"Whodunits" - BCQC November Open 2007

The BC Quiz Club will be organising an Open General quiz on Sunday, the 4th of November, 2007.

The details:

"Whodunits"
Date: Sunday, 4th Nov
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd. (see this link for directions)
Time: Prelims start at 1 pm sharp, so please report by 12:45 pm
Flavour: General
Who can participate: anyone; it's an Open quiz; Entry is free
Format: Prelims + Playoffs + Finals for 6 teams
Team Size: 2 per team
Details of the format will be published at this link
Conducted by: J. Ramanand
Prizes sponsored by Landmark, Pune
Contact:
email: contact@bcqc.org
phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Harish (93733 04910), Salil (98231 12258)

BarQing Mad!! (the Open MELA Quiz at Mindspark 2007) - Report

Date: 7 October, 2007
Venue: College of Engineering, Pune

Set by: Aditya Gadre, Aniket Khasgiwale and Yasho Tamaskar
Conducted by: Yasho Tamaskar
Theme: Movies, Music, Entertainment, Literature, Arts

Quiz Final Results
(4 rounds of IR + 1 speciality round + 1 long connect)
cutoff: 17.5/30

1st: Sayak Dasgupta and Suvajit Chakraborty (E)
2nd: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Prasann Potdar (F)
3rd: Sumant Srivathsan and Ravi Venkatesh (D)
4th: Samrat Sengupta and Salil Bijur (C)
5th: Amit Varma and Rishi Iyengar (B)
6th: Nandan Gokhale and Mrinmayi Katdare (A)

Notes

• An entertainment quiz generally ends up being biased to the tastes of the QMs in music and movies. The quiz setters here made an effort to include questions on generally ignored topics such as Indian literature. The trend however was seemed to be toward cinema - Hollywood and Indian.
• Sayak and Suvajit generally do very well at ent quizzes and were in full form here too. They gave correct answers in all domains right from Alan Arkin to Chhaayawaad and led right from the beginning. Team D (Sumant and Ravi) and Team C (Salil and Samrat), not far behind, were mostly battling for the 2nd spot.
• The speciality round was in terms of 'contrasting pairs of topics' eg. "Sherlock Holmes + Hrishikesh Mukherjee films" or "Rock music + Hindi literature". The team who chose that speciality had the option to double their points while the others could write down the answers in case the original team got it wrong, however with a penalty for getting it wrong again. Meghashyam and Prasann made a stunning rush to the top in this round by doubling their questions and gobbling others' leftovers. Teams C and D slipped slightly here because of negatives leaving D tied with F at the 2nd spot and were tied at 3rd spot.
• The last round was a long picture connect - the points reducing after every slide. Suvajit cracked it on the very first slide and registered his team's victory. By this time the tie at the 2nd 3rd spot had remained so it was resolved by the elims score.
• Plus points: Interesting and workable questions as usual. Lots of domains covered - esoteric as well as pop culture. The newbie team from Fergusson Junior College gave some good answers that passed most teams. The quiz on the overall saw a lot of excitement with a lot of "jumping on the couch", sledging and leg-pulling within the teams.
• Cribs: We saw a reappearance of the infamous finger-of-God. And some more fiery disputes over point distribution and authenticity of answers.

Feedback as usual in the comments.

Chakravyuh (Open Quiz at Mindspark 2007) - Report

Date: 6 October, 2007
Venue: College of Engineering, Pune

Open Quiz - "Chakravyuh"
Elims set by: Abhishek Nagaraj
Finals set by: Abhishek Nagaraj, Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale
Finals conducted by: Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
(~60 seamless IR with round reversal)
cutoff: 25.5/35
1st: Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon (A) 115
2nd: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Samrat Sengupta (F) 110
3rd: Uddata Baruah and S. Balakrishnan (D) 85
4th: Sumant Srivathsan and Ravi Venkatesh (B) 80
5th: Salil Bijur and Maitreyi Gupta (C) 65
6th: A.P. Alagarsamy and Prasann Potdar (E) 60

Notes

• Chakravyuh 2007, the annual COEP quiz had already happened in April. This year, COEP organised "Mindspark", a technical fest with contributions from all departments, meant to be an annual event. The general open quiz, for the sake of legacy and permanency, was called Chakravyuh. That way the year 2007 had two Chakravyuhs and Chakravyuh henceforth is going to be a part of Mindspark.
• Elims which were set by Abhishek were very workable and conformed to the "my mom knows of the answer" kind. A high scoring elims and appreciated by most. There was a sizeable participation for an open quiz in a college and lots stayed back to enjoy the finals.
• Finals turned out to be a tight affair. Team A (Avinash and Harikrishnan) team F (Samrat and Meghashyam) led right from the start with teams B and C making good starts. Team D (Udatta and Balakrishnan) made a silent comeback midway by cracking some good questions to end up at the third spot.
• The first time Aditya (the silent one) and Aniket (the singing one) conducted an open quiz of this level representing the new generation of COEP.
• Lots of very good questions, interesting picture connects and visuals. A few questions were the kind of i've-seen-something-like-this-one-somewhere-before. But QMs cant be blamed since the honest effort was apparent.
• Like in any other quiz, this one had its share of inconsistencies in point distribution and disputes concerning accuracy of answers. The heat that was generated only added to the excitement of a very close finish.
• Cribs: There were many questions where more than answer is required and the policy of allotting points kept changing. A uniform approach though difficult, is desirable. Secondly, the flash presentation seemed to have some usability issues making it cycle through all questions from the start causing slight irritation to others.

Please leave comments on this post if you have any suggestions, criticisms, corrections to offer.