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