Mahaquizzer 2007 - Results

Open category winner: J. Ramanand
College winner: Sandeep M. (IIT Madras)
Ladies winner: Vibha Iyer (Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics)

(Sadly, I don't remember the name of the school winner - if someone does, please leave name and school in the comments.)

Rotaract Pune Open Quiz '07

Forwarding a notice:

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The Rotaract Club of Poona, Main is organising an Open Quiz on Sunday, 3rd June 2007 at Ladies Club, Opp. Dastur School, Camp. The Registration starts at 9.00am and the Quiz will start at 10.00am.

Enquiries and Prior Registration for the same can also be done by sending an E-mail to punequiz@gmail.com or by Calling Karan - 9881896343 or Ankur - 9890164464. Spot Registration is also available.

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KQA 'Mahaquizzer' 2007

The Karnataka Quiz Association will hold the third edition of Mahaquizzer, the annual solo quiz contest, in Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and New Delhi on Sunday, 27 May 2007.

Mahaquizzer is a written quiz; 150 general questions to be answered in 90 minutes.

Prizes will be awarded to the person with the top score in each city, as also to the best woman entrant, the best college entrant and the best school entrant in each city.

The person with the top score across the cities will hold the title of Mahaquizzer for this year. The winner will also receive the Wing Commander Mulky Memorial Trophy for Quizzing Excellence from Wingco's family on Sunday, 24 June at the time of the KQA Anniversary.

Date of contest: Sunday, 27 May 2007 Time: 1000hrs-1130hrs at all venues No entry fee Open to all (above the age of 12)

A list of venues and city coordinators can be seen at this link.
For Pune, the venue is:

Dewang Mehta Auditorium, "Bhageerath",
Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd,
(Behind Dominos Pizza)
Senapati Bapat Road,
Pune - 411016
Coordinator: Vishwajeeth Narvekar
Please contact Ramanand. J (9324445248) or Shamanth Rao (9881000957) for directions to venue

Please do register in advance to ensure good seating!
To register, email kqaquizzes at gmail.com with the name of the city where you would like to appear mentioned clearly in the subject header (e.g.SUB: Mahaquizzer-Mumbai)

Enquiries may be addressed to Arul Mani (arul.mani at gmail.com, call 98452-06690)
:: Arul Mani

Update - May 23 Some Instructions:
1. (If you have registered in advance) please bring a print-out of the confirmation email with you
2. Reporting Time: 0930hrs. Please ensure that you take your seat by 0930hrs
3. We wish to start at 1000hrs sharp at all centres. Please note that nobody will be allowed into the hall after 1000hrs.
4. Please carry valid identification if you are competing as a school/college student.

May 2007 BC Open Colleges and Schools Quiz (Sports) - Report

Date: 13 May, 2007
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL

Open Quiz - "World of Sports"
Set and Conducted by: B.V. Harish Kumar
Theme: Sports

Quiz Final Results
(40 seamless IR + 6 Numbers round)
1st: Aniket Khasgiwale + Aditya Gadre (COEP) (B) - 100 - (Elims: 20)
2nd: Omkar Nene (Garware) + Viraj (H) - 75 - (Elims: 14)
3rd: Tanmay Inamdar + Siddharth Gokhale (BMCC) (D) - 55 - (Elims: 15)
4th: Rohit Chandrachud + Rohit Bahulekar (E) - 35 - (Elims: 13)
5th: Yash Tamaskar + Gaurav Singh (A) - 30 - (Elims: 16)
Jt 6th: Vikas V (SCOE) + Arnab Pal (VIT) (F) - 20 - (Elims: 11.5)
Jt 6th: Shantanu + Ruchik (Muktangan) (G) - 20 - (Elims: 9)
8th: Rishi Deshpande + Amod Bendre (C) - 15 - (Elims: 8)
(Kunal + Vibhav of Abhinava Vidyalaya missed out on the finals by a mere 0.5 points)

QM's Notes

• Tried to cover as many sports and areas as possible.
• Tried to make it as un-ESPN School Olympiad friendly as possible. So mugging up from the quiz books wouldn't have helped unless you knew how to use those facts/numbers in the quiz.
• I was impressed with the way the kids took to the style of quizzing and some of the answers were nothing short of brilliant. Aniket and Aditya were in vintage form as they reeled off quite a few 'good' questions (in the QM's Opinion) to take the lead which they never let go. Some of the other answers like Jahangir Khan and Lester Piggott were also brilliant. The team which missed out on qualifying by 0.5 point was unlucky and did very well sitting in the audience.
• I tried to have a different format for the elims - 15 Questions on a Crossword puzzle (some of the clues were cryptic - Hindu Crossword types) and 10 Audio Visual Questions.
• I expected very high scoring in the elims. So, there were bonus points on offer for cracking all the A/V questions/crossword clues. Though the highest score in the elims was 20 they missed out on the bonus points.
• The idea for the Numbers round came from a similar round done by Shrirang Raddi at the Boat Club many years ago.
• The topicality of the quiz ensured that most of those present were damn good at the topic and I really didn't have to explain too many of the answers.
• We can do topical quizzes on these BCQC Open days - either for schools or for the Open junta (from the response seen for the India quiz) We just to ensure we don't make the topics too esoteric.
• There were 12 teams for the Sports quiz - most of whom had turned up because they were already on the mailing lists. We need to follow the philosophy of some of the truck companies on campuses - Trespassers will be recruited.
• People were allowed to participate in the quiz in spite of wearing t-shirts professing their love for losers like Arse-nal.

May 2007 BC Open Quiz "Indic-Nation" - Report

Date: 13 May, 2007 Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL
Set and Conducted by: Shamanth Rao and Salil Bijur
Theme: India

Quiz Final Results (team no. with elims score):
1st: Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari + Meghashyam Shirodkar (8 - 32.5)
2nd: B.V. Harish Kumar + Ganesh Hegde + Niranjan Pedanekar (4 - 33 (highest elims score))
3rd: Manish Manke + Siddharth Natarajan + Kunal Sawardekar (1 - 32) or Samrat Sengupta + J. Ramanand + Abhishek Nagaraj (6 - 30) (scores not clear)

Others: Aditya Gadre + Aniket Khasgiwale + Yashovardhan Tamaskar (2 - 25), Ketan Doshi + Ashwin Kulkarni + Sumedh Kulkarni (3 - 22.5), Rahul + Vibha + Rachna Gothi (5 - 22) (cutoff elims score), Jay Athalye + Kedar Toraskar + Akshad V. (7 - 24), Anand Ayyadurai + Krishnan Sekar + Georgie Matthews (9 - 23.5), Kunal Thakar + Arnab Pal + Anupam Akolkar (10 - 28)

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Salil has the following notes to offer from yesterday's quiz:

A few "principles" we considered before setting out to make the quiz:

1. Encourage max no. of people to be able be a part of the finals -- thats why we had teams of 3 and 10 teams in finals.
2. Increase no. of questions a team gets to attempt, prevent the "we never got any simple ones" crib -- thats why had a large no. of questions in the finals. The no. of sitters and tough ones a team gets evens out in the end. However we didn't dumb it down too much, and a level was pretty much maintained.
3. Reduce newcomer frustration due to repeated fundaes, tough questions and esoterica and make it more enjoyable and interesting -- thats why we had a comparatively simple elims round with 32.5/35 being the highest. We also had a few not so simple ones in the elims.
4. Prevent boredom among audience and participants by having more innovative rounds other than seamless IR.
5. Encourage people to guess more and not restrict their thinking -- thats why we didnt have negatives in any round and encouraged more guesses for the themes

Format of the quiz:
The quiz was styled as a 9-course meal. We had:

1. Appetizers: 9 IR qns connected to a theme.
2. Soup: Written round with a few audio-visual identify qns
3. Main Course 1: 33 qns on IR.
4. Salad: Written round with qns connected to a theme
5. Sorbet: Audio questions based on inspired songs
6. Main Course 2: 33 qns on IR with round reversal
7. Dessert: Written round with qns connected to a theme
8. Wine: 3 written qns with a stage 2 connect
9. Coffee: A 24-picture clue connect

Now the ground realities:
* We had over 75 people attending both the quizzes, including participants and audience - which is a small record of sorts. We had lots of enthu school students attending, some with their parents who were equally enthu to answer which was really great to see.
* Lots of people + Informal atmosphere = chaos, where people randomly enter and leave and we cannot prevent entry or exit at any point of time.
* Shamanth and Abhishek's newbie quizzes which were used in favour of Theme-Attic were really popular and the audience loved them. We should have such questions instead of topical esoterica since we're targeting Theme-Attic for newcomers. Have simpler themes or themes that cover wider ranges to be newbie friendly.
* Blame the local eateries or our own latitude - but a lot of time is spent waiting for participants after lunch to come so we cant start in time often delaying the whole show.
* IMHO, it is fair for a QM to hurry a team answering at his/her discretion. However it is unfair for participants to rush the QM because they have to leave early - we are flexible to allow substitutions.
* It was heartwarming to see all newcomers showing enthu and being involved throughout. Many enquired for more details, took down contact nos., etc. so we had quite a few newcomers with potential to be regular.

On the actual quiz content:
* We avoided esoteric topics - eg. individual scores & stats of SRT or hardcore JBDY/Sholay facts. (Maybe there were 1-2 out of 100)
* Added humourous facts/trivia to make them interesting and appealing to audience.
* There will always be cribs about not having touched any particular topic or focusing on one more, but an attempt is always made to cover all. Often the reason may be that good questions in a topic weren't found or perhaps didn't suit a particular theme. We dont want to have arbit questions on a topic just to touch it.
* Not everyone likes long quizzes. But we had decided ours to be one. And we had to cater to 30 finalists.
* Plead guilty for not having only-audience questions. We were short of time and frustration levels among participants were rising due to the length. But we did have a loyal audience (that too newcomers) who patienty waited till towards the end and kept attempting qns for chocos.
* Answers in the presentation make it easier to explain to other participants and audience. It is dangerous to an extent and cost us twice :-(. But there are ways to prevent it - though they're time consuming.
* The inspired songs round was considered as 'topical' and 'antakshari-like'. I disagree. It wasn't topical because we didn't ask specifics like music director/film, etc. Most tunes were familiar ones and were based on recollection.
* Received cribs about on-the-fly scoring patterns and no. of attempts for theme that caused confusion in total scoring. I agree here - a better approach is required in dealing with written rounds and themes.

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Some sample elims questions (select the whitespace in front of "Ans" to see answers)
1. Fill up:
a. A peepul tree in Varanasi.
b. A banana tree in a Bangalore temple
c. An idol in Ayodhya
Ans. Abhishek Bachchan. Funda is that all these are Aishwarya Rai's 'husbands'

2. Which Indian PM dropped his surname 'Shrivastava' because it indicated his caste? Ans. Lal Bahadur Shastri

3. Which place in Mumbai gets its name from a black stone statue of King Edward VII (as the then Prince of Wales) which is now located in Jijamata Udyan?
Ans. Kala Ghoda

4. The earlier name of the town of Nanded shares its name with a place in West Bengal. Which place?
Ans. Nandigram

BC InFest 2007 - Report

The latest edition of BC InFest happened at on a quiet Sunday at the serene Boat Club setting amidst politely cloudy weather and many dollops of fun. It saw a good participation of about 20-25 people, and saw its share of good questions, bad humour and care-free quizzing.

We only had time for three quizzes: Meghashyam ("shyam*10^6") put on some excellent questions from a breadth of topics, Maitreyi pulled out some interesting questions from a recent quiz of hers, and Ganesh's religion quiz was quite novel and impressive.

The highlight of the day was InFest-You-Us, the new speciality themes solo quizzing section. The format was as follows: each person had chosen a topic of their interest, preferably a slightly off-beat one, to be set by one of the others. This way, almost everyone participating had set a topic. The taker would be asked 15 questions: 1 point for getting a question right. If missed, the question would go to the "Mob". The Mob was not allowed to discuss among themselves, but people merely raised hands if they thought they knew the answer. The Mob had to decide who among them could go for it. If the chosen one was right, the taker lost 1/2 a point. If not, the confident chosen one would get quite a rocket from the rest :-). Finally, no person from the mob could answer consecutively. Sounds like fun? Well, it was.

Samrat was the chief organiser/convener/whip/Benevolent Dictator For the Day, and in his own inimitable style, a report:

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On sunday BCQC members had a rollicking ride at the Boat Club.

The event started off with a swig of magic potion:
Topic : Cultural References in Asterix
Person : Siddharth N, Question Setter : Shamanth S
Correct : 7 No answers: 4 Answered By Mob : 4 Total : 5
It was an enchanting set by Shamanth, who tried his best to dig out new trivia from Asterix. The experts in the mob also hunted down some stray boars missed by Siddharth

Topic : Train Names in the Ind. Railways
Person : Shamanth S, Question Setter : Abhishek N
Correct : 12 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 11
The most offbeat topic, and Abhishek had a varied offering, criss-crossing the entire length and breadth of India.

Topic : Google
Person : Abhishek N, Question Setter : Kunal T
Correct : 6 No Answers : 7 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 5
Abhishek had a 404 (page not found) for most of the questions , as KT had a tough non-googleable set on offer

Topic : History Of Israel (1917-1990)
Person : Samrat S, Question Setter : Kunal S
Correct : 14 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 14
Samrat was in his best kosher form as he systematically went about conquering the Holy land.

Topic : Discworld Novels
Person : Kunal S, Question Setter : Sudarshan P
Correct : 8.5 No Answers : 6.5 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 8.5
Esoteric set, which had some interesting pop culture references

Topic : Hindustani classical music
Person : Niranjan P, Question Setter : Salil B
Correct : 11 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 10
A rich audio-visual offering from Salil, which appealed to all the non-musical types also. Niranjan was at his rhythmic best, but the mob also added a raga of their own to the jugalbandi of Salil and Niranjan

Topic : Monty Python
Person : Aditya G, Question Setter : Abhishek N
Correct : 8.5 No Answers : 4.5 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 7.5
The mob was on the floor in splits with some of the questions and in danger of rolling over into the Mutha or getting stumped through their head.

Topic : Detectives in Fiction
Person : Ramanand J, Question Setter : Niranjan P
Correct : 10 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 3
Total : 8.5
Excellent well-researched set. Ramanand did splendidly in this tough set. The mob led by Sudarshan also cracked a few mysteries on their own.

Topic : World Cup Football
Person : Gaurav S, Question Setter : Aditya G
Correct : 5 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 9
Total : 0.5
Gaurav got lynched by the mob in this one. The football fanatics Aniket and Samrat pounced on every (mis)pass.

Topic : West Indies Cricket
Person : Harish K, Question Setter : Ramanand J
Correct : 8.5 No Answers : 3 Answered By Mob : 3.5
Total : 5.25
Very interesting collection of questions from Ramanand, captured the entire history of the brilliant and much loved Caribbean entertainers

Topic : Sandman Comics by Neil Gaiman
Person : Sudarshan P, Question Setter : Gaurav Sabnis ( in absentia)
Correct : 8 No Answers : 7 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 8
Another of the niche areas. Sabnis wove a dream sequence for Sudarshan.

Topic : Science in India
Person : Salil B, Question Setter : Siddharth N
Correct : 8 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 5.5
Total :
Salil could not unravel most of the set, and the mob was ready to score at most opportunities

Topic : The Great War in the Mahabharata
Person : Meghashyam S, Question Setter : Harish K
Correct : 14 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 14
Meghashyam cracked the Chakravyuh with ease, and conched his way to glory.

Topic : Catch-22 By Joseph Heller
Person : Aniket K, Question Setter : Meghashyam S
Correct : 13 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 13
Aniket made the most of the topic and was in no dilemma at all

Topic : Pink Floyd
Person : Kunal T, Question Setter : Aditya U (in absentia)
Correct : 9 No Answers : 4 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 8
Nice workable set from Aditya.

Topic : Friends
Person : Yasho T, Question Setter : Gaurav Sabnis ( in absentia)
Correct : 10 No Answers : 3 Answered By Mob : 2 Total : 9
Another rerun of the sitcom.

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We rounded off the day with a little presentation ceremony for Shamanth, with some gifts for being such a prominent member of the BC, contributing immensely to the open quizzes, and for finally leaving ;-).

BC InFest should hopefully be back next year too.

BC May Open - India Quiz

BC May Colleges and Schools quiz - World of Sports

BC InFest 2007

This Sunday at the COEP Boat Club. All the details here.