The Shyam Bhatt Memorial Open Quiz 2022 - Report

Date & Time: 8 May, 2022
Venue: AFMC, Pune
Fest: Silhouettes 2022
Format: Elims + Finals
QM(s): J. Ramanand
Results:
1. Suraj Menon and Arnold D'Souza
2. Shashank Tyagi and Yogesa Metla
3. Gp Capt Anurakshat Gupta and Dr Anmol Dhawan
Other Finalists:
Med Cdt Giridhar Gopal and Med Cdt Saurabh Singh Bisht (college team)
Akshay Parale and Naman Jain
Surg Lt Cdr Hitesh Mahato and Maj Sri Krishna Venigalla
Omkar Dhakephalkar and Pranav Pawar

Mastermind winner and Brain of Pune – Ramanand conducted the Shyam Bhatt Open quiz at AFMC (which most sources tell us, reliably might I add, is the longest running open quiz in Pune). The annual event commemorates AFMC alumnus Shyam Bhatt and as usual his batchmates were on hand to share their memories of him.

The quiz started with a nice easy-paced (but by no means easy-peasy) elims which covered a wide range of topics and resulting in seven teams making it, because nice guy JR did not want to ditch a team on stars.

The finals had 28 questions on the pass with pounce and 3 written rounds. The first written round was contributed by Shrirang Raddi and in tribute to Shyam Bhatt was about events that occurred in the year 1986 (with some debate as to whether it should have been 1985).
The two pounce rounds were interspersed by a written round on capitals (with the five answers forming an acrostic). Having a -10 on pounce meant a lot of the teams on stage were forced into a degree of conservatism – with not too many takers for pounce. The lead yo-yo ed between 3 teams on stage (with your report writer in particular suffering two mishaps in the second IR round). As with any JR quiz, the questions were superbly framed and covered a wide array of topics ranging from the origins of a famous Indian singer’s family name from a mangled cry for help by Parvati, a wide array of goalkeepers famous in other fields, materials used for billiard balls. As with any JR quiz, the content though superb did prompt the odd complaint about there being a slight heavy-handedness on India quotient.
Which brings us to the last round – titled Jaanta Hain Mera Baap Kaun Hain – with a quirky format – teams would be given three clues one by one and had to guess who the father of the person the clues pointed to was. Having negatives and the ability to go only once per question (this was also a tiebreaker round in case two teams tied) - meant that things got super interesting with Suraj and Arnold’s team tying with Shashank and partner and pipping them to the post on points scored in the last round. One minor crib was that perhaps by design the first clue was often too obscure (2/5 questions had Oscar clues that didn’t necessarily help narrow down to one answer) but I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Report by: Suraj Menon