Quiz: Sci-Qi (a Science- and Speculative Fiction Quiz)
Date & Time: 26 September 2021 at 10 am Pune time / 25 September 2021 at 11:30 pm Austin time
Venue: A series of tubes (a.k.a the QM's and participants various homes, connected via Zoom)
QM: Mohit Karve
Scores:
Winner: Sumant Alone (Sumant Srivathsan) - 110 pts
Runners Up: Swadeshi House Mafia (Abhimanyu Badhauria, Rishiraj S) - 82 pts
3rd: Rohirrim (Srijon Sen) - 80 pts
Jt 4th: KatsuCurry (Arpita Shetty, Siddarth Raman) - 65 pts
Jt 4th: TLJ Was Good, Actually (Avaneendra Bhargav, Kunal Sawardekar) - 65 pts
6th: The H Squad (MV Harshavardhan, Harish V) - 58 pts
7th: ILAM (Akshit Mehra, Akshat Kukreja) - 45 pts
8th: The Pramans (Abhinav Dasgupta, Vivek Tejuja) - 40 pts
Report:
Mohit Karve is a old BCQC hand, being part of the COEP Quizzing Renaissance of 2006-2012, and is well remembered by people who were quizzing in Pune during that period (both for the excellent quizzes he set as well as for being the victim of the most egregious Hand of God incident since Peter Shilton). While we have missed his quizzes these past 10 years, the present circumstances and the online nature of all quizzing these days allowed us to participate in one of his quizzes (with him very kindly agreeing to conduct at an un-earthly hour for him).
We started out with a 25-question elims that had 20 1-part question and 5 2-parters. The questions had a nice spread of topics, including some based on Hindi science fiction shows that aired in the 1990s.
8 teams made it to the finals, which had two sets of 17 questions on IR, each preceded by a 4-question written round on linked topics. The quiz had no pounce - a rarity these days but a necessity to ensure the quick completion of a quiz that was already stretching into the wee hours of the morning for the QM. However, the drawbacks of a pounce-less quiz did show in that the almost inevitable disparity in difficulty between the questions made itself felt very keenly. The finals had a great spread of questions as well, ranging from the very first appearance of a key sci-fi mechanic to actual inspiration behind a beloved Indian entry in the sci-fi genre.
Sumant kept up a lead throughout the entire quiz, maxing both written rounds and scoring 40 and 30 in each of the IR sets. KatsuCurry (Arpita and Siddarth) and Rohirrim (Srijon) put up a strong showing in the second half of the quiz, equaling (in KatsuCurry's case) or nearly equaling Sumant's score in that half, but they could not overcome the large lead he had built up in the first half. KatsuCurry's burst of form in the second half did catapult them from the last position they occupied at the halfway mark to joint 4th place, with the rest of the standings staying pretty consistent through the whole run of the quiz.
My one quibble with the topics covered would be that for an event billed as a Science- and Speculative-Fiction quiz, the topics tended to stick very closely to the Sci-Fi end of the scale and there was very little of fantasy, alternate history and other spec-fi genres. Within Sci-Fi though, the coverage was quite good with questions on sci-fi concepts and classics going back over a century, and including all your favourite science fiction franchises along with lesser-known entries in the genre as well.
All in all, the quiz made for a very enjoyable Sunday morning, even for those of us who do not normally rise so early in this part of the week. We hope to see more of Mohit (and other BCQC alums) setting quizzes like this in the future.
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