SEAP Quiz 2004

The SEAP Quiz 2004 was held on Saturday the 25th September in Persistent Systems' Dewang Mehta Auditorium. 24 Teams turned up, something of a disappointment, but probably attributable to the fact that the quiz was only open to SEAP member companies (Don't blame the QM for this, he had no say in it).

Finalists:

Parimal Puranik and C. Phani (Calsoft)
Srihari Suthamally and Sudarshan Purohit (Persistent)
Manish Manke and Kartik Jayaraman (Geometric)
Vaidyanathan K.A. and Venkata Kiran G.P. (Kanbay)
Niranjan Tulpule and Satwik Hebbar (Calsoft)
Siddharth Madhusudan and Parag Shetye (Synechron)

The prelims were quite close with the first four placers separetd by a point apiece. Two Calsoft teams - Niranjan and Satwik, and Uma Chingunde and Vaibhav Nirargi - tied, and because of the only-two-teams-from-the-same-company cap for the finals had to play off in a tie breaker for the fifth spot. As if that wasn't enough there was a three way tie for the sixth spot. One team, Don Ksare (Spelling?) and Saurav Lenka (Kanbay) was eliminated because of a lower score on the starred questions, which still left Synechron and another Kanbay team Paresh Navalakha and L. Subramanian to face off in the tie break. Three tie-break questions proved insufficient and the tie break went to sudden death. Synechron made it through by virtue of knowing that "Fidelio" was Beethoven's only Opera.

The finals were an 8 round Infinite Rebounds affair, with 7 "Classic" rounds and 1 "Stage Two" (in Bangalore quizzing parlance). Your correspondent, being actively involved in the organizing will leave it to others to comment on the quality of the questions; slightly more than 60% were answered. It was quite close till the end: On the last question (which as it happened nobody got), any one of four teams could have won with 10 points. True to form the two Calsoft teams tied for second place, necessitating another tie break. Three tie break questions and they were still tied, so another dose of sudden death was called for. On the second question Niranjan and Satwik won thanks to a greater familiarity with Richard Stallman's alter ego of St. IGNUcious of the church of Emacs.

Final Scores and Placings:

Srihari Suthamally and Sudarshan Purohit (Persistent) 65 Winners
Niranjan Tulpule and Satwik Hebbar (Calsoft) 60 Runners Up
Parimal Puranik and C. Phani (Calsoft) 60
Siddharth Madhusudan and Parag Shetye (Synechron) 55
Manish Manke and Kartik Jayaraman (Geometric) 30
Vaidyanathan K.A. and Venkata Kiran G.P. (Kanbay) 30

:: One of the organisers