The General Quiz | Infest 2024

Quiz: The General Quiz

Date & Time: 21 Jan, 2024, 3 PM
Venue: Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Pune
Fest: InFest 2024
Format: Prelims+Final
QM(s): Anisha Karnail, Akshay Parale, Charles Mathew

Results:

1. Rajiv Rai, Vibhendu Tewari + Anannya Deb (draft) - 170 (Team 5)

2. Abhinav Dasgupta, Prithwish Datta + Anmol Dhawan (draft) - 155 (Team 3)

3. Joint second - Brajendu Bhaskar, Ranajeet Soman + Pranjal (draft) - 155

Other Finalists:

Debanjan Bose, Bedbyas Datta + Annway Ghosh (draft): 130 (Team 6)
Samrat Sengupta, J Ramanand + Suraj Menon (draft) : 135 (Team 2)
Shashwat Salgaocar, Abid Abdullah + Suvajit Chakraborty(draft): 135 (Team 1)

Report - 

The charge of the yearly general quiz at Infest, the last quiz of the weekend, was given to the youth this year - with Akshay Parale, Anisha Karnail and Charles Mathew setting the quiz. Almost everyone who had come for the fest stayed back for this quiz and the QMs delivered on those expectations.

The prelims were a breezy affair of 25 questions with some excellent fundae, some expected questions, but no run-of-the-mill peters. Although the cut-off for the drafts was 19, there were enough tough questions in the prelims to separate 9 teams without too much fuss. 

The finals started with an interesting written round on people who passed away in 2023, a round which certain visiting quizzers from Mumbai were overjoyed to see. Then there was an infinite rebound passing round, where everyone was more or less bunched up around the same score.

After the second written round with the theme of birds, there was a clamour for leniency on certain answers or additional clues in the questions, but the QMs remained phlegmatic and let the din die on its own. 

The second IR round saw teams taking more risks, with pounces more frequent. Rajiv, Vibhendu and Dada had gone into a healthy if not comfortable lead, with Teams 3 and 4 following closely behind. Some questions might have yielded more points, or at least guesses, if the QMs had added a small clue here and there. But generally, the questions were answered and were interesting enough to hold everyone's attention at the end of 2 full days of quizzing.

Team 5 emerged deserved winners, not getting any negatives on wrong pounces, something which Teams 3 and 4 failed to do and rued together afterwards. 

General hilarity and banter was going on during the quiz, which is characteristic of the laid-back nature of quizzing seen at Infest. The quiz ended within time for everyone to leave without being late, and to leave with a warm, contented glow after spending two days full of food, quizzing, in some cases drinking, and enjoying the temperate climes of Pune in January.

There was plenty of local support and attendance this year, and out-of-town support also continued from across the highway. Hopefully, when Infest 2025 comes along, these will have grown.

Until, then, don't panic, and carry a towel.

The Solo Quiz at InFest 2023

Quiz: Solo Quiz

Date: 21 January 2023, Saturday, Day 1 of InFest 2023
Venue: COEP's BHAU Institute
Format: Elims + Semis + Finals
QM: Vibhendu Tiwari and Rajiv Rai

Results:
1. Suraj "Phenom" Menon
2. Aditya "Gadre" Gadre
3. Abhinav "DG" Dasgupta

Other Finalists: Sania Narulkar, Ranajeet Soman, Prithwish Dutta

Semi-finalists: Abhishek Hariharan, Samrat Sengupta, Nikhil Sonde, Meghashyam  Shirodkar, Suvajit  Chakraborty and Kunal Sawardekar

Report: The exciting conclusion of the last Solo Quiz at an in-person InFest left us with two setters for this years' Solo Quiz, a sort of E Pluribus, Duos situation that may just create a precedent for future InFest Solo Quizzes.

The Elimination round was a fun set of 25 questions, with some effort taken by the QMs to make the questions accessible and a provide local flair. After a relatively high-scoring elims (you do not want Ranajeet to start complaining about difficulty of the elims questions on Twitter - trust me on this), 12 participants qualified for the semi-final round. Participants elims points were doubled to form an opening score for the semi-final round which took place immediately following. The semis were relatively high-scoring with plenty of pounces and by the end Suraj, Gadre, Prithwish, Sania, Ranajeet and Abhinav beat out the rest of the filed to qualify for the finals.

The semi-final scores continued through to the finals, where the answers were worth 15 points to compensate for the increased difficulty. Sania had some amazing pounces and great answers through the semis but Gadre and DG surged back in the finals to take second and third places. Suraj maintained his spectacular run of form and dominated the quiz throughout with the outcome for the first place never really being in doubt.

Overall, I really enjoyed the quiz - the questions were accessible, easy-to-understand (I cannot overstate how nice it is not to have to parse through dense blocks of text on the ppt) and above all, interesting. I really appreciated how both quiz setters from across the Sahyadris made an effort to ask questions with some great fundas on Pune.

This quiz has set a high standard for the next edition of the Solo Quiz (I'm not saying which year because I don't want to jinx it as Ranajeet did with his 2020 report), but we are confident that the winner(s) of the 2023 edition are quite up to the task.

(This post has been updated to correct the person at the second runner-up position - our apologies to DG and Prithwish)

Report - The Visuals Quiz at Infest 2021

Quiz : The Visuals Quiz  

Day, Date, Time : Sunday, 10th January 2021, 2pm

Venue : The quiz was conducted over Zoom

Format : Elims (35 questions) + Finals (40 IR + 6 written)

QMs : Aditya Gadre, Omkar Dhakephalkar, Ranajeet Soman, Kunal Sawardekar and Pranav Pawar

Scores :

1. Sumant Srivathsan, Yash Tamaskar, Navin Sharma (We Are Googling) - 345 points

2. Rajiv Rai, Vinoo Sanjay, Srinath Bhashyam (WIMWI Manram) - 290 points

3. Aryapriya Ganguly, Rahul Kottalgi, Amrit Pritam Chetia (Aardvarks) - 265 points

4. Jayashree Mohanka, Sania Narulkar, Prithwish Dutta (Is There A Bigger Picture) - 250 points

5. Ritoban, Amlan, Arijit (Khela Hobe Na) - 245 points

6. Varun Rajiv, Bhargava EM, Santosh Swaminathan (Metaquizziks) - 230 points

6. Samanth Subramaniam, Ravi Mundoli, Ashwin Kumar (Aila Jacta Est) - 230 points

8. Chandrakant Nair, Hrishikesh Verma, Jinson (CIDs From Kerala) - 220 points

Report :

The BCQC, much like Simone de Beauvoir, had to adapt to the Force of Circumstance and move the annual Infest to the realms of online quizzing over Zoom and contend with the many perils it entails. Every year the quiz festival has themed quizzes to go along with the much sought-after InFestYouUs. This year, the Theme was kept general but the Medium was changed to visuals to lessen keywords that lead one down the path of Temptation.

We had 75 participants taking part in a closely fought elimination round. The elims were topped by WIMWI Manram with a whopping 32.5 out of 35. The cut-off was 26.5 and it came down to star-marked questions to eliminate the 9th team. 

The finals, which had Infinite Pounce facilitated through the auspices of Whatsapp, were conducted with 2 rounds of 20 questions on Infinite Rebound along with 2 written rounds. The audaciously named We Are Googling comprising of Sumant, Yash and Navin led pretty much from the first question and never looked like being overtaken at any point in the quiz. 

For the other podium positions, however, it was as unsure as the plot of A Suitable Boy, where the teams' standings could be likened to the suitors' fortunes in the race for Lata's affections - constantly changing. There were some contentious moments, where conceptual clarity was evinced by the teams but they sadly could not provide the Proper Noun which would have earned them the points. Overall, the quiz was conducted in an atmosphere of good humour and appreciative sounds with a healthy audience of 50 sticking around till the end.

Just like Cristiano Ronaldo knew that Manchester United had been great but he would have to move to Real Madrid to achieve greater things, the BCQC knows that although the online nature of the quiz enabled pan-India participation and greater outreach, the better experience will be gathering in person in the balmy January mornings of Pune for a weekend of competition, banter, lazy lunches and the pursuit of Happiness.

We hope to see you there. 

InFest T20 – Free Solo (Solo quiz) - Report

InFest T20 – Free Solo (Solo quiz)

Set & conducted by – Kunal Sawardekar
Date: 4th January 2020
Venue: Academic Complex, COEP
Flavour: General quiz

Format:

Elims – 25 questions

Semi-Finals – 26 questions on IR plus 2written rounds 

Finals – 22 questions on IR plus 1 written round

Results:
Winner – Vibhendu Tiwari 142 pts

Runner-up – Rajiv Rai 139.5 pts

2nd runner-up – Samrat “Sammy Sir” Sengupta 117 pts

Other finalists – Aman Sheikh, Divij Ghosh and Omkar Dhakephalkar

Semi-finalists – Ranajeet Soman, Aditya Gadre, Arnold D’Souza, Shubhankar Gokhale, Brajendu Bhaskar, Vcat Srinivasan

Report:

This year, we saw a new winner of the solo quiz after Dhake and Kunal alternated to win the last few years. Kunal had clearly taken the ‘lesser-seen side of the Dunning-Kruger effect’ feedback to heart and had set an accessible yet interesting set this year. The overall quality of the questions was excellent and although the QM played to his strengths of history-geography and pop-culture, there was enough diversity of topics to give everyone a fair shot.

12 people were drafted into the semis after a 25-question elims which saw a double-digit cut-off, a clear sign of improvement on the QM’s part. The semis were a lot of fun and even with 12 people on IR there were no questions which could be ‘chimped’ on. The staggered pounce system proved a blessing for some and resulted in the downfall of others. Some great fundae were brought to the fore and unanswered questions usually got applause rather than groans. The semis were quite close with a bunch of contestants near 40-50 points. 

Eventually, 3 youngsters from Pune and 3 experienced gentlemen from Bombay made it to the finals. The finals began with a bang for the young guns with Aman and Divijcapitalizing on the pop-culture questions. They got close enough to the lead to worry Rajiv, which is a high compliment, especially in a solo quiz. Sammy sir was in exceptional form throughout the day and kept in contention till almost the end. Vibhendu had not had a strong semi-finals but he made up for it in the finals. While the youth was distracting Rajiv, he slowly but surely crept up the leaderboard till he had taken the lead two questions from the end. As the last question appeared, multiple combinations of outcomes were possible but experience trumped youth in the end, if only just.

The quiz was great fun without losing competitiveness, which is a compliment to the quizmaster. Vibhendu’s performance was so well-received that it earned him extra plaudits at the festivities following the quiz. He is now given the onerous task of setting next year’s quiz (possibly with the runner-up). We are confident he will keep the high standard going at Infest 2021.

InFest T20 - Cineaste (Movies Quiz) - Report

InFest T20 - Cineaste (Movies Quiz)

Set by - Avaneendra Bhargav and Aniket Khasgiwale
Conducted by - Avaneendra Bhargav
Date: 5 January 2020
Venue: Academic Complex, COEP
Format - Elims: 25 questions; Finals: 36 Questions on IR plus 3 written rounds (6 questions each)
Flavour - Movies Quiz

Results:
Winners: Team 5 - Govind Grewal, Devang Ghia and Anuradha Dhanwadkar (draft)
Runners up: Team 1 - Rajiv Rai, Abhishek Kapoor and Pranav Pawar (draft)
2nd Runners up: Team 4 - Vansa David, Nadeem Ansari and Ranajeet Soman (draft)
Other finalists: Team 2 - Brajendu Bhaskar, Pathikrit Basu and Rahul Surana (draft), Team 3 - Kunal Sawardekar, Aditya Gadre and Vibhendu Tewari (draft); Team 6 - Ritoban Maitra, Chinmay Deshpande and Abhinav Dasgupta (draft)

Report:
This was, if memory serves, the fourth edition of Cineaste with the only common factor in each edition being Avaneendra Bhargav. This time, Avaneendra and Aniket (all the way from Straya), served up a great set of movie questions without ever being obscure. As an armchair movie watcher and not really a big-time buff, I found all answers relatable and significant.

The quiz overall went off shockingly quickly and we finished on time at 7:30 against all odds on account of Avaneendra's rock solid QMing, and the crispness and clarity of question framing.

The elims were a short 25 question affair with a few Indian and several nice Western fundas and were largely driven by recent famous movies. The crowd no doubt found the elims  accessible as the cut off was quite high with some stalwarts like Vibhendu, Abhinav and Anannya failing to qualify. On the bright side, we saw some new young, local  teams in the finals.

The finals had a good mix of Western and Global cinema while never going too much into random unknown unreleased film type territory. The questions were well framed and clear on what was required as answers. All the answers were names of people or movies - which really helped in checking pounces at a brisk pace. The quiz was on the easier side which made it fun for everyone involved (all teams crossed 200 points!) in the finals. The written rounds were interesting if a bit hardcore. Aside from a misguided attempt to move things along at a higher pace and introducing a kamikaze element for about 5 questions, Avaneendra did a fantastic job of conducting the quiz. My only real quibble with the quiz would be the relative lack of representation of Indian movies.

While the quiz was always high scoring, the top two teams - Rajiv, Kapoor, PP and Govind, Devang, Anuradha were neck and neck and the lead went back and forth several times. After several nail-biting exchanges, we went into the final written round - where Govind and co held on to their slender 5 point lead to win the quiz.
All the other teams were more or less even for most of the quiz, but Vansa, Nadeem and Rana just pulled out a few good answers and took the third position. 

InFest T20 - The Maazical Mystery Tour (Music Quiz)

Set by - Aditya Gadre and Debanjan Bose
Conducted by - Aditya Gadre
Date: 5 January 2020
Venue: Academic Complex, COEP
Format - Elims: 30 questions including 6 two-pointers; Finals: 36 Questions on IR plus 4 written rounds (3 questions * 10 points each)
Flavour - Music Quiz

Results:
Winners: Team 1 - Rajiv Rai, Abhishek Kapoor and Sumeet Pai (draft)
Runners up: Team 6 - Vansa David, Govind Grewal and Sania Nerulkar (draft)
2nd Runners up: Team 5 - Anannya Deb, Gokul Panigrahi and Kunal Sawardekar (draft)
Other finalists: Team 2 - Ranajeet Soman, Pranav Pawar and Anuradha Santhanam (draft); Team 4 - Anisha Karnail, Manas Mahaveer and VCat Srinivasan (draft); Team 3 - Devang Ghia, Gaurav Sabnis and Nadeem Ansari (draft)

Report:
This is the second time Aditya and Debanjan brought the Maazical Mystery Tour to InFest, and this edition lived up to the high standards set by the first. Compared to the previous edition of MMT at InFest (in 2018), this time the quiz was quite well attended and more than 20 teams braved the chilly weather to attend the quiz.

The QM noted that following feedback in the last iteration of this quiz, the difficulty level in the elimination round had been moderated. True to the QM's word, the Elims were indeed accessible and fun while at the same time covering a time period from the 6th Century to the 21st and many parts of India and the world. 

The Finals had a similar format to the previous edition of MMT, with four written rounds on what the QM described as "whimsical themes" and 36 questions on IR with a (in this writer's opinion) very forgiving pounce. Once again, there was a great representation of various genres, time periods and places.

One minor quibble was that the written rounds had a comparatively high weightage - the points on offer in the 4 written rounds were a quarter of the total points available in the finals. I'm not usually in favour of this as it can potentially skew the outcome of the quiz - but the setters' care in ensuring balance in topics even within each written round ensured that this would not be a concern. 

With a good sprinkling of entertainment quizzing heavy-hitters spread throughout the teams in the finals, the quiz was keenly contested. Team 6 pulled into an early lead with their deep knowledge of bhangra, but Team 5 edged ahead by the end of the second written round with their fundas on dance forms and the Billboard Charts. After this, Team 1 brought the vast experience of the pre-CHOGM era and prodigy of the post-Aashiqui generation (they had both in one team!) to bear and the rest of the quiz was pretty much a contest between Teams 1 and 6 with Team 1 coming through in the end.

On a parting note, I should tell you that I am listening to a song I heard for the first time at the quiz, as I am writing this. I don't know what higher compliment I can pay a Music Quiz.

(Our report on the previous edition of the Maazical Mystery Tour at Infest 2018 can be found here).

The Winners with the QM

The Lone Wolf Quiz at InFest 2019

Akela, A Kela - The Solo Quiz 
Set and conducted by Omkar Dhakephalkar

Format: Written elims followed by a very complicated finals for top 8 (details below)

Results:
1st: Kunal Sawardekar
2nd: Aditya Gadre
3rd: Samrat Sengupta
4th: Pranav Pawar

Other finalists: Sandeep Shankar, Omkar Joshi, Arnold D'Souza and Gokul Panigrahi

Report: 
Omkar set this year's edition as the reigning Solo quiz champ from 2018. The quiz started with a nice elims set (a bit on the tougher side) which did a good job of separating the top 8 from the rest. The quiz saw a huge turnout - almost packed room with several benches needing to be double loaded.

In the finals, Omkar unleashed a super fun, crazy format for the quiz. There would be a series of written "BLED" rounds featuring questions on Businessmen, Lawyers, Engineers and Doctors (or as Omkar put it "the only four meaningful professions in the world"). Each correct answer in these rounds would earn you a card with certain special powers. The Businessman card let you double the points on a question, the Lawyer card let you give multiple answers for a question, the Engineer card let you attempt only a part of the question for points, and the Doctor card allowed you to pounce without a negative. These were on randomised coloured cards. And one could use only the cards available for the colour that was indicated on the question.

While originally skeptical, once we got the hang of it, the finalists had a great time in strategising and using their cards wisely or at least comically.

The bottom two finalists would get eliminated after the 24th and the 32nd question. This led to some interesting permutations especially with the usage of the cards.

The content of the quiz was interesting and wide ranging. And as a good solo quiz should be, was quite extensive and long.

As for the results, Kunal topped the elims and led for the whole quiz. Once or twice there was some hope for Pranav and Aditya but everytime, Kunal pulled away to an unassailable lead. All in all, a very fun quiz by Omkar and congrats to Psaw, Pune's most dominant solo quizzer, for a second win in three years.

The Football Quiz at InFest 2019 - Report

QM: Ranajeet Soman
Format: Written elims (25 points) followed by Finals for 8 teams (28 Questions IR + 16 questions in 4 written rounds)

Results: 
1st: Aditya Gadre and Samrat Sengupta: 207 pts
2nd: Shrirang Raddi and Mihir Raddi: 160.5 pts
3rd: Pranav Mohapatra and Shreyas Shetty: 82 points
4th: Nadeem Ansari and Pranav Pawar: 76.5 pts
5th: Ajai Ragde and Vishal Prasad: 72.5 pts
6th: Akshat Trivedi and Akshay Ayush: 67 pts
7th: Omkar Arora and Anubhab Kar: 50 pts
8th: Adarsh Ramakrishnan and Anirudhan Balajee: 30 pts

Report: 
From personal experience I can say that it is extremely difficult to set a niche quiz, particularly on sports, which appeals equally to the general quizzers and hardcore sports enthusiast. With this, the second edition of his annual football quiz, Rana pulled off this feat with aplomb.

The quiz started with a 25 question elims and set the stage for what was to follow with questions broadly rooted in football - but covering geography, history, politics, other sports and a variety of other topics. The cut off for the 12 teams that showed up was 8/25.

The finals had more involved questions and several cracker fundaes - very well packaged, and extremely with seldom seen attention to detail in the framing. We not only got a tour of the football world but checked out several other attractions along the way. And yes, there were a couple of hardcore football questions but not the number that would scare off any general quizzer. Knowing and following football certainly helped, but was in no way a pre-requisite to do well in this quiz.

As to the results itself, Aditya and Samrat ran away with the quiz from start to finish and won comfortably. Srirang, a former BC Cup winner, who came with his son gave some great answers to finish just 40 points behind.

On a lighter note, the biggest success of this quiz is that Rana resisted the temptation to run this at several other occasions and kept the quiz for this fest. On a less lighter note, a bit of a tragedy that this quiz saw only 12 teams take part for I'm certain a vast proportion of the quizzing crowd would have enjoyed it regardless of whether you follow football or not.

Here's eagerly looking forward to next years edition!

BCQC InFest 2018 Reports | The Supplies Quiz

The Supplies Quiz 

Set by UNESCO Best QM Suraj Menon and Pranav 'Floyd' Joshi 
Format: Written elims followed by a team final in a University Challenge format

Results: 
1st: Aditya Gadre, Aniket Khasgiwale and Shubhankar Gokhale
Jt 2nd: Kunal Sawardekar, Omkar Dhakephalkar and Ranajeet Soman
Jt 2nd: Anannya Deb, Anand Sivashankar and Pranav Pawar

Other finalists:
Vibhendu Tewari, Maitreyi Gupta and Safal Mohammad
Shrirang Raddi, Arnold D'Souza and Sandeep Shankar
Abhinav Dasgupta, Nadeem Ansari, Saahil Singh and Shashwat Salgaoncar


For starters, let me clarify that the quiz was not about drugs or inventory management - but a surprise to all who took part.

The quiz started with a 25 question elim. At the time of writing the elims - no one knew what the format of the quiz was - but we started getting an idea when every single elims question had the name of a university in it. It also nicely ended with a quesion on University Challenge which also was the theme of the quiz format going forward. Great touch!

We made 6 teams with draft picks - and much painful wire and cable and bench movements later - we had the set up with buzzers (kindly made and provided by Shubhankar) ready for the quiz. The format was identical to University Challenge - with a starter for 10 followed by bonus questions if the team gets the answer right on the buzzer. The additional quirk added was that other teams could atempt the bonus questions by writing down the answer - this got a lot of the teams very close to each other without hitting the buzzer too often. The QMs also read out the questions as opposed to putting them on the slide which further made the experience more authentic. This also added the constraint of making the questions small enough to be read and understood for a buzzer round while keeping the workoutability intact. UNESCO Best QM and Floyd delivered a great set of questions and ran proceedings at a good clip. Hope to see more innovative, experimental formats at InFest next year as well.

Report by Aditya Gadre

BCQC InFest 2018 Reports | The Revolutionary Quiz

The Revolutionary Quiz 

Set by Omkar Dhakephalkar and Pranav Pawar
Format: Written

Results: 
1st: Ranajeet Soman and Kunal Sawardekar - 24 points
2nd: Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale - 17 points
3rd: Anannya Deb and Anand Sivashankar - 10.5 points

Dhake and PP - aka Molotov and Ribbentrop for the purposes of this quiz - put up an entertaining set with a Revolutionary theme. There were several rounds for the written quiz - which were both quirky and interesting. I particularly liked the concept of "Torture" on the double questions which could lead to more information worth a point or a penalty of 1 point for human rights abuses!

The questions themselves were fun and interesting - a tough ask for a quiz with this kind of a serious topic. I also liked how the QMs mixed things up with scoring and topics (including very liberal interpretations of Revolution). Perhaps in hindsight the quiz was a bit too tough and low scoring - but I feel the post lunch nature of the quiz had a lot to do with that.

Hoping to see more fun sets on not traditionally fun topics from these two.

Report by Aditya Gadre

BC InFest 2017 Reports | Solo Open Quiz

Set and Conducted by Aditya Gadre
Scorer: Pranav Joshi

Final Results 

1st: Kunal Sawardekar - 395 pts
2nd: Rahul Kottalgi (RSK) - 330 pts
3rd: J Krishnamurthi (JK) - 295 pts
4th: Aniket Khasgiwale - 250 pts

Other Semi Finalists:

Omkar Dhakephalkar - 175 pts
Vibhendu Tiwari - 165 pts
Pranav Pawar - 165 pts
Shubhankar Gokhale - 150 pts

Other Quarter-finalists:

Kunal Thakar - 101 pts
Ajai Ragde - 94 pts
Charles Matthew - 82 pts
Divij Ghose - 77 pts
Ashwini Natu - 69 pts
Mayank Mazumdar - 67 pts
Gokul Panigrahi - 64 pts
Omkar Yarguddi - 39 pts


The quiz started with a 40 question prelim where the top 16 qualified. JK topped the elims with 23 points and Kunal and Khasgi came second with 20 points. The other 13 participants were clustered in a range of 7 points. The cut off was 13 with 3 stars (Ranajeet Soman just missed out on stars). All participants started with a score of (elims score * 3). This was followed by a a 40 question quarterfinal for the top 16. Rahul, JK and Kunal S started strongly and held their performance throughout to comfortably finish as the top 3. Rahul was leading at the end of quarters. Shubhankar and Vibhendu just scraped in with a few good answers towards the end while Kunal Thakar, making his return to Pune quizzing after years, just missed out by 10 points.

RSK, JK and Kunal continued their form from the Quarters. The semis brought slightly tougher questions - Aniket had a good run and comfortably pulled away to cement fourth place and qualification to the next round. There was quite a big gap between the top four and the next four. Kunal S really ramped up and overhauled Rahul's lead to go into the final in first place with a cushion of 25 points over Rahul. JK slipped away a bit finishing  15 points behind Rahul.

the final wsa quite one-sided (or rather one-personed) - with Kunal growing even stronger and pulling away considerably to win the quiz with 5 questions to spare. Rahul successfully held off JK to finish second quite comfortably.

BC InFest 2016 - Report

BC InFest 2016 went off quite smoothly and as usual there were some great quizzes and more importantly a lot of laughs and general merriment. Here is what happened: 

(All reports by Aniket Khasgiwale)

Day 1:

InFestYouUs

InFestYouUs 2016 in its shorter avatar saw 22 people take part on topics of their choice (some even took part in topics not of their choice as some people didn't show up)

This time, InFest took place in a room and not on BC lawns which IMO took away from the "mob effect". None-the-less the quizzes were enjoyable - with no set being inordinately difficult or easy skewing the results.  

Kunal justified his military god tag was on target for 7 of his 10 questions on Fighter Aircraft of the Cold War to finish with the top score.

Results (only scores above 5/10)

Kunal Sawardekar (Fighter Aircraft of the Cold War) - 7 points 

Omkar Yarguddi (Sitar in Hinudstani Classical Music) - 6 points

Sampuran Singh (Flags of the World) - 6 points

Pranav Joshi (Life and Times of Alexander the Great) - 5 points

Arnold D'Souza (Eponymous Etymology) - 5 points

Omkar Borate (Indian Badminton) - 5 points 

Days of the Year Quiz by Omkar Dhakephalkar

Omkar finished his highly anticipated "Days of the year" series of quizzes by asking questions on each day of the year from 1st October to 31st December. The quality of questions varied a bit, but to be fair to the QM this was something he had warned us against. Most of the questions were quite good with a lot of good trivia and only a few peters. Omkar also conducted it quite well and the quiz was quite enjoyable on the whole.

Results:

Winners: Suvajit Chakraborty, Rishwin Jackson, K Chakraborty, Uday Bansal

First runners up (tied): Kunal Sawardekar (sub), Pranav "Floyd" Joshi, Snehashish Panda & Kunal Sawardekar, Anurag Danda, Gokul Panigrahi

Day 2

The Samuel Beckett memorial quiz by Aditya Gadre

This was an experimental quiz where all questions were on the secondary claim to fame of famous personalities, hence the tribute to Samuel Beckett who was a First Class cricketer. The presentation of the quiz was also quite good with a grid being used to go through the questions which made it more interesting. Some questions were peters, but that was expected as the theme itself restricted the content available to the QM. The winners were quite appropriately given the Brian May trophy - named after the famous British Astrophysicist.

Results:

Winners (tied): Suvajit Chakraborty, Sumeet Pai, Pranav "Floyd" Joshi, Omkar Yarguddi & Aniket Khasgiwale, Anurag Danda, Robin and Omkar Borate

Autobiographical Quizzes

The Autobiographical quizzes featured 10 questions based on things that the QMs had personally experienced. The QMs for this year's edition included Avaneendra Bhargav, Navin Sharma, Kunal Sawardekar and VCat. Although the mandate mentioned that they ask questions on event in the last year, many QMs went beyond that, asking questions on everything from their birth to their travels

Avaneendra Bhargav: This was the most offbeat of the four sets, featuring  locations such as Ratnagiri and Khandesh along with very local questions as well. Also kudos to Avaneendra for sticking to the theme of things he has experienced in 2015 and not going beyond.

Navin Sharma: This was the quiz where you felt bad about your life as Navin asked questions from his travels ranging from Melbourne to California and covering exotic places like Brazil on the way. Navin unfortunately couldn't make it to InFest to conduct the quiz in person since he was running the Marathon in Mumbai on that day - something which featured in the quiz as well.

Kunal Sawardekar: Kunal's set made no attempt to stick to events from 2015, in fact his set included questions from 5 million years ago as well. But Kunal covered a wide range of topics by including questions on Food, Business, Education and Travel, thus making for a very interesting quiz.

VCat: VCat also went beyond 2015 to make this set with questions predictably featuring Newcastle, China, Malaysia and Hong Kong but disappointingly not featuring Bhubaneshwar or the Trans Siberian railway. The quiz was also unique in two aspects: it was the only quiz where the QM danced after giving out the answer and it was also the only one to feature a multiple choice question, which somehow still passed two teams. As expected, this was a highly entertaining set by BCQC's QM of the year.

Jai Hind Jai Maharashtra by Aniket Khasgiwale:

This was an India quiz with a greater focus on the state of Maharashtra, since the QM felt that the topic was not adequately explored in the usual BCQC quizzes. It started with a written round which checked the participant's awareness about the state of Maharashtra, with most teams doing quite well. This was followed by 42 questions on IR. 4 teams were quite close to each other at the halfway stage before Team 1 pulled away by answering a few Army themed questions and managed to hold on to their lead till the end.

Winners:
Team 1 - Anurag Danda, Omkar Dhakephalkar, Anurakshat Gupta: 126 points

2nd:
Team 5 - Kunal Sawardekar, Vrushabh Gudade, Shantanu G: 96 points

3rd:
Team 3 - Pranav "Floyd" Joshi, Sumeet Pai, Omkar Borate: 95 points

InFestYouUs 2014-15 - Call for registrations

InFest-You-Us is a mastermind style, specialty themes solo quiz. This year, Infest-you-us will happen next year - on the 3rd of January 2015 , 1:30pm onwards at the Boat Club Lawns in the College of Engineering Pune

The format is as follows:
Each person chooses a topic of their interest. The taker would be asked 10 questions. The taker will be awarded 1 point for getting a question right. If missed, the question would go to the "Mob" i.e. everyone else present. The Mob is not allowed to discuss among themselves, and must decide who among them would go for the answer if the answer given by the participant is wrong. If the chosen one is right, the taker loses 1/2 a point. If not, the confident chosen one will get beaten up by the rest of the Mob.

So if you are interested, this is the course of action:
- Fill up this form ( http://bit.ly/1y9FfB7 )and tell us your name and your topics of choice.Please ensure that all fields are filled in - if we can't contact you, your registration does not exist.
- Then we will find people to make questions for your set for one of your topics of preference.
- Then you show up and we all have fun
- The deadline for registration is 17th November 2014 (We need to give enough time to people to set questions for you)

About the topics ...
- If the largely autocratic BCCI-esque IOC (InFest Organizing Committee) do not think your topic is interesting enough, it will be rejected. The topics must necessarily be not boring / done to death.
- Indicative list of topics that will certainly be rejected are World Cup Cricket, World Cup football, Asterix, Tintin, Friends, Douglas Adams, Big bang theory, Oscars etc
- Interesting topics that have featured before in past editions: English Monarchy, World Chess Championship, History of Israel, Monty Python, Cultural references in xkcd, Indian train names, Detectives in fiction, Hindustani Classical music, The War of Kurukshetra, The Discworld series, Indian Women Politicians, Gulzar with Vishal, Islamic conquerors, Indo-Pak wars,
We may also reject your topic if we can't find anyone to set questions for you (So don't ask for something COMPLETELY random )

If you have any queries, mail us at

2013 InFest - Day 2 - Report

Apologies for the late report. Day 1 report is here.

In contrast to Day 1, Day 2 of the 2013-14 BC InFest had more of the traditional session-like quizzes. By the time the day ended, we had about 25-30 participants. Fortunately, we ran out of time and saved ourselves the ent-al torture of an Ent quiz by this blogger. (Meanwhile, the unasked questions are growing alarmingly monstrous in their little pods, waiting patiently for that one day when they will be unleashed on a...)

But to hairy adventures first: the day began with a quiz on facial hair by Oboneendro and Devanjan. It was only on the arrival of Anannya Deb that this hirsute pursuit gained its core audience. We broke for a not-so leisurely lunch to return and find that the real BCQC.orgy was in progress: an exam for some people for something. That began a pattern of oscillation between our regular spot and the New BC Grassy Knoll Annexe.

The first post-lunch engagement was time for some morbid curiosity - "Quizz Macabra" was an excellent quiz on the subject of death; set by Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale and conducted by the former, the questions were not mourned by anyone.

Aditya Gadre then took the stage for his innovative 'bcqc.orgy/history' quiz which had themes based on six BC quizzers (Niranjan, Anand Sivashankar, Gaurav Sabnis, Abhishek Nagaraj, Avaneendra, and Kunal Sawardekar) from BCQC history. The scoring system also involved choices of cards (Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Fail), and the resulting "eh, what, what?" was an excellent example of BC convolutedness. The questions were interesting, and punctuated by VCat's unfailing cry of "I know this!" on hearing the first word of the question, only to be proved otherwise on hearing the first word of the answer.

The day ended with our last autobiographical quiz, this time by Anannya Deb. The journey through music, places, people, and yes, football, was an enlightening one, and fitting way to close this edition of BC InFest.

We may see you next year - who really knows?

2013 InFest - Day 1 - Report

Day 1 of BC Infest began with a Saraswati Vandana and the traditional lighting of the lamp. OK, not really, but some bulbs did turn themselves on. As appropriate for an occasional footballer, Samrat gently kicked off proceedings by introducing the BC Infest, and by reading out questions in our newly introduced Autobiographical quiz segment. These featured some interesting questions by Abhishek Nagaraj, Hirak Parikh, Navin Sharma, and Samrat sir himself. Borderline narcissism apart, this gave a great glimpse into the lives of some of these quizzers. We also had a previously-unscheduled set by VCat in which we learned of the many things visible from the Trans-Siberian railway.

This was followed by the QI-style quiz by Aniket: there were no panels, but there was lots of klaxon-ing, lots of bantering, and lots of negatives. The quiz, based on the popular British show QI, had questions with lots of obvious-answers-that-were-wrong, and some obvious-answers-that-were-right-but-left-unanswered-for-fear-of-klaxon.

In a great achievement of self-control, most quizzers returned after the lunch break reasonably on time, to begin this year's InFestYouUs. In all, we had 25 participants with 25 diverse and largely eclectic topics, and a well-behaved mob. The best performances of the day were recorded by Vikram Joshi (9-0, English Monarchy), Rohan Danait (8-1, Iron Maiden), and Sahil Gupta (8-2, Indian Corporates), though comparisons are perhaps not recommended given the wide variety of question formats and difficulty levels.

Going by audience reactions, the most sought after topic session was "NSFW", chosen by Suraj Prabhu and set by Yasho Tamaskar, and the most hilarious one was (this will be a surprise) "Indo-Pak Wars", set by Samrat for Kunal Sawardekar.

With a quick round up of some more QI questions by Aniket, we went our separate ways, to resume the following Sunday with Day 2. BTW, in all, we had about 30-35 attendees. Thanks to everyone who attended, and to those who set questions. See you next week.

BCQC InFest Day 1 schedule + InFestYouUs topics

Part I of the BC InFest 2013/14 takes place this coming Sunday (see overall InFest schedule here).

Venue: All quizzes will take place at the Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune.

Schedule:
The schedule for our more-or-less annual more-or-less "Quiz" fest is as follows (more-or-less)

29th December 2013:

11:30 am: We begin the anti-fest with a set of "Auto-biographical" Quizzes, set by some of the BCQC's expats based on their own experiences, travels etc. The quiz will be curated by Samrat Sengupta

12:30 pm: Aniket Khasgiwale will be doing his QI style quiz.

1:45 - 2:30pm: We break for lunch

2:30 pm: We conduct our mastermind style individual specialty themes quiz. We have some great topics, quite a high-profile participant pool and an equally (if not more) high-profile question setter list.

Here is the list of all participants, their topics and question setters.

BC Infest 2013/14 a.k.a. BCQC.orgy

Announcing schedule for BCQC.orgy 2013/14

The quiz anti-fest that no one has really been waiting for is here. Meh. 

Venue: All quizzes will take place at the Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune. 

Schedule:
The schedule for our more-or-less annual more-or-less "Quiz" fest is as follows (more-or-less)

29th December 2013:

11:30 am: We begin the anti-fest with a set of "Auto-biographical" Quizzes, set by some of the BCQC's expats based on their own experiences, travels etc. The quiz will be curated by Samrat Sengupta

12:30 pm: Aniket Khasgiwale will be doing his QI style quiz.

1:45 - 2:30pm: We break for lunch

2:30 pm: We conduct our mastermind style individual specialty themes quiz - Infest-you-us. Over 30 people have registered - so we have over 300 questions on a variety of very interesting topics!

5th January 2014

11:30 am : We begin with a surprise quiz by resident bong quizzers - Oboneendro Bhargav & Debanjan Bose. We are told the quiz is a surprise even to the Quizmasters.

12:30pm to 1:30 pm: We break for lunch

1:30 pm: Our friends from Bombay - Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale conduct the "Dead Boring Quiz".

2:30 pm: Aditya Gadre will then conduct "bcqc.orgy/history" - a mostly general quiz in an experimental format

3:30 pm : We then have another set of "Auto-biographical" Quizzes, set by some of the BCQC's pseudo-expats (Vcat) and some friends from outta town (Anannya Deb) based on their own / their alter ego's experiences, travels etc.

4:30 pm: The Grand Finale - J. Ramanand , is doing "an Ent quiz with some differences, multiplied by divisiveness"

Winter InFest 2009 aka bcqc.orgy

The BCQC will be holding its annual Winter InFest this weekend.

What its all about: well, (mostly) random people come along and conduct quizzes on (mostly) random topics of their choosing and (mostly) torture people.

Venue: The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune

Time: The mayhem starts at 1:30 pm on both days

Quizzes:
Saturday:The legendary George Thomas will be doing his much awaited quiz on whatever the hell he feels like , Suvajit Chakraborty will be doing a general quiz, Yasho will be doing his trademarked Stones quiz (i.e. the WTF Pop culture quiz) and Suraj will be doing an Entertainment quiz
Sunday: Aniket will be doing a quiz on his favourite topics (Cricket wil surely be involved) , Aditya will be doing a quiz on topics yet to be decided and if time permits Suraj will be doing a Business quiz.

There is no registration required. Everyone is invited and we hope a lot of you show up and join in the fun.

BCQC InFest 2009

Firstly everyone at the BCQC wishes you a very Happy New Year.

And getting on to business , the Boat Club Quiz Club will be ringing in the new year with our annual InFest Quiz Session. InFest involves a two or three full length quizzes as opposed to just the one that usually takes place at normal sessions . It generally lasts for about 5-6 hours and promises to be great fun .

Details:

Time : 2 pm ; 4th Jan , 2009
Venue: Boat Club , College of engineering Pune

Quizzes:
1. Ganesh Hegde , who has come all the way from the US, will be doing a Religion, Philosophy and Mythology quiz. The topics may seem intimidating but the quiz will be filled with great workable questions . Basically , you don't need to know a lot about the topics to do well at this quiz.
2. Aditya Gadre will be doing his " Not-so-general General Quiz" . Name of quiz to be explained at Infest.
3. Yasho Tamaskar will be doing a Comics and Cartoons Quiz.
4. Suvajit Chakraborty will also be doing some questions

We may just have other people doing quizzes. If anyone else wants to bring questions , you are most welcome.

You don't need to be teamed up while coming to a BCQC session. Everyone takes part in the quizzes. There are no formalities as such. Just show up if you want to have some fun and great quizzing in a casual atmosphere.

Everyone's Invited!

Cheers, Aditya.

PS: In case of any queries , you can contact me at 9881101291.

BC InFest 2007 - Report

The latest edition of BC InFest happened at on a quiet Sunday at the serene Boat Club setting amidst politely cloudy weather and many dollops of fun. It saw a good participation of about 20-25 people, and saw its share of good questions, bad humour and care-free quizzing.

We only had time for three quizzes: Meghashyam ("shyam*10^6") put on some excellent questions from a breadth of topics, Maitreyi pulled out some interesting questions from a recent quiz of hers, and Ganesh's religion quiz was quite novel and impressive.

The highlight of the day was InFest-You-Us, the new speciality themes solo quizzing section. The format was as follows: each person had chosen a topic of their interest, preferably a slightly off-beat one, to be set by one of the others. This way, almost everyone participating had set a topic. The taker would be asked 15 questions: 1 point for getting a question right. If missed, the question would go to the "Mob". The Mob was not allowed to discuss among themselves, but people merely raised hands if they thought they knew the answer. The Mob had to decide who among them could go for it. If the chosen one was right, the taker lost 1/2 a point. If not, the confident chosen one would get quite a rocket from the rest :-). Finally, no person from the mob could answer consecutively. Sounds like fun? Well, it was.

Samrat was the chief organiser/convener/whip/Benevolent Dictator For the Day, and in his own inimitable style, a report:

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On sunday BCQC members had a rollicking ride at the Boat Club.

The event started off with a swig of magic potion:
Topic : Cultural References in Asterix
Person : Siddharth N, Question Setter : Shamanth S
Correct : 7 No answers: 4 Answered By Mob : 4 Total : 5
It was an enchanting set by Shamanth, who tried his best to dig out new trivia from Asterix. The experts in the mob also hunted down some stray boars missed by Siddharth

Topic : Train Names in the Ind. Railways
Person : Shamanth S, Question Setter : Abhishek N
Correct : 12 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 11
The most offbeat topic, and Abhishek had a varied offering, criss-crossing the entire length and breadth of India.

Topic : Google
Person : Abhishek N, Question Setter : Kunal T
Correct : 6 No Answers : 7 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 5
Abhishek had a 404 (page not found) for most of the questions , as KT had a tough non-googleable set on offer

Topic : History Of Israel (1917-1990)
Person : Samrat S, Question Setter : Kunal S
Correct : 14 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 14
Samrat was in his best kosher form as he systematically went about conquering the Holy land.

Topic : Discworld Novels
Person : Kunal S, Question Setter : Sudarshan P
Correct : 8.5 No Answers : 6.5 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 8.5
Esoteric set, which had some interesting pop culture references

Topic : Hindustani classical music
Person : Niranjan P, Question Setter : Salil B
Correct : 11 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 10
A rich audio-visual offering from Salil, which appealed to all the non-musical types also. Niranjan was at his rhythmic best, but the mob also added a raga of their own to the jugalbandi of Salil and Niranjan

Topic : Monty Python
Person : Aditya G, Question Setter : Abhishek N
Correct : 8.5 No Answers : 4.5 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 7.5
The mob was on the floor in splits with some of the questions and in danger of rolling over into the Mutha or getting stumped through their head.

Topic : Detectives in Fiction
Person : Ramanand J, Question Setter : Niranjan P
Correct : 10 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 3
Total : 8.5
Excellent well-researched set. Ramanand did splendidly in this tough set. The mob led by Sudarshan also cracked a few mysteries on their own.

Topic : World Cup Football
Person : Gaurav S, Question Setter : Aditya G
Correct : 5 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 9
Total : 0.5
Gaurav got lynched by the mob in this one. The football fanatics Aniket and Samrat pounced on every (mis)pass.

Topic : West Indies Cricket
Person : Harish K, Question Setter : Ramanand J
Correct : 8.5 No Answers : 3 Answered By Mob : 3.5
Total : 5.25
Very interesting collection of questions from Ramanand, captured the entire history of the brilliant and much loved Caribbean entertainers

Topic : Sandman Comics by Neil Gaiman
Person : Sudarshan P, Question Setter : Gaurav Sabnis ( in absentia)
Correct : 8 No Answers : 7 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 8
Another of the niche areas. Sabnis wove a dream sequence for Sudarshan.

Topic : Science in India
Person : Salil B, Question Setter : Siddharth N
Correct : 8 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 5.5
Total :
Salil could not unravel most of the set, and the mob was ready to score at most opportunities

Topic : The Great War in the Mahabharata
Person : Meghashyam S, Question Setter : Harish K
Correct : 14 No Answers : 1 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 14
Meghashyam cracked the Chakravyuh with ease, and conched his way to glory.

Topic : Catch-22 By Joseph Heller
Person : Aniket K, Question Setter : Meghashyam S
Correct : 13 No Answers : 2 Answered By Mob : 0
Total : 13
Aniket made the most of the topic and was in no dilemma at all

Topic : Pink Floyd
Person : Kunal T, Question Setter : Aditya U (in absentia)
Correct : 9 No Answers : 4 Answered By Mob : 2
Total : 8
Nice workable set from Aditya.

Topic : Friends
Person : Yasho T, Question Setter : Gaurav Sabnis ( in absentia)
Correct : 10 No Answers : 3 Answered By Mob : 2 Total : 9
Another rerun of the sitcom.

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We rounded off the day with a little presentation ceremony for Shamanth, with some gifts for being such a prominent member of the BC, contributing immensely to the open quizzes, and for finally leaving ;-).

BC InFest should hopefully be back next year too.