Thursday, September 21, 2017

Reports on the Quizzes at Credenz 2017: the PICT Fest



Date: 16-09-2017
Quiz: Credenz BizTech Quiz
Venue: Pune Institute of Computer Technology, Pune
Organized by/Fest: Credenz 2017
QM(s): Ritwik Manatkar

Results:
1. Arnabh Sengupta and Anirudh Anilkumar (AFMC)
2. Veushabh Gudade and Karan Agarwal (COEP)
3. Sameer and Yash (PICT)

The Quiz started off with just a delay of around 20 minutes with a full house auditorium of about 30-35 teams. It is notable that there was no hassle in the registrations and other pre-quiz rituals and a fair share of the crowd was from the host college.

The elims was a nice set of 20 questions with a few two-part questions and star marked ones that touched all the corners of all the Biz-Tech dome. All the answers were familiar to the layman, thus creating multiple guesses and helping the non-quizzing junta to think upon the context. Very appreciable. Advertisements, simple questions, one-liners, company trivia, etc all were covered and the cut-off was around 7.

Top six teams made it to the finals: 3 from PICT, 2 from AFMC and 1 from COEP. 5 rounds of various formats made the finals playful and engaging. The two IRs were regarding various companies, their histories, business terminologies etc. Good framing made answers workable. There was a short and quick written round of 10 questions on "Honest Company Taglines" in which all teams scored decent points.
Another round was a pounce-only round. Questions were divided in two parts. If you answer in the 1st part then the stakes are +10/-10 and if attempted in the next slide with more hints, then they were +5/-5. This round was a bit easy though the teams struggled whether to answer Ponds/ Vaseline or Royal Enfield/Harley Davidson at a point.
The Derail round (wonderfully explained by Arnabh in 5th para of General Quiz report below) saw tougher questions. The interesting rules many teams gained points while others lost.

Overall the quiz was prepared with a lot of efforts that could be seen in terms of framing and content. A few extremely unpopular terms popped up as answers, that ideally shouldn't be in a Biz-Tech quiz but they didn’t seem too vague or irrelevant; and also spoke of the research that must have gone in the making of the quiz.
Peters were tweaked so that still looked new and fresh. 

Suggestions: Instead of just companies/terms the quizmaster should have weaved a story into the questions and asked the fundae. That would result in interesting guesses from teams. The QM should have been more stiff in engaging the crowd and instructing the teams.

It was all in all a very awesome time spent at the quiz with scores coming neck to neck of all the top teams. Kudos to the QM for putting up a great debut series of quizzes.


Report by: Vrushabh Gudade
 

------------------------------------------


Date: 16-09-2017
Quiz: Credenz MELA Quiz
Venue: Pune Institute of Computer Technology, Pune
Organized by/Fest: Credenz 2017
QM(s): Ritwik and Rajan

Results:
1. Arnabh Sengupta and Anirudh Anilkumar (AFMC)
2. Ankit and Anurag Chaudhary (PICT)

The quiz had robust participation from engineering, medical, pharmacy colleges, leading to a full house. The preliminary round consisted of a written round with 20 questions. They were very workoutable, with hints being provided by the QM.

Finals followed the same interesting format as the first quiz, with a Derail Round that really brought the claws out. There was a pleasant balance with respect to questions, and they were evocative of a nice, general flavour. Anime, music, celebrities, literature and TV series; the questions covered it all. The contributions of William Shakespeare to the English language made itself felt during two quizzes, sinister connotations associated with nursery rhymes raised their heads and things started getting Schwifty in there. The rounds were aptly named and the safety slides were all prepared by a meme lord.
The quizmaster was not overly pedantic (Take note, Divij.) and seemed to be happy when teams figured out answers. 

Gr8 m8, 5/8 would quiz again. 

Report by: Anirudh Anilkumar

------------------------------------------


Date: 17-09-2017

Quiz: Credenz General Quiz

Venue: Pune Institute of Computer Technology, Pune
Organized by/Fest: Credenz 2017
QM(s): Ritwik Manatkar

Results:
1. Anirudh Anilkumar and Arnabh Sengupta (AFMC)
2. Bareedu Sai Pavan Kimar and Ruturaj (AFMC)
3. Advay Aundhekar and Ananya Menon (AFMC)

The prelims were on the easier side and had many derivable Qs with the top score being 17 and the cut-off being 8. Most regulars saw their prelims score hover around the 15 mark.
Teams from AFMC dominated the quiz from the start with 4 out of 8 teams in the Finals from the college.

The Finals questions were well spread among the topics and everyone from Rick and Morty, Van Dyck , Skrillex to Shashank Manohar made a cameo. A slurry of incorrect pounces kept some teams on the back foot in the start.
The LVC was made on the Angry Birds characters and led to some teams widening their lead. A second LVC was included that was pounce only for its elements. This round was really well crafted with everyone from Edith Piaf and Zlatan making an appearance. The connect spelled out the name of the fest itself!
The General Quiz at PICT always surprises us with innovative rounds. While last year we saw the introduction of a ‘Memento’ based round, this year the QM, Ritwik Manatkar introduced a wonderful ‘Derail’ round. No tongue in cheek reference to the current rail scenario, obviously. The teams could challenge another team to a Q and if the challenged team failed, they would have 10 points docked from their tally! It led to some wonderful “camaraderie” among the quizzers, all regular in the circuit. It took some explaining for the first timers and shook up the score board a lot.
By the start of the final round 2 AFMC teams were decidedly in the lead while the others trailed by 30 odd points.

The final round saw some great Qs as has been the style of the QM, keeping his best Qs for the last. There was a lot of arguments about half points at one point which came to a stop when the arguing team realized there’s no cash prize for 3rd place. All in all, the quiz was well made, had questions on various topics and the effort put in by the QM was evident from the innovative rounds he had included in the quiz.
PS: Reportedly 200 teams registered for this quiz. That’s some footfall!

Report by: Arnabh Sengupta
 

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Reports on the Two-Day Quiz Fest at ILS Law College, Pune



Date: 7-09-2017
Quiz: Q: Tech Biz Quiz
Venue: ILS Law College, Pune
Organized by/Fest: Q, the Quiz Fest of ILS Law College
QM: Mohit Talwar and Indranil Ghawade

Results:
1. Kavin Aadhithiyan (IITB) and Snehasis  Panda (DJSCOE)
2. Arnabh Sengupta and Hritvik Jha (AFMC)
Other Finalists:
Jalaj Maheshwari and Vikas (GNLU)
Divij G and Vrushabh G (COEP)
Omkar B (SOAS) and Ankit Choudhary (PICT)
Dikshant Rathod and Partner (MITSOM)


First up, was the Biztech quiz, which was named the Tech Biz Quiz for some reason (put me off massively, the name) and we walked into the auditorium to be greeted by a smattering of about 20 teams of two. There were a couple of outstation teams including GNLU and yours truly, while the usual suspects such as AFMC, PICT, COEP etc made up the rest of the crowd.

The prelims could be defined in a single line: "Gimme X and Y" with a fair emphasis on TCQ-ish stuff as well a fair number of peters. Prelims scores ranged from 15 to 9.5 with Omkar and Ankit coming up on top. Six teams made it to the finals and considering how the next day followed (more on that in just a bit), I'd like to say the quiz was pretty decent. The only glitch being the factor of limited pounce coming into play, thus forcing teams to strategize much more than necessary.
The finals had workable fundae along with a few peters and was pretty competitive. Kavin and Yours Truly led till halfway only to relinquish the lead post a couple of bad negatives, with GNLU surging ahead. Little did they know, that post the SVC and LVC rounds (made me a tad bit nostalgic I must say), they wouldn't even place, with AFMC dashing ahead to the finish line, scoring a full house on the last round. We just about survived and held on the win with a 10 point margin at the end. All in all, to quote what a great man once said, much fun was had.

Date: 8-09-2017
Quiz: Q: The Gen Quiz
Venue: ILS Law College, Pune
Organized by/Fest: Q, the Quiz Fest of ILS Law College
QM: Ammu Sasidharan

Results:
1. Kavin Aadhithiyan (IITB) and Snehasis Panda (DJSCOE)
2. Tie between Pranav Floyd Joshi (Modern COE) + Pranav Pawar (MMB) and Arnabh Sengupta +Hritvik Jha (AFMC)
3. Divij G and Dhananjay J (COEP)
Other Finalists:
Ankit C and Anurag C (PICT)
Omkar B (SOAS) and Ritwick (PICT)

Day 2 of the quiz fest and we walked into the Audi with a lot more teams visible, so a silent cheer for gen quizzing. 

Here's another defining statement, this time for the Gen quiz prelims : "This was in the news recently". Very TCQ-ish prelims with a couple of questions that made everyone question their existence to be frank.
Kavin and yours truly led the pack with 13.75 (weirdly specific, but okay) with everyone else bunched together between 9-12 and the last team getting in at 7.5.

The finals were majorly biased towards history, not the good-workable types, but basically "ID X and Y" in relation to the info provided. Scoring was majorly tepid except for the odd blinder or the peter where almost everyone got points. The rounds had multiple genres with one on people who TCQ-ed last year, couple of mixed bags (mostly history though) and an Ent round.
This continued till we reached the last round which was supposed to be a written rapidfire round, if that makes any sense. Basically 10 one liners flashed across the screen.

Before this round started, the standings were:
70 to AFMC and the Pranavs and us on 60.
After the round, the standings were as follows:
100 to us and the Pranavs, AFMC and the COEP team of Divij and Dhananjay all tied on 90.
The COEP team got 7/10 questions right in the last round making a quantum jump from the last position to 2nd place, basically rendering the rest of the quiz unnecessary in a way.

A 3 question tiebreaker followed by a singular tiebreaker which could not be broken, finally culminated in the aforementioned result.
It was a nerve wracking end to the quiz and the fest as a whole for all the teams and us especially, as we managed to hold on to a slight lead of 10 point at the end, yet again.

Kudos to ILS for ensuring everything went about without a hitch with a very smooth registration process, starting mostly on time (assuming standard quizzing delay) and ensuring moolah was handed out right after the quizzes (the sponsors were feverishly cheered for throughout the fest).
The QMs were cordial and flexible in the sense that they listened to the teams on stage to tweak the format to infinite bounce and pounce as everyone likes it, despite some other regulations mentioned on screen.
All in all, a fun couple of days, but a little more balance in the quiz would be much appreciated. Cheers!
  
Note: TCQ stands for Typical Chennai Question (anything that has happened recently)
Reports by: Snehasis Panda