Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Amnesia - September 2007 BC Open General Quiz - Report

Date: 16 September, 2007
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL

Open Quiz - "Amnesia"
Set and Conducted by: Niranjan Pedanekar
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
(~50 seamless IR)
cutoff: 20.5/45 1st: Meghashyam Shirodkar + Samrat Sengupta (B) - 100
2nd: B.V.Harish Kumar + J. Ramanand (C) - 85
3rd: Avinash Mudaliar + Harikrishnan (F) - 75
4th: Sudarshan Purohit + Abhishek Nagaraj (E) - 60
5th: Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari (D) - 55
6th: Kaustubh Bhat + Aditya Gadre (A) - 20

Best School teams: Nandan Gokhale + Samit, Satyavrat Wagle + Rohit Sahasrabuddhe
Best College teams: Aditya Gadre+Kaustubh Bhat, Yasho Tamaskar+Aniket Khasgiwale
Best Newbies: Arnab + Ramanathan

Notes

  • Undoubtedly, the best quiz of the year (even though we have had many good quizzes this year). Perhaps I should say "so far" :-)
  • Terrific elims, one of the best I have ever taken. Almost every question seemed to me to be genuinely workable or at least v. interesting. Only, was too long, thus causing a cascading effect of longer correction and "moderation" and so on.
  • Excellent finals questions - many people would have experienced Niranjan's style of questions for the first time: requiring a heavy dose of lateral thinking, a variety of elements per question, big and structure-intensive questions. I think most of them warmed to it.
  • Some questions were, as happens each time with Niranjan, bordered on the strange ("dard-e-disco" ;-)). Some could have had a few more clues, but then we'd have been there into the wee hours. Some of the split decisions could have been more consistent.
  • Superb performance by Meghashyam, with able support from Samrat. This team had, at the beginning, admitted to not being historically good at connects, Niranjan-style. But if this performance is anything to go by, they have nothing to fear here. Some of the answers were wonderfully intuitive.
  • Perhaps one aspect to a good quiz is how well it can inspire its participants to respond - on that count, we had some very fine answering by all teams, including the rookies Aditya and Kaustubh, making their BCQC Open debut. The audience too was in fine fettle cracking some tough nuts that none on stage could even unwrap.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

AWESOME Quiz .. Really well set .. Connects were really good fun ..
Very Very good quiz ..

Salil said...

I enjoyed most of the quiz. Especially liked the way simple themes were framed as connects.

Crib for the day: I didn't quite like a few connects like the Chupke Chupke one. It seemed too topical and "pop culture" ;-)

BTW, were any of the questions skipped?

Kunal said...

Goshdarnit for all the delays that kept this from happening in, say July. Minor quibble with this post: IIRC, this wasn't Aditya & Kaustubh, I remember at least Aditya (along with our faux-Hibernian friend O'Tamaskar) being in the mega-India quiz in May.

Also pls to post questions (yes, now that I'm not in Pune I can be that guy.).

Harish Kumar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Harish Kumar said...

Again, as usual - questions were top drawer. Niranjan was in fine fettle as far as questions go.You continue to do a Federer and there's no Djokovic in sight. So I'll focus on the other aspects of QMing.
Yes, the Chupke Chupke one was a James/Shiva II/RGV ki Aag.A PDF of the complete set of qs would help in spotting more of these.
As I had commented on the last Amnesia, NP has always been consistently inconsistent in awarding part points/looking for complete answers. 5 'extra' points for the first question was not justified since you couldn't have got the connect unless you had identified those players. So 5+5 is fine, not 10+5. Some others that I remember are - awarding points to us for saying types of 'Rock' music when the earlier team had said types of music; points for Sammy/Meg for the qn on Mumbai blasts.
Small peeves but they sometimes tend to remain in the mind rather than the questions.
And there was extra time given to Team F on almost every qn,even on a pass. I think it will be a good idea to let people know in advance (probably in the announcement itself) about how many qs would be there and for how long does the QM expect the quiz to go on.

Anonymous said...

the questions puhleeeeez.

brijesh

Samrat said...

Excellent quiz. After a Niranjan quiz it seems like your brain has been through a wringer with every ounce of your thinking,knowledge and reasoning extracted out.
It is amazing the way he comes out with new structures for questions, and the innovative connects.
Kudos to NP and eagerly awaiting the next bout of "Amnesia".

Meghashyam was really terrific, he played THE laxman type of innings, with me the humble Dravid ;)

Aditya said...

It was awesome. Arguably the best quiz I've been to so far .
even the elims were brilliant. Every single question was workable and not based on obscure trivia.
Great Job!
Eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to survive factual harassment.

Saagar said...

Hi.
I am Saagar from IIT Roorkee. I'm organizing a quiz as part of our annual cultural fest. Could you put up these details on your blog please. It would be a lot of help? And can you participate in the quiz also? It should be pretty good.

There's an open General Quiz- 'Titans of Trvia' as part of the annual cultural festival of IIT Roorkee, Thomso 2007. It's on Saturday 27.10.2007. The prize money will be to the tune of Rs. 15k. Teams of 2 or 3. Registration on the spot. The quiz will be conducted by Keerthi Raghavan of IIM A, a well-known quizzer in the north Indian quizzing circuit. For more details contact:
Saagar Sinha
9897224365

Thanks.

J Ramanand said...

Saagar: posted on bcqc.org.

Arkus Caesar said...

Hi Ramand
What happened at Chakravyuh this year??..waiting for the update..couldn't make it as IIFt was hosting the BT Acumen North Zonals on 5th and 6th October..just to update..was in the finals of both the Quiz and the Debate..Won the North Zone Debate again, but came third in the Quiz.

J Ramanand said...

arko: was unable to participate in c'vyuuh this time :( - a v. dukhad kahaani that.
someone will put up a report soon.