Sunday, May 04, 2008

Brain Damage - May Open Quiz

Set and Conducted by Abhishek Nagaraj and Aditya Gadre

Results:


1st: J Ramanand , BV Harish Kumar , Kaustubh Bhat :100 pts
2nd: Niran Pedanekar , Yasho Tamaskar and Vasu Ramanujan : 75
Jt 3rd: Meghashyam Shirodkar , Samrat Sengupta , Aniket Khasgiwale :70
Jt 3rd: Salil Bijur , Nndan Gokhale and Manish Manke :70
5th: Apoorva , Akhil and Sanyukta : 50
6th: Kapeesh Saraf , Venkat S , Maitreyi Gupta : 35

Some thoughts about the quiz:


-Turnout was rather disappointing. Only 25 teams showed up.
-This quiz was not a junta-friendly quiz. While we agree the elims were very difficult, they were workable and not obscure.The low cut off was expected.
-The newbie quiz was particularly added with the intention that not-so-experienced quizzers also have some fun.
-We tried to cover new topics in the finals and also to rediscover some of the old facts in new ways.
-We paid no attention whatsoever to the balance of the quiz and did not make question with any topic in mind. We just concentrated on framing good questions which screwed up the balance and it turned out to be a very Brit-heavy quiz.
-In retrospect , we should have had some questions on music given the theme of the quiz.Maybe next time.
-Experimented with a new prize structure .Do let us know your thought about it(in the comments section).
-Also experimented with a different version of Infinite rebounds , IR-beta if you may.
-Tried out another new thing ie the draft system for the finals. This was done with the intention of making the elims more meaningful since they were tough and it was a creditable job to crack them.


As to the quiz itself. Team A did brilliantly to win the quiz comfortably. Team F were a tad unlucky to lose out on some questions to team A. There was some great answering from the teams given the difficulty of the finals questions.


So to sum up , we tried a lot of new things in this quiz.
Please post your opinions in the comments section.

Note: We plan to do this quiz elsewhere. So please do not refer to any details of the questions and do not mention any names.

9 comments:

Debasish said...

A few details on the IR-beta would be appreciated. We, at the NSIT QC are eager to try out new stuff.

Harish Kumar said...

Two long quizzes - not too taxing on the mind, given the length. Enjoyed both.
For some vague reason, in spite of the length, I had a 20-20 feeling about the quiz. We just kept taking 'good guesses' and they kept coming off. There were a few where we didn't mouth the good guesses :-) There were a few (~ 4-5) sitters/chestnuts which could have been avoided especially since QM A (avoiding taking names here - request by a certain Aditya who wrote the blog post)has been ranting about chestnuts/sitters for some time now.
IR-Beta : Did raise few eye-brows from Team F since we kept getting questions in spite of getting points for the previous question.
Balance of topics - certain Aditya has already commented about it.
Drafting - Another idea..if the integrity of the topics can be maintained (meaning qs on the same broad set of topics in the elims and the next newbie/audience friendly PPT-only quiz), the draftees can be decided on the basis of the second quiz on an individual basis. I don't like people taking the elims as a team and then being broken up.

I liked most of the questions - too many etymology qs though.
Overall, quite an enjoyable one!

Vcat said...

Good stuff, but in the end, kinda rushed cos of time.

Btw:
Didn't Maitreyi, Kapeesh and I come in fifth? We were 35 and that other team was 30.

Samrat said...

Entertaining quiz. The QMs conjured team names based on obscure bands were hilarious.
Elim set was one of the best I have seen.

Crib!!!!!
Too much weightage on theme. A 3-4 question bonus in a 42 ques quiz with six teams skews up things big time. A team which misses the theme has little chance of catching up.

Our team answered the maximum number of questions yet came a joint 3rd!!

Anonymous said...

An entertaining quiz by the As.

- Some great questions.
- Great team names, liked the insistence on calling teams by their full names.
- Theme was not necessarily gettable by all. So agree with Samrat on that.
- Good questions in elims, but I did not like the two-pointer scoring though.
- The rock history was well meant. But having to go on without going through it towards the end, looked like sacrilege.

Anonymous said...

BTW, review and comments on the visual quiz appreciated, since it was an attempt at making a different type of a quiz ;))

Harish Kumar said...

Firstly - I have become a fan of the Lessig way!Trying to popularize this in our company!
In a nutshell,Stockholm syndrome is the best way to describe your quizzes. You usually make us undergo factual harassment and we love you for it.
The Visuals quiz was not that heavy on the brain - so there was enough left to be damaged in the next quiz :-)
Great quiz; great way of presenting it; not too many opportunities for you to blunder on half-points (my consistent peeve with you since 2001). I'd have loved it if this had been a multi-media quiz - audio,video as well.

J Ramanand said...

(no one seems to have answered Debasish's query?)
Debasish: 'IR-beta' is a slightly fancy term for the following: As you may know, in the now popular modified IR, following an unanswered question, the question returns to the originating team. This is so that the number of attempts per team is kept as equal as possible. However, what do you do when everyone has a shot at the question (because none of the teams have answered to the full satisfaction of the QM) but the QM decides to award partial points to the originating team? Some prefer beginning the question with the next team, while Aditya-Abhishek decided to go back to them because everyone has had an attempt anyway.

This is something I generally agree with, even though it looks a little odd because that team has got points as well as begins the next question, leading to dissatisfaction amongst the others. Perhaps the best thing for the QM to do is to not award any partial points (like Rohan Jain did in a quiz recently) given that everyone's had a mostly unsuccessful campaign against that question.

J Ramanand said...

Maazhe don-paishe on the prashna-ma.njushaa:

Elims:
Some tough questions. We had to gird up our loins and lungiis midway because we were floundering for a while. Some of the questions were memorable. Minor crib: the fonts and spacing were slightly off-putting to the eyes. Also, you may have learned from my last quiz that changing the form of an elims sheet sometimes puts off teams and even correctors.

Back-pats for doing something extra for the audience/newbies.

Finals:
As Harish says, we did get a little lucky with our 'good guess yaars'. The scoreline may not reflect how tough the going sometimes was or how tight the quiz was. I didn't realise we had won with that margin because I didn't take into account how many points we made in that theme (again, a french cut that went for six - you may say that we at least aimed in the right areas and were fortunate in the process). Still, enjoyed the wild guesses coming off, which doesn't usually happen.

Echo SS and NP's theme-pangs. With such biggish theme questions intermixed with the finals, there is a danger that the teams that get it early not only make a bagful of points, but also have a big advantage in guessing future answers when the theme questions have been indicated before answering begins. Fair to say that this made a significant difference to the outcome, coupled with the fact that in the first phase of qns we got to some qns before F did.

I would venture to suggest that:
- have a separate theme round
- do not accord it so much 'worth' that it can singlehandedly affect the outcome
- or else, if you wish to mix theme qns with the main set, then if it's a long set (of > 4), then do not reveal which qns are theme-related until the answer has been given out. This at least penalises the other suffering teams less. (I tried this at the BC recently - some may remember - and I think this probably works).

Unlike Harish, I don't mind the lower 3 teams being split. It takes a team to do the elims, but since they haven't been good enough for the top 6, splitting them is a penalty they pay (if seen as a penalty). Also, it does have an IPL effect of getting newer team compositions that would otherwise never have happened.

Congratulations to young Nandan Gokhale who is probably the youngest ever finalist of an open quiz in our parts that I can remember.

Prize Structure: I prefer the socialist model :-) Mainly because we aren't (at least I think that is true of most) spurred on by the extra money for the top spots or by the relative lack of vouchers for the lower strata. I continue to think everyone should get enough and the winners can get a little extra (which we can easily afford). That said, I would have been a little dismayed to get movie vouchers in place of a book voucher, but that's me.

However, it was very good of the QMs to arrange for movie vouchers and even pen drives for the audience and newbie quiz winners.

QMs were disappointed by the turnout but it's hard getting teams for May quizzes as schools and colleges are shut, people don't like to travel in the heat (especially from out of town) etc. etc. Don't worry - we'll clap enough to make you not feel the difference :-))

All in all, I had fun, and that's the main currency for the day for me.