Interrobang

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...

Statistics - 1: Pulse : Set by: Ramanand Format: Fully IR, round reversal Total Number of questions: 36 Number of unanswered questions: 2.5 Number of attempts per team: A - 15, B - 15, C - 13, D - 15, E - 14, F - 12 Number of correct answers per team: A - 9, B - 5, C - 3, D - 11.5, E - 1, F - 4 Number of "direct" questions per team (in brackets, the number of correct answers on directs): A - 6(6), B - 8(5), C - 7(2), D - 3(3), E - 7(1), F - 5(1) VIT : Set by: Salil, Kunal, Siddharth, Ganesh & Anand Format: Fully IR, round reversal after half Total Number of questions: 60 Number of unanswered questions: 3 Number of attempts per team: A - 23, B - 24, C - 24, D - 24, E - 24, F - 25 Number of correct answers per team: A - 10, B - 9, C - 9.5, D - 9, E - 9.5, F - 10 Number of "direct" questions per team (in brackets, the number of correct answers on directs): A - 11(5), B - 11(5), C - 7(4), D - 9(4), E - 8(4), F - 14(10) Bran...

Response to comments by Kiran on IR Replying to Formats of Rounds - II : Infinite Rebounds , Kiran said: the reason why infinite rebounds is not that relied upon is pretty simple, its in the name itself. only if the number of questions are infinite or to be practical significantly large, can you apply this format. if there are not many questions (atleast 20 X no. of teams), some teams might feel high and dry in terms of number of questions put to them. that element of fairness is ensure in D&P. moreover, if one of your biggest arguments against D&P is the fact that one team cld end up answeing a direct imm. after a pass, thats not a strong enuff point. having been a veteran in quizzes, i wld still subscribe to D&P inspite of some amount of unfair situations. Niranjan adds: a simulation of infinite rebounds vs D&P (latest code - none of you have it yet..;-)) indicates that differences in team abilities result in a more pronounced variation in points...

Summary of comments to Salil's question In response to Formats of Rounds - I , Salil had a question to ask on awarding split points in an answer to more than 1 team. Principal comments: Arnav: The quizmaster should in general follow a policy of not saying if a particular answer given by a team is completely wrong or partially right, and should move on. In the eventuality that another team gets the complete answer, they should be given all the points, otherwise the q/m can come back to any team that had answered partially correctly to award partial points. Mine: Incidentally, this point took centrestage during VIT's quiz where it was felt that the hosts were trying to please everyone by awarding half points to many teams (once overshooting the value of 10 per qn), or were hesitant in deciding whom to award points to etc.. This issue crops up principally in responses to Connects as the routine observation is that no team manages to answer the question to ...

Question of the Week - 3 Here's a question from the maitré from Mensa 2001 (a.k.a Amnesia 2001 (Surviving Factual Harassment)) which had quite a few personal favourites. Q: Connect: Editor and Managing Director of a daily, a storekeeper at an army depot, a domestic servant, a restaurant proprieter, a refugee, a medical practioner and a barrister. A: They formed the accused in the M.K.Gandhi assassination case. (Nathuram Godse & Narayan Apte, Gopal Godse, Shankar Kistayya, Vishnu Karkare, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Badge & V.D.Savarkar). I think the reasons for liking the question are simply personal - it is a portion of history that I (like many others) have some interest in. It is an oft made valid accusation that we sometimes don't explore newer areas in our quizzes here, so this question commendably moves away from the usual subjects . The question is taut and its p.o.v of the fact is fresh, for those men are not usually described as such....

The Shyam Bhat Memorial Quiz - 2004 Date: 14 March (Sunday) Time: 10 a.m Venue: AFMC, Pune To be conducted by Brijesh This is an Open quiz

Chakravyuh 2004 Results: First: Gaurav & Neeraj (IIM-L & Jamnalal Bajaj cum BCQC) Second: Harish & Ramanand (BCQC) Third: Niranjan & Samrat (BCQC) Also: Brijesh & partner (AFMC), Meghashyam & Pooja Shirodkar, ICICI Mumbai Observations: Probably the most extraordinary circumstances I have seen a quiz conducted in. It's still all very confusing to me. I can only appeal to the other quizzers who were there to limit their comments & criticisms to the questions, for the intentions of the organisers were bonafide. A sympathetic pat on the back for the organizers Siddharth, Anup, Tejas, Shabbir, Mufeet and the rest. Chakravyuuh IV needs to be analysed thoroughly, but not in a public thread (except maybe the distribution of questions) - we can get it right again next time.

Brand Equity 2004 - Pune Regional Round Results: First: Ranjan Banerjee & Ajay Kolhatkar (Renaissance Consulting) Second: Manish Manke & Kartik Jayaraman (Geometric Systems) Third: Landscape, Goa Also: Samrat Sengupta + Amit Garde (Persistent), Kanbay S/W, Triple Point Observations: Perhaps it is not fair for me to write any, as I'm hopelessly biased against the way it is conducted. I don't really like Mr. O'Brien's methods and I don't like the questions from D 'O B & Associates. I wish we could get a fraction of the money splurged there that would help us conduct a quiz of our own. I'm not sure why big-spending quizzes don't have good questions - I don't get the relationship. But the thumb rule still holds true. The greed among the audience is to be seen to be believed! Atleast I had the pleasant company of friend and fellow cribber Capt. Shankar. Renaissance were always my top seeds, and here's hopin...

Short version of the results of the VIT & AIT quizzes: Quiz-o-Mania - the VIT quiz First: Samrat & Harish (BC) Second: Brijesh & Ayon (AFMC) Third: Kunal & Ulka (FC) Also: Niranjan + Ramanand (BC), Shivaji + Vivek (BJMC), MESCO Owl-in-the-Bowl - the AIT Solitaire quiz First: Kunal (FC) Second: Shivaji (BJMC) Third: Brijesh (AFMC) Also: Ramanand (BC), Ganesh (VIT), Samrat (BC) Gen. B.C.Joshi- the AIT Solitaire quiz First: Aditya Narula and Sangram Chahel (ex-AIT) Second: Meghashyam & Pooja Shirodkar Third: Rajiv and Onkar (SIBM) Also: Shivaji + Vivek (BJMC), Salil + Kunal (VIT), Kunal + Ulka (FC)

Chakravyuuh 2004 The details of the fourth edition of COEP's quiz: The Govt. College of Engineering, Pune will hold its annual quiz CHAKRAVYUH on the 7th of March, Sunday . The Quiz is open to all. Date : 7th March (Sunday) Time: Registrations at 9:00am, Elims : 9:30 am Teams of two. No restriction in number of teams from any organization. Venue: The COEP Auditorium

Question of the Week - II Given my current rate of posting here (blame it on lack of time rather than lack of content), this should've read "Question of the Month", but then here it is anyway. This time's pick is a question by the recently de-mobbed Gaurav (of COEP 2002, IIM-L 2004, soon to be Infesting Business Markets and the one who owes me un dosa masala ) from his collection of questions posted here . Now, this is a very BC-esque question: the visual connect that upholds the Rule of Economy by saying nothing more than is necessary. It's also about movies, which is a common hunting ground. The question reads: Q. Look at the image . Whose face should be in place of the question mark? A. Quentin Tarantino (the reasoning derives from the film Reservoir Dogs ). Each block in the upper half is a colour, associated with the face below - the colour being their codenames . Of course, people who haven't watched the film would find it extremel...