Saturday, March 21, 2009

Quiz 10 report - two QMs and their forte

Nishtha and Pranjal conducted the tenth quiz of the season; the first half was peppered with a good variety of questions including music, literature (the QMs forte), and some "pop culture". The long connect was nice, but it left the QM devastated that it wasn't well answered, and even worse, answered by the most unlikely team, which might have led other teams on the wrong track. The QM came up with unique way to avoid cacophonous clarifications: just keep the images so small that everyone is occupied with staring and glaring at the tiny images ;-) Although most answers could be worked out, the QM was generously awarding points even if they were remotely close to the answer :-)

Second part of the quiz had a completely different theme, and a very specific one: computer science. Questions like Akamai (with pic of its founder), a stats paper, among other things made up some real hard core CS stuff ;-). Unfortunately, that left a lot of non-techie crowd in tatters, which opened up the quiz for the "someone-gets-it-once-we-run-out-of-guesses" answering mode with only a few teams involved. Some non-CS questions were really good (but not very "workoutable"), such as the Depression era picture and Primanti Bros. Overall, it was very well-prepared quiz (downloading 12 "popular" youtube videos -- kudos for the effort) and the QM did a great job of controlling the vociferous crowd by doing nothing but patiently waiting for the crowd to shut up, pretty neat :-)

And, both QMs were awesome about keeping this a quiz, and not turning it into a pictionary :-)

UPDATE: There was tie-breaker for the first place, which took ages to finish. First question, no one follows NHL/NFL/MLB/NBA -- both teams missed. Second question, Murali's team got close, before they jumbled up the Xs and Ys. Third question, Keshav blurted out an answer, which if he had penciled, would have won the quiz. Finally, the rockets of Goddard blasted Murali's team to the highest pedestal.

Quiz Teams (and standings):

Ali/Harsha/Kannan/Satya
Shantanu/Shiva/Swapnil/VarunAg
Prananv/Siddharth/Suyash/Utsav
Gaurav/Ravi/Varun + 1 (third place)
Aditya/Murali/Srinivas/Vyas (first place)
Ankit/Deepak/Keshav/Vinay (second place)

Update league standings at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pad8OkPTEUANT0-QEnI_oTA

Next week's quiz will be organized by Shantanu.

12 comments:

  1. i was getting so excited if anyone was remotely close to the answer,that i'd blurt out that it was right , and then ask them to explain...i realised later that often the teams had just identified one part of the connect, and then i would complete the answer for them...
    varun A summed it up pretty well...'not the best quiz, except for the nanvati connect'..:P

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  2. I actually thought that Pranjal's quiz was more 'workable' with or without the comp sci. twist. At least the ones we got (2nd life, new years ball) were worked out. I was (obly) completely lost in the first half :). But I loved the way Tommy controlled his 'team'.

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  3. Both were nice quizzes and had workable answers...the New years ball was a nice one..I didn't read it properly and got duped into thinking it was the Louvre Pyramid, lucky it didn't come to us. Also liked the SETI question.

    Missed Sergeant Pepper by a mile..I knew Nishtha would give a Beatles question and still missed the one that came. But our team mounted a beautiful rearguard action with inspired answers like Mafia (brilliant thinking by Deepak on that one)..until your truly blurted out what would have been a quiz winning answer (ass!!!!)

    My observation seems to hold true..Varun A is like the Hope diamond...as Tommy discovered.

    Lastly...Not to be a tattle-tail (my aplogies Gaurav)..but Tommy, you've gifted Gaurav 6 points extra..much to the consternation of Pranav and Srinivas...

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  4. Hahahahaha... Pranjal quiz sucked big time and time who scored the max out of it. Nishtha di's quiz was awesome and specially the nanavati question :)

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  5. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahhahaahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhhahahahahahha

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  6. Damn. People seem to have finally figured out the reason I thanked Tommy ;)

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  7. Keshav - Frankly my dear I dont give a damn (Hope you got the movie from where the quote originated :) )

    Referring to the points here of course...tired of 1 pointers ! I think Swapnil should have mentioned it was a close affair...we got 6 in the first half and managed only 2 in the second ! Lost out on an easy 'hack' question which I messed up..or we would be in a 3 way tie for 1st place (for 2 points what I would not do)

    Also we were the other team to get sgt peppers on the last try :) after ruling it out at stage 2 coz we dint think a TV appeared in the album cover :)

    Good stuff by both hosts and looking forward to breaking the 1 point jinx next time :) Anyone done a psych profile on Shantanu? :)

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  8. Gaurav..yeah sorry about that...I really scrutinize that points table...probably because I have very few real hobbies and like number crunching..so staring at that like the witch in Snow White stared at her magic mirror is one of them.

    Pranav..dude don't worry about the points...they're not yet 'Gone with the Wind'. Yeah hack was one of the easier ones and nice effort to get Sgt.Pepper..i was shocked when Tommy's team pulled it off to get 3 points...thought that ended the battle for first place right there..3 in the first question would have sealed the deal in any other quiz..but this one allowed for come backs from both our team and more notably, Vyas and Murali's (remember the wild celebrations when they got off the mark?)

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  9. Pschy profile on Shatanu would be useful..he's right now a black box to me as was Pranjal..not that it helps though..every time I've been prepared for a question - Friday the 13th by Pranav and Beatles by Nishtha, I've never actually got it

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  10. i also join a list of distinguished people who've pissed off vyas in a quiz :D

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  11. I truly understand the value of profiling my dear friend Keshav :) So I will try and keep it simple.

    So for my Quiz, when in doubt, think Gadgets, sex and political trivia, possibly in that order :)

    That's the modified golden rule for my part !

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