Friday, September 30, 2016

BPHC's Enigma Quiz - Report

Host: BITS Hyderabad
Proctor: Omkar Dhakephalkar
Results:

1st Place
Finals Score: 122.5
Institution: College of Engineering, Pune 
Divij Ghose
Dhanajay Jagtap

2nd Place
Finals Score: 117.5
Institution: Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce
Shantanu G
Shantanou P

3rd - Charles and Pranav: (95) (Modern+PICT)
4th - Anirudh Anil Kumar Arnabh Sengupta: (90) (AFMC)
5th - 
Omkar Joshi and Hithvik Jha: (65) (AFMC+COEP)
6th - Akshay Parale and Omkar Borate: (32.5) (COEP)
7th - Suraj Prabhudesai and Shubhankar Panse: (27.5) (PVG+PICT) 
8th - Pranav Rao and Ashwin Subramanian: (20)

Report - Written by Divij Ghose, CoEP
Tl;dr : A MELA Quiz disguised as a General Quiz. Some great fundaes, some poorly framed questions but all in all an enjoyable quiz and a great effort by the BPHC Quiz Club.
The Quiz: Pune regional qualifier of BPHC’s Enigma Quiz. Pune was not one of the cities in which the quiz was originally supposed to be conducted, but due to some persuasion and effort by the COEP Quiz Club, it was conducted in Pune with one day’s notice.
Prelims: 30 questions. MELA heavy. 4-5 great fundaes. A couple of poorly framed questions (like the question on one rupee notes). A couple of sitters and a couple of questions which I would call trick questions. The tribute question on COEP was appreciated. Considering it was a 30 question set, highest score (16) and cut-off (7.5) were low. Top 8 teams qualified for the finals.
Finals: Largely a MELA quiz, with a considerable amount of military questions and a few general questions here and there. Decent questions in the IR rounds, with a few sitters in each IR round. The AFMC team dominated the first IR, but lost their lead in the second one. Most questions were on things we’ve heard of. I can’t say the same about the themed written round on “Illusions and Paradoxes”, but I can’t complain either (got to know about things like the Ship of Theseus paradox). Themed written rounds are not easy to set, and since they were going for a theme related to Enigma, I’d say they did a good job, even if it was a low scoring round (with the BMCC team being an exception). What I can complain about is the LVC : it single handedly brought down the level of the quiz. The connect was prizes named after people, but I don’t think anyone present in that room knew what John Charles Fields or Joseph Pulitzer look like. A couple of brave teams did go for the connect, but were promptly awarded negative points. While Charles and Floyd made up for it in the next attempt, the AFMC team of Arnabh and Co. were awarded another -5, which made them slide to 4th place. The BMCC team did well throughout, but slid to second place because of an incorrect pounce.
BITS quizzes have always been enjoyable, and this wasn’t an exception. This quiz was described as a “Pretty OK” quiz, but I’m not being too harsh on them because I can only imagine how hard it must be to organize a national quiz with qualifiers which suit each city’s quizzing style.
Note : This quiz was conducted after Chakravyuh, and all of us (at least the COEP guys) were visibly exhausted. This was a very long quiz, but Omkar Dhakephalkar conducted it smoothly enough for us to not complain about how long the quiz is. Props to him for that.

1 comment:

The Quiz Club, BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus said...

Thanks a lot for the review guys. We would surely work upon the content and make sure a more even spread of topics, and LVC thing would be improved upon. You have been great hosts and we are grateful for all the help provided and just throwing in an idea here, would you guys be up for another quiz maybe? Not a national thing, not even Multicity, just two Quiz Clubs, having good times. Ping us up in case you guys are interested. Thanks a lot again. :D

With Love
The Quiz Club
BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus