Season Opener 2005-06 aka the July Open Quiz

Results

1st: Niranjan Pedanekar & J. Ramanand
2nd: Gaurav Sabnis & Sudarshan Purohit
3rd: Manish Manke & Nishad Manerikar
4th: Amit Varma & Leslie
5th: Salil Bijur and Anupam Akolkar
6th: Siddharth Natarajan & Siddharth Dani
7th: names not recalled

Not sure if I've got the 5th and 6th places right, and can't recall the names of the team in 7th place - Please let me know if anyone remembers

Organised & Conducted by: B.V. Harish Kumar

Report:

Before beginning the report, we must record that Harish had just about 3 weeks to put this quiz together, so it was quite a commendable effort in the circumstances. A 25 question elims (a little too short) was quite tight, with most teams answering the same questions and not being able to differentiate themselves too much. The result was a 4-way tie for the last 3 spots, which could be split using the inbuild elim tie-breaker but still left us with 2 teams for the last place. An oral round failed to help, so we ended with a 7 team final.

Amit & Leslie began the 40-odd question final with 10 points and the Sids with 5 points, courtesy topping the elims. The first few questions went through with no team being able to take the shine off the ball, so scores were pretty close at the first score-break. It continued that way with a couple of near misses for teams and probably the large number of teams in the finals had a telling effect. With a couple of audio questions going our way, Niranjan and I were able to pull slightly ahead. Leaders till then, Gaurav & Sudarshan stayed in the hunt. Manish & Nishad made a late surge moving ahead of Leslie and Amit who uncharacteristically missed some of the questions. It stayed pretty much that way till the end.

I was happy with the quality of questions - the range was better than at previous quizzes by Harish and some of the trivia was new. There were a couple of bloopers and some whose framing could have been improved. But we give him the benefit of the doubt realising the short notice for preparations :-)

A special note must be made of the Bhamidipati family for sponsoring the prizes and even taking the 7th team addition into their budget. They needn't have but they did - and thanks to them for that. Harish's wife Sirisha is yet another quizzing wife adding the job of keeping scores to her domestic chores, and joins a list of long-suffering spouses/companions of BC quizzers in having to put up with all this nonsense ;-)

We had about 25 teams on Saturday which is good news for the viability of these open quizzes. Sudarshan plans to the next Open quiz (in September) with a more specific theme of "ATES" - All That Entertains Sudarshan.

The previous Open quiz - 2004-05 season ending quiz