The Open Team Quiz | InFest 2023

Date: 23 January 2023, Sunday, Day 2 of InFest 2023
Venue: COEP's BHAU Institute
Format: Elims + Finals
QM: Aditya Gadre, Debanjan Bose, Sachin ‘Talent’ Deshpande, and Ranajeet Soman

Team 1 – Prithwish Dutta (Boss), Nikhil Sonde and Anuradha Dharwadkar (draft)
Team 2 – Kunal Sawardekar, Shivam Sharma and Malhar Patel (draft)
Team 3 - Vibhendu, Rajiv Rai and Abhishek Hariharan (draft)
Team 4 - Omkar D, Pranav Pawar, Pranjal (draft)
Team 5 - Meghashyam, Nadeem and Anisha Karnail (draft)
Team 6 - Suraj, Anannya Deb and Anmol Dhawan (draft)

The last quiz of InFest 2023 was a general quiz by Aditya Gadre, Debanjan Bose, Sachin ‘Talent’ Deshpande, and Ranajeet Soman.
The quiz kicked off with a nice and accessible elims set that covered a wide range of topics and included some absolute gems that were worthy of being in the finals too.

The finals were a great set of questions kicking off with a small written round on famous speeches, before segueing into a phenomenal set of questions covering topics ranging from a famous Oxford bequest to sex symbol Gina Lollobrigida interviewing Castro, political arrangements in Cyprus, Christian subsects, Ruskin Bond’s autobiography and the origins of Krumping among others.
While the excellent coverage (this literally was a quiz that had something for everyone) meant most teams were in the hunt, the real fight was between teams 2 and 3 who battled it out pretty much from start to finish, with team 3 prevailing on the last question to eke out a narrow win
All in all, much fun was had and it was a fitting end to cap off what was a great InFest weekend

Note: The report writer blames the twin malaise of procrastination and old age for forgetting the name of the draft pick in Kunal and Shivam’s team. Someone from IISER please provide details

Report by: Suraj Menon

The Ajai Ragde Memorial History-Geography Quiz 2023 | InFest 2023

Date: 22 January 2023, Sunday, Day 2 of InFest 2023
Venue: COEP's BHAU Institute
Format: Elims + Finals
QM: Kunal Sawardekar and Omkar Dhakephalkar

Results:
1st: Brig. Sandeep Shankar, Shrirang Raddi & Pranav Pawar (Draft)
2nd: Anannya Deb, Aditya Gadre & Anisha Karnail (Draft)
3rd: Brajendu Bhaskar, Somashish Ghosh & Sania Narulkar (Draft)

Report:
Other Finalists: Nikhil Sonde, Prithwish Datta & Krishna Girish; Meghashyam Shirodkar, Samrat Sengupta & Akshay Parale, Rajiv Rai, Vibhendu Tewari & Abhinav Dasgupta (Draft)

This year's edition of the quiz started with a nicely set, well-rounded but relatively tough elims (even though that may not be evident on account of the lack of outraged tweets from Ranajeet Soman on the topic) with the cut-off being 10/25. We had our usual mix of 6 teams that qualify directly and 3 teams making up draft picks - with the shocker being that Suraj and Rana didn't make it.

The final had 2 written rounds and 2 IR rounds - with what has now become the standard Kunal Variation of the Infinite Pounce system. Pounces remain infinite but there are only a finite number of pounces at a reasonable neg available to teams. All other pounces are at a -20 risk. Team 1 started strongly and kept their lead throughout the quiz - nonchalantly swatting away hardcore fundas and most of the time not even using their free pounces - ending up with multiple -20s which makes their performance all the more impressive.

Team 3 was neck and neck for most of the quiz - before Team 1 pulled away in the second half. Team 3 eventually lost steam with Team 4 catching up and just pipping them to 2nd place with a strong finish to the quiz. Anisha from Team 4 particularly gave some crackers to keep their scoreboard ticking.

Overall the fundas were excellent and wide-ranging - and for such a niche topic, extremely accessible.

The quiz maintained its reputation and high standards in this edition as well - and it was very generous of the Ragde family to sponsor a few prizes as well. 

Report by: Aditya Gadre

The Solo Quiz at InFest 2023

Quiz: Solo Quiz

Date: 21 January 2023, Saturday, Day 1 of InFest 2023
Venue: COEP's BHAU Institute
Format: Elims + Semis + Finals
QM: Vibhendu Tiwari and Rajiv Rai

Results:
1. Suraj "Phenom" Menon
2. Aditya "Gadre" Gadre
3. Abhinav "DG" Dasgupta

Other Finalists: Sania Narulkar, Ranajeet Soman, Prithwish Dutta

Semi-finalists: Abhishek Hariharan, Samrat Sengupta, Nikhil Sonde, Meghashyam  Shirodkar, Suvajit  Chakraborty and Kunal Sawardekar

Report: The exciting conclusion of the last Solo Quiz at an in-person InFest left us with two setters for this years' Solo Quiz, a sort of E Pluribus, Duos situation that may just create a precedent for future InFest Solo Quizzes.

The Elimination round was a fun set of 25 questions, with some effort taken by the QMs to make the questions accessible and a provide local flair. After a relatively high-scoring elims (you do not want Ranajeet to start complaining about difficulty of the elims questions on Twitter - trust me on this), 12 participants qualified for the semi-final round. Participants elims points were doubled to form an opening score for the semi-final round which took place immediately following. The semis were relatively high-scoring with plenty of pounces and by the end Suraj, Gadre, Prithwish, Sania, Ranajeet and Abhinav beat out the rest of the filed to qualify for the finals.

The semi-final scores continued through to the finals, where the answers were worth 15 points to compensate for the increased difficulty. Sania had some amazing pounces and great answers through the semis but Gadre and DG surged back in the finals to take second and third places. Suraj maintained his spectacular run of form and dominated the quiz throughout with the outcome for the first place never really being in doubt.

Overall, I really enjoyed the quiz - the questions were accessible, easy-to-understand (I cannot overstate how nice it is not to have to parse through dense blocks of text on the ppt) and above all, interesting. I really appreciated how both quiz setters from across the Sahyadris made an effort to ask questions with some great fundas on Pune.

This quiz has set a high standard for the next edition of the Solo Quiz (I'm not saying which year because I don't want to jinx it as Ranajeet did with his 2020 report), but we are confident that the winner(s) of the 2023 edition are quite up to the task.

(This post has been updated to correct the person at the second runner-up position - our apologies to DG and Prithwish)