Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Chakravyuh 2012 - Report



The Chakravyuh Open Quiz - A part of COEP's MindSpark 2012

Conducted by: Neelima Jha

Attended by ~100 teams

Results:

1st: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav: 120 pts
2nd: Aditya Gadre and Vikram Keskar: 115 pts
3rd: Debanjan Bose and Hari Nair: 60 pts
4th: Vikram Joshi and Abhinav Dasgupta: 40 pts
5th: Ranajeet Soman and Rohan jain: 20 pts
6th: Nikhil and Vishvesh: 5 pts

This year's Chakravyuh happened on a Saturday, a welcome change from last year which meant that a few of us could travel from out-of-town to take part.

The elims were, there is no other way to say this, bad. Ambiguously worded questions and no prior thought into what the expected answer was led to the post-elim period turning into a bargaining contest - teams tried to convince the QM about how their answer was correct as per their interpretation of the question and the QM actually gave in on far too many occasions. One thing that irritated me was that the visuals were run only at the end of the elims - thus giving the teams only a couple of looks at the picture and not much time in case you wanted to spend time on that particular question (which is the biggest advantage of a pen and paper elims as opposed to a ppt elims).

Once we had gotten over BDFL not qualifying (that I have never seen BDFL this happy to not qualify, says something about the elims) - we got onto the finals.

The positive was  that there were only about 5-7 god-awful peters so about 35 odd new /kinda-new questions(a decent figure for a college quiz). Also there were some nice fundas explored.

With respect to content three major issues that really put me off in  the finals were
1. Too many questions simply said "Give Funda" which other than saying "Guess what I am about to ask you" is the worst way to ask a quiz question. Some great fundas were ruined by this lazy framing.
2. Serious problems with the notability of some of the answers. Calling them arbit would be an understatement (eg. 1981 TV movie about a sport that practically NO-ONE watches in India)
3. The theme was worth 70 points (!) with points for individual answers (another 70 points!). So hypothetically, I could be a space nut and win the quiz by simply cracking the theme and answering all the questions correctly and not knowing anything else across the quiz. Not blaming the organizers too much for this due to their inexperience but certainly this is something the QMs should keep in mind for future events.

The same issues about lack of clarity from the elims in expected answers led to several more bargaining sessions.

Another issue in terms of conducting the quiz was that what was written on the slide in terms of rules/ what was expected / half points policy was frequently changed throughout the quiz.

Overall, I would say the quiz was okay at best. There was some decent material and the quiz could have been a lot better by ensuring simple things - like writing out real questions, clarity in points, runnign through the quiz in your head once before actually conducting it etc

In terms of an experience, the quiz was awesome fun, at least for those of us on stage - constant trolling, funny answers, Kunal's fatwas and Ranajeet's rascism - made it all a fun few hours spent.

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
2011: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Yash Marathe
2012: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav

13 comments:

Kunal said...

A couple more irritants:

- The connection in the theme round was really weak, to the extent that 3-4 of the teams had figured it out in the early stages of the theme but didn't go for it until the last clue because they didn't think the answer would be this generic.

- A little more focus on the questions would have really helped, especially in terms of making sure that every question asked had only one answer. If your question consists of listing three elements and asking for a fourth, then the list of four things you are using better be exhaustive. In the question on the Montreal Olympics, one team actually gave an answer (that the hst country won no gold medals) that was correct, but lost out because in the QM's (subjective) judgement, the fact that the Olympic flame was lit by satellite was a more notable funda.

A couple more positives:

- The organisation was generally of a high standard with a reasonably punctual start.

- I really liked the idea of the tear-away answer sheets for the elims; they give every team a copy of the questions to discuss in the inevitable HMYG session, and undoubtedly make correcting easier.

J Ramanand said...

Thanks for the report. (Unfortunately, we had to leave early, using our non-qualification to take care of some other business before scheduled time.)

(Assuming no sour grapes) I wish the prelims could have been better. Some of the pitfalls you mention could have been avoided simply by consulting some of the many BCQC alumni currently in residence out of Pune.

BTW, what was the answer to the weighty (not weightless) space connect?

J Ramanand said...

Can I take credit for introducing the tear-away ans sheet? :) I did that at a couple of times earlier, during some of my BC Open quizzes. (am reduced to salvaging something from Chakravyuuh)

Avaneendra said...

Ramanand you don't ask for credit, you take it ! And answer to connect was space race between America and Russia.

J Ramanand said...

> Ramanand you don't ask for credit, you take it !

I'll remember it the next time I meet a bank for a loan ;-)

BTW, for a first-time QM (or so I assume), the QM was definitely very confident in handling proceedings and not unfazed by unruly finalists ;-) (a big positive).

Yash Marathe said...

Pliss to elaborate on racism and fatwa incidents.

Aditya said...

Ranajeet " This was the first time a black athlete .."
Kunal " RASCIST!"
Ranajeet " I mean coloured athlete..."
Kunal "That is even worse..."
Ranajeet " ...okay... African American.."
Kunal : "FATWA!"

Kunal said...

I have been misquoted by Fidel. Racist Ranajeet was allowed to finish his answers before judgement was passed on him. Also, the Fatwa was for something else, not racism.

Ranajeet said...

Fatwa was for our inability to identify Fermat's Last Theorem; a question which everyone was wishing was their own direct. I answered G.H.Hardy and Ramanujan '1729 taxi number' anecdote.

Avaneendra said...

Fidel's version of fatwa was better !

Aditya said...

Ahh yes, the Fermat question was the one with the Fatwa.

But I still insists we spread my version :)

Rohan said...

Hey I was prodding Ranajeet the answers for coloured, African-American, athletes.

There was also confusion(?) on that question when we asked whether a certain image on the slide was 'blanked out' and it was (mis)heard as 'blacked out'.

//some people just want to watch the world burn, and then there are some who just want to issue fatwas//

J Ramanand said...

> was 'blanked out' and it was (mis)heard as 'blacked out'.

At which point it was also pointed out that 'blanc' is French for white. More evidence of racism! (and not 'rascism' as AG has it - yes, this is spelling Naziism.)