Tuesday, December 28, 2010

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

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

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.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

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

Saturday, November 13, 2010

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.

Monday, November 01, 2010

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.....)

Thursday, October 28, 2010

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, ...

Thursday, October 14, 2010

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.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

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

Friday, October 01, 2010

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 BelowFor 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)

Friday, August 27, 2010

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...)

Saturday, July 31, 2010

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

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

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.

Monday, June 07, 2010

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.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

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.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Extentia intra-company quiz IV - report

Date: Fri, May 28, 2010. Location: Extentia, Lane 5, KP
QM: Dinesh Paripatyadar. Questions set by Rohan Nakar of Extentia and BCQC.

First round: Email quiz sent to everyone last Tuesday.
Toppers got 15/15 correct (ranked in order of email time-stamp for answers sent)

Theme: General tending toward India-centric
Participants split into 4 teams of about 6 each. Turnout was higher than previous events.
Format: IR with 25 questions. Quiz ended at 20 on account of time.
17/20 questions answered by teams.

Notes:

Competitive event among 3 teams, with one team not scoring.
Some teams were misled by the ‘discuss the wrong answer’ strategy employed by neighboring teams.
No violence reported

Winners: Team B with Chetan, Umeed, Vcat, Zyfn, Manuela, Prashant M among others.
Runners up: Team D with Jaya, Melanie and several others. They went past Farah/Louis/others’ Team A by 0.5 pts.


Report by 'Vcat'

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Mahaquizzer 2010 - Pune results

Organised by: KQA
Conducted in Pune by: Vishwajeet Narvekar (many thanks as usual!)
Venue: Landmark, Pune (thanks to the staff for turning up so early and for the arrangements)
School Winner: Roopak Karalkar (22)
College Winner: Sukrit Munjal(32)
Ladies Winner: Meghna Sreenivasan (11)
Open Category Winner: J. Ramanand (69)

Number of participants: ~40 to 50
Official final standings: keep an eye on this link.


Updated on 6 Jun
* Links to Top 100 results, local winners, and rankings in the ladies, college & school categories.
* Link to the Mahaquizzer 2010 Q & A.
* Four people from Pune were in the top 100 (Ramanand, Kunal S, Suraj, and Salil), with a few more BCQC members from other centres. Roopak K was ranked 11th in the list of school students.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

The Landmark In-Store Movie Quiz - Report

The Landmark In-Store Movie Quiz was successfully concluded on Saturday evening. Quizmasters Niranjan and Suraj conducted the proceedings with great (and dare I say, Dereksian) flair, while Harish and I provided logistical and moral support. The quizmasters asked about 60-70 regular questions to the audience at large, followed by a final round of about 5-6 questions to four teams of the top scorers in the regular round. The audience for the quiz consisted of about 50-60 Landmark patrons (all adults, and thankfully so, seeing as Niranjan took the time to speculate on the strip club-visiting habits of the participants) with a core of about 20 staying through the quiz.

In sum, fun was had by all. Sadly, I did not note the names of the finalists, so perhaps Niranjan can let us know when he sees this.

Report by Kunal Sawardekar

This was the 3rd Landmark in-store BCQC quiz. The earlier ones were on the themes of Comics and the Books of Harry Potter.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Quiz Show - an informal Movie quiz at Landmark

We're going plane-crazy on Saturday evening. With a quiz on movies. If you're a quizzing enthusiast (read 'drooling geek') show up. If you're a movie buff, we'll be waiting for you. If you are both, then come on right in. If you are neither, then this quiz is tailor-made for you!

maajraa kyaa hai?: an informal movie quiz by the BCQC and Landmark, particularly for non-quizzers.
main kahaan huun?: Landmark, SGS Mall, Pune
maal kab pahunchegaa?: between 5 and 7 pm, Saturday (22nd May)
kitne aadmi hai?: there are no teams, no formalities, no registrations. Just show up, take a seat or stand by, and participate.

That's about it, really. See you on Saturday.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Private rumblings from the Pune Brand Equity 2010 quiz

Niranjan and I teamed up for the Pune round of Brand Equity 2010 quiz where we finished 3rd. Neither of us is any good at biz-quizzing, and so admittedly, a mercenary attitude fueled the decision to travel the entire diameter of Pune. Despite the middle-level placing (not bad, given the presence and three-blade-close-shave elimination of some very good teams), we can't help a couple of rants.

On the difference between data mining and data compression

Or, to compress the question, the various differences between data compression. I hate having to answering such school-type questions1, but I guess we're always ready to pawn our soul for 10 points :-). So we defined it as being techniques "for reducing the size of data for transmission/storage etc" (paraphrasing), but were ruled wrong. I'm not sure what the correct answer was, but I think it was to the effect of "extracting only that info from data that is needed" (memory fails me, as I was still reeling from the surprise). Without going deeply into data compression, there are different kinds: lossy (like in MP3s where you say that some data/info is unimportant enough to be thrown away) or lossless (such as in file compression, where you have a different, smaller form of your data to cheaply store or transmit). I'm not sure what was needed here.

The quizmaster did assert that he knew what he was looking for, he knew it would be one of this tricky ones, and he had sources who helped him "nail this one". He also did apologise a couple of times later, saying that he knew it was one of those borderline ones (i.e. for the inherent ambiguity, not that he was wrong about it), which was kind of him, I suppose. However:

  • It's a terrible kind of question to ask - school homework-ish at best. Neither was it entertaining.
  • If a quiz-setter knows a question/answer is inherently vague or prone to misinterpretation, then he'd be better off not asking it
  • If it's not a domain you are familiar with, then you are dependent on hearing keywords in such answers - not a good idea
  • Don't ask for 'layman' interpretations of technical questions - my layman lives in Shivajinagar, yours may live in Salt Lake.
On yet another case study of the demerits of Direct-and-Pass

I don't have much of a problem with big quizzes being designed to appeal to non-quizzing audiences, but why must they mess with the fairness of the rounds? The use of D&P over Infinite Rebounds (Infinite Bounce to non-Pune quizzers) is a menace that everyone in the game knows about. Most (and all good) quizzes use the IR system for their regular rounds because it guarantees one thing : between two shots at questions for any team, all other teams will have had a chance to attempt a question. IR does not smooth the fairness of the content or the fortune of receiving an easy question. But unlike D&P, you can be assured that your team will not twiddle its thumbs while the rest get to answer. Think of it as all teams receiving (almost) the same number of deliveries to bat to, at any given interval in time.

Yet another illustration of this from the other day: after 2 rounds of passing (one forward, one reverse), the number of attempts (out of 12 questions): two: A, B, F; three: E; five: C, D. Five vs. Two - that kind of imbalance would never happen in IR.

(This is no reflection on the qualities of the other teams, esp. the winners - just a commentary on why a quiz format shouldn't be so uneven. Let luck of the draw play its role in the content and team placement, but not the number of attempts.)

So why do big quizzes still employ an outdated and inferior system? Makes no sense at all.


1. read up for the future: the difference between ink pens and fountain pens; between MP3s and MP4s; between first slip and third slip (about a feet?)

Brand Equity Quiz - Pune round results

Date: 14 May, 2010
Conducted by: Derek O'Brien
Venue: Ishanya , Pune

Turnoutt: 23 teams

Standings
1st: Infosys (C): Ajay & Jayakumar (95)
2nd: Advinus Therapeutics (A): Suraj & Siddharth (58)
3rd: Cognizant (B): Niranjan & Ramanand (55)
4th: Neo Green (D): Shubhodeep & Sandeep (40)
5th: RBI (F): Mohana & Priyam Bhattacharya (35)
6th: QED Baton (E): Nikhil & Tejas (10)
(IBM - Vishwajeet & Ramanathan just missed out)

Report
The theme of the year was 'social networking', so much so that it also was the answer to a question. This was one of the few really good questions in an otherwise routine Brand Equity quiz round. The finals began with a round of direct multiple-choice questions (no passing), went on to a round of 'dry' questions, followed by a 'identify' visual round (reversed passing) and another 'dry' round. The fifth round was an audio-video round, at the end of which the last team dropped out (there was a two-way tie for the 5th place). In the final buzzer round, 3 teams left the stage after 4 questions, and 2 questions later, the quiz ended as Infosys took an unassailable lead. However, the quiz had been decided in the 'identify' round thanks to a hat-trick of answers from the winners, who scooped up 35 points to leapfrog to the top, which they never relinquished since.

The questions zig-zagged from the immensely ordinary (such as identifying the poster of 'Kati Patang') to the slightly controversial ("the difference between data compression and data mining") and a couple of excellent ones (especially well-answered by Advinus). Last year's venue (the amphitheatre in the same location) had a better ambience than the banquet hall thingy for this time. For the quizzing geek, there was yet more evidence of the iniquities of not using Infinite Rebounds (Bounce), but quizzing philosophy has always been secondary in such events. The idea of asking audience members to ask prelims questions was more than off-putting. However, overall, the quiz was a lot less annoying than some other business quizzes, and the audience seemed to enjoy the show.

Questions from the prelims here.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

World Championship of Quizzing - Pune details

We have an announcement on the World Quizzing Championships, and the details of the Pune venue:
This is a solo written competition consisting of 8 sections (of 30 qns each) to be solved in 2 hours.

Date: 5th June 2010 (Saturday)

Time: Report by 3:30 pm. Quiz starts sharp at 4 pm, ends at 6 pm. Answers & Scoring will follow immediately.

Venue: Symbiosis Law School Auditorium, Symbiosis Law School, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune - 411004

Registration: Prior registration is mandatory to ensure your seat. Only very few extra answer sheets will be available for "on the spot" registrations, so confirmation is necessary.

Registration is free & open to all. To register, please contact the local coordinator as follows:

Pune Coordinator: Suvajit Chakraborty (+919370124365,chakrabortysuvajit at gmail dot com)

For the quiz format, visit this link.

Mahaquizzer 2010 (with Pune details)

The announcement for this year's Mahaquizzer follows. A short summary (with Pune venue details) is as follows:

When: 30 May (Sunday), 9 am onwards (timing to be confirmed)

Where in Pune: Landmark, SGS Mall, Moledina Road, Pune

To register: write to mahaquizzer@gmail.com with Pune in the subject line (since the venue may only has limited seating, it is recommended that you register in advance, by 23rd May).

Prizes: for the best quizzer, lady quizzer, school quizzer, college quizzer; as usual, the BCQC will sponsor additional prizes in some of these categories.

Note: the venue will not have desks, so you may want to get a writing pad along with your pen.

The full announcement from the KQA:


We will hold the sixth edition of Mahaquizzer across 14 cities on Sunday, 30 May 2010. The cities where centres are being offered are Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Guwahati, Panaji, Thrissur, Mysore and Coimbatore. If we are able to obtain permission, Singapore will also figure among the venues.

The Quiz

Mahaquizzer is the National Quizzing Championship. It is open to individual entrants, irrespective of age or other affiliations (though we do suggest that the taker is at least 12 years old). There is no entry fee--except in Kolkata where hall-hire expenses will be met thus.

As always, contestants are required to answer 150 questions over 90 minutes.

Four prizes will be given out in each city: Best Quizzer, Best Woman Quizzer, Best College Quizzer and Best School Quizzer.

The person recording the highest score across all centres will hold the title of Mahaquizzer for 2010. She/he will also be awarded the Wing Commander G.R. Mulky Trophy for Quizzing Excellence. This trophy will be presented during ASKQANCE, the KQA 27th Anniversary Open Quiz Festival scheduled for 19th and 20th June 2010.

The Question-setters

Mahaquizzer 2010 has been set by Arun Hiregange, Dibyendu Das, Thejaswi Udupa, Mitesh Agarwal and Ochintya Sharma. Mitesh Agarwal will coordinate the event across all centres.

How to register

  1. Participants interested in registering should mail Mahaquizzer@gmail.com (Mahaquizzer at gmail dot com)
  2. Please mention the city where you would like to appear from in the subject-header.
  3. Please do mention age and institutional affiliations if you are a student.
  4. Since seating is limited in many centres, local coordinators will work on a first-come first-served basis. Please register by Sunday 23 May 2010 to avoid disappointment.
  5. No entries will be accepted by email after the 23rd. However city coordinators may allow entries on the spot if there is adequate seating.
  6. You will receive a mail confirming your entry latest by 28th May 2010. If you fail to receive your confirmation, please text the details to either Mitesh Agarwal (98452-59423) or your city coordinator (see http://kqaquizzes.org for details).

Previous Editions

You can have a look at previous editions of the quiz (2005-2009) here: http://kqaquizzes.org/quizzes/

Venues

We are working on finalising the venues--a list with full addresses will be put up at http://kqaquizzes.org in a few days.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Baar Baar Deco (BCQC May Open Afternoon Quiz) - Results

Date: 9 May 2010

Set and Conducted by: Suraj Menon

Format:
Teams of 2 for elims. About 20 teams participated. 30 questions written elims.
Top 6 teams in finals. Participants from 7th-9th top teams chosen by finalist teams as draft picks. Teams of 3 for finals.
Finals: 1 written theme for free hit. 48 questions IR with round reversal

Results
1st: Team E - Salil Bijur, Aniket Khasgiwale and Nikhil Kumar Verma (draft) - 150pts
2nd: Team C - Niranjan Pedanekar, Aditya Gadre and Sameer Deshpande (subst. Arnold D'Souza) (draft)- 130pts
3rd: Team D - Kunal Sawardekar, Venkat Srinivasan and Gurudatt Bhobe (draft) - 120pts
4th: Team B - J. Ramanand, Yasho Tamaskar and Subhashish Das (draft) - 110pts
5th: Team F - Aditya Chandorkar + 1 + Vaibhav Bajpai (draft) - 95pts
6th: Team A - Prasanna Kumar, Rahul Nayak and Vikram Keskar(draft) - 80pts

Please leave your opinions in the comments section.

Dosvidaniya (BCQC May Open Morning Quiz) - Results

Date: 9 May 2010

Set and Conducted by: Aniket Khasgiwale

Format:
Teams of 2 for elims. About 20 teams participated. 25 questions written elims.
Top 6 teams in finals. Participants from 7th-9th top teams chosen by finalist teams as draft picks. Teams of 3 for finals.
Finals: 48 questions IR with round reversal

Results
1st: Team F - Kunal Sawardekar, Yasho Tamaskar and Subhashish Das (draft) - 125pts
2nd: Team A - Prasanna Kumar, Rahul Nayak and Anand Viswanathan (draft)- 65pts
3rd: Team B - Salil Bijur, Suvojit Chakraborty and Vikram Keskar (draft) - 65pts
4th: Team C - J. Ramanand, B.V. Harishkumar and Gurudatt Bhobe (draft) - 60pts
5th: Team D - Aditya Gadre, Suraj Menon and Sameer Deshpande (draft) - 60pts
6th: Team E - Rashmi Machado, Jaspreet Rikhraj and Bharath S (draft) - 35pts

Please leave your opinions in the comments section.

Monday, May 03, 2010

Extentia Company Quizzes - III

When: Fri, Apr 30, 2010.
Location: Extentia ITT, Rd 12, Kalyani Nagar
QM: Venkat Srinivasan

First round: BCQC set email quiz sent to all employees Monday. Rohan Nakar a regular topper got all 14.5/15 correct. 4 way tie for 2nd at 14.

Theme: General
Participants split into 4 teams of about 4 each
IR with 25 questions
21/25 questions answered by teams

Notes: Competitive quiz where all teams scored above 3 points each. Loads of applause for several questions. Several 'difficult' questions solved by all teams.

Winners: Team 1 led by Chetan Shetty, VP, Operations
Runners up: Team 3 led by Prashant Main, SEO Coordinator
Prizes: Crossword vouchers in various denominations for all winners.

Report by Venkat
Earlier Extentia quizzes here

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

BCQC May Open Quizzes

The BCQC presents two open quizzes in May 2010. Here are the details:

Administrivia

Date: 9th May (Sunday)

Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
(The nearest landmarks: The location is behind Domino's Pizza, near the new ICC Towers complex in which are situated shops such as Mainland China. The place is about 2 km from Pune University. This is a wikimapia map to the location.)

Contact: Phone: Suraj (98903 59065), Ramanand (97642 58560) Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org

'How to's: Up to two members per team; no prior registration needed; no entry fees

Prizes

(the same for each quiz)
Prizes for each finalist, for the Best College Team, the Best School Team, and the Best Newbie Team.
Lots of audience prizes.
Prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark (Pune) and the BCQC.

Morning: 'Dasvidaniya'


Quizmaster: Aniket Khasgiwale
Timings: 10:00 am to 12:30 pm (report by 9:45 am)
Flavour: General
Finals: Top six teams in the final, next 3 teams join the finalists after draft picks

Afternoon: 'Baar Baar Deco'

Quizmaster: Suraj Menon
Timings: 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm (report by 2:15 pm)
Flavour: Audio-Visual
Finals: Top six teams in the final, next 3 teams join the finalists after draft picks

A complete list of BC Opens

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Srujan 2010 - Quiz at TATA Motors

Set by : Aditya Gadre and Gaurav Singh Conducted by : Gaurav Singh
Standings
1st place: Suraj Menon and Vinay N : 85 pts
2nd place: Aniket Khasgiwale and Suvojit Chakraborty: 80 pts
3rd place: Meghashyam Shirodkar and J Ramanand : 75 pts 4th place : Salil and Venkat : 70 pts 5ht place: Kunal Sawardekar (solo) : 65 pts 6th place : PUMBA : 0 pts
The quiz started on a grim note as the MCQ pattern of the quiz was not appreciated by everyone. Further, there were some discrepencies in some questions. The audio-visual round was well appreciated. Yasho Tamaskar and Yash Marathe narrowly missed a final birth. The only non-BCQC team in the final was a team from PUMBA. The finals were well recieved. There were problems regarding uniformity of distribution of the questions. Some difficult questions were followed by relatively easier ones. Considering the audience and the setting, some of the questions were diluted to make them easier. Overall though, the competition was good, with a close call between the first five places . In the end Suraj defended his crown. Report by Gaurav Singh

Friday, April 16, 2010

Abhimanyu 2010

Nischay Mhatre, a third year student of IT at COEP, became the latest winner of Abhimanyu, COEP's intra-college solo quizzing champion. The quiz was organised by last year's winner (and only double champion so far) Aniket Khasgiwale. After a preliminary (written) round, 6 finalists were shortlisted. The finals were conducted in two parts: a common 15 question general round (again, written), followed by a Mastermind-style specialities round. Nischay's topic was The History of Computing.

The details as follows:

Winner: Nischay Mhatre - The History of Computing - 16.5 (9.5 gen + 7 in specialisation) - topic setters: Abhishek Nagaraj & Siddharth Dani
2nd: Gaurav Keskar - The Harry Potter Series of Books - 15 (3+12) - set by Meghashyam
3rd: Aadinath Harihar - The Hindi Film Music of A.R. Rahman - 14 (5+9) - set by Ramanand

Other finalists:
Mohit Karve (The Big Bang Theory TV series, set by Nikhil Kundargi), Gautam Akiwate (Free Software Movement, set by Abhishek), and Vishal Yadav (Indian Politics after Independence, set by Gaurav Sabnis).

List of winners so far
2001 - Rahul Srinivas - Asterix Comics
2002 - Sumeet Kulkarni - Formula-One
2003 - Siddharth Natarajan - Archie Comics
2005 - Akshay Palve - The Mahabharata
2006 - Gaurav Singh - The Harry Potter series
2007 - Aniket Khasgiwale - World Cup Cricket
2008 - Abhishek Nagaraj - XKCD Comics
2009 - Aniket Khasgiwale - Sherlock Holmes
2010 - Nischay Mhatre - The History of Computing

(Thanks to Suvajit for inputs on scores)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Quiztronomy 2010

Date: Saturday, 10th April.
Venue: College of Engineering, Pune.

Set by :Aadinath Harihar, Mohit Karve, Aditya Gadre, Nishchay Mhatre,Kaustubh Bhat and Gautam Akiwate

Conducred by Aadinath Harihar and Mohit Karve

Final Standings


1st : Omkar Bedarkar & Swapnil Bokade - 70 points
2nd : Anirudh Bapat & Abhsihek Oswal- 70 points
3rd : Mihir Rege & Vikram Keskar- 60 points
4th : Rohan Danait & Sanket Bhilare- 55 points
5th : Yash Sinha & Rohan Jain- 40 points
6th : Omkar Moghe & Rohan Ghige- 25 points

Best School Team: Santosh Ranawane & Prabhat Sarode
Best College Team: Suraj Dhiwar & Sanket Sen

The COEP Astronomy Club and the BCQC had organised the second edition of Quiztronomy on Saturday, 10th April. The number of teams were less in number, since most schools had their vacations going on. However, there was a good response from college teams all over Pune as well as a few junior college students.

The elims were fairly straightforward, with most of the questions being of a flavour such that even the general quizzers could get a good score. Hardly 3-4 questions were based on hard-core Astronomy. The cut-off was 12 questions on 25.

The finals was a very close affair right from the start. The finalists were of a good caliber and they managed to come up with some amazing answers. A lot of the finalists even explained the Astronomy concepts involved in the questions, which made the quiz a lot more fun. Even the Quizmasters did the same, thus making sure that they kept the audience involved. This year there were a lot more hard-core Astronomy questions as compared to last year, thus making it more of a true Astronomy quiz. There was also a final double long connect which was cracked by most of the teams and a few members of the audience as well.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Quiztronomy 2010 - Announcement

Last year, in the International Year of Astronomy, an intersection of the COEP Astronomy Club and the BCQC organised "Quiztronomy", an astronomy quiz aimed at popularising the subject among students, particularly school children. Details of the second edition of this well-received quiz are as follows:

Quiztronomy is an astronomy themed quiz- the trivia being workable by everyone and not aimed specifically at astronomy enthusiasts. After the grand success of last year's event, we would like to invite you to participate in this year’s edition of Quiztronomy . The quiz will consist of written prelims, followed by a six team final.

Prizes

  • All finalists will receive prizes and certificates; Winners will also receive a trophy each

  • The school/college contingent with the best performance will receive a “Best Contingent” trophy.

  • This year, we will be awarding prizes worth a total of Rs.15,000/- (inclusive of vouchers)

Details:

Date

10th April, 2010 (Saturday)

Time

10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (reporting time: 10:00 a.m.)

Venue

Main Auditorium, College of Engineering, Pune – 5

Flavour

Astronomy- for everyone

Team

Two members per team; Teammates can be from different classes and cross school/ college

Registrations:

  • Registrations can be done by email (quiztronomy@gmail.com) Spot registrations will also be accepted.

  • Entry is free
Contact: Aadinath (aadinathharihar@gmail.com) or Mohit (lxq.ikrana@gmail.com) for additional information.

Extentia Company Quizzes - Report

Extentia is a software development firm with offices in Pune. A few months ago, the BCQC was approached to conduct quizzes at the company in a package of entertaining quizzing. The quiz was conducted by Yash Marathe on our behalf. Here's a report by Vcat:

Extentia Intra-company quiz I
Fri, Feb 5, 2010. Location: Extentia HQ, Lane E, Koregaon Pk.
QM: Yash Marathe.

First round: BCQC set email quiz sent to all employees earlier in the week to generate enthusiasm for the Friday event. Topper got all answers right.

Theme: General
Participants split into 5 teams of about 4 each
IR with 25 questions
21/25 questions answered by teams

Winners: Team 2 led by Chetan Shetty, VP, Operations
Runners up through a tie break: Team 1 led by Farah Nesargi, Project Manager

Extentia Intra-company quiz II
Fri, Mar 26, 2010. Location: Extentia ITT, Rd 12, Kalyani Nagar
QM: Yash Marathe.

First round: BCQC set email quiz sent to all employees on the previous Tuesday.

Theme: Sports
Participants split into 5 teams of about 5 each
IR with 25 questions
22/25 questions answered by teams

Winners: Team 2 led by Farah Nesargi
Runners up: Team 1 led by Chetan Shetty

If you'd like the BCQC to host similar events in your company, write to us at contact - at - bcqc - period - org or leave a comment on this post

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

X-Quiz-Me at MIT COE

MIT College of Engineering (MIT COE) are conducting 3 quizzes as part of their college fest Tesla. The event is called X-Quiz-Me and it has a general, sports and a Bollywood quiz.

Date: 3rd April, 2010 (Saturday)

Time:
General quiz: 9.45 am
Sports quiz: 1 pm
Bollywood quiz: 4 pm

Venue: MIT College of Engineering, Paud Rd.

Eligibility: College students only. Cross college teams allowed.
Registration: Rs. 50 per team

Contact:
Keyur: 9823081719

Prizes:
For each of the 3 quizzes:
1st prize Rs. 3000 + vouchers
2nd prize Rs. 2000 + vouchers

Monday, March 22, 2010

The Big Bang Theory (BCQC March Open Afternoon Quiz) - Results

Date: 21 Mar 2010

Set and Conducted by:: Vinay N.

Format:
Teams of 2 for elims. 30 teams participated. 30 questions written elims.
Top 6 teams in finals. Participants from 7th-9th top teams chosen by finalist teams as draft picks. Teams of 3 for finals.
Finals: 1 written theme. 48 questions IR with round reversal

Results
1st: Team A - J. Ramanand, Meghashyam Shirodkar and Suraj Menon (draft) - 135pts
2nd: Team B - Anand Sivashankar, Amit Garde and Venkat Srinivasan (draft) - 95pts
3rd: Team D - Suvojit Chakraborty, Yash Marathe and Rohan Jain (draft) - 85pts
4th: Team C - Anannya Deb, S. Balakrishnan and Karan Pande (draft) - 60pts
5th: Team E - Salil Bijur, Yasho Tamaskar and Siddharth (draft) - 50pts
6th: Team F - Aditya Chandorkar, Aadinath Harihar and Jaipal (draft) - 40pts
Please leave your opinions in the comments section.

Reading Between The Lines... (BCQC March Open Morning Quiz) - Results

Date: 21 Mar 2010

Set and Conducted by: Anand Sivashankar

Format:
Teams of 2. 8 teams in finals
30 questions written elims
3 written themes (only 2 were conducted due to shortage of time) and 75-odd questions IR

Results:
1st: Team C - Anannya Deb and S. Balakrishnan - 207.5pts
2nd: Team D - Amit Garde and Meghashyam Shirodkar - 157.5pts
3rd: Team E - J. Ramanand and Suraj Menon - 120pts
4th: Team G - Rashmi Machado and Bharat - 77.5pts
5th: Team A - Shaibal Chakravarty and Ritwik - 47.5pts
6th: Team F - Salil Bijur and Sameer Deshpande - 42.5pts
7th: Team H - Yash Marathe and Vinay N. - 30pts
8th: Team B - Saransh Verma and Avanindra Bhargav - 25pts

QM's notes:
A turnout of 17 teams for the 30 question elims with 8 teams on stage meant that most participants had a fair chance of qualifying. Most of the questions were answered with facile ease and since the purpose was to broaden mass coverage and encourage working out, that lofty objective was achieved albeit with some mild-mannered carping from the regulars on the wildly populist nature of some answers.

The teams did very well using the clues provided with Amit & Meghashyam topping with a stratospheric 26 followed by an equally impressive 24 from Ramanand & Suraj. With the cut-off falling to 13, Niranjan & Vikram must have missed out on the sudden death rule though garnering the Best College team prize.

Beginning with a vanilla opening round on Opening Lines, most teams did get into their groove gradually. Till about half-way into the 37q first round, most newcomers had more than held their own with some fine inferences and educated guesses. Amidst all this, the eventual winners, Bala & Anannya had kept lapping up a fair share of great answers aided by a fairly high Lit Quotient. A Statistically-Improbable-Phrases round again saw some newcomers upstage other veterans although not altering position status overmuch! Amit & Meghashyam got in some crackers and for some time, I was lured into thinking that they'd caught up. The second round was protractedly long and overwhelming for some teams and the performance levels dipped markedly again signalling an inordinately stretched final. Ramamand & Suraj did well too to claim third, and Bharath & Rashmi could not really make it count in the anti-clockwise round slipping to fourth though not without some neat gets earlier.

And so it goes.. While the endeavour (Morse?) was to cover geographies and genres, a lot of mentionables didn't find their way. Two framing glitches and some which could have been articulated better as questions too! The audience was conspicuously silent for most of the quiz and some members of the audience told me that the level was pegged unattainably high. Point taken!

Please leave your opinions in the comments section.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Prahelika 2010

Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT) is conducting its annual tech extravaganza Impetus and Concepts from 23rd to 28th March. Prahelika The Quiz will be one of the events.

Date: 25th March, 2010 (Thursday)

Time: Elims start at 11. Please report by 10:45 am so that you may be directed to the proper venue for elims. Elims will be a written round of 30-40 minutes duration. Finals will start approximately at 1:30 pm. Approximate duration of the quiz is 2 hours.

Venue: Pune Institute of Computer Technology, near Bharti Vidyapeeth campus

Eligibility: College students with valid id. Teams of one or two.
Flavor: General

Registration: You can register at the desk set up in your college or on the spot. In case you're registering on the spot, please be there half an hour prior to the event for logistical reasons.

Contact:
Event Heads: Akshay Baheti - 9975130348 and Pratik Sikchi - 9422958833
Quizmaster: Yash Sinha - 9970137651

Excelsior 2k10 - Results

These are results for the General Quiz called 'Quiz-O-Mania'

Date: 13 Mar 2010

Conducted by:: Jayraj Bajaj and Sameer Jagdale

Results
1st: Team E - Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde - 125pts
2nd: Team B - Suraj Menon and Suvajit Chakraborty - 110pts
3rd: Team A - Salil Bijur and Yasho Tamaskar - 100pts
4th: Team D - Nikhil Motlag and Tejas Kulkarni - 40pts
5th: Team C - Venkat Srinavasan and Rohan Jain - 20pts

Format:
25 questions elims on slides
40 questions Finals: 10 clockwise IR, 10 anti-clockwise IR, 10 clockwise IR with negatives, 10 anti-clockwise with double or negative

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

BCQC March Open Quizzes

The BCQC begins its 2010 season with a set of two open quizzes this month. Here are the details:

Administrivia

Date: 21st March (Sunday)

Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
(The nearest landmarks: The location is behind Domino's Pizza, near the new ICC Towers complex in which are situated shops such as Mainland China. The place is about 2 km from Pune University. This is a wikimapia map to the location.)

Contact: Phone: Suraj (98903 59065), Ramanand (97642 58560) Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org

'How to's: Up to two members per team; no prior registration needed; no entry fees

Prizes

(the same for each quiz)
Prizes for each finalist, for the Best College Team, the Best School Team, and the Best Newbie Team.
Lots of audience prizes.
Prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark (Pune) and the BCQC.

Morning: 'Reading between the lines...'


(a Literature Quiz)

Quizmaster: Anand Sivashankar
Timings: 10:00 am to 12:30 pm (report by 9:45 am)
Flavour: Literature
Finals: Eight teams in the final

Afternoon: 'The Big Bang Theory'

Quizmaster: Vinay N.
Timings: 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm (report by 2:15 pm)
Flavour: General
Finals: Top six teams in the final, next 3 teams join the finalists after draft picks

A complete list of BC Opens

Quizzes at Excelsior 2k10

Students of Sinhgad College of Engineering are organising a national technical event Excelsior 2k10 from 11th to 13th March and have 2 quizzes as a part of the fest.

Eligibility:Open for all

Adroit - Technical quiz

Elims: 11th March 11am to 11.30am
Finals: 12th March 11am to 1pm
Format: Teams of 2 members. 4 teams in finals

Flavour: This quiz is primarily on 4 topics: bridges, tower crains, natural calamities and global warming

Cash prizes: 1st: 30,000/- 2nd: Rs. 20,000/-

Quizmasters: Ravindra Aile and Anurav Jain (9960712083)

Quiz-O-Mania - General quiz

Not to be confused with VIT's annual open quiz

Date: 13th March
Time: 11.00 am to 3.00 pm. Eliminations followed by finals. On the spot registration is also available.
Format: Teams of 2 members. 6 teams in finals

Flavour: General

Cash prizes: 1st: 9,000/- 2nd: Rs. 3,000/-

Quizmasters: Jayraj Bajaj (9860602727) and Sameer (9923072228)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

AIT General Quiz

A general quiz is being organized on 13th March (Saturday) at the Army Institute of Technology, Dighi Hills, Alandi Road, Pune.

Registration: Rs 60 for a team of two. On spot registrations available on confirmation by sms or email.
Directions to get to AIT: Catch a direct bus to Alandi from Pune railway station or Mahanagar Palika or from anywhere. It drops you directly in front of the college gate.
Eligibility: This is a college students only quiz. Intercollege teams allowed.
Prizes: 4000 for the first, 2000 for the second and for third its 1000. These may increase in the future but surely wont decrease.
Timing: 10-30 a.m. onwards
Contact: Prashant Tomar (9823694984) and Ayush Agarwal (9823438132)

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Shyam Bhatt Memorial Quiz 2010

Date: 16 Feb 2010

Set & Conducted by:: Hitesh Mahato (Elims) and Lt. Col. Nikhil Moorchung (Finals)

Results
1st: Team C - Meghashyam Shirodkar and Salil Bijur - 130pts
2nd: Team F - Venkat Srinavasan and Rohan Jain - 90pts
3rd: Team E - Suvajit Chakraborty and Yash Marathe - 85pts
Joint 4th: Team A - Abhinav Raina and Salil Jena (AFMC) - 80pts
Joint 4th: Team B - Abhishek and Krishna (AFMC) - 80pts
6th: Team D - Abhilash and Anirudh (Kasturba Medical College, Manipal)

Format: 25 questions elims on slides; 60 questions Finals (IR with round reversal after 30)

Report
The quiz began on time with an alumnus of AFMC paying a small tribute to his batchmate Shyam Bhatt whom the annual quiz is named after. Elims were set and conducted completely by students while the finals were by an AFMC faculty member Lt. Col. Moorchung. Questions were nice although the finals seemed to be on the easier side with many chestnuts.

Most teams were neck-to-neck half way through. After the round reversal, Team C surged ahead above others. Towards the end, Team F (Venkat and Rohan) made a stunning comeback from 5th place to 2nd cracking all 4 questions that came their way. The 2 AFMC teams A and B were found to be tied at 3rd place at 80 points. Just before the tie-breaker, it was found that the last finals question was yet to be asked. Team F had answered the last one, so it was a direct for Team E which cracked it and joined A and B at 80 points. A close tie-breaker round of 3 questions happened and Team E won ending at 3rd place.

Please comment for any corrections and opinions below.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Axlerate - Open Quiz at MIT, Pune

Axelerate - a general quiz is to be held on the 20th of Feb at Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Pune.

Team of 2
Registration on the spot will be available
Time: 11.00 am


1st Prize Rs 10,000.
2nd Prize Rs 6,000.
3rd Prize Rs 4,000.


Quizmasters:
Rohan Jain - +91 98811 60507
Bharat Marathe - +91 98608 22888

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Landmark Quiz Pune 2010 - Report

Date: 30 Jan, 2010
Venue: Nehru Memorial Hall, Pune
Conducted by: Dr. Navin Jayakumar
Turnout: ~280 teams

Results
1st: Travelling Pillsburies (Rajiv Rai, Sumant Srivathsan, Vibhendu Tiwari) 62 pts
2nd: QED (Samanth Subramanian, G. Swaminathan, Ramana) 58 pts
3rd: 3 Paajis in a Shaniwar Wada Pav (Meghashyam Shirodkar, Amit Garde, Anand Sivashankar) 50 pts
4th: Inglorious Kaminey (Rajen Prabhu, Gopal Kidao, Ravi Mundoli) 40 pts
5th: 3 Mistakes of our parents' lives (Pradeep Ramarathnam, Vikram Joshi, Mukund) 33 pts
6th: No Enthu Da (Aadisht Khanna, Aishwarya, Aswath) 25 pts
7th: Grouchy Marxists (Deviprasad Viswanathan, TK Balaji, Vikram Rajan) 19 pts
8th: GDS System of Measurement (Govind Grewal, Dhananjay Shettigar, Sauvik) 15 pts

Best Corporate Team: ZS Associates
Best College Team: SCMHRD
Best School Teams: 1st: Army Public School; 2nd: Abhinava Vidyalaya

Format:
40 Question Prelims
Cutoff was 26 with some stars
Finals - Two rounds of IR - 15 each. 10 points for each question.
9 Questions on the buzzer which revealed part of a larger image(the theme) on screen. Points ranged from +20 to +4 for cracking the theme.
One more buzzer round at the end.

Please leave opinions, corrections and names that have been missed out in the comments

Quiz-O-Mania 2010 - Report

Date: 30 Jan, 2010
Venue: Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune
Conducted by: Salil Bijur
Turnout: ~75 teams

Format : 32 questions written elims followed by 42 questions on seamless IR.

Results:
Joint 1st: Suraj Menon and Yash Marathe : 80 pts
Joint 1st: Priyambad Pattanayak and Krishnamurti Ganesh : 80 pts
Joint 3rd: Annanya Deb and Suresh Ramasubramanian : 60 pts
Joint 3rd: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Anand Sivashankar: 60 pts
5th: Pradeep Ramarathnam and Vikram Joshi: 40 pts
6th : Srinath and Roshith: 20 pts

Leave your opinions in the comments section.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Landmark Pune Quiz 2010

Details:

* Teams of upto 3 members.
* Venue: Nehru Memorial Hall, Camp, Pune
* 30th of Jan 2010, 3.30pm.
* Quizmaster: Dr. Navin Jayakumar

* Registration needs to be done in advance. The organizers will be assigning seats, and so it is recommended that you register early so as to avoid last minute crowding.

* To register, walk into Landmark, SGS Magnum Mall, Moledina Road, Camp, Pune anytime before the 30th of Jan. You can register for your friends just as well. You could call 40068888 for details.

Quiz-o-Mania 2010

The annual open quiz at Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT) Pune, Quiz-O-Mania, is happening on 30th Jan 2010 as a part of the cultural fest Melange. Details are as follows:

Date: 30th Jan, Saturday
Flavour: General
Time: 9:30am (Reporting Time)
10am sharp (Elims Begin)
Venue: VIT Auditorium
Team size: 2
Teams that qualify for the finals: 6
Prize money: Rs 12,000

QM: Salil Bijur

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

Contact: Parth (9860608442) or Gaurav (9763313354)

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Clairvoyance 2010

The Symbiosis Institute of International Business (SIIB), Pune is organizing its annual national level management event “IGNISENSE ’10” on 16th and 17th January, 2010.

Update: This event has been cancelled.
From a mail sent by the SIIB team:
Dear All,
We are sorry to inform that Clairvoiyance 2010, the Corporate Quiz being organised on 17th Jan 2010 at SIIB,Hinjewadi is not being held due to a pull out from our sponsers.
We are very sorry for the inconvinience caused and we sincerely apologise for the same.
Regards
Team Ignisense
SIIB,Pune.