Quiz: The MELA Quiz
Date & Time: 6 May, 2022, “Morning” Session
Venue: AFMC Pune
Fest: Silhouettes 2022
Format: Elims+Final
QM(s): Med Cdt Giridhar Gopal and Med Cdt Saurabh Singh Bisht
Results:
1. Omkar Dhakephalkar and Shivam Sharma
2. Naman Jain and Prajot Patne (college team)
3. Med Cdt Yash Gupta and Med Cdt Arkajyoti Majumdar (college team)
Other Finalists:
Sahil Gupta and Akshay Parale
Shashank Tyagi and Yogesha Metla
Med Cdt Dev Dileep Nair and Med Cdt Aditya Jayapalan
The second quiz at Silhouettes was the first one on the second day. It was a MELA quiz and my partner was none other than celebrated social media sensation and poet Shivam Sharma of the Manasarovar Project fame. In that way, I was lucky, because I am not a MELA person. And the results showed that.
We were promised that the quiz will start on time, and it did after the promised 45 minutes of delay. I believe the QMs were making the questions till the last moment :P The elims were a short one, about 20/25 questions. This was the first time the QMs were hosting an open, and though the questions were not conventionally “crisp” they were not at all “bad”. The sheer breadth of the quiz was commendable. We were not too nervous about qualifying, but the elims were definitely not a cakewalk. This is despite there being multiple hints in the questions – perhaps they made it more difficult? Paradox?
Six teams qualified for the finals which were composed of two IRs, one long connect, and two connects. The IRs were diverse. Answers ranging from Highway to Hell to Elden Ring were part of the quiz. There may have been a bias away from Art though. We lost out on a couple of sitters. Chestnuts like Passage to India and Madras Eye also made an appearance. The long connect was a bad miss and we got negs on it. The answer to that would make a reappearance at the Shyam Bhatt Open. However, this quiz had an option of “doubling” i.e. double the scores for a correct answer/pounce but also double the negatives. This enabled us to bounce back. The elemental connect was a Bollywood one which we missed.
I liked the fact that the quiz was catered to the college audience in general – anime, computer games, the lot. This is the right direction to go in rather than cater to the same old open quizzers. Props for that.
Towards the end, it was a close match depending on whether a team got negatives or not. We won by a barely-any lead. A commendable performance by first-time QMs, and a very enjoyable quiz.
Report by: Omkar Dhakephalkar
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