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The Odyssey Quiz, Chennai One of India's largest open quizzes. The details (from the QFI yahoogroup ): Name of the Quiz: Odyssey Quiz 2004 Date: January 26th, 2004 Venue: The Music Academy, Chennai Teams of three each. The quiz is open to all. Prilims: 3PM (Teams to be seated by 2.30PM); Finals: 5.30PM Registration forms available at Odyssey (Adyar), Best Wishes (Nungambakkam), H-Style (Anna nagar), Arena Multimedia(Vadapalani). Completed forms to be dropped off at Odyssey only. Outstation teams that want to participate are requested to send complete details (Team Name, Members, Contact details and address) to Gopal Kidao. Prizes: 1st: Gift Vouchers for Rs.45,000/- 2nd:Gift Vouchers for Rs.30,000/- 3rd: Gift Vouchers for Rs.21,000/- Quizmaster: Dr. Praveen Goday Quiz Content: Dr. Praveen Goday, Diwakar Pingle, Quizician (Rajiv Rai, Gopal Kidao, Anustup Datta & Movin Miranda)

What's in a name? Notes and Stones forms the url of this blog combining two words with deep BC associations. Notes : In old BC quizzing times, the word "note" was often used to mark a piece of trivia as "noteworthy". Anything new or unheard of was tagged by saying "note". For instance, the question "What is the name of the planet Pluto's only satellite?" has the answer Charon . This is trivially special as Charon is the boatman who patrols the River Styx and thus the entrance to the underworld realm of Hades in Greek myth. Hades, of course, is the den of Pluto. For those who perhaps knew the name of Planet Pluto's satellite as a matter of fact could now note the fact that its origins had a deeper significance. Stones : The BC's method of Quality Control. Implemented in the form of instant geological feedback. Any obnoxious, silly, farcical, contrived question would earn the person asking that question a sh...

A Few Tips More Rounding off the guidelines: * Setting Audio/Video questions: All too often, we see quizzes where there are mandatory audio-visual rounds and the questions may be set thus: A pic(song) is shown(played). After some brain-racking, the participants come up with their guesses. Then the quiz master goes on to reveal the pic/song and the real question is indirectly connected to the pic/song. The problem with this is the pic/song isn't central to the question. The q may well have been asked without the pic/song without diluting its focus. So when setting a audio-visual qn, ask yourself whether the qn could have been reframed without the pic/song & still have all necessary clues/focus to it. If yes, chuck the pic/audio. You don't "need" to have an A/V question in the quiz. Any deviations from plain text need to make significant contributions to the question. * While conducting a quiz, try & do away with time limits to answers. Working out re...

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Continuing Niranjan's Primer on organizing a good quiz - "Setting a Quiz" 1. Go for infinite rebounds rather that direct-and-passed questions method. it is a great way to eliminate the inconsistencies caused by the d&p method. 2. Do not comment a lot on the content of the answer (other than witty remarks, of course), as it provides unfair hints to others. 3. Never provide hints in the middle of a round. it is unfair to the earlier teams. 4. Keep spare questions handy in case of a tie. use the same questions (preferrably best of three) for all the teams involved in a tie. 5. Do not assume a stiff posture in contesting an argument by a participant/audience. settle the issue quickly, either by an (assumed) authoritative gesture or by a corrective action such as cancelling the question. (authority is generally mistaken for rudeness, which is not among the best interpretations of the word). 6 This one is a recent addition. many times, it...

This being a quiz blog, it would be a good idea to give alerts of quizzes to come. The ones coming up are sadly only for kids, but here they are nevertheless: 1. The ESPN School Sports Quiz is back for the year 2004 and contest forms are on the website. 2. Basu and co. are doing the Indian version of yet another Western quiz - India's Child Genius is the name and apparently the original was on Fox. Strictly speaking, it's not just a quiz, it's Spelling History Geography and more Bees all rolled into one. And if you're brave enough, you can attempt the Sample Test .

It has been a long held view at the BC that quizzes that have sensational prizes have questions from the gutter. Probably the only question to break that thumb-rule has been ESPN School Sports Quiz . Among some of the excellent prizes, the winners can choose a sporting event of their choice that they wish to attend. The winners this time,the crack pair of Robin Dey & Aditya Bagri from Birla High School, Kolkata picked the Sydney Test Match between India and Australia, and if their beaming faces were anything to go by, they were having a great time. Richly deserved of course, for last year's finals were three of the most competitive matches we have seen in a while.

This had to be one among the opening posts of this blog - this text, put together by Niranjan is a compendium of what some of us have considered the best ways of creating good questions. It also describes the driving spirit behind the BC style and offers a glimpse into its philosophy. (The lawn quizzes apart from being a crucible for experimentation helped hone and perfect these ideas). It is also my personal tribute to the best quizzes I've ever participated - the four Mensa quizzes from 1998 to 2001. This appeared originally on the Inquizitive egroup on 15 Feb 2001 and a redux version appeared later that year on 29 Oct. BC Alumni will have great fun re-relishing these words. How to set a quiz or sweet scorn soup for the quizzical soul My qualified abilities may restrict me from making me qualified to provide advice. Furthermore, being a consultant, I cannot stand the thought of advising without being paid. so, all I can do is to share my trivial experiences in setti...

This is a quizzing blog, but it's not quite about swapping questions. Rather, it proposes to serve as a notepad for myriad thoughts on the techniques of setting and conducting quizzes, investigating further into the nature and concepts behind the universally acclaimed and sometimes elusive "good question". This blog will be updated each Sunday. Tthere may be a few posts in between, but they will usually be small updates or corrections or announcements - the meat will usually be on the weekend. This will help keep the blog focussed and provide enough time for thoughts on a topic to coalesce. This blog is also open for contributions on the subjects. I don't foresee any problems in having enough material to write upon, so lack of posts should only be a function of lack of time.

Testing, Testing, One, Three, Yeh blog leak ho raha hai kya?