Report on Chakravyuh 2018

Date: Sunday, 30th September 2018

Quiz: Chakravyuh 2018

Venue: College of Engineering, Pune

Fest/Organized by: Mindspark 2018

QM: Vrushabh Gudade

Flavour: General

Results:
1. Pranav Pawar and Omkar Dhakephalkar (Open)
2. Srirang Raddi and Venkatesh Srinivasan (Open)
3. Arnabh Sengupta and Anirudh Anilkumar (AFMC)

Other Finalists: (All Open)
Gokul Panigrahi and Suryadipta Biswas
Aman Shaikh and Omkar Joshi
Pranav ‘Floyd’ Joshi and Charles Matthews

A long overdue report, but better late than never.

 

The quiz started with standard delay of half and hour. This was further compounded by a ‘message from the sponsors’ who gave an in-depth analysis of IAS examinations. Because of course, that is what quizzers do. Give UPSC.

After a what seemed an eon, the elims began. There was the usual smattering of college teams, a considerable crowd of first-time quizzers and participation certificate hunters and open teams. Missed on many more though.

The elims in itself was very short. Do not know whether this was a due to time-constraint. 20 Questions. What was worse was that one question had the answer in it! And an audio question revealed the answer leading to the net total coming down to 18. Some of the questions were not necessarily well-framed. Balance-wise, at the moment I do not remember much, but then it must have been good; faults fester.

We thought we did badly in the prelims so went to the local watering hole for a quick bite. We were surprised however to get a call and hence reached late and missed the first question. Especially because some really good open teams did not make it. However, we got into the groove pretty quickly.

The finals were also not long. The total questions in the IR were 30. In between there was a short 8 question written. The net length was equivalent to a college quiz. Personally, I felt cheated, but to each fest its own.

The final questions were again a mixed bag tending to the negative. More than a couple of peters. Carrying forward from the elims, quite a few verbose and ill-framed questions flummoxed several teams as to what was exactly answered. Don’t get me wrong; the fundae in these questions were good, just they could have been better asked. This may be due to multiple contributors and no single collating authority.

This also gave rise to an altercation between the QM and a team regarding what was pounced. That brings me to an interesting innovation which was a positive step taken by Vrushabh from his experience in February: a pounce sheet.

This was essentially a sheet with rows and question numbers. If you had to pounce, you could write only in the allocated block. This took away any confusion which occurs while writing on a blank sheet where working is also done: as to what exactly the team has given as the answer.

The competition was close till the final few questions. The college team did really well and kudos to them.

PP and I are just happy that we finally managed to win a Chakravyuh.

 

Report by: Omkar Dhakephalkar

Full winners list:

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 and 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
2015: Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
2016: Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
2017: Suraj Menon and Aditya Gadre
2018: Pranav Pawar and Omkar Dhakephalkar

The Pop-Culture Quiz - Report

Date - 20/05/2018
Set and conducted by Kunal Sawardekar
Format - 25 question elims, 36 question finals

Results
First - Team 5 - Aditya Gadre, Venkatraghavan Sahasranaman and Ranajeet Soman (draft) - 132.5 pts
Second - Team 2 - Rahul Kottalgi, Omkar Yarguddi, +1 - 80 pts
Joint Third - Team 1 - Aniket Khasgiwale, Venkatesh Srinivasan and Vibhendu Tewari (draft) &
Team 4 - Omkar Dhakephalkar, Pranav Pawar and Nadeem Ansari (draft)  - 75 pts

Other Finalists 
Anannya Deb (draft), + 2

Report

Kunal told us that the elims would be fairly simple and displayed a lesser seen side of the Dunning-Kruger effect where people with superior ability in a task assume it is equally easy for others. To put it simply, the elims were not at all simple and the spectre of self-doubt was haunting every quizzer present after the first few questions because nobody seemed to be getting anything. This improved in the latter half and questions became accessible. Ingit sir and Gadre topped the elims with an outrageous (for us) score of 14, with the main draw cut-off at 9 and the draft cut-off at 6.

The finals were really good with Kunal having hit his question setting stride. The quiz had due apologies to Faiz Ahmed Faiz as its tagline and there was no India shit. The western fundae were sufficiently popular to qualify as 'popular'-culture. The quiz had a decent amount of AV content which made it less taxing than dry quizzes tend to be. Team 5 picked up where they left off in the elims and were cruising throughout the quiz. Teams 1, 2 and 4 were reasonably close at the halfway mark before Team 5 pulled clearly ahead.

The only crib one would have was the difficulty level in the elims which could have been rectified with timely guinea-pigging. Apart from that, it was an enjoyable quiz. We hope Kunal turns this into at least a biennial event rather than a quinquennial one.

May Open - Written Quiz Report

Set and conducted by Omkar Dhakephalkar
Format - Written, 40 questions
Flavour - General

Results: 
1st: Aniket Khasgiwale and Venkat Srinivasan (not vcat) - 25.5 points
2nd: Rahul Kottalgi and Pratyush Jha - 23 points
3rd: Venkatraghavan S and Aditya Gadre - 22 points

Omkar put together a great set of workoutable, interesting and accessible questions. The questions covered a wide range of topics. Also kudos to Omkar for crisp framing of the questions - it was very clear what exactly was required in each question.

No negatives I can think of for the quiz - except that perhaps some questions might have been better used in a live passing setting than at a written quiz  

BC Cup 2018 Report + BC Cup of BC Cups Report

BC Cup 2018

Set by Aditya Gadre, Aniket Khasgiwale and Yash Marathe

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. 60 question quarter to determine the top 4 for the semi finals. 40 question semi-final to determine the top 2. A 28 question final to determine the winner.

Report

The 10th edition of the BC Cup saw easily the strongest field we have ever seen at the BC Cup with at 6 past winners and general studs travelling from all over the place for the quiz. The elims were a bit easier than previous years and thus high scoring. Prithwish top scored with a phenomenal 21 out of 30 and Deepanjan was close behind with 20.5 points. The cut off was 14.5 and some very good sports quizzers just missed out with 12 to 14 points. This included former winners Ramkey and Shrirang, Venky, Souvikda, a regular quarterfinalists Shubhankar, Kaushik et al 

The Quarter Finals

The top 8 in the quarter finals were:
Prithwish Datta, Deepanjan Deb, Venkatraghavan S (Ingit Sir), Suraj Menon, Anannya Deb, Kunal Malhotra, Samrat Sengupta, Anand Sivashankar

Ingit, Suraj and Anannya started strongly with Kunal hot on their heels. Prithwish took a while to get going but when we did, he consistently kept climbing. Suraj and Ingit continued their form through the quarters to comfortably take the top 3 spots. Anannya and Kunal kept going neck and neck. Kunal tied their scores on the second last question and somehow the last question passed all the way roun for Anannya to answer to dramatically take the last spot in the semi

The Semi Finals: 

The top 4 were: Suraj, Ingit sir, Anannya and Prithwish

Anannya took forever to get off the mark and Ingit sir had a few good moments, but the semis were the Prithwish and Suraj show with both scoring a strong 7 points each to emphatically book their place in the final

The Finals:

Prithwish and Suraj faced off in a repaet of last year's very closely contested final. Prithwish won the toss and went first. He came close to answering a question but got only half of the answer. The first leg ended scoreless. Suraj gave 2 great answers in his home leg to take 2-0 lead. Prithwish's second home leg also ended scoreless. The final leg saw some surprises with both Suraj and Prithwish missing a cricket question that the crowd seemed to get immediately. Suraj put away another brilliant answer to extend his lead to 3-0 leaving Prithwish needing to answer all the last 3 questions correctly to win on away goals. Prithwish couldn't answer any of the question and Suraj won 3-0

BC Cup Winner 2018: Suraj Menon 
Runner Up: Prithwish Datta 

List of BC Cup winners
List of BC Cup Winners:
2009: Sameer Deshpande and Suraj Menon
2010: Anannya Deb
2011: Anannya Deb
2012: Sumant Srivathsan
2013: Ramkey V
2014: Prithwish Dutta
2015: Samrat Sengupta
2016: Shrirang Raddi
2017: Suraj Menon
2018: Suraj Menon


BC Cup of BC Cups 

Since this was the 10th edition of the quiz, we had a special event for past BC Cup winners. A short quiz to determine the BC Cup of BC Cups

We had 5 former winners taking part: Ramkey, Suraj, Prithwish, Samrat and Anannya

The quiz had three sections to replicate the BC Cup format - easy, difficult and sadistic

In the easy section - Samrat took an early lead with 4 and Suraj scored 3 points. Dada scored 2, Boss and Ramkey scored 1 each 

In the difficult section - we introduced an element of risk - a +1/-1 pounce system. Samrat scored 2 points with no negs to take his score up to 6 with Suraj scored an equal number of positives and negatives to stay at 3. Prithwish, Ramkey and Dada didn't see their scores move much

In the sadistic section - Suraj started with a cracker of an answer to take him to 5 points (just one short of Sammy sir). Unfortunately for him, he got a few questions after that wrong and then Sammy sir parked the bus to ride out to victory

BC Cup of BC Cups Winner: Samrat Sengupta

Report on the BCQC April Open 2018

Date: Saturday, 28 April 2018

Quiz: The BCQC April Open 2018

Venue: AFMC, Pune

Fest/Organized by: BCQC

QM(s): Charles Matthew, Pranav ‘Floyd’ Joshi

Flavour: Gen

Results:

1. Team 5 [145 Pts.]: Arnabh Sengupta, Rohan Setlur (AFMC) + Akshay Parale (Draft, COEP)

2. Team 1 [139.5 Pts.]: Aditya Gadre, Ranajeet Soman + Nikhil Nair (Draft, AFMC)

3. Team 2 [120.5 Pts.]: Pranav Pawar, Omkar Dhakephalkar + Aman Shaikh (Draft)

Other Finalists:

Omkar Yarguddi (Solo) + Gokul Panigrahi, Suryadipta Biswas (Drafts)

PavanKumar, Ruturaj (AFMC) + Aditya Lewis (Draft, AFMC)

Kumal Sawardekar, Arnold D’Souza

The quiz set by Pranav 'Floyd' Joshi and Charles Matthew was a fun experience. It had a 25 question Elims followed by a Final with 20 questions on IR, 11 questions Written and 1 List It!

Team 1 started well in the first Written Round but never found their footing in the Infinite Bounce Rounds with Team 2 building a lead. Team 1 made a late surge by cracking the second Written Round but again lost their lead in the second IR Round where Team 5 gave one great answer after another to go into the List It! with a 14.5 pt lead. The List It! heavily favoured Pune locals and Team 1 duly top scored, but couldn't overhaul Team 5's lead.

Positives:

- A very original quiz, very few, if any, Peters

- a lot of very good fundaes

- Questions were light and interesting while covering a wide range of topics

- A lot of nice subtle clues in the questions

Negatives

- Inconsistent scoring - especially in the written rounds

- The framing on quite a few questions was ambiguous. The QM had to provide clarifications on a lot of questions.

- Too few questions on Infinite Bounce

Report by: Aditya Gadre

Report on Quiztronomy 2018

Date: Saturday, 7 April 2018

Quiz: Quiztronomy 2018

Venue: College of Engineering, Pune

Fest/Organized by: COEP Astronomy Club

QM(s): Siddharth G, Nimish, Daivanti

Flavour: Astronomy

Results:

1. Rohit Dhanorkar (SeamEdu Baner, Solo)

2. Nikita Bhakre, Aditya (ILS Law College, Pune)

3. Samarth, Shreyas (MIT, Pune) (Won tie-breaker)

Other Finalists:

Sarang Vandana and Prayag Gore (Jyotirvidya Parisanstha, Open) (Lost tie-breaker)

Pooja, Mohan (Jyotirvidya Parisanstha, Open)

Anirudh Anilkumar and Arnabh Sengupta (AFMC)

7th of April saw us making our way to COEP for the annual Astronomy Quiz by (you guessed it), its astronomy club.

Greeted by familiar faces of usual suspects, we sat down for the prelims which was a heady mix of know-it-or-you-don’t questions and some basic astronomy most people encounter in life (or if you were googling on the ride to the venue). The prelims were aced by an astronomical margin by a Lupus Solus, and the usual suspects mostly missed the cut. Making it in as the last finalist, yours truly sat down for 5 rounds of hardcore quizzing.

The format was a little skewed: no bounce, and the teams’ seating determined which questions they ended up with. That did not stop the eventual winner from running away with the quiz from the get go. This starry eyed Sound Engineer loved his astronomy and his lead only told us how much. The other teams were left scrambling for the 2nd place as his scores breached the Oort Cloud.

The rounds took off but crashed back down on Nobel Prizes in Physics for too long. This came as a surprise to as push-ups for SINMQ hadn’t even started.

The final round was a lateral connect round with Stephen Hawking as the answer; it was cracked by only one team. #tcq But, it proved to be a decider, as the team that came second clawed their way into the podium from the back of the pack thanks to Mr. Hawking (PBUH). But by then, there was a clear winner in this space race. Truly, there was fault in our stars.

Report by: Arnabh Sengupta

Gallery:

 Samarth and Shreyas, 3rd Position (R)
Nikita Bhakre and Aditya, 2nd Position (Below)
Rohit Dhanorkar, 1st Position (Below Right)