BPCL Quiz by IQL – sometimes its not just the questions… November 9, 2009
Posted by karthikglobalsoul in Events, IQL News.2 comments
Statutory Warning: If you have busy schedules or don’t appreciate humour of any form, I request you not to proceed. For the rest of you, here is the review of the BPCL quiz that KN and me hosted (and backed up by Murthy).
| Questions-Simple | 8 * 5 rounds |
| Audience | 132 + technicians |
| Quiz hosts | 2 |
| Finalists | 16 |
| Fun | 101% |
| Mistakes | Occasionally |
| Satisfaction | 101% |
The ingredients for a perfect quiz. Sometimes it is just not the questions.
Venue: Bharat Petroleum Corp Limited, Anna Nagar.
Occasion: Vigilance Awareness week.
The climate was gloomy but the enthusiastic level inside the auditorium wasn’t. At 10, KN and I were honoured and we clumsily accepted the bouquet offered. The speeches made by the imminent guests were short and sweet (or we dozed off). After all the formalities were done, the stage was set for prelims.
The chairs in the auditorium were arranged in sets of four (members per team) and everyone started discussing from the very first question. I conducted the prelims and made my usual mistake of giving away too many clues. The prelim round of 30 questions (that included 10 hard core BPCL questions) was done within the estimated time of 40 minutes. We had to put up a fight to get the answer sheets back from the participants.
There was a long gap of 2 hours between prelims and finals which gave us enough time for correction.
While correcting a particular question “…. this street (in Chennai) was named after Lord _______?”, everyone had written ridicule answers like Warren and Mountbatten . We laughed over it and it took us few minutes to realize that they understood the “Lord” to be the English designation rather than God. We had to appreciate their “out of box” thinking or make a mockery of our inability to think like the participants. The correct answer was of course, Ranganathan Street in T.Nagar.
The correction was done in 45 minutes and we went to have our lunch. The menu was set for a king and they called it their “regular” lunch menu. We kept talking to participants to keep ourselves awake.
The finalists were cheered when their names were called out and the quiz began.
There was commotion and excitement from the word go. The audience was as thrilled as the finalists and displayed it by calling out KN’s name for every audience question. The rounds were quick and KN carried himself as professional as he could. There was a huge applause for the connect round (on the pictorials on Indian currency) making him blush. It was indeed a moment to cherish!!
There was a close tie between two teams and the team. The team that answered the last question correctly emerged as winners.
Winners:
I place: Mr.A .A . Prabhu Roy,Mr.V.S.Raghavan, Mr.Kani Amudhan,Mr.Nagarajan
II Place: Mr.Koshy Vargese, Mr.G.Ravichandran, Mr.Amit Kumar,Mr.L.Chandrasekaran
III Place:Mr.A.C.Iyer, Mr.Sethuraman,Mrs.Hema Malini, Mr.C.Joseph
IV Place: M/s Lakshmi, Mr.Mukesh .K. Singh, Mr.K.Sethuramalingam,Mr.M.Mohan
Yes, according to them, everybody who qualified was a winner.
After the prize distribution and thank you speeches, the entire auditorium was silent letting both of us to savour the experience of quizzing.
P.S.; Special thanks to Mr.Saieeji of BPCL for letting us conduct this Quiz. And for the audience for being patient enough for nearly 2 hours to know the answers and for appreciating our efforts of hosting the quiz.
Roundup of Masters of the Universe #1 October 26, 2009
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Saturday evening, October 24, 2009, 16.30 hours: the crowd slowly trickles in.
Aniruddh aka Karaboudjan looks over his shoulder every few minutes, trying to crack jokes to get some confidence and hide his nervousness. Kabala aka Ramkumar teases him to near death.
A dozen excited faces stomped into the venue at R.A.Puram. This was the first time such a quiz was being conducted at the IQL. So it was anybody’s nervousness to hope for…
As soon as the number of people went into double figures, the quizmaster for the day (Aniruddh) sacrificed his chair (later he would redeem it) and loaded his powerpoint presentation.
We were all set – this was the first meeting in IQL’s new avatar. Aniruddh quickly took us through the Prelims, it was an all written “all alone” quiz, which meant we had to be accurate as well as quick to answer. Patrick joked about whether IQL will initiate an award for the guy scoring a zero in such quizzes (he scored a zero in the last quiz by Ramana). Luckily he managed to score some points, so we were spared the ignominy of having to sponsor the award. We will consider it though, on popular demand…
There was a slight variation from the traditional array of starred questions for tie-breakers; every third question being a starred question (3, 6, 9 etc). The prelims was not high scoring, with 36 (2 points per correct question) being the highest. Obviously it was Kabala. The rest of us managed to stay within the band of 20-30, which was not bad, considering the prelims was a bit tough.
It was a bit sad to see Yaggy just miss the cutoff (he got 22 whereas the cutoff was 22.5). The final was tougher – at least the first round was so tough, we didn’t have many takers. There was the odd damaal dumeel during the Short Visual Connect rounds, but Aniruddh sought protection under the umbrella disclaimer “please bear with the quizmaster’s inefficiencies”.
I was the scorer for the finals, and I had an easy run to be honest. We had only Kabala answering it all. The rest of the finalists hardly opened their account until the second round. Overall it was thoroughly one sided, Kabala won hands down without dropping a point. The rest of the five finalists combined could not go past his score, that explains his dominance. I did have my moment of embarrassment when I did not know one of the contestant’s name – Mani. My mistake mate, should have asked for your name… I had only marked an “X” against his name.
We had a first timer in Ashish, Murthy’s friend. Welcome mate, looking forward to seeing you more often at our meetings. The Quiz in numbers: 14 participants, 30 prelims questions. Two theme rounds and a handful of questions on infinite bounce.
We had a glimpse of the good old days of IQL, where we teased people around; there were smiles on almost all faces (well except Aniruddh at times when we teased him). Some of the guys took Aniruddh one step further and said he might have been inspired by Arul Mani in terms of quiz mastering et al. all in good jest. This was not an easy task – to cater and challenge quizzers such as Harish, Kabala, Yaggy, Patrick and Malcaluffin… but Aniruddh carried himself well. Overall Aniruddh did a great job, thanks for the good show!!
IQL’s new avatar started off well. From here, we only need the co-operation of our members to carry this momentum.
Sylvian Patrick and I would be hosting the next session in November. We’ll post updates, so wait for that one yet…
IQL Reborn October 8, 2009
Posted by karthikglobalsoul in Events, IQL Meetings, IQL News.2 comments
After some discussion and some serious soul-searching, the IQL gang is proposing to propose we re-work the IQL model as follows:
2 weeks of ten qns (each of us bringing ten qns each to the meeting)
1 week of full quizzes (Prelims + Finals)
1 week of Champs League (winner of previous edition hosting the next)
Would appreciate your responses and suggestions on this.
Thanks,
IQL – Winter Camp in quizzing… coming soon October 7, 2009
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After the success of our inaugural Summer Camp in quizzing in May this year, the IQL plans to host Chennai’s first “Winter Camp” for school-going-geniuses in Nov-Dec 2009.
If you think you can help out or are interested in participating, get in touch with us – leave a note as a comment here or send us an email to iqlteam@gmail.com
We’d love to have volunteers as well as guest quizmasters for this event.
Thanks,
Team IQL
IQL Anniversary Quizzes – Quiz No.2 September 28, 2009
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Answers for the TV series quiz have been revealed along with the attempts for the quiz!!
Thanks and here is a new quiz by Anish Raju.
This is the page you might want to bookmark: IQL’s 2nd Anniversary
