Starmark Sports Quiz 2010

This was a special quiz for us because Titash was making his debut or should I be saying "Dee butt", as a quizmaster in an Open quiz.

All of us turned up at the Starmark terrace on the 21st of March 2010 to sit for the prelims. Titash had finished conducting the Srijan Cyber quiz only a few hours ago. So he was a pretty busy QM.

The Sports quiz was jointly conducted by Titash & Gautam Ghosh. The prelims had 30 questions & I was delighted to see it focused not only on sports knowledge but also watching & closely following sports. I was sitting with Boss & Panda as the Potoldanga Thunder club (Original I should add) and we were in quite good form in the prelims. Unlike usual, we did not mess up anything we knew and scored 23 on 30 in the prelims. It was enough for top spot!

There were 6 teams in the finals with all the usual suspects. All pedigreed teams of high caliber.

Titash started off the quiz with a written round where we did not get full marks because we crossed off an answer we had written correctly. The question was who was declared the winner of the Tour de France after Floyd Landis was disqualified. The first thing that came to my mind was Oscar Perreira but for some reason I believed him to be a Sri Lankan cricketer and we crossed it off and went for Carlos Sastre.

The answer was of course Oscar Perreira.

Then the dry rounds started and we managed a few answers. The luck of the draw was kind to us and we got questions we knew the answers to. Mr. Ghosh was kind towards us on a couple of questions when he awarded us full points even though teams before us had given part of the answers correctly. We were very grateful.

In the second half of the quiz, Supratimda, Ashokda & Somnathda's team were at par with us, jointly in the lead, as we went into a theme round by Titash.

Fortunately for us they jumped the gun early and received negative points. Everyone cracked the theme later on but the negative cost them dearly.

After that round we were again fortunate as we received a couple of sitters to stay just 5 points ahead of Supratimda & Co.

The last round was a topic round with more points going on passes than directs.

But thankfully the first 4 questions were all answered by the team below the top two.

Then it all boiled down to the last 2 questions. They took the topic "Miscellaneous" and received a toughie! It was a question on fishing which no one answered. We took the topic "Sporting deals" and were asked a very workable question.

It was about Beckham signing a multimillion dollar contract to publicize the London Olympics and about bringing him back from LA Galaxy. We were asked who the person was and from where was he to be brought back? We over thought the question and went for Fred Perry and bringing him back from time. Our answer seemed very logical to us and we were pretty confident.

Thankfully our confidence was very obvious & the next team from us who were trailing us by 5 pts clearly thought Fred Perry was a good answer. They also went for Fred Perry and bringing him back from the dead or something.

I am getting tired of saying this but again fortunately for us, we were both wrong which meant we had won! This proves one thing though. You don't win Open quizzes in Kolkata without a bit of help from Lady Luck!

And before wrapping up this review we should not forget to congratulate Titash for doing a wonderful job hosting his first open quiz and Gautam Ghosh who also was excellent.

Some questions:

Q)Which team took part in the Euro without having qualified for the tournament?

Ans: Denmark. Denmark actually won the tournament without qualifying! This was one of the sitters we got.

Q)In horse racing what is a "morning glory" ?

Ans: A horse that does well in morning practice but fades away in the main race.

Q)Besides Zico & Socrates which other 2 midfielders made up the famed Brazilian quartet of 1982?

Ans: Falcao & Cerezo

Q)In which city is the Kentucky Derby held?

Ans: Louisville

Q)Who was nicknamed the Mozart of table tennis?

Ans: Jan Ove Waldner

Q)Which boxer was nicknamed the Bayonne Bleeder ?

Ans: Chuck Wepner the inspiration for the Rocky movies

Q)Sand, Ice & Water are all types of ?

Ans: Sailing or gliding

Q)Which team with a horde of Olympic medals to their name perished in 1969 in an air crash en route to the World Championship in Prague ?

Ans: The US figure skating team

Q)Which Soviet grandmaster, acknowledged as the greatest player never to be the World Chess champion, was paid tribute to in "From Russia with Love" ?

Ans: David Bronstein

Q)The largest manufacturer of these is Vacor de Mexico. The company makes 90 percent of the world’s production. Over 12 million are produced each day. What is the product?

Ans: Marbles. Great answer by Ashokda.