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.