Interrobang

The annual open quiz at Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT) Pune, Quiz-O-Mania, will be conducted on 2nd Feb 2011 as a part of the cultural fest Melange. Details are as follows: Date: 2nd Feb, Wednesday Flavour: General Time: 10:30am (Reporting Time), Elims Begin at 10.45 sharp Venue: "Sharad Arena" (VIT Auditorium) Team size: 2 Teams that qualify for the finals: 6 Prizes: Cash prizes worth Rs 12,000 QM: Salil Bijur Location: Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, 666, Upper Indiranagar, Bibwewadi, Pune-37. For more details, check the event website

When: Jan 23, 2011; Sunday Where: COEP Turnout: Only 11 teams showed up Conducted by: Gaurav, Mihir and Vaibhav Results: 1st: Yash Marathe (Modern) & Omkar Nene (IIT-B) [95 pts] 2nd: Sameer Deshpande (VIT) & Bharat Marathe (MIT) [65 pts] 3rd: Tarun Sharma & Aditya Pawar (AIT) [60 pts] 4th: Shekhar Mehta & Neeraj Paradkar (DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering, Bombay) [50 pts] Low turnout didn't justify the quality of the quiz, could've been publicized better. As expected, there were quite a few repeats from 3 inexperienced quiz setters, but there were some very good questions all the same. Certainly better than the farce last year. Report by Yash Marathe

What: Landmark Quiz, Pune Round When: 22 Jan, 2011 Where: Nehru Memorial Hall, Pune Conducted by: Dr. Navin Jayakumar Results 1st: The Nawabs of Mahabs [Rajiv, Gopal, Sumo] (88) 2nd: Audio Killed the Radia Star [Vikram, Pradeep, Mukund] (70) 3rd: Travelling Pillsburies [Sumant, Anil, Vibhendu] (63) 4th: Also Known as QED [Samanth, Ramanan, Swami] (61) 5th: Pyaaz Hamein Kis Mod Pe Le Aaya [Suraj, Harish, Ramanand] (53) 6th: Nanachi Tang [Salil, Yash Marathe, Kunal Sawardekar] (42) 7th: Feni, Beedi, Wiki [Anand, Amit, Meghashyam] (40) 8th: Immaculate Misconceptions [Team from SAP] (39) Other Results Best Corporate Team: SAP Best School Team: Delhi Public School; Runners Up: Army Public School Best College: SIBM [Jai, Jai, Vikram] Best Team Name: "Wish Wiki would have leaked this quiz" [Arjun, Gyanendra, Baruni] Playstation Buzz challenge: Yash, St. Vincents Review comments can be posted in the comments section for this blog

Those who have been quizzing for a little over a decade may remember how difficult it once was to set questions for a quiz. One had to go digging into books, re-establish friendships with newspapers (even the Times of India), interrogate every multimedia frequency to pass through your TV's cathode ray tube, and generally mope around looking for visuals and audio and ideas. Then came the full wonders of the World Wide Web, and in particular the fourth and most important W: Wikipedia . Random Articles, Featured Articles, and Did You Know... came to our collective aid. Thousands of encyclopaedic minions, eager to show off their deep knowledge of the infinitesmal, rescued quizzes from lapsing into questions about George Bernard Shaw, The Beatles and (sometimes) Heisenberg's grave(s). (As Niranjan would put it, they left us 'encyclo-piidith'.) But like atomic weapons in the hands of Harry S or 24x7 TV in the hands of Rakhi S, some of us knew not what to do with the power...