Quiz-ire cat Report (IISER)

Floyd and Charles belled the Quiz-ire cat with Dhake and Pranav Pawar(PP) on 2nd, Rahul Mohanty and me(Gokul) on 3rd. 

The prelims were easy and approachable, it was easier to compare scores by how much one missed rather than how much one got. There were 20 questions, with some questions being more equal than the others (read: multiple parts and points). There was an obligatory question with an answer as Caravan referencing the IISER event Karavan where the quiz was held. Top 6 teams qualified for the finals, with possibly the highest cut-offs for any quiz.

Apart the above 3 teams, we had Divij+? from COEP, Rohini+Harshad from IISER and an AFMC team. 

Finals had 2 Long connects(which was 1 too many IMO!) sandwiched between 2 infinite bounce rounds with pounce. The ranks remained steady (with the top 3 teams staying on top) barring a few surges due to a freakish long connect scoring. 

PROS:

Overall, excellent content and hosting. Clearly, the setters had put in a fair amount of work. Enjoyed the questions. There was a decent audience presence who got to answer the few questions which went unanswered.

CONS:

There was a big gap between elims(11-12) and finals(4-6) with both having 1/2 hour delays. Organisers had a time-crunch due to external factors and 1 round was skipped. (But we got to see it later, while we waited for the prizes)

Also, rules and scoring for 2 rounds were very skewed. 

For instance,

 the penultimate round had +100/-0 for a 10 slide long connect on which 2 teams got lucky on the first try and hence went on to win the quiz; there was not enough scope for other teams to catch up after this. 

 In contrast, there was also an audio round with written individual hints(direct qs) and an overall theme which was overly complicated by differential scoring and negative points. This ended up as the least scoring round for the teams, despite having about 13 parts to answer.

 

--Results

1: Charles, Pranav Joshi 

2: Omkar Dhakephalkar, Pranav Pawar

3: Gokul Panigrahi, Rahul Mohanty 

4: COEP

5: AFMC

6: IISER