of this blog has been reduced to reporting 'non-quizzes' that are being held in Pune. But then its fate that such things are happening to us. A-MAZE, an inter-college fest was held at the Indian Institute of Planning and Management. The Corporate Quiz was one of the various events. There was also a smaller 'One Minute Quiz' the day before. First, the results:- 1 st : FC 2 nd : SCIT 3 rd : SITM Also: IIPM, ISBN, SCMHRD, VIT Total teams participating: 11 No. of rounds: 3 (general, identify-the-logo, rapid fire) Questions per team: 4 (+ about 10 in rapid fire) Features of the quiz: "All questions are non-transferable." (VERVE, anybody?) "Twenty points per correct answer in the identify-the-logo round." (How else do we show impressive scoring with only 3 rounds?) "Minus 10 for wrongly identifying the logo" (We have to spice up the quiz, don't we?) "On...

Comments on Inquizzition V If you were a part of Inquizzition V and have any comments, please leave them here for the benefit of the organisers. My comments: Organisation: Was quite good this time, so congratulations to the organising team. Well, the odd time lapses & technical goof-ups are expected of most quizzes, are they not? Presentation: I really think that if answers are to be put on slides, then you have to make doubly/triply sure (with the zeal of a paranoid criminal) that you can prevent the inadvertant lapse. It's happened for the second time running, and I fear that even this time there were no backup questions (or had to use audience ones). Since presentations are becoming such an integral part of the whole quiz experience thingy, I hope the organisers will have a good look at this area. There are a lot of ideas we can implement here. I'm dwelling on this at length because this kind of thing sometimes takes away from the quiz. Elim ...

The AOES - IHMES IHM (IoM) Hotel Management College Quiz The Pune round of the above Quiz was held at the Bal Gandharva Rangamandir today at 11:00 am. It was organised by the Agarwal Overseas Education Service (AOES) and the IHMES Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) of the Isle of Man (IoM). Teams: BVP College of HM DYP College of HM MS CoHM AISSMS CoHM NAG (?) CoHM, Kolhapur Format: D&P, 10+5 Winners: AISSMS Remarks: - Questions were very very easy. The Qm told me that this was deliberatly done because of the contestants total lack of quizzing experience and bad experiences with good questions (ie: Teams were Baffled/bemused/mystified) in previous years. - There were 3 - member teams. - I was unable to make an analysis because a) I didnt have any paper and b) I was in the VIP seats (:-)) and it would be unseemly. - As befits a HM Colleges quiz, Participants and Audience (Faculty and VIP Audience at least) were well taken ...

On Connects - I Only connect - Howards End, E.M.Forster When asked my first ever "connect" question at my first BC quiz outing, I clearly remember being nonplussed by it, and asking Kunal Vaed what he really wanted us to do with the question. Evidently, connection questions are one of the biggest differences when one crosses over to the "collegiate" brand of quizzing from the less devious world of school quizzing. Connects are also a recurring bone of contention among all quizzers, so here are some thoughts about this genre of questions. The concept I don't know who asked the first connect or when connects became part of the mainstream, but most of us current quizzers have seen connects ever since we participated in open or college quizzes. A simple example for those who may not have heard such a question: Q: Connect the films Mother India , Salaam Bombay and Lagaan . A: These are the only Indian films nominated for a (Foreign Fi...

The Quiz at BMCC Today the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce, a sister institution to our great college (FC College, as I believe they call us) conducted a quiz as a part of a larger inter college fest. I think the quiz was the event in the fest, because as we came in, the Principal was speaking. After that august personage had finished his discourse, the quiz began. Ominously, however all the participants were from colleges like FC, Gokhale Institute. It may even be that these colleges were the only two to come to BMCC. What could we expect from a quiz that couldn't even attract colleges from more that 100 meters away? Well, it began. For the first time my life, I saw an elim sheet printed landscape style. There were 25 questions, with 10 minutes allotted for the solution thereof. The questions ranged in difficulty from "Who won the 1992 Cricket World Cup?" to "Which was the first bank in India to introduce Visa cards?" (Andhra Bank). Also, perple...

Notes from 'Centre of India, Heart of India' Sohel Bohra had been to a quiz in Indore. Here are some of his notes from that event: Indore Management Association held its annual India Brand Guru quiz for the fourth consecutive year last weekend. The business quiz focuses mainly on brands but since the line between a brand quiz and a business quiz is fine, it can safely be considered a business quiz. This year abt 40 odd corporate teams and 100 odd student teams took part. Harish Bijoor was the quizmaster. He kept calling Indore the 'Centre of India, Heart of India', hence the odd title of this blog. Most teams, to be honest, were there for the prizes rather than the quiz per say. At stake are cars, laptops, fridges, etc. Every quarter-finalist gets a prize. Hence over 36 teams take home decent prizes. The quiz had a new round this year. A written pre-qualifier was added which 36 teams (corporate and students) each wrote to get into the qualifiers. 18 each qu...

SEAP Quiz 2004 The SEAP Quiz 2004 was held on Saturday the 25th September in Persistent Systems' Dewang Mehta Auditorium. 24 Teams turned up, something of a disappointment, but probably attributable to the fact that the quiz was only open to SEAP member companies (Don't blame the QM for this, he had no say in it). Finalists: Parimal Puranik and C. Phani (Calsoft) Srihari Suthamally and Sudarshan Purohit (Persistent) Manish Manke and Kartik Jayaraman (Geometric) Vaidyanathan K.A. and Venkata Kiran G.P. (Kanbay) Niranjan Tulpule and Satwik Hebbar (Calsoft) Siddharth Madhusudan and Parag Shetye (Synechron) The prelims were quite close with the first four placers separetd by a point apiece. Two Calsoft teams - Niranjan and Satwik, and Uma Chingunde and Vaibhav Nirargi - tied, and because of the only-two-teams-from-the-same-company cap for the finals had to play off in a tie breaker for the fifth spot. As if that wasn't enough there was a three...

Some of the quizzes that one would wish he/she had not attended, but though deserve some mention were the 3 ones in AISSMS. It seems, a new quizzing pattern (lets call it AISSMS pattern) has emerged. Consider these:- Direct & Pass (though one of them had a 'new' system called 'Infinite Remote' ). A round where one team member selects a topic for his partner. If unanswered, the question passes not to the teams, but to the first partner. Audio-visuals provided 'live' by the college talents. Trailing teams get knocked out after every 2 rounds. The finale is between 2 teams following the pattern of CNBC 'The Challenge'. Other quizzes that took place were Vedant and the TVS Tyres SmarTest. In all of them, the drawbacks of D&P showed - nastily. Major upsets and major cribs and frustrations. The quality of questions is becoming a secondary issue. Waiting for a good quiz with IR.

First the results:- 1st: FC - Kunal & Ulka 2nd: VIT - Ganesh & Kunal 3rd: VIT - Siddharth & Salil Other finalists: - VIT: Anupam & Anand SCOE: Mohit & Akshay MESCOE: Aditya & Srinivas Big prize money, 2 semifinals, decent questions, irritating QM, D & P, some weird unnecessary rounds. Comments plz.

The Quiz at BJ Medical College, Vedant Venue: Mahatma Gandhi Auditorium, BJ Medical College, Pune. Winners: Siddharth Dani & Salil Bijur (VIT) - Team F Runners Up: (AFMC) - Team E 3rd Place: Kunal Sawardekar & Ulka Athale (FC) - Team C 4th Place: Sanket Anekar & Aditya Chandorkar (FC) - Team A 5th Place: Vivek Venkatraman + 1 (BJMC) - Team D 6th Place: Kunal Thakar & Ganesh Hegde (VIT) - Team B Remarks: - The Quizmaster, perhaps because of his not having been to too many quizzes, completely underestimated the level of the quizzers attending his quiz. Out of a total of 30 Elims questions, the cutoff was 24 with all stars. This same lack of faith in the participants manifested itself in the finals. - The Khashaba Jadhav question featured in the Elims yet again. - There were some very weird rounds. One was the RIM round, where all questions were based on their sponsors, Reliance India Mobile (eg, "What is the full form of CDMA?"). Anoth...

I.Q. was the quiz which was a part of Techstasy, an inter-college event organised by Comp & IT dept. of VIT. Results: 1st: Kunal Sawardekar, Anirudh Shiva [FC] 2nd: Ganesh Hegde, Siddharth Dani [VIT] Other finalists: Nikhil Kundargi, Neil Mehta [ PICT ] Anand Ayyadurai, Anupam Akolkar [VIT] Anand, Pratik [SCIT] Organized by: Harsh Ketkar, Kunal Thakar, Salil Bijur

Calling for groupies Face it, if you are a regular reader of this blog and believe in the associated pastime, then you're not very likely to become a groupie of some rock group. Instead, why not become a group member for this blog and contribute to match reports, contemporary state of quizzing and other features? Note: Not looking for frivolous commentary here (that's restricted only to me).

The Pinnacle Quiz (SIT) Results 1st: Kunal Sawardekar [FC], Salil Bijur [VIT] 2nd: Nikhil Kundargi [ PICT ], Neil Mehta [ PICT ] 3rd: Hrishikesh Kavade [SIT] (???) [SIT] Other finalists: Siddharth Dani [VIT] & Kunal Thakar [VIT], Rashmi Vadnagare[VIT] & Harsh Ketkar [VIT], & a SIT team The Organizers: Akshay Pande & Akshay Raut Notes : * The quality of the questions was quite respectable although they did tend to be a bit obscure at times . A lot of all-around passes ensured a pretty low scoring quiz. * organized at SIT[Sinhagad College Of Engineering Pune] * This is the second year running that a quiz has been organized at SIT. (I think) that last year it had been under the aegis of the computer department . This year's version was managed by the Electronics And Telecommunications department. :: Report by Nikhil

Inquizzition winners Winners at Fergusson College, Pune's annual quiz: 2000 : Gaurav Sabnis & Neeraj Sane (COEP) 2001 : Manish Mahajan & Arka Bhattacharya (COEP) 2002 : Samrat Sengupta & J. Ramanand (PSPL) 2003 : Samrat Sengupta & Sudarshan Purohit (PSPL) 2004 : Amit Garde & Hareeth Sridhar (PSPL) I've started this to maintain these lists for future reference - will add to incorporate runners-up & finalists et al

Inquizzition - V Date : 4 Sep 2004 Results 1st: Persistent Systems Pvt Ltd - Amit Garde & Hareeth Sridhar 2nd: Infosys Pune/Accenture - Dibyasree (?) + 1 3ed: BCQC - Gaurav Sabnis & J. Ramanand Other finalists: Sinhagad COE, Meghashyam & Asavari Shirodkar, Amit Varma & Siddhartha V. (Wisden Cricinfo) Set by : Quest - FC Quizzing Circle Conducted by : Kunal Sawardekar Notes: * PSPL won for the third year running, but 5 different people have been involved in these wins! * Interesting (to me atleast :-) ) observation: on all occasions (actually on 4 out of 5 occasions I have witnessed, not sure about 2001), either Team A or B (which sit on the left side to the audience on stage) has ended up victorious!

Quizeitgeist - I Not sure how many have seen Google's Zeitgeist page, something that is rarely less than revelatory. From the bottom of the very page: zeit·geist | Pronunciation: 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era Quizzes over a period of time establish their own zeitgeist. Most good annual quizzes achieve an invisible spirit and discernible patterns of their own which characterize them and their times. Quite often they are reflective of the people behind them, but many times they are indicative of trends and inclinations of their times. You'll also find a lot of grizzled quizzers shaking their heads at the "new age" of quizzing; this sport of ours is prone to the theory of the generation gap. This post attempts to capture this slightly undefinable feeling and kicks off a small ...

The Worst Quiz I Ever Won A stone's throw away(a paper airplane's throw away?) from the Pune Railway Station, stands Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College (BJMC) one of the most reputed med-schools in Western India. This august institution was the scene for the worst quiz I have ever won. The notice for the quiz was put up on the COEP Boat Club one rainy day when i was in Third Year. It was the part of BJMC's annual fest(!!). The exact name of the fest presently eludes me, but it was one of Ganesha's names. I am always game for any quiz, so I enthusiastically called up the organisers and registered for it. The first omen was the non-availability of my regular quizzing partner, Neeraj. He had to go out of station. It however gave me the opportunity to team up with Saket, another classmate of mine. Both of us reached BJMC. The scene of the quiz was a lecture hall that made COEP's M-13 look like the floor of a posh call centre. And anyone who has attended a...

Inquizzition Announcement - Date: 4th September 2004. - Venue: Fergusson College Amphitheater. - Registrations start 11:00am. All registrations will be on the spot. - Elims begin 12:00pm. Elims will last for 45 minutes. - Finals start 2:30pm. - Teams of two. The quiz will be an open quiz. - Entry Fee: Rs. 50/- for Corporates/Non College teams. Rs. 30/- for College teams. - Prizes: Rs. 6000/- for the winning team. Rs. 4000/- for the first runners up. Rs. 2000/- for the third runners up. Lots of great audience prizes will also be given. - For more details, contact: Kunal Sawardekar (# 9850160475)

Notes on recent quizzes * Kunal Sawardekar's tales of "roaring rampages of revenge" at Malhar 2004 : here and there . BTW, he and his FC teammates brought back a neat haul from "Jhavier" winning "North by Northwest" and coming 2nd in the Book Quiz. Nice! * A typical BVHK post on his experiences at The Landmark Quiz 2004 at Chennai . * The Hindu's report of the Landmark Quiz

Crucible (Tata quiz) : Pune Round results Date : 16 July 2004 Results 1st: Renaissance (Ranjan Banerjee & Ajay Kolhatkar?) 2nd: Daimler-Chrysler(Sohel Bohra + 1) 3rd: Geometric SSL (Manish Manke & Kartik Jayaraman ?) & HSBC Other finalists: SDRC, Leading Edge Set and Conducted by : Giri "Pickbrain" Balasubramaniam Notes: * Thanks to Manish & Sohel for first hand accounts * Renaissance continue to be the best Biz quizzers in Pune, having won Brand Equity twice now in Pune and now the Tata quiz, and given that the Shrirang/Amalesh Infy-joDi is no longer in business.

SCIT Software quiz results Date : 6 Aug 2004 Results 1st: VIT - Salil & Kunal 2nd: VIT - Anand & Anupam 3ed: VIT - Ganesh & Siddharth Other finalists: SCIT, IIIT, SCMHRD Set and Conducted by : Ramanand Notes: * Positions in the finals were decided by the teams themselves, in descending order of scores in the elims * Instead of starting with Team A as usual, lots were drawn to decide the beginning (turned out to be Team C)

Tata Crucible — The business quiz - Pune round The Tata’s are conducting an all India Business Quiz for corporates. Details are at this link . Pune round is scheduled on July 15 (Thursday); time: 4pm Venue Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Range Hills Road, Kirkee Cantonment, Pune 411020 Thanks to Manish for the alert.

A history of the Verve Quiz - 1998 to 2004 A collective gnashing of teeth and muttered imprecations and a general rise in profanity levels would accompany any recounting of the madness of the events of the past connected with the conduct of the Verve quizzes. Verve is the name of the inter-college festival organised by the Express Youth Forum (belonging to the Indian Express, Pune ) and has a quiz as part of the many competitions that make the whole fest. Principally due to the fact that the quizzes have been (except on three occasions) been organised by those EYF guys who didn't know the word "quiz" started with a "Q", Verve has been the scene for some incredibly astonishing gaffes and infuriating formats. A full recap follows. If anyone is wondering why then do the Verve quizzes have any mainstream relevance, it is only due to the fact that it is the sole quiz that makes the headlines in the colleges. Hardly anyone in one's college (thi...

UCQ Results Kunal S. alerts about the results of UCQ ( this link )which aren't great if you are a Pune quizzer. No Pune team made it to the list of 24, but AFMC (#26) and VIT(#28) are the two standby teams. There goes my career as a quizzing psephologist too. Looking at the other results, two guys who took their elims in Pune (K. Anil Kumar - IIM-Cal and Kiritee Mishra from IIT-Kanpur) made it. Interesting to note that old pal Sidharth Chauhan from ILS Bangalore has made it too. Can see a few other ex-MMI participants as well. Incidentally, no teams from ISB (on standby), MDI or last year's winners SPCE seem to have been selected. Best wishes to the teams.

UCQ 2004 - Pune elims I was the (unwilling) local Pune coordinator for the UCQ written elims. The questions were typically Synergy-like, a good mix of all topics, a slant towards current affairs in all areas, 50 decent questions (not all entirely workable). Was quite appalled by the turnout, just 5 full teams from 4 colleges. VIT had two and FC, last year's city representatives AFMC, and SIMS making up the rest. No COEP, no AIT. Siddharth Natarajan informs me of the difficulty of getting 3 others, and I can only feel for him. Sad state of affairs. Speaking in a personal capacity, I think FC have a great chance of qualifying. They're sure to do par and above in their elims as they have a good team in Kunal, Shakti, Ashish and Sangita. They also have several other "profile" related advantages - they're Arts students (not the usual mgmt|engineers), have a female participant (without detracting from your quizzing aptitude Sangita :-) ) and their colleg...

Apologies For the extremely long hiatus of posts in this blog. Pliss to expect a flurry of activity on these pages.

Testing new Blogger Features This is a test! Believe me!

ESPN School Sports Quiz The new series is on air, with (unnecessarily, IMHO) jazzy sets. I have a question: Did they have options for the last round, i.e. in Fortius? in the previous editions? I don't know why they have it - it gives the not-so good teams some parity with the crackerjacks.

World Quizzing Championship? Shrirang via Harish points to UK's Largest Quizzing Organisation" and the mention of a World Quizzing Championship .

University Challenge 2004-05 The new Synergy website mentions the second series of UCQ and it looks like they are accepting registrations for the same. This link gives the necessary info.

College Bowl a.k.a Quizzing in the U.S In continuation to College bowl explained - II Questions: 1. Mainly academic in nature with almost around a 80:20 ratio leaning toward facts from standard academic subjects such as the natural sciences, math, history, geography, social sciences etc. Pure trivia and popular culture (i.e. movies, TV, music etc.) makes up the rest. This is the view of several College Bowl veterans here in my univ who have played it since their high school. 2. All questions are set by independent quiz masters and have to be purchased for a fee from the College Bowl organization that conducts regional competitions and national finals. Sample questions (from a set from the Univ. of Alabama, posted in the files section of the QuizBowl Yahoo group): 1. It radiates three times as much heat into space as it gets from the sun. Some of Earth's best pictures of it were obtained by Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. For 10 points--what pla...

A list of general principles for fairness in conducting quiz finals Since we are discussing formats old & new, I thought it would be a good idea to first jot down what are the parameters of comparison for fairness. The disclaimers here are that (a) these are my personal opinions, please leave comments behind so that this list can be stabilised to a unanimous set (b) these only apply to the normal quiz final format, no buzzers or special rounds are addressed here. I think the following three major aspects have a bearing on the fair conduct of the final: The Passing Format Distribution of Questions in the Question Set The Order in which the Teams are Seated Elaborating: The Passing Format: This determines who gets the question first, to whom it passes next, and then who gets the next question. The most popular formats are IR and D&P. Here are what I think should be the parameters of interest: Each team should ideally have had the same...

A Proposal For new Centaurian system of Scoring/Passing in quizzes Life just got more exciting: Abhishek Nagaraj from F.C. sent in this proposal for a new format. I haven't read it, but promptly posting it here for instant dissemination. Abhishek: hope to send you some comments soon. Interestingly, you've pipped me to the post here - I've been thinking about a new format myself (like you, an amalgamation of D&P and IR) that I've been informally discussing with Niranjan and others. I'll post that here too for you to take a list. From what I've seen so far, your system is very close to what I came up myself (I'm not sure which of us is Newton and which one Leibnitz ;-) ) but I think that's because the motivations and the policies used are similar. Abhishek, A latest copy of Niranjan's code can be made available by The Great One himself - Niranjan, could you please post it on inquizitive ? Will mull over it soon and we'll have lots of...

Discussion on the VIT quiz : Small Suggestion A small addition I wished to make to the Discussion on the VIT quiz : would it be possible to re-christen the quiz to give it a better brand and add longevity to it, especially given that it will be an important addition to the circuit? Quiz-O-Mania doesn't quite fit that bill, especially given the Shyam Bhatts, Chakravyuuhs, B.C.Joshis and Inquizzitions around. Of course, VIT doesn't need to call it the Vaastu quiz (in-joke alert: refer Shyam Bhatt elims), but perhaps something new and interesting?

Shyam Bhatt 2004 results Results : 1st: Amit Garde & Samrat Sengupta (Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd) 2nd: Gaurav Sabnis & J. Ramanand (BCQC) 3rd: Kunal & Ulka (FC) (what are your surnames, guys, not "From FC", right? :-) ) Also: Shankar & partner from AFMC, Vivek (BJMC) & partner from AFMC, AFMC Set & Conducted by : Brijesh Notes : Kunal & Ulka,being the highest ranked college team, took the Shyam Bhatt trophy home to FC. (Hope they had better luck transporting it than I had before.)

Announcement: BC InFest - II : Gaurav's quiz Pasted from the egroups mail BC InFest is back again this year. If you didn't know what it is, not to worry - it is a gala(?) affair where some of the BC diaspora come back to roost once in a while with their own quizzes. Last year's InFest featured quizzes as diverse as an India quiz, US-Israel-Pakistan, Sports, Comp & Lit and F&M quizzes. "InFest - II" kicks off with "The Man(fest) from L" a.k.a "El Hombre" a.k.a "(Hel)L raiser" Gaurav Sabnis who will have a general quiz (no doubt put together during some enthralling lecture on "the Vituperative Effects of Corporate Tax in post-liberalised Third World Economies" (not to be confused with the lekh on Backward Tribes of Maharashtra by Prof. Rele)). 12:30 pm, BC, Saturday (20th March), no prizes, only questions.

College Bowl a.k.a Quizzing in the U.S A major digression from the intense discussions featured on this blog on quizzing in Pune and on many related things. Anti is our first guest contributer for this blog. His "blogchalk" reads "USA, Ohio, Athens, Ananthanarayanan, Anti, Male, 21-25, Quizzing, Cricket, Music, Books, Cars" which tells you enough about him. Additionally, he turned out to be a year senior to me at school in Madras, the revelation all to be blamed on a post on childhood cricket (but we digress away from the digression). Anti has been two ponds apart for a while and in the process learnt a little about the "quizzing" scene as it exists there. The following is the first of a two-part series on College Bowl Quizzing . College bowl explained "College Bowl is a question and answer game of general knowledge and quick recall. It spotlights the fastest minds on campus as they excel on the playing field of knowledge. ...

Coming soon The sudden profusion of posts will bear out my claim that there is more content to blog about on these pages than there is time. Some of the forthcoming posts will hopefully be on: An examination of Connects A proposal for a new format The chequered history of the last 7 Verve quizzes FAQ for this blog Some guest posts expected too.

On the University Challenge Quiz By committing the worst case of quizzing hara-kiri I have ever seen, the team from the Indian School of Business has probably ensured immortality (albeit for the wrong reasons) for itself rather than if they had merely won the quiz , as was widely expected before the finals. ISB had swept all before them in the preliminary rounds, had a stiff challenge to overcome versus MDI, Gurgaon (our own Harish was in that) where they came back from behind to win. Their opponents in the final, a group of undergrads from Sardar Patel College of Engg. Mumbai had had a more severe route to the finals, with a very engrossing and nervous semi-final round. 90% of the time, ISB were coolly swatting away the questions as usual, while SPCE struggled to make the important breakthroughs inspite of some desperate buzzing. Then all of a sudden, ISB lost 20 points by needlessly buzzing incorrectly to make a 50 point lead vanish into thin air as if they had Hou...

Discussion on the VIT quiz Seeing that the VIT quiz was the only one among the three collegiate quizzes so far to have passed off without major incident and thus can be considered for debate without too much heat, this post is for opening a thread on various aspects of it. Please email me (quatrainman{at}yahoo{pointcom}) for adding to this, or leave your comments behind for inclusion. My opening observations: Duration of the quiz was well handled. The questions erred on the side of being too easy. It was one of the tightest quizzes I have ever participated! Questions were too long - need to be pruned for the sake of both the person asking & the teams. Not sure why there were only very few subject rounds (Business, Entertainment) - either there should be more subject rounds or there should be none, IMHO. The quiz fell in between in that respect. Having a different round for non-text questions was fine though (such as the Visual connect rounds). Niranj...

The Renaissance 1998 to 2001 was one of the best times in Pune quizzing. People like Harish, Gaurav, Sujay & me were quite fortunate to be in COEP that time. It was a generation that enjoyed the recurring talents of Niranjan, the heydays of George, Kunal, Anand and the big boys of AFMC. The Four Musketeers from AIT, Navneet, Shrikant, Kapil & Samrat were plying their wares then. Swapnil ,Shankar and many more from nearby colleges and corporates made all contests extremely competitive - qualifying for finals was a tough and proud feat. The quizzes at Mensa, BCJ, the odd Verve & Shyam Bhat, Chakravyuh and Owl-in-the-Bowl were quite superb to watch and participate. Then came the dip in the cyclical fortunes - people left Pune for academic pursuits and employment relocations. The supply of good and more importantly, enthusiastic quizzers dried up. Quizzes became dodgy and BC quizzes were no longer taken for granted. The last two weekends have done much to disp...