The Big Fat Solo Quiz of the Year | InFest 2024

The Quiz lived up to its moniker of the "Big Fat Quiz of the Year", with 90+ questions!!

Like Gadre says "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition", with the Elims having a torturous end for many contenders, 5-6 very good quizzers missed out by a point or less. 

The quiz was peacefully conducted with no "dhangadhinga" due to the presence of an intimidating QM!!

The first answer "Lone Wolf and Cub" was a nice tribute to the format, with a subtle hint by the QM. 

There were several such brilliantly worded questions in the elims encompassing a wide range, workoutable but with a twist, leading to lots of oohs and ahhs at the end. 

The Ten finalists were as follows.

Representing the Pune Vanguard: Omkar D, Ranajeet Soman;

The Pune Old Guard: Samrat Sengupta, J Ramanand;

Bombay Satraps: Rajiv Rai, Prithwish Dutta, Abhinav Dasgupta;

Young Turks from South of Deccan: Abid A, Shashwat S and 

Lone Wolf from Big Apple: Sriram P

The quiz started out with some great local fundaes, leading to Rana and Omkar taking an early lead, with the rest catching up gradually. Pouncing strategy played a big part.

Some descriptive questions saw creative answers like Case De Pesci on the Tuscan coast, County Highway printed paper, and Mars terraforming. 

One of Galileo's appendages also saw some mirth. 

Expected: Rana shooting Football Questions

Not Expected: JR shooting (questions on) recreational drugs

At the half-way mark: Abid, Samrat, Sriram and Abhinav did not make the cut. 

With the remaining six, it was an interesting race, but Rana never left his foot off the accelerator on the Speedway, leading from start to finish. (He also topped the elims).

Rajiv and Shashwat were hot in pursuit, and Boss (Prithwish) had an incredible last lap to catch up with them, to share the spoils.

Final Scores: 

Ranajeet Soman -275

Shashwat S -240

Rajiv R - 238

Prithwish D - 238

Omkar D - 189

J Ramanand - 148

Overall a highly enjoyable quiz, with top-notch production quality, and expertly conducted by two brilliant QMs. The entire audience was there till the very end.

 

Report by: Samrat Sengupta

The MELA Quiz | InFest 2024

Quiz: The MELA Quiz
Date & Time: 21 Jan, 2024, 10:30 AM
Venue: Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Pune
Fest: InFest 2024
Format: Elims+Final
QM(s): Ranajeet Soman
Results:
1. Prithwish Datta, Abhinav Dasgupta + Brajendu Bhaskar (draft): 129 (Team 1)
2. Vibhendu Tewari, Rajiv Rai + Omkar Dhakephalkar (draft): 123 (Team 3)

Other Finalists:
Debanjan Bose, Bedbyas Datta + Annanya “Dada” Deb (draft): 113 (Team 6)
Suraj Menon and Aditya Gadre: 110 (Team 4)
Annway Ghosh, Suvajit Chakraborty + Pranav Pawar (draft): 58 (Team 5)
Abed, Shashwat + Shubhankar Gokhale (draft): 40 (Team 2)

The second day of InFest 2024 began with the MELA quiz set by Ranajeet Soman. All the quizzes on the second day were team quizzes, and hence so was this. The quiz began with a commendable delay of only thirty minutes as participants trooped in on a Sunday morning after Saturday night shenanigans. But it was a balmy winter morning in Pune, the city ideal for morning quizzes and everybody was fresh in mind, body, and spirits.

After handing out sheets, and ensuring that everyone had seats, the quiz began with the elims. We had several new faces today, increasing the number of participants. The elims were a breezy and interesting affair. Ranajeet is known for his brusque no-nonsense yet interesting questions. This was a pleasurable elims, with all aspects of MELA (Music, Entertainment, Literature, Art) in both India and Unconquered Bharat well covered. There were 30 questions in the elims, and the cut-off was 20.

Six teams made it into the finals, with an additional three in drafts. This time the draft process was different from the usual, and it seems that the same will be the default henceforth. The members of the draft teams were asked to pick up chits with the teams they were joining. A special mention must be given to Annanya “Dada” Deb for qualifying for the drafts solo.

At this time, I will also say thanks to Pranav Pawar, who ensured everyone was served tea while the checking was finalised. For the finals, Arnold D’Souza was kind enough to keep scores on the venue whiteboard.

The finals started off with a written round as warm-up. Then there was a round of IR (infinite rebound). By the end of it, Teams 1 and 3 were already putting up their close contest (70, 69). Team 6 (51) was close behind while 4 and 5 were tied (40). The next written round gave a small breather before the deathmatch began. The second IR had its multiple -5s taken by teams on the wrong pounces, even a 7 and 3 as points were conserved on passing. The teams were neck-to-neck throughout though by the end of it, the negatives had got Team 1 from a comfortable lead back to a one-point loss over Team 3 (98-99). Teams 4 and 6 kept the heat up on the leaders while skirmishing among themselves (80-88). Then a written round, which did not change much, but this easy round gave some last-minute fuel to all the teams. In the concluding IR, the status quo remained. The questions were well-distributed difficulty-wise – where the players had to earn their points in the later half, but like a corporate HR, the QM was kind enough to throw in the written rounds as bonuses to keep us chugging along. It was thoroughly enjoyable and built up a good appetite for lunch without exhausting anybody. Much fun was had.

One thing to note is that the QM kept good time, such that we were done in time for lunch (of famous kathi rolls from Kapila) so that the next quiz could begin on time. Kudos to him for that too!

 

Report by: Omkar Dhakephalkar

InFestYouUs 2024 | InFest 2024

InFestYouUs, the flagship event of the annual BCQC quiz fest, 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 had 28 sets and a new venue  – Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Pune. InFestYouUs 2024 also featured several debutants from colleges around Pune and Open quizzers from other states.

This year’s winners were Annway Ghosh and Arnold D’Souza, both scored 9 straight with the Mob not answering anything. Annway’s topic was History of the Electric Guitar, set by Thejaswi Udupa and Arnold’s was The Wars of the Roses, set by Kunal Sawardekar. Once again debutants showed their mettle at InFestYouUs in Annway’s performance. Arnold’s mastery of his topic was well-appreciated. In second place is the upcoming master of quizzing circuits, Ranajeet Soman, fondly called “Rana”. Rumours say that this year the IOC finally gave him his topic of Travis (the Band). In this set by Aditya Gadre, Rana scored a straight 8, with the Mob not getting anything (answers or the music). In third place too, we had a tie. Another debutant, Meghana Iyengar from the IISER quiz club, scored a straight 7 in Kanye West’s Discography and Personal Life set by Pranav Pawar with the Mob not answering anything. She tied with Abhinav Dasgupta, a frequent of these reports. He answered 8, with the Mob answering in 2, for a 7 in his favour. His topic was Latin American Literature of the 20^th Century set by Sachin “Talent” Deshpande.

Like every year, this year too we had diverse topics including Peppa Pig Official, Marathi Poetry of the 20^th Century, The NBA Career of Michael Jordan, the Bijapur Sultanate, Etymology of Names of World Capitals just to name a few. The Mob, whose numbers during the course of the session swelled to above 40, even won a few sets.

A sincere thank you to the huge number of quiz-setters for setting such excellent sets for InFestYouUs. The participants for showing up and staying with us, and the awesome Mob all deserve praise. I would be remiss in not thanking Pranav Pawar, Prashant Bhagwat, and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Pune, and its director and staff for such a beautiful venue. 

Until next year!

Top Scores:

 Report by: Omkar Dhakephalkar