Enquiry : The Jadavpur University Quiz Club

IIFT Inquizition 2010

2010-09-13T06:19:00.000-07:00

We attended the IIFT Inquizition finals on the 28th of August, 2010 at my school auditorium Vidya Mandir along with most of the noted quizzers from the Kolkata Open Quizing circuit. We had taken part in the online prelims of the event from which two teams would qualify directly into the final, after my sister studying at IIFT Delhi had informed me about it.

With a lot of mutual ideas being exchanged, my sister's team "The Toddlers" from IIFT Delhi qualified for the finals at Kolkata along with a team from "The Great Lakes Institute of management", Chennai. We were a little way off in 6th position. But a few hours before the quiz the quiz organisers from IIFT informed us that the Chennai team had backed out and we would be taking their place in the finals. This was an unexpected piece of good luck.

Mr. Dhananjay Shettigar of Quizmonks started the prelims for all the other teams with a question about the Shifting of India's Capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The prelims questions were intelligent & of a very high standard requiring both in depth knowledge as well as working out skills. Me & Sarba having already qualified sat around during the prelims and answered the questions just for fun.

Then the answers were announced & the cutoff scores announced. We saw that we would have missed the cutoff by a mark so making it through the online prelims was even more valuable.
On stage joining us were most of the Kolkata quizzing stalwarts. Debanjan's team had also made it to the finals. We sat next to my sister's team from IIFT warning them it would be a fight for the last place between us.

Then Mr Shettigar started the show. The questions were especially framed keeping in mind the high level of Kolkata Quizzing and most of the first few questions went unanswered. But the questions were really good. Then teams started scoring and thankfully we also got off the mark with what else but a Sports question !!

At the end of the first half of the quiz CP Singh's team were leading and jokingly suggested terminating the event then & there. We had answered a few and were thankfully not bottom.

Then Mr. Shettigar started the theme round. We had been expecting a Kolkata theme and were delighted when after the third question we realised our assumption had been right as the theme was Satyajit Ray. With Sarba in a team there would have been very few questions on Ray that would have been missed and we top scored in the round and very very unexpectedly saw ourselves leading the likes of Jayshridi & Sounakda as well as the top seeds for the quiz Souvikda & Soubhadrada.

But our lead was unexpected for a reason and that reason became clear as the big teams suddenly started scoring big and we got into a rut not answering anything for what seemed like ages. Souvikda & Soubhadroda who had been languishing near the bottom in the first half of the quiz raced into the lead with a flurry of incredible answers & even Jayshridi & Sounakda left us lagging behind with some great answers.

As the quiz ended Sudipda's team also overtook us so we finished a respectable 4th instead of 8th as we had expected.

Mr. Shettigar did a fantastic job and taking part in this quiz was a privilige. The Questions once again were splendidly framed and required both deduction & awareness.

Looking forward to more quizzes from him.

Some questions :

Q. Whom did Peter Drucker credit with introducing the first Hard Hat for worker protection while employed by the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia ?
Ans: Franz Kafka

Q. Which place has 4 metals named after it ?
Ans: Ytterby in Sweden

Q. Who was India's captain when they won their first Olympic hockey Gold & politically what was he the first to demand ?
Ans: Jaipal Singh who demanded the Jhadkhand state

Q.The dance of seven veils or Ishtar was the precursor to what ?
Ans: Striptease

Lone Wolf Mcquade 2010

2010-09-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to write about this highly enjoyable & different quiz for quite a long time now but something or the other always came up that prevented me from doing so. Finally now I have found some unexpected free time with everyone busy watching the Champions League T20. And that includes my TV serial addict mom & sis who are right now gushing over Enrique as he croons his way into the cricketing world. The only reason I watch T20 (the cheerleaders) have not taken over as yet and so here I am typing away.

Everyone at Enquiry had been mulling over a mastermind format quiz for quite a while and we found the best time to do it was during the semester break, when all of us had ample time to search for suitable topics, read up & refresh our knowledge of the said topics & also for the two quiz masters, Debanjan & Boss, to set questions on a vast range of choices. The date was fixed on the 5th of June, 2010 & the venue was the Worldview bookstore at Jadavpur University.

The preparations for the event began almost a month before June 5th with all of us sending in three different topics to the Quiz masters by email. They had the freedom of choosing any one of the topics on which to set questions. This was a two part solo quiz like the famed Mastermind India Show we had all grown up watching. The first part was of course the topic round that was different for all the participants. The second part was a General quiz set common to all. The entire quiz was written.

The topics started pouring in since the day we announced the quiz was happening. I wanted to be one of the quiz masters as setting questions on so many colourful topics would have been fun & I would have learnt a lot. But since Debanjan & Boss were already doing the question setting I reluctantly backed down & started deciding my own three topics.

After a lot of chopping and changing which must have irritated the quiz masters a lot I finally decided on "Friends the TV show", "Manchester United's 1999 Treble season" & "Archie comics". I read the Wiki pages for "Friends" & "Archies" and watched the "1999 Treble season" video for the millionth time as part of my preparations for the quiz.

A couple of days before the event Boss & Debanjan entrusted me with the task of setting questions on a few topics as they were short on time. I was overjoyed. I would be both a participant & a quiz master as well. In true Mithunda & Rajnikanth style I had successfully killed two goons with a single shot.

The topics I set questions on were "Woody Allen", "IPL 2010", "Brand name origins" & my personal favourite "Sir Alex at Old Trafford".

Then the big day arrived and we all piled into the Worldview bookstore for the event to unfold. Around 30 people had registered for the event but unfortunately only around 25 showed up which meant five of the topic sets and a lot of the quiz master's time was wasted. The quiz masters handed each one of our question sheets and the answering started.

My "Friends" set was moderately tough but I had watched each & every episode of the show at least a dozen times. I was sure I was getting 15 on 20 even before they revealed the answers.

After the round was over & the corrections done I saw I had narrowly edged out Jishnuda to claim top spot. His topic was "Tenida". Gairik finished third and his topic had been "Indian classical instrumental music in the last 50 years".

Everyone did reasonably well in their respective topics but even while we were all writing the answers I could see Sumantra AKA Central having difficulty with the "Sir Alex at Old Trafford" set I had cooked up. He was under the impression he would be getting the "KFC Big Bash T20 tournament" and had read up on nothing else. Apparently Boss had been feeling a little mischievous and had hinted Central might get KFC just to tempt Central. And Central had taken the bait not even reading the Wiki page for Sir Alex, from which I had set around 15 of the questions. He still managed to answer a few of the questions & with a little guidance from a guilt-ridden me managed a respectable score.

We took a little break after the topic round and all of us participants walked to 8B, had some food and enjoyed ice cold nimbu paani before heading back to Worldview for the General set to start.

It started in due time & Debanjan started with his half of the questions. We got busy thinking as it was a workable set, took a few guesses & left a few blank as usual. Then Boss took over for his set. Again it was a workable set which got our imaginations going. The exhaustive theme was very nicely concealed and I was really glad when I realized it on the third clue. Most of the others also got the theme right but the individual answers to the theme were not that obvious so we all missed a few points there. Then it was correction time again and fortunately after getting a lot of guesses right I was top again, this time getting the better of Gairik in second and Jishnuda in third. Monishita Dey topped the quiz in the school category. Her topic had been "Films of Satyajit Ray" where she had scored well.

So the final verdict saw Jishnuda third, Gairik second and myself finishing first. The quiz masters had done an awesome job and received a standing ovation from everyone. We all agreed this must become a regular fixture and were all thinking of doing a couple of Lone Wolf Mcquades every year during the semester breaks.

The Worldview bookstore was a great venue & we thank them for their co-operation.

Here is a full list of the people who registered and their topics :

FORMAT: NAME-INSTITUTE-TOPIC1,TOPIC2,TOPIC3

ANAGH ST. XAVIERS JOHNNY DEPP ITALIAN FOOD PINK FLOYD
ANUBHAB FIEM TINTIN SUPER CARS POST '60 POTTER
ARINDAM JU WC 1987 1992 LEONARD COHEN ALAN MOORE
ARPAN FIEM FAUNA OF PLANET EARTH X-MEN LINKIN PARK
ATMADEEP ISB&M F1 POST 2008 ALCOHOL INDUSTRY Q T MOVIES
DEBANJALI MHSG BOB DYLAN CHARLES DICKENS AUDREY HEPBURN
GAIRIK JU INDIAN CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTAL SWAT KAT FRIENDS
JISHNU IIM B TENIDA SACHIN TENDULKAR HARRY POTTER BOOKS
JISHU JU LEONARDO DI CAPRIO PULP FICTION RADIOHEAD
KIRAN RCCIT COMPUTER SRK 3G TECHNOLOGY
KUNAL JU INDIAN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS INDIAN FOOD LOGOS
MONISHITA AHG OSCARS SATYAJIT RAY GREENDAY
NAIRIT PRESIDENCY PAGLA DASHU LORD VOLDEMORT HIGGS BOSON
NEIL BESU FIFA WORLD CUP INDIAN MYTHOLOGY COMICS
NRISINGHA XAVIERS FIFA PLAYER MALE ECO NOBEL PERCY JACKSON
PANCHU PRESIDENCY THE BEATLES BATMAN
RAKTIM ST. XAVIERS ITALIAN CINEMA IT BUSINESS
ROBIN JU F.R.I.E.N.D.S TREBLE CHARACTERS OF ARCHIES
SARBAJIT JU DON BRADMAN JAYANTA MANIK TARINIKHURO
SASWATA CU SIMPSONS PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES LOTR
SHIBARJUN ISB&M REAL MADRID AUTOMOBILES WOODY ALLEN
SHREYA LSA WALL STREET COLLAPSE HARVARD WARREN BUFFET
SID JU WOMEN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS FELUDA HARRY POTTER
SOUVIK JNU 19TH CENT BENG WOMEN BOND ODBHUTURE
SUMANTRA PRESI SIR ALEX AT OLD TRAFFORD KKR KFC BIG BASH
TIRTHA JU BOLYWOOD POST 2000 COMPANY NAME ORIGIN KKR
ABHISHEK XXX ARTEMIS FOWL VAN GOGH P G WOODEHOUSE
ABHISHEK IMT LOTR STAR WARS MARKETING THEORY
SUMIT ST. XAVIERS FRASIER WEST CLASSICAL EAST CLASSICAL
APRATIM DBL ALBUM COVER WORLD CUP POLITICS

Qriosity 2010 Report

2010-09-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

Qriosity 2010 in memory of Subhankar Nag was completed on the 4th of September, 2010 at the Triguna Sen memorial auditorium at Jadavpur University. With three quizzes packed into a single day we were all wondering if we could pull off the event smoothly but our fears were laid to rest as every quiz was conducted in good time & there was even time for a photo session at the end of the day.

The day started with the Sports Quiz conducted by Titash who had flown down from Chennai specially for Qriosity. Around 30 teams sat for the prelims and most of the usual suspects made it to the stage. Notably the Lakshmipat Singhania Academy school team made it to the stage after a good show and even in the finals came up with some great answers. The video questions in particular were enjoyed by one and all which actually makes us sad because we had to discard a few more video questions because of the time constraint. The quiz was an even contest between three teams which was won by the "Potoldanga Thunder Club" & "No good" edged out "Quiz lovers of Kolkata" in a tiebreaker for second spot.

A little while later Sounakda took over for the Biz quiz. A few more teams showed up for this one including a lot of the corporate quizzing heavyweights. There was a funny moment during the prelims when Sounakda correctly predicted Goutamda's late arrival. The big teams were all present for the finals which got going with an interesting Crossword round. All the teams scored a lot of points in this round. Then the normal quiz started & ITC raced off to a good lead with some tremendous answers. TCS in second found it hard trying to keep pace with ITC and eventually finished second with Jayshridi, Goutamda & Tathada in third.

Then it was over to Joy da for the final event of the day, the General Quiz. The auditorium was packed when Joy da started asking the first question of the prelims. Thankfully this was one quiz I could participate in but we didn't fare too well, messing up a few answers and falling short off the cutoff. "Byapok Byatha" represented by Tathada, Atrida & Tintinda top scored in the prelims with a mammoth 22 on 25. Again most of the big names were there with three campus teams making it to the stage. Joy da was at his best cracking jokes and asking some delightful questions. From the word go "Answering Service" (Souvikda, Abuda & Sanjoyda) were locked in a tussle with "Hammer & Tongs" (Kinshukda, Jayshridi & Sounakda) for top spot & that's exactly how the quiz finished as well. "Hammer & Tongs" prevailed in the tiebreaker & "Byapok Byatha" finished third.

All three quizzes were conducted with panache and were well received, fantastic questions were asked and the teams also did Kolkata quizzing proud by coming up with some splendid answers.

We at Enquiry take this opportunity to thank everyone involved with Qriosity 2010 without whom the event could not have been imagined. A special mention must go to Subhoda's family who have always supported us through sun & rain and it was no different this year. Our seniors, sponsors, friends & everyone who took part in Qriosity deserve all the credit for the event's success. Hope to see you all next year.

Link to the pics of the event :

http://picasaweb.google.com/birladey/Qriosity2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCLCWqsCT1O3q9wE

P.S : Really sorry about the quality of the pics. My camera was no good in the low light of the auditorium. Could not use a majority of the pics because of the poor lighting. Will use a better camera next year.

Some questions :

Q. Who was hired by Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi to act as a football coach for his son, Al-Saadi Qadhafi, who aspired to join an Italian football club ? As things turned out Al-Saadi ultimately did join an Italian team but was sacked after just one game when he failed a drug test.

Ans: Ben Johnson.

Q. The discovery of a circuit closer led to the disqualification of the winning team & the Great Britain team being given the gold medal in which event at the Montreal Olympics ?

Ans: The Modern Pentathlon
The circuit closer was used by Boris Onischenko of USSR in the epee fencing event

Q. This footballer, in his country’s squad for the 2010 world cup, holds the record of scoring thrice against Juventus in the Champion’s League for three different clubs. Why might this record be in contention for Ripley’s believe it or not ?

Ans: The player in question is Hans Joerg Butt a goalkeeper who takes penalties !!

Q. In 1936 Joe Gould was the Jewish manager for the then world heavyweight champion & he received a call from none other than Joseph Goebbels requesting a title bout between two men.

Gould : Well for openers I want 300000 dollars here before we get on the boat
Goebbels : Ya, you haf it.
Gould : And another hundred when we get to Berlin
Goebbels : Ya, you haf it.
Gould : And first class travel & accommodation for 6 people
Goebbels : Ya, you haf it.
Gould : And 25000 training expenses.
Goebbels : Ya, ya you will haf that also. If you come to Berlin right away we will sign the contract.
Gould took a deep breath : Only one more clause Mr. Goebbels.

What was this final clause that made Goebbels immediately hang up the phone and who were the two fighters being referred to here ?

Ans: Gould wanted Goebbels to release all the Jews from German concentration camps
The fight would have been between Champion James Braddock & Max Schmeling

Q. Duncan White was the first Olympic medallist for this country. Who won the country’s second Olympic medal 52 years later ?

Ans: Susanthika Jayasinghe

Q. Who was the last player to come back from two sets to love down in a grand slam final and win the title ? Incidentally he also became the first Grand slam winner ever to have lost the first set of the final 6-0.

Ans: Gaston Gaudio beat compatriot and favourite Guillermo Coria in the 2004 French Open final

Q. What was the “battle of the Carmens” at the Calgary winter Olympics ?

Ans: The two favorites, East German Katarina Witt & American Debi Thomas both used Bizet’s Carmen for their skating routines.
Witt won & Thomas was 3rd

Q. Connect : Maverick, Tomahawk, Sidewinder, Hawk, Sparrow, Patriot.

Ans: All Raytheon missiles

Q.“What I Know Is”
“Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”
“All Day I Dream About Sports”
“First on Race Day”
“But it’s not Google”

What term used to describe these phrases was coined in the November 1983 edition of the Washington Post ?

Ans: Backronyms

Q. Pritt owned by the Henkel group invented it in 1969. In India a certain brand has a whopping 90% of the market share. What is the product on our desks ?

Ans: Fevistik

Q. The highest two storied bridge in the world, 170 metres above ground level connects what ?

Ans: The Petronas Towers

Q. The website Alexa.com that provides internet ratings is named after what ?

Ans: The great library of Alexandria

Q. Which non-fiction authoress wrote about Frodo, Fifi & Greybeard ?

Ans: Jane Goodal.

Q. To cook what does one have to take a written test, an ID test and a taste test in which only around 30% pass ?

Ans: The Fugu or Pufferfish

Q. Which country now has the maximum number of tigers in the world ?

Ans: The USA where there are around 7000 captive tigers !!

Q. In the world of music what is the 27 club ?

Ans: Great musicians who have all died at 27 including Hendrix, Morrison, Janis Joplin & Kurt Cobain.

Q. In the Southern American states what were Sundown towns ?

Ans: Towns that blacks had to vacate by Sun down.

Q. Which is the only character that appears in all Terry Pratchett books ?

Ans: Death

Q. Scientists and academics sometimes celebrated February 12 with "Phylum Feast" events—a meal with foods from as many different phyla as they could manage, at least as early as 1972, 1974, and 1989 in Canada in honour of whom ?

Ans: Charles Darwin

Q. Which wildlife sanctuary was so named because it displaced 10 villages ?

Ans: Dachigam

Q. What are Janus words ?

Ans: Words with two opposite meanings like bolt, execute, inflammable, invaluable etc.

Qriosity 2010 Rules & Regulations

2010-08-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

Time	September 4 · 9:00am - 9:00pm

Location	Triguna Sen Auditorium Jadavpur University (Near Gate No 3, Opposite Indoor Stadium) Kolkata (Calcutta), India



	Sports Quiz by Titash Banerjea from 10:00 am Business Quiz by Shounak Chakrobarty from 1:30 pm General Quiz by Joy Bhattacharya from 5:00 pm ...Content and Research Partner : Gyaanspace For the first time in Kolkata, Qriosity introduces STUDENTS Vs CORPORATE quiz where the upcoming stars will fight it out against the battle hardened veterans!!! Contact persons: Siddhartha Roy Ph: 9874293477 Soumyarup Dasgupta Ph: 9002004907 Debanjan Bose Ph: 9874361931 Kunal Mandal Ph: 9051469244 Robin Dey Ph: 9748934452 Qriosity 2010 Rules & Regulations Registration Fee: 1. There is an individual registration fee for every Open/corporate participant as per the following structure: For more than 1 quizzes: Rs. 100 only For 1 quiz: Rs. 50 only 2. For Students there will be no registration fee. Rules & Regulations for the Sports Quiz & Biz Quiz: 1. All teams should consist of a maximum of 3 members only. 2. Teams are allowed from Schools, colleges and corporates. 3.Forming of cross-teams is permitted in the sense that you can team up with members from a different institute/organisation.Even Student-Corporate teams are allowed. 4. However if a team consists of 1 or more non student then the team will not be considered as a student team. 5. 8 teams make it to the stage from written prelims. 6. Top 6 teams automatically qualify irrespective of whether they are a student team or corporate team. Rest 2 stage spots are reserved for the top 2 student teams not making it in the top 6. 7. Students are requested to bring their ID cards along for verification. 8. In case of any dispute the decision of the organizing committee will be final Rules & Regulations for The JU Open Quiz in memory of Subhankar Nag: 1. All teams should consist of a maximum of 3 members only. 2. Anyone can participate. 3. 8 teams make it to the stage from written prelims. 4. In case of any dispute the decision of the organizing committee will be final

Qriosity 2010 work in progress

2010-08-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

The date for Qriosity 2010 in memory of Subhankar Nag has been fixed on the 4th of September,2010. The venue is the same as before, the Triguna Sen memorial auditorium in Jadavpur University. There will be three quizzes all on the same day beginning with the Sports quiz at 10 AM followed by the Biz Quiz at 1 PM and the General quiz from 4 PM. The schedule as you must realize is very tight and so all the events will be conducted strictly on time. The Quizmasters for the General Quiz & Biz Quiz will be as usual Joy Bhattacharjya & Sounak Chakraborti respectively. The Sports Quiz will be probably conducted by Titash Banerjea provided he can find time off from work.

Have some good news for people not in campus anymore because this time round we are thinking of also making the Biz & Sports Quiz open events along with the General Quiz. We might even have a campus vs open affair on the stage where 4 open teams take on 4 campus teams.

Hoping to see all of you turn up for another brain-teasing edition of Qriosity.

The DI Open 2010

2010-05-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

Boss, Sarba, Panchu & me turned up for the DI Open this April in the middle of a raging storm which threatened postponement of the quiz. But thankfully people turned up in spite of the heavy shower and the quiz started with around 30 teams sitting for the prelims. We managed to qualify along with most of the big guns of Kolkata Open quizzing and the evergreen Mr. Neil O'Brien got things going.

We were very slow starting off and the fact that Mr. O'Brien actually didn't hear one of our correct answers didn't help in lifting our already fading hopes. We were getting bored and irritated but started getting some points in the middle stages and towards the end a few good answers saw us, the Potoldanga Thunder Club, finishing 4th which wasn't a bad result given our poor start.

The winners as they are so often in the Open circuit were either DI or Octate, I can't be sure.

Some questions:

Q) What medical condition would a "metabolically challenged" person be in ?
Ans: He would be dead

Q) In Ancient China what was the much sought after 3-inch Lotus ?
Ans: Small feet. They used to bind their feet so they would be small and around 3 inches.

Q) What is a tramp stamp ?
Ans: A lower back tattoo

Q) In which city are the Peace Lines ?
Ans: Belfast

Q) In an exchange if the Dutch got Surinam what did the Brits get ?
Ans: New York

Q) Tagline for which movie "His whole life was a million to one shot" ?
Ans: Rocky

Q) What are Trophy jeans ?
Ans: Souvenir Jeans which people once used to fit in

Starmark Sports Quiz 2010

2010-03-26T23:08:00.001-07:00

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.

Quiz for the recreation club at the Insititute of Engineer's

2010-03-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

Sid & myself were requested to conduct a quiz for the Institute of Engineers and we duly obliged. We weren't sure of the level of the participants so we decided to make an easy quiz with fun questions.

There were 4 teams in the quiz & I started off the quiz with my half of the questions. Instantly I could feel that the people were having difficulty understanding the framing of the questions. Although the questions were easy enough, the framing was a little twisted. But I had forgotten that these were not experienced quizzers who could think their way through a twisted question.

One look at their blank faces after my first question, I knew I would have to provide a lot of hints for teams to answer. And I did.

The teams were very competitive & quarreled with each other over my providing hints. Amazingly they answered some pretty difficult stuff without hints but had not heard of Dan Brown!

Sid took over in the 2nd half of the quiz & the teams answered a lot more questions because Sid had been careful enough to keep a lot of questions on India & Kolkata.

The quiz was appreciated by all present & we left feeling very cheerful after everyone told us we had done a good job. Everyone but one! He was in one of the teams and came up to me with a list of 20 questions he felt, we should have asked. The first 4 questions were : "Who was the 22nd Jain Tirthankara ?", "Who was the last Jain Tirthankara ?", "Who was the 3rd Jain Tirthankara ?" & "Who was the 2nd Jain Tirthankara ?". I didn't read any more.

Some questions & experienced quizzers will realise how easy the quiz really was:

Q) The backdrop for what was a feud between the houses of Capulet & Montague in the city of Verona ?

Ans: Romeo & Juliet. I mentioned Shakespeare as a hint and still 3 teams missed it!

Q) Which landmark replaced King Gyanendra in the bank notes of Nepal ?

Ans: Mt. Everest. The Tirthankara guy protested by saying "only people can be landmarks"!

Sanskriti 2010 Sports & General quizzes

2010-03-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

Since I was one of the quizmasters of the Sanskriti 2010 quizzes this is more a report than a review.

Myself & Sid conducted the usual 2 quizzes (Sports & General) for Sanskriti 2010 in early March this year.

The sports quiz scheduled first saw just 6 teams turning up at first so we used the prelims questions as a written round for all 6 teams. Unfortunately after this round a lot of teams turned up. So we had no choice but to scrap this round & prepare another prelim in 10 minutes!

Not sure how many teams exactly took part but the Vivekanada Hall was completely full. The Hall by the way, was a great place to host small quizzes as the arrangements for sound & projection were top notch.

8 teams qualified from the hurriedly prepared prelims. In the finals there was no stopping Sarba, Panda & Titash as they won comfortably.

An hour later we had the prelims for the General Quiz.

Again 8 teams mostly from Enquiry qualified. This quiz was a lot closer than the sports quiz with Debanjan, Jishu & Arindam winning. In the long visual theme round they got a whopping 19 out of 20 individual identifications correct!

Here are some questions :

Q) In celebration of this sportsperson’s record-breaking feat, ADIDAS launched a range of equipments called the TT-10 series.Identify the person

Ans: Taeke Taekama

Q) The 1984 NBA draft had prospects like Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton. However the number one draft was some one else.Who??

Ans: The "Dream", Hakeem Olajuwon

Q) Buildings, Antennas, Spans of bridges & Earth structures like mountains & cliffs are the four possible starting points for what ?

Ans: BASE Jumpers. BASE is an acronym of Buildings, Antennas, Spans & Earth.

Q) The bird was intended to be an eagle but is now officially recognized as a cormorant although the bird shows the short head and curved beak more readily associated with a bird of prey.
What’s the bird?

Ans: The Liver bird in the Liverpool crest.

Q) Connect : Costa Rica vs Czechoslovakia 1990 with Germany vs Saudi Arabia 2002.

Ans: Headed hat-tricks from Tomas Skuravy in 1990 & Klose in 2002

Q) Among the major cities of India what sporting feature connects the cities of Delhi, Kochi, Pune, Margao, Shillong, Guwahati, Indore & Chennai ?

Ans: Nehru Stadiums.

Q) Who received US$ 9,700 from five lawyers to purchase new equipment after his old one, supposedly held together by duct tape and screws, broke during training in November 2009 ?

Ans: Shiv Keshavan.

Q) Ray McCauley is a former Mr. South Africa who also took part in the Mr. Universe competition in 1974 finishing 3rd. Tell me why he features in this round on Sports & Religion ?

Ans: He turned to God after finishing his bodybuilding career & became a pastor. And it was to him that Hansie Cronje first confessed. Great crack by Soumarup!

Q) Faisal II, the last king of the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq was the inspiration for what?

Ans: Abdullah in Tintin

Q) The name of a village in Devon, inspired from the novel “Westward Ho!”, is the only place name of it’s kind in the British Isles in what way ?

Ans: It is the only village name that contains an exclamation mark! The answer was there in the question!

Q) Which people had a script that moved from left to right diagonally?

Ans: The Liliputans

Q) During WW2, men in the combat arm of the SS had something tattooed on the underside of the left arm, usually near the armpit. There were only 4 variations of this tattoo.
What was tattooed on them ?

Ans: Their blood groups.

Q) When the charge of bigamy was raised against X, Czar Alexander responded by saying, “X has two wives, yes, but I have only one X.”
Who is X?

Ans: Mendeleev

Srijan 2010 Biz & Cyber quizzes

2010-03-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

The quizzes for Srijan 2010 the Tech Fest of Jadavpur University were conducted by our very own Titash on the 20th & 21st of March this year.

The Biz quiz on the 20th, saw around 20 teams taking part with some pretty decent teams turning up.
C. Ramshankar from IIMC, sitting alone, topped the prelims ! Teams from JU, IIFT, Xaviers & a couple of other mixed teams made up the rest of the qualifiers.

CRam raced off to a healthy lead in the early parts of the quiz but towards the end, myself & Boss managed to catch up with him. However CRam managed to win on the last question. IIFT finished 3rd.

The quiz had awesome questions & some very interesting, innovative rounds.

It was time for the Cyber quiz on the 21st. Sadly just 10 teams turned up with just 2 and a half teams from Enquiry ( Shabbir was sitting with a Srijan volunteer ). The rest of the teams were literally begged to participate. As expected the quiz was a 2 horse battle at the start between the 2 full Enquiry teams, Panda & Sid vs Boss & me. After going neck & neck in the early stages, Sid & Panda pulled away in the middle stages and won comfortably. Again the quiz was conducted superbly with great questions. The quizmaster Titash, did his job splendidly but unfortunately the organisation, sans the CEO Kunalda, left a lot to be desired.

Here are some questions :

Q) Mark Wahlberg became famous after commercials for this company which owns a two letter domain name. Which company ?

Ans: Calvin Klein

Q) ‘-------- , save -------- ’ was the slogan of the PETA in 2008 to save elephants that are killed in accidents with trains in the country. PETA members, in their effort to draw attention to the issue, enacted a scene in front of Rail Bhavan here with a railway engine killing a dummy elephant. Fill in the blanks

Ans: Lalu save Bholu

Q) This company became the sponsors of the PGA Championship trophy in 2007.The name of the company is a syllabic abbreviation of the company’s air division. Which company?

Ans: Fedex

Q) Since its initial launch in 1982, the franchise has spawned a variety of products, including six lines of action figures, four animated television series, countless comic series and a film. It is commonly abbreviated as MOTU. What?

Ans: Heman & the Masters of the Universe

Q) Which DELL subsidiary company's name is inspired from the X-files ?

Ans: Alienware

Business Quiz at Army Institute of Management – 26th February

2010-03-23T14:31:00.001-07:00

Fully armed with questions, Mr Gautam Ghosh made his way to the Army Institute of Management to host their Business Quiz on the 26^th February. I must say I also had a ‘part’ to play in the content . Unfortunately during the prelims the teams felt like they were in a shooting gallery, and were ducking for cover. I had anticipated a large deal of quality participation, considering the publicity that the institute and I personally :D had done for the event, but alas it was more of mass rather than class. The cutoff for the prelims was a mind boggling 4 out of 20, with the top team , the usual suspects , Cramshankar and Abhishek Nagraj from IIM C topping by a whopping margin with 13 points. The other teams in the final were ISB&M, 2 teams from Army Institute of Management , a solo PHD student from IIM C and the team of the CEO himself and our very own ‘Brandman’ Gairik . .

Much to my relief the finals seemed a far easier battleground than the prelims, and most questions were answered. The team from Army Institute of Management, had raced to an early lead in a relatively easy warm up round. However in the end class prevailed. As the rounds progressed, CRAM and Nagraj established their dominance, and ended up with double the no.of points of the team in 2^nd. CEO and Brandman put up a spirited effort to make up for the early deficit, but in the end Army Institute of Managament, led by Rishi edged out Enquiry’s sole representatives by 15 points for 2^nd place.

One major positive for this quiz, was the audience. Rarely have I seen an audience stick around for a quiz finals, but here was the hall (though quite small) , filled to capacity.

It was great to see, the crowd cheer up the home teams and they didn’t disappoint.

Apart from the crack team led by Rishi, an all girls team from Army Institute of Management gave some nice answers and finished 4^th.

Overall, a pretty decent quizzing experience for all concerned.

By Titash

Business Quiz ‘Comprehending Wall Street’ at Kalyani Government Engineering College, 27th February

2010-03-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

‘Every dog has his day’ and our very own Kutta, Alekhya Chakraborty from IMT G and formerly of KGEC has been having quite a few big days recently. Seems like the quizzers from the North and all over the country have really felt the bite of this Royal Bengal Daschund , what with his national championship victories in DARE 2010 and the AIMA quiz . So, salivating at the prospect of a quiz organized at the former kennel of this Big Dog of Quizzing (knowing the fact that Alekhya had set bulk of the questions and the other quiz happening in Kolkata was well…in plain words a lump of hair) our CEO, Kunal and I set rail for Kalyani on a warm February morning. Incidentally I had partied till 4 am that morning, so it takes a seriously crazy quizzard to get up for a quiz at Kalyani in 4 hrs time. After a two hour rail journey we arrived at Kalyani railway station, only to learn that the college was 30 hrs away. Of course we know when the CEO is around ‘Chaap nei’, so we took a rickshaw . Our journey was like a throwback to Pather Panchali, the village fields, cows grazing , trains coming and going. Finally, we arrived at our destination .

Expectedly , considering the distance very few outstation teams had turned up. In fact there was only one, apart from us, a mixed team from Xaviers and RCC . However, what the quiz lacked in quality of participation was made up by quality of questions. The prelims had some very nice questions, although it was made slightly easier for the teams with options being provided for 20 of the 30 questions. I wouldn’t blame the organizers, though considering the level of participation. The finals were on stage, which I must say was wonderfully arranged. The whole set up looked very professional, and considering the fact that the quiz was primarily organized by 1^st years, it was a commendable effort. The 1^st round had some good dry questions, which seemed to be made by Alekhya. 2^nd round onwards of course , there were some typical run of the mill biz quizzing rounds, like taglines and logos, the 1^st of which both me and kunal are horrible at. There were also a rapid fire round which had some inordinately tough questions, very few of which could be answered. Interspersed in between were however, some good dry and visual rounds + a connection round which had some excellent questions. In the end there was a round sent by Alekhya which was meant to be a theme round, but was misread by the organizers as a normal round. It gave me quite a kick to actually figure out that it was a theme round, and tell the organizers the errors of their ways afterwards :D, pardon my narcissim. Expectedly Kunal and I won by a comfortable margin, with one of the four home teams coming 2^nd. I must say of course, we were having a few nervous moments when the taglines and the rapid fire rounds were going on.

I must make a point here to appreciate young Sachin of KGEC, 1^st year who did a superb job hosting the quiz. One of the teams had raised an objection to one of the answers, and the way he diffused the whole situation was praiseworthy. I have seen many quizzes in engineering colleges hosted by students, and I think he stood out for his confidence and poise.

Overall, the quiz lived up to expectations, and the Big Dog would be happy that his little puppies managed to pull off a creditable and show and effort in ‘Comprehending Wall Street’ (The name of the quiz)

Question of the Quiz

What brand of tea was launched by the Times Group in the 1980’s only to be shelved due to lack of success ?

Ans) Editor’s choice

By Titash

Question OURS- The Business Quiz at IIFT

2010-03-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

Due to the insurmountable amount of ‘lyadh’ prevailing amongst most quizzers who took part in this quiz, and the technical difficulties faced by our very own environment friendly mascot, am posting a review of the Business Quiz at IIFT held in 22^nd February hosted by me !!!! Finally, a chance to gloat !!!!

With a view to forge a strong quizzing culture in IIFT Kolkata, the Kolkata wing of Quintessential- The Quiz club of IIFT was formed this year, and the 1^st major event organized by Quintessential, Question OURS , the Inter College Business Quiz happened this Monday at the IIFT Kolkata campus. The quiz tested out the mettle of some of the quizzing brains in Kolkata, in some grueling rounds of Business Quizzing. Participants came from some of the best colleges in Kolkata- IIM C, Jadavpur University and Presidency College. Some of the other B-schools in Kolkata also participated, Army Institute of Management, ISB&M, Praxis Business School and MSIT.

First there was a written preliminary round from which 6 teams, qualified for the final. The finals featured teams from IIM C, Jadavpur University, Presidency College and IIFT Kolkata. The team from IIM C, C Ramshankar and Shobhit Bhatnagar who are incidentally also the reigning Tata Crucibles and BT Acumen national champions dominated the quiz from start to finish and won by a large margin. There was a however a very tight battle for 2^nd place, with two teams from Jadavpur University and Presidency College fighting tooth and nail. Finally it was the team of Sumantrasarathi Dutta aka Central and Kunal Mandal aka The CEO, the Concept yada yada yada from Presidency College and Jadavpur University respectively who came 2^nd. The winners walked away with a beautiful trophy and cash prizes.

The event was truly one to remember for IIFT, especially from the point of view of quality of participation. The questions which covered the whole gamut of the business world, from IT to FMCG to Business Strategy had both the participants and the audience gripped for the 3 hrs of this quizzing gala. The event was widely appreciated by all the participants who came from various colleges and it was a common sentiment echoed by all of them, that IIFT Kolkata should have more such event s in the near future.

Some questions :-

1.Which word often used in finance and in daily parlance comes from the modern French word meaning "money box" ?

Ans)Cash

2)This word meant weight in Spanish. It was a name given to ‘The real de a ocho’ which was known in Europe as a thaler. It had a legal weight of 27.468 g . What am I talking about?

Ans)Peso Coin

3)“------------" is also part of a title referring to a minor character from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. -------- is a reference to

10 ^(10^100).

What is ------------- ?

Ans)Googleplex\

4)The word is derived from the Latin bursa. The oldest known of these was found with Ötzi the Iceman who lived around 3,300 BCE. Another early example is on Egyptian hieroglyphs, which show pouches worn around the waist. The next appearance is in 14th century Europe. What are we talking about?

Ans)Purse

5)The T2000, the Dunlop Max200G and the Prince “Original” Graphite are all types of what?

Ans)Tennis Racquets

By Titash

Tata Crucible 2010 Campus Edition Kolkata

2010-03-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

Sunday 14th of March, 2010 when the city was abuzz in IPL fever the campus edition of Tata Crucible 2010 Kolkata round took place at the Taj Hotel like always.

The number of teams was nowhere close to the 300 of last year. This time it was around 100. The IPL game against Bangalore was a factor for the low attendance but as Giri correctly said it was also because there were easier options available to out station teams than Kolkata.

6 teams from Enquiry including 3 from JU, 1 from CU, 1 from IIFT & 1 from Presidency sat in the prelims. Apart from Panda n Central who missed out by half a point, all the rest of us made it to the semis.

From our semi St. Xaviers won & Boss from CU won the other semi beating the Dark Lord Kunalda & Sid from JU in a tiebreaker. And as CU won, in a dramatic moment fit for any Ekta Kapoor production, the Dark Lord rose up from his seat and applauded Boss !! Giri on seeing this, expressed his love for Kolkata and applauded the Lord for his show of sportsmanship !!

But there was yet more drama to unfold !!

As the 4 straight qualifiers were announced we got a shock. IIFT's name was announced !!
Another duo from IIFT had beaten Titash & Jaggi to the finals !!

But one of them, feeling sure they wouldn't make it, had by then reached the Eden Gardens !!

So they were disqualified & JU & IIT KGP who finished 2nd in our semi were called onstage for another tiebreaker.

Amazingly even IIT KGP had departed which left the very sporting combination of the Dark Lord & Sid Vicious to claim the vacant finals spot !!

The final started with a whole round on management gurus & theories where IIMC absolutely blasted away. They won the quiz in the first round itself wrapping up an already expected victory almost within the first round.

With some good answers CU finished 2nd ( which was what the quiz was for anyway !! ) & the sporting duo in a sporting attempt at gaining points finished last with a negative score !!

Some questions

Q) Which entity with the slogan "We make a different world" is one of the top recruiters from colleges in the USA ?

Ans : US Army

Q) Who designed the Tata logo ?

Ans : Wolf Olins

Q) In which "fruit" company had Forrest Gump invested money ?

Ans : Apple

Arohon 2010 NIT Durgapur

2010-03-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

Titash, Debanjan, Jishu & me went to Durgapur on 6th March 2010, to attend the quizzes at Arohon.

We made an early start, catching a bus from Karunamoyee at 7:30 AM. En route the bus halted at Shaktigarh, the "Langcha Capital of the world". And it truly was !!!

Everywhere we looked we saw "Langcha". There was a Langcha Palace, Langcha Cottage, Langcha House, Langcha Hall, Langcha Mahal and a lot more I can't recollect. And for those of you who don't know, "Langcha" is a kind of sweet quite popular here in Bengal. The shape as some of you would know might turn off guys !! Then again I should add it might turn off "some" guys !!

We reached Durgapur in the afternoon & had to wait quite a while for the General Quiz to start.

Mr. Arul Mani conducted the quiz in which around 30 teams sat in the prelims. We were quite surprised to see very few out station teams as usually Arohon is quite a popular destination for college quizzers in Eastern India. But who were we to complain.

The prelims had some fantastic questions. Mr. Mani is known for his question framing and this time too he did a great job hoodwinking people with his clever choice of words.

We made the finals along with 5 teams from NIT Durgapur where the first round was truly a pain both for the eyes and the brain !!

The projector wasn't working well in the daylight & the first round was identifying celebrities from portraits of them as kids !!!

And the list included Aung San Su Kyi & the current head of North Korea !!

It was perhaps the first time in my entire experience of quizzing that a round went by without any team troubling the scorers.

The main quiz started and instantly the questions got better. We raced off into a lead and held on till the end. It got quite interesting towards the end as we had suffered a lot of negative points but we just about finished first.

The next quiz to be hosted by Arnab Sinha was titled the "Final Frontier". Arohon always has late night quizzes and this was one of them. It was scheduled for 11 PM. It was meant for 3 member teams from the same college, which sadly meant Titash would be sitting alone.

It also meant we had a lot of time to kill before the 11 PM start and so Debanjan suggested we walk to the Damodar barrage "nearby".

Jishu wasn't ready to go. So we had a vote with Jishu losing 3-1. It's the last time I'm voting for anything Debanjan suggests !!

We spent the next 3 hours walking around asking people how to get to the barrage. Everybody seemed to think it was just a 15 minute walk away. The roads were like dust bowls and all of us were covered in grime within the first 5 minutes of the expedition. Tired & hungry & thirsty & lost, we wandered about like madmen in search of Utopia by the Damodar barrage side.

I had visions of dipping my feet into the cool water of the Damodar. In my vision, for some reason I was playing a Sarangi as I let the cool waters of the Damodar wash my feet !! I was taken aback at first but then realised why I had suddenly thought of playing a Sarangi.

Rani Laxmi Bai's horse was called Sarangi & her son was named Damodar Rao !!
Years of quizzing has done this to my psyche !! I see connections everywhere !!

Anyway after hours of walking we decided to give it up. All our efforts seemed fruitless and so we reluctantly turned the other way cursing our luck !!

Final Frontier started a bit late, around 12 AM & it was an open air quiz. We made it to the stage where Arnab did a good quiz. Jishu was in good form and we won quite easily.

We spent the night in the room of a school pal of Debanjan & Jishu.

Next morning it was time for the Sports & Entertainment quiz conducted by Mr. Arul Mani again. Again his questions were impeccable & the framing out of this world. And given the line up we had for this quiz it was no surprise when we came out on top !! I am not boasting !! We really did have a quiz team, half of which was entertainment heavy & the other half sports heavy !!

Me & Titash left after the quiz & after a long bus ride reached Kolkata late on the night of 7th March. It had been the most successful quiz trip of my life !! A strike rate of 100%.

But again in today's IPL world 100% is nothing !!

Some questions from Arohon :

Q) This activity which involves 30 bone joints & 50 muscles, has been practised in this country for centuries and experts believe it is the reason for the country's dominance in a certain sport. Namr the activity, the sport & the country ?

Ans: Use of chopsticks, table tennis & China

Q) A poem written by the man who inspired RL Stevenson to create Long John silver has been in the news recently. What is this poem ?

Ans : Invictus

This was a starred question in the prelim
Q) In the parliament what are questions that are meant to be answered orally on the same day called ?

Ans : Starred questions !!

Q) Which 8 letter misnomer is used to describe the silverfish ? Silverfish itself is a misnomer

Ans) Bookworm. Silverfish is an insect, so neither a worm or a fish !!

Q) Which book got it's title from the mishearing of a poem by Robert Burns ?

Ans) Catcher in the Rye

Love All- The Sports Quiz

2010-02-27T23:17:00.000-08:00

With the general quiz supposed to be hosted by Jayasree Mohanka and Souvik Guha being postponed for the umpteenth time, it was a pleasant surprise for all us sports buffs to know that it would be replaced by a sports quiz hosted by Biswabijay Sen on the same day, 21^st February.

It was a sports quiz with a difference. A quiz for the sports followers, not the sports readers. There were very few dry questions, and the prelims too were filled with videos and visuals. After a prelims where the scores were abnormally low for an open sports quiz, 6 teams were announced for the final, and there were some surprises in store, particularly with few of the major forces in open sports quizzing of the last 5 years missing out. There was however some controversy, and mystery surrounding one team which had apparently qualified for the finals. They made a dubious but inconspicuous exit, and were to be replaced by one of the doyens of sports quizzing, but as luck would have it they too had departed , thinking that they had not qualified. The lucky ones to benefit from all this confusion were a team called the Sharpshooters, featuring our very own enquiry member Sumantra aka Central.

And did they take advantage of their luck !!! The sharpshooters put in a really sharp display and came 2^nd , behind the obvious favourites Deepanjan, Souvik Guha and Sounak. In a good day for enquiry a team of Panda, Niranka and I managed to get 3^rd place on the last question. There were no prizes for 3^rd place or else I would have put a poster of Gigi Fernandez in my living room from now on.

Summing up the quiz, I would say the questions did leave something to be desired. It was a bit monotonous at times, since almost all the questions were straight visual identifications. AV’s are always welcome in any quiz, particularly when it comes to sports, but the questions could have been framed in a more interesting manner, I believe.

Some of the questions I can remember:-

In 2003, in a match against South Africa Brian Lara scored 196, and was the last man to be dismissed . He missed out on a double century because of something which happened in 2000. What? (This was accompanied by a video clip)

Ans. In 2000, there was a major rule change in cricket:- Earlier if a batsman hit a ball, and then it hit the helmet , 5 runs were awarded to the batsman, but 2000 onwards the runs were awarded as penalty runs to the team. Brian Lara had hit a ball which hit the helmet, so before 2000 he could have scored a double century, but alas that was not to be.

Which Indian won the Arjuna award in 2000 and the Dronacharya award in 2009?

Ans. Puella Gopichand

By Titash

Business Incubaiter- The Business Quiz organized by Praxis Business School

2010-02-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

It is a well known fact that enquiry members would go to any lengths and travel through any road for a good quiz. This was no more in evidence than when three quizzing gypsies , , Panda, Boss and I along with Jagadish from IIFT, made the long trip to Praxis for their Business Quiz on the 10^th of February. Now, where this place exactly was no one knew. After asking countless people , as we made our way through the roads, then the galis and finally the jungles in Panda’s car (observing the golden rules carefully) , we finally arrived at our Quizzing Oasis. The quiz was hosted by none other than Charanpreet Singh, the director of Praxis and a quizzer and quizmaster of high repute in his own right.

The quiz was well attended, if not in terms of quantity but surely in terms of quality. After a prelims were the 1^st 2 teams had abnormally high scores, and the next 4 were all bunched together , the finals line up stood as :- 2 IIM C teams, Asansol Engineering College, IIFT Kolkata (Myself and Jagdish), Army Institute of Management and Calcutta University , represented by our very own Panda and Boss. I must say the quality of questions in both the finals and the prelims were excellent. Most of the questions were highly workable, and very few (if any) had obscure answers. It was a bit of a throwback to the old days, where most of the questions were on paper, and the slides just showed Question 1, Question 2 . Of course, I must say it was quite lackadaisical of the quizmaster not to make a complete ppt, but that’s again a very personal opinion. Despite the high quality of questions, there were was one thing I didn’t find too appealing, and that was an overdose of audio questions. Most of them were somebody reading out a management book, and people were asked to identify the author or the book which made it monotonous. Of course, this was only a small blight on what was a wonderful quiz.

After a highly competitive final, Asansol Engineering College emerged the surprise winners with the 2^nd team from IIM C finishing a close second. Boss and Panda kept the enquiry flag flying high with a fine performance in 3^rd place. The highly fancied team of IIM C involving CRamshankar finished 4^th and urs truly’s team and Army Inst brought up the rear.

Overall , one of the best business quizzes I have attended.

Some of the good questions:-

In the IPO filing for Google, in 2004, rather than a typical round-number amount of money, the company announced its intention to raise $2,718,281,828 shares. What was the significance of this?

Ans. The value of e

Which company named after something you might find in a farm was so named, because the founder wanted it to be before of his previous employer in the dictionary

Ans. Apple

By Titash

Worst quizzes ever

2010-02-20T22:45:00.000-08:00

To prevent this post from offending the Quiz masters who managed to give us hangovers without getting us drunk, I will be using codewords, in true Fake IPL player fashion.

I request people to send me reports on terrible quizzes they have attended so that I can make it a part of this post. You can do this by emailing me at birladey@gmail.com.

I will start with what was by far the worst quiz I have ever attended based on the quality of questions.

It was an internal quiz at a college, lets call it the Hermitage, in 2006. The best question of the quiz according to me was "From which country was Copernicus ?"

You might be tempted into thinking "That's not very bad" but just you wait. I am not finished yet.

Every second question in this quiz was a spelling ! In the same round, some teams got multiple choice questions which passed ! And on top of that the QM carried a copy of the Manorama Year Book with him.

One of his questions was "What is a basilisk ?". A team said "It's a mythical snake mentioned in Harry Potter." The QM did not agree. It passed to us. I knew that beside being a mythical snake, another name for the Jesus Christ Lizard, which can walk on water, was the Basilisk. So just to be safe I said, "It's a reptile that walks on water". He disagreed again. It passed across everybody. He then revealed the answer which was simply, "It's a Lizard". Try as hard as I could, I could not convince him that a lizard is a reptile. The QM, in turn, in order to convince me took out a page from the Manorama Year Book and showed it to me. "See it's written here. Basilisk, Lizard."

I knew I was beaten.

Another really dreadful quiz was, quite unexpectedly, a Sports Quiz at Aye Aye Yum Boca, a couple of years back. This had to be the worst quiz, I have attended, based on the format.

The first few rounds of the quiz were alright, with a lot of age old repeated stuff. Going into the last round we were leading the eventual winners by 70 points. The last round was a "Choose your Topic" round with choice preference in ascending order of scores. It was a speed round with a maximum of 10 questions in a minute for every team on their chosen topic.

Half of the topics had 20 points per questions & the other half had 10 points per question. So if the bottom 3 teams chose the 20 point Topics & did well, we would be left helpless because we would be left with just 10 point questions. Also there were negatives for guessing wrong ! So the only options you had were to answer correctly or pass. Till date, the only quiz I have attended where guessing was discouraged.

The round started with all the bottom teams choosing the 20 pointer sets. The team which was in 5th spot chose "Sporting Venues" & got 5 correct. Among the 5 that they answered was this question. "How do we better know the Yuva Bharati Krirangan ?"

After every team had their go, we needed 4 correct answers on "Football Coaches" to win. The round started with this question. "Who started the Cattenacio style of football ?"

This was a 10 point question according to the QM & Yuva Bharati for some reason was worth 20. Despite my having a hunch, we had to pass because of the negatives for guessing. The next 3 questions were of the same sort. Then he asks us, " Which I-league coach is renowned for spotting young talent ?"

That did it. I knew getting 4 correct in this round was hopeless and looked at the QM with such contempt that I am sure people thought I was gonna hit him.

The very next question, in a speed round, would have taken a full minute to ask if we hadn't stopped him halfway, by saying pass.

We answered one and got one wrong in that round and finished fourth. The team who had been 2nd finished 3rd. So the only purpose of the round had been to stop good teams from winning and it had worked wonders !!

By the way, the answer to the Catenaccio question was the Inter coach Helenio Herera.

Another quiz deserves a mention in the worst format category & this was the Movie quiz at Aye Aye Tea Swordpur SinghRest, 2010. But here some of the questions were really good.

The most awful quiz that I attended in school was the Hedge Tea-RatRace quiz.

It was supposed to be a mega event and so lots of teams turned up. The QM was some news anchor called Veer. We got to the stage with 5 other teams and were feeling happy with ourselves. 12 questions later, we were swearing under our breaths as we boarded a bus for home. Yes, the mega event for which around 50 teams turned up and waited for over 2 hours for the prelims to start, was over in 5 minutes ! And even those 5 minutes left us school kids wondering, "How can an adult behave like this on stage and how can people laugh at such poor jokes !!"

A few years on and I have realized what some people are willing to do for even a bit of money and that if you are confident, you could commit a murder on stage and people would still clap !!

Numerous quizzes, featuring the Shahenshah of bad QMs, Mr. Moronob Energy, should be included in this post but I have been to so many, especially while in school, I kind of lost track.

In his infamous Sunny Tropics round, we once chose the EPL. He asked us who the current manager of Blackburn was. With a big smile on my face I said "Graeme Souness" which was absolutely correct.

But I had forgotten one tiny fact. Moronob lived in an universe parallel to ours, where strange things happened, unheard of here, in our world.

In his world, Blackburn at that time were being managed by Steve Mclaren, which is why I think he was quite right not to have awarded points for my answer. I should have had the foresight to give both answers, Souness & Mclaren. You can't expect the Shahenshah to know what was happening here, in our world !! Entirely my fault !!

Which is why I am rendering a formal apology, here in this post, to Mr. Moronob Energy for vociferously dissenting against him on stage. I am sorry Moronob Sir !!

A few more things that go on in Moronob Sir's world :

The mascot for the 1954 WC was the trophy itself !!

The 1000th goal in WC football was scored before the 999th !!
According to Moronob, Robbie Resenbrik scored the 1000th in 1978, which is consistent with our world but according to Moronob, the 999th scorer was Alessandro Altobelli who made his debut for Italy in 1980. I guess, in Moronob's world Altobelli is a much revered scientist for having figured out the rudiments of time travelling.

Naim Suleymanglu has had 3 names !! In our world it's only 2.

Aung San Suu Kyi appears in Tintin in Tibet !!
Tintin in Tibet appeared in 1958 when in our world Aung San was 13 years old. Looks like in Moronob's world Aung San used Altobeli's time machine or it might be the other way round !!

There are a lot more of these Moronobisms which I would encourage people to share with the world. The ideas & ideals of Moronob, the Shahenshah of the other world, must be cherished !!!

Very recently I attended a very boring quiz at Magicpur University, which was the first bad quiz I attended here. Given the fact that, most of the other quizzes, I attended here, were done by our people, bad quizzes were a rarity. This was an exception.

The questions were either, way too easy for a college quiz or way to trivial unless you were sitting on a computer with internet access. One of my team mates was on the verge of walking out of the quiz before the QM asked one or two decent questions !!

Here is a new entry sent to my mailbox by a friend. I changed some names around and this quiz was seriously awful. The QM was one of those stupid people who think they know a lot. They make the worst QMs.

From Rampat Ray ( Name changed on request)

I want to share my experience of a 'quiz' I attended in March 2010 at a college fest. It was hosted by a official of Nirula Scientological museum.

Some of the questions in the prelims were
'what is the Bengali date today?',
'which peak can be seen from the top floor of Chaterjee International',
'the color of sky of the moon',
'the closest star' and some slides of animals.
The best question in the prelims was a song sang by Rabindra Nath Tagore himself.

You may say questions aren't so bad but it's the answers which left me speechless.

The QM said the Bengali date was 24th Falgoon and not 25th Falgoon ( which was the right date). Maybe he had set the questions the day before and forgot the fact that dates change everyday !!

He said we can see Kanchanjangha from the top of Chaterjee International !!
He must have had an eye transplant from a Hawk !!

Anyway that was all about the prelims but yeh to sirf trailer tha !!
Picture abhi baki hai mere dost!!

Let's switch to the finals where we were the lone outsiders.

The QM suddenly started a lecture about the geographical diversity of West Bengal, which has the ocean at the one end and world's third highest peck at the other, has mangroves to red soil like desert as well. Then he asks name the only state in India which has all these geological diversities?? Amazed!! Already !! Don't be..because there are plenty of other reasons arriving.

He showed a video of a spectacle-cobra and pointed out the spectacle sign in its back as a hint, said its a sign of spectacle, this type of cobras are rare etc etc and then asked which cobra ? The answer he gave away in his speech. It was a spectacled cobra !!

Finally we got a toughie. I think it was left for us only to stop our cake walk and give all the home teams a boost. He showed a farmland of Brinjals with a "kaktarua" at the middle of the field and then asked what plant we are seeing? Due to a little bit of my knowledge in greens I guessed Brinjals. It was correct and even the QM was surprised when we cracked it.

Have you ever heard of Tongue-twisters being a part of quizzing?

Seeing is believing and we got a taste of it in the 5th round when our score was the double that of the second team.

The Tongue-twisters ranged from "Zinc dijoji dhatu" to "teltele chule tul tule tulo" and many english and hindi tounge-twisting phrases.

It was an infinite point scoring round. The more times you say the phrase the more points you are awarded!!

It was the turning point of the Quiz and we ended up second position after this.

There were mistakes committed by the QM and scorers throughout the quiz. Sometimes the scorer added an additional marks to a team or the quiz master forgot in which direction he had started the round and sometimes he even forgot to ask the question after a long and tiring speech on his yet to be asked question!!

That's all from my side. Can't stop myself from sharing this experience.

Science Sanskriti General Quiz 2010

2010-02-20T22:27:00.000-08:00

The Science Faculty Sanskriti General Quiz was held on the 19th of February, 2010 and hosted by Gautam Ghosh. In the previous 2 editions I had been the quiz master so for a change I participated.

Despite being a General Quiz, around 18 of the prelims 25 questions were Biz. Anyway, 5 teams from Enquiry & 1 team from JUDE made it to the stage and within a span of 10 minutes, we were wishing we hadn't qualified. The quiz started with a barrage of questions about NRIs & Indian CEOs & hardcore Biz Trivia and in the middle of these questions there were some absolute sitters. The questions in the latter half of the quiz were a lot better, although most of them were old chestnuts. But I would much rather someone ask old chestnuts than a history of CEOs.

Me, Boss & Sarba tied with Titas, Sid & Panda for first. There were 3 teams tied for 3rd and Shabbir, Neil & Sumantra, on a wretched afternoon, managed a duck !!! I encourage the readers of this blog, to please pull their legs about this. It's not everyday that a team scores a duck !! But to be fair to them they did get some stinkers, most of the dreaded CEO stuff !!

Unfortunately, the one man, who would have lapped up the CEO stuff like a wolf, our very own CEO Kunalda, gave this quiz a miss.

Some of the better questions :

Q Who were the first 2 scientists to translate Einstein's Theory of Relativity into English ?
Ans : SN Bose & Meghnad Saha

Q Which brand gets it's name from Arabic for hot spring ?
Ans : Hamam

And the question that almost made Boss walk out of the quiz

Q What were the names of the 2 business families in the movie Corporate ?
I won't even bother with the answer

Kritansh 2010 General & Biz Quiz at KIT Bhuvaneswar

2010-02-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

In a crazy quizzing month, during which I had already been to more than 10 quizzes Titash, Rahul & myself climbed aboard the Puri Express on the night of 13th February, 2010 to attend the General & Biz quizzes at KIT Bhuvaneswar next day.

Before I get to the quizzes I must mention some of the crazy things that happened on the fateful Saturday night of the 13th.

The 3 of us had got sleeper tickets but unfortunately while two of the tickets were in the same compartment one was not. So I made my way to the solitary seat at around 12 A.M. There were a couple of guys sleeping on my seat, huddled under a common blanket. I nudged them gently but they wouldn't budge. So I nudged harder & shone my torch into their faces. They woke up & I told them they were in my seat. They moved down from my seat and promptly settled down on the floor of the train & were snoring within minutes. I lay down on my seat & closed my eyes. Presently a TT came along, having been informed by some of the people sleeping on berths that somehow people sleeping on the floors below them, were causing a disturbance. He woke up the people sleeping on the floor. There were around 9 including the two who were in my seat before. There was a huge ruckus because the 9 did not have sleeper tickets & the TT made them leave the train at the next station which was Kharagpur. The 9 then went to one of the overcrowded General Compartments, where you would be lucky to find room to breathe, got around 20 more people and came back to board the same compartment again. The TT rushed off to get the Police.

He came back with one policeman !!! ONE !!! And he too was half asleep !!!
There were around 30 people without tickets !!!

Majority wins & the TT could do nothing as all of them moved in and occupied every inch of free floor space in the compartment.

Now the people who had complained initially started protesting from their berths. The lazy mutts didn't even have the guts or energy to get down & see some action. I, on the other hand, was watching the drama unfold, wishing I had a tub of Popcorn to munch.

One of the protesters came up with the corny line, " There are Ladies here !!"
To which the reply was even cornier, " Babu! Hum garib hain par hum mein insaniyat hain !!"

I almost fell off my seat laughing. After around 20 minutes of the TT & some people trying their best to get the alleged miscreants to leave, I stepped in.

"There is no point squabbling like this. They won't leave. You shouldn't have complained in the first place. So we just have to put up with 20 more now."

And put up we did.

Somehow more people from the general compartments got wind of the situation in our area. They started flooding in. At 2 A.M I was lying on my seat with 4 people sitting almost on top of me. I couldn't get a minutes rest !!

Just before reaching Bhuvaneswar, I went to the Toilet. I took off my glasses to wash my face. The train suddenly jerked a bit, my glasses slipped out of my hands and fell right through that dreaded circular hole where no man dares to go !!!

What a night !!

We got off the train at Bhuvaneswar at 6 A.M & went to the Lingaraja Temple to spend some time. After a few hours there we went to KIT where the quiz started after a long wait.

And all I can say is, the trouble was worth it !!!

Mitesh Agarwal conducted two wonderful quizzes. The format was innovative & it was the fairest format we had ever come across at a quiz. We were quite angry in the General Quiz prelims when we received a negative for an answer we were convinced we got right but in the end we realized where we had gone wrong.

The format which Mitesh Agarwal told us was becoming quite common down south was very fair. We were surprised to hear it wasn't Infinite Bounce but then he revealed a format where if you knew an answer you would always get points for it, and if the question was a workable one you did have a chance of guessing it. It worked like this. When any team got a direct all other teams were given a few seconds to write down the answer, if they knew it. If they got it right they got full points else negative. After this writing period was over the question passed like a normal quiz for all those teams who did not write. It was a very fair format.

After two excellent quizzes in which we finished 2nd in the General Quiz & 3rd in Biz, it was time to head back. The return journey unlike the previous one was quite uneventful.

Here are some questions :

Q After the Saddam era, Why did people in Iraq refer to their situation as the "Purple Revolution" ? Because purple is the colour of voting ink

Q Which sport was developed by Venetian punters to land quickly ? Pole vault

Q Why did Colgate takeover the Mennen Talcum powder company in 1992 ? They made the Teen spirit deodorant

Q Why did AMD codename their chips Kryptonite ? Because Intel was nicknamed the Superman of Silicon Valley

Sanskriti Arts General Quiz

2010-02-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

Boss & Sid conducted the Sankriti Arts General Quiz on 12th February 2010. They did a good job & it was also great to see a projector at a Sanskriti Quiz. Quizzing at the OAT with teams crowding around the laptop is troublesome, so it was nice to see the Quiz in an indoor auditorium.

Around 15 teams sat in for the prelims & 8 made it to the finals. Almost all of us in the finals were from Enquiry & so the quiz was like a quiz club session. We enjoyed ourselves haggling & bullying the QMs every question !!!

Questions from both Boss & Sid were excellent though Sid did get some flak for Chariots of fire ! The Weasley family theme was good fun.

We won the quiz with Titas & Co in second. Sumantra's team was third.

Some questions :

Q. The British Overseas Airways Corporation introduced a new technology in May 1952 which also gave rise to which phrase in the English language ? Jet set

Q.

Kshitij 2010 Biz Quiz

2010-02-09T00:06:00.000-08:00

On 3oth January 2010 me, Boss, Kunalda & Titashda went back to IIT-KGP a week after Springfest for the Biz quiz at Kshitij to be conducted by Arul Mani.

We qualified from the prelims which saw close to 40 teams taking part. It was a pretty short quiz with 2 short written rounds, 1 theme & around 2 passing rounds of 8 questions each. IIT-KGP went into an early lead with us breathing down their necks. And that's how it finished. A mere 5 points between us & IIT who won the quiz.

The questions were framed nicely & very workable. A couple of rounds more would have been nice.

Some of the questions :

Q The fact that outside businesses in the UK are doing so much better than home businesses is being referred to as what by the British media ?
Wimbledon effect

Q Connect Lucent, Apple, Lays, Vodafone, Pepsi etc.
All of their logos have been criticised by the church for having satanic interpretations

Carpedium 2010 Football & General Quiz

2010-02-08T23:33:00.000-08:00

Carpedium 2010 saw the introduction of a Football quiz for the first time and all of us Football buffs flocked to IIM-C on the 7th of January 2010 for the quiz to be conducted by Kaushik Saha.

The prelims saw around 20 teams with 8 making it to the stage. Kaushik asked some great questions most of which were answered. The level of knowledge of all the teams was extra-ordinary. The theme was also well thought out but it would have been very difficult to answer if asked a few months later. Gaurav's team won the quiz with me,Boss & Sarba finishing 2nd. And it was no surprise seeing Sid, who had been finishing 3rd in every quiz since last year, finish 3rd again with Panda & Gairik.

After a couple of hours it was time for the General Quiz conducted by an IIM-C student. The quiz was alright with some nice questions but it was a trifle too long & it had 3 written themes which were quite tedious. Teams from IIM finished 1st & 2nd with us tying for 3rd with Panda, Rahul & Prashnik.

Here are some of the questions i found interesting :

Q What was a schoolteacher called Humberto Munoz Castre's "Contribution" to football ?
He killed Escobar

Q Which team has the record of the biggest win, 6-0, in a FA cup final ?
Bury FC

Q Connect

Greenland (an autonomous region of Denmark, and under the control of the Football Association of Greenland)
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (an unrecognized state, under the control of Cyprus Turkish Football Federation)
Zanzibar (historically a part of Tanzania, but with membership of CAF)
Gibraltar (The Gibraltar Football Association has applied to UEFA for provisional membership. Yet Spain has blocked the application)
Tibet (an autonomous region of China)
The Republic of St. Pauli (representing the St Pauli area of Hamburg, the host city)

Participants at the FIFI WC, The FIFI Wild Cup is the Alternative World Cup of Association football run by FIFI (Federation of International Football Independents).

Q Connect Saeed Owairan with Gheorge Hagi.
Maradona. Owairan was called Maradona of the Arabs & Hagi Maradona of the Carpathians.

Q After WW2 the Deutsche Schaferhund was renamed as what because of anti-German sentiments prevailing at the time ?
Alsatians

Q Which is the 1st mass produced electric vehicle with dimensions of 6 feet by 8 feet ?
The golf cart

Q What sobriquet was coined by Jyoti Prasad an Assamese journalist during the time of the Bangladesh war of 1972 ?
Seven sisters

Q Why was this movie poster withdrawn in December 2009 ?
After the death of Brittany Murphy

The 25th Inter University Youth Fest Quiz 2010 at Rohtak

2010-02-08T23:06:00.000-08:00

A team of 6 participants in quizzing, debating, music & poster making, set out from JU for the National Finals of the Inter University Youth Fest 2010 at Rohtak. The Maharshi Dayanand University, soon to be the site for the IIM-Rohtak complex hosted this year's event and did a fantastic job.

The Quiz was slated on the 4th of February 2010 and Sid, Kunalda & myself were not expecting much after having witnessed the level of the East Zone round of the Quiz just a month back in Manipur.

So we were pleasantly surprised when the Quizmaster Mr. Shirodkar announced the rules of the Quiz & the very mention of Infinite Bounce & a Theme lifted our spirits. The QM in a very dignified manner conducted a marvellous quiz. In the early stages Bombay University & us were going neck & neck with good answers coming from both of us. Benaras Hindu University were a little way behind in 3rd. In the middle part of the quiz we got into the lead after cracking the theme early & were looking good. But towards the end we messed up a few questions & the luck of the draw saw both Bombay University & BHU pulling clear.

The last round was the speed round & we were out of it by then but were still comfortably 3rd. All 3 teams did well in the speed round after which Bombay University finished 1st, BHU 2nd & JU 3rd.

The quiz was very enjoyable and even more so because we were not expecting it to be done so well. Here are some questions :

Q Why did the USA change the codename of their Iraqi opearations from Operation Iraqi Liberation to Operation Iraqi Freedom in a last second decision ?
Because the acronym for Opearation Iraqi Liberation was OIL !!

Q In the days of the highwaymen in England, robbers on horseback would stop carriages and say ".............................., your money or your life." Complete the blanks to form a 3 word phrase often used by commentatos of a certain sport.
Stand & Deliver

Q They were mercenaries working without pay for the Marathas comprising hindus, muslims & sikhs who were allowed to loot from the enemies of the Marathas. Who ?
Pindaris who featured in the horrible movie Veer !!

Q Hanuman couldnot understand the Bhagvad Geeta although he heard it all from the top of Arjun's chariot. What practice followed especially in primary schools of rural India arose out of this ?
The Guru sitting at a higher ground than the students or Upanishad which means at the feet of the master.

BESU Shibpur General Quiz

2010-02-08T08:10:00.000-08:00

Me, Kunalda & Sid were returning from Rohtak after having secured 3rd place in the Quiz at the 25th National Inter University Youth Fest. We arrived at Howrah & immediately hailed a cab to BESU Shibpur where Vijayanand Menon would be conducting a general quiz shortly.

The prelims saw close to 40 teams taking part from which 2 teams each from BESU & JU along with teams from CU & Xaviers made it to the finals. Menon hosted a fabulous quiz. CU ran off to an insurmountable lead with Xaviers quite a way behind in 2nd. Then came the 12 question theme round. The theme in particular was wonderfully conceived although my Xaverian friends might beg to differ. They lost a lot of points because they cracked the theme late & thus finished 4th. The 2 JU teams finished 2nd & 3rd & were separated by a margin of just 2.5 points !

Some questions from the quiz :

Q In 2004 which domain name used for receiving fan-email did Garfield.com relinquish ? gmail.com

Q Connect Tarryn Page, Stacey Rethman, Rea Rangaka, Anushka Life and Yolande Breedt.
Some of the actors playing the Vodafone Zoozoos

Springfest 2010

2010-02-08T06:33:00.000-08:00

A team of around 15 people from Enquiry made the short trip to IIT Kharagpur to take part in the quizzes of Springfest 2010.

We had to get up in the wee hours of the morning to catch a train from Howrah. We all got up on time except the one who had the tickets !! The great Kunalda !!

We had a train to catch at 6 A.M & Kunalda calls me at 5:40 in the morning asking "Are you awake yet ? I just woke up. I don't think i will get to the station on time."

"You moron, I am 5 miutes from the station & you are asking me if I am up yet ?" is not entirely what i said but it's all i can reveal here from my curse-riddled, foul mouthed rant in reply to his query.

I don't know how, maybe my curses did the trick, but Kunalda made it to the station just in time, along with Titash, who must have been waiting more than half an hour for Kunalda on a bitterly cold January morning, poor soul.

Coming back to the quizzes. First in line was The Sports Quiz conducted by Kunal Malhotra
(This is a different Kunal from our Kunalda) on 22nd January 2010. All of us made it to the stage with Boss, Panda, Sarba & myself winning followed by Titash, Nrisinga, Nironko & Sumantra in 2nd. IIT KGP finished 3rd. The quiz was good and some might say I am being overly critical if I say some questions were old chestnuts.

The fact is, and I am not being even a little pompous when i say this, almost all of us in Enquiry are excellent Sports quizzers which is why we find a lot more old chestnuts than most.

The Sports quiz was quickly followed by the Cyber Quiz again conducted by Kunal Malhotra. We changed teams for this and once again most of us made it to the stage. This time around we were left clueless as other teams seemed to find one old chestnut after another whereas we fretted over missed opportunities and stuff we felt we should have known. The quiz was good. I am not sure of the results but i think a team from NIT won with IIT KGP tying for 2nd with a team comprising Panda, Raktim, Sarba & Sumantra.

After the Cyber Quiz I realised something we all know but often forget. "What you know is easy, what you don't is hard". The Sports Quiz was an example of the former and the Cyber of the latter.

I heard somewhere that Kunal Malhotra had been forced to make the Cyber & Biz quiz in a day. If that's true, Hats off to him !! I know how difficult it is to make even one question at a college level quiz in India. To have made 2 quizzes in a day is phenomenal.

The next day Kunal Malhotra did the Biz quiz which IIT KGP won and Boss, Kunalda, Titash & myself finished 2nd.

Then followed the General Quiz conducted by Dr. Bhattacharya from the Qutub Quiz club in Delhi. He did a great quiz and Boss, Panda, Sarba & myself won followed by Debanjan, Priyanka, Jishu & Arindam in 2nd.

Most of us left after the General Quiz but those of us who stayed back took part in the Movie Quiz the next day.

About the Movie Quiz. Perhaps you will not hear this kind of a review for a quiz again so read the following text carefully. To sum up the quiz, it was a waste of good questions !!!!

We have all been to quizzes with stupid formats. They NEVER have good questions. But in the words of Micheline Roquebrune the 2nd wife of Sean Connery "Never Say Never Again".

This quiz had some wonderful questions. But the format. It was so complex, it was ridiculous. There were questions when the only teams to answer got no points. Half the teams were asked 30 questions whereas the other half got only 25. The scoring was so complex it needed a top notch accountant to tabulate. After a tiresome, long, gruelling quiz Debanjan & Co. won with NIT Rourkela 2nd followed by IIT KGP & us tied for 3rd. If only the quiz had been done in a straightforwrd way it would have been immensely enjoyable and we wouldn't have had to return home late in the evening, in a crowded train with all of us carrying severe headaches.

Over all the Springfest quizzes were excellent and we had a good time. The accommodation was fair. I have been to far worse. This was the first time I went to the Springfest & might be the last. I wish I had been here the past 3 years.

Here are some questions from the Sringfest you might enjoy :

Q What did opponents claim players like German goalie Harald Schumacher & Arthur Ashe do in order to distract them ? They tried to hypnotize their opponents

Q Connect Mohammed Yousuf with AG Kripal Singh ? Only test cricketers to have converted religions

Q Where would one use the monetary unit Linden dollars ? In the Second life

Q What was shipped part by part to Lake Havasu Arizona and re-assembled in Oct 1971 ?
The London Bridge

Q In poker what is a hand containing pairs of black 8s & black Aces called ? Dead man's hand

Q 2 parts marble chips to one part cement along with goat milk to act as a glue is used to make what in the world of entertainment ? The terrazo squares on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Ranajay Karlekar Memorial, Jadavpur University Inter Departmental Quiz

2010-02-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

On the 16th of January 2010, a day when people on the streets of Kolkata were talking of only one thing (the passing away of Jyoti Basu), I reached the venue for the Ranajay Karlekar Memorial Quiz, fearing the worst.

We had to come in early to set up the venue for Joy da & Debkumar da to conduct the quiz. The venue was locked and the four of us who had made the grave error of arriving on time thought for a while "Today's gonna be a no show".

But better late than never, people started coming in, the venue opened, we set up the place and the quizmasters arrived.

Around 20 teams registered for the quiz & 8 teams made it to the finals. The Department of History topped the prelims. There were 4 teams from English. Teams from Electrical, Civil & Economics completed the Top 8.

Electrical raced into an early lead, with teams from English, Eco & Civil following. But towards the end English & Civil picked up the pace & the quiz finished Civil 1st followed by English & Electrical.

Joyda & Debuda did a wonderful job. Here are some questions which i found interesting :

According to the Peter's principles if the ABCs of public speaking are Always Be Confident what are the XYZs of public speaking ?
Examine Your Zippers !!!!!

Who was Cuppola's original choice to play Godfather ? Mario Puzo

Whose election slogan was this : Na nar na nari, Indira ka pujari, Sanjay ka savari ? ND Tiwari

Where would you see a failed whale ? Twitter

In the 194os people from which profession began to call themselves Ecdisiasts a term used for snakes and other creatures who shed their skin ? Strippers !! Awesome question !

The inventor of an early form of the Lie-detector gave the idea for what in the world of comics ?
Wonder woman's Lasso of truth

Which useful product is made of hooks & lubes ? Velcro

What are chicken fillets ? Implants used in cosmetic surgery

Which place dropped the letter "L" from it's name when the pope visited ? Hollywood. Another great question, very workable & was glad to see this answered direct. Shows we have not lost the power of deducing stuff.

It was wonderful to see people sitting through the length of the quiz and plenty of our friends who did not actually take part, also came in to enjoy an excellent Quiz.

Hope next year's quiz is as good as this, if not better.

Back after a long layoff

2010-01-28T00:15:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I last updated the blog and it was not because we were not having regular sessions. On the contrary the chief reason i could not update the blog and upload new sessions was because we were having too many sessions. During the Puja Hols i think we must have had at least 10 sessions in a month. I could not keep track of all the sessions and so stopped trying. In the meantime us Enquiry members have enjoyed plenty of great quizzes.

The Jadavpur University Inter Departmental Quiz in memory of Ranajay Karlekar was revived this year thanks to Tintin da's efforts. We were honoured to have Debkumar da & Joy da conducting the quiz which was both brilliant & very enjoyable at the same time. A team from Civil Engg (where yours truly played a small part) won the quiz followed closely by teams from English & Electrical Engg.

The Open quizzing circuit has seen some of our teams make it to the finals but without much luck. The College quizzing circuit has been a much happier hunting ground. We have had plenty of new members attending sessions regularly and 2 weeks back we broke the Enquiry session attendance record with 23 people turning up !

As I sign off, I hope this trend continues and more people view the world wearing "Quiz Goggles"

P.S. : You might be wondering about "Quiz Goggles". It's from one of Joy da's questions. It's the tendency to look at everything around us with the intention of framing questions for quizzes !!

Qriosity 2009 The Subhankar Nag Memorial Quiz Fest

2009-09-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

After a lot of hard work Qriosity 2009 was completed smoothly.
The 3 quizzes were exceptionally conducted. Kudos to Shounak da, Ronodurjoy da & Joy da.

The results of the quizzes are as follows :

Biz Quiz :
1st : Team from IIM-C
2nd :Mixed team from JU & IIFT
3rd : Team from Osmania University and Manipal

Sports Quiz :
1st : Mixed team of JU & CU
2nd : Mixed team of IIFT, Presidency &
3rd : Team from JU

General Open Quiz :

1st : INMANAIACS ( GOUTAM GHOSH, ANIRUDH CHARI, MALAVIKA )
2nd : HAGGARDS ( SHOUVIK GUHA, JAYASHREE MOHANKA, DEEPANJAN DEB )
3rd : QUIZ LOVERS OF KOLKATA ( ASHOKE SANYAL, SOMNATH CHANDA, SUPRATIM CHAKLADAR )

New website for Qriosity 2009

2009-07-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

The new website for Qriosity 2009 is up at qriosity.webs.com .
Check it out for event details, rules & sponsorship details.

QRIOSITY 2009 : The journey has begun

2009-07-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well we have taken the first step towards Qriosity 2009 by finalizing the dates for the events on the 12th n 13th of September, 2009 and the venue as the Triguna Sen Memorial Hall.

We did run into a few hitches on the way but nothing major. Now the onus is on us to improve on the phenomenal success of Qriosity 2008 and make the event even bigger. It's gonna take a lot of hard work but i think we are all up for it.

This time round a Sports Quiz has been added to the existing lineup. The Sports & Biz quizzes will be held on the 12th of September and are meant for college & school students only.
The General Quiz on the 13th of September to be conducted by Joy Bhattacharya has been opened for all participants.

Pictures from Enquiry

2008-09-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from Enquiry sessions and Qriosity quizzes :

NUJS winning the General Quiz at Qriosity 2K8

Gujju Mafia winning the Biz Quiz at Qriosity 2K8

After Qriosity 2K7

Members of the old Enquiry

After Qriosity 2K8

Paddyda's session

Questions from recent sessions

2008-08-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

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Download the files, unrar and view with Microsoft PowerPoint.
All recent sessions will be added to this post.

29th March 2009

Henceforth all recent sessions will be posted in this link

http://www.esnips.com/web/birladeysBusinessFiles

Too much work editing this post every time a new session is done so I'll just upload all future quizzes to the above esnips folder

Quizzes from Sanskriti :

2008

A general round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/0461f4d2-7c7b-4ad9-b11a-b93c7cc8d3ee/general1
A visual round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/d49b39cd-43b6-4d4d-977f-611f169e08bd/visual1
A sports quiz
http://www.esnips.com/doc/57842813-6a10-4764-9c7f-f3a053f4dd26/sportsquiz
Connection round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/2bdba2d3-3dde-4b4a-9552-64fad2e55ccf/Connect
A general round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/18582214-f42d-4dc6-bbea-43a6a44ed442/Geeral
Advertisement round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/a7aa22e4-c51e-49b9-9bca-0a36bd7aa5b2/Adround
General quiz
http://www.esnips.com/doc/4e126330-60c3-4afc-8a94-ad6024755816/scfinal
Connection round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/26cd0b5f-52e0-492b-8cb5-19f42d28881b/connect1
General round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/20d83cf6-a39d-47e5-a975-e0aba2fe434a/gen

2009

General JU Science on 4/3/2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/8518d52f-d0dc-4813-bb9a-0ba990fdf554/2009JUsciencegeneral
JU Science Sports on 6/3/2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/c03e3bd8-ea6f-4cc7-8ce2-02efab99c0be/2009jusciencesports
JU FETSU Sports on 10/3/2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/1223d2d3-dcae-4e3d-b747-06608ce881f9/sports2009

Robin's Sessions :

A food round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/7d1d244e-aeb4-4001-aba3-6910f2fbb508/foodround
A food theme
http://www.esnips.com/doc/3fa73b1d-c427-4712-9c59-26c7a24485cd/foodtheme
A dry round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/390dc71f-a2b2-4c77-ab0a-26acedbd093b/generalround2
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/25187dc4-5429-4a44-87d1-815409a55daf/asdcAxc
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/132a4e2e-4eef-4332-ae27-5f85173b8fac/adsssd
A special round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/e2b46a66-f150-4a4f-95e4-cef0604a04ae/2Chances
A general quiz
http://www.esnips.com/doc/48472e68-6c0e-4f87-8e85-065a05b8b62f/aditya
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/947ee142-76db-458f-9d52-cca9fa442366/cc2
A pharma quiz
http://www.esnips.com/doc/74fe5f62-2ac7-47ce-baa9-70afc0d29a52/Pharma
A general round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/c7717fac-8bc7-4018-8108-3b7718a1cf1f/squiz
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/7b27b4f2-e933-4b9d-8379-308e81acde81/theme5
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/023a2c9b-d240-4fcc-8ce2-4ed288901f05/theme1
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/86f2b6e6-1754-46a5-9bb9-ca804840d658/theme2
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/4a309d85-8caf-467d-b826-eb61c09a4209/theme4
A theme round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/5ffb3ced-683e-4822-b9d9-2f5c4029a156/theme3
A dry round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/faed77e5-36f1-4dbf-918a-b1e38a9d9483/Dry
A sports quiz
http://www.esnips.com/doc/754dab55-f9a1-4d2e-a4de-b78986de1b2d/sprtsn1
General round on 18.8.2008
http://www.esnips.com/doc/983c22a3-7e20-47d3-af78-e1209263a29b/ltstk
General round on 05.02.2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/730c5b80-ee61-42d8-8f9f-7a35857c9bd9/quiz5k
General round on 26.02.2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/97ddeb8b-91c6-4608-a1a0-1e00b849bbc6/6quizblank

Sayantan's Sessions :

General round on 28.8.2008
http://www.esnips.com/doc/dd9ee1cc-6eb2-410e-b1f1-6fb7d5b5dbcb/enquiry

Kunal's Sessions :

Business round on 4.9.2008
http://www.esnips.com/doc/3dc8b52d-2fed-47cc-9405-257aeecffb18/kunalBizju
http://www.esnips.com/doc/6b436222-19e4-4e98-b8c6-07b3114770d9/Biz_ju
General rounds
http://www.esnips.com/doc/e99c954d-a048-448e-93e9-35cab7bc8818/myquizgnrl
http://www.esnips.com/doc/9b5686c5-89ce-4d21-8c65-fca25af7ca1d/myquiz

Titash's Sessions :

General rounds
http://www.esnips.com/doc/6603c150-83a8-4684-90ad-e4bfc4d85b90/titas
http://www.esnips.com/doc/b1548c63-3d52-401d-8d30-6cd5a15c17e1/Quizine
Sports round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/b1eebb61-fe17-417d-9633-1cc5f6d56892/spricket

Gairik's Sessions :

General rounds on 11.9.2008
http://www.esnips.com/doc/086a7bd2-0a61-4710-93ea-4f22d5ad7509/Round-1
http://www.esnips.com/doc/38b17d09-fa3f-4796-8fda-2046a3ea5224/Round-2
http://www.esnips.com/doc/ca00a7ce-921f-457f-84d6-3139bbb3e0ce/Quis2
Connection round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/918b4df9-7027-4a66-9d0c-7ac912726b01/connections
General round on 5.3.2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/45609cdd-4295-4444-86ff-f07b28682a41/gourik

Siddharth's Sessions :

General round
http://www.esnips.com/doc/1897d55c-78de-49b4-b0c4-1f02ae38ddc5/Siddharthas-Session

Shabbir's Sessions :

General round on 12.02.2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/e119cc0a-7e92-4672-b667-008f67f6a0ff/shabbirEnquiry
General round on 5.3.2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/57f55ffa-c8bf-4319-bb2b-6549a5994d0f/Juqc

Panda's Sessions :

General round on 12.02.2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/0cb3e283-52f5-4c10-ba66-43aa694288a9/Pandasession

Sarbajit's Sessions :

General round January 2009
http://www.esnips.com/doc/86fe8dac-02f1-49a1-ad2f-e21b70ee5d0b/Sarbajits-Session

Some more questions in another JU Quiz club blog started by Sena. Here is the link :

http://juquizclub.blogspot.com

About Enquiry

2008-08-24T06:55:00.000-07:00

Enquiry was the brainchild of Paddyda & Subhoda who felt that the University needed it's own quiz club so that students could develop their wits and test themselves. They started out with a few students of their own Computer Science & Engineering Department in 2001 but the Enquiry we know today is not just the Jadavpur University quiz club; We have active members from many other colleges in Kolkata. Meetings are held every Thursday at 6 P.M. where every week one member conducts a full quiz. . Our seniors are in constant touch with the club, helping us out and often come along for the sessions if possible. Qriosity the annual quiz conducted by Enquiry has been improving every year since it's inception 6 years ago.

http://www.slideshare.net/sayanghosh/jadavpur-university-quiz-club-an-overview/

Qriosity results over the years

2008-08-23T22:14:00.000-07:00

--------------------------------------
Qriosity 2k9

Biz Quiz :
1st : Team from IIM-C
2nd :Mixed team from JU & IIFT
3rd : Team from the Army Institute of Management

Sports Quiz :
1st : Mixed team of JU & CU
2nd : Mixed team of IIFT, Presidency &
3rd : Team from JU

General Open Quiz :

1st : INMANAIACS ( GOUTAM GHOSH, ANIRUDH CHARI, MALAVIKA )
2nd : HAGGARDS ( SHOUVIK GUHA, JAYASHREE MOHANKA, DEEPANJAN DEB )
3rd : QUIZ LOVERS OF KOLKATA ( ASHOKE SANYAL, SOMNATH CHANDA, SUPRATIK CHAUDHARI )

Qriosity 2k8

Qriosity 2K8 for the first time in the event's' history had two quizzes.

The Biz quiz was conducted by Sounakda.
The winners of the Biz quiz were :
1st-Gujju Mafia (Team from IIM-C)
And I am happy to inform that two teams from Enquiry finished 2nd & 3rd
2nd-Haplessly Hopeless Inc (Mix of IEM,IIFT & College of Ceramic Technology)
3rd-Potoldanga Thunder Club (Mix of JU & CU)

The General quiz was hosted by Joy Bhattacharjya and the winners were :
1st-NUJS
2nd-Gujju Mafia
3rd-Potoldanga Thunder club

Preyoshi Ganguly won the Miss. Intelligent prize in the Biz quiz whereas Vasudha Reddy walked away with the best Female Quizzer in the General Quiz although she was the best participant overall by far, including us poor guys. The "female" tag saving our blushes.

Results of all the Qriosity quizzes so far :

2008 :

Biz quiz :
Quizmaster - Sounakda
Winners-Gujju Mafia (Team from IIM-C)
Miss Intelligent - Preyoshi Ganguly
General quiz :
Quizmaster - Joy Bhattacharjya
Winners - NUJS
Best Female Quizzer - Vasudha Reddy

2007 :
Quizmaster - Sounakda
Winners - IIMC
Best Female Quizzer - Vasudha Reddy

2006 :
Quizmasters - Tintinda & Samantakda
Winners - Mixed team from JU Chemical Engg. & College of Ceramic Technology

2005 :
Quizmaster -G. Shrikanth
Winners - Paddyda,Suvagatada and sm1

2004 :
Quizmaster -
Winners -

2003 :
Quizmaster - Debkumar Mitra
Winners - Amit De, Debarghya Das & Anirudh Chari

Qriosty 2K8 Credits

2008-08-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

Qriosity 2K8 in memory of Subhankar Nag held on the 23rd of August 2008 at the Triguna Sen Memorial Auditorium in Jadavpur University was a grand succes .

The event in memory of Subhoda would have been unimaginable without the backing of Subhoda's family and friends with whom lie our condolences for their loss. The loss has also been immense for the Quizzing community in general and in particular for us, the members of Enquiry; who deeply feel the absence of the man behind Enquiry and Qriosity.

The success of Qriosity 2K8 was the result of some real hard work put in firstly by Enquiry's lifetime "CEO" Kunalda and a few lesser mortals like myself (Robin), Siddhartha, Arpanda, Sarbajit, Anirban, Shabbir, Shubhrojyoti, Bag,Rajarshi, Proteek, Debarghya, Sudeshna and if there is anybody whose name i've forgotten to mention please forgive my ignorance.

The event would have been impossible without the support of our much-loved ex-students including Pushpolda, Senada, Basabda, Kartikda, Aritrada, Debratnada, Paddyda, Dhimanda, Swarnangshuda, Joydeepda, Debamitrada, PPTda, Tangoda, Jishnuda, Proshenda, Shatabdidi, Anindyada, Sharmiladi,Sayanda, Arijitda, Aritrada,Shantanuda, Arindamda, Shamantakda, Nitinda, Vijitda,Akashda, Suvagatada..... Tintinda (thanks for for your generous support each year) and of course Joyda who took time out of his busy schedule to come to Kolkata and host the general quiz.

No event is complete without the backing of sponsors and we received a generous helping from the people at Telegraph (Thank you Rishinda), Hindalco, The Chatterjee Group, Zapak gameplex, IMS, Linc, Radio Mirchi, Shoppers Stop and Radio JU.

We were guided all along by Dr. Bappa Mallik (Director of Youth Welfare Department) and Proloyda also provided his incessant inputs.

Both the quizzes were fantastic and needless to say the quizmasters Sounakda (Bizmania) & Joy Bhattacharjya (General) did an incredible job.

And last but not the least there would have been no event without all the students who turned up for the quizzes. This year we had 55 teams for the Biz quiz and 115 for the general which is the biggest in Qriosity's history. We had teams from IIT Kgp, BIT Mesra, NIT Dgp, NIT Jamshedpur, NIT Rourkella...etc..thanks to all of them for being a part of our event.

Qriosity 2K8 Poster

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