Making quizzes popular

We at the BC are constantly asking questions: what makes quizzes good, what made a *good* quiz good, why do we quiz, why don't more people in Pune quiz, and what can we do to help spread the fun and cheer that we get out of this sport.

One such introspection provoked this post by Salil, which received a lot of feedback. A discussion amongst some of us much later also elicited a lot of comments. Salil has put together some of the key extracts of the later discussion (featured below; read the link above for the original set of comments). As you may know, we organise open quizzes once in every two months and we'd like to know what you think of the content in our quizzes, whether you find the quizzes interesting, and what you look for in quizzes. General suggestions welcome too.

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Following are from a thread of discussion on attracting more people for our formal quizzes and making them more popular.

Shamanth:

If I were a first time quizzer, I'd expect to be able to answer a few questions, and at least be able to relate to most of the others. Now, judging from the low scores of first time teams in BC quizzes past and present, I'm afraid not too much of that is happening.

If we want people to come back for our quizzes, we'll need to make the quizzes more answerable. Now, I've set aam-junta quizzes – quizzes for first timers a couple of times – and I'm clear that to set a quiz that everyone can enjoy, answer and relate to, does NOT necessarily involve dumbing down of questions – you do NOT have to ask 'how many sisters-in-law does Mrs Agarwal have in KKKKusum?'. You can ask a question about KKKusum/Himesh/pop-culture and still keep it workable. That would be something a KKusum/Himesh fan would appreciate the same way that BC regulars would applaud a involved-literature/history/60s-movie question.

To reach out to a first timer AND pique his interest, we need put in questions that aren't obvious, aren't direct, but are in the area of his interests, and are such that he can figure the answers out very easily, so he at least stays back for the finals, and comes back to the next quiz.

We need to look at who we are setting questions for. What I'd suggest is to have(in the prelims), say, 20 questions targeted at regular BC quizzers, and say 15 at newcomers – the latter comprising of nice, easily workable, non-factual questions on topics that would still interest a non-quizzer – say cricket, Indian history, politics, current affairs, non-intricate business. I know our quizzes comprise questions on these topics already, but most questions aren't easy enough for a first timer.

Yes, there're going to be voices that we're pandering to aam-junta, that we'll become populist, and that we don't need to give 'grace marks'. But hey, quizzing is a two way activity – like I said, we always need to keep in mind who we are setting the quizzes for. And besides, we aren't altering our style of quizzing, we're still staying true to our essence, which is to ask workable questions and stay away from factual recollection based questions.

We need to convey to people why we enjoy quizzing, and for the same reason we think they will enjoy quizzing too. Yes, we can merely say let-them-come-if-they-are-interested, but they simply wont show up if they cant make head or tail of the first quiz they go – I myself remember being almost put off while watching a greek-and-norse-myth filled quiz back in my first year of college.

Besides, 'elitism' is overrated – a lot of the times, all it entails is recollection of a petered funda, that we simply happen to know because we've been quizzing for a long time. First timers who are well read, but simply haven't quizzed before wouldn't do particularly well in a lot of our quizzes, simply because they aren't in touch with our quizzing repertoire.

In the comparison with Bangalore-Chennai we could look at the Landmark-Odyssey quizzes, that regularly see 500+ teams taking part(of 3 members). They've 40 question prelims, and at least 10 of those are the sort that everyone can answer. Finals of course are different, and comprise what we at the BC would call standard questions. However, finals still have some quantity of local/pop-culture questions that are tough to figure out, so the audience relates to it once the answer is out.

I don't know if you should call it a dumbing-down as much as a setting-questions-for-the-audience-you-cater-to.

Abhishek:

I agree with Shamanth.
[...]
A common question I ask is, has my mom heard about the answer while setting a newbie quiz - and that helps me remove some biases that are natural once one has quizzed for a long time.

Shamanth:

Yes - this is a nice way of looking at it. It's a very good criteria for picking newbie questions. Perhaps, in addition to this - 'Would my mom be able to answer this question? If not immediately, at least after some prompting and clue-dropping?' would do well.

Harish:

A thumb rule like this can and should be applied to all questions and not just the newbie questions.
Any quiz which does not cater to the lowest common denominator of the audience is not a good quiz. And this has nothing to do with dumbness etc. There are so many Qs in Niranjan's quiz which are in the so called areas of specialities of so many of our 'recognized' quizzers...you can check how many were actually cracked by those guys.
[...]
Having only seamless rounds with infinite rebounds, while being fair to quizzers on stage is not very audience friendly - it is drab. Rounds like the Chakravyuh round or buzzers or negatives make it interesting. I know it is difficult for such suggestions to pass through the standard format of our quizzes.

Siddharth Dani:

One of the toughest things to do is to try and convince a non-quizzer that he would prolly enjoy going to a quiz because he will prolly increase his knowledge of topics he may not have too much knowledge about or that he will get an ego boost by seeing that he really can answer a few "up his alley questions" or just happen to pick up a nice goodie or some cash. (The goodie/cash thing does work sometimes).

Shamanth:

[I]n Landmark/Odyssey, you do not have 500(or even 300) teams of quizzers. Of these 400-500 teams, only 40-50 will have quizzed with some amount of regularity - most of the teams are family teams - parents and a kid or dad and two kids types.

They just come because they think it's a nice way to spend a weekend afternoon. Now that impression is inculcated simply because Landmark used to put publicity(and majorly) in schools and colleges. Also, people like it because it always has questions that they could answer and get a few right, and win audience prizes - there's lots of audience prizes in it. Besides, there're prizes like best team name and best school team prizes, so hajaar junta show up.

It clicked because they put in enormous publicity the first time, and made a lovely quiz. The first edition, I'm told, did not see that huge a response. Because it was a brilliant quiz, people told friends, who showed up the next year and it grew.

Speaking for me personally, it was a major influence - to see that sort of crowds, and that number of people having fun, and finally being able to answer questions in my first attempt at quizzing drew me. My first Landmark quiz was in my first year when I hadnt done any sort of quizzing, when hostel junta who'd quizzed in school told me to try it and that it'd be fun. I was pretty overawed by the entire experience.

I dont see why that sort of thing cant be done here. Get crowds - make sure they enjoy themselves, and they'll not only come back, they'll bring friends along.

Kunal Thakar:

I am not very sure about this (above mentioned) approach of asking questions.

If we stick to asking questions where the answers are known, this is going to stagnate the quizzing scene for sure. There will be more depth but the questions will heavily favour the zeitgeist. Asking new trivia or venturing into new areas which aren't known to everyone isn't a bad thing.

Having said that, I do believe that we need to make our quizzes more audience friendly. IMO, the most popular quizzes I have seen in Pune have been conducted by [...] Derek, Pickbrain and Parnab. Whatever be said of their questions, it can't be denied that the audience loves the stupid humour, the excitement created by the jumping QM etc. Infact, Parnab quizzes are super arbit but they ensure good turnouts because of his excellent dramatic skills.

Sudarshan:

1. Question topics and wording:

I had feedback from a total newbie, non-techie person this time :
My wife. Though she's a cricket buff, her reaction to nearly all of the questions was that 'they simply go over one's head' because of the cryptic phrasing.
We need a few simply-worded, straightforward questions in both the elims and finals. They don't have to be easy to *answer*, just easy to *understand*.

One suggestion : Let's have two people organizing each open quiz. There are definitely enough people willing to do it. There'll be more questions to choose from, some amount of editing and reviewing, and some checks on questions that look simple to the creator but are verbose/abtruse.

2. Getting more people :

I second Shamanth's point about the massive publicity and word-of-mouth generating the crowds. Look at Crossword's so-called 'sale' which features a single shelf of books at 10% off - but look at the publicity they give it, and the people that go consequently. We need something to make new people know about BCQC.

3. Making quizzes more enjoyable overall :

- Make it a point to have questions with humorous answers/fundas, and more straightforward audio-visuals. Audience interest needn't be generated by jumping up and down or needling the participants - accessible humour, movies, and music are more longlasting ways.

- Abhishek, your flash template for quizzes is really good. Do you think you can add some bits of animation in there? Such as fades between questions, perhaps flashing numbers when the score changes, a special screen to dislpay scores ?

- Audience questions are definitely a good idea. Audience questions with straightforward A/V identifies are easy to do and are best to pull people in.

- Let's also think of different prizes for people rather than throwing normal chocolates at them. Keychains? 10-buck coupons for pepsi? Pens? Comic books? Think cute, fun, envy-inducing on a low budget.

Ramanand:

* Acc. to me, I'd like to help popularise quizzing as "a intellectually stimulating recreational sport". I don't know how many people are inclined towards something like this - re: the point that Dani makes. But in general, IMO, the most enthusiastic quizzers are "geeks", where geeks are defined as people who are passionate about something in great depth. It may be sports or films or music or books, but talk to them and soon they're spouting love-poems to their favourites. Some of my friends, non-quizzers, are in this category and I find them being fascinated by certain aspects of quizzing when I share questions with them. We need to at least attract and retain these. We also learn a lot from these people in turn.

* I feel we should "enable" everybody who wants to quiz or thinks they can quiz to participate. Our model of no fees, walk-ins etc. is perfect for this. But mere enabling is not sufficient as you have all pointed out. We will continue to tweak our "offerings" - hopefully, every change is designed to achieve something.

* I don't like the idea that we have to necessarily dangle carrots-on-steroids to get >100 teams. [D]o we really want all those ppl who come in only for prizes? Not IMHO. But we do want to make it a happy activity for those 80 coming for the content. We really want to be the pleasant domestic life of quizzing in these parts, not an annual one night stand. If we can also get to do the grand-nights-of-passion sometime, then fine - but I won't lose sleep over it.

* In addition to quizzes having some questions even for the (lowest common denominator), I feel the overall quiz should be pitched at the average participant, not at outwitting the (alleged) best participants.

* It should ideally have topics from a wide range AND the quiz host should be good at those topics - enough to be able to speak about the question and related context. This is hard to achieve. We know that many of us cannot claim wide-ranging interests. But we cannot get the few who seem to have wider ranges to do quizzes each time. So, if you want to be a good QM, then you have got to genuinely broaden your own horizons. Ensuring breadth by picking up questions from elsewhere won't help for long.

* Let's face it: we know exactly what certain QMs are likely to ask. And the QMs exacerbate this "incest" by hardly changing their pet themes over different quizzes. In fact, QMs must take pleasure in outwitting participants who think they know exactly how this pitch is going to behave.

* My personal subjective requirements from quizzes these days:
- breadth of topics (some familiar topics, some new that I can learn about)
-indulging pet themes of QMs fine, but only if the expectation from the quizzer is of fairly universal things to think about
- occasional reusability of old things - old wine in new and astonishing bottles
- workable, but not very esoterically so
- elims reflecting finals
- as far as possible, equidistance of topics to new and old quizzer alike - v. hard to achieve
- lack of sitters - but qm needs to be "aware" of recent quizzes
- Niranjan's idea of survivability of qn - a balance of clues to be given out and held back

* I'm not so concerned abt the number of people showing up increasing each time. [...] But we need to do the "retention" bit. I think colleges and schools should continue to be our highest priority for I feel that grown-ups have already now settled into some sort of recreational pattern and there's not that much of a dent possible unlike with the kids.

My suggestions:
* Give out trivia quizzes/trivia puzzles during the finals. Let audience guys look at that when they're bored. Perhaps the content can be related to the elims/finals questions. They can take it home, mail in answers, and we give prizes.
* What are your views on the Theme Attic thing? I think it's a mistake to get people to write down answers all together. Perhaps we should have ppl call out answers for each qn instead? Person doing it can pick the newbies first instead of oldhands, and give them chocs. Otherwise, ppl may snooze off.
* We should get more feedback from participants. Perhaps we should put up a feedback form on the website too.

* I've noticed ppl, especially kids, leave qns blank. Since guess-work is the framework of most of our successes, perhaps we should incentivise this somehow (look at me spout economics ;-)) - perhaps have -ves if no. of blanks exceeds 5. Yes, ppl will probably write nonsense, but perhaps some will be forced to think +vely

:: Salil

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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

Mahaquizzer 2007 - Results

Open category winner: J. Ramanand
College winner: Sandeep M. (IIT Madras)
Ladies winner: Vibha Iyer (Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics)

(Sadly, I don't remember the name of the school winner - if someone does, please leave name and school in the comments.)

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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KQA 'Mahaquizzer' 2007

The Karnataka Quiz Association will hold the third edition of Mahaquizzer, the annual solo quiz contest, in Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and New Delhi on Sunday, 27 May 2007.

Mahaquizzer is a written quiz; 150 general questions to be answered in 90 minutes.

Prizes will be awarded to the person with the top score in each city, as also to the best woman entrant, the best college entrant and the best school entrant in each city.

The person with the top score across the cities will hold the title of Mahaquizzer for this year. The winner will also receive the Wing Commander Mulky Memorial Trophy for Quizzing Excellence from Wingco's family on Sunday, 24 June at the time of the KQA Anniversary.

Date of contest: Sunday, 27 May 2007 Time: 1000hrs-1130hrs at all venues No entry fee Open to all (above the age of 12)

A list of venues and city coordinators can be seen at this link.
For Pune, the venue is:

Dewang Mehta Auditorium, "Bhageerath",
Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd,
(Behind Dominos Pizza)
Senapati Bapat Road,
Pune - 411016
Coordinator: Vishwajeeth Narvekar
Please contact Ramanand. J (9324445248) or Shamanth Rao (9881000957) for directions to venue

Please do register in advance to ensure good seating!
To register, email kqaquizzes at gmail.com with the name of the city where you would like to appear mentioned clearly in the subject header (e.g.SUB: Mahaquizzer-Mumbai)

Enquiries may be addressed to Arul Mani (arul.mani at gmail.com, call 98452-06690)
:: Arul Mani

Update - May 23 Some Instructions:
1. (If you have registered in advance) please bring a print-out of the confirmation email with you
2. Reporting Time: 0930hrs. Please ensure that you take your seat by 0930hrs
3. We wish to start at 1000hrs sharp at all centres. Please note that nobody will be allowed into the hall after 1000hrs.
4. Please carry valid identification if you are competing as a school/college student.

May 2007 BC Open Colleges and Schools Quiz (Sports) - Report

Date: 13 May, 2007
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL

Open Quiz - "World of Sports"
Set and Conducted by: B.V. Harish Kumar
Theme: Sports

Quiz Final Results
(40 seamless IR + 6 Numbers round)
1st: Aniket Khasgiwale + Aditya Gadre (COEP) (B) - 100 - (Elims: 20)
2nd: Omkar Nene (Garware) + Viraj (H) - 75 - (Elims: 14)
3rd: Tanmay Inamdar + Siddharth Gokhale (BMCC) (D) - 55 - (Elims: 15)
4th: Rohit Chandrachud + Rohit Bahulekar (E) - 35 - (Elims: 13)
5th: Yash Tamaskar + Gaurav Singh (A) - 30 - (Elims: 16)
Jt 6th: Vikas V (SCOE) + Arnab Pal (VIT) (F) - 20 - (Elims: 11.5)
Jt 6th: Shantanu + Ruchik (Muktangan) (G) - 20 - (Elims: 9)
8th: Rishi Deshpande + Amod Bendre (C) - 15 - (Elims: 8)
(Kunal + Vibhav of Abhinava Vidyalaya missed out on the finals by a mere 0.5 points)

QM's Notes

• Tried to cover as many sports and areas as possible.
• Tried to make it as un-ESPN School Olympiad friendly as possible. So mugging up from the quiz books wouldn't have helped unless you knew how to use those facts/numbers in the quiz.
• I was impressed with the way the kids took to the style of quizzing and some of the answers were nothing short of brilliant. Aniket and Aditya were in vintage form as they reeled off quite a few 'good' questions (in the QM's Opinion) to take the lead which they never let go. Some of the other answers like Jahangir Khan and Lester Piggott were also brilliant. The team which missed out on qualifying by 0.5 point was unlucky and did very well sitting in the audience.
• I tried to have a different format for the elims - 15 Questions on a Crossword puzzle (some of the clues were cryptic - Hindu Crossword types) and 10 Audio Visual Questions.
• I expected very high scoring in the elims. So, there were bonus points on offer for cracking all the A/V questions/crossword clues. Though the highest score in the elims was 20 they missed out on the bonus points.
• The idea for the Numbers round came from a similar round done by Shrirang Raddi at the Boat Club many years ago.
• The topicality of the quiz ensured that most of those present were damn good at the topic and I really didn't have to explain too many of the answers.
• We can do topical quizzes on these BCQC Open days - either for schools or for the Open junta (from the response seen for the India quiz) We just to ensure we don't make the topics too esoteric.
• There were 12 teams for the Sports quiz - most of whom had turned up because they were already on the mailing lists. We need to follow the philosophy of some of the truck companies on campuses - Trespassers will be recruited.
• People were allowed to participate in the quiz in spite of wearing t-shirts professing their love for losers like Arse-nal.

May 2007 BC Open Quiz "Indic-Nation" - Report

Date: 13 May, 2007 Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL
Set and Conducted by: Shamanth Rao and Salil Bijur
Theme: India

Quiz Final Results (team no. with elims score):
1st: Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari + Meghashyam Shirodkar (8 - 32.5)
2nd: B.V. Harish Kumar + Ganesh Hegde + Niranjan Pedanekar (4 - 33 (highest elims score))
3rd: Manish Manke + Siddharth Natarajan + Kunal Sawardekar (1 - 32) or Samrat Sengupta + J. Ramanand + Abhishek Nagaraj (6 - 30) (scores not clear)

Others: Aditya Gadre + Aniket Khasgiwale + Yashovardhan Tamaskar (2 - 25), Ketan Doshi + Ashwin Kulkarni + Sumedh Kulkarni (3 - 22.5), Rahul + Vibha + Rachna Gothi (5 - 22) (cutoff elims score), Jay Athalye + Kedar Toraskar + Akshad V. (7 - 24), Anand Ayyadurai + Krishnan Sekar + Georgie Matthews (9 - 23.5), Kunal Thakar + Arnab Pal + Anupam Akolkar (10 - 28)

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Salil has the following notes to offer from yesterday's quiz:

A few "principles" we considered before setting out to make the quiz:

1. Encourage max no. of people to be able be a part of the finals -- thats why we had teams of 3 and 10 teams in finals.
2. Increase no. of questions a team gets to attempt, prevent the "we never got any simple ones" crib -- thats why had a large no. of questions in the finals. The no. of sitters and tough ones a team gets evens out in the end. However we didn't dumb it down too much, and a level was pretty much maintained.
3. Reduce newcomer frustration due to repeated fundaes, tough questions and esoterica and make it more enjoyable and interesting -- thats why we had a comparatively simple elims round with 32.5/35 being the highest. We also had a few not so simple ones in the elims.
4. Prevent boredom among audience and participants by having more innovative rounds other than seamless IR.
5. Encourage people to guess more and not restrict their thinking -- thats why we didnt have negatives in any round and encouraged more guesses for the themes

Format of the quiz:
The quiz was styled as a 9-course meal. We had:

1. Appetizers: 9 IR qns connected to a theme.
2. Soup: Written round with a few audio-visual identify qns
3. Main Course 1: 33 qns on IR.
4. Salad: Written round with qns connected to a theme
5. Sorbet: Audio questions based on inspired songs
6. Main Course 2: 33 qns on IR with round reversal
7. Dessert: Written round with qns connected to a theme
8. Wine: 3 written qns with a stage 2 connect
9. Coffee: A 24-picture clue connect

Now the ground realities:
* We had over 75 people attending both the quizzes, including participants and audience - which is a small record of sorts. We had lots of enthu school students attending, some with their parents who were equally enthu to answer which was really great to see.
* Lots of people + Informal atmosphere = chaos, where people randomly enter and leave and we cannot prevent entry or exit at any point of time.
* Shamanth and Abhishek's newbie quizzes which were used in favour of Theme-Attic were really popular and the audience loved them. We should have such questions instead of topical esoterica since we're targeting Theme-Attic for newcomers. Have simpler themes or themes that cover wider ranges to be newbie friendly.
* Blame the local eateries or our own latitude - but a lot of time is spent waiting for participants after lunch to come so we cant start in time often delaying the whole show.
* IMHO, it is fair for a QM to hurry a team answering at his/her discretion. However it is unfair for participants to rush the QM because they have to leave early - we are flexible to allow substitutions.
* It was heartwarming to see all newcomers showing enthu and being involved throughout. Many enquired for more details, took down contact nos., etc. so we had quite a few newcomers with potential to be regular.

On the actual quiz content:
* We avoided esoteric topics - eg. individual scores & stats of SRT or hardcore JBDY/Sholay facts. (Maybe there were 1-2 out of 100)
* Added humourous facts/trivia to make them interesting and appealing to audience.
* There will always be cribs about not having touched any particular topic or focusing on one more, but an attempt is always made to cover all. Often the reason may be that good questions in a topic weren't found or perhaps didn't suit a particular theme. We dont want to have arbit questions on a topic just to touch it.
* Not everyone likes long quizzes. But we had decided ours to be one. And we had to cater to 30 finalists.
* Plead guilty for not having only-audience questions. We were short of time and frustration levels among participants were rising due to the length. But we did have a loyal audience (that too newcomers) who patienty waited till towards the end and kept attempting qns for chocos.
* Answers in the presentation make it easier to explain to other participants and audience. It is dangerous to an extent and cost us twice :-(. But there are ways to prevent it - though they're time consuming.
* The inspired songs round was considered as 'topical' and 'antakshari-like'. I disagree. It wasn't topical because we didn't ask specifics like music director/film, etc. Most tunes were familiar ones and were based on recollection.
* Received cribs about on-the-fly scoring patterns and no. of attempts for theme that caused confusion in total scoring. I agree here - a better approach is required in dealing with written rounds and themes.

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Some sample elims questions (select the whitespace in front of "Ans" to see answers)
1. Fill up:
a. A peepul tree in Varanasi.
b. A banana tree in a Bangalore temple
c. An idol in Ayodhya
Ans. Abhishek Bachchan. Funda is that all these are Aishwarya Rai's 'husbands'

2. Which Indian PM dropped his surname 'Shrivastava' because it indicated his caste? Ans. Lal Bahadur Shastri

3. Which place in Mumbai gets its name from a black stone statue of King Edward VII (as the then Prince of Wales) which is now located in Jijamata Udyan?
Ans. Kala Ghoda

4. The earlier name of the town of Nanded shares its name with a place in West Bengal. Which place?
Ans. Nandigram

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.

---

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.

BC May Open - India Quiz

BC May Colleges and Schools quiz - World of Sports

BC InFest 2007

This Sunday at the COEP Boat Club. All the details here.

Abhimanyu 2007 - Results

1st: Aniket Khasgiwale ("India at the World Cup Cricket")
Other participants: Aditya Gadre ("Manchester United"), Abhishek Nagaraj ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books"), Kaustubh Bhat ("The musical career of Metallica"), Udbhav Bhatnagar ("FRIENDS the TV Series"), and Kapeesh Saraf ("The musical career of Pink Floyd")

Aniket wiped off 9 out of 10 in his topic round and had little to do in the GK round. Aditya and Abhishek gave him the most competition.

Chakravyuuh 2007 - Report

Date: 14 Apr, 2007
Venue: COEP

Open Quiz
Set by: Abhishek Nagaraj, Aditya Gadre, Gaurav Singh and others from COEP
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
(48 seamless IR + 1 written connect qn + 6 direct speciality questions
1st: Kunal Sawardekar + Shamanth Rao (A) - 115* (won on better elims score)
2nd: Amit Varma + Sumant Srivathsan (D) - 115
3rd: A.P.Alagarsamy + Prasann Potdar (B) - 70
Jt 4th: J. Ramanand + B.V.Harish Kumar (F) - 55
Jt 4th: Samrat Sengupta + Salil Bijur (C) - 55
6th: Meghashyam Shirodkar + Aditya Udas (E) - 40

Quiz Elims Results
(cutoff: 19/30 qns)
Samrat + Salil - 22
Kunal + Shamanth, Meghashyam + Udas - 20
Amit + Sumant, Alagarsamy + Prasann, Ramanand + Harish - 19
Dhananjay Shettigar + Amit Pandeya were also on 19, but missed out on starred qns.

Solo Entertainment quiz: (set by Aditya Gadre and Kaustubh Bhat): won by Aditya Udas

Report

* The open quiz saw good attendance (I guess ~30 teams).
* A good and interesting elims. One or two could have been better designed and some dropped, but overall, was good. Was a very tight qualifiers too.
* Quiz started with a single written connect made up of 12 visual elements showed one by one. This was followed by 24 qns of regular IR. Then a set of 30 qns on different topics, of which 6 were offered as directs to the teams. This was part of the chakravyuuh round.
* Was a little disappointed with the finals content. The coverage of the questions and the design of the chakravyuuh round left a bit to be desired, IMO (see tag cloud).
* Nevertheless, there were some good questions such as the aussie guidelines qns. Moments of "should have got that" abounded. * Good organisation and effort overall, though the sound-and-light limitations of the COEP auditorium vis a vis the PSPL audi is harder to adjust to these days.

Please leave comments on this post if you have any suggestions, criticisms, corrections to offer.

Tag cloud of themes:

biz cricket eng_films eng_music etymology football
gen geo hindi_films history ind_films
ind_music india lit misc misc_ent music scitech
sports tv

(note: some questions have been tagged with multiple tags; don't have a roll-up to more general categories such as Entertainment; one question is not included as I don't remember the answer;)

Poster for Chakravyuh

These are the posters for chakravyuh. Useful in case you missed out on any info. Also if people could put up these posters at your respective locations(workdesks, "watercoolers", notice boards etc), that would be of great help. Merci. Broadcast end. (PS : links point to printable files.)

Click here to download

Click here to download

Chakravyuuh 07

The College of Engg. Pune (COEP) will organize its annual open quiz contest Chakravyuuh 07.

The details are as follows:
Date: 14th April, Saturday
Venue: COEP Auditorium (Directions)
Registration : 2:30 pm
Elims : 3 pm
Solo Entertainment Quiz : 4 pm.
Finals : 4:30pm onwards.

Other details:
Team Size : 2
Nature : General trivia.
Restrictions : None. Open to everyone.
Registration : On the spot.
Contact information : Aditya Gadre - 9881101291
Website : Click here
Finals will be followed by a performance by COEP's award winning band.

Intechxication 2007, MIT - Report

Date: 31 Mar, 2007 (Saturday)

Venue: MIT, Pune

Quiz set by: Akshad Vishwanathan

1st: Kunal Sawardekar + Shamanth Rao
2nd: Ganesh Hegde + Abhishek Nagaraj
3rd: Suvojit Chakraborty + Salil Bijur
4th: Vivek Philip + Safal Mohammed
5th: Akansh Gupta + Siddharth Raman
6th: Rohit Prabhavalkar + Shreesh Sikaria

March 2007 BC Open Quiz - QM's (Harish) notes

(See the report on the quiz)

Some of the objectives I had set for this quiz:

1. Set a new precedent for the BCQC Open in terms of production values.
2. Increase the audience involvement during the finals.
3. Questions to be framed in such a way that every team 'type' (those who prefer to work it out; those who know a lot; those who just guess) should have an equal chance.
4. Introduce areas which have not been covered till date without losing out on the interest levels.
5. Make the quiz more interesting with new rounds/formats.

Some notes:

1. Low turnout for the quiz. We need to get the scheduling right and the QMs need to focus their energies on retaining those who do turn up.

2. Very low scoring elims. Lot of questions in the finals went unanswered. JR - can you confirm the number? (JR: 13 out of 36, seamless questions only) I don't agree with Anand's diagnosis - as mentioned in his comment. But we need to think about it.

3. The Speciality round should have been better thought out and executed. 5-pointers would have been a better idea but as Siddhu says hindsight is always 20:20. I don't think couple of teams not getting the same number of directs as the others makes the quiz any less equal. It is just that the format is different. I am also not so much 'For' this equalizing/normalizing of the scoring/format. Drama is what will make the audience interested and the audience is what will keep the club and the quizzing continue. In fact, I'd say if we have to give an edge, let the leading edge go to the audience rather than the quizzers on stage. As long as 70% of the quiz comprises of good questions, the quizzers will be happy (read will return for the next quiz) but if the audience (the not-so-regular quizzers and those who don't qualify) is not happy with the quiz, they will not return for the next quiz. Hitting the golden median is a moving target - I don't think we can achieve it. The next best alternative is to provide enough likeable points for all the stakeholders to ensure they come back and get more people with them.

4. The Bid round, on hindsight again, didn't seem to have elements of equal weight/importance. Could have done a lot better on those Qs. It is a format that can be tried out but as JR says, it is a very tricky one. Getting Connects right will probably be the subject of a Mel Gibson movie.

5. I was satisfied with the effort put in and on a broad basis, the feedback I have got - during the quiz and even after the quiz, has been in line with my evaluation.

6. I hope this quiz makes other QMs think more on how to make the quizzes more interesting and that we should treat these Open quizzes as an opportunity to pit their product against the Landmarks, BEQs and Crucibles of the world. Those quizzes, whether we agree or not, have a certain brand value associated and lot of it has got to do with the effort that goes into it.

7. We should also be aware of the possibility of Landmark and PSPL pulling out of this because of lack of participation, interest levels and lack of quality (!?). We have to work towards avoiding this situation and in fact make the Open quizzes so good that they attract more sponsors and more audience and more quizzers. I don't know if I have succedded in any respect with W5H 2007 but I hope others think about it and do a good job of it.

8. The last and the most frustating aspect of the Open quizzes that irks me no end - at the end of the quiz, I see chocolate wrappers and other litter thrown all over the stage area. JR does the clean-up probably because he knows the effort that went in to get the PSPL folks to give us the Audi and thus, knows the value of it. Let's show some more civic sense. (JR: hopefully, I'd do that at other places too! :-))

March 2007 BC Open Quiz - Report

Date: 24 Mar, 2007
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL

Open Quiz
Set and Conducted by: B.V. Harish Kumar
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
(36 seamless + 6*6 specialities + 6 bid questions + 6*8 rapidfire)
1st: Samrat Sengupta + Salil Bijur (B) - 190
2nd: Niranjan Pedanekar + J. Ramanand (C) - 140
3rd: Amit Varma + Sumant Srivathsan (D) - 115
4th: Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari (F) - 110
5th: Ganesh Hegde + Kunal Thakar/Sudarshan Purohit (supersub) (E) - 85
6th: Kunal Sawardekar + Shamanth Rao (A) - 55

Quiz Elims Results
(cutoff: 15/35 qns)
1st: Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari - 17.5 (recd. bonus of 15 pts in final)
2nd: Samrat Sengupta + Salil Bijur (B) - 17 (bonus of 10)
3rd: Niranjan Pedanekar + J. Ramanand (C) - 16 (bonus of 5)
4th: Amit Varma + Sumant Srivathsan (D) - 15.5
5th-6th: Ganesh Hegde + Kunal Thakar, Kunal Sawardekar + Shamanth Rao - 15

Report (by Samrat and Ramanand)

* Thankfully, unlike the morning's quiz, the open quiz saw much better attendance (~20 teams).
* A very good and interesting elims. Qn 24 (recounted in the samples below) was particularly memorable. Elimination was one of the lowest scoring in recent times, but the quality of questions reflected the type in the finals which is a good practice.
* In a marked departure from previous BC Opens, Harish designed the quiz to have more non-IR rounds and a greater audience focus. We have been guilty of not having much for the audience to do during the finals except watch blankly, which was corrected by Harish this time.
* The quiz began with a video from Harish's previous Open, showing the then winners having bulbs go off inside them leading to some trampoliner-imitations. This seemed to have some effect on many participants, as many of them started leaping around in the quiz. The quiz was quite an audience spectacle - with lots of drama, controversy, sledging, sulking, witticisms, and smiles.
* A summary of the new rounds: First, a specialities round where each team had to pick a topic from the likes of Non-Congress Central Govts, Jnanpeeth award winners, Page-3, Cricket coaches, Nike etc. They also had to nominate another team that would receive questions that the team couldn't answer. The 1st question was some sort of a screening qn - if you got it wrong, the rest of the questions (5 of them) would go en masse to the nominated team. Phew! This round saw a lot of drama when some teams tripped at the first question and had to sit out the other 5 in agony (most of which they knew - in Shamanth's case: all). This section provoked the most comments, which we will come later to.
* A bid round consisting solely of connects was also tried. With different bid levels, the expected amount of work to be done in solving the connects was different. Was an interesting concept.
* There was a rapid fire round at the end to wrap it up; questions were Mastermind type direct ones, though it did not hold much excitement as positions were more or less decided by then.
* A maha-connect based on answers to questions on the finals was exclusively open to audience members. There were quite a few good audience questions, unlike the usual cast-offs that go in that direction.
* Positives: The excellent audience focus; the attempt to introduce different and potentially dramatic rounds; the effort taken to cover many areas (including the oft-neglected sports); the visually-appealing flash presentation made by Sirisha; full marks for effort; there were some very good connect questions, which were quite involved but workable; some of the regular questions were nicely presented/framed.
* Negatives: The qns in the specialities round were worth 10 points each, which was too skewed. The 1st question hurdle also turned the round into a sort of Russian Roulette, impacting some teams negatively and for others a windfall. Suggestions would be to have 5 pts each, have fewer qns, perhaps go back and forth between original and nominated team each time a mistake was made.
* The rapid-fire, being at the end, became a little unnecessary. More interesting variants of this, w.r.t. content and timing in the finals could be pursued.
* Some of us were not entirely happy with the adjudicating in the bid rounds :-) Essentially, the perceived problems here were that that some of the elements in some qns were too easy to merit the same value that some tougher qns had. Anyway, connects are hard to run, and the criticisms are for how the points were given, and not so much for the content themselves.
* We had a lot of questions (nice to have), but had to hurry in answering due to possible lack of time (not so nice). Perhaps if the questions are going to need time to figure out, fewer questions but with more opportunities to get a good shot in could be preferred.
* One also felt that Harish showed that it is indeed possible to have other alternatives to regular formats without diluting content or without making it too gladiatorial. It is only a question of getting the execution right, given one's heart is in the right place. And if you will not try, how will you know?
* The finalists were the usual suspects from BCQC and BQC. Samrat and Salil (pairing up for the first time) were consistent in their performance, winning their first BCQC Open and were mighty thrilled with it. The team of Ramanand and Niranjan ran them close, and cracked a lot of good questions and jokes. The Bombay team of Amit and Sumant came third. Surprisingly the in-form team of Shamanth and Kunal had an off day; they were also unlucky in the speciality round.
* We need to get our scheduling right - unfortunately, the weekend was a little cursed in terms of constraints, but in future, we will try to schedule on Sundays only.
* A big thanks to Landmark for sponsoring most of the prizes and to Persistent for making the auditorium available. Prizes were given out to all finalists, to the best two college teams and the best newbie teams not to make it to stage. A prize for the audience-maha-connect was won by Abhishek Nagaraj.
* Theme-Attic by: Abhishek (Computers), Shamanth (Science)
* Questions will be posted on the egroup soon. Leave your email id in the comments if you are not on the BCQC/BQC groups
* As usual, if we have got any details wrong, let us know.
* Your feedback is the main thing that keeps us from going backwards or being too complacent, so let us know how the quiz went for you (use the comments box).

Sample Elim Questions
1. Andrei Shevchenko - 2005; _______ - 2006; Gennaro Del Vecchio - 2007
2. Who won The Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award in 1952 for writing about the organization he had founded "The Court of Last Resort"?
3. What are these some of the types of: up and down, circular swing (windmill), Drunk style, half-circle, figure eight, side to side, whiplash, Two up, Two down, all-out, tandem, hammer, full body?

Prahelika at Concepts 2007, PICT - Report

Date: 23 Mar, 2007 (Friday)

Venue: PICT, Pune

Quiz set by: Vikrant Agarwal and Akshaya Iyengar

1st: Kunal Sawardekar (UoP) + Maitreyi Gupta (VIT)
2nd: Vivek Philip + Safal Mohammed (AFMC)
3rd: Suvojit Chakraborty (SSLC) + Aditya Gadre (COEP)
4th: Kaushik + Siddharth (MIT)
5th: Harsh Ketkar + Arnab Pal (VIT)
6th: Harish Jakkal + 1 (WIT, Solapur)

March 2007 BC Open Colleges Quiz - Report

Date: 24 Mar, 2007
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL

Colleges Quiz
Set and Conducted by: Ramanand, Sudarshan (contributions from George towards questions)
Theme: Entertainment and Literature

Quiz Final Results
(35 + 43 questions)
Jt. 1st: Aditya Gadre + Kaustubh Bhat (COEP) - 90
Jt. 1st: Safal Muhammad + Vivek Philip - 90
3rd: - Abhishek Nagaraj (COEP) + Kunal Sawardekar (Pune University) - 73
Other College Teams: Maitreyi Gupta+1 (VIT) (55), Yash Tamaskar (COEP) + Suvajit Chakraborty (SSLC) (30) School Teams: Ojas Pandav+Kunal Tilak+Abhishek Kulkarni (5), another team of 2 (All SPM English) (10)

Report

* Unfortunately, the quiz was attended by very few teams , so we had to have a direct finals! :-) Poor turnout could be variously attributed to exams, scheduling it on Saturday morning, and perhaps even the themes. Lots to ponder.
* Up to the participants to comment on quality of questions.
* We had prizes sponsored by Landmark and the BC for all the teams.
* Questions will be posted on the egroup soon
* I seem to have forgotten the name of one school team - if someone remembers, please let me know.

March BC Open Quizzes

Date: 24 March (Saturday)

=================
1. Quiz for college students
Flavour: Entertainment, Literature
Eligibility: college and school students
Teams of 2; 8 Finalists
By: Sudarshan and Ramanand
Time: 8:45 am to 12:30 pm
Prizes for all finalists and Best school teams
Non-collegians are encouraged to watch the finals - lots of chocolates on offer!

=================
2. Open Quiz for all
Flavour: General
Eligibility: No restrictions
Teams of 2; 6 Finalists
By: B. V. Harish Kumar
Time: 1:45 pm to 6:30 pm
Prizes for all finalists, Best school, college, and newbie teams; Special audience round

=================
We will have a Theme-Attic as usual in the break.

==================================================
Date: Saturday, 24 March 2007
- Venue: “Bhageerath”, Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., Behind Domino’s Pizza, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
- Registrations free and on the spot
- Contact: 98810 00957, 93244 45248, contact@bcqc.org

know-IT-all IT Trivia Quiz at COEP.

This was a part of Cynosure, COEP's comp dept's first-time fest.

Results:
1st : Kapeesh Saraf and Vineet Bhatawadekar (COEP)
Jt. 2nd: Akshaya Iyer and Vikrant (PICT)
Jt. 2nd: Suhas Mahajan and Sanmitra Kale (COEP)
Other Finalists : COEP+SSLC, and 2 MIT teams.

Quiz happened at COEP on the 14th of March and was conducted by yours truly.
Elims and finals will be available soon. Watch this space for more.

Note1: When was the last time we had 2 female participants in the top 2 (?)
Note2: Kapeesh and Vineet won easily in spite of the fact that neither of them studies Computer Science. And yes, it was not all "frivolous" IT trivia. We had "hardcore" issues like Algorithms, Data Compression and OS Design discussed too. This of course, in the usual BCQC 'fun' way.
Cheers, Abhishek

BC quizzing overseas - Season Opener Quiz at Georgia Tech 2007

Nupur, active quizzer at the BC lawns during her undergrad stint at COEP, conducted a quiz for her friends at Georgia Tech. A report.

---

Date: 17th Feb, 2007
Venue: Georgia Tech's College of Computing Building
Conducted by: Nupur Dave

Winners: Bharat Jayakumar, Deeparnab Chakraborty, and Gaurav Bhatia.

Report

* I started the QC innings at gatech with a mixed bag. Questions were made, BCQC style, very workable.
* Well received quiz. Great turnout.
* Not a lot of people have heard about the BCQC so this was a good method to get them introduced to it.
* About the quizzers who attended. Bharat Jayakumar, perusing a PhD at gatech, was the winner of the 2004 International UK vs India, University challenge. Deeparnab Chakroborty (PhD CS gatech) is also an excellent and avid quizzer from IITB. There seem to be a good pool of quizzers at gatech and with word getting around, I am sure the gatech quiz club will be gaining momentum pretty soon.
* I am being offered to conduct a similar quiz for the Association for India's Development (AID) Atlanta chapter, sometime. This would be done on a larger scale and I would love to showcase it with the BCQC connection.

:: Nupur

Indian Cinema Quiz at B.J.Medical College - Report

Date: 18 Feb, 2007 (Sunday)
Venue: B J Medical College, Pune
Quiz set by: Kiran, Snehal, and friends

1st: Niranjan + Ramanand
2nd: Phani Babu + B. V. Harish Kumar
3rd: Safal + Satyanshu
4th: Sameer + Anand

Report

* Like last time, had an enjoyable time at the cinema quiz
* Was completely Hindi-cinema oriented this time
* Criticisms: many qns were too easy, and lifted from the Penguin Indian Cinema quizbook
* Interesting aspects: they have a very different format (with lots of buzzer questions, elims with -ve marking etc.) which forces teams to react differently
* Harish and his dad (making his debut on stage!) were off to a good and early lead. Safal and Satyanshu had one dream round where they got all 4 buzzer questions set in the era 71-85, though some of it was due to some strategic buzzing. Niranjan and I made up in the exclusively-buzzer round (we had a missed a few earlier, which given the easiness of questions was almost fatal). It was tight and could have easily remained with the leaders. Blame it on buzzers
* A nice aspect was the reading out of little tidbits about the personality or film involved in each answer. The organisers had put in a fair amount of effort to create the slides and audio/visuals, for which they are to be commended. But some more effort on content is needed.

India Quiz at Silhouettes 2007 - Report

Date: 17 Feb, 2007 (Saturday)
Venue: AFMC, Pune
Quiz set by: Anand Misra

1st: Sajith Surendran + Nitin Arun Dikshit (AFMC)
2nd: Shamanth Rao + Salil Bijur
3rd: Ganesh Hegde + Suvojit Chakraborty (substituted by Samrat Sengupta)
4th: Safal Muhammad + Vivek Mathew (AFMC)
5th: Pallavi Rautrey + Junaira Rahman (SSLC)
6th: Prashant Singh + A.K. Gupta (CME)

Quiz-O-Mania 2007 - Report

Date: 3 Feb, 2007 (Saturday)
Venue: VIT, Pune
Quiz set by: Harsh Ketkar, Arnab Pal, Rashmi Vadnagare

1st: Shivaji Marella + Kunal Sawardekar (90)
2nd: Meghashyam Shirodkar + Abhishek Nagaraj (80)
3rd: Vibhendu Tewari + AP Alagarsamy (70)
4th: Ganesh Hegde + Salil Bijur (40)
5th: J. Ramanand + B.V. Harish Kumar (30)
6th: Niranjan Pedanekar + Samrat Sengupta (20)

Report

* Excellent elims with emphasis on business questions
* Finals were mixed: on the -ve side, there were some vague "connects", easy questions answered on the first attempt, questions that could have been framed better. On the +ve side, there were some nice questions that were very well-framed.
* Finalists outnumbered the audience members :-)
* Given the mad scramble for last spot, a new term for the wooden spoon was coined by Samrat sir (whose team fittingly won it!): the Laal LoTaa (see Lanterne Rouge) :-)

Shyam Bhat Memorial Quiz 2007 - Report

Date: 15 Feb, 2007 (Saturday)
Venue: AFMC, Pune
Quiz conducted by: Safal Mohammad and Vivek Philip

1st: Shamanth Rao + Kunal Sawardekar
2nd: Sayak Dasgupta + Abhishek Ray
3rd: Shivaji Marella + Amit Koregaonkar
4th: Cadet Nishant Karol + Cadet Pulkit Dewan
5th: Uday Mehta + Karan Rampal
6th: Salil Bijur + Suvajit Chakraborty

Business and Entertainment Quiz at Silhouettes 2007

Venue: Armed Forces Medical College, Pune.
Conducted by: Safal Mohammad

Winners: Sayak Dasgupta and Abhishek Ray [Symbiosis Society's Law College (SSLC)]
Runners-up: Suvajit Chakraborty and Subhodeep Jash (SSLC)
Second Runners-up: Nikhil Shriram and Abhilash Chander (SSLC)
Also: Vivek Philip+1 (AFMC), Kunal Sawardekar (Pune Univ) and Arnab Pal (VIT), Nikhil Motlag and Avaneendra Bhargav (AISSMS CoE).

Comments:

- Although the elims had a good mix, the finals had only ten business questions, compared to fifty ent questions.

- Symbi Law swept this quiz, taking the first three places, putting up, as they say, a jolly good show.

- Although the questions were overall quite decent (with the customary AFMC focus on fundae rather than workability), there were a bunch of peters and rather simple questions (eg a question that was very suspiciously similar to one asked in Quiz-o-mania 05, and another that asked us to identify the tune of the US national anthem).

[Apologies for wrong spellings of names, if any. Please to correct. Also, I apologise for not getting everyones names, so please tell us the names of the gentlemen from AFMC and SCOE not named here, if you know.]

The Pot of Gold System of Equitable Distribution

As a perpetual also-ran in the finals(and non-qualifier) of numerous quizzes, I have always deeply felt for the 4th,5th and 6th teams who despite qualifying get nothing out of the tons of money the organizers have on offer. An audience member who answers a stupid question could end up with much more than the team which came 4th. Case in point Landmark, where everyone(including that hindi-poet guy) except teams 4,5,6 went home without anything. (That's probably better that the CD of #1 Their Greatest Hits Chapter. 2 - includes super hit tracks Channa Vey, Kabhi, Duur, Tanha Dil, Maaeri, Chhod do Aanchal that I got.)

That however prompted me to put into words this idea I have been toying with for some time now. It's called the 'Pot of Gold System' wherein, the total prize money up for grabs forms a central 'Pot of Gold', and that money is divided into the ratio of scores that the teams get in the finals. A few potential drawbacks are:

1. Loss of 'tension' and 'stakes' for winners place : Consider a situation where two teams are locked on 1st place at 100 points. They wont go all out for the prize because they know they are going to end up with roughly the same amount of money.
2. Lowering of the stakes: The prizes of course become less top-heavy as the amount of money remains the same, but is more equally distributed. For eg: winners at Landmark would have had to make do with probably 15,000 worth vouchers etc.
3. If a team makes 0 points it still does not get anything whereas going by the premise that they are better that the people who did not make it, they deserve something.
4. Arithmetic will become too cumbersome, and the show will become unwholesome for public consumption.

Advantages are obviously fairer distribution and better incentives for laggards. Teams far behind in the pecking order will not lose interest but will also try and mop up as many points as they can. Here is the system I propose which can balance all these factors, eliminating the 3 drawbacks and minimizing the 'unjust' methodologies and systems.

1. The Pot of Gold is divided into 3 base amount initially. X,Y and Z. X / (no of teams) is the minimum base amount which every team will get. A possible value for X could be the returning of registration costs.
2. The values of X,Y,Z are so chose that X is much lesser that Y and Z is lesser than Y.
3. The value Z represents the Bonus Gold which represents the incentives teams get for winning. The amount Z could be divided into 2/3 parts given to the top 2/3 teams.
4. The value X represents the Pot of Gold, for which the teams are playing.
5. To minimize the problem of cumbersome arithmetic we can round up / down to the nearest 50 or it also be programmed into a live scoring system.

As usual the whole point of writing this is to solicit your opinions on this, and try and see if it can work. This seems to me a very logical step in making quizzing fairer. I know it still has some drawbacks like it will not work in case of prizes in kind, or people not wanting to give 6 awards / certificates. Anyway it is a very implementable system in an open environment where cash is all that one is vying for.

Indian Cinema Open Quiz - B.J.Medical College

The QUIZ CLUB , B. J. Medical College, and ANUNAD, Pune are organising an Open quiz on Indian Cinema.

Date: Sunday, 18th FEBRUARY
Timing: 10 am (tentative)
Venue: B. J. Medical College, Pune
Contact: Snehal - 9822326699, Kiran - 9881678946

Report from last year's quiz.

BCQC Website down for maintenance

The BCQC website is currently down for some maintenance activities. Please don't be surprised at the website having gone "dry"! This blog will be our official refuge for a while.

Landmark Pune Quiz 2007 - Report

Date: 26 Jan, 2007 (Friday)
Venue: Nehru Memorial Hall
Conducted by: Derek O'Brien

Open Quiz Final Results
1st: Anand Sivashankar, Meghashyam Shirodkar, Vibhendu Tiwari
2nd: Kunal Sawardekar, J. Ramanand, Shamanth Rao
3rd: Mitesh Agarwal + 2
4th: Aadisht Khanna, Amit Varma, Rishi Iyengar
Other finalists: SAP (Bangalore), NDA (Pune), B.V.Harishkumar+Srivatsa Subbanna+Gaurav Parab, Ashwan+Hanisha+Vikram Joshi

Best Corporate Teams
1st: Pinstorm (Mumbai), 2nd: SAP (Bangalore)

Best School Teams
1st: ?, 2nd: Muktangan, 3rd: St. Marys

Quizzer of the Year
Ramanand (Other finalists: Mitesh, Anand S, Rishi, NDA representative, and SAP representative)

Best Team Name "Vaanar Brothers" (Anand, Meghashyam, Vibhendu)

Report

* Expectedly, most of the questions could be tagged by one of the following adjectives: irritating, entertaining but pointless, multiple-choice, mouth-hanging-low-at-audacity, tired, take-choice-from-a-set. There were a few nice ones, but you'd have to wait for them a while like for a PMT bus.
* Nice production values of course. Liked the idea of "this happened in 19xx" preceding every question. Audience was kept well-engaged.
* Given the over-abundance of prizes for audience and winners, it was a shame that the finalists who finished 4-8 got nothing for their efforts.
* A very silly way to run the "quizzer of the year" competition. (Don't mistake this for modesty.)
* Overall, nice beginning by Landmark in Pune. They may have slightly underestimated the turnout - many people who had come only to watch had to stand during the finals. Official teams count was about 240.

(this post is missing some details - kindly post in comments if known)

Quiz-O-Mania 2007

Details:
Date: 3rd Feb 2007 (Saturday)
Venue: Main Auditorium, Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune
Time: Elims begin at 1.30pm sharp
Team strength: 2 people
Entry fee: Rs. 40 per team.
6 teams qualify for the finals.

Quiz Masters: Arnab Pal ( 98904 54353) and Harsh Ketkar (98813 79417)

There are many 1-round topic-specific quizzes like Harry Potter, Friends, LOTR, Sports, Literature, etc that will take place throughout the day at VIT's 3-day literary festival, Epiphany (2nd, 3rd and 4th feb.)

*All quizzes are open to everyone*

All the quizzes will happen at Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, 666, Upper Indiranagar, Bibwewadi, Pune- 411 037.
How to get there: http://www.vit.edu/reach.htm

Prizes worth Rs 20,000 to be won.

Previous editions of Quiz-O-Mania: 2004, 2005, 2006

The Landmark Pune Quiz - 2007

Landmark Pune are organising a quiz on the evening
of 26th of January, 2007 at Nehru Memorial Hall.
(Click poster for contact details).

Details:

* Teams of upto 3 members.
* Venue: Nehru Memorial Hall, Camp, Pune
* 26th of January 2007, 3pm.
* Quizmaster: Derek O'Brien

* Prizes
- First place –Rs. 30000
- Second place – Rs. 15000
- Third place – Rs. 9000
- Best corporate team – Rs. 6000
- Best team name – Rs. 3000
- Best school team – Rs. 6000(students of upto class 12 are eligible)
- Best school team runner up – Rs. 3000(students of upto class 12 are eligible)
- Quizzer of the year – Rs. 5000
- Plus attractive audience prizes.

* Registration needs to be done in advance. The organizers will be assigning seats, and so it is recommended that you register early so as to avoid last minute crowding.

* To register, walk into Landmark (Next to Dorabjee's), Moledina Road, Camp, Pune anytime before the 26th of January. You can register for your friends just as well. You could call 40068888 for details.

* Outstation teams could call Landmark and register. However, Shamanth will need to pick up your entry passes, so please email/call him on 9881000957 preferably before this weekend. You'll have to take your passes from him just before the quiz begins.

IMS Quotient 2007

Date: 13th Jan 2007

QM: Charanpreet Singh

Results:

1st: Symbiosis Law: Suvajit Chakraborty, Sayak Dasgupta, Abhishek Ray
2nd: Symbiosis Law: Manas Panda, Sayan Ray, Sridip Sural
Jt. 3rd: Garware and COEP
5th: Fergusson College
6th: AFMC

Previous edition of IMS Quotient

BCQC in Indian Express, Pune

A news article featuring BC Quizzers that appeared on 9 Jan, 2007.

BC quizzers at Mood Indigo 2006

Some key results:

General Quiz: 1st (Kunal Sawardekar + J. Ramanand), Semi-finalists: Abhishek Nagaraj + Maitreyi Gupta
Indian MELA Quiz: 1st (Abhishek Nagaraj + J. Ramanand), Finalist: Suvojit Chakraborty
IMS Quiz: 1st (Suvojit Chakraborty + Kaustubh Bhat)
Sports Quiz: 1st (Abhishek Nagaraj + J. Ramanand)

January 2006 BC Regular Open Quiz - Report

Date: 7 Jan, 2007 (Sunday)
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL
Set and Conducted by: Gaurav Sabnis

Quiz Final Results
(50 questions, Modified IR with reversals from F, 2 pts for correct answers)
1st: Niranjan Pedanekar, J. Ramanand, Meghashyam Shirodkar (A): 21
2nd: Anand Sivashankar, Vibhendu Tiwari, Ganesh Hegde (E): 19
3rd: Sudarshan Purohit, Amit Garde, Shivaji Marella (B): 18
4th: Amit Varma, Rishi Iyengar, Kunal Sawardekar (C): 17
5th: Shamanth Rao, Salil Bijur, Abhishek Nagaraj (D): 11
6th: B.V.Harishkumar, D. Dharmendra, Arnold D'Souza (F): 8

(4 out of 50 questions went unanswered)

Quiz Elim Results (out of 30 questions)
First 6 Teams cutoff: 13
(in order) Anand-Vibhendu (17), Shamanth-Salil (16), Ramanand-Niranjan (15), Amit Garde-Sudarshan (14), Amit Varma-Rishi and Harish-Dhammo (13)
next 3 cutoff: 9
(in order) Kunal S-Arnold(12), Meghashyam-Abhishek (11.5), Ganesh-Shivaji (9)

BC Theme Attic Quiz: "Assassinations and India at the Olympics" by J.Ramanand

Report

* Our first quiz where prizes were sponsored by Landmark.
* Please give feedback on questions, organisation, etc.
* The next set of open quizzes will be in March

And...
* If you want a copy of the elims and finals, please send me an email or leave a message in the comments.
* Thanks are again due to PSPL and Landmark.

Sample Elims questions:
1. Which term, coined by Indian demographer Ashish Bose in 1980, is an acronym and also a pun?
2. In the 1984 Lok Sabha election, whose campaign catch-phrase was "Mere anganey me.n tumhaaraa kyaa naam hai?"
3. Martin Speckter, the head of an advertising agency and an advocate of precision in communication, put forth this idea in an article in 1962. It was supposed to convey in print an attitude of curiosity and wonder. The WSJ called the idea exactly right for a statement like "Who forgot to put the gas in the car". What name did Speckter give this idea?

January 2007 BC Open Colleges Quiz - Report

Date: 7 Jan, 2007
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL

Colleges Quiz
Set and Conducted by: Apurva Dubey, Akhil

Quiz Final Results
(56 questions)
1st: Abhishek Nagaraj (COEP), Sayak Dasgupta, Suvajit Chakraborty (both Symbiosis Law)- 135
2nd: Maitreyi Gupta, Harshwardhan Ketkar (both VIT), Kapeesh Saraf (COEP) - 90
3rd: Shyam Jade, Mihir Mulay (IIT Bombay) - 55
Other Finalists: (Gaurav Singh, Aniket Khasgiwale, Kaustubh Bhat (all COEP)), (Nikhil Motlag, Avaneendra Bhargav (AISSMS COE)), (Tanmay Inamdar (SPBJ college of science), Siddharth Gokhale (BMCC), Ashwin Shankar (A.B.Garware College)), (Pranit Saxena, T.L.Ramaswami, Manu Sebastian (Symbiosis Law)), (Ritoban Sengupta, Soumo Chaudhury, Subhodeep Jash (Symbiosis Law))
School Finalists: (Sarvesh Deshmukh, Viraj Bathe, Aditya Joshi (SPM English)), Jaideep Mehendale, Ameya Karambelkar, Kaustubh Deshpande (SPM English))

Report

* The quiz was attended by about 15 teams (about 40 participants), including some school participants.
* Excellent questions in the elims and finals.
* There were certificates for all finalists and prizes sponsored by Landmark for the top 3 teams.

BCQC January Open Quizzing
Supported by Landmark

We kick off 2007 with an early bout of serious quizzing, this time with a College quiz and the other regular features. Here are the details:

Common Details
Date and Time: 7 January 2007, Sunday
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, "Bhageerath", Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
(nearest landmarks: the building is behind Domino's Pizza; this is the same road as the main Symbiosis college, ICC Trade Towers; ~5 kms from Pune railway station; 2 kms from Pune University Circle)
Contact for info: 98810 00957 (Shamanth), 93244 45248 (Ramanand), contact-at-bcqc-dot-org
Fees: none - just show up and you can take part.
Registration: on the spot.
Prizes: courtesy Landmark, Pune.

---

Quiz 1: Open quiz for College Students:

Organised by: Akhil and Apurva

Flavour: General
Team Size: Upto three per team
Restrictions: none; unlimited number of teams per college, mixed teams allowed
Reporting time: 8:45 am. (The quiz will be from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm)
(Definition of college student: student from 11th standard onwards. School students welcome to take part if interested. Impersonators will be impounded :-))
Registration: call/email. On the spot entries also welcome.
Eight teams in the final

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Quiz 2: Open quiz

Organised by: Gaurav Sabnis
Flavour: General
Team Size: Two per team
Reporting time: 1:30 pm. (The quiz will likely last upto to ~6 pm)

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Quiz 3: Audience theme quiz
Theme: "Assassinations" + "India at the Olympics"
Organised by: Ramanand
When: In the break between elims and finals

---

And...
* We'll be as strict with the timings as we can, so please show up on time
* Prizes for both main quizzes
* Everyone's invited!
* If you don't have a partner, don't worry - just show up and you should be able to find someone like you who needs to pair up. At worst, you can take the elims solo.

KQA's "Go Ogle" online quiz

(Message from KQA's Arul Mani)

The KQA will hold Go Ogle, its annual online quiz on 1st January 2007. The quiz is set by Arul Mani.The rules are given below.

Rules: Open to all solo contestants, irrespective of age or location.

Prior registration is required. Please email us (kqaquizzes at gmail.com) your name, age, address and other contact details by 30th December 2006.

The quiz will be posted at our blog http://community. livejournal. com/kqaquizzes

The quiz will be available for access from 1700hrs IST on 1st Jan and will be taken off at 2100hrs IST.

Participants will attempt the quiz at the blog. Those who do not have a livejournal account may post reponses anonymously. Such entrants must however leave their name (and email i.d used while registering) at the bottom of the entry. Unsigned anonymous entries will not be considered.

No participant is allowed more than one attempt at the quiz. Attempts at skulduggery will result in disqualification. The results and answers will be announced on 2 January 2007 at the blog. Two prizes will be given out, to winner and runner-up respectively. The prizes will be named in a day or two.

For some idea of what last year's quiz was like, go to http://community. livejournal. com/kqaquizzes/ 3634.html

The Mod Mod Infinite Rebounds

Ages ago, I'd written a post on Infinite Rebounds as part of a series discussing scoring formats in quizzes. That post has a couple of errors which came to notice in time, and is slightly obsolete now. This current post aims to correct those errors and record the current set of conventions that are followed in IR (at least in the BC circles). This post is also partly aimed at perhaps reaching a consensus on how we should run this method here - it is after all the most popular form of conducting a quiz in these parts - so as to avoid the usual raised eyebrows just before the finals of a quiz begin when the quizmaster announces his nth variation.

Infinite Rebounds a.k.a. Infinite Bounds (IR) is one of the algorithms to answer the timeless quizzing question of "who gets the next question?". One answer is in these commonly agreed conventions is IR:

(Some terms and abbreviations:
* Q{n-1} : the previous question which has been completed
* Q{n} : the next question which is to be asked
* S: the team that successfully answered Q{n-1}
* P: the team that started Q{n-1}
* Normal passing direction: The usual passing order that a quiz begins with i.e. A->B->...->F->A...
* Reverse: F->E->...->A->F...
* S-1(P-1): the team seated "before" S(P) in the Normal passing direction
* S+1(P+1): the team seated "after" S(P) in the Normal passing direction
)

---

Rule 1. Q{n} after Q{n-1} was correctly answered: The choice of the team to receive Q{n} depends on how Q{n-1} was answered. If Q{n-1} was answered correctly by a team S, Q{n} goes to S+1.

---

Analysis:
* IR attempts to keep things "fair" for all teams by keeping the number of attempts on questions as equal as possible. "Equality" not only over the entire length of a quiz, but also over short windows of time. In IR, this means that at any point, no team will have an unfairly greater number of attempts at questions than any other team.
* We know that the fairest possible system is for all teams to simultaneously attempt all questions. But this is not possible for all questions in a stage-final-format, and so every algorithm needs to address where a question starts and how it passes. Here 'fairness' means for teams to at least attempt almost, if not exactly, the same number of questions. For this, one needs to also convince oneself that theoretically there is no difference between attempting a question on the direct or on a pass.
* In earlier systems like Direct-and-Pass, some teams could enjoy several more attempts than others in a single round. Perhaps over the length of the quiz, the teams may have similar number of attempts, but in a local window, this will not be true.
* A Team is not penalised for sitting next to a "good" team that gobbles up all questions before they can get to it.
* IR always increments the next question marker, ensuring that no team can get an attempt again unless all teams after it have had one attempt since.
* We can state the fundamental principle of IR as: "keep the number of attempts equal". Earlier, we thought it would make sense to re-start next to the team that last got points. But on reflection, this is not quite correct.

---

Rule 2. Q{n} after Q{n-1} was not correctly answered:
(Before modification) If Q{n-1} went through unanswered, Q{n} will go to P+1 i.e. the team next to the one that started the previous question.
(Modification 1) If Q{n-1} went unanswered, Q{n} goes back to P i.e. the same team with which the previous question started.

---

Analysis:
* Earlier, it was felt that no team should start a question twice in a row. However, if we want to keep the number of attempts equal, then here the old rule violated the principle. This is because the team that started the last question is now pushed to the end of the new cycle. Unless the question is unanswered by the rest, this team loses an attempt while the others gain one.
* Applying the modification ensures that at any given point in the quiz, no team can have more than 1 additional attempts over any other team in the final. (Having "1 more" means that the other teams will attempt questions to square the count before this team can increment its count.) In the previous system, this could not be ensured. In fact, data shows that a difference of 2 or more is often seen with the older system.
* This modification is as simple to run, and more importantly, it does not penalise a team just because the quiz-setter asked a tough question that none of the teams could answer.

---

Rule 3. Next question after partial points:
(Before modification) Sometimes a question is made up of multiple sub-answers. Suppose such a question Q{n-1} is attempted by all teams, some of which who give partial correct answers. At the end, the quiz-master awards partial points to those teams with correct contributions. In this case, who gets Q{n}? Previously, the question would be awarded to the team next in passing order to the last team to get points.
(Modification 2) Here, since all teams have attempted the previous question, the question heads back again to P.
(There is no consensus on this point)

---

Analysis:
* Again, the previous system believed in re-starting next to the team that last got points. Instead, if we appeal to the spirit of the principle of equal attempts, Q{n} should go back to P, as everyone's had an attempt on the previous question.

---

Rule 4. Next question after round reversal: A question is asked and completed. The order of passing now reverses. Who gets the next question? If modification #1 is implemented and if the last question was unanswered, then Q{n} goes back to P. This is a trivial case. In all the other cases, there have been several variations here and no consensus has really emerged. The variations:

* Q{n} is given to S-1 (or P+1 in case no modification is applied) and the passing is in Reverse
* Q{n} is given to S+1 and the passing then Reverses
* Breaking with IR here, Q{n} starts at the other extreme i.e. Team F (assuming the previous half started with Team A)

---

Analysis:
* It seems to me that each of the above rules have their pros and cons, and hence their respective advocates. None of these seem to be able to give any firm guarantees, so I think this much dissimilarity in number of attempts can be tolerated. Perhaps the best way is to toss a coin and pick the starting team in each segment randomly. Random is better than Bad :-)

The rest of the 'philosophical' aspects can be read in the previous posts. I hope to bring out the emphasis on the "equality in number of attempts" to help guide all minor quibbles. Of course, there is no intention of imposing some kind of standard, but perhaps leading to a convention that say most open quizzes in Pune and even Bombay can adopt. My personal basket of conventions would be to include both the modifications on points 2 and 3. Hopefully, quizmasters will think clearly about the options available to them instead of making an arbitrary and dogmatic choice. Of course, there are those who say IR is dogma :-), but it's the best we've got at the moment, is it not?

Kindly comment on issues.

P.S.: I remarked that "theoretically, there is no difference between attempting a question on the direct or on a pass". This is not quite true. In fact, practically, there is a difference between all teams when they attempt. The earlier you attempt a question, you have less to work with from answers previously given, but you also benefit from lack of "Forward Bias" (example embedded in this post). But overall, does it matter? I think not.

P.P.S: Apologies for the use of short-forms etc. etc. - all in the name of brevity (esp. if you consider the size of this post!).

P.^3.S: Special mention of Arnold D'Souza (as promised) for independently re-discovering modification #1 in Pune circles :-)

November 2006 BC Regular Open Quiz - QM's (Samrat's) views

A tightly contested quiz, decided on the last few questions. I was surprised seeing that only 3 out of 60 Qs were left unanswered. Though I believe in setting workable and not too difficult questions, but this was a superb performance by the teams by any standards. Hats off to the quality of the teams. Plus it helped that there were 3 member teams. It definitely improves the chances of getting the answers right.

Anand and Vibhendu were somewhat disadvantaged by losing their partner in the middle. It didn't strike me at that time, or we could have arranged a replacement from the 10th-11th team in qualifying, as those guys missed out by only 1 point and they were also newcomers to BCQC.

The differential point system was not appreciated by the teams in general. My rationale for having it was that it is not possible to set questions of equal difficulty level. And in quizzes I have seen people crib that the other team got a sitter and they after getting a toughie also get same points. So I decided to put Qs in buckets of 4 pointers or 6 pointers and try it out. But after the experience of this quiz I also feel that there isn't much merit in continuing with that in future quizzes. As simple and difficult levels are so subjective, and especially in a eclectic and polymath gathering as these Pune Open quizzes are. It is simply not possible for any QM to get it right. So just mix "your" simple and difficult questions, have equal points and hope that the randomness of IR will neutralize the effects.

There were some issues regarding the distribution of points for the connect. Teams felt there was some arbitrariness in awarding of points. In my opinion I did it to the best of my understanding. Teams felt that the break-up should be specified in advance, but in most of the connects it is not possible to be so clear, plus saying that sometimes dilutes the question. So I feel teams should just give it their best shot and leave the rest to the judgement of the QM. And as standard practice QM should not give clues midway, and not comment on part right answers.

The first two teams performed superbly, answering some good ones directly as well as on passes, and deserved their positions, though it could easily have been reversed. The rest of the teams were also at their heels all the time and had their moments.

We had more people in the finals this time, but the purpose was not served exactly, we wanted more new people, but it was just a re-hash of the old hands. It seemed to be an extended BC and BQC gathering. The 10th-11th team if they had qualified would have brought some new blood, missed out narrowly. Hope their time will also come.

Overall it was an enjoyable quiz for me, seeing the enthusiastic and lively teams battling it out in the right spirit, with a decent and supportive audience.

:: Samrat

Appy Fizz - Champions of the World quiz by ESPN Star Sports

Preliminary Round - Mumbai
Date: 7th Dec. 2006
Venue: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai.

Results:
1st - Symbiosis Law (Suvajit Chakravarti + 1(pls to put hand up))
2nd: Aniket Khasgiwale and Abhishek Nagaraj (in supporting role)
3rd: NMIMS, Mumbai.

The thing that peeved/flabbergasted me most about this quiz was the fact that ESPN Star (and the whole wonderful troupe that comes along) had decided to conduct a nation-wide college only (under-25) quiz on the extremely narrow theme of 'World Cup Cricket'. Now, the rights for the WC, as everyone knows, are not with ESPN-Star and the timing of this event could be only to co-incide with West Indies 07.

Anyway, after the journey to Mumbai, we turned up at the venue to find a surprisingly low number of teams who had turned up (about 25). Considering that we had come to know about it only the day before, it appears that the standard publicity machinery had not been exploited to its full extent by the organizers (perhaps deliberately?) other than Harsha Bhogle doing a Mahaan-of-sorts in the TV advt.

The round itself was a 30Q written-only style, with ESPN School Quiz type factual World Cup questions. Vinod Kambli was present to lend the now-mandatory celebrity quotient (and duly forgot who was the highest wicket-taker at the 96 WC, one in which he was an integral part if the team.)Suvajit and co. cracked it getting all 30 right, while we and the team from NMIMS got 28. The organizers told us that the top 6 are likely to go through, thus putting cut-off margins at about 22/23.

This is going to be held in 4 cities (Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata being the others) with the top 24 going through. The top 3 from each centre go through immediately, with the others are chosen at the discretion of the organizers. The finals, we are told, is to be held in Delhi sometime in January.

Appeal to fellow BC Quizzers:The writer is in the hunt for DVDs/VCDs/Books dealing exclusively with any of the cricket WCs. Esp. on the wanted list are DVDs containing all the matches/highlights from a particular WC. You can email me at : abhishek AT bcqc DOT org if you can help us out in this regard.

Sample Qs: (wording might not be exact) (Answers in comments)

1. He participated in the first 3 world cup finals in 75,79 and 83 and retired from International cricket in the year 1996. Name him.
2. Name the man of the series of the 92 world cup.(hint: His team did not reach the finals)
3. Name the only player in India's 83 squad who did not get even a single game.

November 2006 BC Regular Open Quiz - Report

Date: 3 Dec, 2006 (Sunday)
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL
Set and Conducted by: Samrat Sengupta

Quiz Final Results
(60 questions)
1st: Shamanth Rao, Kunal Sawardekar, Meghashyam Shirodkar (E): 62
2nd: Rishi Iyengar, Sumant Srivathsan, B.V.Harishkumar (A): 56
3rd: Amit Varma, Ravi Venkatesh, Kunal Thakar (B): 50
4th: Anand Sivashankar, Vibhendu Tiwari, Siddharth Natarajan (F): 41
5th: J. Ramanand, Abhishek Nagaraj, Salil Bijur (C): 35
6th: Shivaji Marella, Ganesh Hegde, D. Dharmendra (D): 25

(3 out of 60 questions went unanswered)

Quiz Elim Results (out of 32 questions)
First 6 Teams cutoff: 14.5
(in order) Shamanth-Kunal S (20.5), Rishi-Sumant (20), Ramanand-Abhishek (19.5), Anand-Vibhendu(17.5), Amit-Ravi (16.5), Shivaji-Ganesh (14.5)
next 3 cutoff: 13.5
(in order) Meghashyam-Siddharth N (14), Harish-Salil (13.5), Dharmendra-Kunal T (13.5), (just missed out: Biju + Chandan, Akhil + Apurva, both 12.5)

BC Theme Attic Quiz: "Tintin and Asterix" by J.Ramanand

Report

* A very good elims set was provided. The finals were quite enjoyable too.
* Some of the questions in the finals were a tad too easy; I personally didn't like the division into sets of 4 and 6 pointers as these distinctions are v. subjective and not easy to pull off. Some of the 6 pointers tended to be "either you know it or you don't" which made them tougher and hence possibly worthy of a larger value, but in some cases, it wasn't appropriate IMO. Anyway, this is just my opinion and the quiz setter should not need to conform to standard thinking!
* Appropriately for a Samrat quiz, the non-"U-rated" questions were in full flow, and it helped a lot of the on-stage commentary :-) - was a lot of fun. The routine Samrat-isms helped too.
* The split of points in connects was a little ad-hoc; suggestion to Samrat is to try and figure out the exact split required while setting the question and explaining it to the teams beforehand.
* A look at the elims and finals scores above will show that while 2-member teams wrote the elims, 3-member teams sat in the finals. The explanation is as follows: we wanted to try and get more participants on stage. However, the usual method of having 8 teams or inviting 3-member teams at the outset was not preferred (the former because of concerns on the time that could be spent in passing questions; the latter because we wanted to avoid polarisation into a few very strong teams). Instead, the top 6 teams after the elims made it to the final, with each the 6 members of the next 3 teams in the elims randomly assigned to one of the first six. This way, we had a 3 member final. (This system, BTW, was proposed by Samrat.)
* Great performances by all teams, esp. the winners, who got some tough ones. We also had quite a decent turnout (27 teams), including some of the school kids (5 school teams) who stayed back.

And...
* If you want a copy of the elims and finals, please send me an email or leave a message in the comments. The ppts are rather large and it will take some time for them to be collated and sent out.
* If you have any comments on the contents/conduct of the quiz, please leave a comment behind. Newcomers especially, please let us know what you thought of the quiz and if there's anything we can do to encourage your presence in these quizzes.
* We'd be interested in knowing opinions about the 12+6 system of finalists. This can work easily for these kind of open quizzes where there's not much at stake and where the aim is to enable more participation and finalists. More formal quizzes with prizes etc. may not be able to implement this, for finalists may not feel inclined to share space with a relative stranger.
* I couldn't note down the elims scores, so if anyone remembers, let me know.
* Thanks are again due to PSPL, especially the security and auditorium staff for the great support provided throughout the day!

Sample Elims questions:
1. This medical condition takes its name from the Greek word for "Waterfall". Which one?
2. Which company had the tagline 'Geography is History'? (Unfortunately they became history)
3. If Jeux de la Francophonie is French then what is the English counterpart?

Update: Samrat's views on proceedings.

November 2006 BC Open Schools Quiz - Report

Date: 3 Dec, 2006
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSPL

Schools Quiz
Set and Conducted by: Shamanth Rao

Quiz Final Results
(42 questions)
1st: Ruchik, Shantanu, Siddharth - Muktangan Eng. School. - 75.5
Joint 2nd: Aadim, Sarvesh, Omkar - SPM - 75
Joint 2nd: Samrat, Satyajit, Mayuresh - Muktangan Eng. School - 75
Other Finalists: SPM English, SPM English, Abhinava

Quiz Elims Results
Cutoff: 20/30
(Further details to be updated later)

Report

* The quiz was attended by about 17 teams (about 50 kids). The number was a little lower than expected (especially in comparison to the workshops) given the lack of restrictions, but this can be attributed to it being a Sunday and not being an event pushed too much by schools who would issue fatwas for more competitive events. However, about half the teams were appearing in a BC quiz for the first time and as some of the top teams from the previous school quiz were not there (mostly Tenth students), a lot of new faces got a chance to shine.
* The finals were very tight, with the last question deciding the fate of quiz leading to a win by the merest of margins, 0.5 points.
* The response was positive and there were enquiries about the next quiz, so enough incentive to keep going on. There were certificates for all finalists and prizes for the top 3.

Day after exam labours ...

The day after led me to working non-stop on the Website for Chakravyuh. Please go and see it - and more importantly, do come. Cheers,

BCQC November Open Quiz

Time for the next set of open quizzes (which just spills over to December despite its name). This time, we have a bunch of quizzes, and here are the details:

Common Details
Date and Time: 3 December, Sunday
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, "Bhageerath", Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
(nearest landmarks: the building is behind Domino's Pizza; this is the same road as the main Symbiosis college, ICC Trade Towers; ~5 kms from Pune railway station; 2 kms from Pune University Circle)
Contact for info: 98810 00957 (Shamanth), 93244 45248 (Ramanand), contact-at-bcqc-dot-org
Fees: none - just show up and you can take part.
Registration: on the spot.

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Quiz 1: Open quiz for schoolchildren:

Organised by: Shamanth
Flavour: General
Team Size: Upto three per team
Restrictions: none; unlimited number of teams per school
Reporting time: 9 am. (The quiz will be from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm)

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Quiz 2: Open quiz

Organised by: Samrat Sengupta
Flavour: General
Team Size: Two per team
Reporting time: 1:30 pm. (The quiz will likely last upto to ~6 pm)

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Quiz 3: Audience theme quiz
Theme: Tintin and Asterix
Organised by: Ramanand
When: In the break between elims and finals

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And...
* We'll be as strict with the timings as we can, so please show up on time
* Prizes for both main quizzes
* Everyone's invited!
* If you don't have a partner, don't worry - just show up and you should be able to find someone like you who needs to pair up. At worst, you can take the elims solo.

BCQC Schools Workshop I

Facilitator: Shamanth Rao
De-facilitators: Abhishek and Salil
Venue: Symbiosis Library.

The workshop was attended by around 40 kids. This is because the 20 from Abhinava did not turn up for some reason. So we had 20+20 from Symbiosis and Muktangan.

The workshop itself went exceedingly well. We found that most(80%) kids really enjoyed themselves, and as usual Shamanth's questions were quite perfect for the occasion.

Points to self would be, ensure that the furniture at workshop location is not a hindrance rather than being useful. Need to ensure that there is enough space for people to huddle around etc. Need to inform schools about this in future. Another thing we need to do is to tell schools that when we say we expect nothing in return, we mean 'nothing'. Therefore, I and Shamanth walked out bearing two handsomely decorated potted plants, which though were wonderful, we quite hard to carry back home for us poor motorcyclists.

Looking forward to the session next Saturday (Salil being incharge). It would be nice if anyone else could drop by to help him - myself will most probably be busy. Ideally we need two people to be at each workshop. That helps immensely.

Also this would be a good place to add, that if any school would like the BCQC to conduct a workshop please get in touch with us at : contactus@bcqc.org