Interrobang

Forwarding details of a quiz at TAPMI, Manipal: Is the possibility of a recession giving you sleepless nights? Do you feel like taking some time off and chilling out? How does a visit to a beach sound? Or would you like to involve yourself in some serious quizzing? What if you were offered the chance of doing both at the same time? Sounds interesting??? T. A. Pai Management Institute's annual B-School fest, Atharva invites you to participate in the Quiz on the Beach (QOTB) to be held at Kaup Beach, Udupi, Karnataka. QOTB is held on the shores of the magical Arabian Sea with an old British built lighthouse serving as a backdrop. So pack your bags and come down to Kaup Beach for some serious fun!!! Quiz Flavour: Business Quiz Host: T. A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal Quiz Master: Mr. Arul Mani Date: 10th January 2009 Open to Corporates. Please check out the links below for further details: Poster and Rules (link to http://www.tapmi.org/atharva/Qotb.pdf) Atharva - Picas...

Oblig Question: (1637, Original) French: "Je pense, donc je suis"; Latin: ? A round up of the last two months of BCQC quizzing. October saw several quizzes, including a BCQC Open Quizzing Day, while November was very, very quiet thanks to a lot of people having to answer more boring questions in exams and such-like. Quizzes 1. Oct 02 – Oct 04 : Mindspark Mindspark is the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP)'s annual science and technology college fest. Three quizzes, set and conducted by COEP quizzers, were held as part of this, its 2 nd edition. a. Chakravyuuh : The 9 th edition of Chakravyuuh was held on the 2 nd of Oct. This, an open general quiz, is COEP biggest quiz of the year. Read this report for results. b. Torquest : This is a Science and Technology quiz only for college students which was won by Abhishek and Raghav. A summary of results here . c. Barqing Mad! : The report of this open Entertainment quiz can be read here . 2. Oct 12 : BCQC O...

First apologies to all those who have been asking for a copy of the questions. I'm having some serious trouble with my PC right now that renders me hapless when dealing with MS Office. It'll be out soon. In Part 1 , I explained how I went about collecting the content for my quiz. Hopefully, those who were there were pleasantly surprised by the chosen format. Here's how I went about it: Format Most quizzes don't allow for any tactical decisions. An Infinite Rebounds based quiz is uniform, which is kind to the serious quizzer who is fed up of artificial ways to inject drama into quizzes. "Showy" quizzes have disruptive rounds such as buzzers, rounds with very uneven scoring, which may be fun for the audience, but painful for the good teams on stage. But IR can be a tad boring and monotonous. All teams need to do is to focus on the next question, and not worry about any kind of tactics, except for in the odd long connect. It's a classical format, but one...

It may be a tad conceited to write about the making of a quiz, but since this was the hardest quiz that I have ever set, I thought it would be interesting to write about the lessons learnt and decisions taken along the way. The genesis of this quiz was in a bad cricket quiz that I participated in with Harish and others earlier this year. I hadn't been to a good cricket quiz in a long time and felt it was a pity this was such a bad quiz that taught me nothing new or interesting. I had the idea of a "Religions of India" quiz, about cricket, films, and politics. I had never participated in a formal quiz about Indian politics. The closest was a lovely BC quiz by Ganesh Hegde (always the quizzer, never the dancer). I pitched the idea to Harish, but soon, I had begun to form some strange ideas about the format. I requested him to let me go ahead with this alone. I was wary of doing it alone because I did not (still don't) know a lot about Indian cricket. I had a reas...

Set and conducted by : Apoorva Dubey and Akhil Flavour : General Participation : ~40 teams Results: 1st: (B) Vibhendu Tiwari + Nikhil Motlag + J. Ramanand (draft): 140 2nd: (E) Salil Bijur + Yash Tamaskar + Yash Marathe (draft): 105 Jt. 3rd: (C) Suraj Menon + Arnold D'Souza + Kaustubh Bhat (draft): 55 Jt. 3rd: (F) Tushar Kaul + Shiv Anant Tayal + Anand Sivashankar (draft): 55 5th: (D) Suvajit Chakraborty + Aditya Gadre + Roshith Mohan (draft): 50 6th: (A) Gautam + Ramprakash + Sudarshan Shidore (draft): 30 ~50 questions in IR; some "free hit" questions; Elims cutoff: top 6: 9, draft: 8; I couldn't record the elims scores Report This quiz had the toughest elimination round I can ever recall having attempted. We were lucky to squeeze in as draft picks, with those who didn't losing out on the proverbial hair's breadth. This resulted in a very new (and some would say, fresh) lineup on stage. Many of the questions in both the finals and elims were good...

Set and conducted by : J. Ramanand Flavour : Indian Cricket, Indian Politics, Hindi Films Participation : 29 teams Results: (with final-within-final scores) 1st: "C-Madan ke Chinese Chakkars" B.V.Harish Kumar + Salil Bijur + Shiv Anant Tayal (draft): 70 pts 2nd: "D-Ranjeet ke Pujaaris" Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari + Nikhil Motlag (draft): 60 pts 3rd: "E-Lotus-eyed Eaters" Amit Varma + Pradeep Ramarathnam + Tushar Kaul (draft) :55 pts 4th: "B-Bob ke Bajrangbaliis" - Suraj Menon + Yash Marathe + Brijesh Nair (draft) 5th: "A-Shetty's Hairraisers" - Saransh Verma + Anubhav Chatterjee + Suvajit Chakraborty (draft) 6th: "F-Hercules ke Muscules" - Subhodeep Jash + Ritoban Sengupta + Abhishek Nagaraj (draft) Elims A 24-questions elims (split equally amongst the three topics) saw 9 teams being selected for the finals. I apologise for the problems with the videos; it tooks us three laptops before we could someho...

We’re back with the next set of BCQC Open quizzes. Here are the details: When:  Sunday, 12th October, 2008 Where:  Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road (need directions? See http://bcqc.org/?q=participate) What Quiz 1: “Balls, Ballots, Bollywood”  – a three-in-one quiz on Indian cricket, Indian politics and Hindi films Reporting Time: 9:15 am Quiz Time: 9:30 am to 1 pm By: J. Ramanand Quiz 2: October General Quiz  Reporting Time: 2:15 pm Quiz Time: 2:30 pm to 6 pm By: Akhil and Apurva How:  (same for both quizzes) Teams of 2 members (don't have a teammate? don't worry, you might find one at the venue) Top 9 teams for the finals No prior registration needed, no entry fees, open for all Prizes Sponsored by Landmark, Pune Prizes for all finalists Prizes for Best School and Best College teams Contact Email: contact - at - bcqc_dot_org Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Salil (98231 12258)

Set by : Yasho Tamaskar , Aditya Gadre , Aniket Khasgiwale . Conducted BY : Yasho Tamaskar Results: 1st : J Ramanand and BV HArish Kumar : 145 2nd : Salil Bijur and Suraj Menon : 115 3rd : Suvajit Chakraborty and Sayak Dasgupta : 100 4th : Akhil and Apoorva : 95 5th : Meghashyam Shirodkar and Venkat Srinivasan : 55 6th : Mihir Muley and Chinmay Nivargi : 15 Format: 42 seamless IR , Two long connects The quiz was quite entertaining with 4 teams doing well fighting it out for the top three spots . JR and BVHK gave some great answers and cracked both themes before everyone else . Suraj and Salil gave some brilliant answers but lost out due to the theme rounds. Ahkil and Apoorva and Salil and Suraj were tied upto the last round but were beaten as they didn't get the theme. Last years winners ,Suvajit and Sayak didn't seem to be on top form and missed a few easy ones. They did make a big comeback in the last round to just pip Akhil and Apoorva to third place.

Set by : Kaustubh Bhat , aniket Khasgiwale , Mohit Karve , Aditya Bhedasgaonkar , Avnish Dhongde and Aditya Gadre Conducted By : Kaustubh Bhat Results: 1st : Abhishek Nagaraj and Raghav Chakravarthy - 145 pts 2nd : Saransh Verma and Karan Chawla - 60 pts (won on higher elims score) 3rd : Suvajit Chakraborty and Amit Dandekar - 60 pts 4th : PS Sriram and Omkar Nene - 50 pts 5th : Rohan Pandit and Varad Deshmukh - 40 pts 6th : Rohan Jain and Dhruv Chadha - 10 pts Leave opinions and suggestions in Comments section.

Set by : Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale with Kaustubh Bhat and Yasho Tamaskar in supporting roles. Gaurav Sabnis made a sweeping cameo with several questions for the finals and the elims. Conducted by : Aditya and Aniket Standings (elim score in brackets): 1st : J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar : 110 pts (28) 2nd : Amit Varma and Sumant Srivathsan : 90 pts (25) 3rd : Sarat Rao and S Balakrishnan : 70 pts (24) 4th : Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde : 60 pts (25) 4th : Salil Bijur and Yash Marathe : 60 pts (24) 6th : Prasann Potdar and Mukund Krishnan : 50 pts (24) QM's notes : (JR will be putting up unbiased detailed report later) - Simple elims just like last year . The cut off was 24 . The top six teams were very close on elims score. - Finals : We tried as much as possible to make good questions on all topics. Some topics were slightly neglected (Current affairs , Literature, Art to name a few) -Though there seamed to be some simpler ones , as far as I remember , th...

On the 21st of October, the BCQC conducted a quiz for the the Poona School and Home for the Blind as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations. There were two challenges and 'firsts' for us: one, the quiz was to be held in Marathi, and second, some of the participants had little or no ability to see. Thirty teams (of 3 members each, mostly teachers) took the preliminaries. The quiz was conducted by Niranjan Pedanekar, with the questions set by members of the BCQC. Despite many being first-time quizzers, the participants did very well, making it very hard to separate the six top teams. The finals were conducted with great elan and enthusiasm by Niranjan. The finals lasted for about an hour, consisting of simple but largely 'workable' questions passed using IR (yes, we didn't desist from using all that!), including an audio round. Here, at times, Niranjan even sang some of the questions, eliciting spontaneous 'once more'-s from the appreciative audience....

BCQC - September 2008 newsletter Oblig Question: In 1868, geologist Louis Lartet discovered 5 skeletons in a rock shelter in the Dordogne region of Central France. What was the name of these rock shelters? It was such a busy September for the BCQC, so we decided it was time we had our own newsletter ! This quizzing month was unusually busy because many of us were not only participating in quizzes, but also organising them. But largely, we had fun, and hopefully, our hapless victims will agree as well :-). This newsletter is designed to share some of the recent happenings involving the BCQC, and to give some of the BC expats a chance to catch up, and to provide everyone advance notice on what is coming next. ~~~~Quizzes we organised in September~~~~ 1. Sept 18: ACES school quiz : Once again, we were part of the ACES school quiz, now in its 4th edition. Set by the BCQC and admirably conducted by Salil, the quiz was won by St. Mary's School (Boys) in a terrific contest. All the ...

CoEP will be organising a quiz fest as a part of the annual technical event MindSpark There will be three quizzes: 2nd October - Chakravyuh - General Open quiz Details: General quiz .Teams of two. NO restrictions . Anyone can take part. Rs 30/- registration per team. Time: 12:45 pm .. Venue: College of engineering Pune. 3rd October - Torquest - Technical Quiz Details: Science and Technology quiz. Teams of two. College students only (UG or PG) You'll need your College I card. Rs 30/- per team for registration. Time: 1:45pm Venue: College of Engineering Pune 4th October - BarQing Mad ! - Open Entertainment quiz. Details: Entertainment (Tv , Movies and music) quiz. Teams of two. NO restrictions. It's an Open quiz. Rs 30/- per team for registration. Time: 9:45am Venue: College of Engineering Pune Prizes: Total cash prizes of about Rs 50,000/- to be won. In case of any queries you can contact : Aditya at 9881101291 , Aniket at 9766043385 , Yash at 9970519559 .

Set and Conducted by : Karan And Jaipal Standings: 1st: Suvajit Chakraborty and Aditya Gadre : 60 pts 2nd: Yash Marathe and BV Harish Kumar : 30 pts *3rd: Kunal Pungaliya and Keyur Munot : 20 pts 4th : Yash Tamaskar and Kaustubh Bhat : 20 pts 5th : Karan Chawla and saransh Varma : 20 pts 6th: Kaushik S and Siddharth Cavale : 15 pts * won on tiebreak The quiz was a decent debut effort though very very short. A 30 question elim was followed by a 24 question final . Just 24 questions in an Open quiz was a bit of a disappointment. There were a few repeated questions , quite a few sitters and some arbit stuff , but this could all be forgiven since it was after all their first time. A few positives about the quiz were the punctuality - The quiz started and ended on time and the fact that they used IR and not D&P as most new QMs end up using.

Set by : members of BCQC Conducted by Salil Bijur. Standings: 1st : Aditya Kaustubhan , Ashwin Bhide , Shatrunjay Mall [St Mary's (Boys)] - 110 pts 2nd : Rohit Telang ,Abhishek Pandit , Rushabh Banthia [Symbiosis Secondary] - 95 pts 3rd : Rohit Sahasrabudhe , Rohan Danait , Sanket Bhilare [Abhinav Vidyalaya] - 80 pts 4th : Vipluv Shetty , Shreeharsh Godbole , Ambarish Prabhu [Loyola High School]- 70 pts 5th : Punarrasu Pendse , Siddharth JAdhav, Prachi Tadsane [Kalmadi Shamrao High School] - 65 pts 6th : Mohit TEndulkar , Khuzehua Shipchandler , Kaustubh Wagh [St. Vincents High School] - 60 pts Elims: Symbiosis(21) , Kalmadi Shamrao (18) , St Mary's (16), Abhinav (16), Loyola (15), St Vincents (15) Format: 48 questions seamless IR , 8 question written theme round. The quiz was a very closely fought one with the top three finishing within 30 points. St Mary's put on a great show and steadily built up their momentum to take the lead in the third round . They didn't ...

There was a huge turnout of participants and viewers and the QM said that it was probably the toughest round of TC 2008. Nice set of elims. As usual, the elims were followed by the finals of the Tata track which had a few 'firsts'. Arnab B from TIFR qualified for the finals; probably the first all-woman team in TC finals from TCS consisted of Abha Shah and Sowmya, who is Arnab's wife. In fact, Arnab and Sowmya's daughter accompanied them on to the stage and took turns in sitting with the TCS and TIFR teams! The team from TAL which had the two members boasting of a 'cumulative experience of 4 finals of the Crucible, Pune edition' were consistent through the rounds and eventually won. TCS came second. The non-Tata track finals was also quite interesting. Vasu's team stood 7th in the elims and just missed out qualifying on a tie-break question. The finalists were Infosys (Jay +1), ZS Associates, BMC Software (Harish + Shubhadeep), Kotak Mahindra (Samrat and A...

The next quiz in the Theme League will be taking place this Sunday , the 10th of August, at 1:30 pm at the Boat Club lawns , College of Engineering , Pune. Details : The Quiz will be a Science and Technology quiz set by Mohit Karve. It's an Open quiz and anyone's allowed to take part. Quiz will start with a written elims (so get a pen /pencil / quill/ other writing instrument). The top 10 participants will be divided into 5 teams and the others will be randomly distributed to the five teams (these people will get only half the points though). In case of any queries mail us : contact(at)bcqc(dot)org Update: see the Theme League homepage for details. Comments on that page only.

Report for BCQC's annual school quiz 'The Interrogative' written by QM Maitreyi Gupta. The BCQC’s annual school quiz The second year of The Interrogative saw more than 80 teams from 18 schools around the city. The results as follows: (Finals rank: School (Team members): finals score: elims score (stars)) 1st: Abhinav Vidyalaya (Rohan Danait, Sanket Bhilare): 115 : 20 (5) 2nd: Vikhe Patil (Amol Joshi, Omkar Dhakephalkar): 105: 18 (5) 3rd: Symbiosis Secondary (Abhishek Pandit, Rushab Bainthia): 90: 20 (5) 4th: Abhinav Vidyalaya (Rohit Sahasrabudhe, Satyavrat Wagle): 80: 17 (6) Joint 5th: St. Mary's Boys (Shatrunjay Mall, Akshay Agarwal): 70: 16 (5) Joint 5th: Bal Shikhan Mandir (Siddharth Khole, Sumedh Kaulgud): 70: 15 (5) 7th: Symbiosis Secondary (Ankur Borwankar, Rohit Telang): 45: 17 (4) 8th: P. Jog High School (Atharva Kunte, Amoghsiddhi Bhandarkar): 20: 16 (5) Special mention: Shreedhar Kale and Maitreya Ghorpade from Symbiosis Secondary School miss...

Set by : Sumant Srivathsan, Rajiv Rai, Avinash Mudaliar ( Bombay Quiz Club ) Conducted By : Sumant Results: 1st: J Ramanand and Suvajit Chakraborty : 53 pts 2nd: Vibhendu Tiwari and Sarat Rao :48pts 3rd: Kunal Sawardekar and Aditya Gadre :47 pts 4th: Amit Garde and Anand Sivashankar :43 pts 5th: Bikash and Roshith :17pts 6th:Arnold D'souza + Saransh Verma : 16pts Format: 48 seamless IR , 4 mini-themes of 3 questions each , one long connect and one written round. Elims cut-off: 16.5pts The quiz was very good to say the least.The elims were very all very well framed , interesting questions .In the finals all the questions were excellent , most of them were workable and not obscure. It was nice to see the heavy use of audio-visuals in the quiz. Sumant did a great job of conducting the quiz. Another good thing about this quiz was the length. I loved the fact that this quiz was not wrapped up in a hurry and none of the teams were pressurised into answering quickly. The whole thing ...

Quiz 1: “The Interrogative” School Quiz – 2008 Edition Date 27th July, 2008 (Sunday) Time 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (reporting time: 9:00 a.m.) Venue Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Bhageerath, Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd. (Behind Dominos Pizza), Senapati Bapat Road, Pune – 16 Flavour General Teams Two members per team (from Class VII to X); Teammates can be from different classes Conducted by Maitreyi Gupta, Yash Marathe, Rohit Khaladkar Prizes * All finalists will receive prizes and certificates; Winners will also receive a trophy each; Audience prizes * The school contingent with the best performance will receive a “Best School” trophy. * Prizes worth a total of Rs.12,000/- * The prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark, Pune. How to register Prior registrations are required, though some on-the-spot registrations can be accepted. Schools have been sent invitation letters. Interested participants are requested to contact their principal/teacher-in-charge. If your school has...

Amit Varma was kind enough to pick up some fragments of mine for an interesting article on quizzing . Serious quizzing still remains very niche, a masonic sub-culture of sorts, but it takes a quiz-geek to know there are three ways of looking at every intersection, even if it only seems to be a straight road. Anyway, as Amit mentions in the end of his post, check out Niranjan's primers ( 1 , 2 , 3 .) on setting quizzes (to which I've made a small contribution). Perhaps they need a little touching-up, but they're perennially relevant. In other news, a certain Salil Bijur catapulted into top spot in the rankings of the local BCQC Page 3 Quizzers League given his recent appearance in this pub quiz (scroll past the large expanses of skin to the bottom - I must admit that doesn't sound very decent). It didn't go all according to plan since he missed the question on the country with the oldest flag (Denmark), a sitter if there ever was. Too bad they weren't serv...

Date: 28 Jun, 2008 Venue: Nehru Memorial Hall Conducted by: Derek O'Brien Turnout: ~250 teams Open Quiz Final Results 1st: Rajiv Rai, Sumant Srivathsan, Vibhendu Tiwari ('Travelling Pillsburies') 2nd: Anand Sivashankar, Meghashyam Shirodkar, Amit Garde ('Aam Junta') 3rd: J. Ramanand, B.V.Harish Kumar, Niranjan Pedanekar ( full name for the effing record! : 'Encyclopiidith: The Factually Harassed') 4th: Suvajit Chakraborty, Sayak, Abhishek ('Symbiosis Law School - Questionable Characters') Other finalists: 'W.G.Disgrace' (Govind Grewal, Mukund Sridhar, Pradeep Ramaratnam), 'Softwariyaan' (Ramanathan, Abha, Jai), 'Infosys-SHA' (Harshal, Siddharth, Abhik), 'Demon Barbers of Fleet Street' (Venkat, Raj K, Maitreyi) Best Corporate Team : Infosys-SHA (Pune) Best College Team : Symbiosis Law School Best School Teams : 1st: Army Public School, 2nd: Muktangan Quizzer of the Year : Ramanand (Other finalists: Anand S,...

Landmark Pune are organising a quiz on the evening of 28th of June, 2008 at Nehru Memorial Hall. Details : * Teams of upto 3 members. * Venue: Nehru Memorial Hall, Camp, Pune * 28th of June 2008, 3pm. * Quizmaster: Derek O'Brien * Prizes (All prizes are in form of Landmark Gift Vouchers) - First place – Rs. 30000 - Second place – Rs. 15000 - Third place – Rs. 9000 - Best corporate team – Rs. 6000 - Best team name – Rs. 3000 - Best school team – Rs. 6000 (students of upto class 12 are eligible) - Best school team runner up – Rs. 3000 (students of upto class 12 are eligible) - Quizzer of the year – Rs. 5000 - Plus attractive audience prizes. * Registration needs to be done in advance. The organizers will be assigning seats, and so it is recommended that you register early so as to avoid last minute crowding. * To register, walk into Landmark (Next to Dorabjee's), Moledina Road, Camp, Pune anytime before the 28th of June. You can register for your frie...

One of the founding fathers of BC quizzing , Shrirang Raddi, is participating in this year's edition of Mastermind . That probably makes him the only person to have participated in both the UK as well as the Indian versions of the show (if you know of others who have done so, let us know). It is worthwhile to note that Shrirang (who also won the Brand Equity Quiz in 2000-01) was the highest scorer (nationwide) in the written qualifiers for Mastermind India 2002. Due to a series of toxic events, he did not progress beyond Round 1 of that edition (subject: "Poisonous Snakes of India" ). Which is why we're happy to report that the venerable senior has cruised into the next round of the UK version (subject: "The First Kashmir War 1947-48" ). Tally-Ho! and Yoicks! to him for the next round.

The Mahaquizzer national top 100 is finally out. You can peruse the entire list here . Congratulations are in order to Arul Mani for comprehensively topping (even if he did a Tendulkar-'07). Only 5 people achieve the 80+ mark, the level which many people claim should debar them from taking Mahaquizzer again ;) Congratulations are also in order to (Pune winner) Ramanand for a decent showing, even though he just misses out on the national top 10. Update: The list of city-wise winners (by category) is also up.

So this is not uncommon. Yasho (that Hashmi-like molester of unsuspecting horses ) speaks ruefully of being led by years of quizzing which gives you that immensely dangerous tendency to make wild stabs at questions en passant, Don Quixote style. (He also mentions that story of Salil saying"pass" in an exam.) I had the same experience once. Fresh from losing COEP's annual Chakravyuuh (the first of our four glorious bridesmaid trophies there), I found myself at one of the few competitive exams I have ever had to take. Having felt that I was overly cautious at that quiz (leading to our loss), I went in, tilting at the windmills, like Shahid Afridi chasing a half-volley to the ends of the earth. It ended badly. Very badly. The fact that I now quote "quizzing-as-philosophy" amply illustrates that.

Organised by: KQA Conducted in Pune by: Vishwajeet Narvekar (many thanks!) School Winner: nandan Gokhale - Fergusson College (24) College Winner: saransh Verma - Sinhgadh College of Engineering (27) Ladies Winner: maitreyi Gupta - Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (29)* Open Category Winner: J. ramanand (68) * maitreyi also had the highest score by a college student, but the Ladies and College prizes were awarded separately Number of participants: 32 (a little disappointing because some of the registered participants did not show up. Unluckily, we also did have about 6-8 people out of town.) Official Final standings will be out soon .

The KQA's annual solo quizzing championship Mahaquizzer will also be held in Pune, along with 8 other cities. The Pune details can be seen here, while click here for the official homepage .

If you haven't already heard of Boiled Beans , I recommend it highly. It's a quizzing site (Indian) that features questions on science and technology, and the content is such that even non-geeks should find it interesting.

Date: May 4, 2008 Set and Conducted by Niranjan Pedanekar Results (elims scores in bracket): 1st: Harish + Ramanand (D): 215 [25.5] 2nd: Akhil + Apurva (C) : 210 [20.5] Jt. 3rd: Salil + Yasho (B) : 160 [24] Jt. 4rd: Aditya Gadre + Kaustubh (E) :160 [21] 5th: Abhishek + S. Ashwin (F) : 145 [19.5] 6th: Aniket + Manish Manke (A): 105 [20] Best school team: Pushkar Pandit and Kunal Kalkundri; Best college team not in final: Rohan and Gaurav Singh, Best newbies: Harshal Modi and Mahip Vyas Scorer: Aadinath Harihar Report This report is easy to describe: the quiz was brilliant :-). After having inflicted brain-churning quizzes in the last couple of years, Niranjan chose to rebel against the monsters he had unleashed, as well as the verbose laziness of the rest of us. He presented a quiz whose underlying theme was 'pithiness' which showed that questions can be set with an economy of expression by exploiting the proverbial '1 pic == 1000 words. In doing so, he has again pushe...

Set and Conducted by Abhishek Nagaraj and Aditya Gadre Results: 1st: J Ramanand , BV Harish Kumar , Kaustubh Bhat :100 pts 2nd: Niran Pedanekar , Yasho Tamaskar and Vasu Ramanujan : 75 Jt 3rd: Meghashyam Shirodkar , Samrat Sengupta , Aniket Khasgiwale :70 Jt 3rd: Salil Bijur , Nndan Gokhale and Manish Manke :70 5th: Apoorva , Akhil and Sanyukta : 50 6th: Kapeesh Saraf , Venkat S , Maitreyi Gupta : 35 Some thoughts about the quiz: -Turnout was rather disappointing. Only 25 teams showed up. -This quiz was not a junta-friendly quiz. While we agree the elims were very difficult, they were workable and not obscure.The low cut off was expected. -The newbie quiz was particularly added with the intention that not-so-experienced quizzers also have some fun. -We tried to cover new topics in the finals and also to rediscover some of the old facts in new ways. -We paid no attention whatsoever to the balance of the quiz and did not make question with any topic in mind. We just concentrated o...

We're pleased to announce the next set of open quizzes in May. The details: Date: 4 May, 2008 (Sunday) Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Limited Quiz 1: "dekho magar pyaar se" - a Visuals-only quiz Theme: General, Visuals Quizmaster: Niranjan Pedanekar Reporting Time: 9:30 am Quiz Time: 9:45 am to 12:30 pm Teams of 2, 6 team finals, no prior registrations needed Prizes for all finalists, best school/college/newbie teams, audience Quiz 2: "Brain Damage" Theme: General Quizmasters: Abhishek Nagarak, Aditya Gadre Reporting Time: 2:15 pm Quiz Time: 2:30 pm to 6:00 pm Teams of 2, 6 team finals, no prior registrations needed Prizes: Winners: Rs. 1500 Landmark GVs 2nd Place : Rs 900 Landmark GVs 3rd Place : Rs 300 Landmark GVs Prizes for all other finalists as well Prizes for the Best school/college/all-ladies teams, Best team name prize, and audience goodies. In addition, there will be a special audience-only quiz (top 3 places...

Set and Conducted by Rohan and Karan Jain, Rouhaan, and others. Results: 1st: B.V.Harish Kumar + J Ramanand (B) : 120 pts 2nd: Pradeep Ramaratnam + Amit Pandeya (D): 110 pts 3rd: Salil Bijur + Venkat S (E): 80 pts Jt. 4th: Niranjan Pedanekar + Yash Tamaskar : 70 pts Jt. 4th: Amit Garde + Samrat Sengupta : 70 pts 6th: Akhil + Apoorva : 60 pts Report (also see comments) The Rotaract Club of Poona organised the second edition of their Open quiz, once again at the Ladies Club. The weather was a little inhospitable for quizzing, in contrast to the nicely organised event. Participants were well looked after (except for some chip-less munks), which made up for any shortcomings in the actual quiz. The finals were led by Salil and the Hoosier Cat but they hit a brickwall exactly after the half-way stage. This is when the visitors from Bombay picked up steam to remain in the lead right upto the last five questions. They lost the lead exactly once and unfortunately for them, the quiz ended ...

Several of my fellow quizzers are massive sports fans with a 'citius altius fortius' complex, so I'm sure they would have wished they could participate in BBC's new "Sport Mastermind" . Perhaps we should do a home-made Sport Mastermind at, well, home, just to make them feel better. Though going by precedent, we'll have topics such as World Cup football and World Cup cricket and the racing career of a part-time footballer :-).

Date: 02 April, 2008 Venue: IIPM Tower, ICC Tower Set by: Students of IIPM, Pune Conducted by: Meghashyam Shirodkar Theme: Business and General, College quiz Quiz Final Results 1st: SIBM 2nd: Symbiosis Law School 3rd: AISSMS Other Finalists: SIBM-2, ICTM, SCOE Link: Report in the Indian Express .

Aditya Bhedasgaonkar blogs charmingly about Abhimanyu. He has a picture there too for you to put faces to names. Here you go.

(Also see this report) A decent turn-out for the quiz (27 teams). Good to see many new faces and some old stalwarts like Amit Garde and Manish Manke. Just like my last year's quiz, the top three spots were decided in the last few questions, it was exciting to watch with top positions changing intermittently. Amit Garde was in great form, as he with some able support from Aditya and Kaustubh managed to just edge out the other two strong teams marshalled by Ramanand and Niranjan. The other teams also had their moments answering some tough questions. The audience interaction was enjoyable, with our extra finances resulting in some good prizes for them. Also I noticed that the audience was more enthused by the special rounds, than the normal IR rounds. Another aspect was that the quiz went off quite peacefully, with no acrimony among the teams or with the quizmaster :), a welcome trend after a few arguments etc in previous quizzes. One drawback from my side was the intermittent ...

Date: 5th Apr 2008 Venue: Telco Colony, Tata Motors General Quiz Set and Conducted by Vinay N. Format:18 on IR; 6 on D&P; 6 non-passing identify-in-3-clues; 6 on D&P Results: 1st: Prasann Potdar and Amit Pandeya (D): 80 2nd: Salil Bijur and Nirad Inamdar (C): 70 3rd: Saransh Verma and Karan Chawla (B): 65 4th: Abhishek Nagaraj and Aniket Khasgiwale (A): 55 5th: Aditya Sharma and Anirudh Lamba (F): 40 6th: Sirisha and B.V. Harish Kumar (E): 30 Business Quiz Set and Conducted by Vinay N. Format:IR and D&P rounds, a 'betting round' (need clarification on this) and a D&P round connecting to a theme Results: 1st: Prasann Potdar and Amit Pandeya (D): 100 2nd: Vishal Kelkar and Saurabh Goel (B): 95 3rd: Nikhil Motlag and Ramakrishnan Sridhar (B): 50 4th: Abhishek Nagaraj and Weena (C): 30 Joint 5th: Anubhav Chatterjee and Vijay Krishna C.V. (A): 20 Joint 5th: Yash Tamaskar and Siddharth Cavale (A): 20

Set and Conducted by Samrat Sengupta. Results: 1st: Amit Garde , Kaustubh Bhat and Aditya Gadre : 94pts 2nd: J Ramanand , Abhishek N , Yasho Tamaskar : 86pts 3rd: Niranjan Pedanekar , Suvajit Chakraborty , Salil Bhargava :82pts 4th: Salil Bijur , Aditya Chandorkar and Yash Marathe :70pts 5th: Aniket Khasgiwale , Kapeesh Saraf , Venkat S : 38 pts 6th: Harsh Ketkar , Saransh Verma , Manish Manke :34 pts Elims: Ramanand + Yasho , Niranjan + Suvajit (21pts; started with a 16pt advantage), Aniket + Venkat , Aditya + Amit (19.5pts ; started with 8 pt advantage), Yash M + Aditya C , Harsh + Saransh (17pts) Manish and Salil Bhargava , Salil Bijur and Abhishek N , Kapeesh and Kaustubh were the other 3 teams that qualified and were randomly distributed to the other 6 teams. Elims were quite simple and did the job of separating the top nine 9 teams from the rest. The finals had 5 rounds. Three were general rounds and 2 were special 'pick your topic' rounds. Most of the questions we...

Date: 30 Mar, 2008 Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSL, Pune Set and Conducted by: Yash Tamaskar, Suvajit Chakraborty Theme: Entertainment, Music, and a little bit of Literature and Arts Quiz Final Results Format: 2 halves of seamless IR, including two theme connects; ~50 questions 1st: Niranjan Pedanekar + J. Ramanand (A) 2nd: Apurva Dubey + Akhil (D) 3rd: Samrat Sengupta + Amit Garde (E) 4th: Salil Bijur + Abhishek Nagaraj (B) ??th: Kaustubh Bhat + Aditya Gadre (F) ??th: Anupam Akolkar + Chintan Shah (C) Scorers : Aadinath Harihar Elims standings (out of 40 questions): Niranjan+Ramanand (19.5), Akhil+Apurva (12.5), Anupam+Chintan (12), Samrat+Amit (11.5), Abhishek+Salil (10.5), Aditya+Kaustubh (10) No. of teams: ~25 Notes : This is an incomplete report because I don't have all the final scores, and some of the standings may be incorrect. Also, the community had much to say about the quiz on the day, so please use the comments to record them. This way, we...

For the Kunal Sawardekar Prize (the prize is named after the best college quizzer of the previous year; next year it will have the name of this year's winner) Date: 29 March, 2008 Venue: the Boat Club, COEP, Pune Set and Conducted by: J. Ramanand (with contributions from Salil Bijur and Anupam Akolkar) Theme: General, Solo Quiz Final Results Format: 2 rounds of 12 dry + 7 audio visuals each; 5 questions in a common play-off format; IR; total: 43 questions Winner: Yash Marathe - Modern College (A) - 75 2nd: Suvajit Chakraborty (D) - Symbiosis Law School - 65 3rd: Abhishek Nagaraj (C) - COEP - 45 4th: Gaurav Singh (F) - COEP - 30 5th: Aniket Khasgiwale (B) - COEP - 25 6th: Yash Tamaskar (E) - COEP - did not trouble the scorers Scorer : Maitreyi Gupta Elims standings (out of 25 questions): Suvajit (14.5), Aniket (14), Abhishek (14), Gaurav (10), both Yash-es (9) No. of participants: 19 Notes : Yash Marathe won a quiz that was alive right upto the last question....

Abhimanyu is the annual intra-COEP solo quizzing event. This year's edition featured eight finalists, was conducted by Niranjan Pedanekar and others, and featured question sets from BC quizzers in and outside the country, making it quite a globalised quiz. A report: Date : 21 Feb, 2008 Organized by : Aniket Khasgiwale Eight finalists qualified through a written elims. The final started with a 20 question GK round set by Meghashyam. This was followed by each participant taking questions on a chosen topic of interest. The result was a very tight quiz, which was decided on the very last question of the event. The Standings (participant, year, score, topic, topic setter) Winner: Abhishek Nagaraj - BE - (17) - XKCD comics - Kunal Thakar Runner-Up: Aditya Gadre - TE - (16) - World Cup Football - Yash Marathe 3rd: Kaustubh Bhat (15) - TE - Iron Maiden - Kunal Sawardekar 4th: Yash Tamaskar (14) - TE - The "Yes Minister/Prime Minister" series - Gaurav Sabnis 5th: Mohit...

Date: April 2, 2008 Another entertaining event by Derek O Brien. The finalists on stage (in alphabetical order) were from BMC Software, Honeywell, Infosys, Savoir Faire, TCS, and ZS Associates. Savoir Faire from Goa had been winning the Pune round of BEQ for the last two years and were hot favourites to win again. The team from TCS, Ramanathan and Abha (Did I get the names right?) did well to pip them on the tie-breaker question by answering Roshogollas to "What is K C Das credited with inventing?" . The theme of this year was how quizzing has evolved in India over the years. There were mentions of Siddharth basu and even the cover of Mastermind 5 (but sadly, no mention of the winner of Mastermind 5 who hails from Pune) The rounds and the representation of the scores were also in line with the year that was being commemorated. The highlight for me was to listen to the audio clip of Ameen Sayani hosting the BQC on Radio. Jug and Bunny Suraiya were also present. TCS, the l...

(This announcement is for the college quizzers of Pune) We'll be conducting a quiz meant exclusively for all Pune college quizzers. Details: Who can participate: Any (full time) college student from a Pune college. 11th standard onwards. When: tentatively scheduled for 29th March (Saturday). Time: 9:30 am What: A general quiz. Written eliminations (30 mins), Finals (~2 hours). This is a solo quiz. Venue: BC Lawns, COEP Further logistical details will follow later. The quiz is aimed at encouraging college quizzers in the city, so we aren't inviting entries from outside. Also, the quiz is meant for young student quizzers, so we will not be able to accomodate part-time students or professional quizzers with an identity card :-) At any rate, we don't want to get into all that! What you need to do if you are eligible and interested: 1. Register by sending me (and only me) your name, your college's name, what you study (leave a comment with your email id and I'll...

Announcement - March Open BC Quizzes The Boat Club Quiz Club is organising two quizzes on Sunday, 30th March 2008. Entry is free. Venue: Dewang Mehta auditorium, Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune-16 (see this link for directions ) Preliminary Details: Quiz 1: The "LAME" quiz - Entertainment quiz Time: 9.45 am to 12.30 pm; reporting at 9.30 am Teams of 2, 6 teams in the final. QMs: Yash Tamaskar and Suvajit Chakraborty No prior registration. Prizes for all finalists, as well as for best school, college teams and audience prizes. Quiz 2: Open General Quiz Time: 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm, reporting at 2:15 pm Teams of 2, 6 teams in the final. QMs: Samrat Sengupta No prior registration needed. Open to all. Prizes for all finalists; Prizes for best all-school, all-college, and newbie teams as well as for audience All prizes sponsored by Landmark, Pune Contact: Email: contact (at) bcqc (dot) org Keep visiting http://bcqc.org for ...

Set and Conducted by Amit Dandekar Results: 1st: Abhishek Nagaraj and Aditya Gadre 2nd: Suvajit Chakraborty and Yash Marathe 3rd: Aniket Khasgiwale and Yasho Tamaskar 4th:Rohit Khaladkar and Aditya Kulkarni 5th: Swanand Gadgil and Abhishek Khandelwal 6th: Bharat Marathe and Samir Deshpande The quiz started with a 40 question ,fairly simple elim. This time however there were no ridiculously easy questions and the elims were quite good . The cut off was 20. The quiz was quite enjoyable and well set. The main quiz consisted of 60 questions , seamless IR. The quiz had quite a few very easy questions , some chestnuts and some good questions. The quiz setters cannot be blamed for the chestnuts since their effort with making the quiz was apparent. It all evened out in the end so no complaints about the questions as such. They were better than what we see in most college quizzes. There was a bit of confusion and indecision with regards to part marking for some of the questions ...