Thursday, October 14, 2010

Mindspark quizzing - Chakravyuuh Report

Set by Gaurav Keskar, Aadinath Harihar, Mohit Karve with inputs from Amit Patil and Gaurav Mehta
Questions reviewed and moderated by Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale
Theme: General
Date/Venue: 10th October 2010, College of Engineering, Pune:

Format: 35 Question Elims, 54 Question Finals (29 IR + 6 Written + 19 IR Rev)

Results:

1st Place: J Ramanand and B V Harish Kumar (Team E) [Elims: 20 (4*) || Finals: 120]
2nd Place*: Anand Sivasankar and Prasanna Potdar (Team C) [Elims: 25 (2*) ||Finals: 90]
3rd Place: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde (Team F) [Elims: 26 (2*) || Finals: 90]
4th Place: Mayur Srinivasan and Abhishek Padmanabhan (Team D)- IIT Bombay [Elims: 22 (4*) || Finals: 70]
5th Place: Ganesh Hegde and Shivaji Marella (Team A) [Elims: 25 (6*) || Finals: 50]
6th Place: Suraj Menon and Yashovardhan Tamaskar (Team B) [Elims: 23 (4*) || Finals: 50]
(*2nd place decided on Elims scores)

Best College Team (outside the finalists): Akhil Srivatsan and Mukund Verma (IIT Bombay) Additional Credits: Himanshu Panandikar for developing the entire finals on Flash (template provided by Shravan Aras)

Report
When I reached the venue, I was surprised to hear from the slightly hapless registration desk that registrations had closed as they had a large turnout. Though soon it became apparent that all the 500-odd teams that had paid money had not shown up, the actual number of teams to attempt the prelims (297 to be precise) was quite staggering for an open quiz in Pune. Admittedly, most of them were spillovers from colleges taking part in other Mindspark events - still, for a change, it was good to see organisers worried about managing that kind of scale.

The prelims for such an audience was decent - the answers to many a question would have been familiar to them. The elims referred to interesting bits of trivia, but lacked quality in the framing. The same would be true of the finals.

Our team struggled to qualify - in fact, we qualified 2nd last. Only to find out that Messrs. Vinay and Yash Marathe, who had been announced to have just sneaked in, had to leave the stage because the paper from the team from IIT Bombay had been incorrectly scored. We were left teetering on the edge, and it was a pity for Vinay and Yash. But I thought the right thing had been done, even though there was minor egg-on-the-organisers face - with so many teams and people, it's hard to keep the errors to zero, and it was good of the organisers to allow for protests.

The finals never went below a certain threshold of quality, which was good, but quite a few questions had the touch of inexperience in presentation. Hopefully, the young college students behind the quiz will keep getting better. Many of the teams gave good answers, even when they wrong - thus there were many claimants to the Samrat Sir prize for good guesses.

The written round, IMO, was a little unnecessary - there was nothing in the format that merited it. There were a few recriminations too, but quelled by Aadinath's impression of a young Mussolini, keen to enforce order and discipline among the restless masses.

We (team E) made a strong start along with team F, but found ourselves trailing after the 2/3rd mark. Team C had made a strong push by then, challenging the clear leaders, F. However, we found ourselves in a fortunate position soon, and a couple of misses by others saw us surge and open a margin that was comfortable in the end.

For a team that has finished in 2nd place at Chakravyuuh, a record four times, we'll surely take another first place. There was a reasonably good audience turnout for the finals as well, which witnessed a competent 11th edition of Chakravyuuh.

Winners list so far
2001: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2002: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2003: Niranjan Pedanekar and Samrat Sengupta
2004: Gaurav Sabnis and Neeraj Sane
2005: Sudarshan Purohit and Amit Garde
2006: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2007 (Apr): Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2007 (Oct): Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon
2008: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2009: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde
2010: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar

And Gaurav's recounting of the genesis of Chakravyuuh in 2001.

4 comments:

Aditya G said...

297 teams! I think this makes Chakravyuh a quiz with higher attendance than the Landmark quiz in Pune (Yay!).

It should be noted that this was practically the first major open quiz that the kids at COEP did (Me and Khasgi just reviewed the questions and added a few (7 i think)questions to the finals). In that respect it was a very good effort - a decent quiz by any standards.

Thanks to BDFL for the report and the list of past winners.

Arkus Caesar said...

Ah when..o when will the list add:

2xxx : Maniche 666 Mahajan & Arka Bhattacharya

So far, we've only got as far as one not so honourable on stage appearance and one ( from all accounts - not so memorable) Chakravyuh+Abhimanyu 2003 organised to our credit

Dreams are what you live for...it's what sustains me chaque matin when I wake up in distant far flung Ouagadougou

The dream is true, the dream is true?

J Ramanand said...

Arka: yes, do keep the dream alive. Our perhaps we can begin an international version of the quiz, hosted at Ouagadougou?

Arkus Caesar said...

@Ramanand: Sirjee aap agar QM ban ke aane ke liye tayyar then U need only say the word and I will make it happen.. Minor practicalities like possibly requiring the quiz to be in French to better include junta here and tout ca, ca va aller.. Can take care of all that too..hopefully then we will soon have our own international petit edition de Chakravyuh!! ( which will hopefully be won by me :) #couldnt-help-that-im-overcompetitive-kindlyadjustplizzz :D)