ATHRENA - Quiz at SCOE

Set and Conducted by Karan.

Results:
1st: Abhishek Nagaraj and Aditya Gadre : 110 pts
2nd: Aniket Khasgiwale and Yasho Tamaskar : 70 pts
3rd: Saransh Verma and Maulik Patel : 60 pts
4th: Siddharth and Kaushik : 40 pts
5th: Yash Marathe and Vipul : 20 pts
6th: Aditya and Karan : 15 pts

Ganesh, former BC regular, reopens his blog with a post on quizzing.

The Microsoft Redmond Quiz Club

Guest post by Ajay Bhat on "The Microsoft Redmond Quiz Club". Ajay is an alumnus of COEP, where he graduated along with some of us. The club also has another old BC hand - Satyen Kale, who used to drop by the BC occasionally.

When: Every other week – usually on Wednesdays 6 PM.

Where: Microsoft Building 50, Redmond, WA.

Who: Mostly Microsoft employees (of Indian origin) and associates (vendors who work on-site here, spouses.). Non-Microsoft employees are welcome – drop me a line at ajayvb[a t]gmail{d o t}com if you are in the Seattle area and are interested in coming to our quizzes.

Origins

There had been idle talk more than once about having a quiz club in Microsoft Redmond - a number of people here missed the quizzing action from their college days. AID (Association for India’s Development) in Seattle organized an India quiz in August ’07, which got an overwhelming response with around 35 teams of two registering.

This prompted a small number of people to start the quiz club as it was apparent that there was enough interest. Since the first quiz with six participants, the quiz club has hosted a quiz every other week continuously. Now 20-25 people on an average show up for every quiz. We’ve mostly had general quizzes, but we have the occasional theme quiz. The ones on cricket and a specialty A/V quiz were raging successes. We also have a Bollywood quiz lined up next week.

Format & Organization

Typically the format is written solo elims followed by finals in teams of two. The top five elims qualifiers get paired up with the next five in a random drawing. The quiz is non-competitive (in that there are no prizes) and the format means you pair with different people every time – which is a lot of fun as you pair up with quizzers with different strengths making for interesting results. All quizzes are IR or modified IR depending on the quizmaster’s discretion.

People volunteer to prepare quizzes and the QM pipeline’s been full so far – there is a lot of enthusiasm and interest among the quizzers who show up. The club itself is fairly informal with no office-bearers etc. We have an internal mailing list for announcements and an intranet site for sharing quizzes and other information.

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Other desii-videsii guest posts: Anantha on the US College Bowl, Nupur on quizzing at GaTech.

Edison Quiz at Modern College

Set and Conducted by Yash Marathe.

Results:
1st: Aditya Gadre and Suvajit Chakraborty : 155
2nd: Abhishek Nagaraj and Maitreyi Gupta : 100 (Won on tiebreaker to come second)
3rd:Aniket Mandavgade and Abhishek Sathe: 100
4th: Nikhil Motlag and Avaneendra Bhargav (sub Yasho Tamaskar) : 70
5th : Saroj Kumar Singh and Sudeep Sengupta: 55
6th : Swanand Gadgil and Abhishek Khandelwal :20

Quiz was quite good for a debut effort. The elims were pretty bad with about 36 one liner random trivia questions and 4 good questions.
The first round was conducted by some other guy (whose name I've forgotten). It was quite bad. Most questions were very boring and /or too easy.
The next four rounds were conducted by Yash. These were quite good. Some questions were great, while there were quite a few chestnuts.
The quiz was quite a close fight with Team B and Team E ending up tied for second place with 100 points. Team E (Abhishek and MAitreyi) eventually won the sudden death tie break to come second.
Cribs: There were too many chestnuts which gave some of us an unfair adavantage. Organisation was quite poor. The quiz was scheduled to end at 2pm but the finals ended up starting at 2:30.

Quizzing 101

This is college quizzing season. Which means a lot of people will be setting quizzes for their college fests. It also means that a lot of people will be setting and QMing their first quizzes. This is by far one of the most important experiences for quizzers.

However, it takes experience to grasp the nuances of setting, organising and making questions for a successful quiz. It's not difficult or anything, its just that you need to fall and fail to realise what went wrong.

The good thing is, a few stalwarts at the BCQC have already done some excellent writing on the issue of a) making good quiz questions and b)organising a quiz event.

You can find these essays here on our website. This Quizmaster's Checklist is a must-read especially if you are organising a quiz event.

(cross-posted on my personal blog)

Axlerate - Open Quiz Results

Date: 22 Feb, 2008
Venue: Maharashtra Institute of Technology (M), Pune
Set by: Siddharth, Kaushik
Conducted by: Siddharth
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
Format: 6 rounds in total. 5 on D&P (with round reversal) and one on identify with 3 clues (non-passing). One of the D&P round was an inverse frame-the-question-from answer round.

1st: Nikhil Motlag + Avanindra Bhargav (F) - 55
2nd: Yasho Tamaskar + Yash Marathe (B) - 40
3rd: Maitreyi Gupta + Salil Bijur (A) - 35
Joint 4th: Keyur Munot + Bharat Kandoi (C) - 15
Joint 4th: Abhishek Nagaraj + Nandan Gokhale (super-sub addition) (D) - 15
Joint 4th: Venkat Srinivasan + Suvajit Chakraborty (E) - 15


Report/Review/Post-quiz-notes in comments

Why there are so many chestnuts in quizzes

Look at any of our reports, and chances are that you will find a few complaints about "chestnuts". Since this is a quiz blog, a question before we proceed:

In “The Broken Sword”, a forgotten melodrama by William Dimond (1816), one of the characters, Captain Xavier, is forever telling the same jokes, over and over, with slight variations.

As he repeats a certain joke involving a tree, this time making it about a cork tree, Xavier is corrected by his companion Pablo, who says, “A ---. I have heard you tell the joke twenty-seven times, and I am sure it was a ---.”

What?

Question from Amnesia 2006

BTW, apart from being the answer, the above question itself has become somewhat of a 'chestnut', i.e. an oft repeated question. Since most people think of chestnuts as nice questions that simply show up from time to time, let us also expand the scope to ordinary "repeats", which true to their name, have a nasty habit of showing up at the very next quiz.

1. Roach quizzers
Like international cricketers, the average age of local quizzers has gone up considerably. Earlier, most participants would be in college and once released into the real world, the concerns of a livelihood would ensure their graceful withdrawal from the scene. However, these days, quizzers keep coming back for more, and some are into their 2nd or 3rd decade (of quizzing). This means that many participants are very experienced and have accumulated quite a bit of memory trash. Most complaints of repeats would emanate from this lot. They are not dinosaurs as they can still be fleet-flooted and also possess a sharp set of teeth, and can make life tough for the newbie quizmaster.

2. Newly evolving quiz-setters
On the other hand, the number of first-time quiz-setters remains steady, which means that the number of people discovering a chestnut for the first-time remains constant. It reminds me of the first time I did a quiz at the BC. Scarcely had I uttered 3 words that people gave out the answer, and to rub it in, they also predicted the rest of the question and told me exactly what was wrong with it. Just a routine matter of history repeating itself. There's an easy way of getting around it (which is what I did): attend as many quizzes as you can, especially when you're young and willing to expose yourself to the rubbish that passes for many quizzes, and you will learn what to pick and what to leave behind in the shell. Unfortunately, it has been my observation that not enough quiz-setters do this. It is fine if you aren't crazy enough to want to travel to Tristan da Cunha for a quiz, but it may expose you to the risk of repeating questions when in your audience is the crack team of "Tryst of the Cunhas".

3. Too many open quizzes
Allied to problem 1. Open quizzes leave the door open for ancient riff-raff to hobble through. In Pune, most decent quizzes tend to be open quizzes, which is nice for the avid quizzer who no longer commands a frayed identity card, but can be difficult for newbie quiz-setters who just don't have the range or experience to keep these geriatrics at bay. Most open quizzes, locally, started off life as college quizzes and evolved into opens since quizzers wanted to keep coming back and also because quiz-setters do want to have these so-called "good quizzers" attempting their quizzes. This can be a mixed bag.

4. Laziness
Admit it: when it's 4 am in the morning and you have just 5 hours left (assuming sleep is an optional accessory) before your quiz begins, what do you do? You filch. Or else, you scrape wikipedia. With the former, seeing why repeats happen doesn't require borrowing neurons from Holmes. With the latter, I think the chances that you will search for something about which you are are already aware of is pretty high, unless you really get lucky with Random Page. You end up on something interesting which a few millions (ok, tens) of people have just heard last weekend. The solution is simple: finish setting your quiz well in advance and don't treat it like any average academic assignment.

5. Just don't have the range of interests
Similar to 4, but more pardonable. Many quizzers, especially in a given circle, share very similar tendencies, either by virtue of being quizzing-oriented or by picking up and sharing interests. As a result, their questions tend to swim in the same part of the ocean, leading to a lot of inbreeding (sometimes leading to the birth of freak connects!) As a result, their quizzes are liable to stagnate in repeats or variants there of. Breaking out is not easy and may require a conscious effort to genuinely broaden one's horizons, while deepening one's knowledge of familiar ponds.

6. Culture and geography
Over a period of time, certain quizzing circles become fond of certain subjects. People from outside these circles may not, therefore, share the depth of common knowledge that ages into chestnuts, and could therefore unsuspectingly inflict a repeat. This is hard to avoid and unless you can visit quizzes in other lands, or at least get hold of those questions, there isn't much to cover your rear here.

7. Weak sources
If you set a lot of questions from current affairs or use similar sources to others, you're setting yourself up for deja vu. It's easy to see why. Like in 5, go find other things to ask, different avenues to pursue, newer aspects to explore. New and interesting pieces of trivia are born each week, but I've seen some people waste them by asking them too early. I tend to hang on to these, and try asking them when they've aged a bit and started to sidle out of people's heads. I've noticed that the older it is before people discover them, the more interesting it seems to get - because that piece of trivia has been out fanning itself in the sun under everyone's noses, you may provoke that rare expression of joy: "darn, I didn't know this about that!"

8. Not enough creativity
It is possible to ask a known piece of trivia if you can be a little more clever with how you "remix" it. There are many possibilities: connects and visual forms, to name a couple.

9. Sheer bad luck
Almost every quiz-setter who has been hugging an interesting question close in anticipation of asking it next week has felt the deflating emotion of seeing the question show up today. One even groans unfairly: I could have done it better. This happens all the time and sometimes there just isn't an explanation. It's like all those scientists who wait a thousand years before figuring out a new theory within minutes of each other and spend the next millennia squabbling over credit. The worst case that I have known was when we had a BC session a couple of hours before Niranjan's Mensa quiz in 1999. About two or three questions from that session showed up in the finals to everyone's (perhaps apart from the quizmaster's) amusement.

The same happens when people feel that the questions seem to suspiciously emanate from a source. Even if there isn't a conscious effort to filch, perhaps the source for both was the same. If indeed there is no smoke without fire, don't worry about this one.

In summary, without repeating myself, repeats will happen. A fundamental trait of quizzers is that they also tend to be cribbers. The cribbers, especially experienced ones, could probably show some leniency if some of the reasons are traced to pardonable offences. The quiz-setters could, in turn, take every possible pain to avoid the common pitfalls listed above if they are really serious about avoiding repeats. I hate going to quizzes where most of the quiz is reincarnated, for one does not get anything out of that experience. Furthermore, it turns the outcome into a lottery, depending on which team gets a chestnut to swat away directly. I strongly feel that several open quizzes, especially those done by colleges, should not be "open" to all - less experienced college quiz-setters should joust with their counterparts instead of having to contend with the more experienced. One could argue that the better quizzers do come out stronger but I think it also affects the development of others, including the sometimes scalded quiz-setter. But I don't see it changing any soon. So if your quiz is open, then be prepared to be measured on the same scale as other open quizzes.

(Written with not-so fond memories of the COEP first year workshop, where the threat of the nightmarish "repitt" cast a pall over the semesters. Also, I have also surely indulged in the kind of 'cribbage' criticised above.)

Quiz-O-Mania 2008 - Results and Review

Date: 16 Feb, 2008
Venue: Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT), Pune
Set by: Maitreyi Gupta, Nilay Puntambekar, Rohit Khaladkar, Gokul K.
Conducted by: Maitreyi Gupta
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
Format: 55 questions in IR with a round reversal halfway


1st: Niranjan Pedanekar + Yasho (F) - 75
Joint 2nd: Venkat Srinivasan + Suvajit Chakraborty (A) - 65
Joint 2nd: Nirad Inamdar + Salil Bijur (C) - 65
Joint 2nd: Prasann Potdar + Mukund Krishnan (D) - 65
3rd: Meghashyam Shirodkar + Abhishek Nagaraj (B)
4th: Arnold D'Souza + Anu Salelkar
Notes:

This was the 6th edition of Quiz-O-Mania, the annual open quiz conducted in VIT, now part of the literary fest Epiphany. Considering it was the first open quiz the current setters conducted, it was a decent effort on their part.

Elims had only about 25 questions followed by a written environment quiz won by Prasann and Mukund. The finals started late because of the JAM elims (the JAM-quiz clashes at lit fests are becoming a tradition now).

We saw questions from areas often considered 'pop-culture' like sitcoms, cartoons and wrestling, albeit good ones. I also noticed a dominance of current affairs questions. SNAFUs ensured that a few audio questions were scrapped.

There were quite a few repeats which were cracked on directs but at the same time there were some really good questions very well answered by Niranjan and Yasho. The best question, (as remembered by most), however was answered by Anu from Team E. The highlight of the quiz was however a confusion over a particular answer given by us (Team C) but brought in objections by Team B because of which we were given half points only to find out later that we were actually right and would have been the sole 2nd place holders. This situation could have been avoided by a thorough check by QMs and firmness in dealing with objecting teams. But then as always, the QMs decision is final.

AFMC Entertainment Quiz

Set and Conducted by : Safal and Vivek

Results:
1st: Aditya Gadre and Suvajit Chakraborty :110
2nd:Aksha Vyas and Rudra Sen : 80
3rd : Srideep and Subhodeep : 55
4th : Abhishek Nagaraj and Yasho Tamaskar : 50
5th: Team E : 0
6th : AIT : -10

The Quiz started off with a very tough 25 question elims . Cut off was just 5 .

The finals themselves featured a very good mix of music , movies ,TV and other stuff both Indian and western. I particularly liked this quiz since I learnt a lot from it. Quite a few questions went unanswered . A lot of hardcore trivia was asked (eg. stuff like Chubby Checker and Narnie Nixon ) . The only dissapointment was probably the long delay in starting the quiz and the lack of turnout .

Another minor crib was that there were multiple questions on some people . For Example Satyajit Ray , Buddy Holly , Simpsons and Guru Dutt featured twice each.

Overall , it was a good quiz. Rather different from other ent quizzes but good nonetheless.

History Channel's Face-Off - Mumbai Round

The face-off quiz was disappointing - especially after having seen the brilliant sports quiz conducted by Aniket and Aditya a few days ago. The seating arrangement of the finalists on stage was bizarre. The finalists were bunched up on one side of the stage - in a semi-circle and the screen which played the audio-visuals was placed at the other end of the stage. So three teams were sitting with their backs to the screen. Not that they required to watch the screen because most of the questions in the A-V rounds had nothing to do with the video/visuals.Aniket and Suvojit qualified and did well under the circumstances. The questions ranged from being bad to not-so-good. The Quiz-master's display ranged from being mildly irritating to almost puerile. There were some questions, the answers to which were shown as 'trivia bytes' in the video played during the interval between the elims and the finals. There may have also been some repeats from the Delhi round. One question in the elims had already been 'leaked' on one of the mailing lists.

There were issues with scoring - the elims cut-offs were not announced; one team probably should have qualified but couldn't because the QM started off with the proceedings before the elims-sheet in question (pun intended) was brought to his notice.

The most hilarious round was the Rapid Fire round where the participants could give multiple answers to a question. We thought Aniket clearly showed how bad the idea was when he started rattling off all the Test venues in Australia for a question - Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney...turned out his first attempt - Perth was the correct answer but the QM was taken aback by the sheer audacity and ingenuity of the answer and took time to react. But worse was to follow. The Rapid Fire round with multiple attempts had one question which was a True/False one as well. We tried hard to find some sense/logic and the only thing we could think of was that there might be a 'None of the above' option as well - which no one seemed to have thought of. The team which won (Pradeep and ? ) was very good and deserved to win but I'm sure the win would have been sweeter had it come on a more sporting pitch.

Report by Harish Kumar

AFMC Sports Quiz

Results:
1st: Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre (both COEP) : 120
2nd: Amit and Gaurav (both AIT) :110
3rd: Abhishek Nagaraj(COEP) and Suvajit Chakraborty (SLS) :90
4th: Rohit Bahulekar(SIT ) and Rohit Chandrachud (PVG):80
5th: Team A (Dont know names) :60
6th: TEam F( " ) : 15
Quiz was disappointing to say the least . All the questions were either too simple or too difficult. A lot of peters appeared and there were no new interesting questions .

Positives: Quiz started and ended on schedule. The simple, and difficult questions were well distributed since there were a lot of questions (60 to be precise) . A lot of sports were covered .

Negatives: While a lot of sports were covered the quality was very uneven . The cricket questions were quite good but the football questions were very simple. F1 and Tennis almost didn't feature at all.

NiE Fun-Da-Mental Schools Quiz 2008

Date: 15 Feb, 2008
Venue: Alpa Bachat Bhavan, Pune
Organised by: Times of India - Newspapers in Education (NiE)
Quiz Master: Brian Tellis
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
Format: 8 rounds of D&P - Science, GK, Trivia, Sports, History, Audio, Video, Sponsors Special (Bharat Petroleum)
1st: Abhinava Vidyalaya EMHS
2nd: Kalmadi Shamrao HS
3rd: St. Josephs, Pashan
4th: Symbiosis Secondary
5th: Vikhe Patil Memorial HS
6th: St. Vincents HS

Notes:
NiE Fun-Da-Mental, considered Pune's biggest schools quiz in terms of participation (around 120 schools) and prizes (this time, i-pods and GVs were given as prizes) has been organised by Times of India's Newspapers in Education (NiE) for over 10 years now. Earlier there would be semifinals and a grand finale with a celebrity QM but for the past few years the finals have been conducted b Brian Tellis. This time there were no semis but a direct 6-team final after elims.

Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz

Date:13th Feb, 2008.
Venue: AFMC, Pune.

Set and Conducted by : Safal Mohammad and Vivek Mathew

1st: Aditya Gadre and Abhishek Nagaraj (COEP) - 175 pts
2nd: Yash Marathe (Modern) and Yasho Tamaskar(COEP) - 170 pts
3rd: Suvajit C and Raghav C (Symbiosis Law) - 165 pts
4th: Team D - 125 pts
5th: AIT - 110 pts
6th: AFMC - 45 pts

This years Shyam Bhatt Memorial started with a 30 question (rather tough) elims. Question were pretty decent, while there seemed to be a slight lack of turnout.

The Main Quiz itself consisted of 48 dry questions and 10 'Who/what am I?' questions with 4 clues per question.The questions were excellent. Nearly all questions were workable and/or very interesting. Most importantly lots of new areas seemed to be investigated. This was a good example of a quiz where each question was not "taxing" but interesting nonetheless while not decreasing difficulty. The emphasis on "pop-culture"/sports was less, and we saw more questions on things like history/politics and geography.

Overall it was good to see a well organised good quality quiz. The quiz also had an underlying theme with over 18 elements to connect. The 18 elements each had a question, and these questions proved to be too simple eventually. With the theme being cracked early, a lot of the quiz's quality was compromised. Other cribs about the quiz were that the clues to the theme were too obvious and 4 of the teams got the theme on the 3rd clue itself , the occasional appearance of 'finger of god' and some dubious marking. Also maybe a better turnout would've been great.

As for the scoring, it was an extremely tight-run thing throughout. Top 3 teams ended up withing 10 points. It also saw some inspired answering from Yash Marathe/Raghav and a couple of times from Aditya Gadre near the end. Overall a fun quiz to be at.

PS: report compiled by Aditya G with some inputs from Abhishek N

February Open Quiz - "Aleatory" - Open General Quiz

Date: 10 Feb, 2008
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSL, Pune
Set and Conducted by: Salil Bijur, Anupam Akolkar
Theme: General

Quiz Final Results
Format: 18 questions in an Aleatory format; 16 (3qns+connect) + 18 questions IR; total: 52 questions
1st: Rishi Iyengar + Sumant Srivathsan (B) - 155
2nd: Samrat Sengupta + Meghashyam Shirodkar (C) - 110
3rd: Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari (E) - 100
Jt. 4th: Aditya Gadre + Niranjan Pedanekar (A) - 80
Jt. 4th: Venkat Srinivasan + Aniket Khasgiwale (D) - 80
6th: Harshal Modi + Suvajit Chakraborty*(F) - 50
Scorers: Mohit Karve, Salil

Elims standings (out of 30 questions): Aniket+Venkat (23), Aditya+Niranjan (20), Meghashyam+Samrat (17), Rishi+Sumant (17), Vibhendu+Anand (15), Saransh Verma* (had to leave before finals; substituted by Suvajit) + Harshal (12)
Best School team: Rohit Sahasrabudhe + Satyavrat Wagle
Best College team not in finals: Samit Sura + Nandan Gokhale
Best Newbie team: Mrinmayi & Sameer Katdare
No. of participants: ~35 teams

Notes:
Aniket and Venkat's superb crack of the elims raised visions of another upset victory like in the morning's quiz, but the veteran quizzers prevailed in the end. In part, this was due to the quiz being suffused with a few chestnuts, but also their ability to weather the slightly uneven pitch.

The finals began with a round held using a different format. Each team would receive a direct in turn (chosen at random by the audience) and passing would proceed in forward or backward fashion (again chosen at random). Though not so weird in retrospect, it begged the question of what the objective really was. This caused some amount of confusion right at the beginning, and was perhaps largely avoidable.

The second segment of the quiz was more conventional, with the only twist coming in a round where every 4th question was a answer connecting the preceding 3. The connects were thankfully not contrived and one even went unanswered. Some of the other questions were quite nice and tried to touch upon a few new areas, but largely the quiz seemed underwhelming (to me). Some others liked the low intensity and the welcome fact that it did not stretch for too long as some of our other open quizzes have.

Some sample elims questions:
1. Manavikraman Raja, the Saamoothiri of Kozhikode is famous for something he did on May 18th, 1498. How is he better known as?
2. Connect (a) L.A. (b) Bangkok (c) a film directed by Brad Silberling in 1998 which remade the German film "Wings of Desire".

February Open Quiz - "Grindhouse" - Open Sports Quiz

Date: 10 Feb, 2008
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, PSL, Pune
Set and Conducted by: Aditya Gadre, Aniket Khasgiwale
Theme: Sports

Quiz Final Results
Format: 2 halves of seamless IR; one 6 questions written round, 46 questions
1st: Yash Marathe + Keyur Munot (B) - 125
2nd: B.V.Harish Kumar + Yash Tamaskar (A) - 110
Jt. 3rd: Anand Sivashankar + Vibhendu Tiwari (C) - 95
Jt. 3rd: Niranjan Pedanekar + Samrat Sengupta (E) - 95
5th: Abhishek Nagaraj + Suvajit Chakraborty (D) - 60
6th: Ritoban Sengupta + Subhodeep Jash (F) - 40
Scorers: Avnish Dhondge, Aadinath Harihar

Elims standings (out of 38 questions): Abhishek+Suvajit (28.5), Harish+Yash (28), Niranjan+Samrat (24.5), Vibhendu+Anand (24), Yash+Keyur (24), Ritoban+Subhodeep (23)
Best School team: Sanket Bhilare + Aditya Karve (Abhinava Vidyalaya)
No. of teams: ~25

Notes:
This was the first Open Sports quiz conducted by the BCQC and was put together by two very good sports quizzers (we have a surfeit of good sports quizzers at the BC). The quiz was won by a relatively new (to the circuit) pair of college students who left the veterans behind with a superb show of sports quizzing, with some very fine answering that had the others applauding.

The questions themselves were very good and interesting. The elims were a tad easy, but did the job of separating the best 6 teams on the day. There was some assured hosting by both the quizmasters.

The main cribs revolved around the expectedly heavy dose of cricket and football (given the leanings of the quiz setters), the rather poor choice of colours for variables (leaving the participants in a purple fug :-)), and some inconsistencies in awarding partial points (as is always the case). However, the "good"-ness of the questions themselves made up for it. Perhaps we shall insist on another sports quiz next year from these two which addresses some of these minor problems.

Some sample elims questions:
1. Bill Lawry used it to clean his pigeon's nest. William Ponsford used it while painting his house. Ian Chappell never kept any of his. What?
2. Formerly: A city in India; Now: ____ House, a large country house in Gloucestershire, the principal seat of the Dukes of Beaufort.

Quiz-o-mania 2008

Quiz-o-mania 2008

The annual open quiz at VIT Pune, Quiz-o-mania, is happening on 16th Feb (saturday next) as a part of Epiphany . Details are as follows:

Date: 16th Feb, Saturday
Flavour: General
Time: 1:00pm (Reporting Time)
1:30pm sharp (Elims Begin)
Venue: VIT Auditorium
Team size: 2
Teams that qualify for the finals: 6
Prize money: Rs 15,000

QMs: Maitreyi Gupta, Nilay Puntambekar, Rohit Khaladkar

Between the elims and finals of Quiz-o-mania, we're having an Environmental quiz with a huge bumper cash prize.

In addition to this quiz, there will be audience quizzes on F.R.I.E.N.D.S, T20 Cricket and Comics & Cartoons... (schedule for these quizzes coming soon)

Registration: On-the-spot, 40 bucks per team (Registration desks of EPIPHANY will be up in many colleges from 8th Feb onwards. Others can register on the 16th itself)

Location: Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, 666, Upper Indiranagar, Bibwewadi, Pune-37.

Contact: Rohit Khaladkar - +91-99701-55360 or email maitreyigupta@yahoo.com

Other literary events at Epiphany: www.vit.edu/epiphany/events.html

Announcement - Next BC Quizzes

The Boat Club Quiz Club is organising two quizzes on Sunday, 10th Feb 2008. Entry is free.

Venue: Dewang Mehta auditorium, Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune-16 (see this link for directions)

Details: Quiz 1: "Grindhouse" - Open Sports Quiz Time: 9.30 am to 12.30 pm; reporting at 9.15 am Teams of 2, 6 teams in the final. QMs: Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale No prior registration. Certificates and prizes for all finalists, as well as audience prizes.

Quiz 2: "Aleatory" - Open General Quiz BCQC February Open General Quiz 2008 Time: 2 pm to 6 pm, reporting at 1:30 pm Teams of 2, 6 teams in the final. QMs: Anupam Akolkar and Salil Bijur No prior registration needed. Open to all. Prizes for all finalists; Prizes for best all-school, all-college, and newbie teams as well as for audience

All prizes sponsored by Landmark, Pune

Contact: Email: contact (at) bcqc (dot) org

Keep visiting http://bcqc.org for updates and online quizzes

ACES 2007 School Quiz

Date: 4 Nov, 2007
Venue: Tilak Smarak Mandir
Organised by: Abhinava Vidyalaya, Pune and BCQC
Set by: BC quizzers, primarily Abhishek Nagaraj, Aditya Gadre, Salil Bijur, Shamanth Rao, and J. Ramanand,
Conducted by: Ramanand

Quiz Final Results
(40 IR questions + 1 theme + rapidfire)
1st: Abhinava Vidyalaya (F): 125
2nd: Kalmadi Shamrao (B): 110
3rd: SPM English (C): 75
Jt. 4th: Bal Shikshan Mandir (D): 50
Jt. 4th: Symbiosis Secondary (E): 50
6th: Modern (A): 15

(sadly, I left the paper with the names of finalists behind - if someone knows, please put in comments)

Report

* The 3rd ACES quiz was also the second time the BC was involved. The flavour of the quiz was sports + general
* Kalmadi Shamrao and Abhinava also had the best contingents, with about 6 teams from these schools missing out because of the only-one-team-per-school-in-finals rule. Perhaps a end of season Derby between these two teams should be held! They are clearly the two best quizzing schools in the city today.
* Though Kalmadi Shamrao chased Abhinava all the way, drawing level a couple of times after being far behind, Abhinava never lost the lead after picking it up in the end of the 1st quarter
* The organisation was excellent and smooth. Compared to last year, the turnout was very high, with about 60 teams from 15 schools showing up. The hall was packed during the finals with an enthusiastic audience.
* The quiz had a single "Aldus Manutius" theme round (images that spelt out the name of a sportsman, with five such sportsmen to be connected). A small rapid-fire "free throw" round was held for all teams, with one person coming forward to answer 4 questions each. There were four "quarters" in the quiz, each of 10 qns each.
* Last year's report. With this win, Abhinava successfully wrested back the ACES trophy which they lost to DES last time.
* Many thanks to Abhinava Principal Mrs. Pai, teacher-in-charge Mrs. Gandhi and the volunteer teachers and students for the fine show and the opportunity to do a quiz for school students.

Sample questions:
1. Stade de Gerland, Lyon. 3 June 1997. Brazil vs France. Score 1-1.Why is this match remembered?
2. This was invented by Allan Plaskett, an English computer scientist, who also invented another device called "Flightpath". It is pretty simple in practice, consisting of some radio antennae pointed at a particular kind of sportsperson. What is this?
3.She was born in Copenhagen in Denmark, which is where her father was stationed at the time. They later returned to their home-town of Mangalore. She would go on to make her movie debut in the film “Aishwarya” opposite Kannada superstar Upendra. Who?
Answers at the end of this post

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(Original Announcement)
Abhinava Vidyalaya E.M.H.S. along with BCQC is organising an inter-school quiz next week.

Details:
Date: 4th Dec 2007
Time: Elims at 9am, Finals at 10.30am
Venue: Tilak Smarak Mandir, Tilak Rd., Pune
Participation: Teams of 3. For school students only.
Entry: Please contact BCQC or the Abhinava Vidyalaya school office
Flavour: A sports heavy general quiz

(Answers to sample questions)
Roberto Carlos' famous curling free kick, Snickometer, Deepika Padukone

The BCQC Landmark Comics Quiz Report (18 Nov)

The quiz was successfully held on Saturday for an audience of about 40-50 people. These consisted of ages from about 10 years to vannila-flavoured adults, housewives to students to dentists to one size fits all software types. The quiz was conducted by Sudarshan and myself, with other BC members chipping in from time to time. The questions (about 150 of them) were set by BC comic enthusiasts, ranging from Indian comics, Western superheroes, Graphic Novels, Disneylanders, Franco-Belgian comics and so on.

Comic-phile Shubhashis won the title of "Starocomix" in a 3 person playoff, triumphing over some worthy contenders, which included a couple of very good schoolkids.

Thanks to all who came, all the BC members who provided questions, and those that were able to help out during the two hour event.

If you have any feedback, please leave them in the comments. I personally enjoyed this style of 'walk-in-the-park' quizzing, which is very similar to our BC sessions.

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Previous announcement

When? 6-8 pm. Saturday, 17th November
Where? Landmark Bookstore, Moledina Road, Pune.(opposite Magnum/Kakade Mall)
Prizes? Lots of goodies courtesy Landmark. Children will receive extra kindness from us!

We are doing a Comics Quiz for our partners Landmark , the brilliant bookstore at Moledina Road, in their store. So if you know your Popeye from your Tom and Jerry and your Asterix from your Tintin - do drop in!

It will be an informal interactive audience quiz, we'll be asking questions and throwing out prizes. No writing, no teams, no "big organised quiz". We make up the rules as we go along, and have lots of fun in the process.

Hope to see you there, with friends, family, children, parents, grandparents.(I don't think Landmark allows pets inside!)

Whodunits - BCQC November Open

Quizmaster: J. Ramanand

Date: 4th November

Format : Written elims. Top 6 teams go through. Next 6 teams play a playoff. Top 3 teams get chosen, and each of these 6 people are randomly assigned to a team which has already qualified.

Results: (Team names assigned by QM, after innovative murder devices)

1st place : 85 Conch Shells (Niranjan, Harish, Vishal)
2nd place : 65 Armadillos (Anupam, Akhil, Rachana)
3rd place : 55 Bonsai (Meghshyam, Samrat, Anand)
4th place : Designer Jeans (Aditya Gadre, Salil Bijur, Vikas)
5th place : Exploding Cows (Abhishek, Meghana, Amit)
6th place : Godfathers (Gaurav Singh, Yasho Tamaskar, Venkat)

Notes:

The day started off with a few innovations in the elims itself. Like CAT 2005, this elims introduced "differential" marking for the first time. Elims sheets were separate from the answer sheet, an innovation which enabled participants to keep the elims sheet and facilitated quicker(and some might say more accurate) correction. The finalists were chosen as described above.

Playoffs: This went on for about half an hour, had out-of-turn written responses (for closeup-confident teams) and regular passing for the yellowing rest. Scoring was also accordingly modified.

Finals: A 44 question final promised enough masala packed in every question to cause headache to most teams. Lots of brilliant questions, a few new areas touched upon - and cascading presentation of each connect element made clear a quiz which had been made with such painstaking detail that would've made Margaret Mitchell proud. This quiz was crafted more than set. Everyone had a thoroughly brain-rackingly good time. The experience of grizzled-hair teams like NP / BVHK or Samrat, Meghashyam made them the fair horses right from the start. But team Armadillos came up with some inspired answers and seemed to prosper near the middle of the quiz, when most teams were surrendering to mental exhaustion. Team Designer Jeans too made up some ground near the end with some good answers. Overall, decent showing from the on-stage teams - though no one was really on fire.

However, there were a few "buts" as usual. By 7pm mental fatigue, large average passing lengths and dwindling audiences meant that though the last 10 questions still remained, the QM chose to rush past them ("in the interest of general human rights") meaning that a lot of the good work was to no avail, as teams feigned thinking while dreaming of food. It all ended in a rather sombre mood of finality, with some teams "dazed and confused" and others in pseudo-eureka moments of having discovered a "flaw" in IR.

Overall, somehow though the quiz was excellent in itself - the experience seems to lead us towards another cusp in the BCQC development cycle, where we have been forced to re-evaluate what exactly we want to do and how to go about doing it.

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[Request from Ramanand]: Since I may reuse the questions for a Bombay Quiz Club session, I request any commentators to refrain from specifically mentioning any answer keywords. Harish, I have modified your comment accordingly.