Tata Crucible 2008 – Pune round report

There was a huge turnout of participants and viewers and the QM said that it was probably the toughest round of TC 2008. Nice set of elims. As usual, the elims were followed by the finals of the Tata track which had a few 'firsts'. Arnab B from TIFR qualified for the finals; probably the first all-woman team in TC finals from TCS consisted of Abha Shah and Sowmya, who is Arnab's wife. In fact, Arnab and Sowmya's daughter accompanied them on to the stage and took turns in sitting with the TCS and TIFR teams! The team from TAL which had the two members boasting of a 'cumulative experience of 4 finals of the Crucible, Pune edition' were consistent through the rounds and eventually won. TCS came second.

The non-Tata track finals was also quite interesting. Vasu's team stood 7th in the elims and just missed out qualifying on a tie-break question. The finalists were Infosys (Jay +1), ZS Associates, BMC Software (Harish + Shubhadeep), Kotak Mahindra (Samrat and Ashit - they travelled from Mumbai), IBM India (old fogey from AIT - Nikhil Lasrado +1) and Cognizant Tech. Solutions ( Chetan K + Gagan Jain).

The rounds were interesting and different and because many of the questions were on buzzer, not having IR didn't pain that much. The only crib was that on more than a couple of questions on the buzzer, the QM gave teams time to think for a long time. We also benefited from this on one question. So probably can't complain a LOT. :)

Kotak Mahindra were the eventual winners with 65 points while BMC Software were runners-up on 45 points. (Need to confirm the final standings and score - I think Infosys finished third on 15 points). All in all, a very engaging quiz, especially for a biz quiz. The prizes were good and the whole event was managed quite well. As expected, Suvajit added to his winnings from quizzes - this time as a member of the audience, only because this quiz was only for the corporates.

The Pune edition will be aired on CNBC on 6th September at 1800 hours. The repeat telecast is on 7th September at 1730 hours.

:: Report by Harish, who finished 2nd. Corrections/missing information plugs welcome.

ReQuiem for a Theme : League Quiz 2

The next quiz in the Theme League will be taking place this Sunday , the 10th of August, at 1:30 pm at the Boat Club lawns , College of Engineering , Pune.

Details:

The Quiz will be a Science and Technology quiz set by Mohit Karve.
It's an Open quiz and anyone's allowed to take part.
Quiz will start with a written elims (so get a pen /pencil / quill/ other writing instrument). The top 10 participants will be divided into 5 teams and the others will be randomly distributed to the five teams (these people will get only half the points though).

In case of any queries mail us : contact(at)bcqc(dot)org

Update: see the Theme League homepage for details. Comments on that page only.

The Interrogative 2008

Report for BCQC's annual school quiz 'The Interrogative' written by QM Maitreyi Gupta.

The BCQC’s annual school quiz

The second year of The Interrogative saw more than 80 teams from 18 schools around the city. The results as follows:

(Finals rank: School (Team members): finals score: elims score (stars))
1st: Abhinav Vidyalaya (Rohan Danait, Sanket Bhilare): 115 : 20 (5)
2nd: Vikhe Patil (Amol Joshi, Omkar Dhakephalkar): 105: 18 (5)
3rd: Symbiosis Secondary (Abhishek Pandit, Rushab Bainthia): 90: 20 (5)
4th: Abhinav Vidyalaya (Rohit Sahasrabudhe, Satyavrat Wagle): 80: 17 (6)
Joint 5th: St. Mary's Boys (Shatrunjay Mall, Akshay Agarwal): 70: 16 (5)
Joint 5th: Bal Shikhan Mandir (Siddharth Khole, Sumedh Kaulgud): 70: 15 (5)
7th: Symbiosis Secondary (Ankur Borwankar, Rohit Telang): 45: 17 (4)
8th: P. Jog High School (Atharva Kunte, Amoghsiddhi Bhandarkar): 20: 16 (5)

Special mention: Shreedhar Kale and Maitreya Ghorpade from Symbiosis Secondary School missed qualification by 2 star questions. They had 15(3)

Best School: Symbiosis Secondary School

The Best School Trophy was given to the School whose top 3 teams had the highest combined elimination Score.

Quiz Masters: Yash Marathe, Maitreyi Gupta

Elims: 30 questions, 6 stars. Highest was 20 and the cut off was 15 with 5 stars. Lots of teams scored between 12 and 15 so it turned out to be an average difficulty elim

Quiz Master’s notes:

1. Good turnout in spite of on-going tests in some schools. 80 teams is no small figure. A few schools sent as many as 10 teams.

2. Teams reported on time. Can’t say the same about some of the quizmasters ;)

3. Cash prizes were a big plus point. Audience prizes were BCQC keychains. Trophies for the winning team and best school.

4. Quiz started on time and ended at 1pm instead of 12.30. We lost time in the elims. Elims should have been 25 ques rather than 30.

5. We made a lot of new questions for this quiz. Tried to keep as many workable questions as possible.

6. Quiz was liberally sprinkled with pictures to support the answers.

7. Choice of elim questions: they were meant to be easy – turned out to be of moderate difficulty.

8. I think we covered most genres. Even so, the emphasis was on geography and history.

9. New format for the elim sheet – sheet included a space for rough work (questions were displayed on the screen), for jotting down the question or to note multiple answers before deciding the final one. There was a points column as well. The aim was to reduce checking time and increase accuracy of checking.

10. We should have made a filler quiz – for around 10 mins after we finished discussing answers, teams were moving around the audi to sit with their school friends (we had separated them in the beginning)

11. Lack of volunteers due to various reasons – too much work for the few people who did show up.

12. A few goof-ups in the finals because of me : 2 finals’ questions were scrapped because I accidentally clicked a button.

13. Round 1 was a connect round – each question should have carried 5 points rather than 10. Some teams who cracked the connect had got an unfair lead.

14. Note to self and others: Most black and white pictures don’t show up well on the screen.

We would like a feedback about the questions from the finalists and audience. Please leave your comments in the comments box.

:: Maitreyi