Report on Pop Ki Kamai

Day, Date: Sunday, 19-1-2020, Afternoon.
Quiz: Pop Ki Kamai 2020
Venue/Centre: AFMC, Pune

Fest/Organized by: Sai Ganesh and Debasish Mishra from KQA
Flavour: Pop Culture

Scores:
1. TIE at 115 between
Pranav Pawar, Ranajeet Soman, Kunal Sawardekar (all OPEN) &
Anirudh S, Amita A and Satish
3. Anisha K, Trisha and Bhavesh (all from IISER) + Aditya K (draft, AFMC): 80

4. Hitesh Mahato (OPEN), Sai Krishna Venigalla (OPEN), Advay Aundhekar (AFMC) + Shobhit Chamoli (draft, AFMC): 70
5. TIE at 65 between
Pranav “Floyd” Joshi, Samiran Mondal and Gokul Panigrahi (all OPEN) + Sagnik (draft, AFMC) &
Krishna, Punya and Shomik (all from IISER) + Pranav (draft, AFMC)
7. Nikita Bhakre (ILS), Omkar Joshi (COEP), Prajot patne (COEP) + GG (draft, AFMC): 55

8. Vaibhav Vishal, Aparna Ramchandran, Arnold D’Souza (all OPEN) + Ritvik Joshi (draft, AFMC): 30

9. Yash G, Ashwin V, Srestha Y + Akriti (draft) (all from AFMC): 10

The annual pop culture quiz by KQA was hosted in Pune by Omkar Dhakephalkar at AFMC.

An excellent turn-out ensured we started only slightly late. This was because the ppt had to be shifted to the venue computer and there was no mechanism to attach the QM’s laptop. Since there was media-error during transfer, the ppt was run off the shared drive.

One audio question was scrapped due to bad audio, two others had the answer slides along with the question. But groans only spurred the quizzers to be more competitive.

To ensure that everybody present could participate, top 9 teams were taken into the finals. The remaining 3 were split among them as draft picks.

The finals were a very interesting affair. The grid format was a refreshing, where one quizzer even quipped “We’ve come so far along with pounces and bounces that we need to be told how direct and pass works.” The fact that pounce was retained ensured the fairness of the quiz. The spread was clearly defined and wide. Though some were of course audience-specific, rather, city-specific(?), overall there was great brain-searching to derive answers.

All the spots were closely fought for among different sets of teams with 5 point differences and ties being the norm.

The teams decided to split the 40 questions equally and attempt the last 4 only on pounce. That was until one team inadvertently blurted out the answer to a question they pounced on. But that did not affect the proceedings much.

AFMC, as always was an excellent host. Though, the audio system could have been better-suited (the volume when increased tore the audio), the hall, projector etc were great. We could use single chairs to increase the team-size. At this point, the cooperation of Sulci and Gyri, and especially the co-ordinators Yash and Manpreet need a special shout-out. Thank you! This is despite the fact that getting assured rooms, and the confirmation thereof has become a slightly sketchy affair as the process is indeed lengthy. Like before, if quizzing had a dedicated room, it would be awesome to hold more last-minute quizzes there. Also, quizzes need to be run via pen-drive! There has to be a mechanism to use the QM’s laptop!

The publicity to quality ratio was slightly north of 1, all in all a fun quiz, that could’ve been better, and that we were grateful to host in Pune.

Report by: Pranav Pawar, with inputs from Omkar Dhakephalkar