Review of the Landmark Quiz, Bengalooru edition on Nov 1, 2009 November 2, 2009
Posted by karthikglobalsoul in Landmark Quiz, Quizzes, Review.9 comments
(By Malcaluffin aka Vinod H, a proud Malayali on Kerala Formation Day and a happy guest on Rajyotsava Day in Bengalooru)
November 1st is remembered by the denizens of Bengaluru as Rajyotsava Day. But we quizzards also remember it for another reason; yes!! That would be the Landmark Quiz.
The 6th edition of the Bengaluru leg of this quiz juggernaut got underway with the same elan and pomp just like it has been happening since 1988. The venue, St.John Auditorium in Koramangala wore a festive look with banners in both English and Kannada, announcing what’s happening inside.
There was a huge turn-out of around 1000 people; and the organisers proudly proclaimed that they have registered over 340 teams; a far cry from the Landmark edition in Chennai; but since it was a sunday the attendance could have been say a 100 teams more. As usual the quiz was being sponsored by a video games company and several confectionary brands had sweets and cookies lined up as free snacks for the quizzers.
The quiz started on time with the host of the evening Dr.Navin Jayakumar greeting Bengaluru by appreciating the coolness of the city and the crowd. This drew a rapturous applause.
So, after all those niceties and the works; it was time some serious stuff viz; the Prelims. Yours truly and his team-mates were sitting in the midst of some really good quizzers from Chennai; the occasional banter was there but we really knew that we had to put up a good show if we were to go past them.
The prelims, to be frank was tough; a fact which was echoed by most of the teams. The questions were diverse and eclectic; with varying degrees of difficulty. There were also some questions which sort of felt like a sword point on the nape of your neck; the “either-you know it-or don’t” sort of types. But, this ensured that the grain was separated from the chaff.
After we gorged on those goodies that were being doled outside, we realized that the cut-off was around 25-26; a far cry from our score of 17. Many regulars on stage, due to the intense prelims went onto become spectators. But personally speaking, we could have got 4-5 questions more and then our score might have been in the 20’s. One of the things we compromised on was accurate answering. We learnt that answering Roosevelt, to a question whose answer was Theodore Roosevelt, would not really help in an Open Quiz.
Well after all those enlightenment, we basically did some tapori acts and got seats with a good view for the finals; much to the consternation of a guy who was saving his seats for 2 of this other chums!!
The Finals started as usual with that exhilarating video staring with the quote from Francis Bacon viz; “Knowledge is Power”. This was exemplified in the teams present on stage. As always, 8 teams made it to the finals. In them were the crowd favourites “Q.E.D” (Ramana, Swami & Samanth), Metakwizzks (Arul Mani, Kiran & Mitesh) and “We are like this Wonly” (Anushtup, Ochintya & Appu). Another popular team was “Nobel Gases” (Udupa, Ramkey & Shiv). The trio of Sumo, Jayakanthan and Gopal Kidao narrowly missed out.
The first 15 questions were relatively incident free. When the scores were announced, all the teams were having an equally logical chance to become the winners, at that moment. But, what turned the tables was the Buzzer Round. The questions were not that unwieldy; but many of the teams either ended being too-overconfident or were all at sea when their turn came while answering. Navin himself opined that it was “devastating”!!
By the time the final round begun, it became more or less clear to us that “We are like this Wonly” might go on to win the quiz. And they did eventually with “MetaKwizziks” coming second.
As Chennai-ites, we really wished for QED or “Landmark Dreams” (Vijay Sarathy, Goach & Sreeram) to move on to the Nationals but; I reckon they would have a better day at the upcoming Pune, Mumbai or the Chennai legs. So here’s to all our Chennai guys……the very best!!
Last but not the least, Kudos to the winners and the runner-ups (“We are like this Wonly” & “MetaKwizziks”) who advanced to the National Finals to be held on Aug 15th 2010.
In all, it was a very entertaining affair; and if one thinks about how difficult it was; they also need to equally remember that it was a National Open Quiz.
PS: Prelims questions are available in this link: LANDMARK QUIZ 2009 BANGALORE PRELIMS
Review of the ASAP Spent Quiz on October 2, 2009 October 4, 2009
Posted by karthikglobalsoul in Quizzes, Review.3 comments
(By Karthik Narayan)
I read Shashi Tharoor’s tweet that we should all work on Oct 2, on the pretext that work is worship and that’s the best tribute one could give for Gandhiji. A lot of people might have cringed on the very thought but I smiled, thinking of the Chennai quizzers who fulfilled Tharoor’s tweesh (tweet+wish).
Gandhi Jayanthi normally sees most quizzers in mufti, sitting at home, conveniently relaxing in their comfy sofas, half asleep and watching some patriotic movie on the telly (“Roja on Doordarshan). But this year, we were in for a pleasant surprise, working on Oct 2 just as Shashi Tharoor had tweeted.
We had three things to cheer for:
1. The quiz was hosted by ASAP Productions with good prizes lined up (the audience prizes were a generous five free movie tickets!!)
2. A quizmaster of good repute, Vinod Ganesh and J.Krishnamurthy
3. A good chance to catch up on two of the world’s biggest money spinners – sports and entertainment, and needless to say, that there was another quiz happening on the same day at Bangalore (Unmaad), hence we had a slightly better chance at this quiz with our Bangalore counterparts busy working away their own set of questions elsewhere.
The Prelims:
The prelim was mostly one-liners, good 1-2 sentence questions. It was easy on the eye though not too easy to answer. The prelims covered all topics ranging from TV shows, movies, music, drama/ theatre, sports of all kinds. The Prelims had 40 questions out of which at least 15-20 were quite tough yet interesting. The Quiz had the perfect start with a question on who is No.21 on the AFI’s all time 100 Heroes in movies. The answer was fittingly Gandhi, and aptly chosen instead of a random Gandhi question considering the quiz was held on Gandhi Jayanthi. There were other great questions like the ones on America’s Cup, on Anjali Tendulkar, Leander Paes etc that made our hairs stand on end – these are the type of questions that make us all stand and salute the research that goes behind each question; and the people who answer them.
The only disappointment in the Prelims was a question that went like this:
“Who took the photo of Clint Eastwood and Ellen DeGeneres at an Oscar Ceremony?”
We were informed that there will be oohs and aahs when we heard the answer. Frankly it was quite arbit and unguessable.
So the answer was revealed with a video of Steven Spielberg clicking the photo… what gives?
There were few other similar questions in the quiz that we felt quite cheated like watching the unveiling of the London 2012 Olympics Logo. I am sure there were other questions in contention to be put in the Prelims/ Finals. If this was the best of those questions, we wonder what the other probables were. Also there were a few questions based on London, though on different sports (stadium near the river, Lord’s cricket ground etc).
Having said that, the quality of the other questions eclipsed these minor blemishes.
The Finals:
The questions and rounds were framed well – with alternating theme rounds with apt themes such as Couples Retreat (Questions on couples with one sportsperson and one entertainer). Even the themes were quick fire 4 question rounds that were sharp and kept the audience also active.
Hindsight, I felt very happy at learning some new things. These are the quizzes that give us some direction on where to read and what to read. Looking at the trend of the quizzes in the last two years, one feels lost in not knowing what to read. If you ask the hardcore quizzers (read “winners”) they merely say, Google and wikipedia will save the day. But then what do you Google for? Who gives you the topics? Where can you look at the trend? Here’s where!!
A wider range could have been attempted rather than stick to sports and movies for most part of the quiz. Entertainment does not simply mean a few Hollywood movies, a couple of titbits on Indian movies. The prelims held so much promise, covering every topic possible, but the finals concentrated on few topics.
Also one felt that the entertainment level was not high considering that there were few questions on music, drama and the like. This was a quiz for the Nerdy quizzers, but not one that entertained with good music or great actors or movie lines. After all, a quiz has to dish out the happy moments for people to take back, to enjoy some good music, especially in a quiz that is dedicated to entertaining…
We noticed that for some easy questions like those on Marmayogi and AUDI, the teams were struggling to answer. Maybe easy ones are tougher than long and arbit ones for some quizzers!!
Sports and Entertainment in the Quiz:
Entertainer of the day Award goes to:
There were a few contenders for this award. The nominees were:
- Vinod Ganesh – for pulling off the quiz with élan; Vinod has his own style of hosting a quiz, unfazed, cool as a cucumber while the questions were hot.
- Gopal Kidao – for his atrocious and funny comments on the participants on stage and on some of the answers.
- One of the participants in the finals, Ramkey (a popular quizzer in Chennai), was weaving long stories to no real good, Vinod was quite patient in listening to it and then came his calm and cool “no”.
My vote is for Ramkey….
One of the great sporting moments in the quiz:
There were other great sporting moments when Ramana and Kabala made a strong comeback after lagging behind in the first two rounds. They nearly pulled off an upset – doing the “Bradbury strategy” of holding back, waiting for the others to screw up.
In the end it was the team of Srini and Rajagopal who had stiff competition from JK/ Sriram (Statsguru), Sumo-Swami, Ramana-Kabala and the like and won the quiz. Nice to see these two quizzers back to their winning ways.
Questions from the Quiz:
Some questions that I could recall from the quiz (will try and get the questions from the quizmaster). Sorry if there are mistakes, all noted down in haste in bits.
- Homi Dady Motivala and P.Gopichand – only two Indian sportspersons to have won all possible awards for Sports: Arjuna Award, Dronacharya Award, Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award.
- Dr.Leonard Reiffel invented something during who used it to draw illustrations on a series of science shows he did for public television in the late 1950s during his days at NASA. It’s widely used in television for sports these days. What invention? – telestrator.
- The Mellon Arena stadium is the home ground of a particular team and its nickname is contradictory. Why? – It’s the home for the Pittsburgh Penguins, this is nicknamed the Igloo. Since Penguins and Igloos are not in the same Pole (North and South Poles) this is impossible to happen.
- Pirate Latitudes is a book to be published in Nov 2009. Whose book? – Posthumous book by Michael Crichton
Theme:
- Nickname of Indy 500 race driver-winner
- Only 3 batsmen have scored centuries against all the 18 counties in England: Carl Hooper, Chris Adams and?
- What are the two words: the Tibetan word for Buddhists who have settled in Sikkim and the Tibetan word for Sikkim?
- Hole in the wall TV show – what is it based on and identify the participant (video)
Answers for themed questions:
- Helio Castroneves is nicknamed Spiderman
- Mark Ramprakash
- Bhutia and Denzong (pa)
- Darren Gough and Tetris
The theme/ connect is: all sportspersons who have won “dancing with the stars”.
Thanks!!
KN
Making of the Madras Quiz – 2nd and final part August 28, 2009
Posted by karthikglobalsoul in Events, IQL News, Quizzes, Review.2 comments
When we all went back home the day before the quiz (Saturday, Aug 22, the official birthday of Madras), we were quite satisfied with the final output. All that remained was to give it the final touches. All those hours of research would finally pay!! Everyone kept pouring the questions in, so that was a really big help. We did not have to go around fishing for questions at the end. As is the general trend, we did keep 4-5 questions in reserve for current happenings on the eve of Madras Day. Later, I reminded myself to go through the newspapers of the entire week – there was too much to read and note down. Maybe use it for next year!!
Well, we all had our moments on the eve of the quiz, it did not really go all that smooth as people may think!!
On D-day, Sanandan wanted us all to go traditional, to wear kurta-dhoti to give that ethnic feel about the whole thing. On hindsight, I wonder what the audience might have thought of that one – “ethnic”, “cute” or “outrageous”. I was a bit apprehensive about this idea; I would have loved to be there in a kurta-dhoti, but wanted to check with the others if they were okay for it. Patrick had never worn one in his life, so it was practically out of the question. Plus, one wardrobe slip might have converted the carnival into a comedy.
Besides that, overnight we were informed that we had to coordinate with the hardware suppliers ourselves!! This brought about a shift in our priorities. All along it was said that we would be hosting the quiz and need not worry about the background work, and now we had to start calling people, get things organized. A fall-out of this later shook us more on D-day in the form of the audio jack!!
It was a matter of time before we settled things, but some scary stuff prevailed. The jitters started to shake a few of us a bit, a few minutes before the start of the prelims, the projector guy informed us coolly that he had not brought the audio jack! Of all the nerve!!
Once the audio jack was set into place, we immediately did a test run, and we were all set to go! From there it was Sylvian Patrick all the way… He kept his nerve throughout the prelims and finals, made the stage his own and conducted it bravely considering it was his first OPEN quiz. Patrick carries with him a rich experience in terms of college quizzes, but my personal opinion about any quiz is that every quiz helps us learn.
The Madras Quiz would not have been possible without the aid, help, mentoring etc of a lot of people. The following list was not and is not intended to be part of an Oscar winning speech.
Sakthish Kumar who came all the way from Andhra to be part of the team was sent to run around looking for the audio jack. Simultaneously I got in touch with Vincent & Revathi of Mylapore Times. Vincent was almost like – it’s a Sunday, can you sacrifice all your audios and do alternative text questions. All of us did not know how to react to this. Big heartfelt thanks to both Sakthish Kumar and Kathir (of Mylapore Times). Without their timely help, it would have been a big flop show – with a lot of audios and videos at stake.
A special mention must go to all the members that helped out with this quiz: Hantan and Vijay for taking care of the prizes, coordinating with the Chief Guest of the day; Raji aunty for the timely help and brilliant questions and being part of the quiz at the venue; Murthy for his patience, his antics and scaring us with his “my laptop is not working” at the venue but eventually for his efficient scoring. Sridhar, Matti for helping out with the questions, giving valuable suggestions and coming to the quiz inspite of having other priorities (Matti was sick and Sridhar had his research studies to do). Subhashri, Sanandan and Vinod Hariharan for their great questions; Yaggy and Priyanka for helping out with correction of prelims and last but very importantly, our sponsors and Mylapore Times who gave us this opportunity to host the quiz.
Positives to take away:
We learnt a lot from hosting this quiz. Would like to share some out here for the benefit of everyone.
- Quiz started and ended on time.
- Content was King
- Great effort by Patrick to pull it off – his first OPEN quiz and he did a great job!! There were some issues with the hardware, but he remained calm and carried the show through…
- Got good positive feedback.
Some stuff to work on:
- Need to check audios for the quality before using – the PB Srinivoss question did not come out perfectly. Trivial but very important in an OPEN quiz where stakes are high.
- Need to involve audience more by having small talk. Sometimes a “great answer but not right”, “YES” works well rather than a simple NO.
- Guy handling the slides to be more alert, need to follow the QM before moving to the next question (this is for me, I was the one handling the slides)
- We had nearly 35-40 questions that were long textual qns. Need to see how we can reduce this to save time and effort of reading. Else READ ONLY the key words in the question.
- Most importantly – questions are to be READ clearly and carefully. There was a hint of urgency in the way the slides were run + the quizmaster read the questions a tad too quick.
Overall a brilliant effort by the entire team; IQL is making rapid strides. We promise to do an awesome-er job at India Quiz 2010.
We hope the quiz was good, we did our best to make it look good on all counts – to cover all facets of the ever-growing city of Madras and at the same time to give entertainment and quality to this annual event that has grown from strength to strength.
Please do give us your feedback on the quiz. We would like to know how well we did, where we can improve and improvise.
Making of the Madras Quiz – Part One August 26, 2009
Posted by karthikglobalsoul in IQL News, Quizzes, Review.8 comments
(Karthik Narayan, on behalf of the IQL team)
Every year I am part of the Madras Quiz for the last four years – all those years have been as a participant in the quiz. I eagerly waited for the day when we would get to host this coveted quiz. Sylvian Patrick shared the same thought with me last year when we teamed up for this quiz. That thought lingered, I promised Patrick that we would go on to host an OPEN quiz in the city of Chennai, if not the Madras Quiz, one of our own. Well, we did the India Quiz in January this year, and now when I asked Vincent, he was more than happy to let us do it.
Ever since we got the okay from Mylapore Times to host the Madras Quiz 2009, all of us at the IQL were quite excited. This is a quiz we have grown up on, have taken so many potshots at and most importantly, something close to our hearts and where we play to our strengths.
All of us got going and started compiling questions over the last 40 days or so. In the beginning it was easy; we had to just keep the questions rolling over and consolidate it as a database. But as we moved on, exchanged notes and compared our database with the questions that had already been asked, we realized our tasks had not even begun. There were so many questions that had been asked in previous editions and we could not afford to repeat questions at all.
The grueling strategy of eliminating repeated ones and making new questions started all over again, with less than a month to go. Every week all of us met and every time we grunted when told some of our questions had already been asked!!
The challenge did not stop there. Having been part of 4 of the first 5 editions of the Madras Quiz, we had a feel of the level and diversity of the participants – ranging from school going geniuses to aging yet agile sharp-shooters. These were people who had varying interests – from serial and soaps to Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, were crazy about cricket and kaapi yet spoke in American accents at work. So we wanted to cater to all of them, yet make it answerable by all. I thought we did quite well, considering we all have our day-jobs all through the week and all the time we got was during the weekend.
In between missing great Vijayakanth’s latest movies and making unusual excuses to our families for skipping lunches and dinners, we endlessly worked on our PC’s even on weekends and put up the extensive hours of research that showed up in our questions. We had our eureka moments that left us on a high, but the job was not done until we had covered all the topics. So we published a self-prescribed list of topics to ensure we had questions to cover each topic. Now we sit back and wonder how we did it all – ahh, leisure is now an available commodity that’s become cheaper again.
For a change, we got all the questions done well ahead of the quiz itself. We had quite a nightmare on the last day of the India Quiz, plugging questions into the quiz at the very last minute.
(To be concluded)
Prelims questions are attached below:
Review of the Madras Quiz 2009 hosted by IQL August 25, 2009
Posted by karthikglobalsoul in IQL News, Quizzes, Review.19 comments
(Review of the Madras Quiz 2009 hosted by IQL By Subhashree Srinivasan)
Hey KN, I can’t find anyone at P.S. school”, I yelled over the phone and stretched my neck to find some signs of activity.
“Which P.S. school did you land yourself at?? Senior or Higher??”, he asked calmly.
“What??! There are two P.S. schools at Mylapore??”
Irony about the conversation. I was one of the participants at MADRAS CITY QUIZ- ellam about our singara Chennai. Yenna kodume sir ithu.
After troubling my friend for the right directions, I reached the right venue-P.S. Secondary School, Mylapore, to find the auditorium almost full and bustling with activity. Second irony about the quiz- there were equal number of people on stage as there were in participants. Owing to my geography IQ and ignorance, I decided not to participate, but curiosity prevailed and I found a random team mate.
The prelims started at 2 p.m. and consisted of 30 questions. For a person new to quizzing, it was a good set of questions- few easy ones, few brilliant ones and the rest were moderate level. There were some issues during the prelims – especially one of the audios on PB Srinivoss was not clear, and the visual on Hotel Saravana Bhavan was not clear enough.
I was kind of happy with our performance. But, yes, you guessed it; it was short-lived when the correction started. I happened to get JK and his partner’s answer sheet which lodged an extra bit of inferior complexity in me. To be technically right; our rights were equal to their wrongs. The prelims had quite a number of high scores and the top six were picked along with best school and ladies team.
The highest score was 27, and the other scores of the teams that made it on stage were 25, 25, 22, 22 and 22 respectively. Quizmaster Sylvian Patrick announced this and also read out the teams that just missed out by one point!! Tough luck, guys!! The final 6 teams on stage, would have been familiar names and faces to you if you are a regular quizzer in these parts.
And so the stage was set.
Totally there were 5 rounds – round one was a textual round, a mix of everything on Old Madras to current Chennai, containing 20 questions on infinite bounds. There were two rounds with a central theme to be identified – rounds 2 and 4. All teams cracked the theme easily. Ramana and Ramkumar, the defending champions appeared rather quiet. The last round was an anti-clockwise round with 20 questions. The format was a whiff of fresh air, but some of the questions in the finals were rather long to read – perhaps something for the IQL team to work on in the future. The teams cracked most of the questions put to them, except in the third round (movie round) where they were unable to hit the right answers for almost all the questions.
At times it seemed like the quiz master was in a bit of a hurry, reading the questions at express pace as though he had an auto meter bill to contend with. .
To the credit of the entire organizing team, they started and finished on time. There were some little glitches, though one felt that the questions in the finals were too tough and not really aimed at the “true chennaiites” who know their history as well as their filter kaapi – and those who like to soak up the latest news like their ponvandu soap.
This was a quiz that had people of all ages including a mami in her 60s who knew the answerrs to a couple of questions in the finals – the quiz team had to literally shush her from blurting them out before the teams on stage could.
A new script was written this year – the regulars at Madras Quiz know that Ramana and Ramkumar Shankar have been the defending champions over a couple of years now, but from literally nowhere, the team of Jayakanthan and Alagarsamy blasted their way through the finals. My heart went out to runners up Rajaram and Joshi, when I heard that they had travelled all the way from the Gulf to participate – apparently they have made it each year to the Landmark and Madras Quiz over the last few years; particularly at Madras Quiz, they have been runners-up on a few occasions without getting the coveted title. This year too! The other four teams were less than half the scores of the winner and runners-up, so you can understand that it was dominated by two of them.
I have attended only two of the Madras Quiz editions (2008 and 2009), I am not any “quizzer” as you call it, but found this quiz fresher and more enjoyable than the previous ones. When the quiz came to an end; we all left for our places – wiser and with better ideas for the next quiz. This is a big event for us; as a team and a quizzing group.
The destination is clear and we will be there someday. (Do I sound like a martyr??!!)
P.S; Congrats to the entire IQL team for putting up a great show at the Madras Quiz 2009. Very special thanks to Mrs.Raji Muthukrishnan for her wonderful questions. The “brilliance” of her questions was evident from the response from the audience.
