Date:
Saturday, 23rd February 2018
Quiz: The
Shyam Bhatt Memorial Open Quiz 2018
Venue: Armed
Forces Medical College, Pune
Fest/Organized by:
Silhouettes 2k18
QM: Major
Chandrakant Nair
Flavour:
General
Format:
Written elims of 30 questions to decide 8 qualifying teams. Finals had 34
questions on Infinite Bounce/Rebounce and two ‘themed’ written rounds with 7
questions each.
Results:
First Place -Suraj and Ramanand (258 points)
Second Place – Shaswat Salgaocar and Kavin Adhithyan (155
points)
Third Place – Kunal Malhotra and Apratim Mukhopadhyay
(143 points)
Other Finalists
(in order of scores):
Anirudh Anilkumar and Arnab (AFMC) – 138 points
Kunal Sawardekar and Arnold D’Souza – 115 points
Debanjan Bose and Prithwish Dutta – 105 points
Ranajeet Soman and Srirang Raddi – 60 points
Omkar Dhakephalkar and Pranav Pawar – 58 points
Pune’s oldest and arguably biggest Open Quiz – The Shyam
Bhatt Memorial didn’t seem to suffer too much from being conducted on a Friday
afternoon – with about 35 odd teams in attendance! While outstation teams
didn’t quite throng the event like they have in past years, a large number of
the Pune regulars (presumably through honest means and not through sudden
illness), did turn up. A hard-fought prelim of 30 questions with 37 points at
stake, saw 8 finalists go through without any unexpected twists and turns
involving sudden death/starred questions and so on. For the statistically
inclined, the highest score was 30 with the ‘cut-off’ being 21 on 37 – with a
bunch of teams clustered around the 25-26 mark towards the middle of the pack.
Major Nair is by far India’s most prolific quiz master
and certain folk, the report writer included – consider him the best in the
business. It was easy to see why that is a very popular opinion among quizzers
as he walked through an excellent final set to cap an accessible prelim set.
Questions as usual, were interesting, workable and included the trademark old
‘funda’ repackaged tastefully to bring to light something new about an older
established fact. One minor crib that was heard on stage was that the theme for
the second written round – words used to refer to people – led more than a few
teams down the wrong garden path, but I think safe to say it did not impact the
final standings too significantly – while the individual questions in the round
themselves were quite interesting and well set.
The final saw a raging battle for the second, third and
fourth positions – with very little separating these teams right up to the end.
The young college team of Anirudh and Arnab could consider themselves unlucky
to have just missed out on a podium finish, but can take considerable cheer in
the fact that they almost ran a bunch of very strong open teams ragged in the
process.
Overall kudos to Major Nair on an excellent quiz. As
young Floyd is won’t to say “Much fun was had” and we look forward to next
year’s edition as always.
Report by: Suraj Menon