Code Wars ‘07: So Big.F(inally something in hand!)…
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Headshot, It's My Life, Quizzing, School Life, Technology
Key:
CW means Code Wars
C/W means Crossword
Ahh, one symposium I have been waiting to attend. Not only because my friend GQ is organizing this, but also because I have had pleasant memories with this one event last year. I love DPS VK and its atmosphere. It feels warmer (in the emotional sense) and cozier here than it feels in any other school. By far, its the most beautiful school I have visited in Delhi. Even the classrooms are so comfy. DPS RKP might be larger in area and student size as well, but DPS VK is nice and spacious. In between events, I did have a nice walk around the premises. That’s one great school there… and another great clan!
CW and its members are fairly close friends of mine, especially the prez - Onkur (a.k.a Open Sourceror), Arjun (a.k.a Lord (Dork) Vader) as well as a few more like Vivek, Karthick. Although that doesn’t mean that they give me away all the answers and stuff and let me get away with their big prize, a Lenovo Y-Series Laptop! One of the neat rules up there was they would give 42 bonus points to the team which registers 3 days before the event and doesn’t change it’s team composition during the event. 42 points are lost if that is done.
Speaking of 42, Onkur, the Prez, is a die hard H2G2 fan. So a part of the ’syllabi’ of attending the event was to thoroughly know the book. Although that wasn’t mentioned, names of the events, the presentation of stuff in the invite, the very nature of the clan and the tentacles of influence of the Prez were enough to deduce this small fact.
Day I: Hopes Up, down again…
I thought I would have an upper hand in this event as I was sure of the fact that it would be an H2G2/Douglas Adams memorial event more than a tech symposium. But then, when I entered the premises, I saw kids from DPS RKPee, and a few more schools mugging up the book, marking stuff on it, discussing heavily about the characters, remembering every ‘proper noun’ in the book and behaving as if their Social Science Bored Exam is gonna start in another 42 minutes!
Our programmer and gamer were sulking after a pathetic (referring to our performance!) event called Exun. The rest of us just went there to have fun. I was sure that I would once again return empty handed. One of the only reasons I wanted to attend this was because the quiz and C/W are made by Onkur and his allies. A quiz by the Great Quizzard himself wasn’t something that I would miss. Plus, I wanted to know if I had to scrap any questions at all. That’s actually very important for my event, DynamiX.
As soon as we went in, we got what ESP told me. The Techathlon paper with an H2G2 puzzle. Check this, its a dumb puzzle I know but then its atleast better than last year’s stupid stuff! I guess we did get around 6-7 of them right. The muggers doing a hefty lot of H2G2 research from DPS RKPee got around 10 of them.
First up was an event called n-Crypton. It consists of a series of coded stuff with something related to IT. We had fun with it. PS - We won it!
Next Tenzin and I headed up again to give in the quiz prelims. One thing I hate about almost all quizzes is that they ask us to expand acronyms. Agreed that they are the most scoring part, but then I suck at them. Plus, I find them really silly as they don’t test your quizzing aptitude. Muggers from anywhere can qualify in a tough quiz by just answering the acronyms. Perhaps that is why we decided to take them off in our quiz prelims at DX. Coming back to this quiz, it was a toughie… We answered very few there. Although it wasn’t entirely a history test, but then I was reminded the fact about how much I sucked at quizzing. My bleak chances of qualifying were removed with Ramjas sitting right behind me. By constantly being in communication with me by jabbering some nonsense or the other, and ranters from all side complaining, I was sort of in trouble. We just got up from there to submit our paper and get away with it. But then these guys got up with us to submit it further increasing their suspicion.
After a dumb quiz, only some good food could light us up. That is something usually not found in DPS VK. With almost all Principals going on a morcha against international franchise of fast food, computer symposiums did lose a lot of participation. Most people usually came to Exun to have free pizzas from Domino’s. Even I went there for the first time for that very reason. We had Paneer Kulcha, with sour paneer filling, a non-branded ketchup, and some juice which a heartly drank. I went in the warm and cozy Chamar Hall and try and solve a few more combinations in the puzzle. I spoke to a few people there. Many didn’t give a good response about the GD. I inquired stuff about it as I wanted the DX GD to be an example.
C/W prelims now. And in this C/W, we just left 2 clues. Got everything else right! A nice one for the prelim, but then Onkur reminded that we will be crying for our nannies in the finals. Sometime later, I got the news that I would after all be crying for my nanny, as Tenzin had to attend a class at his tutorials and he wouldn’t be able to come with me in the finals. As you might have inferred, we DID qualify to the finals outrightly! I decided to take along with a secret partner…
So hopes up in the very first day. The first position in n-Crypton was enough to make parents feel better about missing a day of school. So I would atleast get one pendrive home. Suddenly, my eyes fell at prized laptop at display. I fell in love with it…
Varun, the best Web Spinner and Screen Painter in Delhi was apprehensive about both the events and wasn’t sounding confident before going in despite the fact that the only one who matches him - Arjun, was a non-participant. The reason being was that they only permitted Gimp as the software of choice for the painters and Kompozer for the spinners. Later, they decided to come back to Dreamweaver as too many kids were crying out. Agreed that they are OSS freaks and want to promote them, but then there should be time for it. Honestly speaking, very few OSS projects have grown enough to compete with the industry standard proprietary stuff…
Day - II: Yeah baby! Give me more…
The day started off with the C/W finals, and a few problems with the projector! CW tried everything, even the technique that they master, Jugaad! The projector just didn’t work. Onkur and Arjun were in a sort of panic. Onkur ate tons of chocolates to calm himself down. Arjun ran around the school in his socks to get another projector. Meanwhile, the co-prez Eeshaan entered the hall with another projector he found somewhere. He took the male wire, tried plugging it into another male wire, since it didn’t fit, he took the ‘incompatible’ projector away to fetch for another one with Arjun.
Arjun found a box and gasped in the Chamar Hall. Even after successfully plugging the right wires in, the thing didn’t work. So well, they had a back up. They printed out sheets of the grid and handed it over to the participants and called out the clues with the right cases and punctuation marks. Quite a task for sure… but then the C/W was quite fun. Although it did contain stuff that I had not heard of before, but then was a clever crossword because of which we had to slightly modify a few clues here and there… It felt awkward to see Uma as a competitor in the finals, but then I, along with my secret partner, the Spirit of Douglas Adams won the crossword. People can fairly call it luck, as i perhaps got some of the easier clues and my guesses fell right! I even took a double or nothing for an 8-letter word starting with ‘L’ guessing it to be Linspire considering Onkur’s loyalties towards Karmony and his šhìt called Freespire! Unexpectedly, I got it wrong! Still, got some of the nice passes and now I get another pen drive to take home. Uma finished third in the same C/W. Quite good for someone who has been out of touch with technology since an year. Varun won the Digital Imaging event.
Meanwhile, some jackass deleted Varun’s Web Design entry. Varun went up for the recovery, used some software, and was awarded the first position in that. Had it not been for the recovery, he would have been awarded the third position as these guys had seen him building the site, but not the final thing.
So we guys had 4 first positions in all. We then started praying hard that no other school wins anything else. The prize distribution was actually quite erratic, with quite a few schools winning stuff. Until the Crossword was over, no school seemed to have dominated the scene. We went out to try out our new laptop. Unlike other schools, which give away their prizes to the schools, we as hypocrites, liars, and cheaters, get to keep it with ourselves.
Next up the quiz finals. I DID NOT qualify for the finals. But then i watched the entire thing. Quite brilliant I must say. Onkur and allies made the quiz such that you had to know a lot of general knowledge as well to crack the questions. You had to think beyond tech. That was a trait somewhat true in my quiz at DX as well. Thankfully, I had no questions to scrap and for the first time, I enjoyed watching a quiz final in which I did not qualify. Not that I didn’t know anything in the finals, but the quality of questions made it up…
As expected, we couldn’t do šhìt in gaming, programming and techathlon as well. The second day had two big puzzles. One of them was ripped off my last year’s admission test at FIITJEE. Or in other words, FIITJEE ripped off the same puzzle from somewhere else! Even though we got them right, we didn’t win because everyone did! And Day-I’s techathlon counted too. Didn’t really find tech in this year’s techathlon though!
DPS RKPee won the Babelfish event. That was playing the text-based game of H2G2. ESP had told me that. I could have gone for it had ESP told me that I am not gonna qualify for the quiz. 42 points were quite precious. There went our laptop. Came in the Lenovo Desktop, who’s monitor is currently installed in my place. It feels terrible to lose out by a small margin that too due to an H2G2 related reason in a tech symposium, especially if you have won four 1st positions! 
Yes we won the runner’s up trophie, a nice biiig silver one, a total of 8 pendrives, 8 trophies, a high-end Lenovo desktop, and a nice bunch of videos, pictures and memories. It felt so good to have my self-esteem back on track! Coming to videos, the Code Warriors put up a great motion picture to conclude the thing. Will put up the videos as and when my Internet connection gets more stable. For now, be happy with just pics… 
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4 Responses to “Code Wars ‘07: So Big.F(inally something in hand!)…”
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Ankur Banerjee Says:
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:08 pmGee, I don’t think RKP’s bigger in area. Ours *looks* smaller because so much goes into gardens!
And thanks for the words about the quiz and crossword.
I guess people didn’t like the GD because I kept egging them on for technical discussions, which, most of them have no clue about. Seriously. Many didn’t know what ‘open source’ was. Finalists.You didn’t qualify in the quiz as there was a tie-breaker which you didn’t qualify in, not because of Ramjas…
PS - Sorry on my part, for mom not letting you come today.
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Prashanth Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 amYeah, I know that, you told me… but then it seems kind of fun making these people feel guilty…
Anyway, a dedicated post on DPS VK vs. DPS Dwarka and the upcoming feud would be up soon…Thats the problem in GDs, people passionate about technology are in just a handful. Can’t blame schools either for not organising GDs with technically competent topics.
And your school looks more spacious and airy thanks to those gardens and open corridors.,, -
Tenzin Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 7:03 amhey prashant….excellent review you wrote….
impressive..!
had real fun reading it.. -
Prashanth Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 11:48 pm@Tenzin:
Thanks a lot mate… For both contributing to CW and then for the nice words… Stay tuned for more…
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