iQuizLeague

(By Karthik Narayan)

In line with celebrations of World Book Day, the British Council had organized a unique quiz based on British books and movies on April 25, 2009, Saturday! When I walked into the open auditorium, I realized that there were around 25 teams (two per team) that had gathered. The prelims started at 4.30 PM sharp. Initially the quiz had been announced as “only for members” but was later thrown open to the public. One could see many familiar faces from the quizzing community. Apart from the regulars, one could see some new young faces as well, which was very promising.

We (participants) were ushered into the air-conditioned part of the auditorium for which we were very thankful to escape the sweltering heat. Ms.Bhooma, the quizmaster, introduced herself and immediately started the prelims – a written round of 20 questions. All questions were printed on the question paper itself; there was only one visual based question which was shown on screen. With a projector and with movies as one of the topics, we thought there would be a few movies/ visual based questions in the prelims, but there were quite a few in the finals.

The questions were of good standard; 5-6 questions in the prelims were based on characters, some pertained to authors. Overall, it was a good mix of questions on various genres of books. Not many questions on movies though, as mentioned earlier, but I thought the finals compensated for this.

Now, if you have been to quizzes in and around Chennai, you would be familiar with these names: Samanth Subramaniam, Swaminathan, Sumo, Gopal Kidao, Jayakanthan etc. If you are new to quizzing, you would like to know that these are some of the best quizzers in the country – veteran quizzers and winners at that!

Following the quiz, we had a short break where we were served refreshments (coke/ Pepsi and biscuits is not bad for a hot afternoon!). We were informed after the correction that the cutoff was around 12.5 out of 20 and it was a tough fight for the finals. Originally the quiz finals was scheduled for 6 teams, but with confusion over the scoring, it was increased to 7 at first. When Sumo/Krishnamoorthy claimed that they had got 15 or so, their scores were re-checked and they were included as the 8th team!! Something to look back and re-work for the quiz organizers – the marking of scores and decision to include 8 teams was not too professional of the quiz organizers.

There were some goodies up for grabs for the audience for answering questions thrown to them; so in spite of the humid Saturday evening, some of us stayed back to watch the finals. The finals had 6 rounds – the first round opened with a lot of clips from various movies. The questions were of good standard and some of the questions stumped both the teams and the audience.

Winners of the quiz – Samanth and Swami (they won a year’s membership at British Council). Other winners: Jayakanthan/ Kiran Vijayakumar, Ashwin Prabhu/ Rajagopal, Vijay (better known as Photo Vijay) and Shamika, an all women team (apols for not noting down names), Gopal Kidao and his wildcard partner Prashanth, Meera/ Sankhya .

The major winner from the audience was Francis Ford “Kabala” aka Ramkumar, who won quite a few goodies with lovely answers.

Strong points of the quiz:

• Thanks to British Council for organizing a books and movies quiz – it is a unique concept in the world of quizzing, not tried by many.

• The content of the quiz was no doubt, of good standard (the quiz was aimed at ages 15-35, so it was a good mix of questions catering to all genres). Questions ranged from Canterbury Tales to JRR Tolkien to Harry Potter and beyond.

• The drawing of lots to choose the seating arrangements for the finalists was a good move.

• The idea of eliminating two teams after the first two rounds was again welcome.

Some areas for improvement:

• The decision to have 8 teams in the finals was not bad, but we were not confident about the way scores were tabulated; the organizers could have read out the scores of the teams that qualified.

• Scoring for the finals could have been handled in a more professional way – the whole thing was tabulated manually by two different people and yet we did notice some errors.

• In trying to keep up with lost time, the quizmaster did not give a fair chance for audience to read the question + answers displayed on the screen.

• We were not sure if the infrastructure used had been tested/ rehearsed as the screen did not capture the full text, audios and videos did not work (some compatibility issue, we were informed). A dress rehearsal always helps, especially considering there were lots of video-based questions in the finals.

• At some points, we felt the quizmaster was trying to be too verbal and missed the spark to go with the words – she kept saying “would you like to know the answer/ score” – sans the excitement in the tone.

• The quizmaster could not take control of the whole quiz at times; she went back to her team to check for rules and for answers to certain questions. A quizmaster has to necessarily be in command and follow the dictums “quizmaster decision is final” and “quizmaster is always right during the quiz”.

• Most of the questions were based on fiction, there were not many (or none that I can recall) on non-fiction.

Overall, we did have a lot of fun participating in the quiz and later as audience. Congrats to Samanth & Swami on winning the quiz.

Thanks, British Council for the wonderful initiative!!

Some questions from the quiz (not verbatim):
1. Which was the first published book in England?
2. During her early literary days, her first few books were signed “By a Lady” to conceal the author’s identity. She went on to become one of the literary giants of her time. Who?
3. What connects the literary characters – Buster, Scamper, Timothy Loony etc?
4. Connect: Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, Harper Lee’s to kill a mockingbird (not sure if this was asked).

Answers:
1. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
2. Jane Austen
3. Dogs in Enid Blyton books
4. Only novels by those authors.