We are not quite sure about the possibility of this happening…

But this is surely on the cards.

Yes folks, the Greatest Show on IQL is back!! And one of the finest quizzers (does he need an introduction guys?) is hosting this edition of the Champions League on Saturday, 4PM at R.A.Puram at No.8, 2nd Floor, Corporation Complex, Diagonally opposite to Kaliappa Hospital (Billroth) or directly opposite to Tic Tac Videos/ Arun Ice cream parlour.

Folklore says even a new born child will know this famed quizzer, but for the newbies on this blog, this is Mr.Vinod Hariharan, aka Malcaluffin.

Please bring a pen along and please BE ON TIME. We would like to start the quiz on time.

Thanks,

Team IQL

(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

Since most of the guys are travelling to Bangalore for the new season of India’s best Open Quiz, the Landmark Quiz (on Nov 1, 2009), we are not meeting this weekend.

However, we will be back with Malcaluffin’s edition of the IQL Champions League the week after. Will post updates out here at the earliest.

Thanks and all the best for Landmark Quiz this weekend.

Team IQL

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…

Hi there,

As promised, we will have the Lone Wolf Quiz by Aniruddh on Oct 24 to kickstart IQL’s new avatar.  This part of our avatar is called the Masters of the Universe.

Date: Oct 24, 2009

Time: 4.30PM

Venue: Shop No.8, 2nd Floor, Corporation Complex, Raja Annamalai Puram (Diagonally opposite Kaliappa Hospital [Billroth] and directly opposite Tictac Videos / Arun ice cream)

Requirements: Please bring along a pen since the whole quiz will be written by you.

We invite volunteers to host the next edition of this format to be held in the second half of November 2009. If you are interested, please do write back through the comments section or drop us a note to iqlteam (at) gmail (dot) com

Thanks!!

Team IQL

Woo Hoahhh.. So you would have read about the format changes in IQL weekly Meetings from the previous post by KN. We want to make it exciting and more entertaining for all the quizzers around. As a club, we also thought we should create a platform for upcoming quiz masters…So we are doing some radical changes in the club activities.

So there will not be any meeting for this weekend and the next weekend as it is a Diwali weekend. Enjoy watching Blue and Aadhavan, eat diwali sweets and make merry with crackers..Have a wonderful Diwali.

So are we going on a hiatus? No not at all.. We are just taking a break from the normal routine and working on revamping  the club activities. So we will be back in two weeks from now.

The Indian Quizzing League weekend meetings will be back in its new avatar from October 25th, 2009 with a Lone-wolf  Quiz by Aniruddh (Karaboudjan, as he is better known in quizzing circles).  Wait for the detailed invite next week…

See you in two weeks from now…

Quizzically Yours

Sylvian

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

(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:

1. 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.
2. Gopal Kidao – for his atrocious and funny comments on the participants on stage and on some of the answers.
3. 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

Dear all, We will not be meeting this weekend owing to non-availability of core-members.

Be part of our online Quiz fiesta each weekend as part of our 2nd Anniversary celebrations!!

Thanks,

Team IQL