Sports Quiz By Bishwabijoy Sen at YMCA

The regular sports quiz by Bishwabijoy was held on 28th August at YMCA this year. Organised by the Mind Games group who organise regular formal and informal quizzes. The prelims had over 20 teams. They were topped by Dirty Rotten Scoundrels followed by Quiz Lovers of Calcutta. Other teams to make it to the final were Three Idiots, Last Action Heroes, Barrackpur Boys and Boye Gaiche. The quiz was a mix of different sports with a lot of a visuals, videos and audio which are typical of the quizmaster's style. There was also a written theme round. 

The main complaint as with all of Bishwa's quizzes was that it was too short with only 30 questions apart from the theme round. Quiz Lovers of Calcutta stormed off to a brisk start taking the early lead and maintaining it till the half way mark. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Three Idiots were within striking distance. In the second half Dirty Rotten Scoundrels rallied led by some amazing answers from their young talent Anurag. It all came down to the last question which was an audio piece about Renee Richards the tennis player. The question was Quiz Lovers' direct who were leading by 5 points and they missed and it was answered by the indomitable Shouvik Guha of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, who won the quiz. Hope to get more questions in this quiz which has become a regular yearly feature in the city next year. Not too many questions can be posted as the quiz had more of an audio-visual feel to it.

First: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Shouvik Guha, Kinshuk Biswas and Anurag Sarkar.

Second: Quiz Lovers of Calcutta: Ashok Sanyal, Somenath Chanda and Indranil Mukherjee.

Third: Last Action Heroes:Partha Sarathi Ghatak, Samrat Dutta and Varun Rajiv.

Some Questions: 

Q) Which sporting term has originated from the sound made by a toy which is known as clackers in English? 

A) Tiki-Taka (Style of football)

Q) Who are the only swimmers to have won gold medals in three different Olympics in the same event? 

A) Dawn Fraser and Krisztina Egerszegi. 

Q) Mark Spitz once replied to question "No. It helps me in streamlining and swim faster." What was he being asked about? 

A) His moustache

Open Quiz by Kinshuk Biswas at YMCA

The much delayed reviews to the quizzes are being posted. The reviews maybe a little short as the quizzes were quite some time ago.

The General Quiz Ver 2.0 by Kinshuk an old hand open Calcutta Quizzing was held at YMCA Chowringhee the new hub of quizzes in the city on 7th of August. 18 teams were present for the prelims which keeping in mind the trend of the quizmaster's earlier quizzes was quite tough. Hammer and Tongs was unsurprisingly the top team of the prelims with 18 points. Inmaniacs followed with 14. The cut-off was 8.5/30 much lower than the respectable 11 of the previous year. Other teams to make it were Last Action Heroes, Quiz Lovers of Calcutta, Byapok Byatha, Gone Up in Smoke, ESS-S&S and Answering Service.
The finals had 70 question with a written round of 5 questions before the usual round of 30 questions in clockwise and anti-clockwise rounds. There was a problem with the audio system which was a major issue throughout the quiz.
Answering Service started off very well going into the lead with very good answers. Hammer and Tongs were close behind followed by Byapok Byatha.
In the second half Inmaniacs started to make inroads into the lead of the top two teams. At the end Answering Service won comfortably, follwed by Hammer and Tongs and Inmaniacs made a late rally to finish third. Special mention to all other teams who answered some crackers.
The quiz was very tough according to a lot of the participants some of whom named it 'Carnage at Chowringhee YMCA'. There were a few questions contributed by the head of Norwegian Quiz Association most of which were unanswered. It was a quiz which most enjoyed but was of a tougher standard than other general quizzes.
First: Answering Service: C.P. Singh, Soubhadra Chakravarty, P. Srikant and Sudip Kalyan De.
Second: Hammer and Tongs: Jayashree Mohanka, Shouvik Guha, Anil Vaswani and Subhendu Roy.
Third: Inmaniacs: Gautam Ghosh, Abhijit Banerjee, Malabika Banerjee and Anirudh Chari.

Some questions from the quiz:

Q) The largest non commercial kitchen in the world serves the following types of cooking Bhimapaka, Nalapaka, Souripaka and Gouripaka. Where is this kitchen?
A) Jagannath Temple Puri.

Q) The original was “The Man in the Arena” speech delivered by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, Paris in 1910. This was substituted by another literary work when being portrayed on the screen. Name the incident or the work of literature which was used in place of the speech?
A) 1995 Rugby World Cup Final or Invictus.

Q) A fictional character in Slavic cultures, his role is similar to that of Santa Claus in the west. He was originally on the list of mascots for the Sochi winter Olympics, but was removed as he would become the property of I.O.C. In 1998, the town of Veliky Ustyug in Vologda Oblast, Russia was declared as his home. Name this very popular character?
A) Ded Moroz

Q) George Mendonsa is believed to be the male protagonist. The claim of the female protagonist however has three candidates: Edith Cullen Shain, Greta Friedman and Barbara Sokol. What is being discussed?
A) VJ Day Photograph by Albert Eisenstadt.

Q) Two people met on 22^nd September 1931 at 45, Beckton Road, Canning Town in East London and discussed about machinery. One was visiting a friend and the other grew up nearby. Name both individuals?

A) Mahatma Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin

Delay in updates

The blog has not been recently updated. The reasons are many and unfortunate. With the coming holidays the remaining quizzes will be reviewed and updated. The following quizzes will be covered: 

1. Mindgames Sports Quiz by Bishwabijoy Sen 

2. General Quiz ver 2.0 by Kinshuk Biswas

3. General Quiz by Anirudh Chari

4. Sukomal Chakladar Memorial Sports Quiz by Supratim Chakladar

5. Oasis Lone Wolf Quiz by BITS Pilani 

6. General Quiz by Tathagata Chatterjee

7. Sports Quiz by Ashoke Sanyal and Somenath Chanda

I apologise to all blog followers for this delay which is completely on account of my shortage of time. Meanwhile, wishing all the quizzers a very happy Durga Puja and Diwali. Keep Quizzing and Cheers.

MELA Quiz by Sreshth Shah at YMCA on 10th July

A novel type of a quiz was conceived by Sreshth a young Calcutta Quizzer who was leaving for USA on the 20th. His idea was to have a MELA (Music,Entertainment,Literature and Art) quiz. As it was a new concept a lot of teams turned up and the quiz master being young people expected a contemporary and different quiz from the classical type quizzes being dished out by the regular quizmasters.

There were 19 teams who were present for the preliminary round. The prelims were a good balance of old and new. Sreshth had forgotten to Photoshop the name of the artist on a painting so one question was cancelled and it was of 29 questions. 

Last Action Heroes topped the prelims with 24 points followed by Potodanga Thunder Club which was welcoming back their talismanic quizzer Robin after a long time of absence due to work pressure. The other teams to make it were Boye Gaiche 2.2, A team with Varun Rajeev a new import from Bangalore, Felix and Jimmy go to the White Castle, Hammer and Tongs, Comfortably Dumb and Sudip Kalyan Dey's team named perennial underachievers. 

The finals started with a written round of 5 questions and went on to the regular infinite bounce pattern. In the middle was another written round with a theme. Lastly there was the anticlockwise infinite bounce round.

It was generally a two way battle all through the quiz with Potoldanga and Last Action Heroes going neck and neck. All this was punctuated by a few brilliant answers from Varun Rajeev and his team. Boye Gaiche was following closely behind. 

The theme round and the second half continued in the same vein. Eventually Potodanga settled the matter by answering a few questions before the end. 

The quiz was overall quite enjoyable. The questions were from a lot of different topics. However, Sreshth remained in his comfort zone and asked questions on things he knows and likes. Thus the music part was abit heavy on western. There was no classical music both eastern or western. But that made this quiz different from normal classical quizzes and was a new experience for quizzers of the city. Overall an intersting evening of different type of Quizzing.

First: Potoldanga Thunder Club: Robin Dey, Prithwish Datta 

Second: Last Action Heroes: Partha Sarathi Ghatak, Samrat Dutta and Anurag Sarkar

Third: Varun Rajeev and Team

Questions: 

Q) In the world of live, street and television performances, how do we better   

     know Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos?

A) Criss Angel

Q)  The origin of this phrase means “to make up one’s mind to go through with an unpleasant situation or experience” dates back to the day when the wounded had to be seen to without the benefit of anesthetics or painkillers. The victim would be given an object that would help him brace himself against the coming pain. What phrase?

A)  Bite the bullet. 

Q)  It is known as raqs sharqi in Arabic, but its English name is attributed to Sol Bloom, entertainment director at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. It is a popular form of exercise and entertainment today, with many different styles of the dance. Identify this style of dance which is the literal translation of the French term ‘Danse du Ventre’. What? 

A)  Belly Dancing

Q)  We first heard Sandeep Vinayak Prabhu on November 3rd 2006 till 26th Jaunary 2007, a total of 86 days. Then we heard him from 17th August 2008 for another 98 days. After that he was heard on 26th December 2009 for another 84 days. And the last we heard of him was from October 3rd2010 for another 96 days.Where did we hear him?

A)  As the voice of 'Big Boss'  

Indefinite Postponement of the Fundoo Film Quiz

The fundoo film quiz has to be postponed indefinitely as the quizmaster Mr. Anirudha Bhattacharya (Anida) will be out of the country for work related matters for at least three months. The inconvenience and dispappointment is regretted. We shall try to hold the quiz as soon as Anida is back.

Mahaquizzer 2011 by KQA

The long overdue review of the Mahaquizzer of this year is finally being posted. Mahaquizzer is an individual written quiz held simultaneously all over India since 2005. The quiz has 150 questions to be answered in 90 minutes.

The pattern of the questions was much different from last year. There was an emphasis on language and word origins in most of the questions. Many people thought that they were solving a cryptic crossword instead of a quiz. Others who are strong in areas like word origins, language and literature loved the quiz. A written quiz should be made even where all quizzers would have an equal chance. There were certain questions which were a little misleading in their clues like Irish cricket team has nothing to do with a four leaved clover as mentioned in question 56. The Irish symbol is the Shamrock. Again in question number 18 Venus is not the progeny of Juve and Diana in Roman myth. The other facts about Venus were correct however the first bit of information was misleading.

KQA must keep in mind that all types of quizzers take this quiz and they should not make it one dimensional. We need to work more on the international style like the WQC. If we need to improve the overall scores internationally instead of just two people scoring highly from India the pattern of the paper has to be modified accordingly.

Overall the paper was a good test of certain areas of knowledge. Some questions could be worked out easily.

Many thanks are due to Gautam Ghosh for arranging the venue and Rudradeep for the legwork.

The Top Five Scores from Calcutta:

1) Shouvik Guha - 78

2) Jayashree Mohanka - 76 (The best score by a lady in India)

3) Gautam Ghosh - 63

4) Sanjoy Mukherjee - 61

5) Anirudh Chari - 60

The June General Quiz by Dhruv Mookerji at the YMCA

Torrential rain and bad weather greeted the General quiz which was held at the YMCA on 19th June. The rain didn't cause any problems for the ever enthusiastic quizzers as there were around 45 odd teams who turned up for the quiz. Quite a few teams were without members, and it seemed like a scramble for people at the venue as quite a lot of teams were formed on spot. A short delay later, the written prelims began, consisting of 34 questions with teams fighting for space to sit, stand or even squat on the floor to write the answers.

The prelims consisted of a nice blend of questions from the world of films, cricket, geography, food and culture.

After the checking of the preliminary sheets, Hammer and Tongs topped the preliminary round with a score of 20, closely followed by Quiz Lovers of Kolkata and Inmaniacs. The other teams which made their way to the stage were Last Action Heroes, Boye Geche, Four of a Kind, Lateral Thinkers and TNT Tears with the cutoff being a score of 14 and a couple of stars.

The format of the Finals consisted of 70 questions with a Long Visual Connect Theme round.

The Finals began with the first question being unanswered by the teams on stage and was answered by someone in the audience. But after that, most teams most teams opened their account with the lead changing hands from TNT Tears to Hammer and Tongs to Last Action Heroes. At the end of the first half though, Last Action Heroes and Hammer and Tongs were the front runners of the quiz with Inmaniacs, TNT Tears and Boye Geche close behind.

Before the second half of the quiz was the Theme Round where the quizmaster would show numerous visuals on the screen and the earlier the theme got answered,  more the number of  points would a team get.

The First visual was that of Michelle Obama and the second one was that of Jude Law. At this stage a correct answer would fetch 80 points while a wrong answer would mean negative 40. Nonetheless, TNT Tears went for the theme and got it right! Seeing this, Hammer and Tongs, Inmaniacs, Boye Geche and Last Action Heroes went for the theme as well on the 2nd slide and got it right as well! Four of a Kind and Lateral Thinkers cracked the theme a few slides later and settled for lower theme round scores. It was one of those days at the office for Quiz Lovers of Kolkata who failed to manage the theme at all. The other visuals of the theme round was the map of USSR, a Blackbird plane, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, A Walrus, Julia Roberts, the singer Madonna and Maxwell. Guesses anyone? The answer was - Songs by the Beatles.

Moving to the second half, the direction changed and so did the frequency of answers by Inmaniacs as they came close to the the leaders of the quiz, Hammer and Tongs. A late surge by the Last Action Heroes made the quiz very tight towards the end. As the last question was asked, all three of those teams were on 180 points and in a nail biting finish, Four of a Kind answered the last question correctly before Hammer and Tongs and made sure the quiz ended in a 3 way tie for first place with a score of 180 each for the three teams.

A couple of Sudden death Tie breaker questions later, Last Action Heroes had to settle for third place at the quiz as the other two teams cracked one answer which they failed to get right.

At the next question to settle for First place, Inmaniacs got the correct answer as Hammer and Tongs got the wrong answer and thus Hammer and Tongs had to settle for second place while Inmaniacs placed first.

After a really long time was a quiz so closely fought, with almost all the teams being very close to each other. Credit must be given to Dhruv Mookerji for such a well researched, nicely presented and a quiz where we had to put our thinking caps on to do well.

The top three teams were gifted Books from the sponsors - Crossword.

Also worth mentioning was that Sarath Rao shot the quiz in detail for a documentary on the quizzing culture in India.

Also credit must be given to Dhruv for ensuring that there was no entry fee for the teams, which did show with the number of teams turning up.

Final Standings :

1st -   Inmaniacs (Gautam Ghosh, Abhijit Banerjee, Anirudh Chari and P. Srikant)

2nd -  Hammer & Tongs (Jayshree Mohanka, Souvik Guha, Sanjay Mukherjee and Anil Vaswani)

3rd - Last Action Heroes (Partha S. Ghatak, Samrat Dutta, Sumantra Gupta and Anurag Sarkar)

Selected questions from the quiz :

Q : If Glaziers in Venice messed up while creating any glass product, rather than waste the glass by disposing of it, they would convert that product into a _____, whivh was the italian word for a common flask. This word is now commonly used in English. Which word?

A : Fiasco.

Q : Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, jack Haley and Terry were cast as 4 of the 5 in a group of characters in a film. Who was cast as the 5th member of this band of travellers?

A : Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz.

Q : A tetragrammatron means 'word with four letters'. However all 4 letter words are not tetragrammatrons. This term specifically refers to one thing - there is only 1 tetrgrammatron ( and it's used in a religion ) . What is it?

A : YHWH ( jehovah)

Q : Tagline for which film was -'A tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge and seafood' ?

A : A fish called Wanda.

Looking forward to another quiz by Dhruv da in the future!

IQA World Quizzing Championships 2011 (WQC)

The World Quizzing Championships 2011, known to many as WQC, organised by the International Quizzing Association (IQA) based in UK, was held this year on 4th June last. The competition was held in 79 venues across 32 countries. Over 1400 solo quizzers took part.

The quiz was in the usual format: 240 written questions divided into 8 subject sections of 30 questions each, all to be answered in 2 hours, the score being the total of the best 7 sections.

In Kolkata it was held at IBS in Sector V at Salt Lake from 4 pm onwards. There were 38 contenders, 16 of them students.

This quiz is a real test of knowledge in the internationally accepted style. One needs to know things. Unlike a lot of quizzes in our country today where one is encouraged to guess or work out the answer through a plethora of clues and helpful hints. The questions are intelligently framed and of short length. No long-winded questions, XYZs, themes or connects - which fall more in the 'puzzles' category. Here also one can guess, but one needs to be in a position to guess, with the adequate reading or knowledge to work from.

This year most found the Entertainment section tough going. Personally, I thought that the History and World sections could have been slightly more difficult. The Sports section, as always, covered a wide range of sports and games, not just the popular cricket, soccer and tennis. Overall a good and enjoyable quiz, with something for everyone. And lots of things to learn and take home. The quiz is backed by excellent research. In all the years, there has never been a single doubt about the correctness of any question or answer. A very neat, clean and above-board quiz.

Credits are due to IBS, The Telegraph, Gautam Ghosh for liaising for the venue, and Rudradeep Sanyal for doing all the slogging and thankless work to put up the quiz.

The Kolkata results -

1st: P.Srikanth with 119 (best 7 score).

2nd: Abhijit Banerjee, 105.

3rd: Gautam Ghosh, 99.

4th: Shoubhadra Chakraborty, 98.

5th: Kinshuk Biswas, 95.

6th: Sanjoy Mukherjee, 83.

7th: Anirudh Chari, 82.

8th: Sudip Kalyan Dey, 81.

Category winners -

Entertainment: P.Srikanth, 16.

Culture: Abhijit Banerjee, 16.

Lifestyle: Shoubhadra Chakraborty, 19.

Sciences: P.Srikanth, 23.

History: Abhijit Banerjee, 25. (Also sole country winner in this category, the next best in India being 23.)

Media: Shoubhadra Chakraborty, 23.

Sport and Games: Kinshuk Biswas, 15.

World: Abhijit Banerjee, 19.

The entire detailed results for the top 200 participants are available at this link. For the list of all particpants with rank below 200, refer to Excel sheet here.

Dalhousie Institute Open Quiz 2011 at The DI

One of the oldest quizzes in Kolkata the DI Open conducted by Mr. Neil O’Brien was held at Dalhousie Institute on 21^st May. There were 77 teams for the preliminary rounds out of which 55 were from different schools. The prelims were of 30 questions. There were a few old chestnuts and few questions which left a lot of teams confused. What Indian monument was discovered in the 1930s by Colonel Morgan behind a bush? The time frame clarification was requested by a few teams and they were told that it maybe 1830s also. Answer given was Ajanta Caves. This left a lot of teams stumped as Ajanta was discovered in 1819 by a British Officer of the Madras Presidency named John Smith. Colonel Morgan and 1930s or 1830s confused a lot of people. Another question which was the first European country to ban the burqa? Answer given was Belgium. Again very confusing as the burqa was banned in Turkey in 1980 and in Belgium in 2010. The dangers of Google quizzing are evident as a google search of the question would give Belgium as the answer which is not correct. The quizmaster may argue that Turkey is in Asia as a matter of convenience. The highest score was 20 posted by Hammer and Tongs followed by Inmaniacs and Answering Service, Paglu and Juxtaposed. A whole lot of teams including DI, Octette and Last Action Heroes were in a tie-break with 17 points. Two questions which were questionable in the prelims were therefore not fair to a lot of teams which would have made the finals or at least to the tie-break.

The tie-breaker round had 3 questions. The first was, Which Cartoon character appeared on Playboy magazine cover and also as a centrefold? Answer given was Bart Simpson. Again a lot of people stumped as the answer is Marge Simpson. It was akin accepting Prince Charles as the answer for a question for which the correct answer is Queen Elizabeth II. The second question was: Who are the recipients of the Jack Nicklaus award? Answer given player of the year by PGA. Again very strange answer considering the fact that it is the award for the best collegiate golfer of United States and is given in three divisions by NCAA. A team answering golfer of the year was overlooked, strange as it was closer to the truth than the answer which the quizmaster had. After the painful process of the tie-breaker DI, Javed and Friends and a college team from Calcutta University eventually made it to the finals.

The finals were again very lopsided as the quiz did not use infinite bounce or flat scoring. Teams answering less number of questions could win this quiz. However this quiz was decided by the seating arrangement. Inmaniacs were the beneficiary of this in the first half of the quiz where they ran away with the quiz posting 60 points. If the quiz was of infinite bounce type then the result of the quiz would have been totally different. However that said Inmaniacs were very good and answered nearly all the questions they got in the first half of the quiz. In the second half Answering Service and DI had a close fight for the other podium spots with the former clinching it by answering the last question of the quiz.

The quiz was very disappointing with respect to questions, content and methodology. The problems with the questions which were there in the prelims and the tie breaker continued into the final. It would have been very nice if the questions were a bit authentic with respect to facts. For example why was the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden called Operation Geronimo? The question itself was incorrect as the operation was named Neptune Spear and Geronimo was the codename given to Bin Laden. The question should have read: Why was Osama Bin Laden given the codename of Geronimo? Another one was: Who coined the term ‘Nerd’? Answer accepted was Jonathan Swift when in fact it is Dr. Seuss.

Another huge problem was the quizmaster unwilling to give points for perfectly correct answers. For example Traf O Data a program written by Bill Gates in 1957 for traffic control was rejected by its users for what reason? Firstly Bill Gates was 2 years old in 1957 so he couldn’t have written any program it was in 1970 that he did. Answer given by a team was that he did not have a driving license as he was underage. Answer accepted he was a minor. Another one what is a Defibrillator used for? Answer by a team a device used to revive a human heart by using electrical impulse. Answer accepted machine used to revive human heart by electric shock.

Another shocker: What kind of a bad habit is Enulation? Answer Picking or Digging your nose. This has not been found in any dictionary encyclopaedia or at any website. The answer obtained for synonym of nose picking is rhinotillexomania. Another One : Which was the first Al Qaeda attack on Americans after the first World Trade Centre bombing attempt? Answer given: The attacks on the American embassies in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998. Answer accepted The attack on the US embassy in Nairobi. The quizmaster was unaware of the fact that the operation was a coordinated attack in both cities simultaneously in fact Dar es Salaam was bombed 5 minutes earlier. The information is available here. A non wikipedia link is being provided so the quizmaster may not brand us as wikipedia crawlers. Here is a very interesting one: What are the ingredients of the drink Shanghai Mary? Answer: Vodka and Sweet and Sour Sauce. Sweet and sour sauce as an ingredient for a cocktail could not be found in any book or website. Vodka and Soya sauce are however used for two different cocktails: The Black Death and Manchurian candidate. There is no drink called Shanghai Mary. There is a Shanghai cocktail which is made of lemon juice, anisette, Jamaican light Rum and Grenadine. The only Shanghai Mary is a dish of dumplings at The Source Restaurant at the National Mall in Washington DC. We took the time out to mail the question to International Bartenders Association who sent us a mail proclaiming that there is no cocktail named Shanghai Mary. They also mentioned that Sweet and sour sauce is not used as a cocktail ingredient. However if there is any such example in fiction they would stand corrected.

We can go on dissecting this quiz and finding the various mistakes and problems. It seems that DI Open takes the old adage of ‘Quiz master is always right’ to the extreme. It is a sorry sight to see such quiz which was an institution in the city losing its integrity in this way in the eyes of the proper quizzers. Getting newspapers to write good things about the quiz solely based on past reputation is a sorry state of affairs. And it does not bode well for all the school children who are made to attend the quiz exposed to such Incorrect facts. Their foundations of quizzing are being damaged. Unless the quiz makes some major changes like infinite bounce,flat scoring ,properly researched and authenticated questions it will be even further demeaned than it is today.Its like using a bullock cart to go to Paris instead of an aeroplane. Sure it can be done for the sake of it but is it really the wise thing to do?

Results:

1. Inmaniacs: Gautam Ghosh, Abhijit Banerjee, Malabika Banerjee and Anirudh Chari
2. Answering Service: Sanjay Mukherjee, C.P. Singh, Soubhadra Chakraborty and P. Srikant.
3. DI: Tathagata Chatterjee, Soumyadip Chaudhury, Barry Antonius and Leslie De Gama

The questions are not being posted separately for this quiz as enough questions have been discussed already.

Calcutta Classic Challenger 3 by Abhijit Banerjee (Abuda) at YMCA

This quiz was the third in the series of quizzes by Abhijit Banerjee or our own Abuda and the first time outside Salt Lake and in the new hotbed of open quizzing of our city at YMCA. Abuda being the traditionalist classical quizzer the quiz was expected to be in similar lines. There were 18 teams for the prelims. There was a huge lift in the glamour quotient of the quiz by the presence of a Fox History Channel crew and two models the anchors for a new show 'Whats with Indian Men'. They were covering the various cultural passions of the men of the city where quizzing was deemed as one by the producers of the show. Good for us the quizzers of Kolkata who are trying to build a genuine reputation outside of certain names which have long been associated with the quizzing of the city.

The first question of the 30 question prelims was : Correctly write the name of the famous New York City hotel which lent its name to a salad of walnut, apple, celery and mayonnaise. I’m looking at something particular in the way the name is written. And we knew that the quiz would be very classical. The answer is Waldorf=Astoria. The '=' sign was required for marks. The funda was that they were two different adjacent hotels which were acquired separately by Conrad Hilton and he buit a sky bridge connecting both and brought them under a single management. The '=' was made into a trademark of the new combined hotel signifying the sky bridge. Great funda and a great question to kick off things.

Inmaniacs topped the prelims followed closely by Hammer and Tongs. The other teams to make it were Answering Service, Byapok Byatha, Quiz Lovers of Calcutta, Barrackpore Boys, Gone Up in Smoke and Potoldanga Thunder Club.

For the first time in Kolkata quizzing there were cheerleaders for a team which was made up of the two anchors of the Fox History channel show. The show will start from Saturday 4th of June at 10 PM. The episode about Kolkata will be later down the line. However it is a request to quizzers to watch the program as they are going to promote proper open quizzing of Kolkata. The main quiz was of 80 questions of infinite bounce and flat scoring with a varied spectrum of subjects. Hammer and Tongs and Inmaniacs started off very well and went into the lead. Answering Service started little late but by the halfway mark they had caught up with the two leading teams. At the midway mark the quiz was a threeway battle with all the 3 teams with a good chance of winning. The other teams though had given brilliant answers but were a little behind and had to make a major comeback to be in fray.

The second half of the quiz was similar in pattern with three teams continuing to score. Potoldanga Thunder Club, Byapok Byatha and Gone Up in Smoke had started to make some inroads but not enough. Eventually Hammer and Tongs were comfortable winners with 165 points followed by Inmaniacs with 135 and Answeing Service with 115. Abuda arranged for a trophy for each member of the top three teams and a beautiful coffee mug as a memento.

It was a very fine quiz with wonderful content and a lot of things which people learnt about. As with all of Abuda's quizzes his experience as a quizzer was reflected in the questions. The only drawback was that there were no Audio or Video in the quiz which Abuda has deliberately avoided due to technical snags that happen frequently with these questions. All in all a wonderful experience which has left us craving for more from this wonderful quizmaster and wonderful person.

Results:
1. Hammer and Tongs: Shouvik Guha, Jayashree Mohanka, Anil Vaswani and Kinshuk Biswas.
2. Inmaniacs: Gautam Ghosh, Malabika Banerjee, Anirudh Chari and Sudip Kalyan Dey.
3. Answering Service: Sanjay Mukherjee, C.P. Singh, Soubhadra Chakraborty and P. Srikant. 

Some Questions from the Quiz:
Q) Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe are the two main ones in this geographical group. Which group?
A) Juan Fernandez Islands

Q) For one whole number jump the difference in wave amplitude is 10 times, and the difference in amount of energy released is 31.6 times. What is being discussed?
A) Richter Scale

Q) Which two countries fought the Pastry War in 1838-39, after a pastry cook from one of the countries claimed that his shop had been ruined by looting officers from the other country ten years earlier in 1828?
A) France and Mexico

Q) ‘No.5, 1948’ is No.1 since 02.11.2006 in what list or category?
A) The most expensive Painting ever sold. 

The next quiz to be reviewed will be the Dalhousie Institute Open by Neil O'Brein.

Film Quiz by Partha Sarathi Ghatak

The second phase of the quiz festival which kicked off with the Sports Quiz on 9th April was the Film quiz by Partha on 23rd April. The quiz was very well attended with 23 teams. The preliminary round was very interesting with an audio of 'Naina Barse Rim Jhim' in a male voice which was to be identified. The answer was Madan Mohan the music director. Then a poster of the film 'Billy Elliot' was shown minus all the cast and the question was the lead actor of this film is going to play which famous character in a film to be released in 2011? The answer: 'Tintin'

The prelims were topped by the perennial 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' followed by TNT Tears, We, Last Action Heroes, Quiz Lovers of Calcutta, Three Idiots, Gone Up in Smoke and Inmaniacs. The prelims score were carried over into the finals after being multiplied by four.

The finals started off with a very interesting written round where edited starting and ending sequences of six films were shown. Teams were given 5 points for correct answers with a bonus for the team getting all 6. Quiz Lovers of Calcutta started off brilliantly getting all six. The quiz was of standard infinite bounce and flat scoring. Quiz Lovers set the early pace getting a lot of points. Last Action Heroes and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels were also scoring and maintaining the advantage they had received by the carryover of the prelims scores. At the halfway mark all the three teams were bunched together with only a 2 point difference between them.

The second half changed the dynamics of the quiz with TNT tears making a big comeback with a lot of answers. Last Action Heroes and Quiz Lovers got blocked in this half by TNT tears and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Eventually Last Action Heroes managed to get their act together again and won the quiz beating Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Quiz Lovers of Calcutta pipped TNT tears to the 3rd position by answering the last question of the quiz.

1. Last Action Heroes - Indranil Mukherjee, Samrat Dutta and Sumanta Gupta(Riju).

2. Dirt Rotten Scoundrels - Shouvik Guha, Aniruddha Bhattacharya and Soubhadra Chakraborty.

3. Quiz Lovers of Calcutta - Somnath Chanda, Kinshuk Biswas and Sounak Chakraborty.

The quiz was very nice from the point of view of content. Being Partha's first attempt at a formal it was a very commendable effort. There were a few observations regarding the quiz. The carry over scoring did not affect the outcome of the quiz but it would have been better to start the finals with a clean slate. This being Partha's first formal quiz he provided a lot of clues in all his questions, with the kind of quizzers on show some good questions were answered quite easily. Now I am looking forward to the next quiz by Partha.

A few questions from the quiz:

Q) The accessory used by this person became very famous as a fashion statement. So much so that the then Prime Minister of Israel wanted a similar cigarette holder. Name the person and the film?

A) Nadira and Shree 420

Q) Many old Hollywood films whose prints were believed to have been lost were found in Australia. Why?

A) In earlier days films were released in Australia last and it was not economically viable for the distributors to ship back the films to the States.

Q) Originally founded in 1934 by William Hinds in England it was synonymous with a certain genre of films through the 50s to the 70s. Name this company or studio?

A) Hammer films.

Q) Devon Aoki's clothing; Alexis Bledel's eyes and blood; Michael Clarke Duncan's eye; Rutger Hauer's eyes; Jaime King's dress and hair; Clive Owen's Converse shoes and Cadillac; Mickey Rourke's blood and prescription pill container; Marley Shelton's eyes,dress, and lips; Nick Stahl's face and body; and Elijah Wood's glasses. Please explain?

A) Only coloured objects to appear in Sin City film which was in Black and White.

Kinshuk Biswas' Sports Quiz at Quizzathon - YMCA

The First of the 2 week Quiz Event 'Quizzathon' kicked off on 9th May, 2011 with Kinshuk Biswas hosting a Sports Quiz for 3 member teams at the new popular venue for quizzing in Calcutta, the YMCA Chowringhee.

Surprisingly enough, the quiz began pretty much on time with the usual teams turning up for the quiz along with a whole set of new faces and teams. All in all, around 18 odd teams turned up for the quiz and the written preliminary round began.

As the first question came up on the screen - ' The largest stadium in the world, used for football and athletics and has a capacity of 150,000 spectators. Name the stadium and city where it is located? ', we knew this quiz was for the sports fanatic and that you'd need to be know your stuff about lots  of Sports to do well at the quiz, which in my opinion was a good thing. ( The answer to that question was the May Day Stadium at Pyongyang though ).

So as the preliminary round went on, the questions covered a quite a few topics, such as Boxing, Olympics, Football, Baseball, Yachting, Cricket and so on along with the usual 'funda' questions that's become a common lingo at the quiz scene here it seemed to most teams that doing well at the Prelim was a hard task.

After a hard prelim round, the top 8 teams were finally called upon after a whole lot of star questions being taken into account. The Prelim was topped by Dirty Rotten Scoundrels quite unsurprisingly, by a big margin. The other teams to qualify were 3 Idiots, Potoldanga Thunder Club, Quiz Lovers of Calcutta, Javed and friends, TNT Tears, Inmaniacs and Barrackpore Boys.

The finals began with a 5 question written round, consisting of questions on Dickie Bird, Hockey, Quidditch and so on. 

One thing worth mentioning was the bad spirit of most participants who didn't qualify for the quiz. Apart from some senior sports quizzers who missed out qualifying by a small margin, the rest left, without staying for the finals of the quiz. Therefore the quiz went on with almost no audience, which was terribly disappointing.

The format like most quizzes nowadays was on an infinite bounce format and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels took the early lead. The quiz was highly interesting since it was one of those quizzes which wasn't cricket or football heavy, instead it was a perfect mix of events, tournaments, teams, individuals, records and without any doubt covered the most number of sports, which was perfect.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels continued increasing their lead with some great answers which kept the other teams in awe. Inmaniacs, Potoldanga Thunder Club and Quiz Lovers of Calcutta jostled amongst themselves for second and third spot.
All the questions were those which required the quizzers to have actively watched and followed sport and again have some 'funda'.

In the second half of the quiz, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels galloped ahead while four teams tried to grasp the second and third spot with the TNT Tears also making a late surge with some good answers.

But, eventually, Inmaniacs held on the 2nd position and Potoldanga Thunder Club barely held on to 3rd Spot with Quiz Lovers of Calcutta and TNT Tears breathing down their neck after the last question.

The Top three teams were awarded trophies and gift coupons, arranged by the brilliant quizmaster, Kinshuk Biswas.

Standings - 

1. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels:  ( Shouvik Guha, Soubhadra Chakraborty and Anurag Sarkar )

2. Inmaniacs: ( Gautam Ghosh, Malavika Banerjee and Anirudh Chari )

3. PotoldangaThunderClub: ( Prithwish Datta, Sumantra 'Central' Dutta and Nrisingha)

Overall, the quiz was enjoyed by all the participants and by those who stayed back for the finals. The choice of questions arranged by the quizmaster was appreciated by one and all. Expecting another quiz from Kinshuk  da in the near future.

Thus ended the first quiz of the two quiz festival at the YMCA.


Selected questions from the quiz : 
1. Jai Alai, a version of Basque Pelota was the fastest sport in the world and once held the record for world ball speed with a 125-140 gram ball that travelled 302 km/h (188 mph), performed by Jose Ramon Areitio, until it was broken by Canadian Jason Zuback on an episode of Sport Science in July 2009 with a ball spped of 328 km/h ( 204 mph). What sport currently holds the record?
Answer - Golf ( YouTube this if you can, absolutely amazing )


2. X-Jump/Spreadeagle, Pencil, T, Toe-Touch, Tuck, Hurdler, Around the World, Herkie, Double Nine and Double Hook are all terms of an American collegiate ‘sport’ popularised by ESPN. Name the ‘sport’?
Answer - Cheerleading


3. Which is the only all woman Quidditch league team?
Answer - Hollyhead Harpies


4.He is nicknamed ‘Pambangsang Kamao’ or national fist in his native tongue. Who ? 
Answer - Manny Pacquiao


5. Yang Tae-Young of South Korea and Russian Alexei Nemov were both embroiled in controversies in their sport in the Athens Olympics in 2004. Due to this the sport adapted a new system , which ended the possibility of a certain achievement synonymous with the sport. What was this achievement which will not occur again? 
Answer - The Perfect Ten

Introduction

This blog is an endeavour to bring to the people the aspects and nuances various open quizzes of our city. The attempts at this though commendable have been very sporadic and irregular in nature. We shall try to cover the quizzes and post a few questions from each of them. In future we may post quizzes here if the visitors like this concept. We shall cover three quizzes in the first three posts:


Sports Quiz at YMCA Chowringhee by Kinshuk Biswas on 9th April 2011.
Film Quiz at YMCA Chowringhee by Partha Sarathi Ghatak on 23rd April 2011.
General Quiz at YMCA Chowringhee by Abhijit Banerjee (Abuda) on 15th May 2011.

The posts will follow.