Interrobang

The BCQC will be holding its annual Winter InFest this weekend. What its all about : well, (mostly) random people come along and conduct quizzes on (mostly) random topics of their choosing and (mostly) torture people. Venue: The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune Time: The mayhem starts at 1:30 pm on both days Quizzes: Saturday: The legendary George Thomas will be doing his much awaited quiz on whatever the hell he feels like , Suvajit Chakraborty will be doing a general quiz, Yasho will be doing his trademarked Stones quiz (i.e. the WTF Pop culture quiz) and Suraj will be doing an Entertainment quiz Sunday: Aniket will be doing a quiz on his favourite topics (Cricket wil surely be involved) , Aditya will be doing a quiz on topics yet to be decided and if time permits Suraj will be doing a Business quiz. There is no registration required. Everyone is invited and we hope a lot of you show up and join in the fun.

A quizzing announcement by SCMHRD: Court Martial – The Neev Quiz Knowledge sits in judgment, while the accused stand represented by cold hard facts defining the truth. As the charge-sheet is read out, the prisoners- of- fact walk through a mine field of anxiety, fear, and helplessness. One by one they overcome harsh allegations of breakdown of discipline and clarity to win their freedom from mediocrity. Court Martial - The Neev Quiz brings together the brightest minds in the country, seeking to crack one of the most awaited events on the quizzing calendar. Court Martial this year will pass judgment on the most talented prisoners-of-fact in India. The quiz is designed and hosted by students of The SCMHRD Quiz Club. When? The interrogation starts with the preliminary round at 10:30 AM on the 13th of December 2009 (Sunday) How? To take part, you can register Online by clicking here http://www.neev-scmhrd.com Or register at the venue. We strongly recommend registering onlin...

We will have an open quiz this week as follows Administrivia Date : 13th December (Sunday) Venue : Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune (The nearest landmarks: The location is behind Domino's Pizza, near the new ICC Towers complex in which are situated shops such as Mainland China. The place is about 2 km from Pune University. This is a wikimapia map to the location.) Contact : Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Salil (98231 12258), Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org 'How to's : Up to two members per team; no prior registration needed; no entry fees Prizes Prizes for each finalist, for the Best College Team , the Best School Team , and the Best Newbie Team . Lots of audience prizes. Prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark (Pune) and the BCQC . Timings : 10:00 am to 1:00 pm (report by 9:45 am) Finals : Six teams in the final Quizmasters : Rohan Jain & Mohit Karve Please note that the national team quiz 'Mega-Whats'...

update: venue details included Mega - Whats is a quiz designed to answer the question ‘Which is India’s best open quizzing team?’. The operative word here is ‘open’; anybody can form a team to participate, and any team can win. The syllabus, to preempt the obvious question, is surprise. The quiz will be held across nine cities simultaneously--Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa, Thrissur, Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi and Kolkata. Date: Sunday, 13 December 2009 Info General quiz, open to all Teams of FOUR members (or less). Prior registration is essential. To register, please email kqaquizzes@gmail.com with Mega-Whats 2009 and the city you are competing from in the subject-header. Please provide the names of the four people who comprise your team in the email–also indicate whether you are taking part in the school or open categories Email registrations will close on Sunday 6th December 2009 . Centre coordinators will allow entries after the cut-off date at their discretion....

Suvajit Chakraborty, Sachin Ravi and Raghav Chakravarthy won Pune's Nobel Quiz Round. All the details in this TOI article .

The 2009 edition of the Texas Instruments Science and Technology Quiz 2009 is back in Pune. Date : 7th November 2009 Venue : Nehru Memorial Hall, No. 4, Ambedkar Road, PUNE Time : 930 AM Teams of two Classes 8, 9, 10 Register online at http://www.tiif.org or send mail to tistquiz-query@list.ti.com or call 080-40065005 Max of 6 teams per school Grand prizes There is a detailed document with entry forms and procedures - if you want this, please write to ochintya[at]yahoo[dot]com or leave a comment on this blog (could be a slower option)

Chakravyuh 2009 was a part of COEP's technical event MindSpark. Set by : Aniket Khasgiwale, Aditya Gadre , Kaustubh Bhat , Mohit Karve , Aadinath Harihar Conducted by : Kaustubh Bhat and Mohit Karve The quiz had 54 questions on seamless IR. Results: 1st: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde: 95 pts 2nd: Niranjan Pednekar and Meghashyam Shirodkar: 90 pts 3rd: Yasho Tamaskar and Suraj Menon: 85 pts 4th: Yash Marathe and Vinay: 65 pts 5th: Nikhil Motlag and Tejas Kulkarni: 40 pts 6th: Raghav Chakravathy and Vikram: 30 pts __________________________________________________________________________________ Particpants views- report by Suraj Mennon Chakravyuh certainly lived up to its billing..... A well put together elim set with a fair mix of classical quizzing and pop culture fundae saw a tough fight for places on stage... Honourable mention to harish and Navya who scored 14..... Cant recollect who won best college team and the other honourable mention so if someone could fill in ...

Announcement by the organisers of Mindspark and Chakravyuuh, COEP's annual quiz Quizzing @ Mindspark ‘09 The College of Engineering, Pune is back with the city’s Premier Technical Festival MINDSPARK, and its bigger and better than ever. As a part of this technical extravaganza, we will be hosting three quizzes in our module ENCYCLOPAEDIA GALACTICA for all quizzing enthusiasts. Torquest (9th October 2009) We wouldn't really be an institute of excellence in technical education unless our students were sound in their technical knowledge and fundas. Pit your love for technology against ours. Brush up your theory and find out how much you could actually apply it when you go out into the mad, mad world. Science and technology are inseparable, and this is a quiz where the passion for both would find a home. Status: College Quiz Chakravyuh (10th October 2009) Chakravyuh has been one of Pune's best known open quizzes for many years now. A general quiz that is literally b...

We were featured in a recent edition of Mid-Day Pune. Read the article here .

While ego-searching for the BCQC, I chanced upon the "BCQC Ride for the Children" expedition. Having ensured that this was nothing to do with Salil (cycles + social causes!), I went to read more about this. This is a cause espoused by two Canadians Goran Matic and Iavor Boev who are currently undertaking "a 4,800 km bicycle journey across the heart of Canada which will take them "from Richmond Vancouver in British Columbia to Montreal Quebec." . Thus I inferred that "BCQC" seems to stand for "British Columbia-Quebec" . Matic and Boev are raising money to buy a Cerebral/Somatic Oximeter for the Montreal Children's Hospital. More details can be seen here . Here's one BCQC wishing the other the best of luck in their endeavour.

Punekar.in, a website that covers Pune, featured an article about the BCQC last month. Read it here. (Please treat my utterances with the usual intake of salt.)

A guest post by old BC alumnus Hirak Parikh , who now quizzes in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The original appeared on his blog here. A veteran quizzer once told me that quizzing was not so much about knowing stuff, but was more about entertainment and having fun. I disagreed at that point thinking that such a remark was an act of high treason. Over the years, I have realised that quizzing is not a knowledge test. If it were so then quizzes would be like exams - timed and written. A written and timed test is the fairest way to judge who knows the most. All teams get the same questions, no question of order or luck. The team/person that got the highest number of correct answers would walk home with the prize. That's not the point, is it? The point is to have fun. Over the years, people have obsessed over the best format that minimizes luck and ensures that the team that knows the most (read: best) wins. Quizzing innovations is an activity which has almost become a kind of cottage industr...

Date: 9 Aug 2009 It was a fairly doomed Sunday to hold a quiz, with H1N1 flu casualties swirling around (and draining participant courage), an auto strike, prize shortfall due to logistics and so on. Our thanks to the 70 odd people who participated in one or the other quiz last Sunday. We will provide finalists with their remaining prizes as soon as we have managed to arrange for them from Landmark. Thanks are in order to Blaft Publications & Landmark for prizes, and especially to Persistent for use of their auditorium, especially on a day like that. The 'Emergency' Quiz Set & Conducted by: : Suraj Menon Results 1st: Yasho+Siddharth, 2nd: Angad+Yash M, 3rd: Harish+Dharmendra; (finalists) Keyur+Saransh, Vikram+Gaurav, Shubhodeep+Sridip Report Circumstances forced us into drastic changes reminiscent of Ashes Tests at Edgbaston or Headingley. The Literature quiz had to be postponed (will happen in the next cycle), and so became a General quiz. Luckily, Suraj ...

Updates to our August Open Quizzes : 1. Tomorrow's Literature Quiz replaced by a morning General Quiz: We will have a general quiz tomorrow morning in place of the Literature quiz. The timings will be the same (starts at 10:00 am). The quiz format may change a bit. The Lit quiz will take place at the next Open Quiz Day (possibly September). There is no change to the afternoon general quiz, which starts at 2:30 pm. 2. On the schedules being affected by Pune's H1N1 situation We have received some enquiries as to whether there will be any change in tomorrow's programmes considering the recent news items about H1N1 cases in Pune. As of now, we have decided to go ahead with both quizzes tomorrow. We understand if there are reservations about participating in public events at this time, so please do make your own considered judgement on the matter. You are welcome to confirm the status of the programme by calling Ramanand (97642 58560) before either of the quizzes tom...

The BCQC is back with its next edition of open quizzes, this time in August. Here are the details: Administrivia Date : 9th August (Sunday) Venue : Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune (The nearest landmarks: The location is behind Domino's Pizza, near the new ICC Towers complex in which are situated shops such as Mainland China. The place is about 2 km from Pune University. This is a wikimapia map to the location.) Contact : Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Salil (98231 12258), Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org 'How to's : Up to two members per team; no prior registration needed; no entry fees Prizes (the same for each quiz) Prizes for each finalist, for the Best College Team , the Best School Team , and the Best Newbie Team . Lots of audience prizes. Prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark (Pune) and the BCQC . Morning: 'On the Same Page' (a Literature Quiz) General Quiz Timings : 10:00 am to 12:30 pm (report by ...

The British Library (Pune) & the BCQC are presenting a General quiz. This is principally aimed at introducing quizzing to Library members and is a newbie-friendly quiz. The details: When: 2nd August (Sunday) Time: 3 pm to 5 pm Where: At the British Library, Pune What will it be about? This is a General quiz, particularly meant for non-quizzers. Format: informal & highly participative quiz with interesting questions. Prizes included! Participation criteria: A member of the British Library in Pune, aged 16 or above. Non-quizzers particularly welcome. Do I need to form a team? Not really – walk in alone or get your friends/family along. What do I get along? Just your wits, that’s all. Do I register in advance? Prior registration is not compulsory but doing so will ensure your participation and help us with arrangements. Contact Savitry Iyer/V. Sugandhi of the Library to register. Note for regular (read: each weekend) quizzers: this quiz is largely aimed at ...

For the last few years, the International Quizzing Association (based in the UK) has been conducting the World Quizzing Championships in several countries, including India. This website has all the details about the format & history of the event. In essence, this is a solo written competition consisting of 8 sections (of 30 qns each) to be solved in 2 hours. Pune will be one of the venues where the quiz will be simultaneously held. Here are all the details: Date: 6 June (Saturday) Time: Report by 3:30 pm. Quiz starts sharp at 4 pm, ends at 6 pm. Answers & Scoring will follow immediately. Venue: (note: this is the same venue at which Mahaquizzer 2009 was held): Symbiosis Law School Auditorium, Symbiosis Law School, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune - 411004 Wikimapia link: http://wikimapia.org/#lat=18. 522336&lon=73.83004&z=17&l=0& m=a&v=2 Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/d2p46t Registration: Prior registration is mandatory to ensure your seat. ...

This was an experimental quiz conducted at the Boat Club in Coep by Aniket Khasgiwale , Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre . The format was as follows: There was a 25 question written elims from which we drew seeds and made eight teams . Then there were 4 Quarters each of which had two legs . Home- where all the questions go directly to one team and Away- when all questions go direct to the other team . Instead of points we awarded 'Goals' for correct answers. In keeping with UEFA rules , in case of a tie the team with more away goals went through. Then there was a semi and a final. Seeds: 1. Anand S , 2. Aditya Chandorkar , 3. Suvajit Chakraborty , 4. Arnold D'souza , 5. Pratyush Srivastava , 6. Omkar Nene , 7. Sameer Deshpande , 8. Abhishek Nagaraj Quarters had 10 questions each . 5 to each time. QF1 : Anand S vs Abhishek Nagaraj Score: 2-2 Away goals : 1-1 . Anand won on the tiebreaker. QF2 : Arnold D'souza and Ratan Sebastian v/s Pratyush and Salil Score...

The BCQC will be organising a sports quiz in the style of the FA cup hence BC Cup. Format : Written elims Top 16 individuals qualify and are drawn into 8 teams . The 8 teams face off against each other in a knockout fashion. Eligibility: Open , anyone can take part. Venue: Boat Club , College of Engineering Pune Time: 1 pm , Sunday , 31st of May QMs: Yash Marathe , Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre Flavour: Sports In case of any queries contact Aditya -9881101291 or Yash 9890102888

Organised by: KQA Conducted in Pune by: Vishwajeet Narvekar (many thanks as usual!) School Winner: Sanket Bhilare - Abhinava Vidyalaya       BCQC prizes: 2nd: Rohan Danait (Abhinava), 3rd: Rajeev Galgali (Shamrao Kalmadi) College Winner: Yash Marathe (Modern)(45)       BCQC prizes: 2nd: Aditya Gadre (COEP), 3rd: Saransh Verma (SIT) Ladies Winner: Suparna Bhattacharya (12) Open Category Winner: Amit Garde (63) Number of participants: ~30 Official final standings: keep an eye on this link .

Set and Conducted by Niranjan Pedanekar. Results (43 questions): 1st: Harish Kumar, Ramanand, Manish (draft) [D]: 70 pts 2nd: Meghashyam, Maitreyi, Nandan Gokhale(draft) [E]: 60 pts Jt. 3rd: Suvajit C, Aniket, Rohan Chokkar (draft) [A]: 45 pts Jt. 3rd: Yash M, Vinay, C V R Sastry (draft) [B]: 45 pts Jt. 3rd: Suraj, Yasho T, (draft), Abhinav [C]: 45 pts Jt. 3rd: Aditya, Kaustubh, Samit [F] (draft): 45 pts Elims: highest: Aniket+Suvajit (21/35); cutoff: 11 Participating Teams: about 35 Conducted with customary elan by Niranjan, this was however the most restrained set of questions I've seen from him. Earlier efforts have been full of maze-like framing & intricate connects, but clearly, recent trends have been towards simpler presentation (most notably seen in last year's visuals quiz ) and less cognitive overload. The elims were good, though some questions perhaps needed some more information to crack. The set was undeniably tough, but workable. Over the years, Niran...

Set and Conducted by Yasho Tamaskar and Suraj Menon Standings : 1st : J Ramanand , Meghashyam Shirodkar and Maitreyi Gupta : 78 pts 2nd : Akhil , Suvajit and Sameer : 73 pts 3rd : Niranjan Pednekar , Aditya Gadre , Siddharth : 43 pts 4th : Abhinav Gudur ,Rohan Chokkar and Nikhil Motlag : 39 pts 5th : Yash Marathe , Vinay and Kaustubh Bhat : 13 pts 6th : Amit Dandekar , Yash Sinha , Saransh Verma : 10 pts 61 Qs seamless IR , One written round with differential marking and a Long Connect While most of questions in the elims were good , though the elims were a bit too tough or rather too quizzer friendly which is why the cut off was very low (only about 8/35). The questions were all great however. Positives: The finals had some very good questions and covered a very wide range of topics which is always good to see. There were several interesting audio-visual questions . All the answers were of the kind that most of audience could have related to them. The team names and the prod...

The BCQC presents two open quizzes in May. Here are the details: Administrivia Date : 17th May (Sunday) Venue : Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune (The nearest landmarks: The location is behind Domino's Pizza, near the new ICC Towers complex in which are situated shops such as Mainland China. The place is about 2 km from Pune University. This is a wikimapia map to the location.) Contact : Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Aditya (98811 01291), Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org 'How to's : Upto two members per team; no prior registration needed; no entry fees Prizes (the same for each quiz) Prizes for each finalist, for the Best College Team , the Best School Team , and the Best Newbie Team . Prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark (Pune) , Blaft Publications (Chennai) , and the BCQC . Morning Quiz: The 'Tyson-Gibran' Quiz Quizmasters : Suraj Menon, Yash Tamaskar Timings : 9:45 am to 12:45 pm (report by 9:30 am) F...

India's biggest solo quizzing competition Mahaquizzer returns with its fifth edition. See below for the official announcement. Pune is one of the centres, so here's a summary of the details with Pune-specific notes: Date: 24th May (Sunday) Quiz Timing: 10:00 to 11:30 am Venue (note: this is different from our usual Open Quiz venue at Persistent Systems): Symbiosis Law School Auditorium, Symbiosis Law School, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune - 411004 Wikimapia link: http://wikimapia.org/#lat=18.522336&lon=73.83004&z=17&l=0&m=a&v=2 Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/d2p46t Local contacts for directions: Ramanand (9764258560), Salil ((98231 12258)), Aditya (98811 01291) Prizes: Best Quizzer, Best Woman Quizzer, Best College Quizzer and Best School Quizzer. In addition, the BCQC will give out prizes to the 1st & 2nd runners-up in both the College & School categories. Prior registration is strongly encouraged so as to confirm your seat; it also he...

Obligatory question: In a list of his favourite Holmes short stories, Arthur Conan Doyle had The Dancing Men at #3, and the Red-Headed League at #2. Which story, from the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, did he rate as his best? Quizzes The most recent BCQC Open Quiz Day was held in April and consisted of a Western Entertainment quiz by Aditya Gadre and a General quiz by Meghashyam Shirodkar and Aniket Khasgiwale. The previous week, Aniket had a successful outing at COEP's solo quiz Abhimanyu by becoming the first COEPian to win the title twice. A similar mark was achieved by Yash Marathe who triumphed for the 2nd year in becoming the BCQC's College Quizzer of the Year . This was also the season of high-profile business quizzing in Pune: the college version of Tata Crucible was won by the SCMHRD pair of Gaurav & Amneet, while Savoir Faire of Goa once again triumphed at the local Brand Equity round . They will participate in the finals to be held on 10th May in Mumba...

Date and Time : 9th May 2009, 2PM. Should go on till 4 - 4:30PM Venue : Conference Hall, Telco Colony. The colony is bang opposite Tata Motors, Pimpri. 2 persons in a team. Age no bar, sex no bar. 6 teams make it to the final. The quiz is a good ol' gen quiz. Elims-Final format. Cash prizes for the winners and runners up. Vinay (9922994677) More details :

Date : 1 May, 2009 Venue : St. Andrews Auditorium, St. Andrews College, Mumbai Conducted by : Dr. Navin Jayakumar Turnout : ~170 teams Results 1st: Alagarsamy, J. Krishnamurthy, Jayakanthan: E (105) 2nd: Pradeep, Mukund, Nitish: D (65) 3rd: Sumant, Rajiv, Vibhendu: C (55+tiebreak) 4th: Vikram, Rishi, Hanisha: G (55) 5th: Souvik, Govind, Dhananjay : H (45) Jt. 6th: Dipan, Arnab, Arka: A (40) Jt. 6th: Suraj, Salil, Aditya G: F (40) 8th: Meghashyam, Amit G, Anand S: B (25) Cutoff seems to be 31.5 on 40 Best Corporate Team : TIFR Best College Team : IIT Bombay Best School Teams : 1st: Dhirubhai Ambani Intl. School; 2nd: BJEM School Best Team Name : 'Pigs Fly, Swine Flu' Report Perhaps not making it to the final of a quiz is a better way of enjoying it. This blogger found the first Bombay Landmark quiz more favourable than the corresponding Pune fixture earlier this year . There were a couple of peeves as usual, but more on that later. There is almost no mar...

Date: 25 Apr, 2009 Conducted by: Derek O'Brien Venue: Ampitheatre, Ishanya , Pune Standings 1st: Savoir Faire (E): Rajiv & Harsh 2nd: Cognizant Tech. Solutions (A): Harish & Ramanand 3rd: Kotak (B): Ashit + Samrat 4th: ZS Associates (F): Prasanna & Mihir 5th: QEDbaton (D): Nikhil & Tejas 6th: Mahindra (C): Sanjay & Amol Report Savoir Faire once again prevailed in a seemingly tight Brand Equity regional round held in Pune. About 30 teams took part, a far cry from previous years when the R-word was a distant galaxy away. The little venue only underscored the current economic climate, but surprisingly turned out to be a compact little place with enough atmosphere for a quiz. The questions themselves were of the usual BEQ nature: some rank sitters (being asked identify to identify films such as HAHK based merely on a song being played), some strange, hard-to-verify ones ("what does taxod(o?)us mean?") and some good questions ("fans of...

Abhimanyu is the annual intra-COEP solo quizzing event. This year's edition featured seven finalists, was conducted by last year's winner Abhishek Nagaraj, with contributions from BC quizzers. This year's edition was held on 29 March. Seven finalists qualified through a written elims set by Abhishek, consisting of questions under 6 sets of subjects. In the finals, each qualifier attempted 15 questions on a chosen topic of interest. A common GK round followed, once again, with a set of subjects, of which the least scoring one was discarded. The Standings (participant, topic, topic setter) Winner: Aniket Khasgiwale - Sherlock Holmes - Ramanand Runner-Up: Aditya Gadre - Led Zeppelin - Siddharth Dani Other Finalists: Kaustubh Bhat - Wimbledon post 1980s - Anand Sivashankar Nischay - Combat Planes - Kunal Sawardekar Aditya Bhedasgaonkar - Scrubs - Gaurav Sabnis Yasho Tamaskar - Batman - Sudarshan Purohit (Mohit Karve, the 7th participant, was unable to attend the f...

Details of the first ever Mumbai Landmark Quiz: Date : 1st May 2009 (Friday) Time : 3pm Venue : St. Andrews auditorium, St. Dominic Rd., Bandra, Mumbai For registration and more details, pl call Landmark Mumbai at 022-26396010 or mail murali@landmark-tata.com

Set and Conducted by Aniket Khasgiwale & Meghashyam Shirodkar. Results: 1st: Rajiv Rai, Sumant Srivathsan, Yash Tamaskar (draft) [A]: 145 pts 2nd: Atul Matthew, Abhinav, Suraj Menon (draft) [B]: 105 pts 3rd: Suvajit C, J. Ramanand, Harish Kumar (draft) [E]: 80 pts Jt. 4th: Anand Sivashankar, Aditya Gadre, Devang Ghia (draft) [F]: 55 pts Jt. 4th: Amit Varma, Anannya Deb, Niranjan Pedanekar (draft) [C]: 55 pts 6th: Vibhendu Tiwari, Sarat Rao, Ajith Prabhakar :45 pts Elims: highest: Rajiv+Sumant (22/35); cutoff: 15 Participating Teams: about 40 I was quite disappointed with the (short) quiz and will struggle to think of redeeming features. Perhaps someone can comment about the silver linings. Until then, the clouds: * Elims were ok, but many questions suffered from being vague in communicating what was expected. This caused problems during correction later. Crisp answers & minimum ambiguity are necessary, especially when people apart from the QMs are correcting. * More than...

Set and Conducted by Aditya Gadre Results: Jt. 1st : Sumant Srivathsan , Rajiv Rai and Sarat Rao : 155 pts Jt. 1st : Abhishek Nagaraj , Hirak Parikh , Govind Grewal : 155 pts 3rd: J Ramanand , Yasho Tamaskar , Akhil : 105 pts 4th : Amit Varma , Ananya Deb , Vibhendu Tiwari : 95 pts 5th : Niranjan Pednekar , Salil Bijur , Apurva : 80 pts 6th : Devang Ghia , Kaustuv Gupta , Pradeep Ramarathnam : 65 pts Some thoughts about the quiz: -This was the first time I tried setting an only MELA quiz. So it was in a sense 'Something Completely Different' . - Elims turned out to quite low scoring. So most of the teams were very closeon elim score. Amit-Anand and Suraj-Kaustubh missed out on sudden death. Looking at the answer sheets , I feel a lot fo the teams over thought answers and got some simple ones wrong which brought down the elim score. That said , Rajiv and Sumant put in a great performance to top the elims by 4 points. - Sorry to all for the repeated changes in the finals line...

For the Yash Marathe 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, 2009 Venue : the Boat Club, COEP, Pune Set and Conducted by : J. Ramanand (with contributions from Suraj Menon and others) Theme : General, Solo Quiz Final Results Format: 2 rounds of IR + Special round of top 4 (10 questions in a common play-off format) Winner: Yash Marathe - Modern College (A) - 130 2nd: Aditya Gadre (E) - COEP - 125 3rd: Gaurav Singh (F) - COEP - 90 4th: Rajeev Galgali (H) - Kalmadi Shamrao Junior College - 40 5th: Yash Sinha (C) - PICT - 35 6th: Aditya Chandorkar (B) - BJMC - 30 7th: Aadinath Harihar (G) - COEP - 25 Joint 8th: Suvajit Chakraborty (D) - Symbiosis Law - 20 Joint 8th: Raghav (I) - Symbiosis Law - 20 Best First Year College Quizzer: C.V.R. Sastry Best Junior College Quizzer: Rajeev Galgali Notes : The quiz started off on a low scoring note ...

For the Yash Marathe Prize (the prize is named after the best college quizzer of the previous year!) Who can participate : Any (full time) college student from a Pune college . 11th standard onwards. Please carry a college identity card if you are not a BCQC regular (we will be polite in case we challenge your presence) When : tentatively scheduled for 29th March (Sunday) . Reporting Time: 1:45 pm 1:15 pm ; Prelims begin at 2:00 pm 1:30 pm . What: A general quiz. Written eliminations (30 mins), 8 qualifiers in the final (~2 hours). This is a solo quiz. Venue: BC Lawns, COEP Prizes : for all finalists; also for best first year participant & junior college participant Registration: On the spot Contact: Ramanand (9764258560) The quiz is strictly for college quizzers from Pune, so we aren't inviting entries from outside. Also, the quiz is meant for student quizzers, so we will not be able to accommodate part-time students or professional quizzers with suspicious ...

The next BCQC Open Quiz Day will be held on April 5th (Sunday). The details: Date: 5th April (Sunday) Open for all; no prior registration needed; No entry fees Two member teams Prizes for Best School and College Teams Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, "Bhageerath", Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., 402, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune - 411016 (The nearest landmarks: The location is behind Domino's Pizza, near the new ICC Towers complex, Mainland China, the Indiabulls shop. The place is about 2 km from Pune University.) Quiz 1: Western Movies-Entertainment-Literature-Arts Quiz Quizmaster: Aditya Gadre Timing: report at 9:30 am, quiz timings: 9:45 am to 12:45 pm Quiz 2: General Quiz Quizmasters: Meghashyam Shirodkar & Aniket Khasgiwale Timing: report at 2:15 pm, quiz timings: 2:30 pm to 6 pm Contact: Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Salil (98231 12258) Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org http://bcqc.org/?q=feb09 Prizes co-sponsored by Landmark, Pune

A quiz blog that doesn't purvey questions may seem like the story in a Monica Bellucci film: unnecessary. But then quizzing isn't all about the questions, or so we think. There are a number of (good) blogs that provide a regular dose of questions for trivia-vores, but we are not like them. This wasn't a conscious choice to differentiate ourselves from the rest, but truly a reflection of those who run this blog. A few reasons: 1. With Occam's razor held to our throat, we may confess that the simplest reason is laziness. Typing out questions and posting them regularly demands effort, attention, and diligence, which are qualities that automatically disqualify us. 2. We are quizzing geeks and prefer little else to making inane chatter on the peculiar sub-culture of quizzing. Most of this has had a negative contribution to the intellectual progress of mankind, but we're too busy to notice. 3. We are perhaps the first, and (almost) uniquely so, to take our post-quiz t...

This report from the official site tells us that SCMHRD's Gaurav Parab and Amneet Sodhi won a tight contest, with Symbiosis Law (Subhodeep Jash & Suvajit Chakraborthy) finishing second. Well done to the winners!

Obligatory Question: If you were wearing the 'mustard & tomato', what would you be? The first two months of 2009 were so frenetic that there was hardly any time to put a newsletter together. Here's how January and February turned out for the Boat Club Quiz Club: Quizzes The January BCQC Open Quiz Day saw two general quizzes, one by Pradeep Ramarathnam of the BQC and the other by Suvajit Chakraborty and Yash Marathe , both leading college quizzers from Pune. Local colleges VIT ( Quiz-o-Mania ), AFMC ( Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz ), Fergusson College ( Inquizzition 8 ), and MIT ( Axlerate ) held their annual general quizzes in these two months. AFMC also held several theme quizzes as part of their annual fest, as did Symbiosis Law, who also had a general quiz called Jigyasa (a quiz that was set and conducted by the BCQC). Clearly, this packed quizzing season saw an abundance of themed quizzes, with sports quizzes at Sinhgadh College of Engineering and COEP . But...

Set and Conducted by Rohit Bahulekar Results: 1st: Aditya Gadre and Yash Marathe : 145 pts 2nd: Suvajit Chakraborty and Rohit Chandrachud : 85 pts 3rd: Yasho TAmaskar and Gaurav Singh : 70 pts 4th: Kunal Pungaliya and Sudharma Bapat: 45 pts 5th: Bharat Marathe and Sameer : 30 pts 6th :Anirban and Sarat : 25 pts Report The quiz had a nice elims . Highest score of 17/25 with cutoff of about 10/25. Good spread of topics covered. Finals had some very good fundae . Some questions were peters and some had wierd answers which led to few arguments. There were quite a few questions and a lot of sports covered. The theme was pretty good and easily gettable.

Set and conducted by Karan Pande Pandav and Rohan Jain Results: 1st: Aditya Gadre and Suvajit Chakraborty : 120 pts 2nd: Aniket Khasgiwale and Yasho Tamaskar : 80 pts Jt 3rd: Keyur Munot and Jaipal : 50 pts Jt 3rd: Siddharth Cavale and Nikhil Motlag : 50 pts 5th: Kunal Pungaliya and Sudharma Bapat : 30 pts 6th : Aditya Pawar and Karan Mann : 10 pts Report A rather business heavy general quiz . Most of the questions were good. Elims were very nice though a few questions could have been framed better. Finals were pretty good , but then had too much vulgarity (with questions on Viagra, flavoured condoms, Erotic novels , books with naked photographs ) for my tastes. One crib about the quiz was that the QMs hadn't decided on what answers they were going to accept (whether to give points for funda or not). One good question had to be scrapped and another two led to a few arguments. Other than that a decent effort from the QMs. Report by Aditya Gadre

Set by Vivek P., Siddhesh and others from FC Conducted by Vivek P. Results: 1st: Aditya Gadre and Suvajit Chakraborty : 90 pts 2nd: Yasho Tamaskar and Suraj Menon : 70 pts 3rd: Niranjan Pedanekar and Meghashyam Shirodkar: 55 pts 4th: Yash Marathe and Aditya Chandorkar : 40 pts 4th: Salil Bijur and Kaustubh Bhat : 40 pts 6th: Amit Garde + Hareeth Sridhar : 25 pts Positives: -Elims were good.Mostly workable questions -Finals had good questions -QM conducted quiz in a very assured manner. -Effort was obviously honest . NO deliberate peters. -Some really nice fundaes covered. -Good organisation. Negatives: -Some of the elims questions could have been framed much better . -The finals were biased towards us 'pop culture' quizzers and other , much better quizzers missed out because of this. - The last theme round was made a lot more complicated than it actually was and caused much confusion.

From the recent Landmark Quiz Pune 2009 : Compiled by Yash S (thanks!): 1. Full form of SIM? Subscriber Identity Module 2. Which FM has presented 8 full budgets and 2 interim budgets including one on his b’day on 29th Feb, 1986? Morarji Desai 3. Which country does not have a border on the Arabian Sea – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Maldives? Saudi Arabia 4. Which scientific word means ‘un-cuttable’? Atom 5. What was the name of the hero in Vikas Swarup’s Q&A? Ram Mohammad Thomas 6. Which TV show has the highest Nielsen ratings since 2005 and may beat All In The Family’s record of having the highest ratings for 5 years? American Idol 7. Which letters were removed from the name of Asus to give it a higher alphabetical ranking? PEG 8. Which term was coined by Fourier with respect to environmental sciences? Greenhouse Effect 9. Big 3 Carmakers of Japan are Toyota and? Honda, Nissan 10. Symbol designed Martin K. Speckter also known as rhet, exclarotive, and exclamaquest? I...

Date : 21 Feb, 2009 Venue : Ganesh Kala Krida Mandir, Pune Conducted by : Dr. Navin Jayakumar Turnout : ~260 teams Results (unfortunately, this blogger lost his notes with team info and scores etc, so please add corrections if possible) 1st: Samanth Subramaniam, G. Swaminathan, V.V.Ramanan, ('QED') 2nd: Gopal Kidao, Vinod Ganesh, Rajen Prabhu ('Absolute Bindaas') 3rd: Jayakanthan, J. Krishnamurthy, Diwakar Pingle ('?') Other finalists: Sumant+Rajiv+Vibhendu ('Travelling Pillsburies'); Pradeep Ramarathnam+Gaurav Grewal+Nitish Khadiya ('Misal Pav-er...'); Niranjan+Ramanand+Avinash ('Amnesia International'); Amit Garde+Anand S+Meghashyam ('Hoist by their own quizzards'); Amit Varma+Ananya Deb+Anil Kothuri ('Jai Santosh Ki Maa') Cutoff seems to be 29 or 30 on 40 Best Corporate Team : Infosys Best College Team : BITS Pilani Best School Teams : 1st: Abhinava Vidyalaya; 2nd: Army Public School Best Team Name : ...

What : Inquizzition 8, Fergusson College, Pune Where : Amphitheatre, Fergusson College, Pune When : Sunday, 22 February, 11 am Flavour : Open general quiz Details : Teams of 2, registration free and on the spot Contact : Nihar 90110-61474, Siddesh 99606-12098, Gaurav 98605-84841

Set by : J Ramanand and Suraj Menon Conducted by : Suraj Menon Results: 1st: Yash MArathe and Yasho Tamaskar : 100 pts 2nd: Suvajit Chakraborty and Aditya Gadre: 95 pts 3rd: Subhodeep Jash and Srideep: 50 pts 4th : Maitreyi Gupta and Rohit Khaladkar : 35 pts 5th : Yash Sinha and Amit Dandekar : 30 pts 6th: Karan Chawla and Saransh Verma: 20 pts The quiz started with an excellent 30 question elims. Great workable questions. One minor crib with the elims were the slightly tougher a.k.a. Quizzer friendly questions due to which there was a low cut-off which in turn led to a mass exodus and the quiz had more or less no audience. The finals consisted of 56 questions seamles IR , one long connect and a theme .Some brilliant questions there too. Great range of subjects covered. It was a tough fight till the end . The Yash's clinched it when they cracked the theme and we didn't . Suraj added some entertainment value to the quiz with his impressions of certain QMs and cries of ...

Set and conducted by : Major Anish Results : 1st: J Ramanand and Aditya Gadre: 130 pts 2nd: Suraj Menon and Yasho Tamaskar : 75 pts 3rd: Akshad + 1 : 70 pts 4th : Gaurav and Avneet : 30 pts 4th : Manas and sayan : 30 pts 6th: YAsh Marathe and Maitreyi Gupta : 25 pts The quiz started with a mostly factual 26 question elims. The finals had 60 dry questions and a special round. The questions were good i the sense that most of them had good fundae , but then most of the questions were completely non-workable which led to the thoughts of what could have been. A large proportion of the questions covered some very good facts . Cribs : -There were quite a few peters and sitters. -The quiz started very late and went on for a long time. Better organisation definitely called for. Do post your opinions in the comments section.

Set and Conducted by : Pradeep Ramamrathnam Results: 1st: Anand Shivshankar , Sumant Srivathsan , Avaneendra Bhargav 2nd: Niranjan Pednekar , Sarat Rao , Vibhendu Tiwari 3rd: Suraj Menon , Aditya Gadre , Nikhil Motlag Other finalists: J Ramamnand , Harish Kumar , Shastry ; Yasho Tamaskar , Salil Bijur and Arnab Pal ; Suvajit Chakraborty , Aniket Khasgiwale and Yash Marathe The quiz started with a long elims with 40 rather tough but very good questions. The highest score was just 21 while the cut off for the six finalists was 13 . The other three teams for draft picks had their cut off as 10. All teams were awarded points in the finals with the formula (elims score) * 2. The final was filled with brilliant questions , especially on cricket and current affairs. In addition to the standard rounds of IR passing , there was a written round where the QM used diffrential marking i.e. the teams were given points depending on how many other teams got the answer. This round changed the...

Date : 7 Feb, 2009 Venue : COEP Auditorium Conducted by : Aadinath Harihar and Mohit Karve Set by : Members of the COEP Astronomy Club and BCQC Flavour : Astronomy Turnout : ~75 teams Final Results 1st: Yash Marathe (Modern) + Suvajit Chakraborty (Symbiosis Law) (E): 95 2nd: Dawood + Gaurang (IUCAA) (B): 90* (better elims score than C) 3rd: Swapnil + Omkar (SKNCOE) (D): 90 4th: Kaustubh + Karan (COEP) (A): 60 5th: D. Mithilesh + S.P.Gautham (DAV Public School) (E): 50 6th: Sanket + Chaitanya (SIT Lonavla) (F): 10 (Scores thanks to Yash Marathe) Report Organised in the International Year of Astronomy, the aim of this first-ever astronomy quiz by the COEP Astronomy Club was to popularise the world of astronomy among students through a quiz that would be interesting even to the non-enthusiast. In this, the quiz was quite a success. An excellent turnout (though the organisers said they expected even more!) attempted a very interesting set of preliminary questions that wer...

Date : 2 Feb, 2009 Venue : Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd. Conducted by : Suvajit Chakraborty and Yash Marathe Flavour : General Turnout : ~25 teams Final Results Joint 1st: Aditya Gadre, J. Ramanand, Rohan Jain (A): 125 Joint 1st: Anand Sivashankar, Sumant Srivatsan, Keyur Munot (B): 125 3rd: Vibhendu Tiwari, Sarat Rao, Atulya (D): 115 4th: Yash Tamaskar, Suraj Menon, Pradeep Ramarathnam (F): 110 5th: Aditya and Abhishek Chandorkar, Aadinath Harihar (E): 75 6th: Aniket Khasgiwale, Salil Bijur, Saransh Verma (C): 60 Scoring : Aditya Bhedasgaonkar Report A very competent quiz, the morning open had a mix of some very interesting trivia, quite a few easy ones, and a last round of specialities that didn't receive universal acclaim because of its format. The elims were not taxing, and were reasonably well-pitched even for the not-so regular quizzer (with a couple of nice red-herring questions). There were a couple of questions in the finals that drew appl...

Set and conducted by : Yash Marathe and Maitreyi Gupta Format : 25 questions elims on ppt followed by 60 questions on seamless IR 10 of which constituted a theme. Results: 1st : Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre : 170 pts 2nd : Salil Bijur and Suraj Menon : 135 pts 3rd : Niranjan Pednekar and Yasho Tamaskar : 115 pts 4th : Dr. Chandorkar and Aditya Chandorkar : 95 pts 5th : Amit Dandekar and Yash Sinha : 40 pts 6th : Rahul and Ashok : 20 pts Positives: - Some really good , workable questions - Good organisation. No major problems , long waiting periods or other events encroaching on the Quiz (like JAM did last year) - Reasonably clear policy on part points - The finger of God didn't show itself. - Nice accessible theme . Another positive about the theme was that it didn't carry too much weightage and thus didn't affect the outcome of the quiz in any way. - Prize money and certificates available very easily. Cribs: - Elims were very simple and had just 25 questio...

The next BCQC Open Quiz Day will be held on Feb 1st (Sunday). The details: Date: 1st February (Sunday) Open for all; no prior registration needed; No entry fees Two member teams Prizes for Best School and College Teams Quiz 1: General Quiz Quizmasters: Suvajit Chakraborty and Yash Marathe Timing: report at 9:30 am, quiz timings: 9:45 am to 12:45 pm Quiz 2: General Quiz Quizmasters: Pradeep Ramarathnam Timing: report at 2:15 pm, quiz timings: 2:30 pm to 6 pm Contact: Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Salil (98231 12258) Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org http://bcqc.org/?q=feb09 Prizes co-sponsored by Landmark, Pune