Interrobang

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...