BC Infest - III

Updated: 15 Dec, Wed

Annual excuse to get BC quizzers together and quiz for fun. Not very formal though. Tentative schedule as below:

18th Dec - Sat - 10:30 am:

1. Quiz by Harish
2. India Quiz by Ramanand
3. Quiz by George
4. Quiz by Salil
5. Words quiz by Manish Mahajan

26th Dec - Sun - 11:00 am:

"Headbutting Lone Wolf" quiz by Ramanand

1st Jan - Sat - 12:30 pm

1. Quiz by Samrat
2. Quiz by Shrirang

All timings & dates are sadly tentative but we hope to stick to them by and large. Will update this post in case of changes.

A history of the BC quiz club - II

The story of the BC quiz club as told by Shrirang Raddi

Installment 2. This one covers my FE and SE, the years before the Saturday Quizzes started.

COEP Days .. Pre- Saturday Club.

The batch that entered COEP in 1991 had a clutch of good quizzers. There was Maya Kamath, the finest lady quizzer I've known. There was Aniruddha Karve, Vishal Dalal (jaundice ensured he passed out a year behind us) and my Loyola quiz partner Nikhil Jakatdar. The last named was more an enthu quizzer than a great one; but to put things in perspective he is more famous today for having sold his startup for something in excess of $100 million.

The college quizzing scene was quite competitive. AFMC were the guys to beat - they had some strong teams and had made winning a habit. The other strong colleges were Fergusson and BJMC. COEP was always strong; but the one thing that distinguished us from the rest was the absence of a home quiz. AFMC had 2 - Shyam Bhat and Silhouettes, Fergusson had the Insynch quizzes (General and book quiz) .. and even BJMC had their annual Triviana quiz. We were the parasites, visiting each of these quizzes and never hosting one. And the reason was not just that the college authorities were not supportive. It had a lot to do with inertia on our part.

When I was in FE the 'senior' team was a pair in BE, Subhash Joshi and Ashok Gidwani. The stalwart from TE was one Niranjan Pednekar, SE had a few enthu people and there was this big bunch of us in FE. The first major event was the BJMC quiz. Nirya paired up with Aniruddha Karve, and I stuck to my Loyola pal Jakatdar. As usual there was a huge group of AFMC guys in their thick blazers; some Fergusson guys etc etc. Somehow the elims seemed pretty easy to the COEP contingent. As the compiling of answer sheets was going on we noticed some commotion happening in the background, and expectedly an AFMC guy was in the thick of it. What had happened was that in the top 6 teams, there were 4 COEP teams. Hence the fight from AFMC to impose a ' 2-team per college' limit. Well they got their wish and so I sat out that quiz. The 2 top COEP teams - Subhash and Ashok, and Niranjan and Aniruddha finished 2nd and 3rd I think. Insych -( the Fergusson cult-fest, died off soon ) - happened soon after, Niranjan and Aniruddha reached the quiz finals.

There also was a quiz conducted by Niranjan in our internal CultFest - this one was the first Boat Club lawns quiz I participated in (and finished an ignominous last)- as well as the MESA quiz conducted internally - but basically there were no major fireworks COEP caused anywhere until the Shyam Bhat quiz of 1992. The team of Nirya and Ana was by then well set as the No 1 team in COEP. I was floating around, wasn't planning to go for the quiz but there was another floater, Arun Pillai who needed a partner. So we went there and the rest is (I fondly believe) history.

An AFMC quiz, where 2 COEP teams qualified 1st and 2nd; tied for 1st place at the end of the quiz, a long way ahead of all others!! We wanted to share the trophy but the organizers insisted on a tie-break. Which was some vague Hindi audio clue I think, and Niranjan cracked it. So we finished 1 and 2, this being the first of many occasions I would finish 2nd in the Shyam Bhat. The spur-of-the-moment pairing clicked big time, and over the next 2 years Arun and I were the top team in COEP.

My SE started off with a bang. The traditional season-opener was the BJMC quiz 'Triviana', conducted as part of their Ganeshotsav fest. As expected Nirya and Ana, and Arun and I qualified for the final. Along with the usual AFMC and Fergusson suspects, there was a BJMC team too, and so the cheering contingent was huge. This was a dream day for us. We took the lead in Round 1, and had crossed 100 points by the time the last round started. (Team No. 2 was at 50.) This quiz was our breakthrough. Sample Question - "Which newspaper publishes 'all the news that's fit to print' ? " (The New York Times). - BJ always had someone famous as the chief guest - the prize distribution that year was done by famous Marathi actor Dilip Prabhawalkar aka 'Chiman Rao'.

Silhouettes happened, so did Shyam Bhat. More runners-up certificates happened. By now every quiz was more or less a COEP vs AFMC show. There was no animosity between us and the AFMC guys though; since every year it was the senior batch that would control the Silhouettes / Shyam Bhat quiz organization, and the juniors would generally curse the seniors (on stage as well as off stage!).

Insynch happened and Arun and I did manage to get a runners-up place in the book quiz. Insynch that year became a battleground between us and the organisers - Amit Verma amongst them, thanks to our loud complaints about rigging. Fergusson had a decent but highly erratic bunch of quizzers - there was Siddharth Madhusudan (nicknamed Mad Sid and fully lived up to the name), Devdan Chaudhari and Orgho something ('Aargh'). Their problem was that they had a lot of internal battles, which spilled over on stage. Everyone else enjoyed the fun. On one unforgettable occasion Fergusson were about 20 points behind us. There was some weird format by which they would get +15 if they got the answer right, and -15 if it was wrong. The question was 'In which Olympics was gymnastics included for the 1st time' (Athens 1896). Devdan knew it, and started to answer, but Mad Sid grabbed the mike, pushed Devdan's face away and confidently said 'Antwerp 1920' or something like that. At which Devdan threw his pen to the floor and stomped off stage, leaving the audience in splits.

Overall my first 2 years in COEP were fun. COEP was by no means the sole dominant force - AFMC won as many as we did - and though we always beat them, Fergie were good too. A lot of our success had to to with having a regular teammate - Niranjan and Aniruddha and Arun and I combined well, so we had the most consistent results. Others like Maya Kamath, Vishal etc. suffered because they did have a regular partner. Maya was the person in-demand whenever there was a 3-member quiz - the regular pairs would do their best to get her to join them.

The last quiz of my SE was something organised in Fergusson. This was the last time the Niranjan and Aniruddha pair competed together, Nirya being all set to leave for his MS. Once again it was basically a battle between 2 COEP teams and 1 AFMC team, and this time Arun and I pulled away in the second half and won quite comfortably. So that year COEP won 2 titles and finished at least runner-up everywhere else.

Internally not much happened. There were some sporadic informal quizzes, and the Boat Club was the hangout anyway. The dream of having a COEP quiz had long been forgotten. There was no recognition from the college authorities of our wins; and we didnt push for it anyway. We were perfectly happy living a parasitic existence, satisfied with the certificate or memento we'd get in every quiz.

Things were ripe for a change.

:: Shrirang

A history of the BC quiz club - I

The story of the BC quiz club as told by Shrirang Raddi

Installment  #1 :

While Amalesh and I were being dumped from the BEQ national 'semi-finals' last Saturday (in 2003), there was a familiar figure in the audience. None other than the rotund figure of Vishal Dalal.  (How rotund? Vishal = George Thomas * 2)He was one of the quiz regulars in our time at COEP, and his immortality in quizzing circles is assured by the fact that he was one of the two fathers of the first Saturday Quiz in 1993, the small thing that has grown into the BCQC. Set me thinking about the days gone by. Dont know how many quizzers would be interested in knowing about the Quiz scene as it was back then, but I'd certainly love to write about it.

Starting with my pre-COEP days - my first brush with quizzing was also my first brush with COEP quizzers. This was back in 1986/87 when I was in the 8th std. There existed then something called the Quiz Foundation. The Quiz Foundation was  basically a COEP outfit run by, amongst others, Salil Joshi and Niloy Mukherjee. For the time they were in COEP (abt 1985 to 89), they used to conduct a very popular Open quiz - The "Exquizit" and an even more popular inter-school quiz - the "Inquizit". The Open Quizzes were organized in the COEP auditorium -- evidently a very supportive and open-minded Principal back then..

This was the time that the Siddhartha Basu 'Quiz Time' show was getting popular. There were two guys from AFMC - Rangaraj Setlur and Kaushik Chatterjee- who finished 3rd nationally the first time, and won it the second time. I remember seeing an Exquizit in the COEP audi where the AFMC guys were given a massive scare by a guy called Rahul Joshi from BJMC - Salil Joshi's younger brother, a really brilliant quizzer. Rahul Joshi liked to play the odd prank, Nirya being the victim on one memorable occasion. More on that incident later.

Salil and Niloy never had problems getting sponsors, all expenses used to be picked up by the Poona Bottling Company - all participants would get free Thums Up etc.. a major attraction. In the 8th standard I teamed up with 2 classmates at Loyola and to our everlasting glory (all other teams were 10th std kids), we reached the stage round of the Gold Spot Inquizit inter-school quiz. (This is another quiz we could never manage to win, losing in the tie-break the next year.)Salil is an industrialist based in Pune now, Niloy went to IIM Ahmedabad and was at Compaq the last I heard.

The first time I  ever competed against COEP was in 11th standard. Fergusson had a very active junior college quiz circle; and there was an enthu guy called Amit Verma who's (dad's) car and driver were commandeered to take a gang of about 8 of us to AFMC to participate in our first ever Shyam Bhat Quiz. This was sometime in 1990. We knew nothing about the quiz - Amit Verma was under the impression it was to be conducted by a guy called Shyam Bhatia - but did a great thing by putting 1 team in the final, the only junior college team to do so. There we finished 4th - predictably, AFMC won  - but finishing 3rd was the COEP team sitting next to us, Sanjeev Patel and Partho Sanyal. This was a legendary pair in their time, unfortunately I do not have the details of their wins. Maybe Niranjan can shed more light on this. Both Sanjeev and Partho went on to the IIMs later, I don't know where they are now. 

This particular quiz is memorable for me because of the certificates. For some reason they distributed the certificates first, then collected them again so that their native calligraphist could inscribe our names. In the confusion my name was written on the winners certificate. So, though I never won the Shyam Bhat for COEP - finishing runner-up every year from 1992 to 1995, I still am the 'certified' winner of the 1990 Shyam Bhat Memorial! Amit Verma stayed on at Fergusson and was involved in many quiz battles with us later, more on those incidents later.

And in the same year there was a solo quiz contest called 'Bahushrut Shree' in Tilak Smarak Mandir.. hugely publicised and well attended. Not much that any Fergussonian could accomplish in that contest; but that contest was my first glimpse of a quizzing giant - none other than Niranjan Pednekar, then doing F.E. at COEP, who won the thing with contemptuous ease.

The next installment will be about my first 2 years in COEP, the pre-Saturday Club days.

:: Shrirang

IIPM 'Corporate Quiz'

Apologies. This purpose of this blog has been reduced to reporting 'non-quizzes' that are being held in Pune. But then its fate that such things are happening to us.

A-MAZE, an inter-college fest was held at the Indian Institute of Planning and Management. The Corporate Quiz was one of the various events. There was also a smaller 'One Minute Quiz' the day before.

First, the results:-

1^st: FC

2^nd: SCIT

3^rd: SITM

Also: IIPM, ISBN, SCMHRD, VIT

Total teams participating: 11

No. of rounds: 3 (general, identify-the-logo, rapid fire)

Questions per team: 4 (+ about 10 in rapid fire)

Features of the quiz:

"All questions are non-transferable." (VERVE, anybody?)

"Twenty points per correct answer in the identify-the-logo round." (How else do we show impressive scoring with only 3 rounds?)

"Minus 10 for wrongly identifying the logo" (We have to spice up the quiz, don't we?)

"Only the first answer will be accepted"

The no-passing policy did give much scope for rigging, but there was no issue when the home team was asked relatively simpler question. The controversy however arose they were asked questions from the one minute quiz. This cost the home team (whose team members had set the one-minute-quiz) the place on the podium.

When there was a tie breaker between SCIT and ISBM for the second place, the QM didn't know when it ended, and would have asked more questions, had we not pointed out that it had finished.

Sample questions from the 1st round:-

Which software company has been debarred by SEBI for 10 years? Ans: GSQ

Average income of cellular users in India has witnessed a growth. True or false. Ans: False

What is the contribution of the oil sector to India's GDP? Ans: 10%

Is Hutchinson India listed on any Indian Stock Exchange? Ans: No

Where is such and such company located? Ans: Amsterdam QM: Ok, I'll give it to you, it's France.

I dread the day when we'll be asked questions such as "What is the distance beween Earth and Pluto" and "Have you heard of Einstein's Theory of Relativity?"

And if you were just wondering, I'll confirm it here: One of the many, big prizes *was* 'The Great Indian Dream' by Malay and Arindam Chaudhari. And no, passes for Rok Sako To Rok Lo were not given.

Comments on Inquizzition V

If you were a part of Inquizzition V and have any comments, please leave them here for the benefit of the organisers.

My comments:

Organisation: Was quite good this time, so congratulations to the organising team. Well, the odd time lapses & technical goof-ups are expected of most quizzes, are they not?

Presentation: I really think that if answers are to be put on slides, then you have to make doubly/triply sure (with the zeal of a paranoid criminal) that you can prevent the inadvertant lapse. It's happened for the second time running, and I fear that even this time there were no backup questions (or had to use audience ones). Since presentations are becoming such an integral part of the whole quiz experience thingy, I hope the organisers will have a good look at this area. There are a lot of ideas we can implement here. I'm dwelling on this at length because this kind of thing sometimes takes away from the quiz.

Elim Scoring: There was some confusion at the results of the elims, so you've got to find a more cleaner way of doing it, I think. I mention this so that it comes up on the radar.

Finals Questions: many of them were too easy, mainly because they were well-known quizzing facts. This might sound like sour grapes, but frankly, Gaurav & I felt that we didn't get the same share of the easy questions as teams A & B did (may be a false perception - I still have to get the data from Salil to confirm this). Of course, we goofed up a little too :-). But there were too many questions people had already heard of. They were good qns no doubt, but done to death in the past, atleast for half of the participants. Which made it a bit of a lottery as you had to be a little lucky to escape the few tough questions. That's my honest assessment of the qns. I don't know what the remedy for that is except for that more the questions quiz setters hear, the more you'll steer clear of the oft-repeated. Since there was good faith and intent involved, I don't have any grouse. Rest was fine I guess, for like goalies & 'keepers, lack of "remarkable" points usually indicates a smooth event :-) . The quiz had probably the best crowd seen in an open quiz in the last one year, a good elims, cohesive org. Which is pretty good.

The AOES - IHMES IHM (IoM) Hotel Management College Quiz

The Pune round of the above Quiz was held at the Bal Gandharva Rangamandir today at 11:00 am. It was organised by the Agarwal Overseas Education Service (AOES) and the IHMES Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) of the Isle of Man (IoM).

Teams: BVP College of HM
DYP College of HM
MS CoHM
AISSMS CoHM
NAG (?) CoHM, Kolhapur

Format: D&P, 10+5

Winners: AISSMS

Remarks:

- Questions were very very easy. The Qm told me that this was deliberatly done because of the contestants total lack of quizzing experience and bad experiences with good questions (ie: Teams were Baffled/bemused/mystified) in previous years.

- There were 3 - member teams.

- I was unable to make an analysis because a) I didnt have any paper and b) I was in the VIP seats (:-)) and it would be unseemly.

- As befits a HM Colleges quiz, Participants and Audience (Faculty and VIP Audience at least) were well taken care of, with complimentary refreshments provided.

On Connects - I

Only connect
- Howards End, E.M.Forster

When asked my first ever "connect" question at my first BC quiz outing, I clearly remember being nonplussed by it, and asking Kunal Vaed what he really wanted us to do with the question. Evidently, connection questions are one of the biggest differences when one crosses over to the "collegiate" brand of quizzing from the less devious world of school quizzing. Connects are also a recurring bone of contention among all quizzers, so here are some thoughts about this genre of questions.

The concept

I don't know who asked the first connect or when connects became part of the mainstream, but most of us current quizzers have seen connects ever since we participated in open or college quizzes. A simple example for those who may not have heard such a question:

Q: Connect the films Mother India, Salaam Bombay and Lagaan.
A: These are the only Indian films nominated for a (Foreign Film) Oscar.

So take a few elements, find something that can thread them together (or with variations) and voila! you have a connect ready.

Now what is the essential philosophy (or atleast, what it ought to be) of connects? To me, three points come to mind (read Niranjan's primer on setting questions which some BC quizzers like to quote from). One, connect questions let you reuse standard (or popular) trivia. Two, they are a great way to alternately present questions instead of the conventional 5W-H way. Three, it encourages a lateral way of thinking, letting you link different fields or people in many ways. A more breadth-wise way of looking at things rather than just depth. There are quite a few examples available at the above link, which were asked at some Mensa quizzes.

Now once you embrace this concept of connects, you will find there are several ways of presenting such questions. Earlier, connects were usually part of the "dry" rounds, asked in plain-text. In the last few years, with audio-visual presentations of quizzes having become the norm, more multimedia connects can be seen. I saw one of my first visual connects at Mensa 2000. I can't reproduce the images, but can give you the crux:

Q: Connect these pics (pic 1: a South African antelope, pic 2: A figurine of a Greek goddess, pic 3: A distinguished German man with moustaches).
A: Footwear brands: Reebok, Niké,Adidas (Adi Daessler).

Soon, in the next Mensa and the first Chakravyuh, we saw mixed audio-visual connects as well and such connects are of course considered part of the course now.

Kinds of connects

Ways of presenting connects are all fine, but the real differentiation (and hence its problems) comes from the content of connects. Now, since at its barest, a connection qustion is a collection of elements and a link, different interpretations of this concept are possible. Worse, these "links" are not always unique, or are sometimes plainly subjective. Compare this to the conventional questions whose basis is always in fact, and hence one can confirm/challenge its veracity to a greater extent and to greater satisfaction than is sometimes possible with connects. But before discussing these, why not take a look at different kinds of connects?

We started "labelling" with Chakravyuh 2001. Connects were becoming quite popular and had usually constituted a significant chunk of the quizpad, plus there were many ways of asking one. At the inaugural edition, we had decided to go in for a style of question setting called seamless quizzing, wherein there would be no subject-wise rounds or special audio-visual phases. Mensa 2001 which just preceded COEP's quiz had come close to it - with only a separate A/V round. We tried to go one step further and mix all questions (something that I think goes perfectly with Infinite Rebounds) without any clustering. Plus keeping with our BC & Mensa influences, we had a large number of connects of different kinds. That's when we came up with the labels Radial, Cascading and Meshed.

Quick examples of these:

Q: Radial Connect: Marlon Brando, Vyjanthimala, Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Pasternak, George C.Scott
A: Award refusals (Oscar, Filmfare,Nobel, Nobel, Oscar).

Q: Cascading Connect: Upamanyu Chatterjee -> Marcus Aurelius -> Russell Crowe
A: (UC) "English, August" has references to (MA) -> In "Gladiator", RC is a general in Aurelius' army

Radial Connects could be replaced by "What's common to the following" - essentially one thing is common to all the elements. Cascading Connects are a sequence (which is provided to the teams) i.e. a chain link. Meshed Connects, well, they are a slot for "all of the rest". Usually in Meshed connects, you could have several interconnections among a sub-group of elements, so it can get tough for the quizmaster to pass judgement on answers (leading to what one quizzer termed as a "Messed Connect")! A rare speciality called the Kekule Connect has also been tried occasionally - in this, the aim is to form a ring i.e. A connects to B, B to C and so on, and then Z connects back to A. There's also the well-known Pyramid connections where instead of connections emerging in just a question, answers to several questions are to be connected to give a answer higher in the pyramid and so on. The Bangalore Stage Two is a case of this with only one level.

Ok, some of these types can border on the frivolous, but the main idea is to allow teams an idea of what kind of connect to solve, given the profusion of connect types. Without it, it becomes quite difficult to sort out the connect. At any rate, that was the thinking behind that idea.

Concluding part of this piece in a few days time. Comments welcome as usual.

The Quiz at BMCC

Today the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce, a sister institution to our great college (FC College, as I believe they call us) conducted a quiz as a part of a larger inter college fest. I think the quiz was the event in the fest, because as we came in, the Principal was speaking. After that august personage had finished his discourse, the quiz began. Ominously, however all the participants were from colleges like FC, Gokhale Institute. It may even be that these colleges were the only two to come to BMCC. What could we expect from a quiz that couldn't even attract colleges from more that 100 meters away?

Well, it began. For the first time my life, I saw an elim sheet printed landscape style. There were 25 questions, with 10 minutes allotted for the solution thereof. The questions ranged in difficulty from "Who won the 1992 Cricket World Cup?" to "Which was the first bank in India to introduce Visa cards?" (Andhra Bank). Also, perplexingly, the elims had half a mark per question, making for a total of 12.5 for the elims. The spine chillingly boneheaded reason for this did not become apparent till later, after the quiz was over.

The elims finished, and it transpired that Rohit Bahulekar (ESPN Sports Quiz 2004 winner) and I had made it to the finals, the other four finalists being BMCCians (it was a lone ranger quiz). There were four rounds, all with the stupidest format ever. The first round had two questions per participant, which did not pass, and with a mind numbing 45 seconds per question. The questions again ranged in difficulty from "From where did Alexander the Great hail?" (they accepted "Greece" as an answer) to " In what year was Citibank established in India?". There were a lot of questions involving new appointments to post like the Attorney General, National Security Advisor and CEC, which largely went unanswered. Then there was the audio visual round, where we had to draw lots for which picture/clip we answered, which was easy to the point of childishness (eg A picture of John Kerry, who we were asked to identify). Then there was a really screwed up speed round. One of the questions was "What does the Mercedes logo refer at (sic)?" After 10 seconds of trying to figure that one out, I blabbered something, just praying for the fiasco to end. The last round was a speciality round. On a geography speciality, a guy who was asked, "Of what is Silvassa the capital?" answered Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The QM answered, "No, its Dadra and Nagar Haveli". It was horrible.

Finally it finished. And now for the piece de resistance. "The score of the finals will be converted to a score out of 12.5 and then be added to the score of the elims to give an aggregate out of 25 which will determine the winner." What?!

In conclusion, the quiz was as the immortal Swati Joshi (who is regrettably not with us anymore :)) put it, a "highest mountain quiz". In fact, they asked that.

QM: "What is the second highest mountain in the world?" Participant: "Kanchenjunga." QM: "Actually its K2, but I'll give it to you."

I think if Abhishek goes ahead with his plans for a Quizzing Awards ceremony, this should definitely be nominated for the quizzing Razzy.

Notes from 'Centre of India, Heart of India'

Sohel Bohra had been to a quiz in Indore. Here are some of his notes from that event:

Indore Management Association held its annual India Brand Guru quiz for the fourth consecutive year last weekend. The business quiz focuses mainly on brands but since the line between a brand quiz and a business quiz is fine, it can safely be considered a business quiz. This year abt 40 odd corporate teams and 100 odd student teams took part. Harish Bijoor was the quizmaster. He kept calling Indore the 'Centre of India, Heart of India', hence the odd title of this blog. Most teams, to be honest, were there for the prizes rather than the quiz per say. At stake are cars, laptops, fridges, etc. Every quarter-finalist gets a prize. Hence over 36 teams take home decent prizes.

The quiz had a new round this year. A written pre-qualifier was added which 36 teams (corporate and students) each wrote to get into the qualifiers. 18 each qualify from this for the quarter-finals. The quarters had 20 questions on the buzzer. Top 2 from each round of 6 make it to the semi-finals. Top 3 from the six make make it to the finals. The student teams (3) and the coporates (another 3) compete against each other only in the finals.

Among the participants, most usual suspects of business quizzing had come to take part. Your correspondent lost out in the quarters to an error of the quizmaster which cost him a berth in the semis. The quiz is notorious for oversights and rehashing previous questions from last years quizzes.

The first quarters was keenly fought among all teams. Last years winner Arvind Khusape (then from IIML) too lost out here. It appears that unfairly the top 6 teams from the 18 were clubbed in one quarters.

He learns that Sun Microsystems won the quiz. A round of lone wolf takes part for the top 2 teams from which a Brand Mahaguru is chosen. Mitesh of Sun won the title taking home a Maruti 800.

Website: www.imaibq.com
:: Sohel

Sohel also points to an open business quiz at NITIE. Details at www.prerana-nitie.com.

SEAP Quiz 2004

The SEAP Quiz 2004 was held on Saturday the 25th September in Persistent Systems' Dewang Mehta Auditorium. 24 Teams turned up, something of a disappointment, but probably attributable to the fact that the quiz was only open to SEAP member companies (Don't blame the QM for this, he had no say in it).

Finalists:

Parimal Puranik and C. Phani (Calsoft)
Srihari Suthamally and Sudarshan Purohit (Persistent)
Manish Manke and Kartik Jayaraman (Geometric)
Vaidyanathan K.A. and Venkata Kiran G.P. (Kanbay)
Niranjan Tulpule and Satwik Hebbar (Calsoft)
Siddharth Madhusudan and Parag Shetye (Synechron)

The prelims were quite close with the first four placers separetd by a point apiece. Two Calsoft teams - Niranjan and Satwik, and Uma Chingunde and Vaibhav Nirargi - tied, and because of the only-two-teams-from-the-same-company cap for the finals had to play off in a tie breaker for the fifth spot. As if that wasn't enough there was a three way tie for the sixth spot. One team, Don Ksare (Spelling?) and Saurav Lenka (Kanbay) was eliminated because of a lower score on the starred questions, which still left Synechron and another Kanbay team Paresh Navalakha and L. Subramanian to face off in the tie break. Three tie-break questions proved insufficient and the tie break went to sudden death. Synechron made it through by virtue of knowing that "Fidelio" was Beethoven's only Opera.

The finals were an 8 round Infinite Rebounds affair, with 7 "Classic" rounds and 1 "Stage Two" (in Bangalore quizzing parlance). Your correspondent, being actively involved in the organizing will leave it to others to comment on the quality of the questions; slightly more than 60% were answered. It was quite close till the end: On the last question (which as it happened nobody got), any one of four teams could have won with 10 points. True to form the two Calsoft teams tied for second place, necessitating another tie break. Three tie break questions and they were still tied, so another dose of sudden death was called for. On the second question Niranjan and Satwik won thanks to a greater familiarity with Richard Stallman's alter ego of St. IGNUcious of the church of Emacs.

Final Scores and Placings:

Srihari Suthamally and Sudarshan Purohit (Persistent) 65 Winners
Niranjan Tulpule and Satwik Hebbar (Calsoft) 60 Runners Up
Parimal Puranik and C. Phani (Calsoft) 60
Siddharth Madhusudan and Parag Shetye (Synechron) 55
Manish Manke and Kartik Jayaraman (Geometric) 30
Vaidyanathan K.A. and Venkata Kiran G.P. (Kanbay) 30

:: One of the organisers

In the past few weeks...

Some of the quizzes that one would wish he/she had not attended, but though deserve some mention were the 3 ones in AISSMS. It seems, a new quizzing pattern (lets call it AISSMS pattern) has emerged. Consider these:-

1. Direct & Pass (though one of them had a 'new' system called 'Infinite Remote').
2. A round where one team member selects a topic for his partner. If unanswered, the question passes not to the teams, but to the first partner.
3. Audio-visuals provided 'live' by the college talents.
4. Trailing teams get knocked out after every 2 rounds.
5. The finale is between 2 teams following the pattern of CNBC 'The Challenge'.

Other quizzes that took place were Vedant and the TVS Tyres SmarTest. In all of them, the drawbacks of D&P showed - nastily. Major upsets and major cribs and frustrations. The quality of questions is becoming a secondary issue. Waiting for a good quiz with IR.

TVS Tyres SmarTest

First the results:-

1st: FC - Kunal & Ulka

2nd: VIT - Ganesh & Kunal

3rd: VIT - Siddharth & Salil

Other finalists: -

VIT: Anupam & Anand

SCOE: Mohit & Akshay

MESCOE: Aditya & Srinivas

Big prize money, 2 semifinals, decent questions, irritating QM, D & P, some weird unnecessary rounds. Comments plz.

The Quiz at BJ Medical College, Vedant

Venue: Mahatma Gandhi Auditorium, BJ Medical College, Pune.

Winners: Siddharth Dani & Salil Bijur (VIT) - Team F

Runners Up: (AFMC) - Team E

3rd Place: Kunal Sawardekar & Ulka Athale (FC) - Team C

4th Place: Sanket Anekar & Aditya Chandorkar (FC) - Team A

5th Place: Vivek Venkatraman + 1 (BJMC) - Team D

6th Place: Kunal Thakar & Ganesh Hegde (VIT) - Team B

Remarks:

- The Quizmaster, perhaps because of his not having been to too many quizzes, completely underestimated the level of the quizzers attending his quiz. Out of a total of 30 Elims questions, the cutoff was 24 with all stars. This same lack of faith in the participants manifested itself in the finals.

- The Khashaba Jadhav question featured in the Elims yet again.

- There were some very weird rounds. One was the RIM round, where all questions were based on their sponsors, Reliance India Mobile (eg, "What is the full form of CDMA?"). Another round involved choosing to answer either an easy or a difficult question. The difficult questions were marked +30-10, while the easy ones were a flat +10. The criteria for classification as either easy or difficult were however skewed, to put it mildly.

- The Quizmaster was one of that dying breed of quizzers who obstinately refuse to adopt Infinite Rebounds. The scoring system in place here was D&P 10+5.

- The last round was a Speed Round with 12 questions per team. Astonishingly for a 10+5 quiz, each Speed Round question carried 10 points. This obviously changed the course of the quiz completely, with some teams making spectacular gains and others falling behind.

- There were some nice, difficult, workable questions, which somehow all appeared in our Speed Round and totally sunk us.

- The audience was restive, and at times rowdy, perhaps because very few questions escaped the teams to pass on to them. The two audience prizes that were awarded were presented in style, with a member of the faculty being called to give them to the lucky winners up on stage.

- All in all, the quiz was an honest effort that somehow fell short of our expectations for such a big quiz. The Quizmaster was a decent chap, who just messed up in what was probably his first college quiz.

Analysis:

Team A: 3D, 1P, 7NA, (+30+0), 70SR = 135 Total.

Team B: 5D, 1P, 6NA, (-10-10), 90SR = 125 Total

Team C: 5D, 4P, 4NA, (+30+10), 50SR = 160 Total

Team D: 2D, 0P, 10NA, (-10+30), 90SR = 130 Total

Team E: 3D, 2P, 6NA, (-10+30), 120SR = 180 Total

Team F: 6D, 2P, 6NA, (-10+30), 100SR = 190 Total.

(D = Direct Qns Answered, P = Passed Qns Answered, NA = Not Answered, SR = Speed Round score, Parenthesis indicate Difficult/Easy round score)

I.Q. at Techstasy (VIT)

I.Q. was the quiz which was a part of Techstasy, an inter-college event organised by Comp & IT dept. of VIT.

Results:

1st: Kunal Sawardekar, Anirudh Shiva [FC]

2nd: Ganesh Hegde, Siddharth Dani [VIT]

Other finalists:

Nikhil Kundargi, Neil Mehta [ PICT ]

Anand Ayyadurai, Anupam Akolkar [VIT]

Anand, Pratik [SCIT]

Organized by: Harsh Ketkar, Kunal Thakar, Salil Bijur

Calling for groupies

Face it, if you are a regular reader of this blog and believe in the associated pastime, then you're not very likely to become a groupie of some rock group. Instead, why not become a group member for this blog and contribute to match reports, contemporary state of quizzing and other features?

Note: Not looking for frivolous commentary here (that's restricted only to me).

The Pinnacle Quiz (SIT)

Results 1st: Kunal Sawardekar [FC], Salil Bijur [VIT]
2nd: Nikhil Kundargi [ PICT ], Neil Mehta [ PICT ]
3rd: Hrishikesh Kavade [SIT] (???) [SIT]
Other finalists: Siddharth Dani [VIT] & Kunal Thakar [VIT], Rashmi Vadnagare[VIT] & Harsh Ketkar [VIT], & a SIT team

The Organizers: Akshay Pande & Akshay Raut

Notes: * The quality of the questions was quite respectable although they did tend to be a bit obscure at times . A lot of all-around passes ensured a pretty low scoring quiz.

* organized at SIT[Sinhagad College Of Engineering Pune]

* This is the second year running that a quiz has been organized at SIT. (I think) that last year it had been under the aegis of the computer department . This year's version was managed by the Electronics And Telecommunications department.

:: Report by Nikhil

Inquizzition winners

Winners at Fergusson College, Pune's annual quiz:

2000 : Gaurav Sabnis & Neeraj Sane (COEP)
2001 : Manish Mahajan & Arka Bhattacharya (COEP)
2002 : Samrat Sengupta & J. Ramanand (PSPL)
2003 : Samrat Sengupta & Sudarshan Purohit (PSPL)
2004 : Amit Garde & Hareeth Sridhar (PSPL)

I've started this to maintain these lists for future reference - will add to incorporate runners-up & finalists et al

Inquizzition - V

Date: 4 Sep 2004

Results

1st: Persistent Systems Pvt Ltd - Amit Garde & Hareeth Sridhar
2nd: Infosys Pune/Accenture - Dibyasree (?) + 1
3ed: BCQC - Gaurav Sabnis & J. Ramanand
Other finalists: Sinhagad COE, Meghashyam & Asavari Shirodkar, Amit Varma & Siddhartha V. (Wisden Cricinfo)

Set by: Quest - FC Quizzing Circle

Conducted by: Kunal Sawardekar

Notes:

* PSPL won for the third year running, but 5 different people have been involved in these wins!

* Interesting (to me atleast :-) ) observation: on all occasions (actually on 4 out of 5 occasions I have witnessed, not sure about 2001), either Team A or B (which sit on the left side to the audience on stage) has ended up victorious!

Quizeitgeist - I

Not sure how many have seen Google's Zeitgeist page, something that is rarely less than revelatory.

From the bottom of the very page:

zeit·geist | Pronunciation: 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 |
Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era

Quizzes over a period of time establish their own zeitgeist. Most good annual quizzes achieve an invisible spirit and discernible patterns of their own which characterize them and their times. Quite often they are reflective of the people behind them, but many times they are indicative of trends and inclinations of their times. You'll also find a lot of grizzled quizzers shaking their heads at the "new age" of quizzing; this sport of ours is prone to the theory of the generation gap.

This post attempts to capture this slightly undefinable feeling and kicks off a small attempt to continually monitor the quizzing ethos of these times - flawed the results maybe, but they may turn up interesting insights as well. As ever, contributions welcome and maybe I need to have a better place for people to note them down.

A few observations from the past:

"Dis-top-pick-a": the topics of choice

* Tintin and Asterix: quintessential quizzing topics, with Asterix especially being very anecdote-trivia-friendly with the derivative names and the retro-history.

* Sherlock Holmes: classical quizzing is never without reference to the ultimate private detective. Even today, Sigerson or Tibet or the Reichenbach or the Napoleon of Crime are invoked in almost every quiz.

* Pink Floyd: something perhaps to do with quizzing youth discovering quizzing and rock music in college (sometimes just fashionably) simultaneously. Again, PF are a trivia friendly music group, with associations with DNA & Hawking serving them well.

* Douglas Adams: watch out for questions #42 or #21, try guessing Douglas Adams if you have no better guess. DNA is much beloved in the quizzing world, who pay homage whenever they can.

* Google: displaced Apple as the most trivia-friendly corporation on earth. They lay out the carpet for quiz-setters and we respond as if in honeyed seduction. Plus the fact that "Coolge" is *the* weapon of choice for the quiz-setter.

* Olympics & World Cup cricket: So much gets added every 4 years that we don't mind really.

* Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Andaaz Apna Apna, Sholay and more: Atleast you'll hear a lot about them at the BC.

* Richard P.Feynman, Oppenheimer and the rest: admittedly no more at their peak, but quite the rage in BC circles about 3-4 years ago.

* Harry Potter and LOTR: These strong contenders in the last few years have meant that ambitious quizzers need to stock up on them. Quizzers prone to snubbing their noses at these upstart topics, well, just don't make finals anymore :-)

* Formula One: All I know about F-1, I learnt from listening to questions. Sad (me of course).

Topics for later: QZG at Annual quizzes.

The Worst Quiz I Ever Won

A stone's throw away(a paper airplane's throw away?) from the Pune Railway Station, stands Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College (BJMC) one of the most reputed med-schools in Western India. This august institution was the scene for the worst quiz I have ever won.

The notice for the quiz was put up on the COEP Boat Club one rainy day when i was in Third Year. It was the part of BJMC's annual fest(!!). The exact name of the fest presently eludes me, but it was one of Ganesha's names. I am always game for any quiz, so I enthusiastically called up the organisers and registered for it. The first omen was the non-availability of my regular quizzing partner, Neeraj. He had to go out of station. It however gave me the opportunity to team up with Saket, another classmate of mine.

Both of us reached BJMC. The scene of the quiz was a lecture hall that made COEP's M-13 look like the floor of a posh call centre. And anyone who has attended a lecture/PPT in M-13 will grasp the gravity of the comment. General din prevailed. the whole scene could have easily passed as the lower house of the Indian parliament. For some reason, the hall was littered with paper airplanes. Then we saw guys generally aiming those airplanes at girls!!

Anyhoo, getting to the quiz. First there were written elims. The elims sheet was cyclostyled!! Who cyclostyles anything nowadays? The questions were atrocious. A few samples

- Who was the first Indian to win the Oskar(sic) Prize(sic)?
- Which Indian woman recently achieved(sic) the Booker Prize?
- Name all four tennis grandslams

The highlight of the elims was the question - "Who was the first indian to win a bronze medal at Olympic Awards(sic)?"

While giving out the answer to this particular question, the quizmaster raised one hand up and shouted "IT WAS KHASHABA JADHAV FROM KOLHAAAAAAAAPUUUUUUUUUUR!!". A section of the crowd, no doubt from Kolhapur, starting banging the benches in glee, and for about 5 minutes there were several cheers in Marathi for a five-decade-old medal.

Anyway, I'm ashamed to say we topped the elims. Other teams on the stage included a team from BJMC (not their regular team), and two from our beloved AFMC.

The questions in the finals made the elims look great. They were as sidey as can get. Throughout the quiz, paper airplanes continued to be showered. A friend later told me, this is a tradition in BJMC.

Saket and I won quite easily in the end. One of the victories that you dont mention on your CV.