COVID Fundraiser Series | Report on the Football Quiz

Quiz: General Quiz on Football 

Date & Time: 6 June 2021 at 1:30 pm

Venue: Zoom

QM: Ranajeet Soman

Scores:

Jt 1st: Muddied Oafs (Rajiv Rai, Vinoo Sanjay, Brajendu Bhaskar) - 150 pts

Jt 1st: In the End, Cricket is the Winner (Prithwish Dutta, Deepanjan Deb, Sachin Deshpande) - 150 pts

Jt 1st: We believe in the cardboard (Aswath Venkataraman, Atulya Bharadwaj, Sandeep Narayan)  - 150 pts

4th: De Gea Dard (Abid Abdullah, Kunal, Shashwat Salgaoncar) - 140 pts

5th: Zulfiqar e Ingit (Anannya Deb, Venkatraghavan S, Venky Srinivasan) - 120 pts

6th: The Ball is Round - (Piyush Kedia, Kaniska Ghosh, Partha Ghatak) - 90 pts

6th: Remembrance of Things Fast (Srinath Bhashyam, Manu Sudhakar, Navin Rajaram) - 85 pts

8th: Boka Juniors (Jayashree Mohanka, Arnold D'Souza, Kinshuk Biswas) - 80 pts

Report: 

Ranajeet Soman is not only one of the best football quizzers in the country, but also one of the most rounded gen quizzers. Over the years, we have come to expect questions from him which are accessible and general even on specialist topics of his bent (football, ghazals, history and .....the band Travis) - and this one was no different. 

The football quiz in it's third edition - this one was the most gen of the lot and also the one that went through the most turmoil in terms of actually taking place - with the pandemic screwing up plans for a proper Infest this year. 

The elims were light and breezy, the questions crisply and pithily framed. One didn't need much football knowledge to answer most of the questions, but most importantly all the questions were nicely clued and were entirely workoutable. In the end, we had a few sports gawds, but mostly general quizzers qualifying for the finals - a testament to how well made the elims was. 

The finals, carried on from there the elims took off. We had 28 questions on Infinite Rebounds (+ Pounce) and 6 questions through 2 written rounds (one on music and one on social causes in football). The finals took us on a tour of history, geography, films, entertainment, politics and many other topics - all with football at its background. The only negatives for me were that some of the questions in the final were too easy which became a bit of a free for all. Overall the quiz was run quite quickly as well - with the finals ending at a reasonable time of 5:30pm - which is a rarity in quizzes these days. 

On to the results, the quiz was very close with at least 3-4 teams constantly exchanging the lead. We ended with an amazing 3 way tie on the last question - which was an exciting end to an excellent quiz.  

Unfortunately Rana has taken the wrong kind of inspiration from Suraj Menon - and told us this was his last football quiz, but we hope he will, like Suraj, come back and do several more quizzes over the 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

Chakravyuuh 2016 - Report

Set by Omkar Borate and Aman Shaikh
Conducted by Aman Shaikh

Format: 25 question elims followed by a 32 question final on IR

Attended by ~ 100 teams

Results:
1st: Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre : 85 pts
2nd: Anannya Deb and Maitreyi Gupta: 75 pts
3rd: Vibhendu Tewari and Avaneendra Bhargav : 70 pts
4th: Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale: 65 pts
5th: Venkat Srinivasan and Samrat Sengupta: 60 pts
6th: Omkar Dhakephalkar and Pranav Pawar: 40 pts

The quiz started with a 25 question elim. The questions were a bit long and while workable, they could have been crisper. Some questions in the elims were totally know it or you don't. Overall the set was competent. The highest score was 19 while the cut off was 13.5 with one star

The finals had 32 questions on Infinite rebounds with half passing clockwise and the other half anti clockwise. The questions themselves were good and one notable point that the QMs should be proud of is that there were almost no Gawd awful peters. One major issue for me was that the quiz had only 32 questions in the final. Would have been nice if a couple of written rounds would have been added.

The finals had a good balance of questions (by topic) and were of a good difficulty level that didn't leave much to be desired. However, a general theme in the finals was that the fundas uncovered were great but the QMs tended to ask for the wrong thing - choosing to not ask a nice workoutable funda in favour of asking a tough know-it-or-you-dont . Also several cases of wildly varying difficult levels. Perhaps a function of inexperience more than anything else.

Another issue which may not have been in the QM control is the logistics.The projector died at least 7 times during the quiz requiring a replacement. Perhaps the organizers should have pushed for M13 which is significantly more reliable as a venue than SH2.

Overall the quiz was good - good questions, good time management (elims started *only* 15 minutes late and finished in exactly 45 minutes!) and fairly good questions. Aman conducted the quiz well and save for a few questions where I felt that part points policy (while clear) was arbit and unfair, the quiz was well designed.

Kudos to the QMs for keeping up the standard by not succumbing to pressure to include questions for the heck of it and ensuring only quality, standard questions made the quiz.

As for the performance in the quiz - all teams led the quiz at least at one point in the quiz. Abhinav and Shubhankar started well and built a good lead by the end of the first half. Samrat and Vcat and Dhake and PP too started well but ran out of steam. Anannya and Maitreyi started with multiple negatives but had a stellar a second half to finish second just 10 points behind the winners. Aditya and Aniket started slowly but chugged on and finished strongly to win the quiz for the second consecutive year.

Winners list so far:
2001: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2002: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2003: Niranjan Pedanekar and Samrat Sengupta
2004: Gaurav Sabnis and Neeraj Sane
2005: Sudarshan Purohit and Amit Garde
2006: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2007 (Apr): Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2007 (Oct): Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon
2008: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2009: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde
2010: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2011: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Yash Marathe
2012: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav
2013: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde
2014: Anannya Deb and Anirudha Sen Gupta
2015: Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre 
2016: Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre 

The BC Cup 2016 - Announcement

The BC Cup is the BCQC's annual solo, open, loooooooong quiz to crown the Best Sports Quizzer in Pune, perhaps Maharshtra (probably India). This is the eight edition. 

Format:   

First, a 30 question prelim determines 8 qualifiers (or Quarter Finalists). These 8 people take part in a 60 question quarter final. The top four go through to the semi final. The semi-final will consist of 36 questions with scoring reset to zero. The top two then go to the Final where they face off one-on one for a 24 question final. 

The top college finisher (UG only, we may ask for ID cards) will get a prize in addition to all the top eight open finishers

Administrivia  

QMs: Yash Marathe, Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
Theme: Sports
Teams: Individual
Restrictions: (or the lack of one) Open quiz. Everyone is welcome

When? 12:45 pm, Saturday, 7th May, 2016
Where? The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune

Prizes: The top 8 in the Open category and the top two College participant get cash prizes. The total prize money will be INR 6500

Shyam Bhatt Open Quiz 2016 - Report

Shyam Bhatt Open Quiz 2016

Set by J Ramanand, BV Harish Kumar and the Choose to Thinq team

Conducted by J Ramanand (with a little help from Deven Deshpande)


Results: 
1st: Shrirang Raddi and Aditya Gadre :185 pts
2nd: Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale: 145 pts
3rd: Balakrishnan satyam and Rahul Kottalgi: 140 pts
4th: Omkar Dhakephalkar and Pranav Pawar: 100 pts
5th: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Varun Suresh: 75 pts
6th: Anurakshat Gupta and Kaushik Chatterji: 65 pts
7th: Rohan Danait and Anand: 60 pts
8th: Aman Sheikh and Divij Ghosh: 40 pts

Report:
The 30th edition of the oldest quiz in Pune, started with a 30 question elim, divided into three sections of quicks (short questions), deliberates (longer questions) and two pointers (well, two parts per question for a point each). Overall I liked the elim for the fundaes it covered, but felt it was a bit too tough. The cut off was 14/35 and the top score was 22/35. On the content, my general feeling was that a lot of the questions had a good hook, but gave one clue too less and the teams were left with too many legit guesses (not a good situation to be in for an elims IMO)

The finals were a very crisp set of 30 questions on Infinite Rebounds with JR's now-standard Chetan pounce system - 3 mistakes and you're out. The double deterrent of a minus 10 for a wrong answer + losing a pounce, coupled with typically complex but well framed questions and BDFL* using a firm consistent approach in dealing with split points as well as vague answers meant we saw almost no pounces in the final. I particularly liked the written round with their little gimmicks - especially the magic square and not-so-obvious theme at the end.

On the content of the finals - the questions were well framed - crisp and clear on what was expected as an answer. The quiz covered a lot of accessible areas for the audience which is always desirable.

A couple of negatives for me were the undue importance given to social media - with 2 questions in the elims and a whole round on emojis in the final. Also the general lack of balance in the finals - almost no sports questions for example. Like the elims - a few questions had a good hook, but gave too few clues and thus became completely know-it-or-you-dont.

Overall, it was a fine quiz, and BDFL was a masterclass in keeping control of a quiz  without resorting to rudeness or shouting. Teams trying to do maaz were comfortably out-maaz'd by BDFL

Team E (Shrirang and Gadre) topped the elims and led from start to finish in the finals. Team G (Meghashyam and Varun) started strongly but fell away after the written round. Team H (Bala and RSK) seemed to be well on course for second place - but Team C (Shubhankar and Abhinav) pulled off a remarkable late surge to leapfrog both Team B(Omkar and Pranav) and Team H into second place.

A shoutout to Omkar, Pranav, Aman and Divij - the all college teams on stage for a great performance. One hopes to see them qualify and win opens in the future.

* For infidels who don't know - Ramanand is BDFL

Chakravyuh 2014 - Report

Set and Conducted by Rohan Danait

Attended by ~100 teams

Format: Written elims of 30 questions. Finals comprising 42 questions on Infinite Rebounds and a 6 question written round on differential scoring

Results:

1st: Anannya Deb & Anirudha sen Gupta: 365 pts
2nd: Aniket Khasgiwale & Aditya Gadre: 300 pts
3rd: Shrirang Raddi & Venkat Srinivasan: 250 pts
4th: Meghashyam Shirodkar & Amit Garde: 215 pts
5th: Debanjan Bose & Vikram Keskar: 185 pts
6th: Shubhankar Gokhale & Arnold D'Souza: 170 pts


An excellent, enjoyable quiz put up by Rohan.

The quiz started with an interesting 30 question written elims  - a throwback to tradition with printed sheets instead of a ppt. There was a surprisingly large range of elim scores with the highest score being 27/30 and the last qualifiers making 18/30

The finals had 2 rounds of 21 questions each on Infinite bounce - using the One-Finite pounce system (recently made popular in Pune circles by BDFL Ramanand) with a +15 on the pounce. The questions were interesting, and well framed (perhaps a bit verbose) and covered a vast range of topics. The effort to avoid peters was evident with 2 seasoned quizzers - Suraj Menon and Ranajeet Soman brought in to moderate the quiz. A few peters got in - but this did not diminish the experience of the quiz by much.

The written round was an airports special - while the questions were nice and interesting - I thought it was a little too specific for a Gen quiz.

To summarise, a number of positives from the quiz. A wide range of questions which were largely original (There were a few peters and some of the questions were on the simpler side for an open quiz, but for this I blame the moderators and not the QM. Kaustubh Bhat will be irked that noble Chakravyuh tradition "at least one finger of god" was not being followed.

Also Rohan conducted the quiz assuredly and was always in control of the proceedings. I also liked that the quiz went along at a leisurely pace, and being on stage was fun as usual with the banter and jokes (which the QM also took part in)

A couple of Negatives on the organization front. First, the registration was chaotic - perhaps next year, there needs to be an exclusive desk for the quiz instead of the universal desk + help desk thing that was there this time. second, most would have prefered to finish the quiz at one shot instead of the hour long break between elims and finals

As for the teams, the two bearded bongs - Anannya and Anirudha - ran away with the quiz right from the start pouncing on question after question and building a 90 point lead over the second placed team - Shrirang and Vcat. Shubhankar and Arnold  had a great showing the written round, but it was a bit too late to properly mount a comeback. In the second half we (Aniket and I) had a good round and cut the Dadas' lead to 65 points and overhauled Shrirang and Vcat for second place.

Congratulations to Anannya (who has perhaps made up for a disappointing performance in the BC Cup final on his last visit to Pune) and Anirudha (stunning debut in Pune quizzing)

Winners list so far:
2001: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2002: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2003: Niranjan Pedanekar and Samrat Sengupta
2004: Gaurav Sabnis and Neeraj Sane
2005: Sudarshan Purohit and Amit Garde
2006: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2007 (Apr): Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2007 (Oct): Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon
2008: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2009: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde
2010: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2011: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Yash Marathe
2012: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav
2013: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde
2014: Anannya Deb and Anirudha Sen Gupta

The BC Cup 2014 - Report

Set by Aniket Khasgiwale, Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. Then a 60 question quarter final to determine the top 4 i.e. the semi finalists. A 40 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 28 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner.

Report: 
The quiz started with a 30 qn elims set - the elim seemed much simpler this year and we had a lot of people crossing double digits. Defending Champion Ramkey topped the elims with a phenomenal 21 pts. Ramanand cleared the elims but had to leave so he gave up his spot. The Cut off was 13.5 - with Venkatraghavan (aka Venky) beating Kaushik Koley in a tiebreaker to enter the Quarter finals.

The Quarter Finals:

The Quarter finalists were :
Shrirang Raddi, Ramkey, Suraj Menon, Shubhankar Gokhale, Suvajit Chakraborty, Prithwish Datta, Venky and Anannya Deb 

The Quarters were very even till the first half with most people on 3 -4 points. Suraj answered practically every cricket question and topped the QF with 8 points. Anannya had a good second half and ended on 7 points to tie with Shubhankar, Shrirang and Prithwish. Last year's finalists Ramkey and Venky would have both been disappointed with their performances and crashed out with 3 and 4 pts respectively. 

We needed a tie breaker as 4 people were tied and 3 spots were open. At the end of a 3 question tie breaker Shrirang was eliminated and Anannya, Shubhankar and Prithwish were through to the semis 

The Semi-Final
Anannya was in vintage form throughout the semi and scored 8 points to win comfortably. Shubhankar missed a few questions on his pet topic of cycling and finished on 3 points. Suraj lost some of his form from the Quarters and finished on 2 points. Just as we seemed to be headed for a tiebreaker for the second final spot - Prithwish scored a point on the second last question to finish on 4 points and book his place in the final.

The Finals 
Prithwish won the toss and went first. In his first home half he scored 1 goal and and followed this up by scoring an away goal in Anannya's first home half. The second half for Prithwish turned out to be tougher than the first and no-one scored any goals. Anannya went into his second home half trailing 2-0 on aggregate and 1-0 in his home leg, thus needing 3 goals to win. Anannya lost the plot a bit as Prithwish scored another away goal and more or less sealed his victory. Anannya then needing to score all his last 4 attempts - missed and could not make it a third triumph at the BC Cup

BC Cup Champion 2014 : Prithwish Datta
Runner Up : Anannya Deb 

As for the review of the quiz, I request those who attended to share their feedback in the comments section. 

Chakravyuh 2013 - Report

The Chakravyuh Open Quiz - A part of COEP's MindSpark 2012

Set by Vibhav Bhave, Rohan Danait and others 
Conducted by: Vibhav Bhave

Attended by ~100 teams

Format: Written elims of 30 questions. Finals comprising 36 questions on IR (with 3 pounces per half) and one LVC

Results:
1st: Meghashaym Shirodkar and Amit Garde: 150 pts
2nd: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav: 145 pts
3rd: J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar: 135 pts
4th: Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale: 115 pts
5th: Shrirang Raddi and Ankush: 105 pts
6th: Abhishek Upadhya and Debanjan Bose: 100 pts

This edition of Chakravyuh was certainly more "quizzer friendly" than last year with more mainstream (perhaps some would say "normal") questions. 

The elims were largely simple and very high scoring with the top score being 27.5/30  and the cut off being 22. Vcat & Rohan and Saikat & Kshitij were unlucky to miss out on the tie break. The elims were quite good with a reasonable range of topics covered and accessible answers. A few cribs about the elims were more in terms of execution than the question themselves - there were questions which were incomplete on the slide and needed supplementary information from the QM which led to a lot of confusion. Also the star marked questions weren't, well, actually marked in the ppt leading to unnecessary attention from the QM being devoted to informing the star questions. 

Coming to the finals, one consistent crib was that the quiz was far too simple. The questions themselves may not have been all that simple, but the fact that there were a lot of peters certainly made them easy. And given the easiness of the questions, only 3 pounces meant that seating position had something to do with your final score. While there were some good questions but the same spread seen in the elims was not replicated in the finals - the first half was almost 50% a business quiz. The biggest crib I have about the content however is the sheer number peters - with so many of them the passing round becomes a game of luck especially with all finalists being established quizzers. 

The other major crib was in terms of execution - there was an occasion where a question had to be scrapped because it was not complete on the slide and one occasion where the dreaded finger of god made its appearance and effectively cost Kunal and Avaneendra the quiz. 

A lot of these cribs can be attributed to inexperience with Vibhav conducting his first quiz at this level. Perhaps going forward, college quiz setters should be more proactive in reaching out to BC alumni in ensuring that at least the repeats are kept to a minimum. 

Coming to other aspects, the quiz was fun with the teams indulging in typical BC banter and  occasional goodnatured trolling. By pure history, this was one of the strongest fields ever with 7 of the 12 finalists on stage being former Chakravyuh winners. The quiz also saw the return to the circuit for one of BCQC's founders Shrirang Raddi (and he made it seem like he had never left). 

Meghashyam and Amit went into the last question of the quiz trailing by 5 points and answered it to pull off a dramatic victory. 

Congrats are especially due to Amit as this victory now makes him a three-time Chakravyuh winner - more than anyone else. 

Winners list so far:
2001: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2002: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2003: Niranjan Pedanekar and Samrat Sengupta
2004: Gaurav Sabnis and Neeraj Sane
2005: Sudarshan Purohit and Amit Garde
2006: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2007 (Apr): Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2007 (Oct): Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon
2008: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2009: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde
2010: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2011: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Yash Marathe
2012: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav
2013: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde

Announcement: The BCQC June Open Quizzes 2013

We will be having two quizzes (both with exclamation marks in their name!) this Sunday - the 16th of June, 2013

Quiz 1: Bulla-wood!

We will start with a quiz set by Yasho Tamaskar on Bollywood. Don't let the poster fool you, Yasho normally covers all genres and eras of Bollywood - so expect everything from Aaaaashiqui to Zubeida

Time: 1 pm
Place: Room 102, Academic Complex, College of Engineering, Pune
Flavour:  Bollywood
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: This is a written quiz (~35 questions)- so please bring a writing instrument.

Quiz 2: The Spanish Inquisition!

Oour second quiz of the day (which was totally not expected by anybody) will be a General Open quiz set by Aditya Gadre. Don't let the poster fool you, there will be no questions on the rack, comfy chairs or nice red uniforms in the quiz.

Time: 2:30 pm
Place: Room 102, Academic Complex, College of Engineering, Pune
Flavour:  General
Teams: Teams of two, 9 teams in the final
Format: Written Elims (please bring a writing instrument)  +  Finals


Contact details in case of queries:
Aditya - 9881101291 ; Avaneendra - 9011040388

The BC Cup 2013 - Report

Set by Aniket Khasgiwale, Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. Then a 60 question quarter final to determine the top 4 i.e. the semi finalists. A 36 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 28 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner.

Report: 
The quiz started with a 30 qn elims set - general feedback indicated that the elim was much tougher than in previous years. The elims also threw up some drama when two-time BC Cup Champion, Anannya Deb did not qualify for the Quarter Finals. Subhankar topped the elims with a phenomenal 17pts and Venkatraghavan (referred to as "Venky" hereforth in this report) came second with 13.5 points. The rest of the quarter finalists were mostly bunched in the 8-10 pt mark.

The Quarter Finals:


The Quarter finalists were :
Shubhankar Gokhale, Ramkey, Anand Sivashankar, Samrat Sengupta, Nishant Chaudhary, Venky, Rohit Suresh and Kaushik Koley


Anand started the quarter finals spectacularly and pulled away with a strong 4 pt lead before losing the plot midway as others - particularly Samrat and Ramkey upped the ante. BC Cup debutant Nishant , the ever consistent Kaushik and "young Rohit" gave some great answers and kept things interesting. In the end,  Venky and Shubhankar's overall good performances (especially in areas of their strengths) helped them finish 3rd and 4th to complete the semi final lineup.

The Semi-Final
Ramkey hit top form as he capitalised on a few critical misses from Samrat and threw in a few amazing answers of his own to win comfortably. Venky held a slender 1 pt lead over Shubhankar going into the last question of the semis which was duly cracked by Shubhankar (hardly surprising since the question involved cycling) to force a tie breaker for the final spot. After the 3 question tie breaker the two were still tied and we went into sudden death. Venky correctly answered his question while Shubhankar missed and we had our other finalist.

The Finals 
Ramkey won the toss and went first. In his first home half he scored 2 goals to 2-0 up and followed this up by scoring a crucial away goal in Venky's  first home half. The second half for Ramkey turned out to not live up to the excitement and high scoring nature. Venky went into his second home half training 3-0 on aggregate and 1-0 in his home leg, thus needing 4 goals to win. Venky put in a couple of superb answers to win his home leg 2-1, but could not complete the spectacular comeback to win the tie. In the end, Ramkey won on aggregate 3-2.

BC Cup Champion 2013 : Ramkey 
Runner Up : Venkatraghavan Sahasranaman 

As for the review of the quiz, I request those who attended to share their feedback in the comments section. 

BC Cup 2013 - Announcement

This is the BCQC's annual solo, open quiz to crown the Best Sports Quizzer. This is the fifth edition. ( Reports for 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 editions). 

Format:   

First, a 30 question elim determines 8 qualifiers (or as Quarter finalists). These 8 people take part in a 60 question quarter final. The top four go through to the semi final. The semi-final will consist of 36 questions with scoring reset to zero. This is to keep the 'winning three consecutive matches' concept constant from last year's edition. The top two then go to the final. 

The finalists will then face off one-on one for a 28 question final. The match consists of a home leg and an away leg. Home leg essentially means you get direct questions. If one gets a direct question wrong which the opponent answers, it counts as an away goal and is used for tie breakers (as per UEFA rules ).
So that's a total of 154 questions + tie breakers.

Administrivia  

QMs: Yash Marathe, Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
Theme: Sports
Teams: Individual
Restrictions: (or the lack of one) Open quiz. Everyone is welcome

When? 1 pm, Sunday, 19th May, 2013
Where? The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune
Registration: Free online registration. 

You can register here. Please register before 18th May.

This is required as we need to get elim sheets printed. On the spot registration is not impossible (but not recommended either). 

Change in date

We regret to inform you that the January Open has been postponed from the 13th of January to the 26th of January. We had to make the change as the venue where it was supposed be held is being fumigated for pest control. Please take note.
The quiz will take place at the Seminar Hall II on 26th January.

Bangiya Sanskriti Samsad Open Quiz - Report

Date : 19-10-2012
Theme : General
Set and Conducted by : Avaneendra Bhargav
Format : 30 question elims.  Finals - 10 question written round, 18+18 IR

Results:
 1st place : Meghashyam Shirodkar, Niranjan Pedanekar, Amit Garde  132 points
2nd place : Ranajeet Soman, Aditya Chandorkar, Rohan Jain  65 points
3rd place : Sachin Ravi, Suraj Prabhu, Abhinav Pathak   28 points
4th place : Bharat Marathe, Omkar Dhakhephalkar, Debopriyo Moulik  22 points
5th place: Finehas Pinto + 2     21 points
6th place : CVR Shastry + 2     0 points


The quiz started late by almost an hour and a half (nobody complained though).  There was a lot of bureaucratic decision making going on with teams made to sit in order of their registration numbers for no practical reason and time was wasted on petty issues.
The elims were good with an even spread of topics. The lack of a projector was a hindrance as the teams sitting in the back rows weren't able to see the LCD screen clearly. The QM read out the relevant points in all questions helping the quizzers.
The finals started at 9.30 pm and hence had to be curtailed by scrapping two written rounds and 6 out of 42 IR questions. Finals started with a Simpsons cameos written round with 10 questions each for 2 points. 6 questions with 5 points each would have been a better idea as the first round made no real difference in scores.
The IR was a bit heavy on business and literature but was overall good. Some nice fundae were evinced and the quiz was interesting. Meghashyam, Niranjan and Amit were in hot form for the entire quiz pulling away to a big lead early on. Our team was comfortably leading the rest throughout for 2nd place.Suraj, Sachin and Abhinav too were 3rd since the beginning and it stayed so.
Overall it was a good quiz but a serious quiz at the Congress Bhavan (no political commentary intended) seemed incongruous to people who have attended previous quizzes by the BSS.
P.S. : No sighting of the sound guy Kulkarni kaka or any mention of Bhasantrao was made much to the disappointment of previous attendees.

Bangiya Sanskriti Samsad Open Quiz

The most Bengali sounding non-Bengali Oboneendro (Avaneendra) Bhargav has set and will host this edition of the quiz which has a cult following in the city. Promises to be good. Show up to have a good time. On the spot registrations allowed.

 

  P.S. There are food stalls with delicious Bong dishes at the venue. NOT complementary though.

Qonnoisseur- The MELA Quiz at MindSpark : Report

Qonnoisseur- The MELA Quiz at COEP's MindSpark 2012

Conducted by Rohan Danait

1st: Swapnil and Akib: 150 pts
2nd: Kunal sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav: 115 pts
3rd: Aditya Gadre and Annanya Deb: 105 pts
4th: Ranajeet Soman and Rohan jain: 95 pts
5th: Ravi and Rohit: 75 pts
6th: Debanjan Bose and Hari Nair: 65 pts

Positives:

- The quiz was a huge contrast from Chakravyuh the previous day - the effort in setting the quiz was apparent.
- The quiz started off with a nice elims set - a few questions could have been better framed but overall a good effort.
- The elims were engaging and well conducted - a big thumbs up for a lot of visual content as well
- The finals had quite a few nice questions - and most questions were well framed
- The ppt was well thought out - everything we needed was on the slides
- The caricatures round was really nice
- Overall the quiz was light and interesting - most teams seemed to like it.

Negatives:

- After reminders and announcements that the quiz has been advanced to 10am, it started at 11 am anyway.
- The quiz (elims + finals) was a bit of a disappointment on the balance front as it turned out to be very Hollywood heavy. Very few questions on music, other entertainment, TV or arts. Nearly nothing at all on India.
- Lack of AV content in the finals
- Some peters here and there - could have been avoided by getting the questions reviewed by resident EntGawds
- Content-wise my only major issue with the quiz was the theme - the connection was extremely loose and possibly even worse lexical. In general "movies of XYZ" make for horrible themes, and this was one. The QM could have explored so much more in a quiz on Music, Entertainment, Literature and Arts - and it saddens me that the theme was also a Hollywood based theme.
- The theme like Chakravyuh was ridiculously high on weightage in terms of points (60!) thus favouring Gary Oldman like crazy. Themes should never have more than 2-3 questions weightage IMO.

The quiz turned out to be quite close with all teams at almost identical scores at the halfway mark - three teams (Swapnil & Akib, Rohan & Ranajeet and us) pulled away in the second half only. Before going into the theme, we were leading, R&R were second. S&A and K&A leapfrogged us on the theme round to take 1st and 2nd respectively.

Chakravyuh 2012 - Report

The Chakravyuh Open Quiz - A part of COEP's MindSpark 2012

Conducted by: Neelima Jha

Attended by ~100 teams

Results:

1st: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav: 120 pts
2nd: Aditya Gadre and Vikram Keskar: 115 pts
3rd: Debanjan Bose and Hari Nair: 60 pts
4th: Vikram Joshi and Abhinav Dasgupta: 40 pts
5th: Ranajeet Soman and Rohan jain: 20 pts
6th: Nikhil and Vishvesh: 5 pts

This year's Chakravyuh happened on a Saturday, a welcome change from last year which meant that a few of us could travel from out-of-town to take part.

The elims were, there is no other way to say this, bad. Ambiguously worded questions and no prior thought into what the expected answer was led to the post-elim period turning into a bargaining contest - teams tried to convince the QM about how their answer was correct as per their interpretation of the question and the QM actually gave in on far too many occasions. One thing that irritated me was that the visuals were run only at the end of the elims - thus giving the teams only a couple of looks at the picture and not much time in case you wanted to spend time on that particular question (which is the biggest advantage of a pen and paper elims as opposed to a ppt elims).

Once we had gotten over BDFL not qualifying (that I have never seen BDFL this happy to not qualify, says something about the elims) - we got onto the finals.

The positive was  that there were only about 5-7 god-awful peters so about 35 odd new /kinda-new questions(a decent figure for a college quiz). Also there were some nice fundas explored.

With respect to content three major issues that really put me off in  the finals were
1. Too many questions simply said "Give Funda" which other than saying "Guess what I am about to ask you" is the worst way to ask a quiz question. Some great fundas were ruined by this lazy framing.
2. Serious problems with the notability of some of the answers. Calling them arbit would be an understatement (eg. 1981 TV movie about a sport that practically NO-ONE watches in India)
3. The theme was worth 70 points (!) with points for individual answers (another 70 points!). So hypothetically, I could be a space nut and win the quiz by simply cracking the theme and answering all the questions correctly and not knowing anything else across the quiz. Not blaming the organizers too much for this due to their inexperience but certainly this is something the QMs should keep in mind for future events.

The same issues about lack of clarity from the elims in expected answers led to several more bargaining sessions.

Another issue in terms of conducting the quiz was that what was written on the slide in terms of rules/ what was expected / half points policy was frequently changed throughout the quiz.

Overall, I would say the quiz was okay at best. There was some decent material and the quiz could have been a lot better by ensuring simple things - like writing out real questions, clarity in points, runnign through the quiz in your head once before actually conducting it etc

In terms of an experience, the quiz was awesome fun, at least for those of us on stage - constant trolling, funny answers, Kunal's fatwas and Ranajeet's rascism - made it all a fun few hours spent.

Winners list so far
2001: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2002: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2003: Niranjan Pedanekar and Samrat Sengupta
2004: Gaurav Sabnis and Neeraj Sane
2005: Sudarshan Purohit and Amit Garde
2006: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2007 (Apr): Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2007 (Oct): Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon
2008: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2009: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde
2010: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2011: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Yash Marathe
2012: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav

BC Cup 2012 Report

When: 10th June, 2012
Where: BC, Pune
By: Aniket Khasgiwale, Aditya Gadre, Yash Marathe

Format:
First, a 30 question elim determines 8 qualifiers (or as Quarter finalists). These 8 people take part in a 60 question quarter final. The top four go through to the semi final. The semi-final will consist of 36 questions with scoring reset to zero.
The finalists will then face off one-on one for a 28 question final. The match consists of a home leg and an away leg. Home leg essentially means your direct questions. If one gets a direct question wrong which the opponent answers, it counts as an away goal and is used for tie breakers (as per UEFA rules ).

Group stages
The fourth edition of the BCQC's megalithic sports quiz began with a low scoring and very close prelim. The prelims cutoff was 10.5, with a top score of 14 by Sumant and Suraj. The 8 qualifiers in random order were:

Sumant, Suraj, Annanya, Kaushik, Samrat,Ranajeet, Aniket R and Shubhankar.

Shubhankar took his spot after a tie-break decider where he beat Abhinav and Omkar

The Quarter Finals: Annanya won the Quarters with 8 points. Suraj and Samrat (7) were next in. Sumant, Shubhankar and Ranajeet were tied on 4 for quite some time, before Sumant scored 2 more to complete the Semi Final line up.

The Semi Final: Suraj put in a great performance to comfortably win it with 7 points. Annanya and Samrat underperformed finished on 3 points and 2 points respectively while Sumant held on to a slim 1 point lead to join Suraj in the final and  break Annanya's winning streak.

The Final
Sumant vs Suraj
In a surprisingly one-sided and low-scoring final, Sumant turned the tables and won both the home and away legs 2-0 to win it 4-0.

The winner for BC Cup 2012 is Sumant Srivathsan

Previous winners:
2009: Suraj and Sameer
2010, 2011: Annanya Deb
2012: Sumant Srivathsan

BC Cup 2012

This is the BCQC's annual solo, open quiz to crown the Best Sports Quizzer. This is the fourth edition. ( Reports for 2009, 2010 and 2011 editions). This year we plan to make a couple of changes - the number of questions have increased from 148 to 154 (a small change) and the prize money has more than doubled (not-so-small change). The quiz is coupled with the BCQC's June Open Quiz to be conducted by the inaugural BC Cup champ Suraj Menon

Format:   

First, a 30 question elim determines 8 qualifiers (or as Quarter finalists). These 8 people take part in a 60 question quarter final. The top four go through to the semi final. The semi-final will consist of 36 questions with scoring reset to zero. This is to keep the 'winning three consecutive matches' concept constant from last year's edition. The top two then go to the final. 

The finalists will then face off one-on one for a 28 question final. The match consists of a home leg and an away leg. Home leg essentially means your direct questions. If one gets a direct question wrong which the opponent answers, it counts as an away goal and is used for tie breakers (as per UEFA rules ). 
So that's a total of 154 questions + tie breakers.

Administrivia  

QMs: Yash Marathe, Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
Theme: Sports
Teams: Individual
Restrictions: (or the lack of one) Open quiz. Everyone is welcome

When? 2:30 pm, Sunday, 10th June, 2012
Where? The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune
Registration: Free registration. You can register here. Please register before 9th June.

This is required as we need to get elim sheets printed. On the spot registration is not impossible (but not recommended either). 

Prizes: 

Landmark Vouchers worth INR 3000 in total. Prizes for the top 8. 

How to get to the venue 

The College of Engineering, Pune (also known as COEP or just "Engineering College") is located very close to other landmarks such as Pune Station, Sancheti Flyover, and the RTO. The Seminar Hall is on the opposite side of the Boat Club (where our informal weekend sessions take place), near the Main Building.

Contact

Phone: Aditya (9881101291) ;  Email: adityadgadre[at]gmail.com

The BCQC is on Facebook and Twitter as well.
some questions from previous BC Opens are now available at the BCQC Questions Blog.