Thursday, April 03, 2008

BCQC College Quizzer Championship 2008

For the Kunal Sawardekar Prize (the prize is named after the best college quizzer of the previous year; next year it will have the name of this year's winner)

Date: 29 March, 2008
Venue: the Boat Club, COEP, Pune
Set and Conducted by: J. Ramanand (with contributions from Salil Bijur and Anupam Akolkar)
Theme: General, Solo

Quiz Final Results
Format: 2 rounds of 12 dry + 7 audio visuals each; 5 questions in a common play-off format; IR; total: 43 questions
Winner: Yash Marathe - Modern College (A) - 75
2nd: Suvajit Chakraborty (D) - Symbiosis Law School - 65
3rd: Abhishek Nagaraj (C) - COEP - 45
4th: Gaurav Singh (F) - COEP - 30
5th: Aniket Khasgiwale (B) - COEP - 25
6th: Yash Tamaskar (E) - COEP - did not trouble the scorers
Scorer: Maitreyi Gupta

Elims standings (out of 25 questions): Suvajit (14.5), Aniket (14), Abhishek (14), Gaurav (10), both Yash-es (9)
No. of participants: 19

Notes:
Yash Marathe won a quiz that was alive right upto the last question. Suvajit, easily the most prolific winner among college quizzers this season, was leading the quiz going into the last round. However, Yash picked up the first two questions in the round to go into the lead. On the last question, everyone except Abhishek went for the risky double with exactly the same guess which turned out to be wrong, handing Yash the inaugural prize. Cash prizes were given to the winner and runner-up, with all the other finalists getting bookstore coupons.

The quiz itself was very low-scoring. The quiz was designed to be more factual and knowledge-oriented, and represented a slightly unfashionable old style, both content-wise and format-wise. Some of the finalists did not like the questions, while others seemingly did :-).

Quiz setter's note: For my part, the choice and framing of some questions were somewhat dictated by the slight lack of time, and I do not claim that all the questions were perfectly made. Some of them could have been composed better. However, the shift away from 'workability' was intentional, as was the delving into newer areas. For one, quizzing alone makes it harder to 'work out' complicated questions. Furthermore, IMHO, the quiz should try to identify a solo winner who can handle both the tough factual nuts as well as be able to apply their mind to the more 'work it out' ones. Most of the questions were not on slides, were verbally asked, and were only a couple of lines long. Naturally, this invited mixed feelings. More comments and criticisms on this welcome.

Congratulations to Yash on his fine win, and to the other finalists for their good performances.

6 comments:

Harish Kumar said...

I like such quizzes where someone who just about made it to the finals ends up winning it. Interesting point - the other Yash who also had 9 in the elims remained in the same position. I'm wondering if the elims were a fair representation of the finals!

Yash Marathe said...

I guess the only real function of the elims is just that - to eliminate, it doesn't do much else. It's all about getting through.

Anonymous said...

I agree...


PS_ Harish, i failed to interpret the "tone" of your last sentence...
Hence no clue how to respond.
Test Cases-
1) U think i should have done better-- Thank you very much

2) My score was expected---
"lagta hai us din ke open quiz ke ghaav bhare nahi ab tak"
:)

Ganesh Hegde said...

I have always been of the opinion that the elims and finals are a different ball game altogether.
Also, Ramanand, I don't completely agree with you when you say that quizzing alone makes it harder to work out complicated questions. Sure, it does mean lesser ideas, but it could also mean lesser 'noise'/confusion. I've also found that difference of opinion in a work-out-able question leads to unnecessary confusion and frequent episodes of 'Damn you, I had guessed it correctly, but you didnt let me write it'.
Quizzing alone is boring though...

Harish Kumar said...

Yaho - Test case # 1!!!

J Ramanand said...

(Is "Yaho" the revenge of the wrongly spelt former quizzing partner, I wonder).

I think the elims was a reasonable entree to the finals. When I circulate them around, you can see if this is so. I didn't intend the elims to just eliminate. The elims scores were lower than I anticipated, and I think they would have been higher if this was a team event.