Quiz-O-Mania 2011

The annual open quiz at Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT) Pune, Quiz-O-Mania, will be conducted on 2nd Feb 2011 as a part of the cultural fest Melange. Details are as follows:

Date: 2nd Feb, Wednesday
Flavour: General
Time: 10:30am (Reporting Time), Elims Begin at 10.45 sharp
Venue: "Sharad Arena" (VIT Auditorium)
Team size: 2
Teams that qualify for the finals: 6
Prizes: Cash prizes worth Rs 12,000

QM: Salil Bijur

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

For more details, check the event website

COEP Zest Sports Quiz - Report

When: Jan 23, 2011; Sunday
Where: COEP
Turnout: Only 11 teams showed up
Conducted by: Gaurav, Mihir and Vaibhav

Results:
1st: Yash Marathe (Modern) & Omkar Nene (IIT-B) [95 pts]
2nd: Sameer Deshpande (VIT) & Bharat Marathe (MIT) [65 pts]
3rd: Tarun Sharma & Aditya Pawar (AIT) [60 pts]
4th: Shekhar Mehta & Neeraj Paradkar (DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering, Bombay) [50 pts]

Low turnout didn't justify the quality of the quiz, could've been publicized better. As expected, there were quite a few repeats from 3 inexperienced quiz setters, but there were some very good questions all the same. Certainly better than the farce last year.

Report by Yash Marathe

2011 Landmark Quiz Pune - Results

What: Landmark Quiz, Pune Round
When: 22 Jan, 2011
Where: Nehru Memorial Hall, Pune
Conducted by: Dr. Navin Jayakumar

Results
1st: The Nawabs of Mahabs [Rajiv, Gopal, Sumo] (88)
2nd: Audio Killed the Radia Star [Vikram, Pradeep, Mukund] (70)
3rd: Travelling Pillsburies [Sumant, Anil, Vibhendu] (63)
4th: Also Known as QED [Samanth, Ramanan, Swami] (61)
5th: Pyaaz Hamein Kis Mod Pe Le Aaya [Suraj, Harish, Ramanand] (53)
6th: Nanachi Tang [Salil, Yash Marathe, Kunal Sawardekar] (42)
7th: Feni, Beedi, Wiki [Anand, Amit, Meghashyam] (40)
8th: Immaculate Misconceptions [Team from SAP] (39)

Other Results
Best Corporate Team: SAP
Best School Team: Delhi Public School; Runners Up: Army Public School
Best College: SIBM [Jai, Jai, Vikram]
Best Team Name: "Wish Wiki would have leaked this quiz" [Arjun, Gyanendra, Baruni]
Playstation Buzz challenge: Yash, St. Vincents

Review comments can be posted in the comments section for this blog

V for Wikipedia

Those who have been quizzing for a little over a decade may remember how difficult it once was to set questions for a quiz. One had to go digging into books, re-establish friendships with newspapers (even the Times of India), interrogate every multimedia frequency to pass through your TV's cathode ray tube, and generally mope around looking for visuals and audio and ideas.

Then came the full wonders of the World Wide Web, and in particular the fourth and most important W: Wikipedia. Random Articles, Featured Articles, and Did You Know... came to our collective aid. Thousands of encyclopaedic minions, eager to show off their deep knowledge of the infinitesmal, rescued quizzes from lapsing into questions about George Bernard Shaw, The Beatles and (sometimes) Heisenberg's grave(s). (As Niranjan would put it, they left us 'encyclo-piidith'.)

But like atomic weapons in the hands of Harry S or 24x7 TV in the hands of Rakhi S, some of us knew not what to do with the power at our mouse-tips. We began filling up powerpoint slides (another technology aid given fresh meaning and purpose by trivia-nerds) with lengthy wikipedia article pages, sometimes omitting to even remove every "citation needed" and reference superscript^{[citation needed]}. But still, we could do a quiz the next day.

We also began asking extensive questions about Wikipedia itself: its name, its logo, its mis-rendered devanaagarii 'vi', and in recent times, the number of hairs on Jimmy Wales's donation banner. These questions elicited tremendous applause and envy from participants, and thus the vicious cycle prospered.

It's been 10 years and Wikipedia has enriched our life immeasurably. Now everyone could ask a question, however bad, and everyone had knowledge at their fingertips. You didn't need to go to a neighbour's house and meet the Eureka-Forbes-esque friendly travelling World Book set salesman, or pore deep into volumes I-K of the Encyclopedia Britannica just to get to an encyclopaedia or even scramble to hide your beloved Manorama Yearbook.

These are some of the things we love about Wikipedia. That it represents an alternative spend of our cognitive surplus (as Clay Shirky puts it), a net positive addition to the world, to let us show off our most beloved pieces of knowledge, to read and learn and discover in an instant. We also think this is something worth supporting, in gratitude to everything that we've taken.

Which is why the BCQC is happy to have made a small donation to Wikipedia late last year, as part of its fund-raising campaign (or, perhaps we just wanted mugshots of large, sad, Americans with British provincial names removed from the top of our browsers at the earliest). The gesture is perhaps more token than substantial, but as a group whose principal aim is to promote quizzing in the world around us, it was among the nicest (and easiest) ways to say thank you.

Thank you, Wikipedia.

Extentia Year-Ender Quiz X, Dec 2010 - quiz report

Date: Dec 24 2010, at Extentia, KP, Pune
Set and conducted by Suraj Menon/BCQC
Theme: General

Event held a week earlier on account of New Year’s weekend next week.

As always an email quiz was sent to Extentians earlier in the week. Answers and winners announced ahead of Fri's quiz.
Winners determined by # of correct answers and timestamp of email. Winner: Vcat

Finals:
Decent turnout. Teams were again formed from the Extentia houses. Five in all.

Teams: Spartans, Royal Brigade, Parikrama, Constant Variables and Infinity.
Format: IR with 25 questions.

* Keenly contested quiz with all the usual shrill sledging between teams
* The Royal Brigade led from the beginning, and the Spartans ran them close.
* Most questions (22/25) were answered and all teams had points on the board mid-quiz.
* Several connect questions were worked out by the top three teams
* Topics currently in the news featured in many questions
* Several new faces among participants!

Winners: Royal Brigade (Surbhi, Soumava, Rahul D, Vcat...)
Runners Up: Spartans (Chetan, Sandip, Sarang, Aditi...)
Prizes: Crossword gift certificates, and chocolate bars for team members


At the end: Note of appreciation for BCQC from the teams and Chetan Shetty, EVP, Operations, Extentia.

Report by Vcat

Bubbling with ideas : Fancy question formats from a pub quiz far, far away

OK, so this is the deal. I used to quiz with same folks who bore you with all the inane details of their latest mercenary exploits at some gender-confused engineering college in town -- hell, I even used to go to those quizzes. Religiously. And lose. But, hey, that's not the point. I was one of the cool folk, the creator of the Centaurian Scoring System  rivaled in length of existence only by the sperm whale and the bowl of petunias.

So that's by way of introduction. Since having quit my self-carpentered chair of crazy-new-quizzing-ideas (Chief Innovation Officer?) at the BCQC, I have to moved on, to frankly more useful endeavors. In an effort to distance myself from the effluvial delights of the boat club and its charmingly green waters, I have drained myself and my brain to the US. To MIT, Cambridge, USA more specifically.

Old habits die hard, so my Wednesday nights are spent quizzing. Or trying to quiz. You see, a hankering for mind numbingly pointless convoluted-ness is hard to satisfy, or so I am finding out. But I try. How you ask? Well Boston, in all its efforts to act Irish, has a number of bars that do the whole "pub trivia" thing and I attend one of these gigs. In fact the bar is on campus -- "The Thirsty Ear" is the name and a fairly passable evening can be had quizzing at that waterhole among fellow nerds who will happily argue about escape velocities of imaginary planets and match imaginary guns to first-person-shooters (we got a full 10/10 on that question I think). Anyway, the point is, give the hosts a chance, and add some beer and tasty tacos and you should be fairly set for the evening.

Some evenings are more passable than others, and in particular there is this British trivia host who will go that extra mile to add that wonderful word we all love to associate with quizzes -- "workability"! Now, not all questions are workable and not all the workable questions are good -- but there are a couple of innovations that the Indian quizzing scene would do well to copy. These would fit in perfectly with our scheme of things!

I was first alerted when the guy did the old guess the Google Doodle round that we all love so much. I mean, when everyone else is asking "who was the first person to achieve a .300 batting average" or something of the sort, this guy independently discovered one of our beloved question formats. Ever the able scout, I was seeing some talent here. Then he puts on the Google Trends type question, another format that I like a lot -- and which I saw used for the first time in India by Google's very own Suhel Bannerjee. This QM will not just put up Google trends and ask us to guess events, he will often have a "match the google trends line" to a list of proper nouns. Again something that we've done -- but not enough. A recent one asked us to match a bunch of google trend lines to "GMail", "Google Wave", "Google Earth" and so on, something that was worked out by people following the ups and downs of these products.

A really cool innovation is his usage of the Joseph Decruex meme. The meme essentially involves imposing the lyrics to current songs in old english and pasting them on a picture of this old french philosopher, lolcat style. So for example the song "Fuck Bitches Get Money" becomes, well see for yourself:

More such joy can be found here, and what's more there is no limiting the number of songs, english or hindi that can undergo Decreux-ization all under the name of workability! I dream of the day when I can stand up on stage and ask someone what song is referred to in "I CRAVE THY MATRIARCHAL STARE, YOUR OFFSPRING WITHERS" [1]

The second innovation that I particularly like is about listing pictures that have something in common and simply asking people to identify the reference (instead of long unwieldy "connects" which can occasionally get tiresome). So one recent example was this question that had famous make-outs in movie history, where you could only barely identify the protagonists of the lip-locks and we were asked to identify the actors and the movie in question. I mean, this was fairly entertaining, could be worked out and required quizzing acumen without being excruciatingly obtuse at the same time. There is something about the pub-trivia format that forces QMs to err on the side of the inane, and this is definitely one instance when this bias probably leads to a nice entertaining question format. Another example lists pictures of places that have a famous monument, and there was an interesting round where we were shown street pictures of the neighbourhood we live in and were asked to mark them on a map we were provided. This could potentially be done for a number of types of maps of various sizes, even perhaps a map on screen where teams choose to place a marker much like in the game Traveler IQ.

Last example innovation for the day is similar in spirit to innovation two. This is the "odd one out" format. What the QM will do is compile an often amusing list of things and ask you to pick the odd one out. This includes stuff like -- "Which of these is a not a real movie?" and there will be a list of titles you would hardly think were movies ("The Conquest of the Silken Beaver") and insert a fake one in there. Again, the possibilities are endless -- are there not lots of towns, people and food items with random names? Granted that this is not the most cerebral of question formats, and will probably appeal more to Derek and his ilk rather than us, but there is something to be said about making questions fun, even to the idiot who tunes in to watch Bigg Boss everyday! (wait, that's me. or at least was)

Anyway, that was me and my worthless gyaan from this part of the globe. I have not written a blog piece in a while -- let alone one about quizzing! If this is interesting do chime in on the comments and I'll try and write more about the quizzing scene at the bars (and questions even!) -- but given my extremely "light" academic schedule that might be hard to do, just yet.

Thanks for the attention, and keep quizzing!

Abhishek

The author was a quizzer who has passed on, who has ceased to be, who bereft of life lies in peace. An ex-quizzer if there ever was. Within his little cubby cage of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he tries to mould himself into a social scientist who studies technology, all while trying to spell "mold" in the american way and trying not to think of the green stuff that reminds him of the BCQC so much. You can pay condolences at abhishek.mit.edu 

[1] That was this song for those unwilling to think.

KQA Mega-Whats 2010 - Pune results

Date: 12 Dec, 2010
Venue: COEP
Conducted by: Vishwajeet Narvekar for the KQA

No. of Teams: 10

Results:
Open Category winners: Suraj, Ramanand, Harish, Suvajit: 32 points
College winners: Rohan Prabhu, Omkar Moghe, Shreevallabh Gharote, Sameer Patil (COEP): 12 points

Thanks to Aadinath and Mohit of COEP for making the arrangements.

Prizes
sponsored by Tender Leaves (Pune's newest Book Service++) and BCQC.

Update: 30 Dec 2010
The overall results and the questions+answers are available at the KQA site here.

KQA Mega-Whats 2010 - Pune details

* Team of (upto) 4 people

* Venue: Seminar Hall II (Next to main Auditorium), College of Engineering, Pune (COEP), Shivajinagar, Pune-5 College coordinator: Mohit Karve (9890777964 ; mohit@bcqc.org)

* Timing: 2:30 to 5:30 on 12th December (Sunday)

* General Written Quiz* Prizes for the top 2 best teams, college teams, school teams (sponsored by BCQC)

* Entries received so far will appear on http://bit.ly/ezwhDq

Please read below for the details. Since the venue can only accommodate about 30 teams, you are advised to register in advance by writing to the organisers as given below.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arul Mani <arul.mani@gmail.com>

This is to announce the second edition of Mega-Whats, our National Open Quizzing Championship.

The quiz will be held across nine cities simultaneously. Apart from Bangalore, we have  venue confirmations from Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa, Thrissur, Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi and Kolkata. More information on venues soon.

The details:

Date: Sunday, 12 December 2010

QMs: Kiran Vijayakumar and Arul Mani

   1. General quiz, open to all.
   2. Teams of FOUR members (or less).
   3. Prior registration is essential.
   4. To register, please email Mahaquizzer@gmail.com with Mega-Whats 2010 and the city you are competing from in the subject-header.
   5. Please provide the names of the four people who comprise your team in the email–also indicate whether you are taking part in the school, college  or open categories
   6. Email registrations will close on Tuesday 7th December 2010.  Centre coordinators will allow entries after the cut-off date at their discretion.
   7. Please note that the quizzing community in your city may charge an entry fee to meet venue and equipment hire expenses.
   8. The school category is open only to teams comprising students from Std. VIII-X .
   9. School teams ( Std. VIII-X) are allowed free entry. A school may field ONE team.
  10. Please report by 1430hrs at the venue in your city. Since we need to ensure a coordinated start nationwide, the quiz will start at 1500hrs sharp. The doors will be closed five minutes before we begin.
  11. Contesting teams will answer in writing a quiz of six sections and about sixty questions, inclusive of audios, videos and visuals.
  12. Answers and scores will be announced immediately after the event–prizes will be given out for Best School Team, Best College Team, and Best Open Team.
  13. The prizes aren't small--they are insignificant.
  14. We will rank the top 100 teams across the country–this list will go up by the 25th of December.
  15. The rankings will be announced after adjudication. The decision of the quiz-masters will be final and binding on all participants.
16. The city-winners will face off in June 2011 as part of the KQA 28th Anniversary.

For more details, please call 97312-14519

Article by Arul Mani

Arul Mani of Karnataka Quizzing Association has a very nice article on quizzing in general and his personal experiences. Do read and share.

Extentia Company Quiz VIII

Fri, October 29, 2010 at Extentia KPO/Umkaz, Koregaon Park
QM: Venkat Srinivasan. Quiz set by Suraj Menon/BCQC
Theme: Festivals & Sport

Email Quiz:
The usual email quiz was sent to Extentians earlier in the week. Winners determined by # of correct answers and timestamp on email. Some eager-beavers started to badger Vcat with questions on the questions mid-week.

Answers and winners announced at the end of Fri afternoon's main quiz. The winner's usually a skilled Googler.
Finals:
Among the highest turnouts for an Extentia quiz. The event coincided with the company's traditional attire day for the upcoming Diwali festival. Teams were formed from the Extentia houses for the first time. Six in all. Several new faces. (And very traditionally dressed teams!)
Teams: Unicorns, Spartans, Royal Brigade, Parikrama, Constant Variables and Infinity. Format: IR with 25 questions. Questions alternated between festivals and sport/sports scams.
The Unicorns took an early lead and were soon matched by the Spartans.
Non scoring teams such as RB and Infinity started to get points on the board mid-quiz.
The Constant Variables overtook all the others by the 15th question.
21/25 questions answered. Good pickup on clues by most teams.


Immediate demands for points to be posted, soon as a correct answer was given.The usual intense competitiveness was on display, never mind the 'festive spirit'.

Everyone knew but didn't answer: 'Allan Donald' ('Whatever you do, don't bet on number 10. He doesn't run.')

Winners: Constant Variables (Farah, UZK, Bobby......)
Runners Up: Spartans (Chetan, Sandip, Dhiraj.....)

Extentia Company Quiz VII

When: Fri, September 24, 2010 at Extentia ITT, Kalyani Nagar
QM: Prakash Kamath. Quiz set by Suraj Menon/BCQC
Theme: General

Email Quiz:
As always a 'warm up' email quiz was sent to Extentians earlier in the week. Winners determined by # of correct answers and timestamp on email.

Answers and winner: (Vcat) announced ahead of Fri afternoon's quiz. He won 'cos he got Mehrauli for the exact location of the Iron Pillar [Q: Where is this (pic) located?]

Finals:
* Good turnout at ITT. A full house for this Extentia location.
* IR with participants split into four teams as always.
* Team 1 started to lead from the 4th question. Competitive quiz where all teams scored over 30 points each.
* Most questions were worked out and answered by teams
* Teams were given a minute for each direct - to read long questions and work out answers. An actual stopwatch was used.
* Cordial atmosphere despite intensity of competition. No fights between teams and with the QM.

Winners: Team 1 by 30 points(Jaya, Soumava, Vcat......)
Runners Up: Team 2 on the last question (Farah, Rohan, Deepak, Zyfn, ...

Mindspark quizzing - Chakravyuuh Report

Set by Gaurav Keskar, Aadinath Harihar, Mohit Karve with inputs from Amit Patil and Gaurav Mehta
Questions reviewed and moderated by Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale
Theme: General
Date/Venue: 10th October 2010, College of Engineering, Pune:

Format: 35 Question Elims, 54 Question Finals (29 IR + 6 Written + 19 IR Rev)

Results:

1st Place: J Ramanand and B V Harish Kumar (Team E) [Elims: 20 (4*) || Finals: 120]
2nd Place*: Anand Sivasankar and Prasanna Potdar (Team C) [Elims: 25 (2*) ||Finals: 90]
3rd Place: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde (Team F) [Elims: 26 (2*) || Finals: 90]
4th Place: Mayur Srinivasan and Abhishek Padmanabhan (Team D)- IIT Bombay [Elims: 22 (4*) || Finals: 70]
5th Place: Ganesh Hegde and Shivaji Marella (Team A) [Elims: 25 (6*) || Finals: 50]
6th Place: Suraj Menon and Yashovardhan Tamaskar (Team B) [Elims: 23 (4*) || Finals: 50]
(*2nd place decided on Elims scores)

Best College Team (outside the finalists): Akhil Srivatsan and Mukund Verma (IIT Bombay) Additional Credits: Himanshu Panandikar for developing the entire finals on Flash (template provided by Shravan Aras)

Report
When I reached the venue, I was surprised to hear from the slightly hapless registration desk that registrations had closed as they had a large turnout. Though soon it became apparent that all the 500-odd teams that had paid money had not shown up, the actual number of teams to attempt the prelims (297 to be precise) was quite staggering for an open quiz in Pune. Admittedly, most of them were spillovers from colleges taking part in other Mindspark events - still, for a change, it was good to see organisers worried about managing that kind of scale.

The prelims for such an audience was decent - the answers to many a question would have been familiar to them. The elims referred to interesting bits of trivia, but lacked quality in the framing. The same would be true of the finals.

Our team struggled to qualify - in fact, we qualified 2nd last. Only to find out that Messrs. Vinay and Yash Marathe, who had been announced to have just sneaked in, had to leave the stage because the paper from the team from IIT Bombay had been incorrectly scored. We were left teetering on the edge, and it was a pity for Vinay and Yash. But I thought the right thing had been done, even though there was minor egg-on-the-organisers face - with so many teams and people, it's hard to keep the errors to zero, and it was good of the organisers to allow for protests.

The finals never went below a certain threshold of quality, which was good, but quite a few questions had the touch of inexperience in presentation. Hopefully, the young college students behind the quiz will keep getting better. Many of the teams gave good answers, even when they wrong - thus there were many claimants to the Samrat Sir prize for good guesses.

The written round, IMO, was a little unnecessary - there was nothing in the format that merited it. There were a few recriminations too, but quelled by Aadinath's impression of a young Mussolini, keen to enforce order and discipline among the restless masses.

We (team E) made a strong start along with team F, but found ourselves trailing after the 2/3rd mark. Team C had made a strong push by then, challenging the clear leaders, F. However, we found ourselves in a fortunate position soon, and a couple of misses by others saw us surge and open a margin that was comfortable in the end.

For a team that has finished in 2nd place at Chakravyuuh, a record four times, we'll surely take another first place. There was a reasonably good audience turnout for the finals as well, which witnessed a competent 11th edition of Chakravyuuh.

Winners list so far
2001: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2002: Shrirang Raddi and Amalesh Mishra
2003: Niranjan Pedanekar and Samrat Sengupta
2004: Gaurav Sabnis and Neeraj Sane
2005: Sudarshan Purohit and Amit Garde
2006: Gaurav Sabnis & Shamanth Rao
2007 (Apr): Kunal Sawardekar and Shamanth Rao
2007 (Oct): Avinash Mudaliar and Harikrishnan Menon
2008: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar
2009: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde
2010: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harish Kumar

And Gaurav's recounting of the genesis of Chakravyuuh in 2001.

Mindspark quizzing - Full Throttle Report

Set by Himanshu Panandikar, Mohit Karve with inputs from Aadinath Harihar
Questions reviewed and moderated by Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale
Theme: Automobiles
Date/Venue: 10th October 2010, College of Engineering, Pune:

Format: 30 Question Elims, 42 Question Finals

Results:

1st Place: Suraj Menon and Yashovardhan Tamaskar (Team E) [Elims: 19 (4*) || Finals: 85]
2nd Place: Kunal Sawardekar (Team D) [Elims: 20 (4*) || Finals: 70]
3rd Place*: Chinmay Pande and Gautam Unni (Team C) (Elims: 17.5 (4*) || Finals: 60]
4th Place: Chaitanya Pise and Ninad Alurkar (Team B) [Elims: 16.5 (4*) || Finals: 60]
5th Place: Vinay N and Yash Marathe (Team F) [Elims: 20 (4*) || Finals: 30]
6th Place: Jaipal Dhupar and Saransh Verma (Team A) [Elims: 17.5 (4*) || Finals: 30]
*3rd place decided on Elims scores

Best College Team (outside the finalists): Bharat Marathe and Aditya Ramachandran (MIT)

Please provide comments if you attended the quiz.

Report by Aadinath Harihar

Mindspark quizzing - Torquest Report

Set by Mohit Karve, Mihir Khatwani with inputs from Gaurav Keskar, Himanshu Panandikar, Amit Patil and Aadinath Harihar
Questions reviewed and moderated by Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale
Theme: Science and Technology
Date/Venue: 8th October 2010, College of Engineering, Pune:

Results:

1st Place*: Sachin Ravi and Raghav NC (Symbiosis Law School) (Elims: 18 || Finals: 105)
2nd Place: Nikhil Motlag and Avaneendra Bhargav (Elims: 16 || Finals: 105)
3rd Place: Jaypal Dhupar and Saransh Verma (Elims: 22 || Finals: 80)
*1st place decided on Elims scores after Tie Breaker also ended in a tie

Unlike previous years, Torquest was an open quiz this time making it extremely competitive. The number of teams participating in a "SciTech" quiz was also high this year. The elims started with excellent set of 30 questions, spreading across various domains of Science and Technology. It had a perfect mix of questions for a regular as well as a non-regular quizzer.

The finals had seamless 48 Questions in IR fashion (24+24). This was just perfect for a Scitech Quiz making it neither too short nor too long. Right from the beginning, teams B,C and F were locked in a fierce battle for the top spot. In the end we had a tie between teams B and F for the top spot. The tie-breaker questions again led to a tie between the two teams and hence finally team B was declared winner on the basis of elims score. The finals however made the quiz look more like a business quiz than a SciTech one. There was more focus on tech companies than technology. The partial points distribution decisions invited protests by teams for a few questions. Overall it was a well set and an enjoyable quiz. Comments are most welcome.

Report by Amit Dandekar

4 Quizzes at COEP's Mindspark, including Chakravyuuh

MindSpark is the annual Technical Festival of the College of Engineering, Pune.

This year MindSpark will play host to 4 quizzes from 8th- 10th October 2010. Specifics Below. For any additional clarifications. visit http://mind-spark.org/eureka.php.

1. Chakravyuh- the Open General Quiz

Sponsors: Atlas Copco 

Saturday, 9th October 2010

Timing: 11:00 am to 4:30 pm.
Venue: The Auditorium, College of Engineering, Pune

Weblink: http://mind-spark.org/events/chakravyuh.php
Chakravyuh has been one of Pune's best known open quizzes for many years now. A general quiz that is literally based on anything and everything under the sun, the participants of this quiz can range from college students to software professionals. Chakravyuh has gone on to produce quizzers who would later perform exceptionally well at national level quizzes. Previous years have elicited fantastic participation and the prize money remains as sweet as ever.
Status: Open Quiz (Anyone can Participate)
Team size: 2
Registration fees: Rs. 30/- per team. Register on the Spot.

2. Torquest- The Scince and Technology quiz

Friday, 8th October 2010p

Weblink: http://mind-spark.org/events/torquest.php
We wouldn't really be an institute of excellence in technical education unless our students were sound in their technical knowledge and fundas. Pit your love for technology against ours. Brush up your theory and find out how much you could actually apply it when you go out into the mad, mad world. Science and technology are inseparable, and this is a quiz where the passion for both would find a home.
Status: Open Quiz (anyone can Participate)
Team size: 2
Registration fees: Rs. 30/- per team. Register on the Spot.

3. Full Throttle- The Automobile Quiz
(in association with the COEP SAE Collegiate Club)

Sunday, 10th October, 2010

Weblink: http://mind-spark.org/events/fullthrottle.php

Have your fingers always itched to pull apart an engine to pieces and check how it works than just admiring the beauty of the bike and riding it? Then test your automobile wisdom in this adrenaline pumping quiz. Cars, bikes, and everything capable of clocking some serious revs- get ready to experience the rush! Turn up your collars, and roll up your sleeves, for only the sharpest can keep pace with Full Throttle.

Status: Open Quiz (Anyone can Participate)
Team size: 2
Registration fees: Rs. 30/- per team. Register on the Spot.

4. 10^-9- The Nanotechnology Quiz
Sunday, 10th October, 2010

Weblink: http://mind-spark.org/events/10%5E9.php

From nanotubes to colloids to powder technology. You need to know it all to crack this one. Dodge a volley of questions and advance in your quest to conquer the material world for this is the Nanotechnology quiz. The winner takes it all.

Status: College Quiz (I Cards required)
Team size: 2
Registration fees: Rs. 30/- per team. Register on the Spot.
***************************************************************************************

Total Prize Money to be won : Rs 60, 000/-

Goodies for participants and Loads of Audience Prizes (Movie Tickets, Magazines, Anti Virus Packs, T Shirts etc.)

***************************************************************************************
For more details contact:

Aadinath Harihar +91 98224 31348 (chakravyuh@mind-saprk.org)
Mohit Karve +91 98907 77964 (torquest@mind-spark.org)
Himanshu Panandikar +91 90497 25707 (fullthrottle@mind-spark.org)

Extentia Company Quiz VI

Extentia Company Quiz VI - Fri, August 27, 2010 at Extentia KP

QMs: Mukul Vyas and Soumava Chatterjee. Quiz set by Suraj Menon/BCQC
Theme: General

Email quiz sent to Extentians earlier in the week. Answers and winners announced ahead of Fri's quiz. Winners determined by # of correct answers and timestamp of email.
About 20 Extentians in all - the now familiar in-company quiz folks.
IR with participants split into four teams as always.
Team 1 established an early lead that it held through the quiz
Tie for 2nd between teams 3 and 4. Tiebreaker won by Team 4
Interesting, workable questions, and most were answered by teams.
QMs had a good sense of humor and helmed the quiz well
Minor fight between team 3,4 and a QM at tiebreak
Demands for Vcat to be excluded from next event (or distribute prizes first and then have the quiz!)

Winners: Team 1 (Melanie, Rahul D, Vcat......)
Runners Up: Team 4 (Farah, Jaya, Surbhi, Louis...)

Extentia Quiz V

Extentia Quiz V - Fri, July 30 at Extentia ITT
QMs:Rohan Ambasta and Vishnuprasad Verma. Quiz set by Suraj Menon/BCQC
Theme: General

Email quiz sent to Extentians earlier in the week. Answers and winners announced ahead of Fri's quiz.

* Well attended quiz with participation that increased after the first few questions.
* Participants split into four teams.
* Clear early lead established by Team III. Several last second correct answers by teams.
* Accusations of (un)fairplay traded between Team I and everyone.
* Great questions - lots of applause for both questions and answers.

Winners: Team III (Jaya, Farah, Mukul, Rahul D, Soumava, Zyfn, Vcat)
Runners Up: Team I (Naazneen, Umeed, + 4 others)

Report by Vcat

BC Cup 2010 Report

This year’s edition saw one major change in terms of format of the quiz : The quiz was entirely individual this time, even in the later stages.

Format:
First, an elim determines the seeds and the 8 qualifiers. The qualifiers then face off one-on one according to seeds. Every match consists of a home leg and an away leg. Homeleg is basically direct questions. If one gets a direct question wrong wich the opponent answers, it counts as an away goal and is used for tie breakers (as per UEFA rules)

Group stages
The quiz started with a 20 question reasonably simple elim. The top 8 scorers qualified for the knockout stages. The elims were a lot closer than last year and also a bit more high scoring with the cut off at 7.5 /20. The seeds were as follows:

1.Bikash Mahapatra 2. Srinath Satyanaryanan 3. J Ramanand 4. Suraj Menon 5. Annanya Deb 6. Omkar Nene 7. Sameer Deshpande 8. Suvojit Chakraborty

The Quarter Finals:

QF1
Bikash v Suvojit ,
Bikash started very well taking a quick lead. The score was at 3-1 with 2 questions to go and Suvojit pulled off a great comeback to get both to tie 3-3. In the sudden death tie-breaker Bikash correctly identified a tearful Australian captain while Suvojit misplaced him by about 20 years.
Final score: 3-3, Away goals 1-1 Bikash Wins on Tiebreaker

QF2
Srinath v Sameer
Srinath continued his sublime form from the elims and took this match quite comfortably. He lost the away leg 2-1 but made up with a 3-1 home win to take the match on aggregate.
Final Score:5 -3 Srinath wins on aggregate

QF3
Ramanand v Omkar Nene
Ramanand won this one quite comfortably with good performances in both legs
Final Score: 5-2 Ramanand wins on aggregate

QF4
Suraj v Annanya
This turned out to be the toughest set of the quarter finals perhaps fitting in retrospect as the match was between last year’s winner and this years winner. Annanya got out of this one with a hard fought 1-0 victory.
Final Score: 1-0 Annanya wins on aggregate

The Semi Finals

SF1
Bikash v Annanya
Yet another very hard fought match. The match ended in a tie on aggregate and on away goals. Annanya clinched it in the tiebreaker.
Final score: 4-4 Away goals 1-1 Annanya wins on tiebreaker

SF2
Srinath v Ramanand
Srinath hit top form for this match and won it with a few questions to spare. Luck in terms of questions was a major factor, but Srinath did have some cracking answers.
Final score: 6-2 Srinath wins on aggregate

The Final
Srinath v Annanya
This was match where the lead was exchanged so many times, that we’ve lost count. The score after several lead changes was poised at 4-4, away goals 1-1 going into the final 9 questions for Srinath. Annanya had a couple of great cracks to hit 2 away goals, while Srinath managed to crack a very tough question on obscure chess. In the end, the match ended with Annanya winning on aggregate 6-5.
Final score 6-5, Annanya Deb wins on aggregate

The winner for BC Cup 2010 is Annanya Deb
Runner up: Srinath Satyanarayanan

Please leave your opinions in the comments section.

The BC Cup 2010

An individual, knock out, FA Cup inspired quiz to crown the Best Sports quizzer. It is by far the biggest sports quiz we have heard of.*

QMs: Yash Marathe, Aniket Khasgiwale and Aditya Gadre
Theme: Sports
Teams: Individual
Restrictions: (or the lack of one) Open quiz. Everyone is welcome

When? 12:30 pm, Saturday, 12th June 2010
Where? The Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune
Registration: Free registration. You need to register by mailing aditya[at]bcqc.org or yashcmarathe[at]gmail.com or call Aditya at 9881101291. This is required as we need to get elim sheets printed.
Prizes: Landmark Vouchers

* We have not heard of too many sports quizzes :)

Report on the inaugural BC Cup last year is here.

WQC Pune round - results

Organised by: IQA
Conducted in Pune by: Suvajit (many thanks!)
Venue: Symbiosis Law School, Pune

Local Results (from memory & Aditya Gadre) - the 'worst' section score in brackets:
1st: Kunal Sawardekar: 92 (+4)
2nd: Ramanand: 82 (+8)
3rd: Suraj Menon: 76
4th: Salil/Akhil/Aditya G: 59

Number of participants: ~30
For more: keep an eye on this link.
Bombay results here.