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)