Open Gen Quiz at VIT Pune - Report

Quiz: Gen Open
Date & Time: 15 May, 2022, Evening Session
Venue: VIT, Pune
Fest: Advitiya 2022
Format: Elims+Final
QM(s): Naman Jain
Results:
1. Piyush Kedia and Shubham (College team)
2. Anisha Karnail and Ahan
3. Sahil Gupta and Shivam Sharma
Other Finalists:
Sagnik Sarkar and Dr. Anmol Dhawan
Akshay Parale and Charles Matthews
Omkar Dhakephalkar and Pranav Pawar

The elims was short, crisp and easy. This was important as there were many first-time college quizzers. Though the open quizzers might have thought it too easy; for the college quizzers that might not be the case. This is not to say that the questions were ill-framed. The hints were couched in excellent wording. The quizmaster was also quite strict about various doubts and arguments and knew exactly what he wanted. Out of 25, we scored about 22/23. This was not the highest, Piyush and Shubham scored higher!

There was one seat of the six finalists reserved for a college team. Unfortunately the team that qualified was not to be seen anywhere, so it was thrown open.

There is one complaint regarding the finals though: it was on the shorter side. Though I understand why it was a good idea: it was in the evening, we had two quizzes before, plus shorter quizzers also help maintain interest of a college crowd. There was a total of 30 odd questions in the finals: two IRs of 6 questions each, a written and the final round.

Overall, there was a fine balance. I was afraid it would be Bollywood or Sports heavy as they are the QM’s pet subjects, but that was not the case. We did swimmingly well for the first part.

The last round was very sweet and dedicated to prominent quizzers and friends of the Pune circuit who passed away last year – Vcat Srinivasan and Rahul Mohanty. Naman had created sets of two questions divided into two sets of three each for a total of twelve. They were based on topics which Rahul and Vcat were generally interested in. The questions were nice, and a worthy tribute to the two quizzers.

Unfortunately, despite a lead at a point, and even a chance at a close second, the last round did our team in. It is true what they say regarding you need only one question for a steady scoring stream to stagnate. But the last round also had negatives. Stagnation quickly turned into a downward spiral worse than the Indian economy and we did not finish even in the top three. No matter, there will always be more quizzes.

At the end, it was an enjoyable quiz and we had a lot of fun. Thank you, VIT, and QSoc for such a nice quizzing weekend!

Report by: Omkar Dhakephalkar