Interrobang

A history of the BC quiz club - V Sancho joins in our series of articles on BC quizzing through the years with some reminiscences from '93 to '98. The previous articles on the topic are at: 1 , 2 , 3 (All by Shrirang), 4 (Vishal Dalal) I joined COEP in October 93. Ours was the year there was a series of court cases which meant that college started very late. Admissions happened on 27th sep and we started off on october 4th. For my first three sems there seemed to be no quizzing going on for practical purposes. I know today that COEP was active in quizzing circles at that time with people like Srirang, Maya, Karve, Vishal, etc but i as a new comer simply did not know that they existed. I had quizzed a bit in school but had stopped totally in the 11th and 12th. i got to know first of quizzing when Akshaya, my batchmate, mentioned in passing that he had gone to AFMC for a quiz (he probably heard from Maya, his elder sister). At that time quizzing was, i guess, a very small...

Hayekian Quizzing Quizzers familiar with my "imaginative" connects can breathe easy. I am not about to ask a connect related to Salma Hayek. Instead I want to speak a bit about the ideas of Friedrich von Hayek and the concept of Spontaneous Order. I, like all strong believers in the virtue of the free market system, swear by the concept of spontaneous order. Spontaneous order means emergence of an order out of what are seemingly chaotic or disorderly circumstances, and oput of a natural process. It is believed that things that benefit society the most are the product of spontaneous forces that are beyond the direct control of a single man. It is this principle that is used to argue in favour of a laisse-faire capitalist system sans any top-down "regulation" as against a state-led/state-controlled/state-regulated economy. Though Hayek's ideas are used mainly in the field of economics (he got the Economics Nobel in 1974), they can apply to any situation or s...

(a.k.a Pune's Oldest Quiz) Date : 12th Nov. Venue : Dewang Mehta Aud, PSPL. Conducted by: Major Brijesh Nair Results : 1. Major Shankar, Sudarshan Purohit (SuperSub : Niranjan Pedanekar) 2. Vasukeshav Sharma and Chandrakant Nair 3. Ganesh Hegde and Ashish Chauhan 4. Anand Shivashankar and Meghashyam Shirodkar 5. Aditya Udas and Anupam Akolkar 6. Safal Mohammad & Vivek Philip 7. Siddharth Dani and Abhishek Nagaraj (a.k.a Dhoni ko kaun Taal sakta hai ? ) Smart Ass Comments: Niranjan added another feather to an already burgeoning cap by becoming the first ever substitute in (pune?)quizzing. Thus becoming the superest sub since the super one , replacing Major Shankar midway through the quiz. Please contact the partners-in-crime for exact details of the time, nakshatra and positions of planets when this happened, for future reference. This quiz saw the forging of a new 'harlem globetrotters' in quizzing. Herald the age of the ANNAarchists. And yes - Brij...

Niranjan's thoughts on Nupur's post Context: Read this This [the post] is an excellent summarization of what went on at the BCQC from the perspective of the 'oppressed' ;)) Bravo! I do think that these things matter to some extent. But yet, I do not fully agree with the main theme of Nupur's post, and would like to convey my personal point of view in this matter. I know that Nupur has been seriously interested in quizzing and a fairly regular quizzer. Therefore, whatever I want to say may not apply to her in specific, but to the issues she has mentioned in general. I remember the first few encounters of Shrirang, George, Ramanand, et al (and even me ;)) at the BCQC. These could not easily be termed as friendly. I clearly remember Ramanand being scoffed at in his first quiz, I don't know whether 'even' he remembers it ;)) George has mostly been an adamant rogue, but an object of ridicule at times ;)) But yet, these guys continued. I think that was...

Date: 5th November 2005. Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium. Organised by: Abhishek Nagraj, Kapeesh Saraf, Aniket Khasgiwale (I hope I spelled that right) & Gaurav Singh. Main Quiz Results: 1st: Shamanth Rao + Kunal Sawardekar. 2nd: Anand Shivshankar + Meghashyam Shirodkar. 3rd: Maj. Brijesh Nair + Manish Manke. Also: Gaurav Sabnis + D. Dharmendra; Niranjan Pedanekar + Sudarshan Purohit; Shivaji Marella + Ganesh Hegde Picture Quiz Results: 1st: Niranjan Pedanekar. 2nd: Ganesh Hegde.

The BCQC: Its downfall and rise The following is by a now expat member of the group, Nupur, who was at COEP a few years ago. This also reminds me that the story of the BC quizzing scene was last told until the mid 90s. We need someone to push it till '97 as there are many of us who can take the story ahead from there :-). This post is a little provocative for members of that era, so comments are more than invited. I think the Boat Club Quiz Club was strategically flawed. These are my views on what I had experienced 2 years ago at the BCQC and I think I kind of understand why there was a major dip in the QC population (and popularity?), in the year 2002. These are my views on what I think was going wrong. I do not know how true it is now. Explaining the answers : I think this was the #1 reason why many people lost enthusiasm to attend the QC. Lets take an example. (I recall this one clearly) The question was: " What comes in 6 'flavours'. Top, Bottom, Up, Down,...

Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz 2005 Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz 2005, the annual quiz organized by the students of Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune will be held this weekend. Date : 12th October, 2005, Saturday Time : 5pm Venue : Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Bhageerath building, Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd. Behind Domino's Pizza, Senapati Bapat Road Participation: Open quiz. Teams of max two members. Entry Fee: Rs 40/- per team. Cash prizes to be won. Contact: Major Brijesh Nair - 93120-62615

Triads Sanjeev "Sancho" Chandran, one of the old stalwarts of the BC during his engineering days at COEP from 1993-97 wrote in w.r.t the posts on Connections to mention something known as triads . Here's what he had to say on it: I seem to remember we used to run a version of connexions called triads which did not find mention in your post. i don't know if it still exists - it was never very widely done because it was a little complicated (especially to explain in a mail, as you will see below) but good fun when done in practice. The basic funda is as follows. there are three distinct clues for something say 10122, 79, 34 or pc barua, saigal, dilip kumar (these might not be very good q's - i am quite rusty). let's say the q is to be asked to team A. Normally the teams are first told what the answer is expected to be (a person, an event, a place, a book etc). this is however optional and the QM may choose to give this or not depending on his fee...