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