Saturday, March 26, 2005

Prahelika: The Quiz at PICT Concepts

Set By: Nikhil Kundargi and Neel Mehta

Results:

1st: J Ramanand & BV Harish Kumar (PSPL & Infosys)

2nd: Siddharth Dani & Kunal Sawardekar (VIT & FC)

3rd: Gaurav Sabnis & Sarika Chuni (IBM & Times of India)

Also: Salil Bijur & Ganesh Hegde (VIT), Meghashyam Shirodkar & Aniruddha Kasbekar (EXL & VIT), Arvind Iyengar and Aditya Pethe (MESCOE)


Remarks:

- The questions in this quiz, though good were quite easy. Also, some of them were not original. The elims were very high scoring, with the top qualifiers getting an astronomical 31/42, which shows you how easy the quiz was.

- There were a numner of technical Snafus, including the fact that one visual connect had the answers on the slide itself.

- There was a bit of controversy involving the name of Geriatrix's wife (the QMs said it wasn't ever revealed and someone said it was revealed to be Myopia in "The Secret Weapon"). However, the QMs stood fast, and research by your correspondent has proved them right (insofar as the name does not occur in "Secret Weapon", at least). We await comments by more dedicated Asterix readers on this one.

3 comments:

Nikhil said...

Goody ! Goody ! Fianlly KS could no longer sit still . About that Geriatrix's wife thingy, I have got a conflicting report from Aditya P who confirms the existence of Myopia. Something is fishy here.

Anonymous said...

I have been reading Asterix for the last 20 odd years and I can confirm to you that Geriatrix wife's name is not mentioned in the English versions of Asterix.

Kunal said...

Myopia, as I have said before, appears in Asterix and the Soothsayer, but you can't be sure whether Impedimenta is addressing Mrs Geriatrix, or (as may think)is uttering an oath (to the goddess of short sightedness). In another part of the book, Impedimenta says something like '...Bacteria and Mrs Geriatrix...' which G&U wouldn't have done if they were definitively revealing her name to be Myopia.

So, in conclusion, although it is safe to say that Mrs Geriatrix's name is never revealed, the fact in question does not have the 100% certainty we'd like to have in quiz questions.
So there!