BCQC August Open - Anurakshat Gupta AFMC Quiz Report

Anurakshat Gupta conducted a general quiz on 23rd of August as a part of the BCQC August Open at Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC). This quiz was conducted in two parts ie. the Preliminary round and Final Round for the Top-6 teams from the prelims.

Results :

1st : Kunal Sawardekar, Arnold D'Souza and Shivam Sharma - 100
2nd : Anmol Dhawan, Ashwin Mahesh and Nikhil Joseph - 90
3rd : Suchishree Chatterjee, Kaushik Chatterjee and Rohan Setlur - 70
4th: Venkat Shrinivasan, Rohan Danait and Deven Deshpande - 20
5th: Uday Bansal, Khagendra Chakravarti and Saraswat Chatterjee - 20
6th: Pranav Pawar, Debopriyo Maulik and VG Sreeram - -10

Comments :

The prelims started out at exactly 1605 hours as was told by Anurakshat Gupta before the small break between his quiz and the previous quiz. The questions were interesting with a certain bias on History/Geography, thus building the tidings for a HisGeoHeavy quiz. Prelims had many descriptive questions with answers being either a Country name or a Capital city name. Thus guessing/chimping/Eenie Meenie Miney Mo was a legit strategy to go ahead with for some of the questions where you had little to no knowledge. Top 6 teams from the Preliminary rounds made it to the finals with 3 other teams being drafted into the top 6 teams.

There were a total of 35 questions in the Finals which were divided into two rounds of 17 and 18 questions per round. Every round gave you the opportunity for three exhaustive finite pounces. The finals began with Vcat pouncing prematurely on 2 questions, thus earning his team an early lead, albeit a negative lead of -20 points. Team 5 tried to smartly answer the question by shouting out two different answers that they were fixated upon in a bid to try and get points, but the QM was no stranger to such antics by the quizzers in general and thus he asked them to give him one final answer. Turned out that both the answers were wrong. The finals went smoothly with Team 6 catching up very rapidly in the second half to the leaders, finally ending the quiz with only a 10 point gap.

The questions, IMO, were well framed and had enough hints for people having background knowledge in the subject to work it out. The quiz was a bit too heavy on His/Geo for it to qualify as a gen quiz. Nonetheless the questions were based on some brilliant fundae. Cherry on the cake, Anurakshat Gupta explained every question's answer/funda after the teams were done answering. The question on elderly people driving license stickers on Japanese cars was one of the questions that contributed to the continuous process of cerebral explosions.

This quiz was a major boost to my His/Geo knowledge. Hardly had any peters, but then again I speak out of my limited experience. Enjoyed the quiz overall and all the brilliant fundae. Much fun was definitely had.

The Not So General Gen Quiz - Report

Arnold D'Souza conducted a 30-question written quiz on topics of not-so-general general interest on 23 August 2015 at the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune as part of the BCQC's August Open Quizzes.

Results:

1st: Anurakshat Gupta & Kunal Sawardekar - 370 pts
2nd: Venkat Srinivasan & Rohan Danait - 180 pts
3rd: Suchishree & Kaushik Chatterjee - 170 pts
3rd: Gokul Panigrahi & Shayak Chatterjee - 170 pts
5th: Anmol Dhawan & Ashwin Mahesh - 155 pts
6th: Deven & Shivam - 140 pts

Report:

This was a quiz that was clearly billed from the get-go as being heavy on the QM's own interests, and within those bounds, it was fun and very interesting. Participants hoping for a wide coverage of topics would have been disappointed though - the only India-related question was on cricket, and none of the answers were Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

The questions were (IMO) framed well, and despite the QM's professed admiration for Kolstylz questions (i.e. questions which are not workable and where you have to know the answer), many were quite work-out-able, and one of them (on a group of 44 ladies) did blow my mind, as advertised. My one quibble was questions requiring multi-part answers - there was one question where you were asked to name two, unrelated bands from their unrelated band-name-origin-stories - though antipathy to multi-answer questions is something in which I appear to be quite alone in modern Indian quizzing.

The major innovation in this quiz (one that I expect will be much debated in the comments) was the pounce system - the first I've seen in a written quiz. The questions were worth 10 points for a correct answer, but you could "star" questions in which case you got 20 points for a correct answer and -10 for a wrong one (including partial or incomplete answers). This meant that teams that were really sure of an answer could double down and take a risk (and a payoff if they turned out to be right). As with all quizzing innovations, this was controversial among the attendees, but I think we can expect to see more variations of this in future quizzes.

Please post your feedback in the comment section.

CineWest - a quiz on posters from the world of Movies & TV

Ready to make history? Participate in the world's first* ever posters quiz on Sat, 29 Aug.

Venue: COEP Academic Block
Time: 1:30 pm
Format: written prelims, followed by a 6-team final. Some college student teams will get to be part of the final.
Theme: a movie & TV quiz through the lens of posters.

Attending the quiz? Join the event page:https://www.facebook.com/events/973328172708443/?ref=4&action_history=null

* this may be a completely false claim.

BCQC July 2015 Opens - Report

(Report by Arnold D'Souza)

The July Open was held on Sunday the 26th of July, 2015 at the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC). The even consisted of two quizzes—one general and one themed.

GEN QUIZ:
Set by:
Saraswat Chatterjee and Rohan Setlur

Teams:
14 teams of 2 – (6 qualify for finals) – no draft picks.

Final Result:
1st – Anurakshat Gupta + Madhusadan (120)
2nd – Debanjan Bose + Suraj Prabhu (115)
3rd – Arnold D'Souza + Anjali Jospeh (95)
4th – Samrat Sengupta + Aniketh Rallabhandi (85)
5th – Shantanu + Shantanu (60)
6th – Gokul (25)

Comments:
The elims were an interesting change from the standard written format. There were 15 questions all of which were only on a pounce for +10/-5 each. In effect, this was like a written elims where you got -5 for a wrong answer but had the option to leave a question blank without any loss. However, since the live scores were being kept on the blackboard, this meant that one could strategically decide on each question toward the end whether one needed to risk going for an answer or not. At least this is what we did (after screwing up a couple of optimistic pounces toward the beginning) and just about managed to qualified 5th or 6th.

One downside of this issue is that it discourages guessing to an extent—but I don't think this is a significant problem. One can always guess and keep the answer to oneself if not sure. The joy of realizing that you managed to successfully work out/cleverly guess an answer shouldn't be diluted just because of the fact that it wasn't down in front of an audience. Moreover, the format encourages teams to take risks and I like that.

There were no draft picks—something that I am personally okay with—but I know a lot of other quizzers (especially college students) who feel that draft picks are important, so that was possibly one downside to the quiz.

The finals consisted of two sets of 10 questions each on IR. The initial plan by the quiz-masters was to keep +10 for direct and +5 for passed questions, but we convinced them that this is not a good idea in an IR and they willingly agreed to keep a +10 all round.

There were 3 pounces available per team for each half of the quizzes with a -5 if you got the pounce wrong.

The 20 questions were followed by a final Long #PuneStylz (LPS) written round with 10 variables in it (A-J). Each variable was worth 5 points, plus another 25 for getting all 10 correct. I quite enjoyed this round and I thought it was pretty well set. Two things need to considered in an LPS—how much knowing the previous variable helps one get the next as well as independent clues thrown in which can help someone solve a variable in the middle on their own. The latter is important because I've often seen LPS questions where if someone misses (or has no idea about) one of the first few variables, it's almost impossible for them to get any of the following ones at all and this can really skew the scores badly.

Our quiz-setters for the day had done an excellent job of finding a suitable balance between the two types of clues—forward and independent.

The LPS was rather lit/ent biased and one noteworthy highlight of it was Debanjan and Prabhu—in first place at the time—getting so overly excited about the easiness of ent questions that they somehow managed to write Peter Sellers as having acted in Lawrence of Arabia instead of Peter O'Toole. This ended up costing them not only the 5 points for the variable but also the 25 point bonus and they ended up in second.

Enjoyable quiz overall and quite a good show by the quiz-masters who may not be as experienced as some of the others we've had at the opens. There were a few peter-questions but certainly no more than can be expected.

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P.O.R.N. QUIZ—PUBLICATIONS, OBJECTS, ROCK MUSIC & NATURE:

Set By:
Debanjan Bose

Teams:
Roughly the same number as the first quiz (2 per team)

Format:
Written (24 questions)

Final Results:
1st – Arnold D'Souza + Anjali Joseph (117.5)
2nd – Anurakshat Gupta + Suraj Prabhu (82.5)
3rd – Aniketh Rallabhandi + Anmol (80)

Comments:
This was a written quiz with 10 points per question—some of them had part points (including one with 4 parts for 2.5 each). Although I generally dislike questions with multiple parts in an IR, they're completely fine in a written quiz so no complaints there.

The quiz was originally supposed to be a 35 question set, but apparently time issues meant that only 25 questions were set—well 24 actually since Q24 was mysteriously absent. It's hard to tell whether this was merely carelessness or a cleverly disguised tribute to the comically haphazard July Open “Earth, Space and Beyond” quiz set by Vcat.

The framing of some of the questions could have done with some improvement in terms of clarity—the quiz-master ended up having to explain some of them as they were being read out. This was slightly disappointing because I thoroughly enjoyed the fundae in the quiz.

The quizzes were also the debut for my partner Anjali—who performed quite splendidly despite nursing a hangover throughout. At one stage toward the end of the written quiz, she would put her head down on the table, listen the quiz, sit up, say “This is so-and-so” and promptly go back to sleep until the next question.

To sum up, I quite liked the quiz—apart from the couple of gripes mentioned above—and this was not just because we ended up winning quite convincingly.

I look forward to conducting the written quiz at the next open (August).

BC Cup 2015 - Report

Set by Aniket Khasgiwale, Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. Then a 60 question quarter final to determine the top 4 i.e. the semi finalists. A 40 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 28 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner. We ditched the college finals due to lack of turnout.

Report: 
The quiz started with a 30 qn elims set which turned out to be quite tough with all contestants claiming they wont qualify at the end! Venkatraghavan (ie Ingit Sir) topped with a phenomenal 16.5 pts and Shrirang too put in a strong performance with 13.5 pts. The others were bunched up around 10 points, with Rohit Suresh just making the cut above Suraj with 9 points. A lot of good quizzers were on 8 or 8.5 points - Suraj, Kaushik, Atul, Samridh and Parijat (who also won the College section) which shows how strong the field was this year.

The Quarter Finals:

The Quarter finalists were :
Shrirang Raddi, Prithwish Datta, Samrat Sengupta, Ingit Sir, Rohit Suresh, Anannya Deb, Arnold D'Souza and Shubhankar Gokhale.

The Quarters were very even till the first half with all 8 people on 2-3 points. Anannya put in a stellar performance to top the elims consistently scoring in all sports. The QF ended up being very close with all 8 people having a chance to qualify with 3 questions to go. It ended with Anannya comfortably winning with 9 points and Samrat and Arnold also qualifying with 6 points. Ingit got a NBA question right and forced a three way tiebreaker against Shubhankar and Rohit for the 4th Semi final spot. A lengthy tie breaker later, Rohit won on sudden death to take the final spot.

The Semi-Final
Anannya continued his form from the Quarters and steadily built a lead which was enough for him to win. For most of the quiz, Samrat seemed to be comfortably taking the other final spot, by Arnold pulled off a brilliant comeback to answer two of the last four to tie scores on the last question of the semis. Another tie-breaker ensued - and Samrat won to cement his place in the finals.

(Side note: Q19 of the Semis was the 1000th question asked in the BC Cup - many thanks to all participants for continued support. We hope to go on for a 1000 more)

The Finals 
Samrat won the toss and went first. In his first home half he scored 1 goal and almost got a second. Anannya failed to score in his first home half. Things were getting interesting as Anannya got an away goal in Samrat's second home half, but Samrat rallied to get two answers in quick succession to take the score to 3-1. Anannya needed to just tie to win the match in his second home half, but he remembered the name of a Soviet gymnast and an Indian athlete just after giving the wrong answer. Anannya thus lost a successive BC Cup final and continued his tremendously consistent run at the Cup while Samrat won his first BC Cup in style.

BC Cup Champion 2015 : Samrat Sengupta
Runner Up : Anannya Deb 

College Champion: Parijat Chaudhary

As for the review of the quiz, I request those who attended to share their feedback in the comments section. 

BC Cup 2015 - Announcement

The BC Cup is the BCQC's annual solo, open quiz to crown the Best Sports Quizzer. This is the seventh edition. 

Format:   

First, a 30 question elim determines 8 qualifiers (or Quarter Finalists). These 8 people take part in a 60 question quarter final. The top four go through to the semi final. The semi-final will consist of 36 questions with scoring reset to zero. This is to keep the 'winning three consecutive matches' concept constant from last year's edition. The top two then go to the Final where they face off one-on one for a 28 question final. 

This year we are introducing an additional round for the top 4 college quizzers who do not qualify for the Open section. There will be a 24 question "College final" for these 4 college quizzers between the Quarter finals and the Semi finals of the Open Section 

Administrivia  

QMs: Yash Marathe, Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
Theme: Sports
Teams: Individual
Restrictions: (or the lack of one) Open quiz. Everyone is welcome

When? 12:45 pm, Saturday, 9th May, 2015
Where? The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune

Prizes: The top 8 in the Open category and the top 4 in the College get cash prizes. The total prize money will be in excess of INR 5000

If you are planning to show up for sure, please let us know by filling in your name at this link. This will help us gauge interest and save some paper.

BCQC March 2015 Open Quizzes - Results and Reports

Quiz 1: Business Quiz 

Set and Conducted by BV Harish Kumar 

Format: Written elims of 20 questions. Finals comprising 24 questions on Infinite Rebounds in four Quarters and a 4 question written round 

Results:

1st: Arnold D'Souza, Ajay Ragde and Anway: 115 pts
2nd: Raghav C, Sachin Ravi and Suraj: 110 pts
3rd: Saswat, Alok and Omkar Dhakephalkar: 105 pts
4th: Shantanu G, Shantanu P and Anurag G: 100 pts
5th: Karthik, Shivam and Pranav Pawar: 80 pts
6th: Kunal Sawardekar, Samrat Sengupta and Pranav Joshi: 65 pts

The quiz was light and interesting with a nice mix of biz fundaes and general trivia with a Business bent. Harish covered a lot of topics and even distributed a "buzzword bingo" sheet in the audience as an innovative way to take feedback on the topics covered. I really liked the quiz for the fact that it moved away from standard business tropes and did not require one to memorise faces of CXOs. BVHK showed that good business quizzes with workoutable questions are very much possible despite the stereotype attached to business quizzes these days. 

The only negative was the 15 pt pounce scoring where the team could not pounce on their own question - I know, as BVHK said during the quiz as well that "Life is not fair" - but I'd have let teams pounce on their own questions. Especially so after seeing the results where the top 4 were separated by 15 points 

Quiz 2: General Audio-Visual Quiz 

Set and Conducted by Anannya "Dada" Deb

Format: Written elims of 30 questions. Finals comprising 44 questions - 24 on Infinite Rebounds, four Triads of 3 questions each (written)  and a 10 question round on topics to be chosen by the teams 

Results:

1st: Venkatraghavan S, Aditya Gadre and Charles: 140 pts
2nd: Arnold D'Souza, Ajay Ragde,  Pranav Pawar: 112.5 pts
3rd: Raghav C, Sachin Ravi and Omkar Dhakephalkar: 107.5 pts
4th: Samrat Sengupta, BV Harish Kumar and Shantanu: 90 pts
5th: Shantanu, Venkat and Nikhil: 72.5 pts
6th: Sumeet, Shubhankar and Kaustubh*: 47.5 pts

Kunal Sawardekar and Sumeet had originally qualified but since Kunal had to leave, Sumeet picked one super-sub from the audience. 

Dada's quizzes are always entertaining and this one was no different. An excellent accessible 30 question elims and a well crafted 44 question final. One of the aspects that never disappoints in Dada's quizzes is the coverage of topics - which is always vast and the quiz is a truly "general" quiz. A small negative is that the quiz was probably slightly heavy on art and culture and bit lacking in sports. 

The 2 strikes system for each round of 12 questions also was easy going and never put any team in threat of losing out due to recklessness. 

I liked the concept of the triads - 3 questions linked in some way - most of the times the link was obvious and made it fun to work out other questions we had missed from the one odd answer we got.

Except for a couple of finger of god incidents, the quiz went off smoothly. 

-x-x-x

Please post your feedback in the comments section. 

BCQC.orgy aka InFest 2014-15 - Schedule

We will have our annual quiz anti-fest on 3rd and 4th Jan 2015. All events will take place at the Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune

The schedule is as follows:

InFestYouUs 2014-15 - Call for registrations

InFest-You-Us is a mastermind style, specialty themes solo quiz. This year, Infest-you-us will happen next year - on the 3rd of January 2015 , 1:30pm onwards at the Boat Club Lawns in the College of Engineering Pune

The format is as follows:
Each person chooses a topic of their interest. The taker would be asked 10 questions. The taker will be awarded 1 point for getting a question right. If missed, the question would go to the "Mob" i.e. everyone else present. The Mob is not allowed to discuss among themselves, and must decide who among them would go for the answer if the answer given by the participant is wrong. If the chosen one is right, the taker loses 1/2 a point. If not, the confident chosen one will get beaten up by the rest of the Mob.

So if you are interested, this is the course of action:
- Fill up this form ( http://bit.ly/1y9FfB7 )and tell us your name and your topics of choice.Please ensure that all fields are filled in - if we can't contact you, your registration does not exist.
- Then we will find people to make questions for your set for one of your topics of preference.
- Then you show up and we all have fun
- The deadline for registration is 17th November 2014 (We need to give enough time to people to set questions for you)

About the topics ...
- If the largely autocratic BCCI-esque IOC (InFest Organizing Committee) do not think your topic is interesting enough, it will be rejected. The topics must necessarily be not boring / done to death.
- Indicative list of topics that will certainly be rejected are World Cup Cricket, World Cup football, Asterix, Tintin, Friends, Douglas Adams, Big bang theory, Oscars etc
- Interesting topics that have featured before in past editions: English Monarchy, World Chess Championship, History of Israel, Monty Python, Cultural references in xkcd, Indian train names, Detectives in fiction, Hindustani Classical music, The War of Kurukshetra, The Discworld series, Indian Women Politicians, Gulzar with Vishal, Islamic conquerors, Indo-Pak wars,
We may also reject your topic if we can't find anyone to set questions for you (So don't ask for something COMPLETELY random )

If you have any queries, mail us at

Chakravyuh 2014 - Report

Set and Conducted by Rohan Danait

Attended by ~100 teams

Format: Written elims of 30 questions. Finals comprising 42 questions on Infinite Rebounds and a 6 question written round on differential scoring

Results:

1st: Anannya Deb & Anirudha sen Gupta: 365 pts
2nd: Aniket Khasgiwale & Aditya Gadre: 300 pts
3rd: Shrirang Raddi & Venkat Srinivasan: 250 pts
4th: Meghashyam Shirodkar & Amit Garde: 215 pts
5th: Debanjan Bose & Vikram Keskar: 185 pts
6th: Shubhankar Gokhale & Arnold D'Souza: 170 pts


An excellent, enjoyable quiz put up by Rohan.

The quiz started with an interesting 30 question written elims  - a throwback to tradition with printed sheets instead of a ppt. There was a surprisingly large range of elim scores with the highest score being 27/30 and the last qualifiers making 18/30

The finals had 2 rounds of 21 questions each on Infinite bounce - using the One-Finite pounce system (recently made popular in Pune circles by BDFL Ramanand) with a +15 on the pounce. The questions were interesting, and well framed (perhaps a bit verbose) and covered a vast range of topics. The effort to avoid peters was evident with 2 seasoned quizzers - Suraj Menon and Ranajeet Soman brought in to moderate the quiz. A few peters got in - but this did not diminish the experience of the quiz by much.

The written round was an airports special - while the questions were nice and interesting - I thought it was a little too specific for a Gen quiz.

To summarise, a number of positives from the quiz. A wide range of questions which were largely original (There were a few peters and some of the questions were on the simpler side for an open quiz, but for this I blame the moderators and not the QM. Kaustubh Bhat will be irked that noble Chakravyuh tradition "at least one finger of god" was not being followed.

Also Rohan conducted the quiz assuredly and was always in control of the proceedings. I also liked that the quiz went along at a leisurely pace, and being on stage was fun as usual with the banter and jokes (which the QM also took part in)

A couple of Negatives on the organization front. First, the registration was chaotic - perhaps next year, there needs to be an exclusive desk for the quiz instead of the universal desk + help desk thing that was there this time. second, most would have prefered to finish the quiz at one shot instead of the hour long break between elims and finals

As for the teams, the two bearded bongs - Anannya and Anirudha - ran away with the quiz right from the start pouncing on question after question and building a 90 point lead over the second placed team - Shrirang and Vcat. Shubhankar and Arnold  had a great showing the written round, but it was a bit too late to properly mount a comeback. In the second half we (Aniket and I) had a good round and cut the Dadas' lead to 65 points and overhauled Shrirang and Vcat for second place.

Congratulations to Anannya (who has perhaps made up for a disappointing performance in the BC Cup final on his last visit to Pune) and Anirudha (stunning debut in Pune quizzing)

Winners list so far:
2001: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2002: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2003: Niranjan Pedanekar and Samrat Sengupta
2004: Gaurav Sabnis and Neeraj Sane
2005: Sudarshan Purohit and Amit Garde
2006: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2007 (Apr): Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2007 (Oct): Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon
2008: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2009: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde
2010: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2011: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Yash Marathe
2012: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav
2013: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde
2014: Anannya Deb and Anirudha Sen Gupta

The Cricket Quiz - Report

The quiz was set and conducted by Arnold D'Souza. It was originally supposed to be IR with all teams in finals but since we had a good turnout it was conducted as a written quiz.

Results
1st - Aniket Khasgiwale and BV Harish Kumar  - 37.5 pts
2nd - Ranajeet Soman and Samrat Sengupta - 23 pts

Report :

The quiz had 46 questions plus two other rounds. The first round was a doppelgangers round where celebrities from non-cricketing fields were shown and we had to guess the cricketer they resembled. It was a nice non-serious start to the quiz (the Nathan Bracken - Amelie Mauresmo part especially).

There were two sets of 22 and 24 questions respectively with a healthy share of tough questions. The questions were well framed, however, some of the answers weren't 'workoutable' at all. There were a few record/statistics based questions which seem unavoidable in a cricket quiz. Even though the quiz was tough, the questions were not arbit (barring a couple). There was a heavy English county bias and a lot of questions from the late 19th/early 20th century. Indian domestic cricket felt slightly left out I am sure.

The third round was a bar graph representation of the runs scored over a batsman's career. This was the most enjoyable round of the quiz. The quizmaster's choice of batsmen for this round was excellent.

As themed quizzes go, this was a good quiz and a very nice debut by Arnold.

Questions are here.

July College Quiz - Report

The quiz was set and conducted by Vibhav Bhave who will be fleeing leaving the country soon. The quiz had a 25 question elims and finals with two 15 question IRs and 2 written rounds including an intensely confusing "auction round".  The finals had a 6 + 3 draft system. Following are the results :

1st : Team 2 :- Rohan Danait, Ranajeet Soman + Sampooran Singh (not Gulzar) - 179 points
2nd : Team 1:- Aniketh Rallabandhi, Daipayan Roy + Dhananjay Jagtap - 162 points
3rd : Team 5 :- Omkar Dhakhephalkar, Pranav Pawar + Saikat Sarkar - 146 points

Other finalists : Team 3 :- Alok Kulkarni, Rohit Sahasrabuddhe + Kshitij Jyoti
Team 6 :- Kinshuk, Arundhati Kulkarni + Aman Shaikh
Team 4 :- Anurag Gangras, Anway Karmarkar + Divij Ghose

Report :

We had a very good turnout of 22 teams considering the recent times. The elims were of a good quality for a college quiz with a lot of teams making it into double digits. There were no arbit questions and a couple of very good ones. The cut-off for the top 6 was 15/30.

It was great to see new faces making it to the top 6 pushing a couple of seasoned teams in the drafts.
The finals had a 'double-dip' pounce with one wrong answer on the pounce fetching a -10 and the second one barring the team from pouncing in that IR round. Team 2 led from the first question with Team 1 and 5 following not very far away.

The second round was the auction round which caused disparity between the scores of the top 3 teams and the rest. There were 6 topics consisting of 3 one lined questions on each topic. A team could bid for a maximum of 3 and a minimum of 1 category from the points they score in the first IR round. I will spare you the intimate details of the scoring since trying to remember them is making my head spin. Team 2 pulled away with a 40 point lead in this round since Rohan Danait seemed to have understood the scoring system perfectly.

The third round was much easier to understand. It was another written round with stuff blanked out from comic strips. A wider variety of comics apart from Asterix and Scrooge McDuck could have easily been managed considering the amount of webcomics floating around.

The last round was another 15 question IR where Team 1 did really well drawing dangerously close to first place. However, Team 2 kept scoring consistently on the bounce and the pounce staying just out of reach.

The quiz was a decent quality considering the Pune college quizzing scene isn't very strong. However some questions would have definitely been better off in a school quiz (What is the capital of 'Slovakia' and 'Who started the currency 'rupee' in India' being examples). There was brevity in a lot of the finals questions which could have been framed better. A few questions like the WTC headquarters were excellent.
A college quiz once a year is a not a bad tradition to set.

July quizzes - a College quiz and an Open Cricket Quiz

The BCQC is organising two open quizzes in July. Details:

Date: 27 July 2014 (Sunday)
Venue: Academic Complex., COEP, Pune (next to the BC). Given the venue, we have to declare a dress code: no shorts, as COEP has become finicky about not allowing people wearing shorts in the Complex.

Quiz 1: College Quiz

Set & hosted by: Vibhav Bhave

When: 10:30 am to 1:00 pm 

Theme: General

Format: written prelims, followed by finals

Registration: free, open to college students (cross-college teams allowed)

Teams: teams of two members each

Certificates for all the finalists

Quiz 2: The July Open

Set & hosted by: Arnold D'Souza

When: 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm 

Theme: Cricket

Format: written prelims, followed by finals

Registration: free, open to all

Teams: teams of two members each 

Certificates for college finalists, top college team

Join the FB event page here.

June Open Quizzes - Results

When: 15 June 2014 at COEP

Quiz 1: Flags of the World
Set and Conducted by Kunal S
Format: 25 questions; random pairing of teams for some participants

Results
Joint 1st: Saikat Sarkar+Kshitij Jyoti & Samrat Sengupta+Suyash Thite (16.5)
Joint 2nd: Aniket Dass+Rujul Godse, Anmol Dhawan+Ashwin Mahesh, Omkar Dhakephalkar+Ranajeet Soman (16)


Report: Nice set of questions with some very interesting facts, ending with an other-worldly twist.
Questions here.

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Quiz 2: "Attaa tu MELAS"
Set and Conducted by Ranajeet Soman
Flavour: Music, Entertainment, Language, Arts, Sports
Format: 25 qns written prelims, 2 IR + 1 written round in the final on '(not naughty) nautical phrases (which had nothing to do with Notting Hill)', draft picks

1st: E: Samrat Sengupta, Tadatmya Vaishnav, Omkar Yarguddi (85)
2nd: D: Omkar Dhakephalkar, Pranav Pawar, Anmol Dhawan (70)
3rd: F: Rohan Danait, Vibhav Bhave, Alok Kulkarni (60)
Other finalists: (A) Kunal S+Debanjan Bose+Sumit (55), (C) Sahil Gupta+Payas Awadhutkar+Karan Gunjal (45), (B) Saikat Sarkar+Kshitij Jyoti+Ashwin Mahesh (5)

Prelims cut-off: 6 (1 star) for the top 6, 4.5 for the draft picks

Report: The only disappointment of the quiz was, contrary to what was displayed on the quiz's publicity material, there was no question on a certain Ajay Singh Deol (there was a question on "Deool", though). A tough prelims for the participants, with only one team getting into double figures (Kunal & Debo, who veered to the other extreme of scariness scoring 17, whereas the 2nd highest team had 9). In the final, Team D looked comfortable in the first 2 rounds, but went off the pace in the last. The exact opposite happened to Team E, resulting in their win.

Some very interesting questions - my favourites being the ones on the Emmy Awards, the one about Boris Becker, and "the Kiss".

What could have been better? some of the answer explanations.

Questions: Prelims

Got feedback? Use the comment form.

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July quizzes:
- Cricket Open by Arnold D'Souza
- College General Quiz by Vibhav Bhave
- World Cup Quiz by Anannya Deb & Aditya Gadre

Schedule will be put up on our calendar and our FB group

June Open Quizzes

The BCQC is organising two open quizzes in June. Details:

Date: 15 June 2014 (Sunday)
Venue: Seminar Hall, Academic Complex., COEP, Pune (next to the BC). For the first ever time in BCQC history, we have to declare a dress code(!): full-length trousers for guys, as COEP has become finicky about not allowing people wearing shorts in the Complex.

Quiz 1: "Flags of the World"

Set & hosted by: Kunal Sawardekar

When: 2:15 pm to 3:15 pm 

Theme: um, flags of the world

Format: written, for all teams

Registration: free, open to all

Teams: teams of two members each, but we're going to experiment this time by randomly pairing together all participants (gives you a chance to team up with someone new)

Certificates for the top three college participants

Quiz 2: "The June Open"

Set & hosted by: Ranajeet Soman

When: 3:30 pm to 5:45 pm 

Theme: Music, Entertainment, Literature, Arts, Sports (i.e. a Lt. General Quiz)

Format: written prelims, followed by final for 6 teams

Draft Picks: participants from the best three college teams not to qualify will join the top 6 teams 

Registration: free, open to all

Teams: teams of two members each (no random pairing here)

Certificates for members of the top three college teams

Join the FB event page here.

World Quizzing Championships (Pune)

What: World Quizzing Championships, a written solo competition conducted by the IQA and held simultaneously around the world.

When: 7 June, 2012 (Saturday), 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm

Where in Pune: AFMC, Wanowrie (exact venue to be updated)

Proctor: Dr. Anurakshat Gupta, anurakshat@rediffmail.com

Registration: free, Rs. 100/- charge; suggest you use this FB event page to tell us if you are attending, so that the organisers know how many answer sheets to get.

This will be preceded by an informal session: 2 pm till 3:30 pm, to be conducted by Krishnamurthi Josyula and Debanjan Bose. (
contact: . Prizes for the top 2 and best college quizzer.


Venue for both events: New Lecture Hall, AFMC, Pune

Abhimanyu 2013 - Results

"Abhimanyu" is the annual solo contest for COEP's quizzers. This began with a preliminary round held last year, from which 6 quizzers qualified. The final was delayed for several months and was finally held in May 2014. The finalists took part in a common written general round, which was followed by a Mastermind-style set of specialities (picked in advance).

The General round was set by Ramanand, while the 6 specialities were set by the previous Abhimanyu winner, Gautam Akiwate.

Results:

Winner: Payas Awadhutkar (4 + 10), topic: Border-Gavaskar Trophy
2nd: Vibhav Bhave (7+4.5), topic: Downton Abbey
3rd: Rujul Godse (4.5+6), topic: Current Affairs
4th: Rohan Danait (6+2), topic: Quentin Tarantino
5th: Chinmay Tadwalkar, topic: Lok Sabha elections
6th: Omkar Yarguddi, topic: Scrubs Season II

Payas had a sensationally perfect 2nd round to clinch the title.

List of winners so far
2001 - Rahul Srinivas - Asterix Comics
2002 - Sumeet Kulkarni - Formula-One
2003 - Siddharth Natarajan - Archie Comics
2005 - Akshay Palve - The Mahabharata
2006 - Gaurav Singh - The Harry Potter series
2007 - Aniket Khasgiwale - World Cup Cricket
2008 - Abhishek Nagaraj - XKCD Comics
2009 - Aniket Khasgiwale - Sherlock Holmes
2010 - Nischay Mhatre - The History of Computing
2011 - Mohit Karve - Freaks and Geeks
2012 - Gautam Akiwate - Presidents of India
2013 - Payas Awadhutkar - Border-Gavaskar Trophy

(can someone help fill in the winner of 2011, and give the winning topics in 2011 and 2012?)

KQA Mindsweep 2014 - Results

City results from the KQA Mindsweep written quiz (scores reported as follows: best 8 sections, all 10 sections):

1. Rahul Kottalgi (76, 90)
2. Aditya Gadre (53, 59)
3. Suraj Menon (52, 58)
4. Samrat Sengupta (38, 42)
5. Gaurav Sabnis (32, 37)

13 people attempted the quiz in Pune.

BCQC May Open 2014 - Report

Set and Conducted by Gaurav Sabnis

Flavour: General

Format: Written elims of 35 questions + Finals of 48 questions

Results:
1st: Suraj Menon, Aditya Gadre and Divij Ghose
2nd: Samrat Sengupta, Navin Sharma and Srisha Haridas
3rd: Venkat S, Arnold D'Souza, Vibhav Bhave
Other finalists: Kunal Sawardekar, Gokul, Supreeth Ravish ;  J Ramanand, Samridh Kapur, Rohan Danait;  Avinash Mudaliar, Rahul Suhas Kottalgi, Utsab Saha

The quiz started with an interesting "old fashioned" pen and paper elims with a wide range of scores - the top scorers had 25/ 35 while the 9th team had 12/ 25

The finals had 48 questions - 42 general questions with 6 questions on a Dissertations 

The finals were light and interested, peppered of course with some stuff which none of us had a clue about, but overall , a very good quiz by Gaurav  who made it look like he's almost not been out of mainstream Indian quizzing for 8 years. 

Just a few peters, very interesting fundaes, very simply framed, fun questions - It certainly was a treat for us. 

PS: Please post your feedback in the comments. 

PPS: I have forgotten some of the people who took part in the finals. Please tell me names asap - I'll edit  post.

The BC Cup 2014 - Report

Set by Aniket Khasgiwale, Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. Then a 60 question quarter final to determine the top 4 i.e. the semi finalists. A 40 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 28 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner.

Report: 
The quiz started with a 30 qn elims set - the elim seemed much simpler this year and we had a lot of people crossing double digits. Defending Champion Ramkey topped the elims with a phenomenal 21 pts. Ramanand cleared the elims but had to leave so he gave up his spot. The Cut off was 13.5 - with Venkatraghavan (aka Venky) beating Kaushik Koley in a tiebreaker to enter the Quarter finals.

The Quarter Finals:

The Quarter finalists were :
Shrirang Raddi, Ramkey, Suraj Menon, Shubhankar Gokhale, Suvajit Chakraborty, Prithwish Datta, Venky and Anannya Deb 

The Quarters were very even till the first half with most people on 3 -4 points. Suraj answered practically every cricket question and topped the QF with 8 points. Anannya had a good second half and ended on 7 points to tie with Shubhankar, Shrirang and Prithwish. Last year's finalists Ramkey and Venky would have both been disappointed with their performances and crashed out with 3 and 4 pts respectively. 

We needed a tie breaker as 4 people were tied and 3 spots were open. At the end of a 3 question tie breaker Shrirang was eliminated and Anannya, Shubhankar and Prithwish were through to the semis 

The Semi-Final
Anannya was in vintage form throughout the semi and scored 8 points to win comfortably. Shubhankar missed a few questions on his pet topic of cycling and finished on 3 points. Suraj lost some of his form from the Quarters and finished on 2 points. Just as we seemed to be headed for a tiebreaker for the second final spot - Prithwish scored a point on the second last question to finish on 4 points and book his place in the final.

The Finals 
Prithwish won the toss and went first. In his first home half he scored 1 goal and and followed this up by scoring an away goal in Anannya's first home half. The second half for Prithwish turned out to be tougher than the first and no-one scored any goals. Anannya went into his second home half trailing 2-0 on aggregate and 1-0 in his home leg, thus needing 3 goals to win. Anannya lost the plot a bit as Prithwish scored another away goal and more or less sealed his victory. Anannya then needing to score all his last 4 attempts - missed and could not make it a third triumph at the BC Cup

BC Cup Champion 2014 : Prithwish Datta
Runner Up : Anannya Deb 

As for the review of the quiz, I request those who attended to share their feedback in the comments section.