InFestYouUs 2014-15 - Call for registrations

InFest-You-Us is a mastermind style, specialty themes solo quiz. This year, Infest-you-us will happen next year - on the 3rd of January 2015 , 1:30pm onwards at the Boat Club Lawns in the College of Engineering Pune

The format is as follows:
Each person chooses a topic of their interest. The taker would be asked 10 questions. The taker will be awarded 1 point for getting a question right. If missed, the question would go to the "Mob" i.e. everyone else present. The Mob is not allowed to discuss among themselves, and must decide who among them would go for the answer if the answer given by the participant is wrong. If the chosen one is right, the taker loses 1/2 a point. If not, the confident chosen one will get beaten up by the rest of the Mob.

So if you are interested, this is the course of action:
- Fill up this form ( http://bit.ly/1y9FfB7 )and tell us your name and your topics of choice.Please ensure that all fields are filled in - if we can't contact you, your registration does not exist.
- Then we will find people to make questions for your set for one of your topics of preference.
- Then you show up and we all have fun
- The deadline for registration is 17th November 2014 (We need to give enough time to people to set questions for you)

About the topics ...
- If the largely autocratic BCCI-esque IOC (InFest Organizing Committee) do not think your topic is interesting enough, it will be rejected. The topics must necessarily be not boring / done to death.
- Indicative list of topics that will certainly be rejected are World Cup Cricket, World Cup football, Asterix, Tintin, Friends, Douglas Adams, Big bang theory, Oscars etc
- Interesting topics that have featured before in past editions: English Monarchy, World Chess Championship, History of Israel, Monty Python, Cultural references in xkcd, Indian train names, Detectives in fiction, Hindustani Classical music, The War of Kurukshetra, The Discworld series, Indian Women Politicians, Gulzar with Vishal, Islamic conquerors, Indo-Pak wars,
We may also reject your topic if we can't find anyone to set questions for you (So don't ask for something COMPLETELY random )

If you have any queries, mail us at

Chakravyuh 2014 - Report

Set and Conducted by Rohan Danait

Attended by ~100 teams

Format: Written elims of 30 questions. Finals comprising 42 questions on Infinite Rebounds and a 6 question written round on differential scoring

Results:

1st: Anannya Deb & Anirudha sen Gupta: 365 pts
2nd: Aniket Khasgiwale & Aditya Gadre: 300 pts
3rd: Shrirang Raddi & Venkat Srinivasan: 250 pts
4th: Meghashyam Shirodkar & Amit Garde: 215 pts
5th: Debanjan Bose & Vikram Keskar: 185 pts
6th: Shubhankar Gokhale & Arnold D'Souza: 170 pts


An excellent, enjoyable quiz put up by Rohan.

The quiz started with an interesting 30 question written elims  - a throwback to tradition with printed sheets instead of a ppt. There was a surprisingly large range of elim scores with the highest score being 27/30 and the last qualifiers making 18/30

The finals had 2 rounds of 21 questions each on Infinite bounce - using the One-Finite pounce system (recently made popular in Pune circles by BDFL Ramanand) with a +15 on the pounce. The questions were interesting, and well framed (perhaps a bit verbose) and covered a vast range of topics. The effort to avoid peters was evident with 2 seasoned quizzers - Suraj Menon and Ranajeet Soman brought in to moderate the quiz. A few peters got in - but this did not diminish the experience of the quiz by much.

The written round was an airports special - while the questions were nice and interesting - I thought it was a little too specific for a Gen quiz.

To summarise, a number of positives from the quiz. A wide range of questions which were largely original (There were a few peters and some of the questions were on the simpler side for an open quiz, but for this I blame the moderators and not the QM. Kaustubh Bhat will be irked that noble Chakravyuh tradition "at least one finger of god" was not being followed.

Also Rohan conducted the quiz assuredly and was always in control of the proceedings. I also liked that the quiz went along at a leisurely pace, and being on stage was fun as usual with the banter and jokes (which the QM also took part in)

A couple of Negatives on the organization front. First, the registration was chaotic - perhaps next year, there needs to be an exclusive desk for the quiz instead of the universal desk + help desk thing that was there this time. second, most would have prefered to finish the quiz at one shot instead of the hour long break between elims and finals

As for the teams, the two bearded bongs - Anannya and Anirudha - ran away with the quiz right from the start pouncing on question after question and building a 90 point lead over the second placed team - Shrirang and Vcat. Shubhankar and Arnold  had a great showing the written round, but it was a bit too late to properly mount a comeback. In the second half we (Aniket and I) had a good round and cut the Dadas' lead to 65 points and overhauled Shrirang and Vcat for second place.

Congratulations to Anannya (who has perhaps made up for a disappointing performance in the BC Cup final on his last visit to Pune) and Anirudha (stunning debut in Pune quizzing)

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
2013: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde
2014: Anannya Deb and Anirudha Sen Gupta

The Cricket Quiz - Report

The quiz was set and conducted by Arnold D'Souza. It was originally supposed to be IR with all teams in finals but since we had a good turnout it was conducted as a written quiz.

Results
1st - Aniket Khasgiwale and BV Harish Kumar  - 37.5 pts
2nd - Ranajeet Soman and Samrat Sengupta - 23 pts

Report :

The quiz had 46 questions plus two other rounds. The first round was a doppelgangers round where celebrities from non-cricketing fields were shown and we had to guess the cricketer they resembled. It was a nice non-serious start to the quiz (the Nathan Bracken - Amelie Mauresmo part especially).

There were two sets of 22 and 24 questions respectively with a healthy share of tough questions. The questions were well framed, however, some of the answers weren't 'workoutable' at all. There were a few record/statistics based questions which seem unavoidable in a cricket quiz. Even though the quiz was tough, the questions were not arbit (barring a couple). There was a heavy English county bias and a lot of questions from the late 19th/early 20th century. Indian domestic cricket felt slightly left out I am sure.

The third round was a bar graph representation of the runs scored over a batsman's career. This was the most enjoyable round of the quiz. The quizmaster's choice of batsmen for this round was excellent.

As themed quizzes go, this was a good quiz and a very nice debut by Arnold.

Questions are here.

July College Quiz - Report

The quiz was set and conducted by Vibhav Bhave who will be fleeing leaving the country soon. The quiz had a 25 question elims and finals with two 15 question IRs and 2 written rounds including an intensely confusing "auction round".  The finals had a 6 + 3 draft system. Following are the results :

1st : Team 2 :- Rohan Danait, Ranajeet Soman + Sampooran Singh (not Gulzar) - 179 points
2nd : Team 1:- Aniketh Rallabandhi, Daipayan Roy + Dhananjay Jagtap - 162 points
3rd : Team 5 :- Omkar Dhakhephalkar, Pranav Pawar + Saikat Sarkar - 146 points

Other finalists : Team 3 :- Alok Kulkarni, Rohit Sahasrabuddhe + Kshitij Jyoti
Team 6 :- Kinshuk, Arundhati Kulkarni + Aman Shaikh
Team 4 :- Anurag Gangras, Anway Karmarkar + Divij Ghose

Report :

We had a very good turnout of 22 teams considering the recent times. The elims were of a good quality for a college quiz with a lot of teams making it into double digits. There were no arbit questions and a couple of very good ones. The cut-off for the top 6 was 15/30.

It was great to see new faces making it to the top 6 pushing a couple of seasoned teams in the drafts.
The finals had a 'double-dip' pounce with one wrong answer on the pounce fetching a -10 and the second one barring the team from pouncing in that IR round. Team 2 led from the first question with Team 1 and 5 following not very far away.

The second round was the auction round which caused disparity between the scores of the top 3 teams and the rest. There were 6 topics consisting of 3 one lined questions on each topic. A team could bid for a maximum of 3 and a minimum of 1 category from the points they score in the first IR round. I will spare you the intimate details of the scoring since trying to remember them is making my head spin. Team 2 pulled away with a 40 point lead in this round since Rohan Danait seemed to have understood the scoring system perfectly.

The third round was much easier to understand. It was another written round with stuff blanked out from comic strips. A wider variety of comics apart from Asterix and Scrooge McDuck could have easily been managed considering the amount of webcomics floating around.

The last round was another 15 question IR where Team 1 did really well drawing dangerously close to first place. However, Team 2 kept scoring consistently on the bounce and the pounce staying just out of reach.

The quiz was a decent quality considering the Pune college quizzing scene isn't very strong. However some questions would have definitely been better off in a school quiz (What is the capital of 'Slovakia' and 'Who started the currency 'rupee' in India' being examples). There was brevity in a lot of the finals questions which could have been framed better. A few questions like the WTC headquarters were excellent.
A college quiz once a year is a not a bad tradition to set.

July quizzes - a College quiz and an Open Cricket Quiz

The BCQC is organising two open quizzes in July. Details:

Date: 27 July 2014 (Sunday)
Venue: Academic Complex., COEP, Pune (next to the BC). Given the venue, we have to declare a dress code: no shorts, as COEP has become finicky about not allowing people wearing shorts in the Complex.

Quiz 1: College Quiz

Set & hosted by: Vibhav Bhave

When: 10:30 am to 1:00 pm 

Theme: General

Format: written prelims, followed by finals

Registration: free, open to college students (cross-college teams allowed)

Teams: teams of two members each

Certificates for all the finalists

Quiz 2: The July Open

Set & hosted by: Arnold D'Souza

When: 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm 

Theme: Cricket

Format: written prelims, followed by finals

Registration: free, open to all

Teams: teams of two members each 

Certificates for college finalists, top college team

Join the FB event page here.

June Open Quizzes - Results

When: 15 June 2014 at COEP

Quiz 1: Flags of the World
Set and Conducted by Kunal S
Format: 25 questions; random pairing of teams for some participants

Results
Joint 1st: Saikat Sarkar+Kshitij Jyoti & Samrat Sengupta+Suyash Thite (16.5)
Joint 2nd: Aniket Dass+Rujul Godse, Anmol Dhawan+Ashwin Mahesh, Omkar Dhakephalkar+Ranajeet Soman (16)


Report: Nice set of questions with some very interesting facts, ending with an other-worldly twist.
Questions here.

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Quiz 2: "Attaa tu MELAS"
Set and Conducted by Ranajeet Soman
Flavour: Music, Entertainment, Language, Arts, Sports
Format: 25 qns written prelims, 2 IR + 1 written round in the final on '(not naughty) nautical phrases (which had nothing to do with Notting Hill)', draft picks

1st: E: Samrat Sengupta, Tadatmya Vaishnav, Omkar Yarguddi (85)
2nd: D: Omkar Dhakephalkar, Pranav Pawar, Anmol Dhawan (70)
3rd: F: Rohan Danait, Vibhav Bhave, Alok Kulkarni (60)
Other finalists: (A) Kunal S+Debanjan Bose+Sumit (55), (C) Sahil Gupta+Payas Awadhutkar+Karan Gunjal (45), (B) Saikat Sarkar+Kshitij Jyoti+Ashwin Mahesh (5)

Prelims cut-off: 6 (1 star) for the top 6, 4.5 for the draft picks

Report: The only disappointment of the quiz was, contrary to what was displayed on the quiz's publicity material, there was no question on a certain Ajay Singh Deol (there was a question on "Deool", though). A tough prelims for the participants, with only one team getting into double figures (Kunal & Debo, who veered to the other extreme of scariness scoring 17, whereas the 2nd highest team had 9). In the final, Team D looked comfortable in the first 2 rounds, but went off the pace in the last. The exact opposite happened to Team E, resulting in their win.

Some very interesting questions - my favourites being the ones on the Emmy Awards, the one about Boris Becker, and "the Kiss".

What could have been better? some of the answer explanations.

Questions: Prelims

Got feedback? Use the comment form.

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July quizzes:
- Cricket Open by Arnold D'Souza
- College General Quiz by Vibhav Bhave
- World Cup Quiz by Anannya Deb & Aditya Gadre

Schedule will be put up on our calendar and our FB group

June Open Quizzes

The BCQC is organising two open quizzes in June. Details:

Date: 15 June 2014 (Sunday)
Venue: Seminar Hall, Academic Complex., COEP, Pune (next to the BC). For the first ever time in BCQC history, we have to declare a dress code(!): full-length trousers for guys, as COEP has become finicky about not allowing people wearing shorts in the Complex.

Quiz 1: "Flags of the World"

Set & hosted by: Kunal Sawardekar

When: 2:15 pm to 3:15 pm 

Theme: um, flags of the world

Format: written, for all teams

Registration: free, open to all

Teams: teams of two members each, but we're going to experiment this time by randomly pairing together all participants (gives you a chance to team up with someone new)

Certificates for the top three college participants

Quiz 2: "The June Open"

Set & hosted by: Ranajeet Soman

When: 3:30 pm to 5:45 pm 

Theme: Music, Entertainment, Literature, Arts, Sports (i.e. a Lt. General Quiz)

Format: written prelims, followed by final for 6 teams

Draft Picks: participants from the best three college teams not to qualify will join the top 6 teams 

Registration: free, open to all

Teams: teams of two members each (no random pairing here)

Certificates for members of the top three college teams

Join the FB event page here.

World Quizzing Championships (Pune)

What: World Quizzing Championships, a written solo competition conducted by the IQA and held simultaneously around the world.

When: 7 June, 2012 (Saturday), 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm

Where in Pune: AFMC, Wanowrie (exact venue to be updated)

Proctor: Dr. Anurakshat Gupta, anurakshat@rediffmail.com

Registration: free, Rs. 100/- charge; suggest you use this FB event page to tell us if you are attending, so that the organisers know how many answer sheets to get.

This will be preceded by an informal session: 2 pm till 3:30 pm, to be conducted by Krishnamurthi Josyula and Debanjan Bose. (
contact: . Prizes for the top 2 and best college quizzer.


Venue for both events: New Lecture Hall, AFMC, Pune

Abhimanyu 2013 - Results

"Abhimanyu" is the annual solo contest for COEP's quizzers. This began with a preliminary round held last year, from which 6 quizzers qualified. The final was delayed for several months and was finally held in May 2014. The finalists took part in a common written general round, which was followed by a Mastermind-style set of specialities (picked in advance).

The General round was set by Ramanand, while the 6 specialities were set by the previous Abhimanyu winner, Gautam Akiwate.

Results:

Winner: Payas Awadhutkar (4 + 10), topic: Border-Gavaskar Trophy
2nd: Vibhav Bhave (7+4.5), topic: Downton Abbey
3rd: Rujul Godse (4.5+6), topic: Current Affairs
4th: Rohan Danait (6+2), topic: Quentin Tarantino
5th: Chinmay Tadwalkar, topic: Lok Sabha elections
6th: Omkar Yarguddi, topic: Scrubs Season II

Payas had a sensationally perfect 2nd round to clinch the title.

List of winners so far
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
2010 - Nischay Mhatre - The History of Computing
2011 - Mohit Karve - Freaks and Geeks
2012 - Gautam Akiwate - Presidents of India
2013 - Payas Awadhutkar - Border-Gavaskar Trophy

(can someone help fill in the winner of 2011, and give the winning topics in 2011 and 2012?)

KQA Mindsweep 2014 - Results

City results from the KQA Mindsweep written quiz (scores reported as follows: best 8 sections, all 10 sections):

1. Rahul Kottalgi (76, 90)
2. Aditya Gadre (53, 59)
3. Suraj Menon (52, 58)
4. Samrat Sengupta (38, 42)
5. Gaurav Sabnis (32, 37)

13 people attempted the quiz in Pune.

BCQC May Open 2014 - Report

Set and Conducted by Gaurav Sabnis

Flavour: General

Format: Written elims of 35 questions + Finals of 48 questions

Results:
1st: Suraj Menon, Aditya Gadre and Divij Ghose
2nd: Samrat Sengupta, Navin Sharma and Srisha Haridas
3rd: Venkat S, Arnold D'Souza, Vibhav Bhave
Other finalists: Kunal Sawardekar, Gokul, Supreeth Ravish ;  J Ramanand, Samridh Kapur, Rohan Danait;  Avinash Mudaliar, Rahul Suhas Kottalgi, Utsab Saha

The quiz started with an interesting "old fashioned" pen and paper elims with a wide range of scores - the top scorers had 25/ 35 while the 9th team had 12/ 25

The finals had 48 questions - 42 general questions with 6 questions on a Dissertations 

The finals were light and interested, peppered of course with some stuff which none of us had a clue about, but overall , a very good quiz by Gaurav  who made it look like he's almost not been out of mainstream Indian quizzing for 8 years. 

Just a few peters, very interesting fundaes, very simply framed, fun questions - It certainly was a treat for us. 

PS: Please post your feedback in the comments. 

PPS: I have forgotten some of the people who took part in the finals. Please tell me names asap - I'll edit  post.

The BC Cup 2014 - Report

Set by Aniket Khasgiwale, Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. Then a 60 question quarter final to determine the top 4 i.e. the semi finalists. A 40 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 28 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner.

Report: 
The quiz started with a 30 qn elims set - the elim seemed much simpler this year and we had a lot of people crossing double digits. Defending Champion Ramkey topped the elims with a phenomenal 21 pts. Ramanand cleared the elims but had to leave so he gave up his spot. The Cut off was 13.5 - with Venkatraghavan (aka Venky) beating Kaushik Koley in a tiebreaker to enter the Quarter finals.

The Quarter Finals:

The Quarter finalists were :
Shrirang Raddi, Ramkey, Suraj Menon, Shubhankar Gokhale, Suvajit Chakraborty, Prithwish Datta, Venky and Anannya Deb 

The Quarters were very even till the first half with most people on 3 -4 points. Suraj answered practically every cricket question and topped the QF with 8 points. Anannya had a good second half and ended on 7 points to tie with Shubhankar, Shrirang and Prithwish. Last year's finalists Ramkey and Venky would have both been disappointed with their performances and crashed out with 3 and 4 pts respectively. 

We needed a tie breaker as 4 people were tied and 3 spots were open. At the end of a 3 question tie breaker Shrirang was eliminated and Anannya, Shubhankar and Prithwish were through to the semis 

The Semi-Final
Anannya was in vintage form throughout the semi and scored 8 points to win comfortably. Shubhankar missed a few questions on his pet topic of cycling and finished on 3 points. Suraj lost some of his form from the Quarters and finished on 2 points. Just as we seemed to be headed for a tiebreaker for the second final spot - Prithwish scored a point on the second last question to finish on 4 points and book his place in the final.

The Finals 
Prithwish won the toss and went first. In his first home half he scored 1 goal and and followed this up by scoring an away goal in Anannya's first home half. The second half for Prithwish turned out to be tougher than the first and no-one scored any goals. Anannya went into his second home half trailing 2-0 on aggregate and 1-0 in his home leg, thus needing 3 goals to win. Anannya lost the plot a bit as Prithwish scored another away goal and more or less sealed his victory. Anannya then needing to score all his last 4 attempts - missed and could not make it a third triumph at the BC Cup

BC Cup Champion 2014 : Prithwish Datta
Runner Up : Anannya Deb 

As for the review of the quiz, I request those who attended to share their feedback in the comments section. 

BC Cup 2014 - Announcement

This is the BCQC's annual solo, open quiz to crown the Best Sports Quizzer. This is the sixth edition. ( Reports for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 editions). 

Format:   

First, a 30 question elim determines 8 qualifiers (i.e. Quarter finalists). These 8 people take part in a 60 question quarter final. The top four go through to the semi final. The semi-final will consist of 36 questions. The top two then go to the final. The scoring is reset to zero after every round.

The finalists will then face off one-on one for a 28 question final. The match consists of a home leg and an away leg. Home leg essentially means you get direct questions. If one gets a direct question wrong which the opponent answers, it counts as an away goal and is used for tie breakers (as per UEFA rules ).

So that's a total of 154 questions + tie breakers.

Prizes: 

Cash prizes for the top 8 finishers (i.e. everyone who qualifies from the elim)

1st place: Rs 1500
2nd place: Rs 1000
3rd and 4th places: Rs 500 each
5th, 6th, 7th and 8th places: Rs 250 each

Administrivia  

QMs: Yash Marathe, Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
Theme: Sports
Teams: Individual
Restrictions: (or the lack of one) Open quiz. Everyone is welcome

When? 12:45 pm, Saturday, 10th May, 2014
Where? The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune

Entry Fees? What is that?
Registration: Please register so that it helps us understand how many sheets need to be printed. We will get 5-10 extra sheets - but if you are sure of coming, please register. You can register by joining the facebook event page OR by filing this form 

If you have any queries, please write in to us at  

April Open Quizzes 2014 - Results

Quiz 1: 

Written General Quiz
Set and Conducted by Aditya Gadre

1st: Kunal Sawardekar and Aniket Khasgiwale - 29.5 /40
2nd: Arnold D'Souza and Suraj Prabhu - 20/40

Quiz 2:

The Malik Pritam Quiz
Flavour: MELA
Set by: Aniket Khasgiwale, Govind Grewal, Abhinav Dasgupta, Nikhil Sonde and Anannya Deb
Conducted by: Aniket Khasgiwale

Results:
1st: Suraj Menon, Dvaipayan and Anurag: 180 pts
2nd: Avaneendra, Shivam and Alok: 125 pts
3rd: Kunal Sawardekar, Ajay Ragde and Sanidhi Ragde: 115 pts
4th: Suraj Prabhu, Omkar D and Omkar P: 110 pts
5th: Samridh Kapur and Arnold D'Souza: 100 pts
6th: Venkat S, Maitreyi Gupta and Kapeesh Saraf: 35 pts

Since there were only 17 people who showed up, we decided to randomise teams and have everyone in the final. The intended elims were run as 3 written rounds

Four teams were within 5 pts of each other at the half-way mark, following which Suraj Menon and team pulled away to win quite comfortably. 4 teams were in contention for 2nd and 3rd spots till the last 2 questions - with Kunal and team getting the second last question to beat Suraj Prabhu and the Omkars while Shivam and Alok got the last question to cement 2nd place.

BCQC Open Quiz - April 2014

2014 Norwegian Open solo written quiz

The 2014 Norwegian Open solo written quiz will be held on Apr 5 2014 at 3pm. The venue will be Boat Club as usual. Please register at this link (registration mandatory). To be proctored by Avaneendra Bhargav.

Prizes:
1st Prize - LM Vouchers worth 300
2nd Prize - LM Vouchers worth 200

Quiztronomy - The Annual Astronomy flavoured quiz presented by the COEP Astronomy club.

Quiztronomy - The Annual Astronomy flavoured quiz presented by the COEP Astronomy club.
When - March 30, 2014 (Sunday)
Where - College of Engineering Pune.
Teams of 2
*OPEN TO ALL* (The poster says students only, but this is a correction)
Registration charges - INR 50 per team
For registrations contact:
Sarang - +91 90284 72187

More details here.

BCQC March Open Quizzes 2014 - Report

Quiz 1: Written History Quiz 

Set by Vikram Joshi
Proctored by Aditya Gadre
Format: 100 questions to be answered in 60 minutes

A total of 30 people took the quiz in Pune. Here are the results (Only Top 5 scores). Full results from all centres will be published soon

1st: Kunal Sawardekar : 55 pts
2nd: Suraj Menon 43.5 pts
3rd: Anannya Deb: 40.5 pts
4th: Anurakshat Gupta: 38.5
5th: Aniket Khasgiwale: 24.5

Quiz 2: Extra! Extra! - The Typical Chennai Quiz 

Set and Conducted by Kunal Sawardekar
Format: 22 question written quiz
Flavour: Current events and news

Results:
1st: Anannya Deb and Aniket Khasgiwale : 13 pts
2nd: J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar: 12 pts

Quiz 3: Questionable Intelligence

Set and Conducted by J Ramanand
Flavour: General
Format: Written prelims. 8 teams in the final. A total of 39 questions in the final across 4 rounds and one Visual connect

Results:
1st: Kunal Sawardekar and Anannya Deb: 185 pts
2nd: Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale: 115 pts
3rd: BV Harish Kumar and Navya: 110 pts
Jt 4th: Srisha Haridas and Utsab Saha: 100 pts
Jt 4th: Aniketh Rallabhandi and Vibhav Bhave: 100 pts
6th: Suraj Menon and Maitreyi Gupta: 50 pts
7th: Samridh Kapur and Nirmoh B: 20 pts
8th: Suraj Prabhu and Mustafa Abbas: 10 pts

Report:

The quiz began with an "old school" pen and paper elims on a printed sheet which certainly helped the QM to get the elims done in a short time. The elims cut off was 10/26 while the toppers got 16/26

The finals started with a short written round on Puneri tropes - such as Puneri Patya, Hou de Kharcha and Political Hoardings - which gave everyone some points and some laughs.

The first round of 10 IR questions with JR's now-standard "One-Finite" pounce variation (You can pounce as many times as you like, but once you get a pounce wrong, no more pounces for you in the round) was fairly low scoring with no team crossing 30 pts at the end of the round.

The second round involved picking quirky topics for other teams in a unsymmetrical order ('cause BDFL said so!). Topics ranged from Indian documentaries to Karl Marx to Australian Arts. This round had an added feature of a normal pounce on +15/-5 scoring. This round too was fairly low scoring.

Team C (Kunal and Anannya) then cracked the visual theme on the very first clue and surged into the lead which they would keep for the rest of the quiz.

The second and third places were still up for grabs with Aniketh and Vibhav chugging along quite nicely and Harish and Navya putting in a briliiant performance.

At the end of the 2nd IR round and the 2nd Topics round, Kunal and Anannya had pulled away from the rest and won the quiz comfortably. Aniketh and Vibhav seemed to just slow down enough for us (Aniket and Aditya) as well as Harish & Navya to go past and take the 2nd and 3rd places. Srisha and Utsab performed extremely well in the last round to take a very commendable 4th place.

Overall the quiz, not surprisingly at all, was excellent. Great questions, innovative rounds and exemplary audience involvement from JR.

A special mention of Navya who (after becoming the youngest ever participant in a BC Open Quiz) now becames the youngest ever finalist in an Open quiz in Pune

Announcement: BCQC March Open Quizzes 2014

First, it was just one quiz. Then it became two. Now it's three! (we decided to get this announcement out before it became a pile-up on the quizzing highway).

Administrivia

Date 16 Mar, 2014 (Sunday)
Venue Room 101, Academic Complex, COEP (this is next to the Boat Club) (see on Google Map)
Eligibility Open to all, no registration fees
Prizes sponsored by Landmark, Pune
Contact Avaneendra (90110 40388); Ramanand (9764258560)

The Quizzes

1: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm - "100 years, 100 questions" - Vikram Joshi - written, solo
2: 2:00 pm to 3:15 pm - "TCQ" - Kunal Sawardekar - written, teams of 2
3: 3:15 pm to 6:30 pm - "Questionable Intelligence" - J. Ramanand - written prelims+8 team finals, teams of 2

(we will make every attempt to stick to the timings)

100 questions on the 100 years since World War I

Set by Vikram Joshi, Proctored by Aditya Gadre.
Format: 1 hour written quiz; solo quiz
Flavour: General
Registration: required (fill this form)
Timings: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm

TCQ Written

A written quiz on really current current events and an homage to the very recently departed, decommissioned and discontinued.
Set and Conducted by Kunal Sawardekar
Format: written quiz; teams of two
Flavour: Questions on entities in the recent news
Registration: on the spot
Timings: 2:00 pm to 3:15 pm
Prizes: top two teams

Questionable Intelligence

Set and Conducted by J. Ramanand
Format: written prelims for teams of two; stage finals for 8 teams (of which 2 will be college teams; a third college team will be 'drafted' in); trivia crossword for the audience during the finals
Flavour: General
Registration: prior registration encouraged (fill this form); 26 teams have registered so far
Timings: 3:15 pm to 6:30
Prizes: all 8 finalists

Feb Open Quiz - Reports

Many thanks to Extentia (venue partner) and Landmark (prizes sponsor).

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"The World is Awesome"
Flavour: Geography
Set & Conducted by Kunal Sawardekar
Format: 30 questions written quiz

Results
1st: Shrirang Raddi & Arnold D'Souza (24)
2nd: Aditya Gadre & Samrat Sengupta (21.5)

Report
A nice quiz on what is still a niche topic for many. A conscious attempt was made by the QM to make the questions accessible through clues and references (some of which were lost on some of us!)

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'Garbology' - Feb Open Quiz
Flavour: Military aviation, Maratha history, scandals old and new, turnarounds in sports and politics, stuff you can buy at kirana shops
Set & Conducted by Shrirang Raddi
Format: 17 qn prelims, 41 qn finals

Results
1st: Harish Kumar, J. Ramanand (team 6 - 23)
2nd: Raghu, Mayank, Venkat (team 5 - 18)
3rd: Kunal S, Aditya Gadre (team 3 -16)
Other finalists: Samrat S + Ajay R (team 1 - 13), Avaneendra+Deepak Mohoni+ (team 2 - 5), Aditya Joshi + Naval Malpani (team 4 - 3)

Report
A highly unusual quiz, both in content and presentation - definitely not something people here are used to. "Out of the quizzing zeitgist" is how Kunal described it. One of the comebacks hinted at in the opening slide was that of the QM himself, who is returning to Pune quizzes after a while. This was his first BC Open as well, with the Opens having begun since his previous quizzing stint.

Most of the questions were interesting, but some could have been framed/presented better. The topics were eclectic and relatively unexplored, but the older folks were at a distinct advantage.

We had a relatively low turnout, partly due to the fact that there were some college quizzes at the same time.

2013 Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz at AFMC, Pune - Report

2013 Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz, AFMC, Pune
14th Feb, 2014
Set and Conducted by Chandrakant Nair
Flavour: General

Format: Written elims of 37 questions. Finals (3 written rounds, 2*20 questions on Bounce+Pounce)

Results:
1st - Vikram Joshi and Meghashyam Shirodkar - 340 points
2nd - Aditya Gadre and Shubhankar Gokhale - 335 points
3rd - Hrishi Varma and Justin Thomas - 325 points

The other finalists (in no particular order)

Gopal Kidao and Sachin Deshpande
Navin Rajaram and Venkatesh Srinivasan
Ramanand JN and Shrirang Raddi
Balakrishnan Satyam and Rahul Kottalgi
Debanjan Bose and Suraj Prabhu
Aniketh Rallabhandi and Vibhav Bhave
Aryapriya Ganguly and Avinash Mudaliar
Wg Cdr Anurakshat Gupta and Maj Safal Muhammad

Report

The Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz is, by our estimation, the oldest running quiz in Pune. This edition of the quiz, interestingly, had a mix of several newcomers to the quiz (from many parts of the country) and several old-returners (who took part in editions as far back as two decades ago.) And then there were some of the usual suspects.

Chandrakant Nair, an alumnus of AFMC, is the Amit Trivedi of Indian quizmasters: one has always been astonished by the depth, the breadth, and prolificity of his quizzes that does not sacrifice quality. This edition was yet another instance of his excellent work.

There were eleven fine teams on stage, whose collective achievements were both answering these excellent questions and surviving without grievous injury, a tiger-trap of a stage at the Dhanwantari Auditorium! (the quiz returned to that august setting after a few years of being sidelined to a classroom).

I particularly enjoyed the prelims (perhaps because my team did well at it) - the 'pitch' was true and one could trust the 'bounce' in terms of the clues offered. The finals had some terrific questions, but since we had begun late, I found myself feeling impatient towards the end (it didn't help that I had to be somewhere else pretty soon.) Overall, I though this year's final was much more interesting and generally accessible compared to 2013.

Great answering by the winners, who kept their calm, and to the runners-up, who mounted a rousing challenge in the last round to give the winners a little bit of a scare, not to mention the scorer.

Special mention of the scorer, who needs to be given a quizzing medal of some sort, just to keep up - singlehandedly - with the scores of 11 teams, a couple of whom were getting increasingly restive, and lots of pounces and negatives flying around. Also a nod to the college team of Aniketh and Vibhav who had a great preliminary round and some good final answers.

Some suggestions/cribs:

1. No 10-11 teams please. I find 8 teams a stretch as well, but 11 was the height (the breadth?). Too much of a pounce-fest for my liking, and found it hard to listen to teams making interesting guesses.
2. The Friday scheduling was harsh on many local quizzers who could not make it, and missed out on a good quiz (and the quiz missed out on them). Also resulted in a negligible audience.
3. ~7 hours of quizzing (inclusive of just sitting around) is avoidable - shorter prelims/finals with more breathing space between questions would have been appreciated by me. Also, I don't get a chance to 'savour' the questions, because there is this mad rush to speed-read the question, to try and get the pounce in.
4. The middle round's secret theme was a little too obscure, IMO, and definitely not very 'crack-able' with just the visual hint and not having a chance to look at the 'puzzle' more carefully when it is in progress.
5. The last round had too much at stake - almost as much as the 2 passing rounds.

Finally, my partner Shrirang returned to AFMC and Shyam Bhatt after a couple of decades - this is a quiz where he has never won despite several close finishes (an unfulfilled ambition this time as well!). But the QM's nod to COEP in the prelims was much appreciated, especially as Shrirang mentioned to me, the seeds of the COEP Saturday Quiz Club, the precursor to what is the BCQC were sown in AFMC. Read more here.

2013 InFest - Day 2 - Report

Apologies for the late report. Day 1 report is here.

In contrast to Day 1, Day 2 of the 2013-14 BC InFest had more of the traditional session-like quizzes. By the time the day ended, we had about 25-30 participants. Fortunately, we ran out of time and saved ourselves the ent-al torture of an Ent quiz by this blogger. (Meanwhile, the unasked questions are growing alarmingly monstrous in their little pods, waiting patiently for that one day when they will be unleashed on a...)

But to hairy adventures first: the day began with a quiz on facial hair by Oboneendro and Devanjan. It was only on the arrival of Anannya Deb that this hirsute pursuit gained its core audience. We broke for a not-so leisurely lunch to return and find that the real BCQC.orgy was in progress: an exam for some people for something. That began a pattern of oscillation between our regular spot and the New BC Grassy Knoll Annexe.

The first post-lunch engagement was time for some morbid curiosity - "Quizz Macabra" was an excellent quiz on the subject of death; set by Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale and conducted by the former, the questions were not mourned by anyone.

Aditya Gadre then took the stage for his innovative 'bcqc.orgy/history' quiz which had themes based on six BC quizzers (Niranjan, Anand Sivashankar, Gaurav Sabnis, Abhishek Nagaraj, Avaneendra, and Kunal Sawardekar) from BCQC history. The scoring system also involved choices of cards (Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Fail), and the resulting "eh, what, what?" was an excellent example of BC convolutedness. The questions were interesting, and punctuated by VCat's unfailing cry of "I know this!" on hearing the first word of the question, only to be proved otherwise on hearing the first word of the answer.

The day ended with our last autobiographical quiz, this time by Anannya Deb. The journey through music, places, people, and yes, football, was an enlightening one, and fitting way to close this edition of BC InFest.

We may see you next year - who really knows?

February Open Quizzes 2014

On Saturday, 22 February 2014 we conduct two Open Quizzes.

Quiz I - The World is Awesome - Written Quiz

Time: 2:30 pm
Flavour: Geography, World
QM: Kunal Sawardekar
Teams of 2
Written Quiz - Please bring writing instrument(s)

Quiz 2 - Open Quiz by Shrirang Raddi

Time: 3:30 pm
Flavour: A mishmash of military aviation, Maratha history, scandals old and new, turnarounds in sports and politics, stuff you can buy at kirana shops and many other things besides
QM: Shrirang Raddi
Teams of 2
Written Elims followed by Stage Finals

Venue
Extentia Information Technology,
Nilanjali Housing Colony,
Kalyani Nagar,
Pune



2013 InFest - Day 1 - Report

Day 1 of BC Infest began with a Saraswati Vandana and the traditional lighting of the lamp. OK, not really, but some bulbs did turn themselves on. As appropriate for an occasional footballer, Samrat gently kicked off proceedings by introducing the BC Infest, and by reading out questions in our newly introduced Autobiographical quiz segment. These featured some interesting questions by Abhishek Nagaraj, Hirak Parikh, Navin Sharma, and Samrat sir himself. Borderline narcissism apart, this gave a great glimpse into the lives of some of these quizzers. We also had a previously-unscheduled set by VCat in which we learned of the many things visible from the Trans-Siberian railway.

This was followed by the QI-style quiz by Aniket: there were no panels, but there was lots of klaxon-ing, lots of bantering, and lots of negatives. The quiz, based on the popular British show QI, had questions with lots of obvious-answers-that-were-wrong, and some obvious-answers-that-were-right-but-left-unanswered-for-fear-of-klaxon.

In a great achievement of self-control, most quizzers returned after the lunch break reasonably on time, to begin this year's InFestYouUs. In all, we had 25 participants with 25 diverse and largely eclectic topics, and a well-behaved mob. The best performances of the day were recorded by Vikram Joshi (9-0, English Monarchy), Rohan Danait (8-1, Iron Maiden), and Sahil Gupta (8-2, Indian Corporates), though comparisons are perhaps not recommended given the wide variety of question formats and difficulty levels.

Going by audience reactions, the most sought after topic session was "NSFW", chosen by Suraj Prabhu and set by Yasho Tamaskar, and the most hilarious one was (this will be a surprise) "Indo-Pak Wars", set by Samrat for Kunal Sawardekar.

With a quick round up of some more QI questions by Aniket, we went our separate ways, to resume the following Sunday with Day 2. BTW, in all, we had about 30-35 attendees. Thanks to everyone who attended, and to those who set questions. See you next week.