InFest 2022 | WYGW - The InFest General Quiz in memory of Vcat Srinivasan

Quiz: WYGW - Who You Going With, the InFest General Quiz in memory of Vcat Srinivasan
Date: 9th January 2022, Sunday, Day 2 of InFest 2022
Venue: Held over Zoom
Format: Elims + Finals
QM: Suraj "Pheno" Menon

Results:
1. 210: King Kong vs Godzilla (Santhosh, Preetham, Navin)
2. 198: WIMWI Manaram (Vinoo, Srinath, Rajiv)
3. 168: Chete Chete Khabo (Manav, Alok P, Brajendu)
4. 160: RoTF (Kiran, Ravi, Manu)
5. 125: Peter Panchali (Sachin, Debanjan, Prithwish)
5. 125: Covid positive otherwise negative (Shantanu, Shashank)
7. 120: Hello Hello G (Navin Sharma, Nikhil Sonde)
7. 120: Maris Troika (Raju, Thejaswi, Ramkey)
9. 95: ZEF (Anannya "Dada" Deb, Aditya Gadre, Ingit Sir)

UNESCO Best QM Suraj Menon conducted the general quiz at InFest 2022. The quiz was held in memory of Vcat (a prominent and unforgettable BCQC quizzer) who tragically passed away last year. One minute of Iron Maiden was a nice tribute to someone who was always larger than life and a minute of silence would have just been wrong.

The quiz started with a fast paced elims which resulted in a predictable bloodbath. The questions, as always, were fun, interesting, wide ranging and very well framed.

The top 9 teams qualified for the finals - which had 36 questions on the pass (with pounce) and a short written round. Suraj had set questions based on books he had read over the last year (more or less) and yet, the quiz was extremely well balanced and general - just shows the sheet range of the man's reading and research.

There was the added gimmick of teams choosing a book (from a very well formatted array on the screen) and getting a question based on it. The questions were general enough without really requiring any in depth knowledge - and most of them were nicely framed and workoutable.

My one small crib was that while the fundas were fantastic, many questions were missing the one clue that would lead one to the answer - which reduced some potentially brilliant questions to merely nice fundas in "Know It Or You Don't' packaging. 

Report by: Aditya Gadre

InFest 2022 | InFestYouUs 2022

          InFestYouUs, the flagship event of the annual InFest, is a Mastermind-style quiz in which participants choose a specialized topic on which they are asked ten questions. They play against everyone else, who collectively form the 'Mob'. The participant gets +1 per correct answer, and -0.5 for every answer they pass/get incorrect and the Mob answers correctly.

         This year we surpassed all records (so far) with 67 sets spread over a day and a half. With so many participants and QMs, we had a consistent audience, ready to give negatives as the Mob, as well as patiently waiting hours for their turn. 

         There were two winners at InFestYouUs 2022 too. At 9/10 were Nikhil Sonde (Nobel Prizes in Physics set by Sania Narulkar) and Mukilan Ayyapparaj (Akira Kurosawa set by Avaneendra Bhargav). Both showed how they knew their topics like the back of their hand, with Nikhil Sonde earning particular praise, being a last-minute replacement. Mukilan (debut at InFestYouUs) also answered rapidly, missing only one despite coming close to the answer. The Mob got no opportunity to score in their sets.
At 8 points was Srinath Bhashyam (National Anthems by Omkar Dhakephalkar) who missed two, without the Mob stealing anything.
His gaddi was not safe however, with a crowd at 7. Abhinav Dasgupta’s keen literature prowess was seen (The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction by Vivek Tejuja) as well as debutant Arjun Siva’s was in the ring (The History of, and, Contemporary MMA by Atul Mathew). Another last-minute minute replacement, Ramesh Natarajan (Cricket Stadiums in India by Venkatesh Srinivasan) also features in the honourable mentions at 7. They all lost a point to the Mob.
Thejaswi Udupa’s Karnataka Set, Rajiv Rai’s History of Photography in India set and Shubhanker Gokhale’s Currencies in Circulation sets were particularly appreciated.

        A special mention must be given for participants and quiz masters from Europe, Australia, Singapore and America who participated despite the Earth rotating and trying to play spoilsport.

       A sincere thank you to the huge number of quiz-setters for setting such diverse and excellent sets for InFestYouUs. Heartfelt thanks to all the setters who could take their sets in-person, from sickbeds, and through half-sleeps. The participants for showing up and staying with us, and the awesome Mob all deserve praise. We would also like to thank Eric Yuan and Zoom Video Communications for their cloud-based peer-to-peer video conferencing software platform, Zoom, which enabled this fest. Cheers until next year!

Top 10 scores:

 

Report by: Omkar Dhakephalkar