Interrobang

It may be a tad conceited to write about the making of a quiz, but since this was the hardest quiz that I have ever set, I thought it would be interesting to write about the lessons learnt and decisions taken along the way. The genesis of this quiz was in a bad cricket quiz that I participated in with Harish and others earlier this year. I hadn't been to a good cricket quiz in a long time and felt it was a pity this was such a bad quiz that taught me nothing new or interesting. I had the idea of a "Religions of India" quiz, about cricket, films, and politics. I had never participated in a formal quiz about Indian politics. The closest was a lovely BC quiz by Ganesh Hegde (always the quizzer, never the dancer). I pitched the idea to Harish, but soon, I had begun to form some strange ideas about the format. I requested him to let me go ahead with this alone. I was wary of doing it alone because I did not (still don't) know a lot about Indian cricket. I had a reas...

Set and conducted by : Apoorva Dubey and Akhil Flavour : General Participation : ~40 teams Results: 1st: (B) Vibhendu Tiwari + Nikhil Motlag + J. Ramanand (draft): 140 2nd: (E) Salil Bijur + Yash Tamaskar + Yash Marathe (draft): 105 Jt. 3rd: (C) Suraj Menon + Arnold D'Souza + Kaustubh Bhat (draft): 55 Jt. 3rd: (F) Tushar Kaul + Shiv Anant Tayal + Anand Sivashankar (draft): 55 5th: (D) Suvajit Chakraborty + Aditya Gadre + Roshith Mohan (draft): 50 6th: (A) Gautam + Ramprakash + Sudarshan Shidore (draft): 30 ~50 questions in IR; some "free hit" questions; Elims cutoff: top 6: 9, draft: 8; I couldn't record the elims scores Report This quiz had the toughest elimination round I can ever recall having attempted. We were lucky to squeeze in as draft picks, with those who didn't losing out on the proverbial hair's breadth. This resulted in a very new (and some would say, fresh) lineup on stage. Many of the questions in both the finals and elims were good...

Set and conducted by : J. Ramanand Flavour : Indian Cricket, Indian Politics, Hindi Films Participation : 29 teams Results: (with final-within-final scores) 1st: "C-Madan ke Chinese Chakkars" B.V.Harish Kumar + Salil Bijur + Shiv Anant Tayal (draft): 70 pts 2nd: "D-Ranjeet ke Pujaaris" Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari + Nikhil Motlag (draft): 60 pts 3rd: "E-Lotus-eyed Eaters" Amit Varma + Pradeep Ramarathnam + Tushar Kaul (draft) :55 pts 4th: "B-Bob ke Bajrangbaliis" - Suraj Menon + Yash Marathe + Brijesh Nair (draft) 5th: "A-Shetty's Hairraisers" - Saransh Verma + Anubhav Chatterjee + Suvajit Chakraborty (draft) 6th: "F-Hercules ke Muscules" - Subhodeep Jash + Ritoban Sengupta + Abhishek Nagaraj (draft) Elims A 24-questions elims (split equally amongst the three topics) saw 9 teams being selected for the finals. I apologise for the problems with the videos; it tooks us three laptops before we could someho...

We’re back with the next set of BCQC Open quizzes. Here are the details: When:  Sunday, 12th October, 2008 Where:  Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road (need directions? See http://bcqc.org/?q=participate) What Quiz 1: “Balls, Ballots, Bollywood”  – a three-in-one quiz on Indian cricket, Indian politics and Hindi films Reporting Time: 9:15 am Quiz Time: 9:30 am to 1 pm By: J. Ramanand Quiz 2: October General Quiz  Reporting Time: 2:15 pm Quiz Time: 2:30 pm to 6 pm By: Akhil and Apurva How:  (same for both quizzes) Teams of 2 members (don't have a teammate? don't worry, you might find one at the venue) Top 9 teams for the finals No prior registration needed, no entry fees, open for all Prizes Sponsored by Landmark, Pune Prizes for all finalists Prizes for Best School and Best College teams Contact Email: contact - at - bcqc_dot_org Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Salil (98231 12258)

Set by : Yasho Tamaskar , Aditya Gadre , Aniket Khasgiwale . Conducted BY : Yasho Tamaskar Results: 1st : J Ramanand and BV HArish Kumar : 145 2nd : Salil Bijur and Suraj Menon : 115 3rd : Suvajit Chakraborty and Sayak Dasgupta : 100 4th : Akhil and Apoorva : 95 5th : Meghashyam Shirodkar and Venkat Srinivasan : 55 6th : Mihir Muley and Chinmay Nivargi : 15 Format: 42 seamless IR , Two long connects The quiz was quite entertaining with 4 teams doing well fighting it out for the top three spots . JR and BVHK gave some great answers and cracked both themes before everyone else . Suraj and Salil gave some brilliant answers but lost out due to the theme rounds. Ahkil and Apoorva and Salil and Suraj were tied upto the last round but were beaten as they didn't get the theme. Last years winners ,Suvajit and Sayak didn't seem to be on top form and missed a few easy ones. They did make a big comeback in the last round to just pip Akhil and Apoorva to third place.

Set by : Kaustubh Bhat , aniket Khasgiwale , Mohit Karve , Aditya Bhedasgaonkar , Avnish Dhongde and Aditya Gadre Conducted By : Kaustubh Bhat Results: 1st : Abhishek Nagaraj and Raghav Chakravarthy - 145 pts 2nd : Saransh Verma and Karan Chawla - 60 pts (won on higher elims score) 3rd : Suvajit Chakraborty and Amit Dandekar - 60 pts 4th : PS Sriram and Omkar Nene - 50 pts 5th : Rohan Pandit and Varad Deshmukh - 40 pts 6th : Rohan Jain and Dhruv Chadha - 10 pts Leave opinions and suggestions in Comments section.

Set by : Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale with Kaustubh Bhat and Yasho Tamaskar in supporting roles. Gaurav Sabnis made a sweeping cameo with several questions for the finals and the elims. Conducted by : Aditya and Aniket Standings (elim score in brackets): 1st : J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar : 110 pts (28) 2nd : Amit Varma and Sumant Srivathsan : 90 pts (25) 3rd : Sarat Rao and S Balakrishnan : 70 pts (24) 4th : Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde : 60 pts (25) 4th : Salil Bijur and Yash Marathe : 60 pts (24) 6th : Prasann Potdar and Mukund Krishnan : 50 pts (24) QM's notes : (JR will be putting up unbiased detailed report later) - Simple elims just like last year . The cut off was 24 . The top six teams were very close on elims score. - Finals : We tried as much as possible to make good questions on all topics. Some topics were slightly neglected (Current affairs , Literature, Art to name a few) -Though there seamed to be some simpler ones , as far as I remember , th...

On the 21st of October, the BCQC conducted a quiz for the the Poona School and Home for the Blind as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations. There were two challenges and 'firsts' for us: one, the quiz was to be held in Marathi, and second, some of the participants had little or no ability to see. Thirty teams (of 3 members each, mostly teachers) took the preliminaries. The quiz was conducted by Niranjan Pedanekar, with the questions set by members of the BCQC. Despite many being first-time quizzers, the participants did very well, making it very hard to separate the six top teams. The finals were conducted with great elan and enthusiasm by Niranjan. The finals lasted for about an hour, consisting of simple but largely 'workable' questions passed using IR (yes, we didn't desist from using all that!), including an audio round. Here, at times, Niranjan even sang some of the questions, eliciting spontaneous 'once more'-s from the appreciative audience....

BCQC - September 2008 newsletter Oblig Question: In 1868, geologist Louis Lartet discovered 5 skeletons in a rock shelter in the Dordogne region of Central France. What was the name of these rock shelters? It was such a busy September for the BCQC, so we decided it was time we had our own newsletter ! This quizzing month was unusually busy because many of us were not only participating in quizzes, but also organising them. But largely, we had fun, and hopefully, our hapless victims will agree as well :-). This newsletter is designed to share some of the recent happenings involving the BCQC, and to give some of the BC expats a chance to catch up, and to provide everyone advance notice on what is coming next. ~~~~Quizzes we organised in September~~~~ 1. Sept 18: ACES school quiz : Once again, we were part of the ACES school quiz, now in its 4th edition. Set by the BCQC and admirably conducted by Salil, the quiz was won by St. Mary's School (Boys) in a terrific contest. All the ...