Saturday, March 26, 2005

Prahelika: The Quiz at PICT Concepts

Set By: Nikhil Kundargi and Neel Mehta

Results:

1st: J Ramanand & BV Harish Kumar (PSPL & Infosys)

2nd: Siddharth Dani & Kunal Sawardekar (VIT & FC)

3rd: Gaurav Sabnis & Sarika Chuni (IBM & Times of India)

Also: Salil Bijur & Ganesh Hegde (VIT), Meghashyam Shirodkar & Aniruddha Kasbekar (EXL & VIT), Arvind Iyengar and Aditya Pethe (MESCOE)


Remarks:

- The questions in this quiz, though good were quite easy. Also, some of them were not original. The elims were very high scoring, with the top qualifiers getting an astronomical 31/42, which shows you how easy the quiz was.

- There were a numner of technical Snafus, including the fact that one visual connect had the answers on the slide itself.

- There was a bit of controversy involving the name of Geriatrix's wife (the QMs said it wasn't ever revealed and someone said it was revealed to be Myopia in "The Secret Weapon"). However, the QMs stood fast, and research by your correspondent has proved them right (insofar as the name does not occur in "Secret Weapon", at least). We await comments by more dedicated Asterix readers on this one.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

MIT Intechsication Quiz

Organised by: Ruman Tambe & Kedar Toraskar


Results:

1st: Kunal Thakar & Siddharth Dani (VIT)

2nd: Kunal Sawardekar & Ulka Athale (FC)

3rd: Salil Bijur & Ganesh Hegde (VIT)

Also: Anupam Akolkar and Aniruddha Kasbekar (VIT), MIT Alandi, Srinivas Kulkarni & Aditya Pethe (MESCOE)


Remarks:


-The quiz was universally acknowledged as the best MIT Quiz ever. That's not saying much, but it must be said.

-There was an inexplicable preponderance of Astronomy and Astrology questions. About 1/5th of all questions were star-based.

-The quiz featured what is easily the most amazing question I have ever heard in a Pune quiz (I would have said any quiz, but how can you compete with Mood-I?).

Q: Connect Evelyn Waugh and Elvis Presley.

A: They both died in the bathroom.

-Although it did not live up to the expectations of the Quizzing Elite, I think the organisers deserve to be commended for a decent first attempt at setting a quiz.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Pragya - The quiz in Rennaissance at Bharati Vidyapeeth

This quiz will be right up there in the Hall Of Quizzing Disasters. We got some premonitions of what was awaiting us when the elimination paper had MCQs with gems such as "Where was the FICCI annual meeting held this year?"
a)Calcutta b) Madras c) Bombay d) Ahmedabad

I had teamed up with Anirudh Kasbekar and we got a call at ten PM saying that we had qualified. On reaching the venue, we found out that Dani and Ganesh's team hadn't qualified. They are the India specialists and their performance was definitely better than ours. In fact, no VIT team had qualified. We had written our college name as only PICT, although Anirudh hails from VIT. Maybe that was the reason we got through. A new innovation at the quiz was the selection of FIVE teams. The quizmasters seem to be devout numerologists. The teams were from PICT/VIT, MESCOE, 2 BVP and AFMC.

The first round progressed well. The next one was a buzzer audio, video round. The buzzers were the most technologically advanced ones available in the neighborhood sarkari office. Just push the plunger and it goes ting-tong. The priority resolution? No problemo. They had trained audio experts who had finely honed auditory powers that enabled them to decide who pressed first. Curiously, those who pressed with greater gusto seemed to prevail over those who pressed first. Over buzzer was the latest model where they had done away wit the tumblers also. It had a hole wherein you had to insert an old marker pen and press it down for it to buzz. When the auditory expert's decision seemed to consistently go against the AFMC team, they got irked and stormed to the well and were somehow placated. The next question, they and an other team pressed the buzzer simultaneously. And, the AFMC team, having blundered in thinking they had ringed first, blurted out the answer. The quizmaster was furious at this blasphemy and fined the AFMC guys TEN points. Their shell-shocked expressions would have provided them practice on how to react in the battlefield when shrapnel are flying all around them. The guy manning the computer had the habit of playing a new audio question without intimating us. This led to some teams (including us) thinking that the previous question was been played fully and not the next ones. Many times, we were jolted into reality only when the BVP buzzers rang out all around. The next blooper occurred at the end, when there was a tie for both the first and third places. The teams from MESCOE and BVP decided to play it safe and forgo the tiebreaker. The organizers initially agreed. Then they declared that the first prize will be shared by the two teams and the second prize and third prizes will go to the other two teams. Soon, we realized that the second placed team would get more than the winning teams. This was not at all what they wanted. The teams tied for the first place protested vigorously and the tiebreakers took place. The question in the tiebreaker was "Who was the second Prime minister of India." The winning team answered correctly but the QM was adamant that they were wrong. Then, he declared the President's name. Unfortunately, he named the second Prime minister of India. The question was scrapped after five minutes of passionate debate. Then was the turn of the AFMC and BVP playoff for the third place. The QM read "How many centuries did SRT score in…." and AFMC pressed the buzzer. The QM stopped midway and looked at them with an expectant and gloating face. Flabbergasted, AFMC requested that he complete the question. They were not heeded and had to answer. They said '34'. With a positively mirthful expression, the QM answered. "Wrong. I meant in International matches. And the answer is 31." I still have a nagging suspicion that if the QM had receive 31 as an answer, he would still have given it wrong and revealed gloatingly that he had wanted the no of total centuries. All in all, this was a quiz that will linger in my memory for a long time to come.

p.s The audience consisted of all eight people while there were six organizers on stage.

Nikhil Kundargi

Sunday, March 13, 2005

On Connects - II


Part I of this post appeared ages ago - apologies for such a large gap!

And if you don't answer, then the booted bony thing with five toes on the end of my leg will soon connect sharply with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers.
- Edmund Blackadder to Baldrick, "Ink and Incapability"

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected."
William Plomer

Problems with Connects - Quality

A lot of people hate and dislike connects. I think this is because either they've seen a lot of bad connect questions or just don't have the flair for it. I think the former has more to do with this aversion than the latter.

Q. Connect a picture of a newspaper, a collection of people, someone looking for something, images and so on.
A. Google - Google News, Groups, Search, Images etc.
[Quoted by Sohel from one of his bad quizzing experiences]

With questions like these, it's easy to see why connects have such a bad reputation. Anyone, in any which warped way, can collect 2 or more items and label it a connect. Worse, it isn't apparent to them that the question sucks. The mistake others make is to think this is a generic issue with connect questions. I would venture to guess that even the other (original) questions of such a quiz-setter would not pass any version of quality control, so it should be a reflection on the setter's abilities. Business quizzes have suffered from a similar problem of perception - there are so many of them that inevitably quality suffers and the genre is badmouthed leading a lot of people to believe that business quizzes cannot be interesting (which would be untrue).

At the same time, I do think that some quizzers (including good ones) somehow aren't naturally good at solving connect questions and seem distinctly uncomfortable with them. As a reflection of this, you would also not see connects in quizzes they set. Speaking from experience, I think it comes easy to some rather than others. Again, this shouldn't discriminate against the good connect question (which some of these quizzers are usually liable to look upon as a second-rate novelty) just because it doesn't fit into their style. Just because I am not that good at buzzer rounds shouldn't mean that I don't accept situations where they make sense (but that's a different discussion :-) ).

Another instance where quality is likely to suffer is when you have formats like Pyramidal Connects where the answers to groups of questions are in turn connected to form new answers and so on for about 2 or 3 levels. My observation is that it gets really difficult to sustain the quality of some of the questions. For instance, in one case, I was trying a pyramidal connection with the ultimate objective of connecting 4 questions whose answers lead to the 4 Holmes novels. For "scarlet", I had no option but to go for "colours of the red" as an intermediate answer with some good questions leading to it. I just couldn't help filling up some of the holes with not-so-good questions. The same was observed at Chakravyuuh 2002.

Possible Solutions

Creating good connections takes practice and experience. Many people have set appalling connections along the way, but have learnt to refine them from criticisms. It would be best to try out these questions on fellow quizzers or at local "net sessions" like at the BCQC. But don't upset formal & competitive quizzes by including suspect connect questions - atleast give it more intense scrutiny than other questions.

Remember that you can't just take a couple of items and find some vague subjective relationship that only you can see. For e.g., connecting the films of Shahid Kapur and Kareena Kapoor only because they're dating each other is a strict no-no!

Problems with Connects - Overuse

Another problem that surfaced spectacularly at the 2004 Chakravyuuh quiz was that the connection question was overused, especially at the cost of other more straightforward questions. About 50% of that quiz was made up of connects and as could be expected when there was such a deluge of them, many of them weren't good.

The Chakravyuuh quizzes have had a history of including more connections than probably any other local quiz. Where the organisers of the 4th edition slipped was in believing that a good quiz had to have a number of connects. Which is not true. A good quiz fundamentally needs to have good questions, be they connections or other types of questions, even the usual straightforward ones. This condition is always paramount, and connections need to fit into this framework. IMO, this is where the organisers goofed up. I was happy to note that in this year's Chakravyuh the connect questions were present and adequately employed, and most of them were decent to good.

In this sense, the connect question is like a googly or the doosra in a spin-bowler's arsenal. The doosra is best used sparingly in addition to the stock delivery which should always be consistent. If he overdoes the doosra, he becomes predictable and even monotonous. The good googly provides a nippy surprise and adds to the spell rather than distracting from it.

Possible Solutions

You don't have to include connects in a quiz set if you can't or don't want to. If people (especially senior quizzers :-) ) give you the impression that connects are a must, neglect that - it's more important to set a good quiz rather than spoil it by adding poor connects to the mix. But as mentioned earlier, no harm in trying some out in lab conditions. New entrants to the so-called "college quizzing" formats are usually eager to try these out to show they've "arrived", but caution is advised here!

Problems with Connects - Points breakup

A problem that usually accompanies connect questions (and doesn't plague regular kinds) is usually one of splitting points among teams when it takes more than one team to give a satisfactory answer. This happens all the while in quizzes, so here's an illustration:

Q. Connect Nusli Wadia, Christopher Lee, Alyque Padamsee
A. Jinnah (grandson, actor who played him in the biopic, actor who played him in Gandhi)
Suppose a team answers "Jinnah" but isn't able to give all three relations. Another team then fills in the remaining details. Now who gets the points? Should it be split among the two or given solely to the second (who may not have initially known it was Jinnah, but just based it on the earlier team's response)? There are a lot of headaches here for the quizmaster and invariably, this leads to carping among any affected teams.

There are several variations of this case: one team provides the "funda" (or the central idea behind the connect), others fill in the exact relationship between the elements. Or there are too many elements and not a single team can provide all the connections.

In several cases, split points are awarded to the teams such that the combined value exceeds the original value of the question! If in the above example, the first team got 5 for the connection and team #2 got 10 for saying the connection and the rest of the stuff, the value of the answer now is 15 rather than the initial 10. If the quiz is being held in a situation where every other question is strictly worth 10, this could cause a problem.

Possible Solutions

Principally, this issue crops up either when the question is actually too bulky to be effectively solved by one team or if the quizmaster isn't clear as to what aspects are important in the question. Some predetermination in this regard will help a great deal. The person asking the question should already be clear as to what he wants, and correctly informing the teams will prevent any suggestions of bias or ineptitude. For instance, declaring that the "funda" gets half the worth and that a satisfactory explanation gets the other half will help these decisions. Or keeping an extremely wooden face (watching some film starring any supermodel would help hone this) when listening to the teams and only awarding full points to the best answer could be the solution (though this is quite difficult in practice!). Whatever be the approach, being consistent throughout is of primary importance.

In terms of elements in the connect, connections where teams are expected to give the connection and make a satisfactory explanation of the relationships, as a thumb-rule I suggest not having more than 3 or 4 elements at worst. Also, while setting the question it is worthwhile pondering over whether some of these elements are really necessary and if they're there just to make the numbers. If so, it is best to cull them.

Like in many other areas, principles of simplicity and reducing unnecessary redundancies apply here as well.

Additional notes on types of connects

I have mentioned some kinds of connects in the last post, but while thinking on this topic, I realised there was one more distinction to make. Over the last few years, quiz finals have typically had questions shown on screen, and as a result a greater number of audio-visuals and visual connects (earlier, quizmasters would read out questions from their notes and perhaps have a special a/v round). Some of these connects tend to be different in what I call their depth.

Essentially, Depth indicates how much does one need to know about an element in the connect to make the connection. An example will help here:

Q. Connect Linus Torvalds, Lucille Ball, Gerhard Schroeder, Benjamin Franklin (paraphrasing a question from Quiz-o-mania 2005)
A. "Peanuts" characters - Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Franklin
Compare this to a question like:
Q. Connect a bird character from the Peanuts comics, Max Yasgur, Jimi Hendrix, Pt. Ravi Shankar (paraphrasing another question from Quiz-o-mania 2005)
A. Woodstock (a character from the comic, his dairy farm was the location, both played at the festival)
In the earlier question, one didn't have to know a great deal about Torvalds, Lucille Ball and the rest, for that wasn't the point here. Merely identifying them would do. While in the second case, simply identifying them wouldn't help - you needed to know a little more about the people. Actually the key difference is that Benjamin Franklin could have been replaced by James Franklin and it wouldn't have mattered.

Many connect questions are like this - in some, the answer has nothing to do with the people or items shown, only the labels or names contribute to the answer. In the latter case, you need to know a bit more about the actual elements in the question who are not at all substitutable. The first case is superficial - I would call it a lexical connection (instead of a pejorative "shallow") where the words by themselves are important, but not details of the elements the words are represented by. The second case is deeper, and rewards quizzers who have a deeper knowledge of the elements - perhaps it ought to be called a semantic connection.

When people say lateral connection (and I hear this term a lot), they usually seem to mean a "lexical" kind, because this isn't a straightforward one to answer if you've not realised its type. You spend a lot of brainpower trying to work out an improbably link between Torvalds and Lucille Ball (as we did :-)). I don't think it is necessary and even practical to announce this distinction while asking connect questions (unlike in the case of distinctions like "radial/cascading" where I feel the teams ought to be told), but atleast quizzers need to keep this in mind while attempting such questions. Another example pair to round this off, both by Gaurav and asked at Chakravyuuh 2001:

Q. Connect the films "First Blood" and "Junior" and the Olympics
A. Nicknames of Mark Waugh ("the forgotten Waugh/war", "Junior" and "Olympics" for his five ducks in a particular series)

Q. Connect the films "Paper Moon", "The Wedding Planner" and "Blue Lagoon"
A. Tennis wives, also actresses - Tatum O'Neal, Mrs. Sampras (!), Brooke Shields.

Summary

Well, reviled or not, connects are here to stay. People making connect questions are exhorted, for the sake of the mental health of quizzers & their own physical well-being, to invest the same (if not more) amount of diligence and care as they would for "normal" questions. Connects can be subjective beings, so get feedback if you can on their quality before you trust your own judgement. If you believe as I do that quiz questions are meant to be answered and not to show others what puny intellectual mortals they are, then approach connects such that they can be answered by teams on the basis of their knowledge and intelligence.

While asking connects, always expect stones. Always!

From now on, I'll connect the dots my own way.
- Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes", Bill Watterson

Thursday, March 10, 2005

BVP Vidyut Quiz

Organised by: BVP College of Engineering Electrical Department.


Results:

1st: Rahul Gokhale and Mohit Chabra (SCOE)

2nd: Anish Bhat (SCOE) and Kunal Sawardekar (FC)

3rd: Sidharth Dani and Anupam Akolkar (VIT)

Also: Vasukeshav Sharma snd Chandrakant Nair (AFMC); Nikhil Kundargi and Neel Mehta (PICT); Ganesh Hegde and Aniruddha Kasbekar (VIT)

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

BTW...

I forgot to mention this in the Chakravyuuh post. Our team name that day was The Taatyaa Vinchu Code...

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

SCOE Osiris '05

Set by: Anish Bhat and Akshay Raut.


Results

1st: Kunal Thakar (VIT) & Kunal Sawardekar (FC)

2nd: Mihir Shah & Rahul Gokhale (SCOE)

3rd: Salil Bijur & Anupam Akolkar (VIT)

Also: Siddharth Dani & Ganesh Hegde (VIT), Srinivas Kulkarni & Aditya Pethe (MESCOE), Ashwin Date and Mohit Chabra (SCOE)


Remarks

The quiz, Headbang, was very rock music/Simpsons/Hitchiker's Guide/Calvin & Hobbes heavy, reflecting the QMs tastes to a very great extent. The elims were quite good, IMO, with some very workable questions, though they were again very partial to some topics. The finals, too were good, though some of the visual connects were a little weak. All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, though some participants who were not quite with the Quizeitgeist might disagree.

Chakravuuh 2005

Held on the 6th of March

Results

1st: Amit Garde & Sudarshan Purohit
2nd: J. Ramanand and B.V.Harishkumar
3rd: Anand Sivashankar & Vibhendu Tiwari
Other finalists: Shivaji & Vivek, Meghashyam & Anupam, Shrikanth (spelling?)+1

Set and conducted by Siddharth Natarajan, Shabbir, Abhishek Nagaraj et al

Report

Finally, a Chakravyuuh quiz the way we used to know it! After the embarassing aberration of last year, Siddharth & gang gave us a good quiz. A few organising glitches as we just waited desultorily for the finals to begin, but none too major.

Tough elims but interesting questions. The finals had their usual share of connects as befits a Chakravyuuh, but this time they were more balanced and good. But I felt they put too many elements even in the simplest of radial connects because of which in many such questions, the explanation of all the elements with the central theme could not be given. Case in point for me was the Emirates question where the tough part was getting the Emirates connection, but not explaining the Arsenal stadium relation shouldn't have mattered. Anyway, the stadium element didn't add a great deal to the qn IMO. A case where they got the balance right was in the VAT connection which was well made, as was the Mandrake one. There were a couple of sitters, and also a reappearance of the cascade connections.

Amit & Sudarshan answered some very good questions to never be in doubt of finishing first towards the end. BVHK & I started well but then couldn't keep the tempo, and also fell foul of not be able to complete some of the connects. Special mention must be made of Anand-Vibhendu & Shivaji-Vivek who had their moments.

The "Chakravyuuh" round wouldn't have affected top spot, but there was enough to play for the remaining teams. Luckily, we got our first two qns right to seal the second spot. Shivaji-Vivek were not so fortunate, and lost 3rd spot to Anand-Vibhendu. I think the Chakravyuuh round should probably have at least one more level if you want to make it tempting for the teams to go further inside.

The turnout was a little less than what I had expected, and we also had a few of the regulars missing. Still, it was an enjoyable quiz and one befitting past editions. This is the first time no COEPian has figured among the winners, so that's a first. What didn't change was Harish & me completing a hat-trick of second places (3 out of 3 attempts). Ivan Lendl, the English cricket team at the World Cup, Martin Scorcese - we have some idea how you felt :-)

Past winners

2001 - Shrirang Raddi & Amalesh Mishra
2002 - Shrirang Raddi & Amalesh Mishra
2003 - Niranjan Pedanekar & Samrat Sengupta
2004 - Gaurav Sabnis & Neeraj Sane

Abhimanyu 2005

Held on the 6th of March

Results

1st: Akshay Palve ("Mahabharata")
2nd: Abhishek Nagaraj ("Company name etymologies")
Other finalists: Harshad Sardeshmukh ("World Cup Cricket"), Sharmad Joshi ("English Premier League") and Kapeesh Saraf ("The films of Amitabh Bachchan")

Set and conducted by: Ramanand & Harish

Abhimanyu is COEP's solo quiz for COEP students conducted in a Mastermind-like format. Conducted as part of the larger Chakravyuuh event, this year saw 45 participants in the elims of which 5 qualified for the finals. Akshay won both the elims & the finals though he was given a close fight by the rest, especially by Abhishek.

List of winners at "Abhimanyu"
2001 - Rahul Srinivas - Asterix comics
2002 - Sumeet Kulkarni - Formula-One
2003 - Siddharth Natarajan - Archie comics
2005 - Akshay Palve - The Mahabharata

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Phoenix '05, MESCOE

4th Mar 2005

Lord of the Rings: the Entertainment Quiz

Set and conducted by: Pratap Nagarkar

Results

1st: Aditya Udas (MESCOE) + Kunal Sawardekar (FC)

2nd: Kunal Thakar & Anand Ayyadurai (VIT)

3rd: Siddharth Dani & Salil Bijur (VIT)

4th: Arvind Iyengar & Aditya Pethe (MESCOE)

5th: Shriniwas Kulkarni (MESCOE) + Anupam Akolkar (VIT)

6th: Ganesh Hegde & Anirudh Kasbekar (VIT)

Report

'Lord of the Rings' was the quiz at Phoenix, organised by the Mech. dept. of MESCOE. Ent quizzes are popular in MESCOE; Hollywood & rock being the favourite topics. The quiz was set by one of their alumnus Pratap, known for his weakness for movie themes and OSTs.

The first round was 'Movie Dialogues' where Anand & Kunal T. of VIT got of to a flying start. It was followed by rounds on 'Music' and 'Movies'. The next one was the audio round where the MESCOE-FC combine of Aditya & Kunal S. dominated.

Next came the specialities round, the topics comprised Indian rock bands, OSTs, Serials (western), Books, Media Personalities and Comics. The selection was made by teams with scores in the ascending order, thereby the top two teams (KT-AA, AU-KS) left with little choice (books & OSTs in that order).

The last round, and the most controversial one was 'Hate thy Neighbour'. 6 questions per team. Negatives for all questions (even for pass). Weightage for questions decreasing from 25 to 5. The 1st two could be thrown to any team. Acting skills came in handy here for all, especially maintaining expressions/reactions. KT-AA and AU-KS were the favourite targets, yet managed to maintain their lead. The finish was close and the MESCOE-FC combine won narrowly by answering their last 3 make-or-break questions correctly.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Brand Equity Quiz 2005

Results

1st: Ranjan Banerjee and Ajay Kolhatkar (Renaissance)
2nd: Shrirang Raddi & Mohit (Infosys)
3rd: Savoir Faire
4th: Synechron
5th: Amit Garde & J. Ramanand (Persistent Systems)
6th: Wipro GE

Set and conducted: Derek O'Brien and Associates

Report

There was a less of a lot of things that the Brand Equity Quiz usually provides. First, the budgets seem to have taken a big hit with the participants not getting too many gifts (that they've grown accustomed to paying for in the entry fee). The advertising was low-key compared to usual BEQ standards, reflecting in both the reduced count of audience & teams. And as if it was all rubbing off, even Derek O'Brien was a tad subdued compared to past performances.

What didn't change, however, were the results and quality of the quiz. Renaissance further embellished their reputation as the best Business quizzers in town with their 2nd win in a row making it their 3rd in 4 years. Their closest competitor has always been the team of Shrirang-and-partner. Shrirang was squeezing in his favourite quiz before dashing off to catch a flight and providing a stiff challenge to the eventual winners. It went down to the last question, with Shrirang having lost points the penultimate question to squander a slender lead. Ranjan pressed the buzzer on the last qn without bothering to answer the question, and though Renaissance lost points, they prevented Shrirang from taking the prize (and he knew the answer) in a smart show of gamesmanship.

In the end the best team won despite a late Shrirang surge who was shaking off sluggish form earlier (he couldn't identify a thinly disguised Sabeer Bhatia). Renaissance, in our minds, are good enough to win the National finals but have narrowly missed making the finals twice in the past. This blog wishes them all fortune and looks forward to a finish befitting their talent.

The other consistent thing was us at Persistent finishing 5th. For the last three years, we have made the lower half of the finals our own! Just underscores the fact that between Amit, Samrat & me, we're decent enough general quizzers to make the finals, but not good enough at the Business specialty to do better. Harish & Manish Manke of Infy were seventh after the elims (which had only 5 questions and a crossword to solve - we were second at it to Shrirang & his colleague).

The questions were a lot of the usual kinds, not really my style. The theme this time was films, following cricket & politics in preceding years. The theme doesn't indicate the bent of questions, of course, just the surrounding gimmickry. Though I must say, they do a good job of production which goes down well with the audience.

I've saved the best for last. For years, Samrat held the position of sle@ze king in local quizzing (i.e. one who gets those kinds of questions right). His absence has now been filled by Harish who made a strong challenge yesterday night by correctly answering "The 1st Pl@yb0y Pl@ym@te" to a question. He was of course warmly feted in front of everyone, including his father and duly rewarded for his endeavour. This promises to be a "seminal" (a word much joked upon in BC circles) moment just like the one that made Samrat's name at AFMC 5 years ago.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

COEP Fervor Quiz

2nd march 2005 - Organised and set by Siddharth Natrajan


Results

Winners: Srinivas Kulkarni & Abhijeet Erande (MESCOE)

2nd: Siddharth Dani & Anupam Akolkar (VIT)

3rd: Ganesh Hegde & Aniruddha Kasbekar (VIT)

4th: Kunal Thakar & Salil Bijur (VIT)

5th: Mihir Shah & Rahul Gokhale (SCOE)

6th: Abhishek Nagraj + 1 (COEP/PIET/whatever its called today)


Report


  • Although a Sci/Tech quiz, the QM managed to keep the audience entertained, including the non-engineering junta, which consisted exclusively of me.

  • Audience participation in the quiz was amazing, especially by the non-engineering junta :-).

  • Following hallowed COEP traditions, creative answers and those that defied the laws of physics were rewarded with bananas. The finalists took care to ensure that none were wasted.

  • The audience were treated to a 10 minute monologue on turbocharging, supercharging and their ramifications on engine RPM, power, speed, the ozone layer and the national economy by one of the finalists. In an attempt to restore order and sanity to the proceedings, the QM awarded them their full 10 points.

  • The questions were generally good, though some of them were suspiciously similar to Chakravyuh 2004 questions.