Winter InFest 2009 aka bcqc.orgy

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.

Court Martial – The Neev Quiz (SCMHRD)

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 online.

Where?
The Quiz will be held at SCMHRD, Symbiosis International University Campus, Hinjewadi. We will arrange for transportation from Deep Bunglow Chowk, Pune to the campus and back for interested participants. To avail of this facility, kindly register online.

What?
Apart from bragging rights, prizes worth Rs 25,000 are at stake.

The Rules of Engagement:
1. The quiz is open to all students of PG & UG colleges. ( No Correspondence Course Students)
2. Each team to have two members.
3. Both the team members should be from the same college.
4. Please bring your Ids along for registration verification.
5. Registration is open till 10:29:59 Hrs on 13th Dec, 2009.


For any queries please contact:
Abhishek: 09665033938
Amneet: 09730089513

BCQC December Open General Quiz

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' will be held in the afternoon of Sunday at a different venue down the same road. Please read this link for the details.

A complete list of BC Opens

First Edition of "Mega-Whats" - a written quiz for open teams

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

1. General quiz, open to all
2. Teams of FOUR members (or less).
3. Prior registration is essential.
4. To register, please email kqaquizzes@gmail.com with Mega-Whats 2009 and the city you are competing from in the subject-header.
5. 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
6. Email registrations will close on Sunday 6th December 2009. Centre coordinators will allow entries after the cut-off date at their discretion.
7. Please note that the quizzing community in your city may charge an entry fee to meet venue and equipment hire expenses.
8. The school category is open only to teams comprising students from Std. VIII-X .
9. School teams ( Std. VIII-X) are allowed free entry. A school may field a maximum of TWO teams (of four members each)
10. Please report by 1430hrs at the venue in your city. The quiz will start at 1500hrs (sharp) and end by 1730hrs.
11. Contesting teams will answer a written quiz of six sections and about sixty questions, inclusive of audios, videos and visuals.
12. Answers and scores will be announced on the same day–prizes will be given out for Best School Team and Best Open Team.
13. Prizes for Open and School category winners.
14. We will also announce a national winner and rank the top 100 teams across the country–this list will go up by the 25th of December.
15. The rankings will be announced after adjudication. The decision of the quiz-master will be final and binding on all participants.

For more details, please email kqaquizzes@gmail.com, or call Arul Mani (097312-14519)

Pune Details 1. There will be NO entry fee.
2. Prizes will be sponsored by the BCQC
3. Venue:
Symbiosis Law School Auditorium, Symbiosis Law School, Symbiosis Campus
Senapati Bapat Road,
Pune - 411004
Coordinator: Vishwajeet Narvekar

Symbiosis Law wins Pune Nobel Quiz Round

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

Texas Instruments Science and Technology Quiz 2009 - Pune round

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)

Chakravyuuh 2009

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 the details would be grateful

The finals were a close run affair what with only a 10 point spread between the top 3 teams. could have been a close run thing, but Amit and Anand made their early lead count and kept up the momentum with some cracking answers. Meghshyam and NP pushed them close in the end only to miss out. As for the quiz itself, fabulous set of questions, bar one or two that werent framed well.

Positives
- Good balanced elims set with something for everyone. Some brilliant questions there
-Quiz was ably conducted by Kaustubh bar one incident refer below
- 54 questions meant that the length of the quiz was just about right giving all teams a fair shot and not too many obvious sitters/peters
- The lack of production value was more than compensated by the quality of the questions themselves
- Full clarity on part points, meant the quiz was dispute free and we avoided unpleasant situations where the person asking the questions didn't know enough about the answer, (often seen when you arent asking your own questions). Kudos to Bhat Mohit and Adinath for that
- Some cracker questions

Negatives
- the quiz started late, but then what quiz starts on time
- the Dreaded finger of God made one appearance inspite of two safety slides (Another entry to the record books for Kaustubh Bhat)
But then again these were minor glitches on what was unarguably one of the best quizzes that has happened in recent times, take a bow Gadre, Khasgi, Kaustubh, Adinath and Mohit.

Congratulations to the winners and all the finalists.

Any comments , bouquets/brickbats are welcome.

Chakravyuuh 2009 and other events

Announcement by the organisers of Mindspark and Chakravyuuh, COEP's annual quiz

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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 based on anything and everything under the sun, the participants of this quiz can range from college students to software professionals. Chakravyuh has gone on to produce quizzers who would later perform exceptionally well at national level quizzes like BBC Mastermind INDIA and University Challenge. Previous years have elicited fantastic participation and the prize money remains as sweet as ever.

Status: Open Quiz

Full Throttle (11th October 2009)
Have your fingers always itched to pull apart an engine to pieces and check how it works than just admiring the beauty of the bike and riding it? Then test your automobile wisdom in this adrenaline pumping quiz. Cars, bikes, and everything capable of clocking some serious revs- get ready to experience the rush! Turn up your collars, and roll up your sleeves, for only the sharpest can keep pace with Full Throttle.

Status: Open Quiz

Venue for all quizzes: The Auditorium, College of Engineering, Pune
Team size: 2
Registration fees: Rs. 30/- per team for every quiz
Instructions:
1) All school and college teams must possess valid I-cards. All the open quizzes have special prizes for the best school and best college teams.
2) Participation in Torquest will be confirmed only against a valid I-card.
3) Certificates will be given to all finalists. Prizes for all winners.

BCQC in Mid-Day Pune

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

The other BCQC

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.

An article about the BCQC at Punekar.in

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.)

Pounce and Bounce

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 industry among quizzers with time on their hands. I am about to add more to that body of literature. That being said IMHO, my experience suggests that there is no point looking for the Holy Grail of a perfect format. A good quiz depends on ensuring three simple things in order of importance:

a) The format should be the 'modified infinite bounds with a midway reversal'. All questions have equal points, the next question to the team to the left/right of the team that answered it. If the question is unanswered then the original teams gets the next question. Order reverses halfway during the quiz.

b) A long quiz.
I think for 5-6 teams there should be at least >40 questions. A factor of 10 is ideal. Even the old system of rounds with pass-direct questions (full points for direct, and half for a pass question) would be okay provided the quiz was long enough. c) Questions, questions, questions.
The greatest evil is not the format, or the order, or marking scheme -- but bad questions. If questions are set correctly, spread over different topics evenly, and are of similar difficulty then the quiz will be fair and the best team 'should' win.

In practice, luck and order does play somewhat of a role even in the modified infinite bounds format, though b) should take care of it to some extent. The critical issue is to normalize questions in some fashion. Why normalize? Each quizmaster (QM) has his/her own personal strength (read: fetish) and quizzes as a result tend towards personal idiosyncrasies. The good QM is diligent about this and goes about setting questions keeping in mind those biases (knowing the QM and his/her strengths can help you work out the answer, cause you can guess what he/she knows, and how he/she sets questions). One way to do it, as is usually done for big quizzes, is to have two or more question-setters with divergent interests.

Despite the best intentions of the QM(s): all questions are not equal, some are more equal than others. A QM may think that a question is reasonably difficult, but may turn out to be a sitter. On the other hand, some questions are way too tough and end up being unanswered. Personally, if more than 10-15% of questions end up this way then the QM did a bad job. You cannot go about an weigh each question for difficulty.

The other aspect is that there should be some drama, some element of excitement in a quiz. I am a fan of 'buzzer-rounds' which have fallen out of favour in recent times. It provided that adrenalin-rush and rewarded quick recall and reflexes which are sadly missing from the current slow-cooking style. The current trend is away from the fireworks and some quizzes have written components at the start. This is bad, bad, bad.

Long story short. I tried out two innovations at the quizclub. Each team was given two wildcards to allow them to Pounce or Bounce a question.

Pounce: You can attempt a question out of turn. The team has to write down the question or tell the quizmaster before the question is attempted by any of the other teams in regular fashion. There are no negatives and a correct answer get full points.

Bounce: You can bounce a question to the team of your choice. If team doesn't answer it correctly they get -(full points), and if they do answer it correctly they get the full points. Regardless of the outcome, the team bouncing gets the next question.

The rationale behind the Pounce rule was to ensure that sitters can attempted by all. In the past, with great difficulty I have resisted urges to destroy the chair I was sitting on, or strangling the person who smirks when handed a sitter as a direct while I was left wringing my hands in despair. Often, close quizzes are decided on the basis of which team got slightly easier questions. This is where the Pounce comes in. Jump in on question out-of-queue. Grab a sitter. Of course, a team can misjudge the opponents knowledge and would end up with the question in the regular course of events.

The rationale behind the Bounce rule is to induce some excitement and additionally serves as a handicap for the obviously better team(s). There are always going to be a few questions that seem so unreasonable and tough that no one can answer them and a weaker team can either direct it towards the strongest team, or to their closest rival to level the playing field. Of course, if a team is really good and they can actually answer the question that seemed 'too tough' then all the better for them.

Innovations in practice:
This weekend when I tried these out and found the results mixed. No one team used the Bounce rule. They all played too nice, perhaps fearing retribution. The Pounce rule was used by all teams to good effect. Only once out of six times did a team not answer the question correctly. In all six cases, the team would not have got the question in the regular order and judged the moment of 'pouncing' correctly.

This was the casual Saturday quiz and not the best testing ground when there were only three teams and no one was too worried about winning or losing as there was nothing at stake. I curious to see how this works out in a longer, larger quiz more at stake. These rules do favour teams that can fake emotions of knowing or not knowing answers depending on the situation. A tight quiz can almost be like a poker game.
You can sometimes work out the answer being seeing who knows it.

BCQC August Open Quizzes - report

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.

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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 stepped into the breach and considering that he had half a night to put together a set of elims & finals, he did an excellent job.

Despite the health conditions of the city, about 20 teams arrived to take part in the prelims (our thanks to them) and the finals saw a very fresh lineup. Suraj had about 50 questions and a 'Amul ads' written round. Most of the questions were interesting and Suraj's peculiar brand of histrionics were on show. One day, we'll get him to do an entire Kerala quiz.

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'Questionable Intelligence'

Set & Conducted by:: J. Ramanand

Results (corrected standings)
1st: Yasho+Yash M, 2nd: Suraj+Siddharth, 3rd: Salil+Aniket; (finalists) Harish+Dharmendra, Kaustubh+Mohit, Keyur+Saransh

Report
The term 'Questionable Intelligence' was perhaps an accurate reflection (once again) of the quiz-master's tendencies to tie everyone into unnecessary knots with his format-mongering. Since the same person is writing this report (sort of like Genghis Khan pillaging the hapless and then reporting on the scene for Amnesty International), he prefers to let participants comment on the content, while he offers to depose in front of the enquiry commissions.

The quiz consisted of three 'sets' (the last only for the top 3 after two rounds), with normalised scoring. This resulted in teams not necessarily winning based on most questions answered across the quiz, but with relative performances in each set. The problem was that the division of questions among sets was largely artificial. This system worked better in a previous quiz, where each set was based on a different theme.

So essentially teams were being judged for attempting a similar number of questions, and could be penalised for doing badly in one set. The first two sets had 14+2 connects each across 6 teams, while the last had 10 across 3. I still think these are similar attempt-wise. But another ill-advised option to see more than one question at a time in the final only served to confuse matters more. Teams found the last round tough and scored very little, leading to a lot of confusion.

For which this QM asks forgiveness and is thankful that people were polite enough not to complain too much. Some of these ultra-experiments were tried because the audience was a lot more familiar and likely to be considerably more tolerant, of which rather undue advantage was taken :-). This QM/reporter has been a vocal critic of several untried experiments and confusing quizzes, so will await brickbats/raps on knuckles/egg showers if flung!

Would like to thank Aditya Gadre & George (and a couple of nameless others) for kindly offering comments on questions. Aditya's input, in particular, helped shape the elims - this was at least one improvement on this QM's last strange elims adventure.

Please do let us know what you thought of both quizzes by leaving comments below.

Important: Updates to our August Open Quizzes

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 tomorrow.

Wishing everyone good health!

See this link for the rest of the logistical details

BCQC August Open Quizzes

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 9:45 am)
Flavour: Literature General

Afternoon:
'Questionable Intelligence'

Quizmaster: J. Ramanand
Timings: 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm (report by 2:15 pm)
Flavour: General
Finals: Six teams in the final

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Also read an update here.

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A complete list of BC Opens

British Library, Pune & BCQC Quiz

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 the newbie/once-in-a-while quizzer. If you participate, you might find us largely ignoring you in favour of the newbies :-). But you are welcome to watch & help out.

World Quizzing Championships - Pune details

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. Only very few extra answer sheets will be available for "on the spot" registrations, so confirmation is necessary. Registration is free & open to all. To register, please contact the local coordinator as follows:

Pune Coordinator: Suvajit Chakraborty (93701 24365, chakrabortysuvajit [at] gmail.com)

The BC Cup - Report

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: 3-3 Away Goals: 2-2 . Arnold & Ratan won after a very lengthy tiebreaker.

QF3: Suvajit and Sudarshan Shidore v/s Omkar Nene and Manish
Score: 2-3 . Omkar and Manish won this one on aggregate.

QF4: Aditya Chandarkar and Yasho Tamaskar v/s Sameer Deshpande and Suraj Menon
Score: 2-2 Away goals: 0-1 . Suraj and Sameer go through on away goals.

Semis had 20 questions each . 10 to each team.

SF1: Anand and Yasho (draft pick as Anand was alone) v/s Arnold and Ratan
Score: 4-4 Away goals: 1-2 . Anand jumped the gun on the last question and got it wrong to allow Arnold and Ratan to go through on away goals.

SF2: Omkar and Manish v/s Sameer and Suraj
Score: 2-5 . Sameer and Suraj hit 3 away goals on the trot and ran away with it.

Finals: The finals had 36 questions .

Arnold and Ratan v/s Sameer and Suraj
Score: 2-10 .

A surprisingly low scoring , anti-climatic final where Sameer and Suraj hit their peak while Arnold and Ratan lost the plot.

Any comments about the quiz are welcome.

The BC cup

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

Mahaquizzer 2009 - Pune results

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.

Amnesia: BCQC May Open Afternoon Quiz

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, Niranjan's prelims have usually been superlative, combining interest & creativity in equal measure, but this one was a couple of carats short of his usual top tier.

In comparison, the finals were much better: he opened with a couple of very nicely made questions. There were fewer questions this time, and a lot more time to think, which was very much appreciated by this reviewer. There were the usual questions bordering on "eh?" but there was a conscious effort to steer clear of the usual areas. Consequently, there were more questions on unexplored Indian topics & even mutilated fauna, and very few on pet topics such as films & sport.

As the scores show, there seemed to be something for every team. Going into the last 13 questions, any of the teams could have taken top spot. We were lucky for a couple of things to go in our favour. We had managed only 3 out of the first 30, and managed to get 4 in the last 13. Even at the end, we didn't know we had won, but it was clear it had been very tight.

Played in excellent spirit by all teams and with great interest from the audience, this was a fine quiz.

Thanks to Landmark (Pune) and Blaft Publications for co-sponsoring prizes, and Persistent Systems for allowing use of their splendid auditorium

Tyson Gibran Quiz : BCQC May open (Morning Quiz) Report

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 production values in general were very entertaining .

Negatives:
The quiz was way too long and the last 30 questions had to be rushed through at a very high pace.
IMHO both the special rounds seemed forced. The TIME covers round seemed to just be about recognising people .
The long connect seemed to be made just to make up the lack of myth/religion in the rest of the quiz. In my opinion the theme was too far out and not accessible to all. In addition the 5 question weightage to the theme (something my last quiz was criticised for too) did seem too much. The two teams that cracked the theme on the second clue just ran away with it with no chance for anyone else to catch up.

BCQC May Open Quizzes

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)
Flavour: General
What to expect: A lot more than ear-lickin' sportsmen/philosophers/second-rung Bollywood villains.

Afternoon Quiz: 'Amnesia'

Quizmaster: Niranjan Pedanekar
Timings: 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm (report by 2:15 pm)
Flavour: General
What to expect: Creative quizzing with a lateral thinking twist.(See past 'Amnesia' reports here)

---

A complete list of BC Opens

Mahaquizzer 2009 - Pune details

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 helps the organisers plan the event better. Please see below for registration details.

We had 32 participants in Pune last year, and are hoping to see more this year. Read last year's Pune report: http://notesandstones.blogspot.com/2008/05/mahaquizzer-2008-report.html

Updates
8 May: An actively updated list of participants as registrations come in.

-----Official Announcement by KQA-----
Hello,
We will hold the fifth edition of Mahaquizzer across 12 cities on Sunday, 24 May 2009. The cities where centres are being offered are Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati, Thrissur and Mysore. If we are able to obtain permission, Singapore will also figure among the venues.

Mahaquizzer is the National Quizzing Championship. It is open to single entrants. There is no entry fee. Contestants are required to answer 150 questions over 90 minutes.

Mahaquizzer 2009 has been set by Arun Hiregange, Dibyendu Das, Thejaswi Udupa, Avinash Thirumalai and Ochintya Sharma.

Four prizes will be given out in each city: Best Quizzer, Best Woman Quizzer, Best College Quizzer and Best School Quizzer.

The person recording the highest score across all centres will hold the title of Mahaquizzer for 2009. She/he will also be awarded the Wing Commander G.R. Mulky Trophy for Quizzing Excellence.This trophy will be given in June 2009 during the KQA 26th Anniversary event.

You can have a look at previous editions of the quiz (2005-2008) here: http://kqaquizzes.org/quizzes/

Participants interested in registering should mail Mahaquizzer@gmail.com. Please mention the city where you would like to appear from in the subject-header. Please do mention age and institutional affiliations if you are a student. Since seating is limited in many centres, local coordinators will work on a first-come first-served basis. Please register by Sunday 17 May 2009 to avoid disappointment.

We are working on finalising the venues--a list with full addresses will be put up at http://kqaquizzes.org in a few days.

Please pass the information around at work and on other fora that you may have access to. Please do try and get friends who've never quizzed before to try out this quiz.

For clarifications or for more information , please call me at 97312-14519.
Thank you,
Best Regards
Arul Mani
Coordinator
Mahaquizzer 2009

BCQC – March and April 2009 newsletter

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 Mumbai.

The Landmark Quiz show hit Mumbai for the first ever time, on Maharashtra Day. A couple of teams with Pune affiliations successfully made it to the top 8 beating over 150 teams to the finals.

As ever, there were several BC sessions on weekends: some by visiting BC alumni, some involving new formats. Never been to a BC session before? There's a session this Sunday afternoon at the COEP (directions).

Upcoming Quizzes

* The next BCQC Open Quiz day will be held on the 17th of May, featuring two general quizzes. The details will be announced in a couple of days. As usual, there are lots of prizes: each finalist wins a prize, as do the best college/school/newbie teams.

* India's biggest solo quiz 'Mahaquizzer' will be held on the 24th in several centres, including Pune. Here are all the details for participants in Pune. Do register early! This time, the BCQC will be sponsoring additional prizes for school & college students.

* Tata Motors are organising their annual open general quiz this Saturday: the details can be found here.

Answer to Obligatory Question: The Speckled Band

Previous BCQC newsletters here.

Srujan Open Quiz at Tata Motors, Pune

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:

Landmark Quiz 2009 - Bombay

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 margin for error in these kinds of elims (as we would soon realise): the questions are biased towards being 'all-quizzer-friendly', which meant that once again, they were significantly based on events currently in the news or of immediate local interest, and the cut-offs were very high. The selection of questions & their framing were quite good, in the balance.

The finals had several interesting questions, and a couple of the teams gave some outstanding answers. There weren't any obvious 'recent repeats' this time, though there were a few easy ones that hardly had more than one viable options to guess.

The preference for items very recently in the news was clear, and it could partly be because of the excessive load of setting 3 full-size quizzes in about 8 months (with 2 more to go on Aug 15). This blogger thinks some of the questions could still have had the same impact if asked outside the current time-frame, and wished this preference for current affairs wasn't so prevalent in this quiz. Some of the India-related questions were good.

The theme, though mercifully better than the Pune one, was too easy: most teams got it on the 2nd attempt. Like some of us in the audience, they must have been eying the answer after the very first element of the theme. Mixing the theme with questions sometimes results in contrived question making, and could have been avoided. The 'steal' points (just 5) in the first buzzer round seemed to present very little incentive to any one wanting to take a risk early in the quiz.

In summary, the quiz was well-attended and well-conducted. The audience questions were a little sparse and the Playstation round for schoolkids in the middle dragged on for too long. A little less emphasis on just the last couple of months would have been preferable, but the team that won deserved to do so, and did so without really breaking into a sweat.

Brand Equity 2009 - Pune round

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 which brand are associated with the term BrickCon"). The prize-to-question-quality ratio is reminiscent of the economic values of the IPL. This blogger was attending a BEQ event after 4 years and sees that except for the questions becoming even more general in nature, not much had changed.

On the positive side, the quiz master was restrained in his humour and even excellent in repartee and audience-engagement. The "fight against blindness" theme was well-received and made a welcome change from the frivolity of past BEQs.

The national final play out next Sunday at Bombay.

Questions & Answers from the quiz are available at this blog post.

Abhimanyu 2009

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 finals)

With this, Aniket becomes the first person to win this intra-COEP event twice.

(Compared to previous edition, this one was well-organised and tried to address many of the problems from previous years, so pats on back for Abhishek)

List of winners
2001 - Rahul Srinivas - Asterix comics
2002 - Sumeet Kulkarni - Formula-One
2003 - Siddharth Natarajan - Archie comics
2005 - Akshay Palve - The Mahabharata
2006 - Gaurav Singh - The Harry Potter series
2007 - Aniket Khasgiwale - World Cup Cricket
2008 - Abhishek Nagaraj - XKCD Comics
2009 - Aniket Khasgiwale - Sherlock Holmes
(I don't quite remember if the event did not happpen in 2004 - it probably was related to that bad day Chakravyuuh had that year)

Landmark Quiz 2009 - Mumbai

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

BCQC April Evening Open Quiz

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 average number of cricket qns
* A couple of qns in the finals (like the Gulzar) were just bad
* Powerpoint excesses once again, as we groaned again and again about the size of the text in the question. Will lead me to believe they were pasted from a web source, so avoidable, IMO.
* Once again, a case of QMs making questions till the last minute and hence not being able to present a crisp and pleasant interface?

Ok, there were a couple of very nice questions in the finals, which provoked good answers by some of the finalists. The winners led comfortably through out the quiz, and team 2 did very well to come back. But in all, I found the quiz rather uninspiring, and I almost found myself thinking of other things I could have been doing. Wish that were not so.

'And Now for Something Completely Different' - BCQC Open (Morning Quiz) Report

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 up . Especially Suraj And Kaustubh who went from top six to draft picks to just in on sudden death and finally to just out on sudden death.
-As for the finals , Hirak-Abhishek-Gowind and Sumant-Rajiv-Sarat were in inspired form and led pretty much from start to finish.
-The questions themselves were inclined towards factual knowledge because making them workable without making them obvious was proving very difficult for me. Maybe next time I'll give more emphasis on workability. Still I don't think it made the quiz too boring . This is my perception , do correct me if I'm wrong.
-Apologies for some of the sitters and peters.

On another note :
It was nice to see the Bombay teams come in such large numbers for the BCQC opens. It really made the quiz a lot more competitive . Hope to see them for all future BCQC events.

Please post your thoughts in the comments section.

BCQC College Quizzer Championship 2009 Results

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 with rookie Rajeev, the only junior collegian in the finals leading at 40 after the first IR round. Rajeev didn't score in the second IR round where Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre made huge gains with Yash at 80 and Aditya at 75.

After the IR rounds, the top 4 (Yash M, Aditya G, Gaurav Singh (at 50) and Rajeev went into a super-final. The format in this round was such that at a time, questions would be asked keeping at least 3 left open and the finalists could choose their question to attempt. A question was closed if it was answered or if there were 4 attempts. 5 questions clockwise and 5 anti-clockwise. Yash and Aditya dominated this round going neck-to-neck. At the end, just like last year, this quiz went upto the last question and Yash Marathe went into history as the first to win a prize named after himself :-).

BCQC College Quizzer Championship 2009

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 identity cards!

Last year's report here.

BCQC Open Quizzes - April 5th

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

Why we don't do questions on this blog

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 tête-à-têtes online. You will see feverish discussions, nay reviews, about quizzes we attend. We think this helps our understanding of this sport that we enjoy so much.
4. A quiz is not a mere summation of its questions, but something that is a mix of the quiz-setter's choices and compositional skills, a function of its teams' abilities and personalities, and the context of its setting. You can't quite tell how a quiz was, just from its questions. As if it is possible to reconstruct an innings by a sequence of runs scored. A quiz is a complex creature, and no quizzer's experience of it is similar to another's. This may sound an overdone examination of a simple hobby, but then you don't have to buy into this.
5. Given our size and history, we have been inclined towards experimentation in formats, presentation, and questions, as well as possessing an unreasonable amount of enthusiasm in writing about views about our infatuation with the sport. Which is why there are essays on formats, on setting quizzes, on analyses, and dil-dehlaadene-waalaa angst.
This post came about because I saw a comment on an earlier post impatiently asking for questions to that quiz. Sorry, you're quite unlikely to get a list of questions for your favourite < insert high paying quiz name> quiz here. You will have better chances elsewhere. So why bother reading this blog? We didn't say you had to bother. Even some of us don't.

Tata Crucible 2009 - Pune results

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!

BCQC – January and February 2009 newsletters

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 the most novel of them was Quiztronomy, an Astronomy quiz for students that was held as part of the COEP Astronomy Club's effort to mark the International Year of Astronomy. The response was very good and the members have promised to be back next year as well.

The biggest quiz of the season in these parts was the Landmark quiz in Pune, which had several new elements to it this year. If you missed out, there's going to be one in Mumbai on the 1st of May.

There were several BC sessions, with a Requiem for a Theme English Music quiz by Aditya Gadre, and contributions by Yash Tamaskar, among others.

Upcoming Quizzes in March-April

The next BCQC Open Quiz day will feature a Western Music-Entertainment-Literature-Arts (MELA) quiz by Aditya Gadre and a General Quiz by Meghashyam Shirodkar and Aniket Khasgiwale. This quiz will probably be held towards the end of March or beginning of April, so if you have exams or any preferences, you should write in to me.

We also plan to have an open quiz for first year students of local undergraduate colleges, as well as the (already dreaded) BCQC College Quizzer Championship that began last year.

Requiem for a Theme at the BC will feature a unique medicine quiz sometime in the next four weeks.

I've started so I'll finish

* If you are organizing a quiz and want to let people know about it, write into us ("contact"-at-"bcqc.org") with the salient details and we'll put it up on our website.

* We love to hear comments about quizzes, especially those that we do. Use the comments sections on our blog posts to do so, or write to us.

* Finally, we leave you with this interesting story from the UK surrounding Gail Trimble on this year's University Challenge quiz show who was dubbed the Greatest UC contestant ever and provoked a lot of comment about her looks and her brains. (Link thanks to Harish).

Answer to Oblig Question: A member of the Marylebone Cricket Club (their club colours)

Previous BCQC newsletters here.

Sports Mania - Sports Quiz at Exelcior , SCOE

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.

Axlerate - Open quiz at MIT

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.

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Report by Aditya Gadre

Inquizzition - 8 at Fergusson College

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.

Landmark Quiz Pune 2009 - Prelims questions

From the recent Landmark Quiz Pune 2009: Compiled by Yash S (thanks!):

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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? Interrobang
11. Which two prime-ministers are alumni of FC College, Pune? P.V. Narsimhan Rao and V.P. Singh
12. Fort in central India having historical significance and derived from cowherd? Gwalior
13. Introductory lines of a book? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Gamboge pigment is extracted by tapping resin from various species of evergreen trees. Where is it from? Cambodia
15. DNA of scientist matched from hair cell and dental records. Used to recreate picture. Visual. Who? Copernicus
16. What is the pouch of a kangaroo called? Marsupiam
17. First England all-rounder to be picked up in the IPL? Dmitri Mascarehnas
18. Who is Daniel Craig voicing in upcoming Tintin movie? Red Rackham
19. Question about type of sari, mixture of silk and zari? Paithani sari
20. Video. Identify singers. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
21. Malay name for southern third of Vietnam same as Indian coastal town. China added as suffix to differentiate from Indian town. Which town? Cochin
22. First person to knock out Mohd. Ali while he was still heavyweight champion? Chuck Wepner.
23. If Jihad means struggle, what means someone who struggles? Mujahideen
24. Quotes about instrument. Sound evokes hundred colours. Which instrument? Sarangi
25. Phrase given by Charles Darwin to explain why some genetic traits are not passed on? Natural Selection
26. Boastful city. Hosted world expo in 1893. Some more facts. Identify? Chicago
27. Name of most popular medicine in the world. What is it used to remove from blood? Cholesterol
28. Bilingual movie about which painter? English title is ‘Colours of Passion’? Raja Ravi Varma
29. Who finished joint 9th in Olympics on basis of number of gold medals won ahead of several countries? Michael Phelps
30. Name of which tribe in the Mahabharata means forest dwellers? Vanaras
31. Which religious ceremonies are ship captains allowed to perform? Baptism and Funeral
32. Which cricketer appointed ambassador for UN AIDS in Nov 2008? Sanath Jayasuriya
33. Complete list Beheaded, Divorced, Beheaded, Died of Fever, Divorced, Beheaded, _________ ? Survived (Wives of Henry VIII)
34. Origin of DC in DC Comics? Detective Comics
35. Who was born here? Visual of The White Elephant café in Edinburgh? Harry Potter
36. Visual. Cover of Amar Chitra Katha. Identify? Tanaji
37. Visual. Connected to 36. Name of pet? Yashwanti
38. Video from Johnny Gaddar. Performer name of Taranjeet Dhillon? Hard Kaur (-ve points to all school children writing Hardcore :P)
39. Video of floating turtle with 3 elephants holding a flat world. Identify? Discworld
40. Ad featuring aliens sucking out gravity. Ad for what? Fevicol

Landmark Pune Quiz 2009 - Report

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: 'Consortium of Loose, Forward and Quiz-going Women'

Report
It was a new look Pune Landmark Quiz, now in its third year: a bigger venue, a change in quizmaster, and a flood of teams from places outside Maharashtra. The first was because the quiz has seen increased participation each year and threatened to burst out of last time's venue; we've heard all sorts of reasons for the second; the third seems to be because of the introduction of the "national round" (the top 2 teams from 4 landmark quizzes get to face-off in it).

For many of us, it was the first experience of Navin and team, who have received much acclaim in other centres. In terms of questions, it was a great improvement from last year. The prelims were populist, with a significant bias towards contemporary and local questions. Most of the questions were interesting to attempt, though a few of them just came down to a couple of choices to pick from - something which could be a little excruciating.

The final had a fairly simple format: 2*15 rounds of infinite rebounds/bounce/bounds in either direction interspersed with 2 buzzer rounds (16 & 10). QED took an early lead (which they never relinquished) by virtue of picking up the theme (5 questions spread over the quiz) on the very first question. The rounds went by speedily because several questions were answered on the very 1st or 2nd attempt (the ones that weren't usually went all the way to the audience who did nail some good answers).

We had been told to expect a no-unnecessary-frills quiz, which was the case - no gimmicks, and a good mix of content. Perhaps someone and who was in the audience (regular as well as casual quizzer) can provide their point of view as to how they viewed this experience.

Some of the negatives:
There were a few 'repeats' - stuff that is well known in the quizzing community. This made some of the directs more valuable than others. The theme was contrived, IMHO, and some of the elements were either lexically connected or tenuous. Also, some parts of the quiz's content seems to be somewhat formulaic (teams seemed to expect certain types of local questions and contemporary events ), thus making it vulnerable to prior preparation. This is not to diss any of the teams that took advantage of this (they were also better in other respects), but I wish the setters would find a way to make the quiz more unpredictable, even while staying within the self-stated constraint of keeping it friendly even for the lay quizzer.

A minor point was that the usual tradition of introducing the teams on-stage was omitted. Also, wonder if there could have been two projection screens instead of one, because it was a little difficult to see the screens from the corners.

On the positives: the quiz was well-conducted, and the organisation was better than last time. Another omission was welcomed (particularly by me!) - that of choosing the "Best Quizzer". The process of doing so never seemed fair or interesting to me, so we were spared all that.

Back to the results: QED were deserving winners with some fine answers, but it was a tight race among the rest of the teams. Many thanks to Landmark, especially the industrious organisers from the Pune store. The Landmark Quiz now moves on to Mumbai for the first ever such quiz there, to be held on the 1st of May.

Postscript: This blog certainly seems to have raised the profile of the word "Interrobang" in the Indian quizzing community. The question has become a frequent visitor in quizzes (especially Pune-related ones), with sightings in two BCQC Open quizzes (this one and that), at KQA's ASKQANCE last year, and now at this Landmark quiz. It is perhaps time to retire the question, because if I see the name Martin Speckter once more at a quiz, I shall scream :-). This has also fueled a great deal of personal interest in Mr. Speckter, for he has become reduced to a single claim to fame in these parts! (read why the name was chosen for this blog.)

Inquizzition - 8 - Quiz this Sunday

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

Jigyasa - General quiz at Symbhav 2009

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 "Jai Ramanand " whenever any question by JR came up on the screen.

Do post your opinions in the comments section.

AFMC Shyam Bhatt Memorial quiz 2009

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.

BCQC January Open report

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 story of the quiz a bit as JR and co , who were doing well upto this stage fell back a bit. Niranjan, Sarat and Vibhendu did very well in this round and made up a lot of ground.

The quiz ended with a Long Visual Connect. It was cracked only by Niranjan , Sarat and Vibhendu.

All in all a long and pleasantly exhausting quiz.

Please do post your opinions in the comments section.

PS: Apologies for the late report. Also I don't have the final scores. Somebody please post them in the comments and I will put the figures into the report.

Quiztronomy 2009 - report

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 were only somewhat blighted in the audio-visual questions by a mix of incorrect and disappearing pictures! The finals saw a mix of participants: a team of Ph.D students, a school team, a team from Lonavala, the usual crop of engineering aspirants, and a suited-booted-lawyer-to-be.

This was my first quiz in the fully-furnished COEP audi with all bells and whistles running, and finally, the college has a comfortable place to hold events in. The organisation was smooth, greased by a large team of volunteers. There was a small solo general quiz during the break between prelims and finals, with winners in four categories (Parents-Teachers, School, Jr. College, and Senior College).

Not that there weren't a few criticisms, largely stemming from some slides being packed dense with text - these could have easily been condensed. But largely, the finals were interesting, and balanced between the demands of a niche topic and the needs of making it appealing. The long connect at the end was quite good as well. A large number of prizes were given away: to schools and to participants (even those who just missed out on qualifying).

The organisers plan to return next year with another edition of this quiz, and it should be well worth looking forward to.

BCQC February 2009 Morning Open Quiz "Gnosolalia" - Report

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 applause.

As for the negatives, Suvajit's curious habit of tailing off into silence while reading out a question was observed. The last round consisted of 2 'speciality topics' per team; there were two sets of topics (randomly decided, I think). One of them had to be doubled (no -ves). The catch was that if unanswered on the direct, the question would pass clockwise or the other way depending on which set it belonged to. Teams felt this could lead to a lot of imbalance in attempts and value for answers. Perhaps the QMs could explain what their thinking was here.

Organisationally, no SNAFUs that I can think of, so a good organisational job done by the quiz masters.

Quiz O Mania '09 at VIT

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 questions. Last years elims were brilliant . This time they could have been much better.
- Quite a lot of sitters/peters.
- Slightly uneven distribution of questions both in number and in quality.(For eg: The language questions were very good whereas the sports questions were all very easy for an open quiz)

Overall the quiz was well organised , conducted in a very competent manner and most importantly a lot of fun .

Do leave your opinions in the comments section.

BCQC Open Quiz Day - February 1st

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