Columban Open Quiz 07: Vroom… Vroom…

Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Quizzing

Finally, some inter-school quiz contest to bunk classes at my new school. These actually help a lot if you want to build a good rep amongst your teachers and fellow classmates. But before you go out to some quiz, some things that you need to check for are,

· Whether your school is invited…

For me, the answer to that would be an eternal NO! Remember which school I study in? So what you need to do is, convince your Principal well enough so that she herself calls up the host school and registers her school for participation and that too for ONE single team! (There were atleast 42 teams from St. Columba’s School (SCS))

· Anyone coming?

Lone Warriors do not always perform well in quizzes; neither do they get enough encouragement from the school to proceed further. The situation worsens if he doesn’t do well in the contest, which is why I decided that we need a solid team. Thankfully, we had one!

Sanket Amdalli: An extremely talented bloke from Vadodara, formerly known as Baroda. He is the semi-finalist at India’s Child Genius and has secured wonderful ranks in several national level Olympiads which includes a rank 42 in FTRE!

Sourabh Biswas: A bong from Nagpur, he went all the way to the T.V finals of the Bournvita Quiz Contest. A truly brilliant chap who is also an avid reader.

Sambit Mishra: A geek from Damanjodi, Orissa: Came third in the Young World School Quiz, one of THE largest school quizzes in India.

Prashanth Kanduri: Well, you can’t forget this bloke, can you? Major achievements include Regional Finalist Position (Andhra Pradesh) at the Bournvita Quiz Contest.

We named ourselves PS3. Nope, we aren’t huge fans of console gaming, but it expands to our first names. (PS^3 would make it clearer perhaps.) And this isn’t my first time at SCS. I had gone there previously at class 9^th only to come back empty handed.

With team to go, the school had organized an Air-Conditioned 4X4 SUV named Tata Safari! (Now, from where/how did they get that?) After circuiting the GPO at Ashok Place 42 times and getting ourselves chellaned for taking the U-Turn at the wrong place, we finally made it to St. Columba’s School. It appeared as if our school has never represented itself in any such contest. The guys at the registrations were gaping at us as if we were inhabitants from the legendary planet of Magrethea! After 30 minutes of waiting and bird-watching, and scanning all our potential competitors (and also eying out for the computer geeks I know), we finally entered into the air-cooled hall. Moving air, speeds up sweat evaporation at the surface of the skin, which in turn cools you down thus, making you feel more relaxed. The hall over there is actually an indoor basketball stadium with retractable hydraulic baskets hanging from the roof. It was impressive to look at. The seating arrangement for so many schools was good. 4 chairs for every team. We were team no. D - 42+2, staring at the stage with weird look.

The prelims began, and it was such a relief to get the very first question right. Sanket and Sambit caught the sports and old movies part firmly. Trivia on Movies, Technology and Observation-based questions were mine. Sourabh did the literature, history and mythology part nicely. The quiz was very good and well adhered to SCSOQ standards. I had a great time the last time I came here as well. A totally thought provoking quiz for one, as one can never prepare for such a quiz. Well, actually you cant prepare for any quiz. True quizzers do it with sheer observation and true know-how of what they see, hear, smell, taste or touch. The more things you are into, the better your chance of doing well in a quiz. Coming to the quiz again, it was a very cleverly made one. To my other team members, it was a one of a kind quiz. They had never before faced such a type of trivia based quiz.

At the end of it, anyone must admit. 30 minutes is simply too less for a trivia based quiz consisting of 50 questions which even included 5 audio and 5 visual based questions. For a normal straight-forward quiz, this was fine as you either know the answer or you don’t. But over here, you need to think, recall apply some brains, check the grammar that those guys have used and decipher out what they are actually asking. Some more time would have been handy. The multimedia ones were great fun, we got 7 out of those 10 right. At the end of it, we had the answers called out. Unlike the last time, they didn’t ask the participants the answers to their questions and neither did they give Cadbury Perk Chocolates to those who answered them correctly.

When they finally started announcing, we felt happy on side that we got nearly 14-15 answers right but also started losing hope as all the teams shouted “YAAAY!” for every answer the guy blurted out. We started feeling that we were too bad to come here. A corner of my mind was screaming faintly though, “We may make it at the last spot!” After a small pause, the results were promptly announced. Keeping our fingers crossed, we heard the 10^th team – SCS, 9^th – SCS, 8^th – Amity. Hopes were nearly down to zero after the 7^th one too wasn’t ours. We turned back and then suddenly it sounded like it was D-44 announced in a mono-mike. “Woah, a moment of partial victory there! What were those n00bs shouting ‘Yay’ for? For getting their answers wrong?”

After hopping up the stage, we saw a shady character who looked like a cross between the mobile version of Stephen Hawking and Mr. Bean. Shortly, we also found out that he was our nerdy quizmaster. The sound system of the hall wasn’t very good this time. We could only understand the questions because it was displayed on the screen and the hints because the quizmaster was in audible range! Coming to the ‘staged’ quiz, the seating wasn’t very good there. They were nothing but plain stools and no tables. The teams were seated close enough to hear each other’s whispers. Gladly, the static of the microphone and the cacophony of the crowd didn’t let others hear our answers (happy ) and neither did it allow us to hear theirs (sad ).

The questions were very good in the stage rounds, especially the ‘Connect’ questions. One of those questions featured Elisha Cuthbert, Newton, some bloke who looks like Newton, and the Newton Pendulum. The only thing that I saw that was connecting the four was Popular Mechanics for Kids. QM said it was a brilliant answer, but the real answer was Cuthbert Calculus. The QM got the 42-jokes thrown in the middle, he understood the PJs, and was quite lively in giving good hints. So there we were out of the semis with the 6^th place with tons of rocket fuel burning in our eyes all set to blast off in the next quiz!

Also, we had lunch at Nirula’s which is a furlong away from there. The Rs. 50-wala-unlimited-buffet offer is out. It has been shifted to the breakfast time now, sigh!

PS: Post Scripts:

1. Would like to thank Uma for persuading me to watch V for Vendetta, helped in the audio round!

2. I want the entire COQ questionnaire, for all the groups A, B, C, D. Prelims, Quarters, Semis as well the Finals! I don’t know how you get it, I just want it! Any SCS guy lurking around? [pacific64(at)gmail(dot)com].

3. Anybody knows about any other quiz coming up? Please notify me in case it is.

4. I found “Infinite Bounce” terrible out there. After some thinking and analysis, I found it to be better than the direct/pass system. Also mention if your school is organizing a quiz with that system of scoring!

5. Also found out that our team does have potential. We just need to attend more quizzes.

6. Quizzes involving trivia have pretty long questions. By the time I finish reading the last line, I forget what was in the first. By the time I finally manage to fully understand it, the time’s up. So I want a very good sound system the next time I attend a quiz having tons of trivia. Atleast let me hear it properly!

1. Aditya Mubayi and Kunal Savarkar are wonderful quiz-makers and quiz-masters. Hope to see such quizzes in the future.

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Permalink | July 28th, 2007

8 Responses to “Columban Open Quiz 07: Vroom… Vroom…”

Says:
July 29th, 2007 at 9:14 am
The quizmaster did look like a cross between Hawking and Bean
Any special reason for this huge font size?
Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Yeah, quit writing in that huge font size! :p COQ’s always good though, and the fact that you were surprised that people around you were getting the 42 jokes means you need to start going to more quizzes.
Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Great to hear that you’re still participating in all the competitions. You’re really tied down to a lot of work and you’re really serious about it too I guess. The frequency of posts has reduced considerably.

Can’t blame you, it’s been like that for most of us.
Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
@Arjun: The quiz master was pretty funny… And the reason why this thing came in a huge size because I made a draft on OO.org Writer and then copy pasted that into this. For some reason, size 14 is very big in wordpress standards. And I was too lazy to correct that…
@Onkur: Please keep me notified abt quizzes coming up, Mr. Prez of CW and Ex. Veep of DPSVKQC!
@Abhishek: The reason for less frequency of posts is that what you just wrote and MTNL’s stupid service which is making think of switching ISPs this month. My phone was dead for nearly 2 weeks this month. I had my Phase I Tests yesterday.
Says:
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:57 am
I’ve seen Mr Kunal & Mr Adittya at heritage quiz they and teir ques. r mind blowing. they make the participants enjoy.they r my favourite
Chirag Says:
September 4th, 2008 at 4:18 am
Hey Prashanth!!
Reading your blog after a long time.
What coincidence, we had D-44 team number in this coq 2008 and reached the semi-finals. (i guess we met their too-!!)
Enjoy quizzing…..
Chirag
Prashanth Says:
September 7th, 2008 at 1:26 am
@Chirag:
Hehe, that seems to be the unlucky number, should have got 42! Anyway, I did go through your archives recently, and it is a nice blog you have there… I guess you are one of those guys who would love to read blogs like Freakonomics, and many other blogs from NY Times and Wall Street.
Too bad it doesn’t give much insight to your own life. So I need to stay in touch with you to know more about you. Do buzz me whenever you get a news about any quiz.
Cheers!
Chirag Says:
September 8th, 2008 at 8:18 am
@Prashant You guessed rite! I do read ny times and other stuff on wall street (freakonomics ain’t my taste)
Ya - keep informing everyone abt. latest quizzes. I’ll tell you if i come to know of any. Btw…have you registered for the ‘tcs it wiz’ quiz?
ps. 44 turned out to be our lucky number!