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.