Monday, March 17, 2014

BCQC March Open Quizzes 2014 - Report

Quiz 1: Written History Quiz 

Set by Vikram Joshi
Proctored by Aditya Gadre
Format: 100 questions to be answered in 60 minutes

A total of 30 people took the quiz in Pune. Here are the results (Only Top 5 scores). Full results from all centres will be published soon

1st: Kunal Sawardekar : 55 pts
2nd: Suraj Menon 43.5 pts
3rd: Anannya Deb: 40.5 pts
4th: Anurakshat Gupta: 38.5
5th: Aniket Khasgiwale: 24.5

Quiz 2: Extra! Extra! - The Typical Chennai Quiz 

Set and Conducted by Kunal Sawardekar
Format: 22 question written quiz
Flavour: Current events and news

Results:
1st: Anannya Deb and Aniket Khasgiwale : 13 pts
2nd: J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar: 12 pts

Quiz 3: Questionable Intelligence

Set and Conducted by J Ramanand
Flavour: General
Format: Written prelims. 8 teams in the final. A total of 39 questions in the final across 4 rounds and one Visual connect

Results:
1st: Kunal Sawardekar and Anannya Deb: 185 pts
2nd: Aditya Gadre and Aniket Khasgiwale: 115 pts
3rd: BV Harish Kumar and Navya: 110 pts
Jt 4th: Srisha Haridas and Utsab Saha: 100 pts
Jt 4th: Aniketh Rallabhandi and Vibhav Bhave: 100 pts
6th: Suraj Menon and Maitreyi Gupta: 50 pts
7th: Samridh Kapur and Nirmoh B: 20 pts
8th: Suraj Prabhu and Mustafa Abbas: 10 pts

Report:

The quiz began with an "old school" pen and paper elims on a printed sheet which certainly helped the QM to get the elims done in a short time. The elims cut off was 10/26 while the toppers got 16/26

The finals started with a short written round on Puneri tropes - such as Puneri Patya, Hou de Kharcha and Political Hoardings - which gave everyone some points and some laughs.

The first round of 10 IR questions with JR's now-standard "One-Finite" pounce variation (You can pounce as many times as you like, but once you get a pounce wrong, no more pounces for you in the round) was fairly low scoring with no team crossing 30 pts at the end of the round.

The second round involved picking quirky topics for other teams in a unsymmetrical order ('cause BDFL said so!). Topics ranged from Indian documentaries to Karl Marx to Australian Arts. This round had an added feature of a normal pounce on +15/-5 scoring. This round too was fairly low scoring.

Team C (Kunal and Anannya) then cracked the visual theme on the very first clue and surged into the lead which they would keep for the rest of the quiz.

The second and third places were still up for grabs with Aniketh and Vibhav chugging along quite nicely and Harish and Navya putting in a briliiant performance.

At the end of the 2nd IR round and the 2nd Topics round, Kunal and Anannya had pulled away from the rest and won the quiz comfortably. Aniketh and Vibhav seemed to just slow down enough for us (Aniket and Aditya) as well as Harish & Navya to go past and take the 2nd and 3rd places. Srisha and Utsab performed extremely well in the last round to take a very commendable 4th place.

Overall the quiz, not surprisingly at all, was excellent. Great questions, innovative rounds and exemplary audience involvement from JR.

A special mention of Navya who (after becoming the youngest ever participant in a BC Open Quiz) now becames the youngest ever finalist in an Open quiz in Pune



3 comments:

J Ramanand said...

QM's notes:
- we had 29 teams in the prelims. Most of the non-finalists didn't seem to mind sticking around.
- there was an audience-only trivia crossword
- ran out of time for the last round
- One-finite Pounce: still in experimental phase for me; if I'm able to put up qs that are not too obvious, then I am probably better off not having any pounce at all
- Direct round: I know it was complex (but when have I done a BC quiz without it being so), but the driving principles were:
* In regular infinite pounce, the team getting the directs has a bit of an advantage in that they can go for the qn without the penalty; which means no. of directs do matter. Here, as in school quizzing, directs are equal
* Attempts are somewhat equal, at a penalty, with the option to write
* Reason for switching the order back and forth is to avoid the pitfalls in old-style direct-and-pass where the last team has to wait an unreasonably long time before getting an attempt in.
* Reason for letting the last team in order of passing to pick the topic for each qn is because they have the least probability in getting to an attempt
* But again, if the qns are non-obvious, all this may not be needed

* Prelims: more than for saving time, I prefer having the questions on paper (instead of screen), despite its toll on the environment, as it lets teams pick what qns to focus on, and spend time as per their choice, rather than having to chug along with the slideshow. One day we'll all be using an app on our phablets to look at the qns, so the dead tree part of it will also not be a bother.

* Didn't expect the finals to be on the lower-scoring sides. Will welcome comments on accessibility and spread of topics. I wish I could have spent some more time talking about the answers.

Perhaps this was the most mentally balanced of quizzes I have done at a BC Open!

Varun said...

Hi, I just came across your blog. Can I know when you guys next meet? I'd like to come

J Ramanand said...

Varun: join the FB group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/198207793566767/ . There is an informal session today at 2:30 pm. Call Avaneendra at 9011040388 for details.