Rotaract Pune Open Quiz 2008

Set and Conducted by Rohan and Karan Jain, Rouhaan, and others.

Results:
1st: B.V.Harish Kumar + J Ramanand (B) : 120 pts
2nd: Pradeep Ramaratnam + Amit Pandeya (D): 110 pts
3rd: Salil Bijur + Venkat S (E): 80 pts
Jt. 4th: Niranjan Pedanekar + Yash Tamaskar : 70 pts
Jt. 4th: Amit Garde + Samrat Sengupta : 70 pts
6th: Akhil + Apoorva : 60 pts

Report (also see comments)

The Rotaract Club of Poona organised the second edition of their Open quiz, once again at the Ladies Club. The weather was a little inhospitable for quizzing, in contrast to the nicely organised event. Participants were well looked after (except for some chip-less munks), which made up for any shortcomings in the actual quiz.

The finals were led by Salil and the Hoosier Cat but they hit a brickwall exactly after the half-way stage. This is when the visitors from Bombay picked up steam to remain in the lead right upto the last five questions. They lost the lead exactly once and unfortunately for them, the quiz ended soon after. There were several imaginative guesses from all the teams, which coupled with some bonhomous banter, meant that no one received any "bhajji" points for noxious behaviour.

The quiz was slightly blighted by a few 'sitters' (like identifying Hitler and Mussolini) and 'chestnuts' (A.G.Bell's attempt at inventing a metal detector). There were more than a few 'identify two people' questions which got a little tiring.

On the positive side, many of the answers were quite audience-friendly. I liked the mostly assured style of the quizmaster (Rohan) who managed to avoid a a major pitfall that many newbie QMs fall into: that of not knowing what to do with partially correct answers. He did this by clearly specifying what he expected as the answers to such questions. (Though, forgetting some of the answers midway took the sheen off his performance :-)). There seemed to be a genuine attempt to ask topics across genres (rock vs hindi films vs india vs geo), which was fairly successful. Finally, there weren't too many complications in the quiz, which helped on the hottest day of the season when energy was at a premium.

Rotaract Pune Open Quiz 2007

Organised by Karan and team of Rotaract Club of Pune, Main

Report by Harish:

Final Standings
Meghashyam and Hazardous Waste (i.e. Kunal S) - 166 (Team C)
Ramanand and team (i.e. Harish) - 162 points (B)
Salil and team (i.e. Ganesh) - 15x (D)
Doctor and Aastha Kataria - 14x (A)

Highlights -
1. A quiz held at a Ladies' Club :-)
2. The QM and the organizers were not BCQC regulars so it did come as a whiff of air - some fresh, some not so fresh.
3. Elims - 25 questions in 40 minutes.
4. There was a filler quiz conducted between the elims and the finals.
5. Finals consisted of four rounds of 15 questions each. Scoring pattern - D&P; no IR. 10,5 in the first round; 12,6 in the second, 14,8 in the third and 20,10 in the fourth round.
6. There were lot of questions which would be considered 'standard trivia' among the seasoned quizzers because of the regularity with which they appear in quizzes. E.g. Mel Blanc's epitaph (finals),Video Killed the Radiostar (elims). So it was a quiz of attrition and the team which missed the least number of questions on Directs was the winner - JR please confirm this. Please note that the team which did answer the maximum number of questions in the quiz did not win - this is empirical evidence of how IR helps in standardizing the scoring and the eventual winners are decided by the number of questions answered and not whether they were direct or passed.
7.The Doctor's team did very well answering most of their directs. Meghashyam and Hazardous waste answered some 'brilliant' questions and finally Ganesh had the pleasure of playing on home turf (well, as close to his home as is possible) and scoring heavily.
8. There was lot of enthusiasm shown by the organizers and were willing to receive feedback. The efforts put in, in terms of hospitality and making the participants was welcome - esp. after the energy sapping conditions seen at some of the recent quizzes e.g. Chakravyuh/Quizzomania.
9. One major peeve was that there were no prizes for the teams placed third and fourth. Probably the money which went into the potato chips and the trophies could have been spent on GVs for teams placed third and fourth.
10. All in all, had a pleasant experience which did not make the mind stretch a lot.

:: Harish

Rotaract Pune Open Quiz '07

Forwarding a notice:

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The Rotaract Club of Poona, Main is organising an Open Quiz on Sunday, 3rd June 2007 at Ladies Club, Opp. Dastur School, Camp. The Registration starts at 9.00am and the Quiz will start at 10.00am.

Enquiries and Prior Registration for the same can also be done by sending an E-mail to punequiz@gmail.com or by Calling Karan - 9881896343 or Ankur - 9890164464. Spot Registration is also available.

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