November (League) Quiz

Date: 5th November 2005.

Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium.

Organised by: Abhishek Nagraj, Kapeesh Saraf, Aniket Khasgiwale (I hope I spelled that right) & Gaurav Singh.

Main Quiz Results:

1st: Shamanth Rao + Kunal Sawardekar.

2nd: Anand Shivshankar + Meghashyam Shirodkar.

3rd: Maj. Brijesh Nair + Manish Manke.

Also: Gaurav Sabnis + D. Dharmendra; Niranjan Pedanekar + Sudarshan Purohit; Shivaji Marella + Ganesh Hegde

Picture Quiz Results:

1st: Niranjan Pedanekar.

2nd: Ganesh Hegde.

The BCQC: Its downfall and rise

The following is by a now expat member of the group, Nupur, who was at COEP a few years ago. This also reminds me that the story of the BC quizzing scene was last told until the mid 90s. We need someone to push it till '97 as there are many of us who can take the story ahead from there :-). This post is a little provocative for members of that era, so comments are more than invited.

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I think the Boat Club Quiz Club was strategically flawed.

These are my views on what I had experienced 2 years ago at the BCQC and I think I kind of understand why there was a major dip in the QC population (and popularity?), in the year 2002. These are my views on what I think was going wrong. I do not know how true it is now.

Explaining the answers: I think this was the #1 reason why many people lost enthusiasm to attend the QC.

Lets take an example.

(I recall this one clearly)

The question was: "What comes in 6 'flavours'. Top, Bottom, Up, Down, Charm and Strange".

The answer was 'Quarks'.

Now this was a 2-3 times repeated question. So the seniors knew it. And they waved it off even before the answer was given . "Ya ya, chalo next question", they said.
I looked around and at the new students, and saw a bewildered, lost and helpless look on their faces. They, obviously, had no idea what was going on! I turned to the QM immediately and said "Please explain it to these guys!!", but it went unheard in the conversations around me.

This is an oft repeated mistake the QC did. The QC was so in-itself, everyone expected the new students to 'pull themselves up to the seniors'. No help was offered, though.

This led to a lot of people losing enthusiasm to come for the QC. I think that the QC could be more sensitive to the new comers and gather a larger crowd. One could argue with the Quality over Quantity issue, but then, the more the merrier right? And once the answer is explained, if someone still doesn't get it, then they will filter out automatically. But one must make it a point to get the answer out AND explain it if possible. I have been, many times, put off completely because some answers (like connect questions) were not explained.

Teams: Newcomers or "kaccha players" were made to team up with the really really good Quizzers, with the view that they will learn something.
In fact the effect was the opposite.
The amateur quizzer never gets a chance to think, since the experienced quizzer has already got the answer even before he finished reading the question. Also, suggestions/attempts made by the newbie, get shot or go unheard by the better quizzer (and this leads to a lowering of self confidence while attempting questions..... its actually a vicious circle, get it?).

Money: I have NEVER won a prize. I am not a good quizzer, just really enthusiastic. But now when I look back at the way some BCQC quizzes were conducted, I feel that I should have protested. No its not the money obviously, it's the principles. The participants had to put in Rs 10 per head or so (I remember Swapnils quiz had Rs 50 per head). The top 3 teams got all the money.
Now I know where I stand. I am never going to win a quiz. Never.
So why should I pay when I know the money is going to someone else? and more often it goes to the people who decide to keep a fees for the quiz! So if I was a regular quiz winner, what difference does it make to me if I put in a couple of tenners? I will get it all back (and more) sometime or the other! Of course, this reason is not a crowd deterrent, but yes, I have felt disdain sometimes, over a period of 4 years.

Here I feel compelled to insert a comment (which was sent to Nupur earlier): "I would like to dispel (and I think you would agree) any notion readers may hold that money was involved on a regular basis. The purpose was merely to make occasional sessions at the BC more competitive and most importantly, provide people with a chance to set first-rate quizzes, because that was the time only collegians got to organise official events. I rather think that met its purpose and lifted an otherwise moribund time to more purposeful pursuits. We haven't done it in a long time now, mainly because now there are many more quizzes being organised which take care of that. As you may recall, participating was totally voluntary, and the amount won was usually and promptly spent on refreshments for the participants. It was just a token issue and nothing was really intended there. People who haven't been to the BC may not quite get the setting. (And I'm not mistaken, the fee at Swap's wasn't as high as that - I don't think any quiz in Pune then would have charged that much, let alone a poor, amateur grouping :-) " :: Ramanand

Not including everyone: In the jokes. However trivial this sounds, it definitely had an impact. In fact most of the jokes cracked at the QC were ones you could understand only if you knew the person well and/or existed at a particular place/time. No effort was taken to explain the joke. The attitude was "You did not understand, you're dumb". This evidently, alienated a lot of people.

Female repellent: The less said the better. It took me 2 whole years to get friendly with the QC. First 2 years, no one made any effort to mix around with the few girls (read me) who used to attend. And yes, if a girl answers the question, all heads turn "huh! she got it right??!!". But that's more male mentality than QC. So forgiven (temporarily).
But I must mention that I never felt that any extra effort was taken to make the girls feel comfortable. In case someone at the QC is reading this, and feels that they did try, do let me know.

Politics: Frankly and thankfully, there wasn't much of this at the QC, because we all wanted the QC to stand through all the storms, and thought of it above and beyond ourselves. Yes, we do have the occasional story's a couple of guys had cooked up for the chakravyuh (yes, you two, if you're reading this, I knew it all along :-) )

Looks like the effects of the first 2 points have reflected in the fact that there are hardly any students from COEP itself in the QC. Most are from other colleges.
I believe that the QC could have been more assertive than aggressive. They were aggressive towards the learners (what I was all along); its just that I persisted because nothing else in COEP was even close to as value adding as the BCQC, I felt. But I also saw a lot of talent move away because of the attitude of the QC.

And no, I don't have anyone in mind while writing this. :-).

If you were at the BCQC and feel differently, please feel free to email me at nupurgtATgmailDOTcom

:: Nupur

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Nupur also wrote in to add a comment sent to her by one of the BCQC seniors: "This is what I feel should be done : [The post] revealed the disadvantages of not having a structure to the BCQC. We are failing to realize in our quest to keep the BCQC informal, that it is very important to document facts and information (that's why the notesandstones blog has finally come up). We need to keep a database of who all attend the QC, who all took a quiz, when, how, where, Who won? etc. If not all this, we should AT LEAST have a database of people who have attended the BCQC in the past."

Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz 2005

Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz 2005, the annual quiz organized by the students of Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune will be held this weekend.

Date : 12th October, 2005, Saturday
Time : 5pm
Venue : Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Bhageerath building, Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd. Behind Domino's Pizza, Senapati Bapat Road
Participation: Open quiz. Teams of max two members.
Entry Fee: Rs 40/- per team.
Cash prizes to be won.
Contact: Major Brijesh Nair - 93120-62615

Triads

Sanjeev "Sancho" Chandran, one of the old stalwarts of the BC during his engineering days at COEP from 1993-97 wrote in w.r.t the posts on Connections to mention something known as triads. Here's what he had to say on it:

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I seem to remember we used to run a version of connexions called triads which did not find mention in your post. i don't know if it still exists - it was never very widely done because it was a little complicated (especially to explain in a mail, as you will see below) but good fun when done in practice.

The basic funda is as follows. there are three distinct clues for something say 10122, 79, 34 or pc barua, saigal, dilip kumar (these might not be very good q's - i am quite rusty).

let's say the q is to be asked to team A.

Normally the teams are first told what the answer is expected to be (a person, an event, a place, a book etc). this is however optional and the QM may choose to give this or not depending on his feeling of how difficult the q is.

They are told the clues one by one. they are given a chance to answer after each clue with points reducing after each clue (say 10,8,6)
A has two choices, say "next clue" or answer.
if they answer and it is correct they get the points.
If they answer and it is wrong it passes to B who has the same choices. if it goes all the way through without a correct answer the next clue is given to team A.
A can of course, upfront say "next clue"
Whenever a team asks for the next clue, any other team can say "overrule". (in a bigger quiz you could actually have a buzzer for this)
e.g in the above case say after pc barua, A says next clue. Everyone is quiet. So, then the clue saigal is given. A again says "next clue". however, team D might think they know the answer, so they say "overrule".
Once any team says overrule, Team A is obligated to answer.
If they answer correctly they get the 8 points or else it passes to B. Since there is an overrule, B too is obligated to answer for the 8 points.

This continues till a correct answer is given or it reaches the team which called the overrule (D). Now, if D answers correctly they get the 8 points on offer plus a bonus 8 points. The next triad is, as per infinite rebound, asked to E

If D answers incorrectly, they get no points and lose 8 points (which were on offer) as a negative. the question passes to E. E can now ask for the next clue or choose to answer for 8 points (in some variants once an overrule was in place all six teams had to attempt before the next clue could be given)

If all clues are given and all teams cannot answer then the QM provides the answer and as per infinite rebound the next triad is asked to team B.

It does sound a bit complicated but i used to find it good fun. People like Anand S, George, Kunal Vaed might remember this format. you could also ask them.

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:: Sancho

League Quiz - November Edition Update

Watch this space for more details about the November round.

Until then check out the teaser here.

Update 1 :

The date is 5th Nov. I will confirm the timings soon. Please check out the full details, sample questions and contact info here.

You can contact me at : cheerfulguy(AT)gmail(DOT)com

Update Deux : The final details are as follows :

1. Scope : General / Trivia
2. Date : 5th November, 2005
3. Day : Saturday
4. Place : Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd.,
Senapati Bapat Rd. Pune.
5. Time : 4 : 30 PM
6. Teams of 2 / open for all

Contact no : +91-20-25468688 Cheers,

Wikipedia Article on India Quizzing

I've started a Wikipedia article on Indian Quizzing here. As of now, it is woefully incomplete, and a lot of the stuff I've written is crap. But the important thing is that there IS a page on it, and I've tried to give it some semblance of a structure. I'd like to request quizzers who feel they have information that needs to go into the article to please contribute in filling it out. Right now, work is needed on almost evry section, including the Quizzing by City section, Types of Quizzes section and Quizzing by Topic section.

The Maruti Suzuki FACT (Free A Child Today) Quiz

link

- Pune Leg
- Saturday, 15th Oct. @ Nehru Memorial Hall.
- organized by CRY
- Corporate General Quiz
- QM : Gautam Bhimani


Results:
1. MBT - Ankit, Pawan
2. Honeywell - Nilesh, Anand
3. Tata Motors - Saurav + 1
4. Tata Tech - Krishna, Vasant
5. Infosys - Harish + Manish
6. Aviva - Exl : Sudeep, Sanjay

Comments :
(+) Special Word for Gautam Bhimani, a really nice QM
(+) Extremely nice A/V questions. Not often do you get that.
(+) A Majority of the questions were very good, and lots of new areas not talked about here.
(+) Nice organization, flexible rules and coordial hosts made it a pleasure to be there.
(-) The scoring system was the major grudge, the first and last rounds has a lot of points, and the 10+5 system didn't help.
(-) The fewer number of teams for such a big quiz surprised me, but this might be because it was the 1st year in Pune.
Notes :
* Shamanth + 1(kanbay), Tata Tech and one more team(IIRC Tata Systems) had a long tie-breaker for the final place in the finals.
* CRY didn't overbear themselves on the quiz, wrt the social conciousness factor, but they got across their point. This report would not be complete w/o a mention for the work that CRY does. Find out more here.

The September/October 2005 Open Quiz - Results

Sudarshan conducted our latest Open Quiz - an Entertainment Quiz - last Saturday. I've seldom seen such good theme quizzes, and especially since this was Sud's debut effort at conducting a quiz, it was quite a good effort. I got a peek into many new themes I never knew much about.

Results

1st: Kunal Sawardekar and Niranjan Pedanekar
2nd: Amit Varma and Leslie Mathew
3rd: Gaurav Sabnis and Anand Sivashankar
Other Finalists: Amit Garde & Brajesh, Shamanth Rao and J. Ramanand, Meghashyam Shirodkar and Aditya Udas

Despite the slight snafu of the sponsors not turning up, we do have prizes for the finalists (we think :-) ). Finalists: Kindly send an email with your postal address to Sudarshan (email address: sudarshan (dought) purohit (at) gmail (dought) com) or leave them behind on the comments for this post. Sud will make all necessary arrangements.

Any reviews? Use the comments please.

Quizzing Vocab

Harish unearthed this very interesting link to do about quizzing vocabulary. Bet you didn't know much about the Cricket Pitch Question, Multivia and Buzzer Rock.

Engima 2K5 Concepts
held at Bharti Vidyapeeth Deemed University College of Engineering (BVDUCOE)

Date: 1st Oct 2005

Results
1st: Salil Bijur & Arnab Pal (VIT)
2nd: Ashim Tiwari & Suvajit Chakraborty (Symbiosis)
3rd: Anupam Akolkar & Siddharth Joshi (VIT)
4th: Abhishek Nagaraj & Aniket Khasgiwale (COEP)
5th: Shyamal Kishore & Amit Kumar (BVDUCOE)
6th: Sumant Singh & Abhigya Reshu (BVDUCOE)

Set by: Debashish Roy

Report:
Enigma 2K5 was general quiz with a heavy tilt towards biz questions. D&P and a faulty seating arrangement (descending order of elims scored from A-F) ensured an imbalance in the no. of attempts per team. However the questions in the later rounds helped us make a comeback.

Rounds: After a general round (with many biz questions), there was an exclusive business round, a rapid fire round (with many biz questions) and a mixed bag round (with many biz questions). The questions in the take-your-pick round were too less (only 2) and rather obscure. Audio round was the last one where we had to identify the song and the artiste from the first few seconds of the song. The selection was rather obscure as there was not much scoring here.

Major Crib: One could not hear the answers of other teams. Worse was, they weren't allowed to know them either.

It seems to be the first time that the organisers have done the quiz so considering that it was a decent effort.

Vedaant 2005

Date: 28th Sep 2005

Results:
1st: Safal Mohammad & Vivek Philip (AFMC)
2nd: Salil Bijur & Arnab Pal (VIT)
3rd: Shreekant Awchar & R. Shyam Krishnan (BJMC)
4th: Philip Mathew & Neelabh Nayan (AFMC)

Set By: L.A. Committee of Vedaant 2005

Report:
First a few flashbacks to BJMC quizzes by Gaurav and by Kunal S. As compared to last time, the questions this time were worse. Alongwith school quiz and Manorama type trivia, there were also some like "In which city did the Boston Tea Party take place?" or "In which city is the Leaning Tower of Pisa?".

The elims were multiple choice with negative marking. After 2 semifinals, there were 5 rounds in the finals like 2 rounds of D&P, Fastest Finger First, an "interesting" Who Am I?, Crossword and Rapid Fire.

After experiences from last year, this time there were professional security guards for controlling the audience. A few paper planes did make it to the stage though. On a side note, I feel more quizzes should be held at BJMC. Never have I seen such a passionate or enthusiastic audience for a quiz ever before!

The September Open Quiz '05

{'twas the September Quiz, but happening in October}

Announcing a speciality quiz on Arts and Entertainment

Date : 8th October, 2005, Saturday
Time : The Elims start at 5 pm. Finals expected to start by 6, and end by 9 pm. There is no registration required. Please arrive by 4:45 pm
Venue : Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Bhageerath building, Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd. Behind Domino's Pizza, Senapati Bapat Road
Teams : Two member teams. Anyone and everyone is allowed (except George Thomas, who will be the non-present chief guest)
Prizes : sponsored by Foliage Outdoors. Merchandise, CDs, and whatever other cool stuff they come up with.
Theme : Arts, movies, music, books, comics, pop culture, and anything else related to these.

Contact : Sudarshan [sudarshan (dought) purohit (at) gmail (dought) com]. Or call (020) 27290002 before 10 am or after 8 pm.

Sunday's Open Sports quiz

From Harish's comment - looks like it's not only that sports is a young person's game, but that sports quizzes too. Was it too ESPN Sports Quizzer friendly?

Shamanth and his partner won this one. They were the oldest team on stage with finalists/winners of the ESPN Star school quiz making the rest of the fray. Abhishek and Aniket from COEP were leading initially but the lack of IR and the buzzer set-up did them in.Shamanth's team did well to win this one. Great to see lot of young blood on stage - a team from Abhinav had two boys in their Class X putting up a good show.

Inquizzition - VI

Date: 24 Sep 2005

Results

1st: Amit Garde & Trilok Khairnar
2nd: Shivaji Marella and Ganesh Hegde
3rd: Gaurav Sabnis and Sarika Chuni
Other finalists: B.V.Harishkumar and J.Ramanand, Amit Varma and Leslie Mathew, Niranjan Pedanekar and Sudarshan Purohit

Set by: Quest - FC Quizzing Circle

Conducted by: Kunal Sawardekar

Reviews: (Please leave them in the comments - I'll try and add them here)

Bheja Fry at Techstasy 2005

Bheja Fry, the quiz at Techstasy, the annual event organised by Comp-IT dept. of VIT was held on 22nd Sep.

Organised by: Harsh Ketkar, Anay Kulkarni, Chinmay Borkar

Results:
1st: Kunal Sawardekar & Ulka Athalye (FC)
2nd: Siddharth Dani & Arnold D'Souza (VIT)
3rd: Akshay Jog & Maitreyi Gupta (VIT)
4th: Abhishek Nagaraj & Kapeesh Saraf (COEP)
5th: Anupam Akolkar & Anand Ayyadurai (VIT)
6th: Udbhav Bhatnagar & Kartik Shah (COEP)

Quizzy Logic '05
part of AISSMS' annual fest Silicon Fusion

Date : Wed, 21st Sep. 05
Results :

1. Siddharth Dani and Abhishek Nagaraj (VIT, COEP)
2. Anupam Akolkar and Rahul Bhat (VIT)
3. Aniket Khasgiwale and Vineet Bhatawadekar(COEP)
4. +1 AISSMS Team

Notes:

Ill managed esp. in terms of time. 3 hrs between elims and finals
The questions could be said to be 'tough' bordering on 'obsure'.
Negative marking/ Half IR Half D&P didn't help.
However atleast the questions were original and this quiz was definitely a step in the right direction.

PS :

There was the old 'chestnut' about the Warner Bros. only this time it was printed as : Jack + William + Robert + John = ? later modified to, Jack + Harry + Albert + Sam = ?

Open Sports quiz - Rotary Club

An Open Sports quiz is being organized by Rotary Club.

Date :Sunday, 25th September.
Time : 1430
Teams of two
Venue: Gandhi Bhavan Hall,
Near Girls Blind School,
Behind Cummins India,
Kothrud
Pune

Inquizzition 2005

Inquizzition 2005: An Open Quiz organised by Fergusson College, Pune.

Features:

• Open Trivia Quiz (Not restricted to college teams).
• Two member teams.
• Cross-college and cross-institutional teams allowed.
• Venue: Fergusson College Amphitheater.
• Date: Saturday, 24th September 2005.
• Time: Registrations from 11:30 am. Elims begin 12:30 pm, Finals begin 2:30 pm.
• Prizes worth over Rs. 15000.
• Audience Prizes and prizes for all finalists.
• Contact: Kunal [#9850160475, kunalns(at)gmail(dot)com], Puranjay [#9370191718, puranjay(underscore)p(at)rediffmail(dot)com].

Upcoming College Quizzes

Bheja Fry, Techstasy 2005
22nd Sep
Venue: Vishwakarma Inst. of Technology, Pune
Time: Elims at 9.30 am
Contact: Harsh 9881379417
http://www.vit.edu/techstasy for more details.

Inquizitive, Vedaant 2005
23rd Sep
Venue: B.J. Medical College
Time: 11.30 am
http://geocities.com/bjmcvedant2005/ for more details.

TRIVIA MATTERS

Part of Abhivyakti, MIT.

Organized by : Akshad Vishwanathan, Kedar Toraskar.

Results:

1st : Kunal Sawardekar & Ulka Athale (FC)
2nd : Salil Bijur(VIT) & Janice D'Sa (PICT)
3rd : Abhishek Nagaraj & Aniket Khasgiwale (COEP)
4th : Kunal Thakar & Arnold D'Souza (VIT)
5th : Vasukeshav Sharma & Chandrakant Nair(AFMC)
6th : Rahul Phadnis & Viraj Phanse (MIT)

Report :

The 'English' Quiz at MIT was doing its first round at 'Abhivyakti' - basically a public speaking event. The management was excellent and on the whole everything seemed to be well run. There were no technical snags (with a VB based presentation) and 'live' scores. There was a slight glitch in the elims scoring with Dani & Anupam having to give up their place for Salil's team. Apart from that most things seemed OK. Coming to the questions, they were the usual mix of recycled, chestnuts and some really nice ones. Overall the effort was excellent and there seemed to be a lot of thought and preparation into the whole thing. However as happens often the luck of the draw did play some part in the final outcome. Also, somehow there was this feeling of 8 rounds finishing too quickly - probably because a lot of the easy questions were answered on the direct. Also the audio round could have been better.

Note 1 : Live scoring did not eliminate the 'suspense' as many of us might have feared. It just made things a lot clearer.Something that should be considered in quizzes henceforth.

Note 2: There was a tie-breaker between us and Kunal's team for the 3rd place.

Cheers,