Thursday, December 26, 2013

BCQC InFest Day 1 schedule + InFestYouUs topics

Part I of the BC InFest 2013/14 takes place this coming Sunday (see overall InFest schedule here).


Venue: All quizzes will take place at the Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune.

Schedule:
The schedule for our more-or-less annual more-or-less "Quiz" fest is as follows (more-or-less)

29th December 2013:

11:30 am: We begin the anti-fest with a set of "Auto-biographical" Quizzes, set by some of the BCQC's expats based on their own experiences, travels etc. The quiz will be curated by Samrat Sengupta

12:30 pm: Aniket Khasgiwale will be doing his QI style quiz.

1:45 - 2:30pm: We break for lunch

2:30 pm: We conduct our mastermind style individual specialty themes quiz. We have some great topics, quite a high-profile participant pool and an equally (if not more) high-profile question setter list.

Here is the list of all participants, their topics and question setters.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Anniversary Mahaquizzer 2013 - Pune Results

Quite a good year for Pune quizzers at the second Mahaquizzer of the year.

J. Ramamand makes the top 10 in India with a score of 63/150

Other quizzers who took the quiz in Pune and finished in the top 100 were:

29th: Nilay Puntambekar (51/150)
83rd: Saikat Sarkar (33/150)
92nd: Aniketh Rallabhandi (30/150)

Also Srisha Haridas just missed out on the top 100 with 28/150 getting a rank of 105

Regular Pune quizzer Suraj Menon (took the quiz from Mumbai this year) won the All India College title with a score of 60 - finishing rank 15th in the country on the open section




Friday, December 20, 2013

BC Infest 2013/14 a.k.a. BCQC.orgy

Announcing schedule for BCQC.orgy 2013/14

The quiz anti-fest that no one has really been waiting for is here. Meh. 


Venue: All quizzes will take place at the Boat Club, College of Engineering Pune. 

Schedule:

The schedule for our more-or-less annual more-or-less "Quiz" fest is as follows (more-or-less)

29th December 2013:

11:30 am: We begin the anti-fest with a set of "Auto-biographical" Quizzes, set by some of the BCQC's expats based on their own experiences, travels etc. The quiz will be curated by Samrat Sengupta

12:30 pm: Aniket Khasgiwale will be doing his QI style quiz.

1:45 - 2:30pm: We break for lunch

2:30 pm: We conduct our mastermind style individual specialty themes quiz - Infest-you-us. Over 30 people have registered - so we have over 300 questions on a variety of very interesting topics!

5th January 2014

11:30 am : We begin with a surprise quiz by resident bong quizzers - Oboneendro Bhargav & Debanjan Bose. We are told the quiz is a surprise even to the Quizmasters.

12:30pm to 1:30 pm: We break for lunch

1:30 pm: Our friends from Bombay - Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale conduct the "Dead Boring Quiz".

2:30 pm: Aditya Gadre will then conduct "bcqc.orgy/history" - a mostly general quiz in an experimental format

3:30 pm : We then have another set of "Auto-biographical" Quizzes, set by some of the BCQC's pseudo-expats (Vcat) and some friends from outta town (Anannya Deb) based on their own / their alter ego's experiences, travels etc.

4:30 pm: The Grand Finale - J. Ramanand , is doing "an Ent quiz with some differences, multiplied by divisiveness"

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Mahaquizzer & AsiaSweep 2014

KQA quizzes this Sunday.

Mahaquizzer (solo event) starts at 9:30 am, AsiaSweep (team event) at 2:30 pm.
Prior registration is a must for both events to allow proctors a chance to get the correct number of sheets.
Links to register: http://kqaquizzes.org/asiasweep/ and http://kqaquizzes.org/mahaquizzer/

Pune venue: COEP Academic Complex, COEP, Shivajinagar, Pune.

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Brainstorm '13 - COEP Internal Quiz - Report

(based on information sent in by Rohan Danait)


On October 24, a quiz for COEP students was held at COEP, aimed at introducing them to quizzing and to the BCQC. The quiz was set by Chinmay Tadwalkar and Mustafa Abbas (SE students) with Rohan's guidance. 20-25 teams of two members participated in the elims, from which 6 teams + 3 draft picks were selected for the finals. (Rohan says: around 15-20 people said they were interested in quizzing and would like to attend more quizzes in the future.)


The finalists:

1st place: Omkar Borate, Anubhav Tiwari, Swapnil Ahire

2nd place: Atharva Deshpande, Darshan Jaware, Animesh Bora

3rd place: Mruganayani Nagur, Ipshita Paul, Devyani Salokhe

The other finalists were:

4) Nishant Bhumare, Vibhav Tungar, Kaustubh Shakkarwar

5) Divyansh Saxena, Rohan Manatkar, Urvi Purohit

6) Devashree Ragde, Sanket Gurikar, Simran Batra



More such events are being planned for COEP quizzers, including the finals of Abhimanyu in the coming months.


Sunday, October 13, 2013

Conundrums (Mood Indigo General Quiz) 2013 - Pune qualifiers

Set by Ramanand J, Harish Kumar
Conducted by: J Ramanand
Flavour: General

Attended by ~30 teams

Format: Written elims of 25 questions. Finals (2*10 questions on IR (with One-finite Pounce per half) and one written round on sobriquets (5 qns)

Results:
1st: Saikat Sarkar and Kshitij Jyoti (AFMC): 120 pts (19/6* in prelims)
2nd: Suraj Prabhu (FC) and Aniketh Rallabhandi (SCOE): 95 pts (19/4*)
Jt 3rd: Rohan Danait and Vibhav Bhave (COEP): 70 pts (17)
Jt 3rd: Nirmoho Banerjee and Samridh Kapur (AIT): 70 pts (16)
5th: Debopriyo Moulik (ILS) and Pranav Pawar (MESCOE): 50 pts (16)

Five teams were included in the finals instead of the four previously advertised because of a almost-dead tie between the 4th and 5th teams to qualify.

The One-finite Pounce system: teams are allowed to 'pounce' on questions in a half for +10 and no negatives. But if they get a pounce attempt wrong, they forfeit the chance to pounce for the rest of the round.

The top two teams will now go through directly to the Conundrums semi finals at Mood Indigo in Dec. 2013. 

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Announcement: Conundrums - the Mood Indigo General Quiz - Pune round

What: Conundrums is the Mood Indigo (IIT Bombay) General Quiz. Two preliminary rounds are being organised in Pune and Chennai, ahead of the preliminary, semis, and finals in Mumbai in December

Who is this for: College students in Pune

What's at stake: The Pune prelims give two teams a direct entry into the semi final stage in December. You don't have to fight the large number of competitive teams
in the Mumbai prelims for a place in the semis. And if you don't qualify here, you can always go to Mumbai for one more attempt.

The General Quiz final during Mood Indigo has cash prizes worth Rs. 30,000/-

When: the Pune round will be held on 12 Oct (Sat) at 2 pm

Where: COEP (hall to be confirmed)

What's the format:
there will be a 25 question written prelim, followed by a stage final for the top 4 teams. 2 teams will make it to the semis.

Who is setting/conducting the quiz: Ramanand & Harish are setting. Ramanand will conduct.

What do I do next: Register at  www.moodi.org/#/competitions -> Literary Arts -> Omniscience -> Registration.

Contact: Atharva Kelkar <atharva.kelkar@gmail.com> for any help or clarifications.

Monday, October 07, 2013

Quizowski! (BCQC October Open) - Report

Set and Conducted by Abhishek "_logik" Upadhya, Maitreyi "mitt" Gupta, and V "Venkat" Cat.

Flavour: General

Attended by: about 10 teams


Format: Elims 30 qs, Finals 15 (IR + infinite pounce) + 6 (Mind of a quizzer round) + 15 (IR + infinite pounce) = 36 qs
Elims highest: J. Ramanand & Samridh Kapur - 19.5

Elims cut-off : 9 (7 for draft)


Results:

1st: J. Ramanand, Samridh Kapur, Avaneendra Bhargava (draft) - 140

2nd: Kunal Sawardekar (left halfway), Suraj Prabhu, Dinesh (draft) & Mayuri (draft) - 120

3rd: Anurakshat Gupta & Kshitij Jyoti - 115

4th: Aditya Pawar, Ayush Agrawal, Anubhav Chatterjee (draft) - 90

5th: Alok Singh, Daipayan Roy, Neil Sarkar (draft) - 60

6th: Saahil Singh, Kiran Sai(?), Vivek Dubey + 1 - 40




Despite the lack of glaciers, this was an excellent quiz. I particularly enjoyed the prelims: wide variety of topics, interestingly framed, and trademark good-bad-useful puns from Abhishek. Once again, given the number of participants, everybody was pooled into the finals. The finals too had several interesting questions and topics (there is an embargo on discussing specifics as Abhishek may run this quiz at KQA later).


The middle specialities round was a bit of an inconsistent set, and clearly betrayed its 4 am origins. There was the odd confusion at some points of the quiz. But overall, the quiz gets a "laal salaam". The only issue: the absence of VCat from most of the finals, which left many in the audience disappointed.

Sunday, October 06, 2013

BCQC October Open Quizzes 2013: "M" - Music, Military and More Report

Set and Conducted by: Ayush Agrawal

Format:
30 written questions on Music, the Military and some other topics whose names begin with the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.

Results:
1st: Abhishek Upadhya and Kunal Sawardekar - 23.5 pts
Jt. 2nd: Samridh Kapur and Aditya Pawar - 17 pts
Jt. 2nd: Anurakshat Gupta and Kshitij Jyoti - 17 pts

A very enjoyable start to the quizzing day. I especially liked the military section of the quiz (as much of a shock that may be to many of you) which, in spite of an audience with quite a bit of exposure to the military milieu, educated as well as entertained us. The other "M"s were a teensy-weensy bit on the easy side but also enjoyable and workable. My one crib was with the multiple-answer questions - but those seem to have become a cultural phenomenon as ubiquitous and irrepressible (no matter how much one tries to repress it) as twerking.

Got something to say / add? Please feel free to have a go in the comments.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Chakravyuh 2013 - Report

The Chakravyuh Open Quiz - A part of COEP's MindSpark 2012

Set by Vibhav Bhave, Rohan Danait and others 
Conducted by: Vibhav Bhave

Attended by ~100 teams

Format: Written elims of 30 questions. Finals comprising 36 questions on IR (with 3 pounces per half) and one LVC

Results:
1st: Meghashaym Shirodkar and Amit Garde: 150 pts
2nd: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav: 145 pts
3rd: J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar: 135 pts
4th: Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale: 115 pts
5th: Shrirang Raddi and Ankush: 105 pts
6th: Abhishek Upadhya and Debanjan Bose: 100 pts

This edition of Chakravyuh was certainly more "quizzer friendly" than last year with more mainstream (perhaps some would say "normal") questions. 

The elims were largely simple and very high scoring with the top score being 27.5/30  and the cut off being 22. Vcat & Rohan and Saikat & Kshitij were unlucky to miss out on the tie break. The elims were quite good with a reasonable range of topics covered and accessible answers. A few cribs about the elims were more in terms of execution than the question themselves - there were questions which were incomplete on the slide and needed supplementary information from the QM which led to a lot of confusion. Also the star marked questions weren't, well, actually marked in the ppt leading to unnecessary attention from the QM being devoted to informing the star questions. 

Coming to the finals, one consistent crib was that the quiz was far too simple. The questions themselves may not have been all that simple, but the fact that there were a lot of peters certainly made them easy. And given the easiness of the questions, only 3 pounces meant that seating position had something to do with your final score. While there were some good questions but the same spread seen in the elims was not replicated in the finals - the first half was almost 50% a business quiz. The biggest crib I have about the content however is the sheer number peters - with so many of them the passing round becomes a game of luck especially with all finalists being established quizzers. 

The other major crib was in terms of execution - there was an occasion where a question had to be scrapped because it was not complete on the slide and one occasion where the dreaded finger of god made its appearance and effectively cost Kunal and Avaneendra the quiz. 

A lot of these cribs can be attributed to inexperience with Vibhav conducting his first quiz at this level. Perhaps going forward, college quiz setters should be more proactive in reaching out to BC alumni in ensuring that at least the repeats are kept to a minimum. 

Coming to other aspects, the quiz was fun with the teams indulging in typical BC banter and  occasional goodnatured trolling. By pure history, this was one of the strongest fields ever with 7 of the 12 finalists on stage being former Chakravyuh winners. The quiz also saw the return to the circuit for one of BCQC's founders Shrirang Raddi (and he made it seem like he had never left). 

Meghashyam and Amit went into the last question of the quiz trailing by 5 points and answered it to pull off a dramatic victory. 

Congrats are especially due to Amit as this victory now makes him a three-time Chakravyuh winner - more than anyone else. 

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
2011: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Yash Marathe
2012: Kunal Sawardekar and Avaneendra Bhargav
2013: Meghashyam Shirodkar and Amit Garde

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Announcement: The BCQC October Open Quizzes 2013

On Sunday, the 6th of October, 2013 - we conduct two open quizzes. 


Quiz I: "M"


Time: 11:00 am
Flavour:  Music, Millitary, Mysteries and "More"
QM: Ayush Agrawal
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: This is a written quiz (~35 questions)- so please bring a writing instrument.

Quiz II: Quizowski


                                

Time: 2:00 pm
Flavour: General 
QMs: Abhishek Upadhya, Maitreyi Gupta and Venkat Srinivasan
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: Written elims followed by finals for the top 9 teams

Venue:
The venue for both the quizzes will be Extentia Information Technology, Nilanjali Housing Colony, Kalyani Nagar, Pune. You can put this in to google maps to figure out the exact location. 

Basic Directions: Come onto North main road in Koregaon park - turn onto the bridge towards adlabs - go straight past adlabs and take a left when you see the Bounty Hotel on your left, enter lane no 12 and go the end of the lane, Extentia should be on your right. 

BCQC September Open Quizzes 2013: Quiz Vuiz Tey Question Purana - Report

Quiz Vuiz Tey Question Purana

Set and Conducted by Samrat Sengupta

Format:
Written elims of 20 question with the teams getting points in the final to start off depending on elim standings
Final of 18 questions on Infinite Rebounds, 18 questions on 6 Speciality topics (6 x 3), 2 List its and 6 questions on differential scoring.


Standings:

1st: Team F: Kunal Sawardekar, Aditya Gadre and Aditya Karve : 161 points
2nd: Team B: J Ramanand, Tadatmya and Anubhav Chatterjee: 151 points
3rd: Team D: Ayush Agarwal, Aditya Pawar and Alok : 108 points
4th: Team A: Venkat Srinivasan, Rohan Jain, Abhishek Upadhya and Ameya: 82 points
5th: Team C: Suraj Prabhu, Venkat and Samridh: 66 points
6th: Team E: Alok Singh, Daipayan Roy, Maitreyi Gupta: 50 points


9 teams showed up, so the elims were more of a means of deciding who gets the starting advantage rather than actual eliminations. After the rather low scoring elims (Top two scores were only 9.5 and 8.5 with most other teams bunched at around 4 points), Teams B and F finished in the top 2 positions to start with a 20 point advantage and teams D and E started with a 10 point advantage.

Samrat's quiz lived up to its name - in that it was truly a mixture of old and new elements of quizzing. This meant no pounce, specialty round and inclusion of a differential scoring round and a list it.

Cribs:
- In terms of pure fairness, the quiz did seem to lack a bit especially since the questions in the IR round ranged from St. Peter (taking the 'Question Purana' part of the name a bit too seriously perhaps :P ) to Succulent Karoo and, in this case, not having enough questions to smooth over the peaks and troughs, seating position did affect standings.
- Some issues with the age old question of multi-pronged questions and their part marking
- A lot of the questions, while certainly very interesting, seemed a bit "knowledge" based and hence may not have been the most friendly environment for some of the newer quizzers. Will also slip in here that I am not a fan of list-its. Quizzing is not about memorizing lists IMO.

Positives:
- The quiz was truly a throwback to several years ago with Sammy Sir at his entertaining best
- Extremely fun to take part in with constant banter, puns and jokes
- Some very new areas explored which are not usually seen in Pune quizzes
- I personally thought the elims were very good - a nice mix of topics. Tough, but interesting.


As for the actual quiz results, Team B led Team F for most of the quiz by a narrow margin before pulling away with a significant 30 point lead before the final round of 9 IR quesitons. Sadly for Team B luck favoured Team F with most of the questions in the final round being on their pet topics and Team F pulled off an unlikely comeback to win on the last question of the quiz.

Please share your views / feedback in the comments section

BCQC September Open Quizzes 2013: The Pub Quiz - Report

The Pub Quiz

Set and Conducted by Aditya Gadre

Format: A written quiz of 41 questions with a total of 44 poitns to score on th topics of Food, Alcohol and Pop Music

Results:
1st: Venkat Srinivasan and Rohan Jain: 18 points
2nd: Samrat Sengupta and Maitreyi Gupta: 12 points


Overall the quiz was low scoring (I expected the scores to be more in the 15-20 range).

That said, the quiz was remarkably even with almost all the teams in the 11-12 range - with Samrat and Maitreyi just making it past to get second place. Vcat and Rohan were in great form and were miles ahead on 18.

Please leave your feedback in the comments section. 

Mindspark 2013 quizzes: Chakravyuuh, Torquest, Quonoisseur

The College of Engineering, Pune will be organizing three quizzes as a part of its technical festival MindSpark'13. The quizzes are spread over three days - September 27th, 28th and 29th

1. Torquest - The Science and Technology Quiz
College Quiz
Date: 27th September (Friday)
Contact: Omkar Yarguddi +91 78751 50078

2. Chakravyuh - The General Quiz
Open Quiz
Date: 28th September (Saturday)
Contact: Vibhav Bhave +91 99224 12867

3. Quonoisseur - The MELA Quiz
College Quiz
Date: 29th September (Sunday)
Contact: Rujul Godse: +91 98500 86949


For any other general queries please contact: Rohan Danait: +91 98505 53038 or visit our website

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Announcement: The BCQC September Open Quizzes

On Sunday, the 22th of September, 2013 - we conduct two open quizzes. 

Quiz I: The Pub Quiz



Time: 10:30 am
Flavour:  Food, Alcohol and Popular Music
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: This is a written quiz (~35 questions)- so please bring a writing instrument.

Quiz II: Quiz Vuiz Tey Question Purana


                                   

Time: 1:30 pm
Flavour: General 
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: Written elims followed by finals for the top 9 teams

Venue:
The venue for both the quizzes will be Extentia Information Technology, Nilanjali Housing Colony, Kalyani Nagar, Pune. You can put this in to google maps to figure out the exact location. 

Basic Directions: Come onto North main road in Koregaon park - turn onto the bridge towards adlabs - go straight past adlabs and take a left when you see the Bounty Hotel on your left, enter lane no 12 and go the end of the lane, Extentia should be on your right. 

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

BCQC August Open Quiz 2013 Part Deux (Laplace's Demons) - Results

Date: 25 August 2013

Set, Curated by: Mohit Karve & Avaneendra Bhargav

Conducted by: Avaneendra Bhargav

Format: It was supposed to be a written quiz but since only 10 teams turned up, I divided them into 8 teams and conducted the quiz on infinite pounce

Result: 
Abhishek Upadhya, Maitreyi Gupta - 1st
Rohan Danait, VIbhav Bhave & Alok Kulkarni - 2nd
Suraj Prabhu + 2 - 3rd
 (I just remember that the first team had 300 points. If any one else remember the points please let me know in the comments)

BCQC COLLEGE QUIZZER OF THE YEAR


Monday, September 09, 2013

BCQC August Open Quiz 2013 Part Doux - Report

Date: 25 August 2013

Set, Curated and Conducted by: Anannya  "Dada" Deb

Format: Teams of 2 for the Prelims; top 6 teams plus 3 draft teams in the Finals; 2 Rounds of IR with 18 Questions each, 4 Rounds of thematically connected "Threesomes" worth 5 points each; Infinite Bounce on the IR Rounds (+15/-10)

Result: 
Vikram Joshi, Sumit & Kshitij Jyoti - 65 points
Anubhav Chatterjee, Roshit & Debanjan Bose - 60 points
Rohan Danait, Saikat Sarkar & Alok Kulkarni - 45 points
Kunal Sawardekar, Saahil Singh & Archis Katti - 30 points
Suraj Prabhu + 2 - 25 points (You didn't write your names on the sheet, guys - let us know in the comments and we'll put them up)
Abhishek Upadhyaya, Maitreyi Gupta & Kartik Ganesh - 20 points

Report:
I always associate Dada with quizzes that are more "subaltern" than what we are used to at the BCQC, and this time was not an exception. While subaltern-ness is always welcome, what I especially liked about this quiz was that even though the themes explored were different from the (Pune) quizeitgeist, the answers were not unknown to most of the audience (I am a bit of a fan of the Mother Rule, BDFL-ian fatwa nothwithstanding). Another motif of Dada's quizzes which I enjoyed again in this quiz was the use of his own photography as visual clues - instead of the copy-paste from Google Images that many of us quizzers usually resort to.

One peeve I had with the quiz (and perhaps with the Bombay school of quizzing in general) was the multiple-pronged questions. Although the quality of the framing was in general quite high, I didn't quite see the point of asking for multiple answers to the same question. One particular question was completely answered in parts by four different teams, but the QM found himself unable to award any points at all without recourse to non-Euclidean geometry. I feel such questions would be vastly improved if just one answer was expected from the teams.

Overall, a good quiz, if somewhat tough (in spite of the Infinite Pounce, there was only about 4-5 pounces through the quiz).

Got something to say / add? Please feel free to have a go in the comments.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Announcement: The BCQC August Open Quizzes - Part II



On Sunday, the 25th of August, 2013 - we conduct two quizzes. 

Quiz I: Laplace's demons

Time: 10:30 am
Flavour:  Science and Technology
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: This is a written quiz (~35 questions)- so please bring a writing instrument.

Quiz II: A Touch of Grey (You will be grateful you are not dead)*

Bombay-based Quiz Gawd Anannya "Dada" Deb will be returning to the BCQC to conduct yet another wide-ranging, interesting and in all aspects brilliant quiz. 

Time: 1:30 pm
Flavour: General 
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: Written elims followed by finals for the top 9 teams

* Grateful Dead reference. Dada will not kill you. Really. 

Venue:
The venue for both the quizzes will be the Academic Complex, College of Engineering, Pune.  

Monday, August 05, 2013

The August 2013 Open Quiz - Report

Date: 4 Aug 2013

Set and Conducted by: B V Harish Kumar

Flavour: General

Format:
Teams of 3 for prelims. ~20 teams participated. 2 rounds of Infinite Rebounds (20 qns each) + 1 written round. A "DRS" pounce system. Prelims cut-off: 4.5, prelims highest: 15.5

Results
1st: Team F - Ranajeet Soman, Samrat Sengupta, J Ramanand (125)

2nd: Team A - Ayush Agrawal, Samridh Kapur, and Aditya Pawar (55)

3rd: Team B - Abhishek Upadhya, Arnold D'Souza (briefly substituted by Avaneendra), and Maitreyi Gupta (50)

4th: Team D - Ajachi, Suraj, Abhinav (45)

5th: Team C - Lakshmy, Roshith, Venkat (drafted in as a 3rd)(30)

6th: Team E - Abhinav, Saikat, and Kshitij (20)


Venue sponsored by Extentia (many thanks especially to Vcat for organising the place!)

Report
The last time Harish conducted a quiz was six years ago, a time when there was no such thing as an infinite pounce (except in the minds of some lewd quizzers) and Amit Varma (remember him?) was still a quizzer. To some of the younger quizzers at the quiz, the selection of topics and their framing into questions must have felt like a throwback to an older era.


The low scores in the prelims may have been because of time constraints (people like me who went for a late lunch returned even later and had about 10 minutes remaining on the clock), but also because the questions were on topics that weren't a lot of people's strengths. Politics, Sports, and India has traditionally been Harish's forte and that showed in the choice of topics. The framing was minimal, which made the clues easier to spot, but only if you trusted the 'bounce' (a finite one).


The finals carried on from the prelims - the answers to most of them were not too obscure, but most teams did struggle to score. Harish had his own version of the pounce, the aim of which was not necessarily to counter sitters, but to provide teams with the ability to compete with those that were close to them in the scoring. Based on their current scores, teams were paired for the pounce every five questions and they could only pounce when a question was presented to the team paired with them. Interesting, but I'm still unconvinced (discussion in the comments, if anyone's interested.) The pairing was a little subjective in the end, but fortunately, it wasn't too complicated to pull off for Harish.

We built up a good lead right from the first question, but as the scores will show, the rest of the teams were bunched up together, and it was a very tight finish that may have looked differently given another 10 questions.


Uncomplicated (except for the pounce system) quizzing - that was the order of the day.

Got something to say? Please leave your opinions in the comments section.

"The Silly Olympics" - August 2013 Sports and Entertainment Quiz - Results

When: 4th August, 2013

Where: Extentia, Pune

By: Curated by Aditya Gadre, based on a quiz by Suraj Menon. Valiantly conducted (in the face of relentless sledging) by Avaneendra Bhargav.

Format: 35 question written quiz for 2 member teams. (About 20-odd teams took the quiz.)


Results:

Winners: Ranajeet Soman and Ramanand (25 points)

2nd: Venkat S and Arnold D'Souza (20)

3rd: Samrat Sengupta and Maitreyi Gupta (19.5)


Report: 


An excellent set of questions on sports and entertainment (side aside: why is there a spate of Sports+Entertainment quizzes in recent times, "SpEnt" as it is referred to. Has the potential of just a Sports or an Ent quizzes been spent?). Most questions were very workable, even the ones masquerading as hip-hop questions.

Got something to say yourself? Use the comments box.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Announcement : The BCQC August Open Part I



This Sunday - the 4th of August, 2013 - we have quite a show lined up. 

Act 1: The Silly Olympics*

Avaneendra Bhargav will be running a quiz Suraj Menon recently conducted at some village in Jharkhand. This is a Sports-Entertainment aka SpEnt Quiz. Just like all other Suraj Menon quizzes, it is nice, fun  and interesting quiz. 

Time: 1:30 pm
Flavour:  Sports and Entertainment
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: This is a written quiz (~35 questions)- so please bring a writing instrument.

* Yet another Monty Python reference. Nothing silly about this quiz :)

Act 2: à¤•à¤¹ के बताइयेगा!

Pune Quizzing legend BV Harish Kumar will be making a much awaited return to conducting quizzes at the BCQC after a gap five years or so. Given his past quizzes, I can assure you that this one will also be brilliant. 

Time: 3 pm
Flavour: General 
Teams: Teams of three.
Format: Written elims followed by finals for the top 6 teams (No draft picks)

Venue:
The venue for both the quizzes will be Extentia Information Technology, Nilanjali Housing Colony, Kalyani Nagar, Pune. You can put this in to google maps to figure out the exact location. Many thanks to Vcat for help with the venue. 

Basic Directions: Come onto North main road in Koregaon park - turn onto the bridge towards adlabs - go straight past adlabs and take a left when you see the Bounty Hotel on your left, enter lane no 12 and go the end of the lane, Extentia should be on your right. 



Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Mahaquizzer 2013 results

Oops! We seem to have forgotten to post the results for Mahaquizzer this year.

Pune results were as follows: 

Open Category winner:  Kunal Sawardekar - 62 pts
2nd: J Ramanand - 57 pts

College winner: Aditya Akhauri - 26 pts

Ladies winner: Sravya Darbhamulla


The official results (the top 100) has been published by the KQA here

Four Pune quizzers made the top 100 (ranks in brackets) - Kunal (23), Ramanand (27), Aditya Gadre (51), Roshith Mohan (87)

In addition to this, Suraj Menon (19) and Aniket Khasgiwale (78) also made the top 100.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Bulla-wood (The Bollywood Quiz) - Report

Quiz set by Yash Tamaskar
Conducted by Aditya Gadre

Format : Written quiz with 35 questions. 10 points per question (1 had 12.5 points)

Results :

1st : Vibhendu Tewari and Abhinav Dasgupta - 287.5 pts
2nd : Navin Sharma and Ranajeet Soman - 150 pts


This was the first written quiz I have seen where teams asked for supplements to their answer sheets. There were multiple variables in almost every question which made writing down answers really tedious. The questions were decent overall with a couple of peters. Some questions could definitely have been better framed. Gadre tried his best to help the teams out and gave hints where a question seemed a bit vague.
Quite a few teams were between the 100-140 mark. Navin and I got those extra 10-15 points which saw us go clear. That being said, with Vibhendu in the house, everyone was always playing for second place which is illustrated by the huge gap between 1st and 2nd place. The quiz was mostly full of mainstream fundae which is not a bad thing (IMO). It was fun but not more than that. 

BCQC June Open Quizzes - The Spanish Inquisition! - Report

The Spanish Inquisition!
Set and Conducted by Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elims followed by 60 question finals - 48 IR (10 pounces on +10/-5) + 1 written rounds of 6 questions + 1 written round of 6 questions on differential scoring

Results:
1st: Team 3 - Kunal Sawardekar, Ranajeet Soman and Venkat Srinivasan : 187 pts
2nd: Team 2 - Aniket Khasgiwale, Samrat Sengupta and Abhishek Upadhyay (sub for Salil Bijur) : 169 pts
3rd: Team 1 - Vibhendu Tewari, Abhinav Dasgupta and Ajay Ragde: 160 pts
4th: Team 5 - Shubhankar Gokhale, Avaneendra Bhargav, Gokul Panigrahi: 159 pts
5th: Team 4 - Vibhav Bhave, Rohan Danait and Navin Sharma :103 pts
6th: Team 6 - Debanjan Bose, Aniketh Rallabhandi, Aditi Prabhudesai: 96 pts

Kunal and Ranajeet topped the prelims with 21/30. The cut off for the top 6 was 13/30. The cut off for the top 9 for the draft pick spots was 10/30

All teams were extremely even at the end of the first round (24 questions) with barely 15 points separating the top 5 teams. Team 6 was trailing at this point having picked up a few negatives on the pounce. The first written round saw all teams scoring quite comfortably. The second written round with differential scoring saw Team 2 pull ahead of Team 1 (who could not score in this round). In the second IR passing round, Team 3 used up their pounces and remained in close contention for the lead (just 2 points behind Team 2 for much of the second half of the quiz).

Team 6 got almost all their pounces correct in the second half and were aided by Team 4 getting some pounces wrong to come close, but could not overhaul the lead Team 4 had over them.

Team 5 kept consistently chugging along, but could not build on enough momentum to pull away with the lead. In the end, Team 3 answered two questions which no-one else got and pulled away with a 18 point lead going into the last question. "A keen contest on the cards" - Team 1 on 160 and Team 2 on 169 if either answered they would cement second place. Neither answered that last question which was finally answered by Team 5 who missed out on third place by just 1 point.

All in all, Team 3 were extremely consistent throughout the quiz with both - the stuff they knew as well as very good with their guesses - and emerged deserving winners. Team 1 will no doubt rue a few misses on topics they were comfortable on especially on the pounce and in the written rounds which could have taken them to second place quite easily.

Please post your reviews and feedback in the comments.  

Monday, June 10, 2013

Announcement: The BCQC June Open Quizzes 2013

We will be having two quizzes (both with exclamation marks in their name!) this Sunday - the 16th of June, 2013

Quiz 1: Bulla-wood!


We will start with a quiz set by Yasho Tamaskar on Bollywood. Don't let the poster fool you, Yasho normally covers all genres and eras of Bollywood - so expect everything from Aaaaashiqui to Zubeida

Time: 1 pm
Place: Room 102, Academic Complex, College of Engineering, Pune
Flavour:  Bollywood
Teams: Teams of two.
Format: This is a written quiz (~35 questions)- so please bring a writing instrument.

Quiz 2: The Spanish Inquisition!



Oour second quiz of the day (which was totally not expected by anybody) will be a General Open quiz set by Aditya Gadre. Don't let the poster fool you, there will be no questions on the rack, comfy chairs or nice red uniforms in the quiz.

Time: 2:30 pm
Place: Room 102, Academic Complex, College of Engineering, Pune
Flavour:  General
Teams: Teams of two, 9 teams in the final
Format: Written Elims (please bring a writing instrument)  +  Finals


Contact details in case of queries:
Aditya - 9881101291 ; Avaneendra - 9011040388

Sunday, June 02, 2013

World Quizzing Championship 2013 & 100 years of Indian Cinema Results

Following are the scores for WQC 2013, Pune.



Name
Score
Kunal Sawardekar
87
Ramanand J
73
Nandan Gokhale
64
Ranajeet Soman
57
Debanjan Bose
56
C.V.R. Shastry
43
Prasanth Srinivasan
38
Debajyoti Adhikari
28
Naushi Samad
24


100 years of Indian Cinema Quiz, Pune

Since we had only 4 participants we changed the format to IR with infinite pounce and no negatives for the pounce.

Debanjan Bose - 19
Ranajit Soman - 19
Samridh Kapur - 16
Rohan Jain -13