Sunday, February 26, 2006

Chakravyuuh 2006 (COEP)

Main Quiz Results

1st: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2nd: B.V.Harishkumar & J. Ramanand
3rd: Kunal Sawardekar and Shriniwas Kulkarni
Other finalists: Niranjan Pedanekar+Sudarshan Purohit, Samrat Sengupta+Siddharth Dani, Aditya Udas+Meghashyam Shirodkar

Quiz setters & hosts

Abhishek, Vineet, Aniket and all the rest from the COEP

Media Quiz
Organised by Kapeesh

Winner: J. Ramanand

Report

* The quiz opened differently, with the new look Chakravyuuh round being conducted first. The format was: six questions on six topics ranging from 5 to 15 points based on difficulty levels for each team. Bonus points for other teams if a direct was not answered correctly. An early lead was taken by Harish and me. Later, during the conventional IR rounds, the other teams too pressed on the accelerators turning the quiz into an extremely close fight. The special themes were cracked early by G+S and S+N who went into the lead. K+S and H+me made a late surge. In the end, there were only 5 points separating the top two teams. G+S made a very good comeback considering they were trailing after the Chakravyuuh round.
* For the fourth time in a row, Harish and I came second at Chakravyuuh, something that caused a lot of disappointment :(
* The disappointment was quelled by one of the best quizzing days I've personally had with some of the best post-quiz Sharvaree sessions ever. (Will be posting the DCH stuff in detail next week)
* It was one of the tightest quiz finishes I have participated in
* Some great moments: Dani, Samrat (returning back after a long while with no attenuation of his bon mots)
* We had some kids turn up for the quiz (duly rewarded with chocs!) reminding us that we really have to try and get the schools quiz going.

Comments/Criticisms

* Good organisation, excellent production, time was adhered to
* Overall, IMO, the quiz was quite good. I didn't like Theme 2 much, thought it was contrived and definitely too local and tough for non-Maharashtrians (though ironically, we'd remember Dani's outburst for a while :-) ) Theme 1 was better, but the general observation that it is very hard to set such pyramid connects while maintaining consistency.
* Chakravyuuh round: nice concept, but some of the 5-pointers were too tough and some of the 15 pointers too easy. Connects were decent. Questions inspired some good answering.
* We have to standardise irritants like these thousand variations of Infinite Rebounds. I'll start a thread on it on this blog - it's very frustrating when we end up arguing on stage.
* Could some of the questions pared down in their length?
Overall, an memorable experience.

* Last year's results.
* Some sample questions.

Abhimanyu 2006 (COEP)

Quiz Results

1st: Gaurav Singh (Speciality: Harry Potter stories)
2nd: Aniket (Speciality: Indian Test Cricket Captains)
Other finalists: Kapeesh Saraf (Bob Dylan), Kartik Iyer(World War II), Abhishek Nagaraj(Blackadder series), Vineet(Bal Gangadhar Tilak)

Quiz setters & hosts

Abhishek, Kapeesh, Aniket and all the rest from the COEP

Report

The GK round held first bunched up the quizzers after a low scoring effort from all, but Gaurav cracked the speciality round 15/15 to sweep the contest and win the 6th edition of the intra-COEP solo quiz.

Previous year

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Chakravyuh 2006

The details for Chakravyuh are:

Venue: COEP Auditorium.

Schedule:

  • 11 a.m.: Abhimanyu finals
  • 12:15 p.m.: Chakravyuh Elims
  • --- Fillers planned---
  • Latest by 2: Chakravyuh finals

Expected to finish by 5.

Teams of two. Attractive audience and finals prizes.

For more details see: The Chakravyuh Blog or call me, Abhishek at: 98907 26322. Cheers,

Monday, February 13, 2006

Nihilanth 2006 Quizzes

Aadisht Khanna, whom you may remeber from such blogs as Maajarly Shadymax Arbit Fundaes, was at the recently concluded IIT-IIM culfest Nihilanth. The following is his report of the quizzes conducted there.

General Arrangements:

The organisers were extremely professional, and pulled out all the stops for us. Nihilanth teams were each given a room to themselves, instead of being thrown into a dormitory or common room. Five to a room doesn't sound all that great but it much better than the twenty-five to a room funda at Saarang. Other areas where the organisers were helpful: delaying the start of events as far as possible when the IIMB and IITM teams were stuck on a delayed train, and coming up with a non-points quiz when one of the quizmasters cancelled the India Quiz at the last minute. Another good thing is that Nihilanth had an entire venue to itself, so no interruptions from other events. Grub and Coffee at the mess were also Landmark Quiz Bangalore level (by which I mean after anticipating something so bad, we were pleasantly surprised to find that it at least met minimum standards). Cribs with general arrangements: IIMC is probably the worst venue to hold a Nihilanth after IIT Kharagpur and Guwahati. Kolkata is too far away from all other institutes (except Kharagpur and Guwahati), and IIMC in turn is too far away from Calcutta. This drives up travel time and costs, and in the case of IIMB and IITM can screw you over (since the IIMB second string team and the IITM teams had to miss the Biz Quiz). Being far away from the city also meant that you couldn't go out to eat, and that the food stalls on campus for the IIMC fest (which was running in parallel) were freakishly expensive. Also, the campus is frankly smelly and dilapidated- the seven 'lakes' lead to many insects, which lead to many birds, which leads to the campus being festooned with guano. The toilets are givvup-level- IIMC junta seem to not grasp the concept of flushing. Finally, although this is a problem with the sponsors more than the organisers, cheques for pirze money and travel reimbursement were not given immediately (and still haven't reached after two weeks).

The Quizzes:

Biz Quiz: won by IIMB after the only guy from there who refused to trust the public sector and flew down instead qualified solo while waiting for the rest of his team to show up (thank you, thank you). IIMA finished second. Conducted by G Sreekanth. Good points:

    1. Some very good fundaes
    2. Sreekanth came up with a variation on Stage 2 where instead of getting negative points for guessing the theme wrong, you only lose the opportunity to guess it further on in the round. Makes the risk more palatable.
Bad points:
  1. Some of the clues in the connect questions were really tangential.
  2. This quiz used Direct-Pass instead of Infinite Bounce (which IITM and IIMB have already moved beyond in favour of Modified Infinite Bounce).
Sci-Tech Quiz: conducted by Sreekanth and Anil. Won by IIMB-II. IIMB-I came second. Last quiz to be conducted on the first day, and finished at about two/ half past two in the morning. Started out with teams struggling to stay awake and then getting more alert as the quiz got more interesting.

Good Stuff:

  1. Some very good questions.
Bad Stuff:
  1. The questions were inconsistent. Some were too easy and some were bizarrely difficult.
  2. The stage two (Lucasian professors) was a peter* (to be fair, the QMs might not have known this).
Sports Quiz: conducted by Anil. I have zero fundaes on sports, so can't comment on it, but my team says it was one of the best quizzes ever, with very good fundaes. IIMB was obliterated in this quiz- I think IITM and IIMA were in the points for this one.

Movies Quiz: conducted by the IIMI chap who started the Nihilanth concept (can't remember his name). This was (almost) the worst quiz- prepared in a hurry and with almost every question getting answered on the direct. It was also short, so that if you missed a single question, you ended up out of contention. This was won by IIT Roorkee, which managed to crack almost every pass that came their way. The two IIMB teams finished joint third. I'm not sure who finished second- I think IIT KGP.

Lit+Arts: The best quiz in the two days over there. Conducted by Beatzo. Very long, but fun. (Shades of the Saarang Lone Wolf.) Good points:

  1. Beatzo seems to have struck a refined balance between questions he wants to put and a difficulty/ obscurity level which participants are comfortable with. So lots of new fundaes, but which were still crackable and workoutable.
  2. A written Stage Two.
  3. A long, long Stage Two (20 questions, I think).
Bad points: none.

Won by IIMB-I. I think IITM and IIMA were second and third in some order.

Non-ranking general quiz: conducted by IIMC junta after the India quiz was cancelled (as the QM hadn't prepared it). This was conducted for the prize money of the India Quiz, but had no points counting towards the Nihilanth trophy. IIMC was barred from participating. Won't comment on this- the organizers had to come up with a quiz on short notice, so they used questions which I think were used in IIMC internal quizzes. Since three QMs had to contribute whichever questions they had, there were problems with putting the questions on Powerpoint slides properly, the balance of the quiz, etc. I won't crib about this- if you have to come up with a quiz in eight hours (that too, starting at two in the morning), its excusable. I think IIMA won this, and IIMB-II came second or third.

General Open Quiz [Conducted by Gautam Bhimani (questions may have been contributed by Joy Bhattacharya, who was supposed to conduct it but told jai)] : The Open quiz of the culfest, which was open to the general public but had four spaces reserved for Nihilanth teams. However, all these four spaces were occupied on 'merit'. This was the worst quiz of the festival- not just by being the least good, but by being in a whole new league of badness. Cribs:

  1. No starred questions in the prelims.
  2. Almost zero funda-based questions.
  3. Although infinite bounce was used, the QM still had 'rounds'. Instead of mixing the questions up, there was an 'audio' round, a 'video' round, dy rounds, etc.
  4. The audio round was in turn a special round, where all the questions were based on covers/ ripoffs and fell into the set {Who is performing the cover, Who is the original by, Who has ripped this song off, Which is the song that has been ripped off}
  5. The filenames of the videos were not changed, so some questions had to be scrapped when the filenames showed up on the display.
  6. There was one round based on identifying celebrities from their pictures as kids.
  7. There was another round based on identifying the celebrity partners of people in the photos.

Won by Beatzo+Anil+someone else.

::Aadisht Khanna

*peter - n, IITM lingo : A question in a quiz that has been asked in a previous quiz (allegedly from the word "repeater").

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Quiz-O-Mania 2006 Results & Comments

Results

1st: Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2nd: Niranjan Pedanekar and Sudarshan Purohit
3rd: Gaurav Sabnis and Ganesh Hegde
Other finalists: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harishkumar, Meghashyam Shirodkar and Aditya Udas, Abhishek Nagaraj and Shriniwas Kulkarni

Quiz organised and conducted by: VIT (Anupam-Kunal Thakar-Salil-Siddharth)

Report and Comments

* Kunal and Shamanth creamed the opposition in this quiz by a whopping margin - Niranjan and Sud made a good late comeback to snap up 2nd spot
* Must say that the poor auditorium facilities ruined any viewing pleasure for audience and participants - it made good questions feel ok and bad questions terrible
* A little disappointed overall with the questions - a lot of repeats/known trivia
* A few excellent questions, but drowned in the cacophony - Nepal massacre, Asterix-Tour de France, Schengen visa etc. come to mind
* Avoidable snafus meant that last year's effort outshone this time's.

Others please chip in.

BCQC - Maharashtra Herald article

Another article on the BCQC (please note new URL!), this time in the Maharashtra Herald. Click on the image above to enlarge (it is a little big). (Thanks to some of the dads involved in the operation :-) )

Previous features:

* The Indian Express
* Pune Times of India

Monday, February 06, 2006

Wing Commander Mulky no more


One of the founders of the KQA and well-known quizzer Wing Commander Mulky passed away on Saturday.

Dharmendra has this personal tribute to him.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

A few Surmises on the 'Steal' Variation

Just for completeness, here is stated the steal variation on IR (introduced by Brijesh):

  1. Passing is as per normal IR order.
  2. Before the team on the direct answers, any other team might intrude and get points (+ve and -ve) as per the correctness of their response.
  3. These teams are thereby omitted from the regular passing order.
  4. Those teams who have not 'stolen' in this way, can continue as normal.

At the two instances that this has been tried out the scoring rule was : +10/-10

Why I Like it:

  1. As said before, the closer a system is to written elims, the fairer it is. True in this case.
  2. Rewards people for surety of answers.
  3. Independent of passing order, length of passing chain etc.
  4. Teams blame only themselves for knowing the answers and not answering, other than the standard(pls. pardon) 'i-knew-it-but-never-came-to-us' routine.

Why I Don't Like it:

  1. A great burden on the precious time of quizzers (?), venues, audience etc.
  2. NOT great for people watching in the halls. It gets very boring - QMs having private discussions with the teams.
  3. Maybe, takes away a bit from the guessing part of quizzing. Rewards exact perfect knowledge to reasoned, logical guesses. But that is how competitive quizzing is these days.(sigh!)

Conclusion:

I really feel is system mein kuch dam hai. It really has enough things going for it, to make it a really, major viable option to IR. And yes, I also think that it is a much major 'variation' on IR - than the others we've had, to really call it a variation. A couple of suggestions though:

  • To make the time wastage at a minimum, make it clear that you do not encourage steals. This may seem a bit antithetical but making the points system +10/-20 would make the odds for a team, who is 'reasonably confident' to defer answering - and thereby reducing number of such steals, and thereby time.
  • I think for large, big-money quizzes to involve the audience we need to take a cue from the much hated Derek. On BQC, they have a similar funda where teams type in their answer and the audience can see it, and that sort if thing. In fact the whole clandestine, the secret's between the QM and the audience would actually make the people sitting extremely excited and interested. However alas!, no joy for low-budget, technologically handicapped quizzes like ours.
  • Also since there is no audience at BCQC, that certainly makes 'steal' ka palla bhari, for use at meetings.

Think for the day: Is there any way of combining graded points award system (points proportional to no. of teams answering) with steal ?

Cheers,

Abhishek

Thursday, February 02, 2006

QUIZ-O-MANIA 2006

Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT), Pune is organising the 5th edition of its annual quiz QUIZ-O-MANIA this weekend. This year a music quiz will be held along with the general quiz.

QUIZ-O-Mania, the Open General Quiz
Date: 4th Feb 2006 (Saturday)
Time: Registrations begin at 12.00pm. Elims at 1.00pm
Teams of 2, Entry open to all
Venue: VIT Auditorium

Open Music Quiz
All types of music genre will be covered.
Date: 5th Feb 2006 (Sunday)
Time: Registrations begin at 10.00am. Elims at 11.00am
Teams of 3, Entry open to all
Venue: VIT Auditorium

Both quizzes have a total prize of Rs.20,000 including cash.
Exciting audience prizes.
Snacks will be provided to all finalists.

How to get there: http://www.vit.edu/location.htm

Contact for details:
Salil - 9823112258
Kunal - 9890180692
Siddharth - 9422501573